The next stage of my life’s work was a seven years’ pastorate of Market Street Church in the city of New York.  To those seven years of hard and happy labor I look back with joy.  The congregation swarmed with young men, many of whom have risen to prominence in the commercial and religious life of the great metropolis.  The name of Market Street is graven indelibly on my heart.  I rejoice that the quaint old edifice still stands and welcomes every Sabbath a congregation of landsmen and of sailors.  During the year 1858 occurred the great revival, when a mighty wind from Heaven filled every house where the people of God were sitting, and the glorious work of that revival kept many of us busy for six months, night and day.

Early in the year 1860 a signal was made to me from this side of the East River.  It came from a brave little band then known as the Park Presbyterian Church, who had never had any installed pastor.  The signal at first was unheeded; but a higher than human hand seemed to be behind it, and I had only to obey.  That little flock stood like the man of Macedonia, saying, “Come over and help us,” and after I had seen the vision immediately I decided to come, assuredly concluding that God had called me to preach the Gospel unto them.

This morning my memory goes back to that chilly, stormy April Sunday when my labors began as your first pastor.  About two hundred and fifty people, full of grace and grit, gathered on that Easter morning to see how God could roll away stones that for two years had blocked their path with discouragement.  My first message many of you remember.  It was, “I determined not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified.”  Of that little company the large majority has departed.  Many of them are among the white-robed that now behold their risen Lord in glory.  Of the seventeen church officers—­elders, deacons and trustees—­then in office, who greeted me that day, only four are living, and of that number only one, Mr. Albion P. Higgins, is now a member of this congregation.  I wonder how many there are here this morning that gathered before my pulpit on that Easter Sunday thirty years ago?  As many of you as there are present that were at that service thirty years ago will do me a favor if you will rise in your pews.

(Thirteen people here stood up.)

God bless you!  If it hadn’t been for you this ark would never have been built.

Ah! we had happy days in that modest chapel.  The tempest of civil war was raging, with Lincoln’s steady hand at the helm.  We got our share of the gale; but we set our storm-sails, and every one that could handle ropes stood at his or her place.  Just think of the money contributions that small church made during the first year of my pastorate—­$20,000, not in paper, but in gold.  The little band in that chapel was not only generous in donations but valiant in spirit, and it was under the gracious shower of a revival that we removed into this edifice on the 16th of March, 1862.