born on the twenty-fifth of December, 1873, his tiny tomb-stone bears the simple inscription: "Our Christmas Gift." During all our seasons of domestic sorrow the cordial sympathies of our noble-hearted congregation were very cheering; for we had always kept open doors to them all, and regarded them as only an enlargement of our own family. In our household joys, they too, participated. When the twenty-fifth anniversary of our marriage occurred, they decorated our church with flags and flowers and suspended a huge marriage-bell on an arch before the pulpit. After the President of our Board of Trustees, the Hon. William W. Goodrich, had completed his congratulatory address, two of the officers of the church in imitation of the returning spies from Eshcol marched in, "bearing between them on a staff" a capacious bag of silver dollars. A curiously constructed silver clock is also among the treasured souvenirs of that happy anniversary. In April, 1885, the close of the first quarter-century of my ministry was celebrated by our church with very delightful festivities. Addresses were delivered by his Honor Mayor Low, Dr. McCosh, of Princeton, Dr. Richard S. Storrs, and the Hon. John Wanamaker, Post-Master General. A duodecimo volume giving the history of our church and all its activities was published by order of our people. From such a loyal flock in the full tide of its prosperity, to cut asunder, required no small exercise of conscience and of courage. When the patriarchal Dr. Emmons, of Franklin, Massachusetts, resigned his church at the age of eighty, he gave the good reason: "I mean to stop when I have sense enough to know that I have not begun, to fail." In exercising the same grace, on a Sabbath morning in February, 1890, I made before a full congregation the following announcement: "Nearly thirty years have elapsed since I assumed the pastoral charge of the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church; and through the continual blessings of Heaven upon us it has grown into one of the largest and most useful and powerful churches in the Presbyterian denomination. It has two thousand three hundred and thirty members; and is third in point of numbers in the United States. This church has always been to me like a beloved child: I have given to it thirty years of hard and happy labor. It is now my foremost desire that its harmony may remain undisturbed, and that its prosperity may remain unbroken. For a long time I have intended that my thirtieth anniversary should be the terminal point of my present pastorate I shall then have served this beloved flock for an ordinary human generation, and the time has now come to transfer this most sacred trust to some other, who, in God's good Providence, may have thirty years of vigorous work before him, and not behind him. If God spares my life to the first Sabbath in April, it is my purpose to surrender this pulpit back into your hands, and I shall