Produced by David Newman in honor of Barbara Talmage Griffin (1918-2004),
great-granddaughter of the subject of this biography.
FORTY YEARS IN SOUTH CHINA
The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D.
by
Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
Missionary of the American Reformed (Dutch) Church, at Amoy, China
1894
INTRODUCTION.
BY REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.
Too near was I to the subject of this biography to write an impartial
introduction. When John Van Nest Talmage went, my last brother went.
Stunned until I staggered through the corridors of the hotel in London,
England, when the news came that John was dead. If I should say all that I
felt I would declare that since Paul the great apostle to the Gentiles, a
more faithful or consecrated man has not lifted his voice in the dark
places of heathenism. I said it while he was alive, and might as well say
it now that he is dead. "He was the hero of our family." He did not go to
a far-off land to preach because people in America did not want to hear him
preach. At the time of his first going to China he had a call to succeed
Rev. Dr. Brodhead, of Brooklyn, the Chrysostom of the American pulpit, a
call with a large salary, and there would not have been anything impossible
to him in the matters of religious work or Christian achievement had he
tarried in his native land. But nothing could detain him from the work to
which God called him years before he became a Christian. My reason for
writing that anomalous statement is that when a boy in Sabbath-school at
Boundbrook, New Jersey, he read a Library book, entitled "The Life of Henry
Martyn, the Missionary," and he said to our mother, "Mother! when I grow up
I am going to be a missionary!" The remark made no especial impression at
the time. Years passed on before his conversion. But when the grace of God
appeared to him, and he had begun his study for the ministry, he said one
day, "Mother! Do you remember that many years ago I said, 'I am going to be
a missionary'?" She replied, "Yes! I remember you said so." "Well," said
he, "I am going to keep my promise." And how well he kept it millions of
souls on earth and in heaven have long since heard. But his chief work is
yet to come. We get our chronology so twisted that we come to believe that
the white marble of the tomb is the mile-stone at which a good man stops,
when it is only a mile-stone on a journey, the most of the miles of which
are yet to be travelled.
The Dictionary which my brother prepared with more than two decades of
study, the religious literature he transferred from English into Chinese,
the hymns he wrote for others to sing, although himself could not sing at
all, (he and I monopolizing the musical incapacity of a family in which all
the rest could sing well), the missionary stations he planted, the life he
lived, will widen out, and deepen and intensify through all time and all
eternity.
I am glad that those competent to tell of his magnificent work have
undertaken it. You could get nothing about it from him at all. Ask him a
question trying to evoke what he had done for God and the church, and his
lips were as tightly shut as though they had never been opened. He was
animated enough when drawn out in discussion religious, educational, or
political, but he had great powers of silence. I once took him to see
General Grant, our reticent President. On that occasion they both seemed to
do their best in the art of quietude. The great military President with his
closed lips on one side of me, and my brother with his closed lips on the
other side of me, I felt there was more silence in the room than I ever
before knew to be crowded into the same space. It was the same kind of
reticence that always came upon John when you asked him about his work. But
the story has been gloriously told in the heavens by those who through his
instrumentality have already reached the City of Raptures. When the roll of
martyrs is called before the Throne of God, the name of John Van Nest
Talmage will be called. He worked himself to death in the cause of the
world's evangelization. His heart, his brain, his lungs, his hands, his
muscles, his nerves, all wrought for others until heart and brain, and
lungs and hands, and muscles and nerves could do no more.
He sleeps in the cemetery near Somerville, New Jersey, so near father and
mother that he will face them when he rises in the Resurrection of the
Just, and amid a crowd of kindred now slumbering on the right of him, and
on the left of him, he will feel the thrill of the Trumpet that wakes the
dead.
Allelujah! Amen!
BROOKLYN, June, 1894.
PREFACE.
The accompanying resolution of the Board of Foreign Missions of the
Reformed Church in America, November 16, 1892, explains the origin of this
volume:
"Resolved, That the Board of Foreign Missions, being firmly convinced that
a biography of the late John V. N. Talmage, D.D., for over forty years
identified with the Mission at Amoy, would be of great service to the cause
of Missions, heartily recommend to the family of Dr. Talmage the selection
of an appropriate person to prepare such a memoir, and in case this is
done, promise to render all the aid in their power in furnishing whatever
facts or records may be of service to the author of the book."
The writer raised his pen to this task with hesitancy. He had known Dr.
Talmage only little more than a year; long enough, indeed, to revere and
love him, but not long enough to tell the story of so rich and fruitful a
life.
Dr. Talmage was a man of unconscious greatness. If he could have been
consulted it is doubtful whether a public record of him would have ever
seen the light. His life to him would have seemed too commonplace and
unworthy. He was exceedingly careful in the use of language. He could not
endure exaggeration. Nothing so commanded his admiration as honesty and
accuracy of statement. That ought to be sufficient to guard any one who
speaks of such a man against indiscriminate eulogy.
We have endeavored as far as possible to make this memoir an autobiography.
To carry out this purpose has not been without difficulties.
Dr. Talmage did not keep a continuous diary. He did not preserve complete
files of his correspondence as if anticipating the needs of some possible
biographer.
The author's enforced retirement from the mission field in the midst of
collecting and sifting material, has been no small drawback.
It is hoped, however, that enough has been gleaned to justify publication.
Sincerest thanks are due to those brethren who contributed to the
concluding chapter, "In Memoriam."
If these pages may more fully acquaint the Church of Christ with a name
which it should not willingly let die, and deepen interest in and hasten by
the least hair-breadth the redemption of "China's Millions," the author
will feel abundantly rewarded.
JOHN G. FAGG.
ARLINGTON, NEW JERSEY
October 1, 1894.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Rev. John Van Nest Talmage
Chinese Clan House
Buddhist Temple, Amoy
Pagoda near Lam-sin
Chinese Bride and Groom
Traveling Equipment in South China
Pastor Iap and Family
The Sio ke Valley
Glimpse of the Sio-ke River
Scene in the Hakka Region
Girl's School; The Talmage Manse; Woman's School. (Kolongsu, opposite Amoy)
Pastor Iap
CONTENTS
I. The Ancestral Home
II. Call to China and Voyage Hence
III. The City of the "Elegant Gate"
Description of Amoy and Amoy Island
Ancestral Worship
Infanticide
Is China to be won, and how?
Worship of the Emperor
IV. Light and Shade
The Chiang-chiu Valley
Breaking and Burning of Idols
The Chinese Boat Race and its Origin
The Chinese Beggar System
Two Noble Men Summoned Hence
V. At the Foot of the Bamboos
Opium
Romanized Colloquial
Chinese Sense of Sin
Primitive Lamps
Zealous Converts
The Term Question
What it Costs a Chinese to become a Christian
Persecuted for Christ's Sake
"He is only a Beggar"
Printing under Difficulties
Carrier Pigeons
VI. The "Little Knife" Insurrection
How the Chinese Fight
VII. The Blossoming Desert
Si-boo's Zeal
An Appeal for a Missionary
VIII. Church Union
The Memorial of the Amoy Mission
IX. Church Union (continued)
X. The Anti-missionary Agitation
XI. The Last Two Decades
Forty continuous Years in Heathenism
Chinese Grandiloquence
XII. In Memoriam
Dr. Talmage - The Man and The Missionary
By Rev. W. S. Swanson, D.D.
Venerable Teacher Talmage
By Pastor Iap Han Chiong
Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D.
By Rev. S. L. Baldwin, D.D.
The Rev. J. V. N. Talmage, D.D.
By Rev. Talbot W. Chambers, D.D., LL.D.
Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D.
By Rev. John M. Ferris, D.D.
APPENDIX
I. THE ANCESTRAL HOME
John Van Nest Talmage was born at Somerville, New Jersey, August 18, 1819
He was the fourth son in a family of seven brothers and five sisters.
The roots of the Talmage genealogical tree may be traced back to the year
1630, when Enos and Thomas Talmage, the progenitors of the Talmage family
in North America, landed at Charlestown, Massachusetts, and afterwards
settled at East Hampton, Long Island.
Dr. Lyman Beecher represents the first settlers of East Hampton as "men
resolute, enterprising, acquainted with human nature, accustomed to do
business, well qualified by education, circumspect, careful in dealing,
friends of civil liberty, jealous of their rights, vigilant to discover,
and firm to resist encroachments; eminently pious."
In 1725 we find Daniel Talmage at Elizabethtown, New Jersey. Daniel's
grandson, Thomas, during the years between 1775 and 1834 shifts his tent to
Piscataway, New Jersey, thence to New Brunswick, thence to Somerville,
where the stakes are driven firmly on a farm "beautiful for situation."
Thomas Talmage was a builder by trade, and erected some of the most
important courthouses and public edifices in Somerset and Middlesex
Counties. He was active in the Revolutionary war, holding the rank of
major. It was said of him, "His name will be held in everlasting
remembrance in the churches." He was the father of seven sons and six
daughters.
The third son, David T., the father of John Van Nest Talmage, was born at
Piscataway, April 21, 1783. He was married to Catharine Van Nests Dec. 19,
1803. David T. Talmage was rather migratory in his instincts. The smoke
of the Talmage home now curled out from a house at Mill stone, now from a
homestead near Somerville, then from Gateville; then the family ark rested
for many years on the outskirts of Somerville and finally it brought up at
Bound Brook, New Jersey. Though the family tent was folded several times,
it was not folded for more than a day's wagon journey before it was pitched
again. The places designated arc all within the range of a single New
Jersey county.
In 1836 David T. Talmage was elected a member of the State Legislature and
was returned three successive terms. In 1841, he was chosen high sheriff
of Somerset County. Four of his sons entered the Christian ministry, James
R., John Van Nest, Goyn, and Thomas De Witt. James R., the senior brother,
rendered efficient service in pastorates at Pompton Plains and Blawenburgh,
New Jersey, and in Brooklyn, Greenbush, and Chittenango, New York. He
received the degree of Doctor of Divinity from Rutgers College, New Jersey,
in 1864. John Van Nest gave his life to China. Goyn, a most winsome man and
eloquent preacher, ministered with marked success to the churches of
Niskayuna, Green Point, Rhinebeck, and Port Jervis, New York, and Paramus,
New Jersey. He was for five years the Corresponding Secretary of the Board
of Domestic Missions of the Reformed Church. Rutgers College honored
herself and him by giving him the degree of Doctor of Divinity in 1876.
Thomas De Witt, the youngest son, still ministers to the largest church in
Protestant Christendom. What a river of blessing has flowed from that
humble, cottage well-spring. The wilderness and the parched land have been
made glad by it. The desert has been made to rejoice and blossom as the
rose. The courses thereof have gone out into all the earth, and the tossing
of its waves have been heard to the end of the world.
In November, 1865, Dr. T. De Witt Talmage preached a sermon on "The Beauty
of Old Age"[*] from the words in Eccles. xii. 5, "The Almond Tree shall
flourish." It was commemorative of his father, David T. Talmage. He says:
"I have stood, for the last few days, as under the power of an enchantment.
Last Friday-a-week, at eighty-three years of age, my father exchanged earth
for heaven. The wheat was ripe, and it has been harvested. No painter's
pencil or poet's rhythm could describe that magnificent sun setting. It was
no hurricane blast let loose; but a gale from heaven, that drove into the
dust the blossoms of that almond tree.
[Footnote *: This sermon gives so graphic and tender a portrayal of the
father of one of America's most distinguished ministerial families, that
the author feels justified in making so lengthy an extract.]
"There are lessons for me to learn, and also for you, for many of you knew
him. The child of his old age, I come to-night to pay an humble tribute to
him, who, in the hour of my birth, took me into his watchful care, and
whose parental faithfulness, combined with that of my mother, was the means
of bringing my erring feet to the cross, and kindling in my soul
anticipations of immortal blessedness. If I failed to speak, methinks the
old family Bible, that I brought home with me, would rebuke my silence, and
the very walls of my youthful home would tell the story of my ingratitude.
I must speak, though it be with broken utterance, and in terms which seem
too strong for those of you who never had an opportunity of gathering the
fruit of this luxuriant almond tree.
"First. In my father's old age was to be seen the beauty of a cheerful
spirit. I never remember to have heard him make a gloomy expression. This
was not because he had no conception of the pollutions of society. He
abhorred everything like impurity, or fraud, or double-dealing. He never
failed to lift up his voice against sin, when he saw it. He was terrible in
his indignation against wrong, and had an iron grip for the throat of him
who trampled on the helpless. Better meet a lion robbed of her whelps than
him, if you had been stealing the bread from the mouth of the fatherless.
It required all the placidity of my mother's voice to calm him when once
the mountain storm of his righteous wrath was in full blast; while as for
himself, he would submit to more imposition, and say nothing, than any man
I ever knew.
"But while sensitive to the evils of society, he felt confident that all
would be righted. When he prayed, you could hear in the very tones of his
voice the expectation that Christ Jesus would utterly demolish all
iniquity, and fill the earth with His glory. This Christian man was not a
misanthrope, did not think that everything was going to ruin, considered
the world a very good place to live in. He never sat moping or despondent,
but took things as they were, knowing that God could and would make them
better. When the heaviest surge of calamity came upon him, he met it with
as cheerful a countenance as ever a bather at the beach met the incoming
Atlantic, rising up on the other side of the wave stronger than when it
smote him. Without ever being charged with frivolity, he sang, and
whistled, and laughed. He knew about all the cheerful tunes that were ever
printed in old 'New Brunswick Collection,' and the 'Strum Way,' and the
sweetest melodies that Thomas Hastings ever composed. I think that every
pillar in the Somerville and Bound Brook churches knew his happy voice. He
took the pitch of sacred song on Sabbath morning, and lost it not through
all the week. I have heard him sing plowing amid the aggravations of a 'new
ground,' serving writs, examining deeds, going to arrest criminals, in the
house and by the way, at the barn and in the street. When the church choir
would break down, everybody looked around to see if he were not ready with
Woodstock, Mount Pisgah, or Uxbridge. And when all his familiar tunes
failed to express the joy of his soul, he would take up his own pen, draw
five long lines across the sheet, put in the notes, and then to the tune
that he called 'Bound Brook' begin to sing:
'As when the weary trav'ler gains
The height of some o'erlooking hill,
His heart revives if, 'cross the plains,
He eyes his home, tho' distant still:
Thus, when the Christian pilgrim views,
By faith, his mansion in the skies;
The sight his fainting strength renews,
And wings his speed to reach the prize.
"'Tis there," he says, "I am to dwell
With Jesus in the realms of day:
There I shall bid my cares farewell,
And he will wipe my tears away."
"But few families fell heir to so large a pile of well-studied note-books.
He was ready, at proper times, for all kinds of innocent amusement. He
often felt a merriment that not only touched the lips, but played upon
every fibre of the body, and rolled down into the very depths of his soul,
with long reverberations. No one that I ever knew understood more fully
the science of a good laugh. He was not only quick to recognize hilarity
when created by others, but was always ready to do his share toward making
it. Before extreme old age, he could outrun and outleap any of his
children. He did not hide his satisfaction at having outwalked some one
who boasted of his pedestrianism, or at having been able to swing the
scythe after all the rest of the harvesters had dropped from exhaustion, or
at having, in legislative hall, tripped up some villainous scheme for
robbing the public treasury. We never had our ears boxed, as some children
I wot of, for the sin of being happy. In long winter nights it was hard to
tell who enjoyed sportfulness the better, the children who romped the
floor, or the parents who, with lighted countenance, looked at them. Great
indulgence and leniency characterized his family rule, but the remembrance
of at least one correction more emphatic than pleasing proves that he was
not like Eli of old, who had wayward sons and restrained them not. In the
multitude of his witticisms there were no flings at religion, no
caricatures of good men, no trifling with things of eternity. His laughter
was not the 'crackling of thorns under a pot,' but the merry heart that
doeth good like a medicine. For this all the children of the community
knew him; and to the last day of his walking out, when they saw him coming
down the lane, shouted, 'Here comes grandfather!' No gall, no acerbity, no
hypercriticism. If there was a bright side to anything, he always saw it,
and his name, in all the places where he dwelt, will long be a synonym for
exhilaration of spirit.
"But whence this cheerfulness? Some might ascribe it ail to natural
disposition. No doubt there is such a thing as sunshine of temperament.
God gives more brightness to the almond tree than to the cypress. While
the pool putrefies under the summer sun, God slips the rill off of the
rocks with a frolicsomeness that fills the mountain with echo. No doubt
constitutional structure had much to do with this cheerfulness. He had, by
a life of sobriety, preserved his freshness and vigor. You know that good
habits are better than speaking tubes to the ear; better than a staff to
the hand; better than lozenges to the throat; better than warm baths to the
feet; better than bitters for the stomach. His lips had not been polluted,
nor his brain befogged, by the fumes of the noxious weed that has sapped
the life of whole generations, sending even ministers of the Gospel to
untimely graves, over which the tombstone declared, 'Sacrificed by overwork
in the Lord's vineyard,' when if the marble had not lied, it would have
said, 'Killed by villainous tobacco!' He abhorred anything that could
intoxicate, being among the first in this country to join the crusade
against alcoholic beverages. When urged, during a severe sickness, to take
some stimulus, he said, 'No! If I am to die, let me die sober!' The swill
of the brewery had never been poured around the roots of this thrifty
almond. To the last week of his life his ear could catch a child's
whisper, and at fourscore years his eyes refused spectacles, although he
would sometimes have to hold the book off on the other side of the light,
as octogenarians are wont to do. No trembling of the hands, no rheum in
the eyes, no knocking together of the knees, no hobbling on crutches with
what polite society terms rheumatism in the feet, but what everybody knows
is nothing but gout. Death came, not to fell the gnarled trunk of a tree
worm-eaten and lightning-blasted, but to hew down a Lebanon cedar, whose
fall made the mountains tremble and the heavens ring. But physical health
could not account for half of this sunshine. Sixty-four years ago a coal
from the heavenly altar had kindled a light that shone brighter and
brighter to the perfect day. Let Almighty grace for nearly three-quarters
of a century triumph in a man's soul, and do you wonder that he is happy?
For twice the length of your life and mine he had sat in the bower of the
promises, plucking the round, ripe clusters of Eshcol. While others bit
their tongues for thirst, he stood at the wells of salvation, and put his
lips to the bucket that came up dripping with the fresh, cool, sparkling
waters of eternal life. This joy was not that which breaks in the bursting
bubble of the champagne glass, or that which is thrown out with the
orange-peelings of a midnight bacchanalia, but the joy which, planted by a
Saviour's pardoning grace, mounts up higher and higher, till it breaks
forth in the acclaim of the hundred and forty and four thousand who have
broken their last chain and wept their last sorrow. Oh! mighty God! How
deep, how wide, how high the joy Thou kindles" in the heart of the
believer!
"Again: We behold in our father the beauty of a Christian faith.
"Let not the account of this cheerfulness give you the idea that he never
had any trouble. But few men have so serious and overwhelming a life
struggle. He went out into the world without means, and with no educational
opportunity, save that which was afforded him in the winter months, in an
old, dilapidated school-house, from instructors whose chief work was to
collect their own salary. Instead of postponing the marriage relation, as
modern society compels a young man to postpone it, until he can earn a
fortune, and be able, at commencement of the conjugal relation, to keep a
companion like the lilies of the field, that toil not nor spin, though
Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these - he chose an
early alliance with one, who would not only be able to enjoy the success of
his life, but who would with her own willing hands help achieve it. And so
while father plowed the fields, and threshed the wheat, and broke the flax,
and husked the corn, my mother stood for Solomon's portraiture, when he
said, 'She riseth also while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her
household. She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the
distaff. She is not afraid of the snow for her household, for all her
household are clothed with scarlet. Her children arise up and call her
blessed, her husband also, and he praiseth her. Many daughters have done
virtuously, but thou excellest them all.' So that the limited estate of
the New Jersey farmer never foundered on millinery establishments and
confectionery shops. And though we were some years of age before we heard
the trill of a piano, we knew well about the song of 'The Spinning-wheel.'
There were no lords, or baronets, or princes in our ancestral line. None
wore stars, cockade, or crest. There was once a family coat of arms, but
we were none of us wise enough to tell its meaning. Do our best, we cannot
find anything about our forerunners, except that they behaved well, came
over from Wales or Holland a good while ago, and died when their time came.
Some of them may have had fine equipage and caparisoned postillion, but the
most of them were only footmen. My father started in life belonging to the
aristocracy of hard knuckles and homespun, but had this high honor that no
one could despise. He was the son of a father who loved God, and kept His
commandments. What is the House of Hapsburg or Stuarts, compared with
being son of the Lord God Almighty? Two eyes, two hands, and two feet,
were the capital my father started with. For fifteen years an invalid, he
had a fearful struggle to support his large family. Nothing but faith in
God upheld him. His recital of help afforded, and deliverances wrought,
was more like a romance than a reality. He walked through many a desert,
but every morning had its manna, and every night it's pillar of fire, and
every hard rock a rod that could shatter it into crystal fountains at his
feet. More than once he came to his last dollar; but right behind that
last dollar he found Him who owns the cattle on a thousand hills, and out
of the palm of whose hand all the fowls of heaven peck their food, and who
hath given to each one of His disciples a warrantable deed for the whole
universe in the words, 'All are yours.'
"The path that led him through financial straits, prepared him also for
sore bereavements. The infant of days was smitten, and he laid it into the
river of death with as much confidence as infant Moses was laid into the
Ark of the Nile, knowing that soon from the royal palace a shining One
would come to fetch it.
"In an island of the sea, among strangers, almost unattended, death came to
a beloved son; and though I remember the darkness that dropped on the
household when the black-sealed letter was opened, I remember also the
utterances of Christian submission.
"Another bearing his own name, just on the threshold of manhood, his heart
beating high with hope, falls into the dust; but above the cries of early
widowhood and the desolation of that dark day, I hear the patriarch's
prayer, commending children, and children's children, to the Divine
sympathy.
"But a deeper shadow fell across the old home-stead. The 'Golden Wedding'
had been celebrated nine years before. My mother looked up, pushed back
her spectacles, and said, 'Just think of it, father! We have been together
fifty-nine years!' The twain stood together like two trees of the forest
with interlocked branches. Their affections had taken deep root together
in many a kindred grave. Side by side in life's great battle, they had
fought the good fight and won the day. But death comes to unjoint this
alliance. God will not any longer let her suffer mortal ailments. The
reward of righteousness is ready, and it must be paid. But what a tearing
apart! What rending up! What will the aged man do without this other to
lean on? Who can so well understand how to sympathize and counsel? What
voice so cheering as hers, to conduct him down the steep of old age? 'Oh'
said she in her last moments, 'father, if you and I could only be together,
how pleasant it would be!' But the hush of death came down one autumnal
afternoon, and for the first time in all my life, on my arrival at home, I
received no maternal greeting, no answer of the lips, no pressure of the
hand. God had taken her.
"In this overwhelming shock the patriarch stood confident, reciting the
promises and attesting the Divine goodness. O, sirs, that was faith,
faith, faith! 'Thanks be unto God who giveth us the victory!'
"Finally, I noticed that in my father's old age was to be seen the beauty
of Christian activity. He had not retired from the field. He had been
busy so long you could not expect him idle now. The faith I have described
was not an idle expectation that sits with its hands in its pockets idly
waiting, but a feeling which gathers up all the resources of the soul, and
hurls them upon one grand design. He was among the first who toiled in
Sabbath-schools, and never failed to speak the praise of these
institutions. No storm or darkness ever kept him away from prayer-meeting.
In the neighborhood where he lived for years held a devotional meeting.
Oftentimes the only praying man present, before a handful of attendants, he
would give out the hymn, read the lines, conduct the music, and pray. Then
read the Scriptures and pray again. Then lead forth in the Doxology with
an enthusiasm as if there were a thousand people present, and all the
church members had been doing their duty. He went forth visiting the sick,
burying the dead, collecting alms for the poor, inviting the ministers of
religion to his household, in which there was, as in the house of Shunem, a
little room over the wall, with bed and candlestick for any passing Elisha.
He never shuddered at the sight of a subscription paper, and not a single
great cause of benevolence has arisen within the last half century which he
did not bless with his beneficence. Oh, this was not a barren almond tree
that blossomed. His charity was not like the bursting of the bud of a
famous tree in the South that fills the whole forest with its racket; nor
was it a clumsy thing like the fruit, in some tropical clime, that crashes
down, almost knocking the life out of those who gather it; for in his case
the right hand knew not what the left hand did. The churches of God in
whose service he toiled, have arisen as one man to declare his faithfulness
and to mourn their loss. He stood in the front of the holy war, and the
courage which never trembled or winced in the presence of temporal danger
induced him to dare all things for God. In church matters he was not
afraid to be shot at. Ordained, not by the laying on of human hands, but
by the imposition of a Saviour's love, he preached by his life, in official
position, and legislative hall, and commercial circles, a practical
Christianity. He showed that there was such a thing as honesty in
politics. He slandered no party, stuffed no ballot box, forged no
naturalization papers, intoxicated no voters, told no lies, surrendered no
principle, countenanced no demagogism. He called things by their right
names; and what others styled prevarication, exaggeration, misstatement or
hyperbole, he called a lie. Though he was far from being undecided in his
views, and never professed neutrality, or had any consort with those
miserable men who boast how well they can walk on both sides of a dividing
line and be on neither, yet even in the excitements of election canvass,
when his name was hotly discussed in public journals, I do not think his
integrity was ever assaulted. Starting every morning with a chapter of the
Bible, and his whole family around him on their knees, he forgot not, in
the excitements of the world, that he had a God to serve and a heaven to
win. The morning prayer came up on one side of the day, and the evening
prayer on the other side, and joined each other in an arch above his head,
under the shadow of which he walked all the day. The Sabbath worship
extended into Monday's conversation, and Tuesday's bargain, and Wednesday's
mirthfulness, and Thursday's controversy, and Friday's sociality, and
Saturday's calculation.
"Through how many thrilling scenes had he passed! He stood, at Morristown,
in the choir that chanted when George Washington was buried; talked with
young men whose grandfathers he had held on his knee; watched the progress
of John Adams' administration; denounced, at the time, Aaron Burr's infamy;
heard the guns that celebrated the New Orleans victory; voted against
Jackson, but lived long enough to wish we had one just like him; remembered
when the first steamer struck the North River with it's wheel buckets;
flushed with excitement in the time of national banks and sub-treasury; was
startled at the birth of telegraphy; saw the United States grow from a
speck on the world's map till all nations dip their flag at our passing
merchantmen, and our 'national airs' have been heard on the steeps of the
Himalayas; was born while the Revolutionary cannon were coming home from
Yorktown, and lived to hear the tramp of troops returning from the war of
the great Rebellion; lived to speak the names of eighty children,
grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Nearly all his contemporaries
gone! Aged Wilberforce said that sailors drink to 'friends astern' until
halfway over the sea, and then drink to 'friends ahead.' So, also, with my
father. Long and varied pilgrimage! Nothing but sovereign grace could
have kept him true, earnest, useful, and Christian through so many exciting
scenes.
"He worked unwearily from the sunrise of youth, to the sunset of old age,
and then in the sweet nightfall of death, lighted by the starry promises,
went home, taking his sheaves with him. Mounting from earthly to heavenly
service, I doubt not there were a great multitude that thronged heaven's
gate to hail him into the skies, - those whose sorrows he had appeased,
whose burdens he had lifted, whose guilty souls he had pointed to a
pardoning God, whose dying moments he had cheered, whose ascending spirits
he had helped up on the wings of sacred music. I should like to have heard
that long, loud, triumphant shout of heaven's welcome. I think that the
harps throbbed with another thrill, and the hills quaked with a mightier
hallelujah. Hail! ransomed soul! Thy race run, - thy toil ended! Hail to
the coronation!"
At the death of David T. Talmage the Christian Intelligencer of October 25,
1865, contained the following contribution from the pen of Dr. T.W.
Chambers, for many years pastor of the Second Reformed Church, Somerville,
New Jersey, now one of the pastors of the Collegiate Church, New York:
"In the latter part of the last century, Thomas Talmage, Sr., a plain but
intelligent farmer, moved into the neighborhood of Somerville, N.J., and
settled upon a fertile tract of land, very favorably situated, and
commanding a view of the country for miles around. Here he spent the
remainder of a long, godly, and useful life, and reared a large family of
children, twelve of whom were spared to reach adult years, and to make and
adorn the same Christian profession of which their father was a shining
light. Two of these became ministers of the Gospel, of whom one, Jehiel,
fell asleep several years since, while the other, the distinguished Samuel
K. Talmage, D.D., President of Oglethorpe University, Georgia, entered into
his rest only a few weeks since. Another son, Thomas, was for an entire
generation the strongest pillar in the Second Church of Somerville.
"One of the oldest of the twelve was the subject of this notice; a man
whose educational advantages were limited to the local schools of the
neighborhood, but whose excellent natural abilities, sharpened by contact
with the world, gave him a weight in the community which richer and more
cultivated men might have envied. In the prime of his years he was often
called to serve his fellow citizens in civil trusts. He spent some years
in the popular branch of the Legislature, and was afterwards high sheriff
of the County of Somerset for the usual period. In both cases he fulfilled
the expectations of his friends, and rendered faithful service. The
sterling integrity of his character manifested itself in every situation;
and even in the turmoil of politics, at a time of much excitement, he
maintained a stainless name, and defied the tongue of calumny. But it was
chiefly in the sphere of private and social relations that his work was
done and his influence exerted. His father's piety was reproduced in him
at an early period, and soon assumed a marked type of thoroughness,
activity and decision, which it bore even to the end. His long life was
one of unblemished Christian consistency, which in no small measure was due
to the influence of his excellent wife, Catherine Van Nest, a niece of the
late Abraham Van Nest, of New York City, who a few years preceded him into
glory. She was the most godly woman the writer ever knew, a wonder unto
many for the strength of her faith, the profoundness of her Christian
experience, and the uniform spirituality of her mind. The ebb and flow
common to most believers did not appear in her; but her course was like a
river fed by constant streams, and running on wider and deeper till it
reaches the sea. It might be said of this pair, as truly as of the parents
of John the Baptist, 'And they were both righteous before God, walking in
all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless.' Hand in hand
they pursued their pilgrimage through this world, presenting an example of
intelligent piety such as is not often seen. 'Lovely and pleasant in their
lives, in their death they were not (long) divided.' Exactly three years
from the day of Mrs. Talmage's death her husband received the summons to
rejoin her on high.
"These parents were unusually careful and diligent in discharging their
Christian obligations to their children. The promise of the covenant was
importunately implored in their behalf from the moment of birth, its seal
was early applied, and the whole training was after the pattern of Abraham.
The Divine faithfulness was equally manifest, for the whole eleven were in
due time brought to the Saviour, and introduced into the full communion of
the Church. Years ago two of them were removed by death. Of the rest,
four, James, John, Goyn, and Thomas De Witt, are ministers of the Gospel,
and one is the wife of a minister (the Rev. S. L. Mershon, of East Hampton,
L.I.). Without entering into details respecting these brethren, it is
sufficient to say that, with the exception of the late Dr. John Scudder's,
no other single family has been the means of making such a valuable
contribution to the sons of Levi in the Dutch Church.
"Mr. Talmage was not only exemplary in the ordinary duties of a Christian,
but excellent as a church officer. Shrewd, patient, kind, generous
according to his means, and full of quiet zeal, he was ready for every good
work; one of those men - the delight of a pastor's heart - who can always
be relied upon to do their share, if not a little more, and that in things
both temporal and spiritual. He was a wise counselor, a true friend, a
self-sacrificing laborer for the Master."
We find the following allusion to the life and death of his mother, in a
sermon by Dr. T. De Witt Talmage:
"In these remarks upon maternal faithfulness, I have found myself
unconsciously using as a model the character of one, who, last Wednesday,
we put away for the resurrection. About sixty years ago, just before the
day of their marriage, my father and mother stood up in the old
meeting-house, at Somerville, to take the vows of a Christian. Through a
long life of vicissitude she lived blamelessly and usefully, and came to
her end in peace. No child of want ever came to her door, and was turned
away. No stricken soul ever appealed to her and was not comforted. No
sinner ever asked her the way to be saved, and was not pointed to Christ.
"When the Angel of Life came to a neighbor's dwelling, she was there to
rejoice at the incarnation; and when the Angel of Death came, she was there
to robe the departed one for burial. We had often heard her, while
kneeling among her children at family prayers, when father was absent, say: