486 JAMES WALKER. 



greater sensation than was produced by Mr. Walker. But he knew 

 wliat was in him. Soon after he was settled, he said to a friend and 

 classmate that it was not wise for a young minister to put eveiy thing 

 into his first sermon, otherwise he would soon find himself a'n'ound. 

 The reputation of Mr. Walker as a vigorous, eloquent, and convincing 

 preacher rapidly increased and extended. In 1822 he was urged to 

 take charge of a society in Washington, D.C. In 1823 the strongest 

 appeals were made to him to settle in Baltimore. No one else was 

 thought to be so well qualified by abilities and courage to defend these 

 outposts of the denomination. It was not the exposure of these new 

 positions which led Mr. Walker to dechne them ; but loyalty to the 

 23eo])le and church which had chosen him for their minister, and which, 

 as he modestly said, had manifested for him a " degree of affection and 

 attachment which has left me nothing to regret*but that it was not better 

 deserved and better rewarded." In his reply to the Baltimore invita- 

 tion occurs the following characteristic remark : " I am not unapprised 

 of the difficulties to be encountered by him who shall be your succes- 

 sor ; his arduous duties, his great and undivided responsibility, widely 

 separated from the main body of his theological friends, and in frequent 

 collision with his opponents, numerous, active, and implacable. But, 

 formidable as these obstacles may appear to some, they have no terror 

 tor me : nay, so far from shrinking from them, I would go forward to 

 meet them." 



Dr. Walker preached his farewell sermon to his people on July 14, 

 1839, after a devoted ministry of twenty-one years ; during wliicli his 

 society had grown from ninety-five families to about two hundred and 

 twenty-five. He resigned his pastoral charge in order to accept an 

 appointment to the Alford Professoi-ship of Natural Theology, Moral 

 Philosophy, and Civil Polity in Harvard College. Every possible 

 effort was made, independently, by the church, the congregation, the 

 Sunday school teachers, and the young men of his society, to induce 

 him to withdraw his request for a dismissal. But he was not a 

 man to have come to a decision on an important step in life before he 

 had looked at it from all sides. His people trusted implicitly in his 

 honor and the purity of his motives, and, though disappointed, they 

 acquiesced in his conclusion with Christian grace. If the separa- 

 tion was painful on both sides, not a friendship was broken, nor a 

 confidence impaired ; and when on the 16th of August, 1874, some of 

 Dr. Walker's friends desired to commemorate his eightieth birthday by 

 a substantial expression of their love and veneration, none more eagerly 

 embraced the opportunity than the survivors among his old parish- 



