A duodecimo volume giving the history of our church and all its activities was published by order of our people.
From such a loyal flock in the full tide of its prosperity, to cut asunder, required no small exercise of conscience and of courage.

When the patriarchal Dr.Emmons, of Franklin, Massachusetts, resigned his church at the age of eighty, he gave the good reason: "I mean to stop when I have sense enough to know that I have not begun, to fail." In exercising the same grace, on a Sabbath morning in February, 1890, I made before a full congregation the following announcement: "Nearly thirty years have elapsed since I assumed the pastoral charge of the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church; and through the continual blessings of Heaven upon us it has grown into one of the largest and most useful and powerful churches in the Presbyterian denomination.

It has two thousand three hundred and thirty members; and is third in point of numbers in the United States.

This church has always been to me like a beloved child: I have given to it thirty years of hard and happy labor.

It is now my foremost desire that its harmony may remain undisturbed, and that its prosperity may remain unbroken.