Being himself "of infinite wit", the pastor had an eye and a feeling for the humor of some of the situations which he created by his pulpit advertising. As a matter of course and of human nature, around so superb a beacon, many bats and strange birds flitted. Parasites and hangers-on, as well as men and women who wished to exploit themselves financially and for their own glory, and rise into notoriety on his fame, sometimes pestered him. For example, on seeing in the Saturday morning's Public Ledger, that the theme of the popular preacher in the First Independent Church was to be "On the importance of a man's having his life insured", one youth resolved to make gain of godliness. Mr. Chambers, while in his study, a front room in his house at Twelfth and Girard streets, which opened into the hall near the front door, was surprised to have ushered in upon him a young man with a small arm load of insurance literature and advertisements. The visitor strove to prove that a certain insurance company of Philadelphia was the best in the world. Having expected to get Mr. Chambers to recommend from the pulpit this particular corporation, he went away sorrowful, for he had had great expectations. Nevertheless from the tact, worldly wisdom, persistence and importunity of even the average life insurance agent, what lazy Christian cannot learn a lesson?
Mr. Chambers always knew of the great preachers, not only in Philadelphia, but in other cities. Although, very properly, he never recommended his members to attend on the ministry of others, he did warmly urge his nephew, Milner, when visiting Philadelphia, to go and hear Philips Brooks, and he himself went with him to listen to Dr. Talmage.
When the grand rector of Holy Trinity called on me in Boston, as he did more than once (for he, too, loved Japan), and saw hanging on the wall of my study a certain portrait of his Philadelphia neighbor and friend, he cried out: "What a Grand old Roman! Did you know John Chambers?" Then he burst forth into hearty panegyric of the old "war horse", and seemed delighted that I was one of his boys. Later on, when our people in the Shawmut Church helped a native missionary to Japan and several Japanese lads from the U. S. White Squadron, then in Boston harbor, were present, Dr. Phillips Brooks spoke to my people.
After my address in the Chambers-Wylie Memorial Church on the "Historical Night", December 11, 1901, I gave my people in Ithaca an account of the great Philadelphia pastor. The brief notice of John Chambers in the Cyclopedia of Temperance and Prohibition (New York, 1890), is also from the biographer.
It is only fair history to set down that in sermon preparation the pastor and his pen were not always closely acquainted with each other. No two men were more different in this respect than Albert Barnes and John Chambers. Much as they loved and admired each other, their habits were very unlike. The former spent from five o'clock until nine every morning of his life in his study searching the oracles of God in languages old and new. It was his habit to throw down his pen in the middle of a sentence, or even a word, on the clock stroke. The popular preacher made light of spending too much time in the study and urged more personal work with men. More than once Mr. Chambers passed his joke with the scholar.
Yet to-day Albert Barnes is still teaching the Gospel through his commentaries, in many tongues and countries, almost "all nations", after having educated a whole generation of American ministers and Sunday School teachers. On the other hand John Chambers still preaches in the lives of his disciples, in the church edifices which they have reared, in the congregations they have gathered, and in ever expanding circles of unseen but potent influence.
As a boy, when Albert Barnes, aged and venerable, almost blind through his long-continued labors which had so tried his eyes, met me on the street and asked me some question as to the place and person of the funeral of a friend mutually dear, I remember with what reverence I looked up to the great scholar and the fearless champion of spiritual freedom. I realized even then the shade of difference in feeling from that which I nourished toward my grand pastor. Nevertheless, God needs both kinds of servants. The suggestions of Socrates, as to writing both on the skins of animals and on the tablets of the human heart, are in point here.
The comparison made between Albert Barnes and John Chambers is much like that in the modern story of "Verbeck of Japan" and of Samuel R. Brown, "A Maker of the New Orient", perhaps, also, as the parable of the leaven in each case.
These were the days of the infidel's Bible as well as the saints' Word of God, the era of King James's Version and of the old crude theories of verbal inspiration. It was on such theories and on such alone, that such unlearned men, meretricious platform speakers, and ephemeral secularists, as Joseph Barker, Robert Ingersoll, and Charles Bradlaugh could thrive. The climates, both of popular and orthodox theology and of infidelity, were somewhat different from the cosmic influences of to-day. The arguments of unfaith were, for the most part at least, the old common, shallow, and blatant ones. The theological parasites and bacilli were as harmful, and in God's providence as useful, then as now, but I think popular orthodoxy and the average pulpit furnished much of the food for the obnoxious microbes, and even made congenial "cultures" for the peculiar varieties existing then.