A year later the decline in the merchant marine began to be seriously felt. It was said to be due to the sale of a large number of vessels to the English and the change in destination of others, many going to England and the Continent which formerly would have come to Boston and New York. This diversion of commerce was believed to be due to the prevailing high rates of exchange. Then, of course, a great many of the men who had manned our merchant vessels had been absorbed by the army and navy. Just before this decline began, a competent authority had estimated that throughout the world at least one hundred and forty thousand merchant vessels of all kinds were afloat, manned by a million men, and that one-third of these were under the flag of the United States.
These changes in our commerce and this falling off in American seamen greatly lessened the number of inmates at the Sailors’ Home, and seriously weakened the Mariners’ Church. Then, too, a new element had occupied Fort Hill and the adjacent streets. The growth of business was crowding people southward and westward, comfortable homes giving way to commercial establishments. These things, together with an intention which Mr. Kellogg had long cherished of entering upon a literary career, caused him to think seriously of resigning his position. During the summer of 1865 he did so, and was soon after succeeded by the Rev. J. M. H. Dow.
The foregoing is but a glimpse of Elijah Kellogg’s work in Boston. In its entirety, that work is known only to God and the Recording Angel. Its influence was widely felt upon sea and land. Thousands of sailors upon lonely waters were made happier by it, and up among the hills, under the trees, at many a farm-house window, sad faces that looked out and watched for their dear ones’ coming brightened at the remembrance that they had been led to Christ through the efforts of this seaman’s friend.
Mr. Kellogg was a saintly, lovable man, and but for his modesty, shunning, as he often did, the leading churches of the day, because of what he termed their “starch and formality,” he would have been named and known among the great preachers of his time.
When and under what circumstances I made the acquaintance of the Rev. Elijah Kellogg I do not now recall. The place, however, was Boston, and I persuade myself that the time was the winter of 1856-1857, during what was mentioned in the newspapers of that day as the “Finney revival.” I was then an errand boy in a jewelry store, a member of the Park Street Church Sunday-school and congregation, and spent many of my evenings out--for I slept in the store--at the rooms of the Young Men’s Christian Association, then in Tremont Temple. It was probably at the last-mentioned place that Mr. Kellogg came into my life, and now, looking back over the years that have passed, I acknowledge that I have cause for gratitude that I did not resist the love and friendship that he generously bestowed upon me.