"Many of these young men have entered other denominations; but our pastor never seemed otherwise than glad that they had found fields of usefulness in other directions. His only concern seemed to be that they might be true men, useful men, faithful to God and to duty. And here, I cannot refrain from an allusion to my own change of church relations, as illustrative of his generosity. When I felt called upon to leave this home of my youth and unite with another people who bear a different name, I called on him to tell him of my purpose. And while he could not accept of my views, I shall never forget with what a largeness of heart he took my hand in both of his, and bade me go and preach the everlasting Gospel to perishing men." Our great teacher was a man of continuous spiritual growth, in his old age ripening in the wisdom that helped and in the faith that makes faithful. Some things were seen by himself more clearly when God had given him the perspective of experience. This was so notable, that it excited the surprise of those who remembered only the former fiery days. He became less impetuous and abusive of his enemies. One alumnus writes, "A few years before his death, I asked him (Dr. Chambers) why he had fallen away from his strenuous and frequent utterances in behalf of total abstinence. He replied that experience had taught him that to make a man 'every whit whole' was almost as easy as to save him from a single evil habit, or to correct a single fault, and that he had come to feel that the utterance of a complete gospel was more necessary than preaching temperance. I think that this showed Mr. Chambers to be a less narrow-minded man than he had sometimes appeared to be". His nephew writes: "After I graduated at college in 1866, I went to the Union Theological Seminary and visited him a number of times. I was not quite clear about entering the Presbyterian ministry. He urged me to do so and told me confidentially the plans to get his own church into the Presbytery before his death. When I asked him how he could advise me to subscribe to the Westminster Confession when he could not do it himself, he said: "My son, I can swallow some things now I could not forty years ago"! In a word, John Chambers saw as clearly as Whittier: "The letter fails and systems fall, And every symbol wanes; The Spirit overbrooding all Eternal Love remains." With prophetic eye he perceived also that "the individualism of the middle of the nineteenth century" was soon to belong to the past, and that unity and co-operation were to prevail over competition and independency. Yet to suppose John Chambers was ever a sectarian would be to misjudge him wholly. His very life breathed out the prayer: "O Lord and Master of us all! Whate'er our name or sign, We own thy sway, we hear thy call, We test our lives by thine."