Yet even with a growing Sunday School and enlarging church membership, the way of the young pastor was far from smooth, and the First Independent Church of Philadelphia was in no danger of being smothered with kindness. Almost as a matter of course, an industrious army of prophets arose to foretell failure to a church founded on the Bible alone. Rather, instead of "prophets", we should say a busy host of fortune-tellers, since the Hebrew and Biblical word, prophet, does not mean predicter, but the utterer of truth. The little ecclesiastical infant, rather foundling, needed much warmth of prayer and devotion, certainly during its first decade. With shakings of the head and emphatic use of the hands in dreadful warning of calamity, the Philadelphia variety of soothsayers declared that in two or three years, the First Independent Church would go to pieces. Both laymen and ministers were loud in declaring that such a church, without a "creed," (though the Bible is a very library of creeds), could not thrive or live. The idea of success in rearing a church, with the Holy Scriptures only as a rule of faith and practice, was scoffed at. In our day, it does indeed seem strange that Protestant ministers should so talk, but experience, the great teacher, showed "the divine sufficiency of the Bible as a rule of faith and practice, and ... also a bond of union holding together a large and flourishing congregation in Christian love and harmony". So wrote John Chambers in 1859. However, "liberal", or, rather scriptural, in his theological opinions, the young minister was, since especially he cared nothing for any man's boasted "predestination" or "election" to eternal life, unless that same man showed the fruits of faith in holy living, he was anything but liberal in his ideas of morals, or as related to amusements, or the keeping of the Christian day of rest. We shall see this clearly when we note how he dealt with one of his theatre-going elders. In his fortieth anniversary sermon, May 14th, 1865, which was printed, Mr. Chambers referred to this experience, stating that during the two-score years of his ministry no word of disagreement, or of an unpleasant character with his fellow-presbyters, had ever been spoken, with the exception that we are about to describe, and which, in order to make a perfectly correct record, Mr. Chambers himself would not omit. Shortly after administering his first communion, the young pastor found that "one of the original elders was in the habit of attending theatrical amusements and of taking his children with him". What resulted from this discovery is given in his own words: