I have felt free to mention the faults, failings, and defects of the man we all loved so well, partly because he himself instilled early in us the love of absolute truth, and because his career is in itself a mighty lesson to all young men. It is a story that shows self-conquest and mastery of difficulties, for John Chambers was ever rising on stepping stones of his dead self to higher things. Out of his own faults, by God's grace, he made a ladder by which he mounted up to God. It is because his strength was made perfect in weakness that his life speaks even yet so powerfully. Though he has been dead much more than a quarter of a century, his influence is to-day like wave on wave of ever widening circles, and the force of his life is reproduced in scores of other human lives in all parts of the earth. Even in intellectual edification he "builded better than he knew". When the "higher criticism" came, with its imaginary terrors, as of hoof, horn, and teeth, I for one, felt able to tame, manage, and use it as a faithful beast of burden, both for the history of Japan and of Israel, largely because John Chambers used to say to me: "Will, study the Bible, and don't be afraid of what you find there". Where some see only the chestnut burr, I have found food and sweetness. "Out of the eater has come forth meat, and out of the strong, sweetness," largely because of the atmosphere which John Chambers suffused around my youthful head. Mr. Chambers's fortieth anniversary sermon on May 14, 1865, was published in a neat pamphlet, with a sketch of the history of the church. He was then in his sixty-eighth year and in vigorous health. About eight or ten of his original parishioners out of the seventy-one who, in April, 1825, had voted to call him to be their pastor, still survived. Despite the subtraction of removals, dismissals and deaths the church rolls showed an active membership of twelve hundred. The church edifice, on a lot seventy-six by one hundred feet, had cost, for building and enlargement, about fifty thousand dollars, all raised by direct subscription. About three thousand persons had been received into membership, nine-tenths on confession of faith. Other statistics are interesting--2,509 funerals, 6,247 sermons, 2,400 funeral addresses, 3,000 addresses on missionary, temperance and Sunday School subjects, and about 28,000 pastoral calls. In forty years, excepting his absence in Europe, he had been out of the pulpit for ill health only three times. In the foulness of strength and prosperity the spirit of this discourse is best set forth as he expressed it, "Oh, to grace how great a debtor" and "Hitherto the Lord hath helped us." The salary of our pastor, at first very modest, had been increased to $1,500, then to $2,500, and for a few later years, he received $4,000. It was about this time, 1865, that the gentlemen of the congregation presented him with a tea set of silver.