He said:  “Dr. Talmage ought to realise that if he goes around the world he will come out at the same place he started.”

The timbers of our destroyed church were still smoking when I left home.  Three great churches had been consumed.  Why this series of huge calamities I knew not.  Had I not made all the arrangements for departure, and been assured by the trustees of my church that they would take all further responsibilities upon themselves, I would have postponed my intended tour or adjourned it for ever; but all whom I consulted told me that now was the time to go, so I turned my face towards the Golden Gate.

In a book called “The Earth Girdled,” I have published all the facts of this journey.  It contains so completely the daily record of my trip that there is no necessity to repeat any of its contents in these pages.

I returned to the United States in the autumn of 1894 and entered actively into a campaign of preaching wherever a pulpit was available.  Of course there was much curiosity and interest to know how I was going to pursue my Gospel work, having resigned my pastorate in Brooklyn.  On Sunday, January 6, 1895, I commenced a series of afternoon Gospel meetings in the Academy of Music, New York, every Sunday.  Because the pastors of other churches had written me that an afternoon service was the only one that would not interfere with their regular services, I selected that time, otherwise I would much have preferred the morning or the evening.  I decided to go to New York because for many years friends over there had been begging me to come.  I regarded it as absurd and improbable to expect the people of Brooklyn to build a fourth Tabernacle, so I went in the direction that I felt would give me the largest opportunity in the world.

I continued to reside in Brooklyn pending future plans.  I liked Brooklyn immensely—­not only the people of my own former parish, but prominent people of all churches and denominations there are my warm personal friends.  Any particular church in which I preached thereafter was only the candlestick.  In different parts of the world my sermons were published in more than ten million copies every week.  How many readers saw them no one can say positively.  Those sermons came back to me in book form in almost every language of Europe.

My arrangements at the Academy of Music were not the final plans for my Gospel work.  I expected, however, to gather from these Gospel meetings sufficient guidance to decide my field of work for the rest of my life.  I felt then that I was yet to do my best work free from all hindrances.  I looked forward to fully twenty years of good hard work before me.

Over nine churches in my own country, and several in England, had made very enthusiastic offers to me to accept a permanent pastoral obligation.  For some reason or other I became more and more convinced, however, that the divine intention in my life from this time on would be different from any previous plan.  The only reason that I declined to accept these offers was because there was enough work for me to do outside a permanent pulpit.