Seaside Theopolis

God of the Grove, where leaves are green,

Are brilliant in the golden light,

Where bright skies looking down between

Smile on us through the silent night--

Thou God of might and matchless love,

Walk through our walks at Ocean Grove.

--Ocean Grove Hymn.

On the northern New Jersey sea coast one winter's day in 1868, Rev. William B. Osborne, Methodist minister and onetime Philadelphia marble dealer, left his horse & buggy on the highway, wandered among sand dunes, knelt in prayer. There, during the following summer, he put up a tent, held religious services. Later, with a pious Manhattan brush maker named James A. Bradley, he formed the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association, began selling lots. Ocean Grove prospered.

Flanked in later days by a line of resorts including Asbury Park and Bradley Beach, both developed by astute Mr. Bradley, Ocean Grove acquired in 1876 a big auditorium in which spoke not only religious leaders but Presidents of the U. S.--Grant, Garfield, McKinley, Roosevelt I, Taft, Wilson. Last week, when it reached the height of its most successful season since 1929, Ocean Grove was still a predominantly Methodist theopolis, one of a few communities left in the U. S. which are run on a strictly godly basis.

At midnight every Saturday, heavy chains are stretched across the three entrances to Ocean Grove, and no automobile may enter, or move in the town's streets, until midnight Sunday. Unless they go to Asbury Park or Bradley Beach, the 35,000 summer residents of Ocean Grove go without ice cream, soda pop, postcards, films and newspapers on Sunday. Ocean Grove is the only dry community on the North Jersey coast, and in 1926 the late John Philip Sousa, concert touring, incurred its permanent displeasure by playing Follow the Swallow after he had been told a march called Wets & Drys would be inacceptable.

Last week 1,000 preachers, putting up in Ocean Grove's colony of 200 tents, or staying in its lacklustre boarding houses and private homes, attended an annual conference on evangelism led by Bishop Adna Wright Leonard of Pittsburgh. This week the 68th annual Camp meeting is to open in the auditorium. Last year its series of daily meetings attracted 62,430 people, and Ocean Grove expects attendance to be even better this year. So far, morning and evening crowds at Sunday auditorium services have averaged 4,000. According to Joseph A. Thoma, 39-Year-old city manager of Ocean Grove, who was born in nearby Long Branch and grew up under Ocean Grove's benign influence, the community is operating on a 100% cash basis, with funds in hand for building new jetties on the beach and completing hard-surfacing of its streets, and $35,000 per year net coming in regularly from assessments.

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