aken their
"sacramentum," or vow of loyalty, before this pulpit. What is our crown
of rejoicing? Are not even they in the presence of Christ at His
coming?

It is due to you that I should commend your liberality in gifts to God's
treasury. During these thirty years over $640,000 have been contributed
for ecclesiastical and benevolent purposes, and about $700,000 for the
maintenance of the sanctuary, its worship, and its work. Over a million
and a quarter of dollars have passed through these two channels. The
successive boards of trustees have managed our financial affairs
carefully and efficiently. The architecture of this noble edifice is not
disfigured by any mortgage. I hope it never will be.

There is one department of ministerial labor that has had a peculiar
attraction to me and afforded me peculiar joy. Pastoral work has always
been my passion. It has been my rule to know everybody in this
congregation, if possible, and seldom have I allowed a day to pass
without a visit to some of your homes. I fancied that you cared more to
have a warm-hearted pastor than a cold-blooded preacher, however
intellectual. To carry out thoroughly a system of personal oversight, to
visit every family, to stand by the sick and dying beds, to put one's
self into sympathy with aching hearts and bereaved households, is a
process that has swallowed up time, and I tell you it has strained the
nerves prodigiously. Costly as the process has been, it has paid. If I
have given sermons to you, I have got sermons from you. The closest tie
that binds us together is that sacred tie that has been wound around the
cribs in your nurseries, the couches in your sick chambers, the chairs
at your fireside, and even the coffins that have borne away your
precious dead. My fondest hope is that however much you may honor and
love my successor in this pulpit, you will evermore keep a warm place in
the chimney-corner of your hearts for the man that gave the best thirty
years of his life to your service.

Here let me bespeak for my successor the most kind and reasonable
allowance as to pastoral labors. Do not expect too much from him. Very
few ministers have the peculiar passion for pastoral service that I have
had; and if Christ's ambassador who shall occupy this pulpit proclaims
faithfully the whole Gospel of God and brings a sympathetic heart to
your houses, do not criticize him unjustly because he may not attempt to
make twenty-five thousand pastoral vis