T. De Witt Talmage As I Knew Him - free ebook by Eleanor McCutcheon Talmage

MRS. T. DE WITT TALMAGE

The Rev. T. De Witt Talmage, D.D. The Rev. T. De Witt Talmage, D.D....

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PREFACE

I write this story of my life, first of all for my children. How much would I now give for a full account of my father's life written by his own hand! That which merely goes from lip to ear is apt to be soon forgotten. The generations move on so rapidly that events become confused. I said to my son, "Do you remember that time in Philadelphia, during the war, when I received a telegram saying several hundred wounded soldiers would arrive next day, and we suddenly extemporised a hospital and all t

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AS I KNEW HIM

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1832-1845

Our family Bible, in the record just between the Old and the New Testaments, has this entry: "Thomas DeWitt, Born January 7, 1832." I was the youngest of a family of twelve children, all of whom lived to grow up except the first, and she was an invalid child. I was the child of old age. My nativity, I am told, was not heartily welcomed, for the family was already within one of a dozen, and the means of support were not superabundant. I arrived at Middlebrook, New Jersey, while my father kept the

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1845-1869

When moving out of a house I have always been in the habit, after everything was gone, of going into each room and bidding it a mute farewell. There are the rooms named after the different members of the family. I suppose it is so in all households. It was so in mine; we named the rooms after the persons who occupied them. I moved from the house of my boyhood with a sort of mute affection for its remembrances that are most vivid in its hours of crisis and meditation. Through all the years that h

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1856-1862

My first sermons were to me the most tremendous endeavours of my life, because I felt the awful responsibility of standing in a pulpit, knowing that a great many people would be influenced by what I said concerning God, or the soul, or the great future. When I first began to preach, I was very cautious lest I should be misrepresented, and guarded the subject on all sides. I got beyond that point. I found that I got on better when, without regard to consequences, I threw myself upon the hearts an

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1862-1877

I spent seven of the most delightful years of my life in Philadelphia. What wonderful Gospel men were round me in the City of Brotherly Love at this time—such men as Rev. Alfred Barnes, Rev. Dr. Boardman, Rev. Dr. Berg, Rev. Charles Wadsworth, and many others equally distinguished. I should probably never have left Philadelphia except that I was afraid I would get too lazy. Being naturally indolent I wanted to get somewhere where I would be compelled to work. I have sometimes felt that I was nat

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1877-1879

Without boast it may be said that I was among those men who with eager and persistent vigilance made the heart of Brooklyn feel the Christian purpose of the pulpit, and the utility of religion in everyday life. The fifteen years following the dedication of the new Tabernacle in 1872 mark the most active milestone of my career as a preacher. A minister's recollections are confined to his interpretation of the life about him; the men he knows, the events he sees, the good and the bad of his enviro

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1879-1881

In the spring of 1879 I made a Gospel tour of England, Ireland, and Scotland. On a previous visit I had given a series of private lectures, under the management of Major Pond, and I had been more or less criticised for the amount of money charged the people to hear me. As I had nothing whatever to do with the prices of tickets to my lectures, which went to the managers who arranged the tour, this was something beyond my control. My personal arrangement with Major Pond was for a certain fixed sum

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1881-1884

On July 2, 1881, an attempt was made to assassinate President Garfield, at the Pennsylvania Station, Washington, where he was about to board a train. I heard the news first on the railroad train at Williamstown, Mass., where the President was expected in three or four days. "Absurd, impossible," I said. Why should anyone want to kill him? He had nothing but that which he had earned with his own brain and hand. He had fought his own way up from country home to college hall, and from college hall

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1884-1885

I reached the fiftieth year of my life in December, 1883. In my long residence in Brooklyn I had found it to be the healthiest city in the world. It had always been a good place to live in—plenty of fresh air blowing up from the sea—plenty of water rolling down through our reservoirs—the Sabbaths too quiet to attract ruffianism. Of all the men I have seen and heard and known, there were but a few deep friendships that I depended upon. In February, 1884, I lost one of these by the decease of Thom

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1885-1886

As time kept whispering its hastening call into my ear I grew more and more vigorous in my outlook. I was given strength to hurry faster myself, with a certain energy to climb higher up, where the view was wider, bigger, clearer. As I moved upward I had but one fear, and that was of looking backward. A minister, entrusted with the charge of souls, cannot afford to retrace his steps. He must go on, and up, to the top of his abilities, of his spiritual purposes. In the midst of a glorious summer,

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1886

Society life in the big cities of America in 1886 had become a strange nightmare of extravagance and late hours. It was developing a queer race of people. Temporarily, the Lenten season stopped the rustle and flash of toilettes, chained the dancers, and put away the tempting chalice of social excitement. When Lent came in the society of the big cities of America was an exhausted multitude. It seemed to me as though two or three winters of germans and cotillions would be enough to ruin the best o

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1886-1887

The balance of power in Brooklyn and New York during my lifetime had always been with the pulpit. I was in my fifty-fourth year, and had shared honours with the most devout and fearless ministers of the Gospel so long that when two monster receptions were proposed, in celebration of the services of Rev. Henry Ward Beecher and Rev. R.S. Storrs, D.D., I became almost wickedly proud of the privileges of my associations. These two eminent men were in the seventies. Dr. Storrs had been installed past

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1888

It seems to me that the constructive age of man begins when he has passed fifty. Not until then can he be a master builder. As I sped past the fifty-fifth milestone life itself became better, broader, fuller. My plans were wider, the distances I wanted to go stretched before me, beyond the normal strength of an average lifetime. This I knew, but still I pressed on, indifferent of the speed or strain. There were indications that my strength had not been dissipated, that the years were merely notc

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1888-1889

The longer I live the more I think of mercy. Fifty-six years of age and I had not the slightest suspicion that I was getting old. It was like a crisp, exquisitely still autumn day. I felt the strength and buoyancy of all the days I had lived merging themselves into a joyous anticipation of years and years to come. For a long while I had cherished the dream that I might some day visit the Holy Land, to see with my own eyes the sky, the fields, the rocks, and the sacred background of the Divine Tr

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1889-1891

For fifteen years, to a large part of the public, I had been an experiment in church affairs. In 1889 I had caught up with the world and the things I had been doing and thinking and hoping became suitable for the world. In the retrospect of those things I had left behind what gratitude I felt for their strife and struggle! A minister of the Gospel is not only a sentinel of divine orders, he must also have deep convictions of his authority to resist attack in his own way, by his own force, with h

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1891-1892

On April 26, 1891, the new Tabernacle was opened. There were three dedication services and thousands of people came. I was fifty-nine years of age. Up to this time everything had been extraordinary in its conflict, its warnings. I found myself, after over thirty years of service to the Gospel, pastor of the biggest Protestant church in the world. It seems to me there were more men of indomitable success during my career in America than at any other time. There were so many self-made men, so many

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1892-1895

I had only one fault to find with the world in my sixty years of travel over it and that was it had treated me too well. In the ordinary course of events, and by the law of the Psalmist, I still had ten more years before me; but, according to my own calculations, life stretched brilliantly ahead of me as far as heart and mind could wish. There were many things to take into consideration. There was the purpose of the future, its obligations, its opportunities to adjust. My whole life had been a s

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1895-1898

Among the mysteries that are in every man's life, more or less influencing his course, is the mystery of disaster that comes upon him noiselessly, suddenly, horribly. The destruction of the New Tabernacle by a fire which started in the organ loft was one of these mysteries that will never be revealed this side of eternity. The destruction of any church, no matter how large or how popular, does not destroy our faith in God. Great as the disaster had been, much greater was the mercy of Divine myst

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MRS. T. DEWITT TALMAGE 1898-1902

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MRS. T. DEWITT TALMAGE 1898-1902

The wishes of Doctor Talmage reign paramount with me; otherwise I should not dare to add these imperfect memoirs to the finished and eloquent, yet simple, narration of his life-work which has just charmed the reader from his own graphic pen. Dr. Talmage did not consider his autobiography of vital importance to posterity; his chief concern was for his sermons and other voluminous writings. The intimate things of his life he held too sacred for public view, and he shrank from any intrusion thereup

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1899-1900

In his study no wasted hours ever entered. With the exception of the stenographer and his immediate family no one was admitted there. It was his eventful laboratory where he conceived the greatest sermons of his period. I merely quote the opinions of others, far more important than my own, when I say this. It is a sort of haunted room to-day which I enter not with any fear, but I can never stay in it very long. It has no ghostly associations, it is too full of vital memories for that; but it is

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1900-1901

So much has been written about Dr. Talmage the world over, that I am tempted to tell those things about him that have not been written, but it is difficult to do. He stood always before the people a sort of radiant mystery to them. He was never really understood by those whom he most influenced. A writer in an English newspaper has given the best description of his appearance in 1900 I ever saw. It is so much better than any I could make that I quote it, regretting that I do not know the author'

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1900-1902

There was no warning of the divine purpose; there was no pause of weakness or illness in his life to foreshadow his approaching end. Until the last sunset hours of his useful days he always seemed to me a man of iron. He had stood in the midst of crowds a towering figure; but away from them his life had been a studied annihilation, an existence of hidden sacrifice to his great work. He used to say to me: "Eleanor, I have lived among crowds, and yet I have been much of the time quite alone." But

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