in life
was mercenary and selfish. My income from my lectures, and the earnings
from my books and published sermons, were sufficient for all my needs.

During the year 1893 I did my best to stem the tide of debt and
embarrassment in which the business elements of the church was involved.
I find an entry in my accounts of a check dated March 27, 1893, in
Brooklyn, for $10,000, which I donated to the Brooklyn Tabernacle
Emergency Fund. There is a spiritual warning in almost every practical
event of our lives, and it seemed that in that year, so discomforting to
the New Tabernacle, there was a spiritual warning to me which grew into
a certainty of feeling that my work called me elsewhere. I said nothing
of this to anyone, but quietly thought the situation over without haste
or undue prejudice. My Gospel field was a big one. The whole world
accepted the Gospel as I preached it, and I concluded that it did not
make much difference where the pulpit was in which I preached.

After a full year's consideration of the entire outlook, in January,
1894, I announced my resignation as pastor of the Tabernacle, to take
effect in the spring of that year. I gave no other cause than that I
felt that I had been in one place long enough. An attempt was made by
the Press to interpret my action into a private difference of opinion
with the trustees of the church--but this was not true. All sorts of
plans were proposed for raising the required sum of our expensive church
management, in which I concurred and laboured heartily. It was said that
I resigned because the trustees were about to decide in favour of
charging a nominal fee of ten cents to attend our services. I made no
objection to this. My resignation was a surprise to the congregation
because I had not indicated my plans or intimated to them my own private
expectations of the remaining years of my life.

On Sunday, January 22, 1894, among the usual church announcements made
from the pulpit, I read the following statement, which I had written on
a slip of paper:--

"This coming spring I will have been pastor of this church twenty-five
years--a quarter of a century--long enough for any minister to preach in
one place. At that anniversary I will resign this pulpit, and it will be
occupied by such person as you may select.

"Though the work has been arduous, because of the unparalleled necessity
of building three great churches, two of them destroyed by fire, the
field has been del