"For a whole year I did not even say to the beloved companion of my bosom what my object was, what I was thinking about, but I was casting around to know what was to become of this house. I thought of that little house down at the eastern end of Girard street, where the venerable and godly Samuel Wylie, D.D., lived and preached Jesus Christ, and I remembered the degradation which afterward fell upon it. I remembered the beautiful church on Seventh street, below Arch, where our honored friend, Dr. Beadle, preached, and I remembered that it was converted into a place for negro minstrels. I recollected the house where my once remarkable and eloquent and noble friend, Thomas H. Stockton, preached Christ Jesus, and how it was desecrated from the service of Almighty God to the service of the devil, and I said one morning, as I sat upon the summit of a hill away off yonder in the state of New York, just as the sun was going down, and I looked out upon that beautiful country: 'God helping me, when I go home I will tell my brethren the conclusion I have reached after a whole year's study and thought and prayer.' That conclusion that I had come to was that we would go into the Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia, we would change our charter, and we would put this church in such a chartered position that we should never lose it, but it should stand firm and fixed upon the immutable principles of the Lord God, firmly consecrated to the holiness of the atonement and the blood of the saints. We did it. We went into the Presbyterian Church. Those men of God threw their arms around us, almost with shouts of hallelujah, in the room just back of our house. The Presbytery met us and welcomed us, and I had the satisfaction of seeing this church taken into fellowship with that denomination where they are to-day, and where I trust the church will ever abide and prosper under God's blessing. I say devoutly that we did not lose our membership by the change. I believe there were two communicants who took some offense. One of them, poor fellow, has gone to Heaven, I believe, but there were but those two who left us, and I am as certain as I can be that if that dear brother had lived, they would have, both husband and wife, been with us now". It is very certain that the step was a wise one. It is still more certain that had such a transfer taken place before, or during the war, there would have been a much larger procession of members into the Congregational Church, wherein scores of "Chamberites" could from the opening of the war be counted. Deeply indoctrinated in primitive and apostolic ideas, they who remained with the pastor until 1874 would, if the change had been made twenty years earlier, have gone like those who in 1861 went out from the First Independent Church, largely because of their ideas as to Union and secession, and entered the Central Congregational Church.