We declare our sincere approval of the earnest and faithful preaching of our honoured evangelist. We hold Doctor Chapman to be a true man of God, and express our admiration for his unfailing kindness and his generous self-devotion. We thank God for the true and tender way in which he has warned men of danger and shepherded our souls. We bear witness that in the effort to bring us and our city to God he has not spared himself at all but has spent himself freely that we might be bettered, our churches enriched, and our city prospered.

Truly he had not "spared himself." None but he was aware of the sharp pain that warned him of the physical collapse impending.

On his arrival in New York his physician declared that an immediate operation was necessary. Dr. Chapman wanted it deferred until after a campaign that had been projected for Charleston, West Virginia, but danger in further delay was too great. Finding, to his great relief, that future dates could be satisfactorily adjusted, he went to the hospital on November ninth, and on the following day the operation was performed. Although difficult and critical, it was pronounced successful, and the surgeons wondered how one in so serious a condition had been able to continue his work so long.

He remained in the hospital for seven weeks. On the fifteenth of December he was told by his physician that it would be "humanly impossible" to prosecute his programme. The disappointment was most bitter. On that same day he dictated a letter to Dr. Roberts:

I cannot tell you how sorry I am to disarrange the plans made. In fourteen years I have had thirteen serious breakdowns, and in almost every case when the local doctors treated me, they feared that the case was fatal, but insofar as I can remember, in no city did I stay away from my work more than five days, and this was when I was in Edinburgh and under the professional care of Sir James Affleck. This,

therefore, is the first time that I have been compelled to ask to be released from an engagement.

At the end of the year he had sufficiently recovered to go to Atlantic City.

On the eighteenth of January he wrote to Dr. Earnest Thompson of Charleston, West Virginia.:

I am leaving to-morrow morning for New York to consult with my doctor. I have been in Atlantic City almost three weeks, and I have done the very best I could to make a good recovery so as to be in shape for the campaign in Charleston, February eighteenth.

Conditions with me have not been quite so favourable as they were a week ago. At that time Doctor Bainbridge was here and felt that there was every reason to believe that I would be in condition by February eighteenth. What he will say when I see him to-morrow I cannot tell, but I will send you word at once by wire.

If the door should be closed, and he tells me that it will be unwise for me to come to you, then I am sure you will appreciate what this has all cost me in the way of personal suffering and disappointment.

These days of convalescence were tedious and trying to a nature more attuned to the clarion than to the lullaby. But seventeen weeks elapsed before he was permitted to take up the work he had so reluctantly laid down.

CHAPTER XVIII

CLIMAX AND CLOSE

ATLANTIC CITY, perched on the rim of the ocean, reflects in her features the face of the waters that roll in at her feet. There is a curious blending of motion and rest, of sunshine and shadow, of pleasure and pain.

The siren song of her climate, salubrious and restorative, lures to her beneficence the Joseph-coated cosmopolitanism that flows a human stream in eddying currents along the boardwalk.

Such kaleidoscopic movement of an ever-fluctuating populace is a never-ending stimulant to mental inertia.

Some are there for council or convention, intent upon the serious things of life; some, with no motive other than to eat the bread of indolence; some, because they are birds of restless wing; some, to regain health sacrificed in service.

Here Dr. Chapman spent the first weeks of his convalescence. On January twenty-fourth, 1917, he wrote to Dr. Roberts:

While it may not be possible for me to take great evangelistic campaigns for a little while, I am expecting, just as soon as I regain my strength, to begin holding evangelistic conferences with ministers, for which I have many invitations, and also to visit some of the educational institutions where I have invitations to work with the students.

Just one month later, on the twenty-fourth of February, in the First Presbyterian Church of Jamaica, New York, he preached for the first time in seventeen weeks.

Early in the month diplomatic relations with Germany had been broken and on the twenty-eighth came the defiant announcement that no restrictions would be placed on submarine warfare.

In March China severed diplomatic relations with Germany; and the Czar of Russia, abdicating, left his throne tottering to its fall.

During this month Dr. Chapman preached every Sunday, conducted the Friday night services in the Central Presbyterian Church of Brooklyn, and gave as much time as his strength would permit to the composition of his book"When Home Is Heaven."

On the eleventh of April he received notice that the Presbytery of New York had elected him a Commissioner to the General Assembly that was to convene in Dallas, Texas, on the third Thursday of May. He arrived in Dallas on May sixteenth in time to attend a Pre-Assembly Conference. The scorpion that was scourging civilization absorbed all thought. Intervention by the United States had been long impending and on the second of April the President addressed Congress. The declaration of war on Germany was made on April the fourth by the Senate and on April the sixth by the House of Representatives. A bond issue of seven billions was authorized and a conscription bill calling for five hundred thousand men was passed.

The Presbyterian Assembly was the first of the ecclesiastical bodies in convention following the declaration of war. A proud and self-confident autocracy had spurned the righteousness that exalteth a nation and had brought upon itself all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of Barachias, slain between the temple and the altar, to the last drop drained from the veins of the Armenians.

Christian people doubtful of the imprecatory psalms now found in them the terms in which they could best express their inextinguishable indignation.

The Assembly held its sessions in the City Temple of Dallas and on May seventeenth elected its Moderator. No commissioner had a personal following comparable to that of Dr. Chapman. His concentration upon evangelism had refined his reputation and given definiteness to his fame. By his distinguished service at home and abroad, by the grace and charm of his personality, by his lofty conception of his calling, by the strength and dignity of his method, by his unfaltering loyalty to Holy Scripture, he had won the confidence of the Church and was worthy of her preferment.

In presenting his name to the General Assembly Dr. John F. Carson touched the patriotic and devotional chords to which the spirit of the commissioners was concentual.

The first ballot was decisive. Four hundred and twentysix votes were necessary to determine an election. Dr. Chapman received five hundred and ninety of the eight hundred and fifty cast. By vote the election was made unanimous.

"This is the man"-so stated Dr. D. S. Kennedy of the Presbyterian-"brought up through courses of sorrow, pain, care, labour, training, scholarship, faith, struggle, and victory, to lead the great Presbyterian Church of the U.S.A. in this teeming year of the nation's and the world's crisis. God sought not a man of boasted statesmanship, nor one famed for critical scholarship, nor a great administrator. He called forth from his humble Indiana home, and trained and anointed a man, baptized with a mother's prayer and a father's instruction, who glories not save in the cross of Christ."