On the following Wednesday I was in the large upper room of the college at Lewisburg, Pa.; I was about to address the students.  No more people could get into this room, which was on the second or third storey.  The President of the college was introducing me when some inflammable Christmas greens, which had some six months before been wound around a pillar in the centre of the room, took fire, and from floor to ceiling there was a pillar of flame.  Instantly the place was turned from a jolly commencement scene, in which beauty and learning and congratulation commingled, into a raving bedlam of fright and uproar.  The panic of the previous Sunday night in the Academy of Music, Brooklyn, had schooled me for the occasion, and I saw at a glance that when the Christmas greens were through burning all would be well.

One of the professors said to me, “You seem to be the only composed person present.”  I replied, “Yes, I got prepared for this by something which I saw last Sunday in Brooklyn.”

So I give my advice:  On occasions of panic, sit still; in 999 cases out of a thousand there is nothing the matter.

I was not released from my pastorate of the Brooklyn Tabernacle by the Brooklyn Presbytery until December, 1894, after my return from abroad.  Some explanation was demanded of me by members of the Presbytery for my decision to relinquish my pastorate, and I read the following statement which I had carefully prepared.  It concerns these pages because it is explanatory of the causes which carried me over many crossroads, encountered everywhere in my life: 

    “To the Brooklyn Presbytery—­

“Dear Brethren,—­After much prayer and solemn consideration I apply for the dissolution of the pastoral relation existing between the Brooklyn Tabernacle and myself.  I have only one reason for asking this.  As you all know, we have, during my pastorate, built three large churches and they have been destroyed.  If I remain pastor we must undertake the superhuman work of building a fourth church.  I do not feel it my duty to lead in such an undertaking.  The plain providential indications are that my work in the Brooklyn Tabernacle is concluded.  Let me say, however, to the Presbytery, that I do not intend to go into idleness, but into other service quite as arduous as that in which I have been engaged.  Expecting that my request will be granted I take this opportunity of expressing my love for all the brethren in the Presbytery with whom I have been so long and so pleasantly associated, and to pray for them and the churches they represent the best blessings that God can bestow.—­Yours in the Gospel,

    “T.  Dewitt Talmage.”

The following resolution was then offered by the Presbytery as follows: