It may be his knowledge of the language was all the more accurate on this account. He got it from the fountain-head, and not through foreign sources. He was thus qualified to take a prominent place in all the varied work of a mission--in translation, in revision, and in hymnology--departments as important and as influential for attaining the end in view as any other possible department in the Mission. As a preacher to the Chinese he was unrivaled. The people hung on his lips and never seemed to lose a word. He was in this respect a model to every one of us younger men. The ideal of the church in China which he had set before him, the goal he desired to reach, was a native, self-governing, self-supporting, and self-propagating church. This is now axiomatic. It was not so in those early days. The men in Amoy then were men for whom we have to thank God--men ahead of their time, with generous and far-reaching ideas; not working only for their own present, but laying the foundation for a great future. Side by side with him were the brethren of the English Presbyterian Mission, with whom he had the fullest sympathy, and they had the fullest sympathy with him. It is difficult to say who were foremost in pressing the idea of an organized native church. All were equally convinced and strove together for the one great end. After many years of waiting the church grew. Congregations were formed and organized with their own elders and deacons, and in this he took the first steps. He was a born organizer. And then came the next great step, the creation of a Presbytery and the ordination in an orderly manner of native pastors. Some congregations were ready to call and support such pastors, and the men were there, for the careful training of native agents had always been a marked feature of the Amoy Mission. But how was it to be done? Common sense led to only one conclusion. This church must not be an exotic; it must be native, independent of the home churches. And there must be kept in view what was a fact already--the union between the Missions of the "Reformed Church" and of the "English Presbyterian Church." It must be done, and done in this way, and so it was done. The Presbytery was created with no native pastor in the first instance, but with native elders and the missionaries of both Missions. Then came a struggle that would have tried the stoutest hearts. The "Reformed Church" in America declined to recognize this newly-created Presbytery. Dr. Talmage went home and fought the battle and won the day. To its great honor be it said, the General Synod of the "Reformed Church" rescinded its resolution of the previous year, and allowed their honored brethren, the missionaries, to take their own way. So convinced were the missionaries of the wisdom, yea, the necessity, of the course they had taken, that they were prepared to resign rather than retrace their steps.