When I came back home in 1874, and in the still grandly attended Friday night meeting spoke to Dr. Chambers' people, I told them of Christian churches with nearly a thousand members enrolled, of Christian schools and hospitals, and of a new Japan. I called the attention of the now venerable pastor to this fresh illustration of the truth he had so often proclaimed, how much greater God was than our feeble faith, and how superbly the kingdom of heaven was marching on. After the benediction, a hearty right hand shaken and left shoulder patted in the ancient style, with words of glowing friendship, made for my soul a picture set in diamonds of delight--the last of the great man that has framed itself in my memory. CHAPTER XVI. TRANSFER OF THE CHURCH TO THE PRESBYTERY. For forty-eight years the congregation to which John Chambers ministered had formed an Independent Church. The time had now come when the same company of Christian believers, which had been the Ninth Presbyterian Church, was to enter upon the third stage of its history, and become the Chambers Presbyterian Church. On the 9th of May, 1825, Mr. Chambers had received his call. Amid all vicissitudes, the removing to a new neighborhood, the building first, and then the enlarging, of the church edifice, the terrible storm of the Civil War, and the removal of a large number of his people elsewhere, nothing had seriously interfered with his work or threatened its stability or continuance, but in 1874 the pastor began to think seriously about the future of his flock. The whole trend of population in all three directions, north, south, and west was away from Broad and Sansom, while business was steadily encroaching upon the neighborhood once wholly occupied by homes. John Chambers had overstepped the limits of three score years and ten. A stroke of paralysis was nature's first warning that the best days of his strength were over. The time seemed now to have come when an independent church, of the type which had for nearly half a century demonstrated its power to live and grow, was no longer needed. It was not self-conceit, but dire necessity that compelled John Chambers to reflect and to ask the question whether, after the removal of his own personality and the snapping by death of the ties which bound three generations to him in love and loyalty, the church could exist as an independent body. Long he pondered the matter. He breathed his thoughts at first to no one, not even to his wife, but looked to God for light. He waited for the vision. While he was musing, the fire burned. He has himself told the story: