Even the small children, the poor, the aged, sent in their dollars.  About one thousand dollars was contributed the first day.  Everything was done by the trustees and the people, to expedite the plans of the New Tabernacle so that in two weeks from the date of the fire I broke ground for what was to be the largest church in the world of a Protestant denomination, on the corner of Clinton and Greene Avenues.  That afternoon of October 28, 1889, when I stood in the enclosure arranged for me, and consecrated the ground to the word of God, was another moment of supreme joy to me.  It was said that those who witnessed the ceremony were impressed with the importance of it in the course of my own life and in the history of Christianity.  To me it was akin to those pregnant hours of my life through which I had passed in great exaltation of spiritual fervour.

My words of consecration were brief, as follows: 

“May the Lord God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and Joshua, and Paul, and John Knox, and John Wesley, and Hugh Latimer, and Bishop McIlvaine take possession of this ground and all that shall be built upon it.”

Before me was a vision of that church, its Gothic arches, its splendour of stained-glass windows, its spires and gables, and, as I saw this our third Tabernacle rise up before me, I prayed that its windows might look out into the next world as well as this.  I was glad that I had waited to turn that bit of God-like earth on the old Marshall homestead in Brooklyn, for it filled my heart with a spiritual promise and potency that was an invisible cord binding me during my pilgrimage to Jordan with my congregation which I had left behind.

With Mrs. Talmage and my daughter, May Talmage, I sailed on the “City of Paris,” on October 30, 1889, to complete the plan I had dreamed of for years.  I had been reverently anxious to actually see the places associated with our Lord’s life and death.  I wanted to see Bethlehem and Nazareth, and Jerusalem and Calvary, so intimately connected with the ministry of our Saviour.  I had arranged to write a Life of Christ, and this trip was imperative.  In that book is the complete record of this journey, therefore I feel that other things that have not been told deserve the space here that would otherwise belong to my recollections of the Holy Land.  It was reported that while in Jerusalem I made an effort to purchase Calvary and the tomb of our Saviour, so as to present it to the Christian Church at large.  I was so impressed with the fact that part of this sacred ground was being used as a Mohammedan cemetery that I was inspired to buy it in token of respect to all Christendom.  Of course this led to much criticism, but that has never stopped my convictions.  I was away for two months, returning in February, 1890.