The life and death of Rev. T. DeWitt Talmage, D. D.

Chapter I. Birth And Parentage

Thomas De Witt Talmage was born in Boundbrook, Somerset County, New Jersey, January 7, 1832. He was the youngest of twelve children, of whom five were girls. In personal appearance he is a little above the medium height, with blue eyes and sandy hair and complexion. He dresses very plainly but neatly, and in private life rather resembles an off-hand merchant than a clergyman. His father (David T. Talmage) was noted for his remarkably good judgment, firmness, deep piety and activity in Christian life. His mother, Catherine Talmage, was a woman of great strength of character and sweetness of disposition, and a frequent attendant upon the sick and the. poor within the circle of her influence. Dr. Talmage says : " 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, no poet's rhythm could describe that magniri

8 LIFE OP REV. T. DE WITT TALMAQS3, cent sunsetting. It was no hurricane blast let loose, but g gale from heaven, that drove into the dust the blossoms of that almond tree! His death furnished lessons for me to learn, and for the many friends who knew him. As the child of his old age, I pay an humble tribute to my father, who took me into his watchful care, and to my mother, whose parental faithfulness succeeded in bringing my erring feet to the Cross, and kindled in my soul the anticpation of immortal blessedness! I must therefore not fail to speak of my father's death. Methinks the old family Bible which I brought away from home would rebuke my silence, and the very walls of my youthful home would tell the story of my ingratitude. Therefore, I -must speak, even with a broken utterance, and in terms which may seem too strong for some who have never had the opportunity of gathering the fruit of a luxuriant almond tree. In the death of my father I discover the beauty of old age.

" Solomon announced that ' the almond tree shall flourish.' Now, it is well known that in the month of January Palestine is adorned with the blossoming of the almond tree. It breathes its life into that winter month, as a promise of God sometimes lights up and sweetens the coldness and desolation of a sorrowing spirit. It was not a useless tree, made just to bloom and die, or, like the willow by the water-courses, to stand weeping into the stream; but it disputed with terebinth and cassia, for a high place in the commerce of the world. Its wealth bore down the dromedaries of the desert, and in ships of Tarshish struggled with the sea. Its rugged trunk parted into gracefulness of branch, and burst into a lavishness of bloom, till the Temple imitated it in the golden candlestick, and Jeremiah beheld its branches shaking in his dream! The pomegranate had more pretentious color, and rung out its fragrance with red bios-

LIFE OF BEV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D. 9

soming bells; but the almond tree stood in simple white, as if, while born of earth, it aspired to take on the apparel of those who dwell in Raiment exceeding white,' so as no fuller of earth can white them ! When the almond tree was in full bloom it must have looked like some tree before our window on a winter's morning, after a nightfall of snow, when its brightness is almost insufferable, every stem a white and feathery plume. A row of almond trees in full bloom must have roused up all the soul's sense of purity; when they began to scatter their blossoms, as one by one they fell, it must have seemed like the first struggling flakes of a chill day, coming thicker and faster, until the herbage, still deeply tinged with autumnal coloring, is covered, and the hills and mountains, that were of Bcarlet, become as white as snow.

"Now the reader will see Solomon's meaning. He was given a full-length portrait of an aged man. By striking figures of speech he sets forth the trembling and decrepitude, and then comes to describe the whiteness of his locks, by the blossoming of the almond tree. It is the master touch of the picture, for the reader will see in that one sentence not only the appearance of the hair, but an announcement of the beauty of old age. The white locks of a bad man are but the gathered frosts of the second death, but a 'hoary head is a crown of glory' if it be found in the way of righteousness. There may be no color in the cheek, no luster in the eye, no spring in the step, no firmness in the voice, and yet around the head of every old man whose life has been upright and Christain there hovers a glory brighter than ever shook on the white tops of the almond tree. If the voice quiver it is because God is changing it into a tone fit for the celestial choir. If the back stoop, it is only because the body is just about to lie down in peaceful

10 LIFE OF REV. T. BE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

sleep. If the hand tremble, it is because God is unloosing it from worldly disappointments, to clasp it on ringing harp and waving palm. If the hair is turned, it is only the gray dawn of Heaven's day streaming through the scant locks. If the brow, once adorned by a luxuriance of auburn or raven, is smitten with baldness, it is only because God is preparing a place to set the everlasting crown. The falling of this aged Christian's staff will be the signal for the heavenly gate to swing open. The scattering of the almond blossoms will only discover the setting fruit. Elijah's flaming equipage were too tame for this ascending spirit. The arms of Jesus are grander than bounding horses of fire.

" The old age of my father revealed the beauty of a cheerful spirit. I never remember to have heard him utter a a gloomy expression. This was not because he had no perception of the pollutions of society. He abhored anything 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 hirn, if you had been stealing the bread out of the mouth of the fatherless. It required all the placidity of my mother's voice to calm him Avheh 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 oould hear in the very tones of his voice the expectation that Christ Jesus would utterly destroy all iniquity and fill the earth with His glory.

" My Christian father, too, was not a misanthrope, did not think that everything was going to ruin; but 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 w T ave 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 6 Shumway,' and the sweetest melodies that Thomas Hastings ever composed. I think that every pillar in the Somerville and Boundbrook 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 ploughing amid the aggravations of a c new ground,' even while 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 6 Woodstock,' ' Mount Pisgah,' or 6 Uxbridge.' And when all his familiar tunes failed to express the joy of his soul, he would take up his pen, draw five long lines across the sheet, put in the notes, and then, to the tune that he called 6 Boundbrook,' begin to sing —

As when the weary traveler gains

The height of some o'eiiooking hill, His strength revives/ if 'cross the plain*

He eyes his home, though distant still. Thus, when the Christian pilgrim views,

By faith, his mansion in the skies, The sight his fainting strength renews,

^Lnd, wings his speed to reach the prize.

* 'Tis there/ he says, 1 1 am to dwell

With Jesus in the realms of day- There I shall bid my cares farewell,

And He shall wipe my tears away.'

But few families fall 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 fiber of the body, and rolled down into the very depths of his soul with long reverberations. No one that ever I 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 towards 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 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 on 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 the things of eternity. His laughter was not the < crackling of thorns under a

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

pot,' but the merry heart that doeth good like a medicine. For this all the children in 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! 1 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 all 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 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 over- work in the Lord's vineyard;' when, if the marble had not lied, it would have said: 'Killed by villainous tobacco!' He abhored anything that could intoxicate, being among the first in this country to join the crusade against alcoholic beverage-. 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 bands, 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.

" Seventy-eight 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 tongue 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 hot that which breaks in the bursting bubble of the champagne glass, or that w^hich is thrown out with the orangepeelings of a midnight bacchanalia, but the joy which, planted by a Saviour's pardoning grace, mounts up higher and higher, till it rolls forth in the acclaim of the hundred and forty and four thousand who have broken their last chain and wept their last sorrow. O mighty God! How deep, how wide, how high the joy Thou kindlest in the heart of the believer!

" Let not his cheerfulness give you the idea that he never had 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 life, but who would with her own willing hands help to achieve it. And so, while father ploughed the fields, and threshed the wheat, and broke the flax, and husked the corn, my mother stood for Solomon's portraiture when he said: i 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 all about the song of 6 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-ofarms, but we were none of us wise enough to tell its meaning. Do our best, we cannot find anything about our fore-

, runners, 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 postilion, but the most of them were sure only of footmen!

" My father started in life belonging to the aristocracy of hard knuckles, 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 Stuart, compared with the honor of being a 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 its 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 warrant 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.

u 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 homestead. The ' golden wedding ' had been celebrated nine years before. My mother looked up, pushed back her spectacles, and said: 1 Just think of it, father? We have been together fiftynine years? ' The twain stood together like two trees of the forest with interlocked branches. Their affections had taken deep rool 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 un joint 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 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? My mother's death! 'Oh!' she said, in her last moments, c father, if you and I could only go together, how pleasant it would be! ' But the hush of death came down one autumnal afternoon, and for the first time in my life, on my arrival 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* Oh! sirs, that was Faith, Faith! ' Thanks be unto God, who giveth us the victory ! '

"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 pockts 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 he 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 had 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 ease 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 trem-

LIFE OF RET, T. DE WITT TALLAGE, D.D. 19 bled 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 Savior'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 clemagogism. 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 he had 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 pro« gress of John Adam's 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 its 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, grand-children, and great-grandchildren. Nearly all his contemporaries gone. Aged Wilberf orce said that sailors drink to ' friends astern ' until half way over the sea, and then drink to ' friends ahead.' With him it had a long time been £ 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 unweariedly from the sunrise of youth to the sunset of old age, and then in the 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 was 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 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!

"Now, after such a life, what sort of death would you have expected ? Will God conduct a voyager through so many storms, and then let him get shipwrecked coming up the harbor? Not such an one is my God and Savior. The telegraph thrilled with tidings north, south, east, west, that brought, in the rushing rail-train, his kindred together. The hour for which this aged servant of God had waited patiently had come, and he rejoiced with a joy at which the tongue faltered. There was no turning from side to side on the pillow, as if looking for escape from grim pursuers, but gazing up and around as if looking out for the chariot of King Jesus. The prayer which the older sons had heard him make fifty years ago, asking that at last he might have 1 nothing to do but die,' was literally answered. AH hi& children, save that one which he sent forth with his: blessr* ing a few months ago, in the good ship ' Surp^ke,' to proclaim the glories of the Messiah on the other- side of the earth, were present — some to pray; som% to hold; his har*j% some to bathe his brow. Ail to wptiQh* % n &i wait, and; weep, and rejoice. He asked about my children. Talked about the past. Expressed his. anticipations . of the fixture. Slept sweetly as a child ever, slept in the arms of its mother. Then broke forth with, the, utterance 4 Goodness and mc.ivy have followed me all the days- of my life!' The Bible that he had studied for sa many years, now cast its light far on into the valley, until the very gate of heaven flushed upon his. vision. Some one quoted the passage, 'This & a. faitkfui saying and worthy of all acceptation, that

Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. 5 'Of whom I am the chief/ responded the dying Christian. We said, ' To live is Christ.' He answered, 'To die is gain;' and, lest we did not understand him, he repeated, ' To die is gain! ' And, as if the vision grew more enrapturing, lie continued to say, 'To die is gain!' Ministers of the Gospel came in, and, after the usual greeting, he said, ' Pray, Pray.'

" We sang some of his favorite hymns, such as:

Jesus can make a dying bed

Feel soft as downy pillows are, While on His breast I lean my head,

And breathe my life out sweetly there.

He would seem almost to stop breathing in order to listen, and then at the close would signify that he remembered the old tune right well. He said: 'I shall be gone soon, but not too soon.' Some one quoted: ' Though I walkthrough the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.' And he replied: ' Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me.' £ Can you testify of God's faithfulness ? ' said another. He answered; 'Yes! I have been young and now I am old, yet have I never seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread/ He said: 'I have it good; I could not have it any better; I feel well — all is well.' Again, and again, and again, he repeated, 'All is well!' Then, lifting his hand, exclaimed: 'Peace! peace!'