THE FIFTEENTH MILESTONE

1891-1892

On April 26, 1891, the new Tabernacle was opened. There were three
dedication services and thousands of people came. I was fifty-nine years
of age. Up to this time everything had been extraordinary in its
conflict, its warnings. I found myself, after over thirty years of
service to the Gospel, pastor of the biggest Protestant church in the
world. It seems to me there were more men of indomitable success during
my career in America than at any other time. There were so many
self-made men, so many who compelled the world to listen, and feel and
do as they believed--men of remarkable energy, of prophetic genius.

Everywhere in England I had been asked about Cyrus W. Field. He was the
hero of the nineteenth century. In his days of sickness and trouble the
world remembered him. Of all the population of the earth he was the one
man who believed that a wire could be strung across the Atlantic. It
took him twelve years of incessant toil and fifty voyages across the
Atlantic. I remember well, in 1857, when the cable broke, how everyone
joined in the great chorus of "I told you so." There was a great jubilee
in that choral society of wise know-nothings. Thirty times the grapnel
searched the bottom of the sea and finally caught the broken cable, and
the pluck and ingenuity of Cyrus W. Field was celebrated. Ocean
cablegrams had ceased to be a curiosity, but some of us remember the day
when they were. I kept a memorandum of the two first messages across the
Atlantic that passed between Queen Victoria and President Buchanan in
the summer of 1858.

From England, in the Queen's name, came this:

"To the President of the United States, Washington--

"The Queen desires to congratulate the President upon the successful
completion of this great international work, in which the Queen has
taken the deepest interest. The Queen is convinced that the
President will join with her in fervently hoping that the electric
cable which now connects Great Britain with the United States will
prove an additional link between the nations whose friendship is
founded upon their common interest and reciprocal esteem. The Queen
has much pleasure in thus communicating with the President and
renewing to him her wishes for the prosperity of the United States."

The President's answering cable was as follows:

"To Her Majesty Victoria, Queen of Great Britain--

"The