What has been the outcome of these thirty years of happy pastorate?  As far as the results can be tabulated the following is a brief summary:—­During my pastorate here I have preached about 2,750 discourses, have delivered a very large number of public addresses in behalf of Sunday Schools, Young Men’s Associations, the temperance reform, and kindred enterprises for advancing human welfare.  I have officiated at 682 marriages.  I have baptized 962 children.  The total number received into the membership of this church during this time has been 4,223.  Of this number 1,920 have united by a confession of their faith in Jesus Christ.  An army, you see, an army of nearly two thousand souls, have enlisted under the banner of King Jesus, and taken 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.