T. De Witt Talmage

T. De Witt Talmage by T. De Witt Talmage.

Mrs. T. De Witt Talmage.

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 turned in to the help of the suffering soldiers?" My son's reply was, "My memory of that occurrence is not very distinct, as it took place six years before I was born." The fact is that we think our children know many things concerning which they know nothing at all.

But, outside my own family, I am sure that there are many who would like to read about what I have been doing, thinking, enjoying, and hoping all these years; for through the publication of my entire Sermons, as has again and again been demonstrated, I have been brought into contact with the minds of more people, and for a longer time, than most men. This I mean not in boast, but as a reason for thinking that this autobiography may have some attention outside of my own circle, and I mention it also in grat.i.tude to G.o.d, Who has for so long a time given me this unlimited and almost miraculous opportunity.

Each life is different from every other life. G.o.d never repeats Himself, and He never intended two men to be alike, or two women to be alike, or two children to be alike. This infinite variety of character and experience makes the story of any life interesting, if that story be clearly and accurately told.

I am now in the full play of my faculties, and without any apprehension of early departure, not having had any portents, nor seen the moon over my left shoulder, nor had a salt-cellar upset, nor seen a bat fly into the window, nor heard a cricket chirp from the hearth, nor been one of thirteen persons at a table. But my common sense, and the family record, and the almanac tell me it must be "towards evening."

T. DE WITT TALMAGE

AS I KNEW HIM

FIRST MILESTONE

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 toll-gate, at which business the older children helped him, but I was too small to be of service. I have no memory of residence there, except the day of departure, and that only emphasised by the fact that we left an old cat which had purred her way into my affections, and separation from her was my first sorrow, so far as I can remember.

In that home at Middlebrook, and in the few years after, I went through the entire curriculum of infantile ailments. The first of these was scarlet fever, which so nearly consummated its fell work on me that I was given up by the doctors as doomed to die, and, according to custom in those times in such a case, my grave clothes were completed, the neighbours gathering for that purpose. During those early years I took such a large share of epidemics that I have never been sick since with anything worthy of being called illness. I never knew or heard of anyone who has had such remarkable and unvarying health as I have had, and I mention it with grat.i.tude to G.o.d, in whose "hand our breath is, and all our ways."

The "grippe," as it is called, touched me at Vienna when on my way from the Holy Land, but I felt it only half a day, and never again since.

I often wonder what has become of our old cradle in which all of us children were rocked! We were a large family, and that old cradle was going a good many years. I remember just how it looked. It was old-fashioned and had no tapestry. Its two sides and canopy were of plain wood, but there was a great deal of sound sleeping in that cradle, and many aches and pains were soothed in it. Most vividly I remember that the rockers, which came out from under the cradle, were on the top and side very smooth, so smooth that they actually glistened. But it went right on and rocked for Phoebe the first, and for DeWitt the last.

There were no lords or baronets or princes in our ancestral line. None wore stars, c.o.c.kade, 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 equipages and postilions, but the most of them were sure only of footmen. My father started in life belonging to the aristocracy of hard knuckles and homespun, but had this high honour that no one could despise: he was the son of a father who loved G.o.d and kept His commandments. Two eyes, two hands, and two feet were the capital my father started with.

Benignity, kindness, keen humour, broad common sense and industry characterised my mother. The Reverend Dr. Chambers was for many years her pastor. He had fifty years of pastorate service, in Somerville, N.J., and the Collegiate Church, New York. He said, in an address at the dedication of the Brooklyn Tabernacle, that my mother was the most consecrated Christian person he had ever known. My mother worked very hard, and when we would come in and sit down at the table at noon, I remember how she used to look. There were beads of perspiration along the line of her grey hair, and sometimes she would sit down at the table, and put her head against her wrinkled hand and say, "Well, the fact is, I'm too tired to eat."

My father was a religious, hard-working, honest man. Every day began and closed with family worship, led by my father, or, in case of his absence, by Mother. That which was evidently uppermost in the minds of my parents, and that which was the most pervading principle in their lives, was the Christian religion. The family Bible held a perfect fascination for me, not a page that was not discoloured either with time or tears. My parents read out of it as long as I can remember. When my brother Van Nest died in a foreign land, and the news came to our country home, that night they read the eternal consolations out of the old book. When my brother David died that book comforted the old people in their trouble. My father in mid-life, fifteen years an invalid, out of that book read of the ravens that fed Elijah all through the hard struggle for bread. When my mother died that book illumined the dark valley. In the years that followed of loneliness, it comforted my father with the thought of reunion, which took place afterward in Heaven.

To the wonderful conversion of my grandfather and grandmother, in those grand old days of our declaration of independence, I trace the whole purpose, trend, and energies of my life. I have told the story of the conversion of my grandfather and grandmother before. I repeat it here, for my children.

My grandfather and grandmother went from Somerville to Baskenridge to attend revival meetings under the ministry of Dr. Finney. They were so impressed with the meetings that when they came back to Somerville they were seized upon by a great desire for the salvation of their children.

That evening the children were going off for a gay party, and my grandmother said to the children, "When you get all ready for the entertainment, come into my room; I have something very important to tell you." After they were all ready they came into my grandmother's room, and she said to them, "Go and have a good time, but while you are gone I want you to know I am praying for you and will do nothing but pray for you until you get back." They did not enjoy the entertainment much because they thought all the time of the fact that Mother was praying for them. The evening pa.s.sed. The next day my grandparents heard sobbing and crying in the daughter's room, and they went in and found her praying for the salvation of G.o.d, and her daughter Phoebe said, "I wish you would go to the barn and to the waggon-house for Jehiel and David (the brothers) are under powerful conviction of sin." My grandparent went to the barn, and Jehiel, who afterward became a useful minister of the Gospel, was imploring the mercy of Christ; and then, having first knelt with him and commended his soul to Christ, they went to the waggon-house, and there was David crying for the salvation of his soul--David, who afterward became my father. David could not keep the story to himself, and he crossed the fields to a farmhouse and told one to whom he had been affianced the story of his own salvation, and she yielded her heart to G.o.d. The story of the converted household went all through the neighbourhood. In a few weeks two hundred souls stood up in the plain meeting house at Somerville to profess faith in Christ, among them David and Catherine, afterward my parents.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DAVID TALMAGE. CATHERINE TALMAGE. (_The Parents of Dr. T.

DeWitt Talmage_)]

My mother, impressed with that, in after life, when she had a large family of children gathered around her, made a covenant with three neighbours, three mothers. They would meet once a week to pray for the salvation of their children until all their children were converted--this incident was not known until after my mother's death, the covenant then being revealed by one of the survivors. We used to say: "Mother, where are you going?" and she would say, "I am just going out a little while; going over to the neighbours." They kept on in that covenant until all their families were brought into the kingdom of G.o.d, myself the last, and I trace that line of results back to that evening when my grandmother commended our family to Christ, the tide of influence going on until this hour, and it will never cease.

My mother died in her seventy-sixth year. Through a long life of vicissitude she lived harmlessly and usefully, and came to her end in peace. We had often heard her, when leading family prayers in the absence of my father, say, "O Lord, I ask not for my children wealth or honour, but I do ask that they all may be the subjects of Thy converting grace." Her eleven children brought into the kingdom of G.o.d, she had but one more wish, and that was that she might see her long-absent missionary son, and when the ship from China anch.o.r.ed in New York harbour, and the long-absent one pa.s.sed over the threshold of his paternal home, she said, "Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation." The prayer was soon answered.

My father, as long as I can remember, was an elder in churches. He conducted prayer-meetings in the country, when he was sometimes the only man to take part, giving out a hymn and leading the singing; then reading the Scriptures and offering prayer; then giving out another hymn and leading in that; and then praying again; and so continuing the meeting for the usual length of time, and with no lack of interest.

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 he called "Bound Brook," begin to sing:

As when the weary traveller gains The height of some o'erlooking hill, His heart revives if 'cross the plains 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, 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.

He knew about all the cheerful tunes that were ever printed in old "New Brunswick Collection," and the "Shunway," and the sweetest melodies that Thomas Hastings ever composed. He took the pitch of sacred song on Sabbath morning, and kept it through all the week.

My father was the only person whom I ever knew without any element of fear. I do not believe he understood the sensation.

Seated in a waggon one day during a runaway that every moment threatened our demolition, he was perfectly calm. He turned around to me, a boy of seven years, and said, "DeWitt, what are you crying about? I guess we can ride as fast as they can run."

There was one scene I remember, that showed his poise and courage as nothing else could. He was Sheriff of Somerset County, N.J., and we lived in the court house, attached to which was the County Jail. During my father's absence one day a prisoner got playing the maniac, dashing things to pieces, vociferating horribly, and flourishing a knife with which he had threatened to carve any one who came near the wicket of his prison, Constables were called in to quell this real or dramatised maniac, but they fell back in terror from the door of the prison. Their show of firearms made no impression upon the demented wretch. After awhile my father returned and was told of the trouble, and indeed he heard it before he reached home. The whole family implored him not to go near the man who was cursing, and armed with a knife. But father could not be deterred. He did not stand outside the door and at a safe distance, but took the key and opened the door, and without any weapon of defence came upon the man, thundering at him, "Sit down and give me that knife!" The tragedy was ended. I never remember to have heard him make a gloomy remark. This was not because he had no perception of the pollutions of society. I once said to my father, "Are people so much worse now than they used to-be?" He made no answer for a minute, for the old people do not like to confess much to the boys. But after awhile his eye twinkled and he said: "Well, DeWitt, the fact is that people were never any better than they ought to be."

Ours was an industrious home. I was brought up to regard laziness as an abominable disease. Though we were some years of age before we heard the trill of a piano, we knew well all about the song of "The Spinning-Wheel."

Through how many thrilling scenes my father had pa.s.sed! He stood, at Morristown, in the choir that chanted when George Washington was buried; talked with young men whose fathers he had held on his knee; watched the progress of John Adams'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 another just like him; remembered when the first steamer struck the North river with its wheel-buckets; was startled by 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 pa.s.sing merchantmen. He 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. He lived to speak the names of eighty children, grand-children and great-grand-children. He died just three years from the day when my mother sped on.

When my father lay dying the old country minister said to him, "Mr.

Talmage, how do you feel now as you are about to pa.s.s the Jordan of death?" He replied--and it was the last thing he ever said--"I feel well; I feel very well; all is well"--lifting his hand in a benediction, a speechless benediction, which I pray G.o.d may go down through all the generations--"It is well!"

Four of his sons became ministers of the Gospel: Reverend James R.

Talmage, D.D., who was preaching before I was born, and who died in 1879; Reverend John Van Nest Talmage, D.D., who spent his life as a missionary in China, and died in the summer of 1892; Reverend Goyn Talmage, D.D., who after doing a great work for G.o.d, died in 1891. But all my brothers and sisters were decidedly Christian, lived usefully and died peacefully.

I rejoice to remember that though my father lived in a plain house the most of his days, he died in a mansion provided by the filial piety of his son who had achieved a fortune.

The house at Gateville, near Bound Brook, in which I was born, has gone down. Not one stone has been left upon another. I one day picked up a fragment of the chimney, or wall, and carried it home. But the home that I a.s.sociate with my childhood was about three miles from Somerville, N.J. The house, the waggon-shed, the barn, are now just as I remember them from childhood days. It was called "Uncle John's Place" from the fact that my mother's uncle, John Van Nest, owned it, and from him my father rented it "on shares." Here I rode the horse to brook. Here I hunted for and captured Easter eggs. Here the natural world made its deepest impression on me. Here I learned some of the fatigues and hardships of the farmer's life--not as I felt them, but as my father and mother endured them. Here my brother Daniel brought home his bride. From here I went to the country school. Here in the evening the family were gathered, mother knitting or sewing, father vehemently talking politics or religion with some neighbour not right on the subject of the tariff, or baptism, and the rest of us reading or listening. All the group are gone except my sister Catherine and myself.

My childhood, as I look back upon it, is to me a mystery. While I always possessed a keen sense of the ludicrous, and a hearty appreciation of fun of all sorts, there was a sedate side of my nature that demonstrated itself to the older members of the family, and of which they often spoke. For half days, or whole days, at a time I remember sitting on a small footstool beside an ordinary chair on which lay open "Scott's Commentaries on the Bible." I not only read the Scriptures out of this book, but long discourses of Thomas Scott, and pa.s.sages adjoining. I could not have understood much of these profound and elaborate commentaries. They were not written or printed for children, but they had for my childish mind a fascination that kept me from play, and from the ordinary occupations of persons of my years.

So, also, it was with the religious literature of the old-fashioned kind, with which some of the tables of my father's house were piled.

Indeed, when afterwards I was living at my brothers' house, he a clergyman, I read through and through and through the four or five volumes of Dwight's "Theology," which must have been a wading-in far beyond my depth. I think if I had not possessed an unusual resiliency of temperament, the reading and thinking so much of things pertaining to the soul and a future state would have made me morbid and unnatural.

This tendency to read and think in sacred directions was not a case of early piety. I do not know what it was. I suppose in all natures there are things inexplicable. How strange is the phenomenon of childhood days to an old man!

How well I remember Sanderson's stage coach, running from New Brunswick to Easton, as he drove through Somerville, New Jersey, turning up to the post-office and dropping the mail-bags with ten letters and two or three newspapers! On the box Sanderson himself, six feet two inches, and well proportioned, long lash-whip in one hand, the reins of six horses in the other, the "leaders" lathered along the lines of the traces, foam dripping from the bits! It was the event of the day when the stage came.

It was our highest ambition to become a stage-driver. Some of the boys climbed on the great leathern boot of the stage, and those of us who could not get on shouted "Cut behind!" I saw the old stage-driver not long ago, and I expressed to him my surprise that one around whose head I had seen a halo of glory in my boyhood time was only a man like the rest of us. Between Sanderson's stage-coach and a Chicago express train, what a difference!

And I shall always marvel at our family doctor. Dear old Dr. Skillman!

My father's doctor, my mother's doctor, in the village home! He carried all the confidences of all the families for ten miles around. We all felt better as soon as we saw him enter the house. His face p.r.o.nounced a beat.i.tude before he said a word. He welcomed all of us children into life, and he closed the old people's eyes.