T. De Witt Talmage as I Knew Him

It was a very different state of public feeling which met the disaster that came to the Tabernacle on that early Sabbath morning of October 18, 1889. I had a congregation of millions all over the world to appeal to. I stood before them, accredited in the religious course I had pursued, approved as a minister of the Gospel, upheld as a man and a preacher. The hand of Providence is always a mysterious grasp of life that confuses and dismays, but it always rebuilds, restores, and prophesies.

At my house in Brooklyn, on the evening of the day of the fire, the following resolutions were passed by the Board of Trustees:—

"Resolved—that we bow in humble submission to the Providence which this morning removed our beloved Church, and while we cannot fully understand the meaning of that Providence we have faith that there is kindness as well as severity in the stroke.

"Resolved:—That if God and the people help us we will proceed at once to rebuild, and that we rear a larger structure to meet the demands of our congregation, the locality and style of the building to be indicated by the amount of contributions made."

A committee was immediately formed to select a temporary place of worship, and the Academy of Music was selected, because of its size and location.

I was asked for a statement to the people through the press. From a scrap-book I copy this statement:—

Even the small children, the poor, the aged, sent in their dollars. About one thousand dollars was contributed the first day. Everything was done by the trustees and the people, to expedite the plans of the New Tabernacle so that in two weeks from the date of the fire I broke ground for what was to be the largest church in the world of a Protestant denomination, on the corner of Clinton and Greene Avenues. That afternoon of October 28, 1889, when I stood in the enclosure arranged for me, and consecrated the ground to the word of God, was another moment of supreme joy to me. It was said that those who witnessed the ceremony were impressed with the importance of it in the course of my own life and in the history of Christianity. To me it was akin to those pregnant hours of my life through which I had passed in great exaltation of spiritual fervour.

My words of consecration were brief, as follows:

"May the Lord God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and Joshua, and Paul, and John Knox, and John Wesley, and Hugh Latimer, and Bishop McIlvaine take possession of this ground and all that shall be built upon it."

With Mrs. Talmage and my daughter, May Talmage, I sailed on the "City of Paris," on October 30, 1889, to complete the plan I had dreamed of for years. I had been reverently anxious to actually see the places associated with our Lord's life and death. I wanted to see Bethlehem and Nazareth, and Jerusalem and Calvary, so intimately connected with the ministry of our Saviour. I had arranged to write a Life of Christ, and this trip was imperative. In that book is the complete record of this journey, therefore I feel that other things that have not been told deserve the space here that would otherwise belong to my recollections of the Holy Land. It was reported that while in Jerusalem I made an effort to purchase Calvary and the tomb of our Saviour, so as to present it to the Christian Church at large. I was so impressed with the fact that part of this sacred ground was being used as a Mohammedan cemetery that I was inspired to buy it in token of respect to all Christendom. Of course this led to much criticism, but that has never stopped my convictions. I was away for two months, returning in February, 1890.

While in England I received an invitation from Mr. Gladstone to visit him at Hawarden. He wired me, "pray come to Hawarden to-morrow," and on January 24, 1890, I paid my visit. I was staying at the Grand Hotel in London when the telegram was handed to me. With the rest of the world, at that time, I regarded Mr. Gladstone as the most wonderful man of the century.

"No man who has heart disease ought to use the axe," he said; "that very stump is the place where my friend used it, and died."

He rallied the American tendency to exaggerate things in a story he told with great glee, about a fabulous tree in California, where two men cutting at it on opposite sides for many days were entirely oblivious of each other's presence. Each one believed himself to be a lone woodsman in the forest until, after a long time, they met with surprise at the heart of the tree. American stories seemed to tickle him immensely. He told another kindred one of a fish in American lakes, so large that when it was taken out of the water the lake was perceptibly lowered. He grew buoyant, breezy, fanciful in the brisk winter air. Like his dog, he was tingling with life. He liked to throw sticks for him, to see him jump and run.

"Look at that dog's eyes, isn't he a fine fellow?" he kept asking. His knowledge of the trees on his estate was historical. He knew their lineage and characteristics from the date of their sapling age, four or five hundred years before. The old and decrepit aristocrats of his forest were tenderly bandaged, their arms in splints.

"Look at that sycamore," he said; "did you find in the Holy Land any more thrifty than that? You know sometimes I am described as destroying my trees. I only destroy the bad to help the good. Since I have thrown my park open to visitors the privilege has never been abused."

We drifted upon all subjects, rational, political, religious, ethical.

"Divorce in your country, is it not a menace?" he asked.

Gladstone's religious instinct was prophetic in its grasp. His intellectual approval of religious intention was the test of his faith. He applied to the exaltations of Christianity the reason of human fact. I was forcibly impressed with this when he told me of an incident in his boyhood.

"I read something in 'Augustine' when I was a boy," he said, "which struck me then with great force. I still feel it to-day. It was the passage which says, 'When the human race rebelled against God, the lower nature of man as a consequence rebelled against the higher nature.'"

I asked him then if the years had strengthened or weakened his Christian faith. We were racing up hill. He stopped suddenly on the hillside and regarded me with a searching earnestness, a solemnity that made me quake. Then he spoke slowly, more seriously:

I asked him if he did not believe that many people had no religion in their heads, but a good religion in their hearts.

"I have no doubt of it, and I can give you an illustration," he said.

"Yesterday, Lord Napier was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral. After the war in Africa Lord Napier was here for a few days, at the invitation of Mrs. Gladstone and myself, and we walked as we are walking now. He told me this story. I cannot remember his exact words. He said that just when the troops were about to leave Africa there was a soldier with a broken leg. He was too sick to take along, but to leave him behind seemed barbaric. Lord Napier ordered him to be carried, but he soon became too ill to go any further. Lord Napier went to a native woman well known in that country for her kindness, and asked her to take care of the soldier. To ensure his care she was offered a good sum of money. I remember her reply as Lord Napier repeated it to me. 'No, I will not take care of this wounded soldier for the money you offer me,' she said; 'I have no need of the money. My father and mother have a comfortable tent, and I have a good tent; why should I take the money? If you will leave him here I will take care of him for the sake of the love of God.'"

Gladstone was in the thick of political scrimmage over Home Rule, and he talked about it with me.

Two nights before, at a speech in Chester, Mr. Gladstone had declared that the increase of the American navy would necessitate the increase of the British navy. I rallied him about this statement, and he said, "Oh! Americans like to hear the plain truth. The fact is, the tie between the two nations is growing closer every year."

It was a bitter cold day and yet Mr. Gladstone wore only a very light cape, reaching scarcely to his knees.

"I need nothing more on me," he said; "I must have my legs free."

After luncheon he took me into his library, a wonderful place, a treasure-house in itself, a bookman's palace. The books had been arranged and catalogued according to a system of his own invention. He showed many presents of American books and pictures sent to him.

"Outside of America there is no one who is bound to love it more than I do," he said, "you see, I am almost surrounded by the evidences of American kindnesses." He gave me some books and pamphlets about himself, and his own Greek translation of "Jesus, Lover of my Soul." Mrs. Gladstone had been obliged to leave before we returned from our walk. Mr. Gladstone took me into a room, however, and showed me a beautiful sculptured portrait of her, made when she was twenty-two.

"She is only two years younger than I am, but in complete health and vigour," he said proudly.

"I am too old now," he said, wistfully, I thought.

"Is it the Atlantic you object to?" I asked.

"Oh! I am not afraid of the ocean," he said, as though there were perhaps some other reason.

"Tell your country I watch every turn of its history with a heart of innermost admiration," he called after me. I carried Gladstone's message at once, going straight from Hawarden to America, as I had intended when leaving London.

I was prepared for a reception in Brooklyn on my return, but I never dreamed it would be the ovation it was. It becomes difficult to write of these personal courtesies, as I find them increasing in the progress of my life from now on. I trust the casual reader will not construe anything in these pages into a boastful desire to spread myself in too large letters in print.

When I entered the Thirteenth Regiment Armoury on the evening of February 7, 1890, it was packed from top to floor. It was a large building with its three acres of drill floor and its half mile of galleries. There were over seven thousand people there, so the newspapers estimated. Against the east wall was the speaker's platform, and over it in big letters of fire burned the word "Welcome."

On the stage, when I arrived at eight o'clock, were Mayor Chapin, Colonel Austen, General Alfred C. Barnes, the Rev. J. Benson Hamilton, Judge Clement, Mr. Andrew McLean, the Rev. Leon Harrison, ex-Mayor Whitney, the Hon. David A. Boody, U.S. Marshal Stafford, Judge Courtney, Postmaster Hendrix, John Y. Culver, Mark D. Wilber, Commissioner George V. Brower, the Rev. E.P. Terhune, General Horatio C. King, William E. Robinson and several others.

The most inspiring moment of these preliminaries was the approach of the most distinguished man in that vast assembly, General William T. Sherman. He marched to the platform under military escort, while the band played "Marching through Georgia." Everyone stood up in deference to the old warrior, handkerchiefs were waved, hats flew up in the air, everyone was so proud of him, so pleased to see him! Mayor Chapin introduced the General, and as he stood patiently waiting for the audience to regain its self-control, the band played "Auld Lang Syne." Then in the presence of that great crowd he gave me a soldier's welcome. I remember one sentence uttered by Sherman that night that revealed the character of the great fighter when he said, "The same God that appeared at Nazareth is here to-night."

But nothing on that auspicious evening was so great to me as when Sherman spoke what he described as the soldier's welcome:

"How are you, old fellow, glad to see you!" he said.

The building of the new Tabernacle, my third effort to establish an independent church in Brooklyn, went on rapidly. We were planning then to open it in September, 1891. The church building alone was to cost $150,000. Its architectural beauty was in accord with the elegance of its fashionable neighbourhood on "The Hill," as that residential part of Brooklyn was always described.

During my absence our pews had been rented, realising $18,000. The largest portion of these pews were rented by letter, and the balance at a public meeting held in Temple Israel. The second gallery of the church was free. The highest price paid in the rental for one pew for a year was $75, the lowest was $20. In the interval, pending the completion of the church, pew holders were given tickets for reserved seats in the Academy of Music, where our Sunday services were held. There were 1,500 free seats in the second gallery of the new Tabernacle.

It was a great joy to find that the enterprise I had inaugurated before sailing for the Holy Land had made such good progress. But we were always fortunate.

On February 9, 1890, I preached my first sermon since my return from the Holy Land in the Academy of Music. It was expected that I would preach about the country of sacred memories that I had visited, but I was impressed with what I had found on my return in religious history of a more modern purpose. They had been fixing up the creeds while I was abroad, tracing the footsteps of divine law, and I felt the importance of this fact. So I chose the text in Joshua vi. 23, "And the young men that were spies went in and brought out Rahab, and her father and her mother, and her brethren, and all that she had."

The laying of the corner stone of the new Tabernacle took place on the afternoon of February 11, 1890. It was a modest ceremony because it was considered wise to defer the festivities for the dedication services that were to occur in the church itself in the spring. The two tin boxes placed in the corner stone contained the records of the church organisation from 1854 to 1873, a copy of the Bible, coins of 1873, newspaper accounts of the dedication of the old Tabernacle, copies of the Brooklyn and New York newspapers, photographs of the trustees, a 25-cent gold piece from the Philadelphia mint with the Lord's Prayer engraved on one side, drawing and plans of the new Tabernacle, and some Colonial money dated 1759, 1771, 1773, 1774. During my trip in the Holy Land I had secured two stones, one from Mount Calvary and one from Mount Sinai, which were to be placed in the Tabernacle later.

The "Tabernacle Rabble," as the Philistines of Clinton Avenue called us, continued to meet in the Academy of Music with renewed vigour. My own duties became more exacting because of the additional work I had undertaken, of an editorial nature, on two periodicals.

Here is one from the "Chicago American," published in 1890:—

Dr. Morgan Dix, of Trinity Church, with a salary of $15,000, heads the list, Dr. Brown of St. Thomas' Church, received the same amount; so did Dr. Huntington of Grace Church, and Dr. Greer of St. Bartholomew's. The Bishop of the diocese received no more. Dr. Rainsford of St. George's Church received $10,000, and like Dr. Greer, possessing a private fortune, he turned his salary over to the church. The clergymen of the Methodist Episcopal churches were not so rich. The Bishop of New York received only $5,000. The pastor of St. Paul's, on Fourth Avenue, received the same amount, so did the pastor of the Madison Avenue Church.

The Presbyterian pulpits were filled with some of the ablest preachers in New York. Dr. John Hall of the Fifth Avenue Church received the salary of $30,000, Dr. Paxton $10,000, Dr. Parkhurst and Dr. C.C. Thompson $8,000 respectively. Dr. Robert Collyer of the Park Avenue Unitarian Church, received $10,000, and Dr. William M. Taylor of the Broadway Tabernacle the same amount.

In the spring of 1891 I shaved my whiskers.

From England, in the Queen's name, came this:

"To the President of the United States, Washington—

"The Queen desires to congratulate the President upon the successful completion of this great international work, in which the Queen has taken the deepest interest. The Queen is convinced that the President will join with her in fervently hoping that the electric cable which now connects Great Britain with the United States will prove an additional link between the nations whose friendship is founded upon their common interest and reciprocal esteem. The Queen has much pleasure in thus communicating with the President and renewing to him her wishes for the prosperity of the United States."

The President's answering cable was as follows:

It is interesting to compare the elemental quality, the inner character of these national flashes of feeling, that came so comparatively soon after the days of the revolution in America. It was a sort of prose poetry of the new century. This recollection came back to me, on my return from Europe, upon the opening of the new Tabernacle, a symbol of the eternal human progress of the world. Materially and spiritually we were striving ahead, men of affairs, men of religion, philosophers, scientists, and poets.

I was present in 1891 at the celebration of Whittier's eighty-fourth birthday. He was on the bright side of eighty then. The schools celebrated the day, so should the churches have done, for he was a Christian poet.

John Greenleaf Whittier was a Quaker. That means that he was a genial, kind, good man—a simple man. I spent an afternoon with him once in a barn. We were summering in the mountains near by. We found ourselves in the barn, where we stretched out on the hay. The world had not spoiled the simplicity of his nature. It was an afternoon of pastoral peace, with one who had written himself into the heart of a nation. How much I learned from that man's childlikeness and simplicity!

The Third Brooklyn Tabernacle.

We were in the midst of a religious conflict on many sacred questions in 1892. There came upon us a plague called Higher Criticism. My idea of it was that Higher Criticism meant lower religion. The Bible seemed to me entirely satisfactory. The chief hindrance to the Gospel was this everlasting picking at the Bible by people who pretended to be its friends, but who themselves had never been converted. The Higher Criticism was only a flurry. The world started as a garden and it will close as a garden. That there may be no false impression of the sublime destiny of the world as I see it, let me add that it is not a garden of idleness and pleasure, but a vineyard in which all must labour from early morning till the glory of sundown wraps us in its revival robes of golden splendour.

What a changing, hurrying world of desperate means it is. What a mirage of towering ambition is the whole of life! I have so often wondered why men, great men of heart and brain, should ever die out, though they pass on to live forever under brighter skies.

In January, 1892, Congressman William E. Robinson was buried from our church, and in February of the same month Spurgeon died in England. Though men may live at swords' points with each other they die in peace. This last forgetfulness is some of the beautiful moss that grows on the ruins of poor human nature.

There is an affinity of souls on earth and doubtless in heaven. We seek those who are our kindred souls when we reach there. In this respect I always feel a sense of gratitude, of cheerfulness for those who have passed on. My old friend, Charles H. Spurgeon, in February, 1892, made his last journey; and I am sure that the first whom he picked out in heaven were the souls of Jonathan Edwards and John Calvin—two men of tremendous evangelism. I first met Spurgeon in London in 1872.

"I read your sermons," I said to him first.

"Everybody reads yours," he replied.

Spurgeon made a long battle against disease; the last few months in agony. His name is on the honour roll of the world's history, but for many years he was caricatured and assailed. He kept a scrap-book of the printed blasphemy against him. The first picture I ever saw of him represented him as sliding down the railing of his pulpit in the presence of his congregation, to show how easy it was to go to hell, and then climbing up on the opposite railing to show how difficult it was to get to heaven. Most people at the time actually believed that he had done this.

In this same month Dr. Mackenzie, the famous physician, died, and my old friend, the Rev. Dr. Hanna of Belfast, the leading Protestant minister of Ireland. Out of the darkness into the light; out of the struggle into victory; out of earth into Heaven!

There were questions that could not be solved, however, questions of industrial moment that we almost despaired of. The tariff was one of them. I felt convinced that the tariff question would never be settled. The grandchildren of every generation will always be discussing it, and thresh out the same old straw which the Democrats and Republicans were discussing before them. When I was a boy only eight years old the tariff was discussed just as warmly as it will ever be. Like my friend Henry Watterson, of Kentucky, I was a Free Trader. Politics were so mixed up it was difficult to see ahead. Cleveland was after Hill and Hill was after Cleveland; that alone was clear to everybody.

For my own satisfaction, in the spring of 1892, I went to see what Washington was really doing, thinking, living. It had improved morally and politically, its streets were still the trail of the mighty. A great change had taken place there.

In spite of the personal malice against me of one of the great editors of New York, the people did not seem to lose their confidence in the Christian spirit. Both Dr. Parkhurst and myself were the targets of this brilliant man's sarcasm and satire at this time, but neither of us were demoralised or injured in the course of our separate ways of duty.

In the summer of 1892 the working plans of what the newspapers generously called my vacation took me to Europe on a tour of Great Britain and Ireland, including a visit to Russia, to await the arrival of a ship-load of food sent by the religious weekly of which I was editor. Some criticism was made of the way I worked instead of rested in vacation time.

Someone asked me if I believed in dreams. I said, no; I believed in sleep, but not in dreams. The Lord, in olden times, revealed Himself in dreams, but I do not think He does so often now. When I was at school we parsed from "Young's Night Thoughts," but I had no very pleasant memories of that book. I had noticed that dreamers are often the prey of consumption. It seems to have a fondness for exquisite natures—dreamy, spiritual, a foe of the finest part of the human family. There was Henry Kirke White, the author of that famous hymn, "When Marshalled on the Nightly Plains," who, dying of consumption, wrote it with two feet in the grave, and recited it with power when he could not move from his chair.

"I thank God for Dr. Talmage's life and ministry, and I despise the man who cannot appreciate his services to Christianity. May he preach in this pulpit again!"

On leaving his church I was obliged to address the crowd outside from my carriage. Nothing can be so gratifying to a preacher as the faith of the people he addresses in his faith. In England the religious spirit is deeply rooted. I could not help feeling, as I saw that surging mass of men and women outside the City Temple in London after the service, how earnest they all were in their exertions to hear the Gospel. In my own country I had been used to crowds that were more curious in their attitude, less reverent of the occasion. Dr. Parker's description of the sermon after it was over expressed the effect of my Gospel message upon that crowd in England.

He said: "That is the most sublime, pathetic and impressive appeal we ever listened to. It has kindled the fire of enthusiasm in our souls that will burn on for ever. It has unfolded possibilities of the pulpit never before reached. It has stirred all hearts with the holiest ambition."

So should every sermon, preached in every place in the world on every Sunday in the world, be a message from God and His angels!

In Nottingham I was told that Albert Hall, where I preached, could not hold over 3,000 people. That number of tickets for my sermon were distributed from the different pulpits in the city, but hundreds were disappointed and waited for me outside afterwards. This was no personal tribute to me, but to the English people, to whom my Gospel message was of serious import. The text I used most during this preaching tour was from Daniel xi. 2: "The people that do know their God shall be strong and do exploits." It applied to the people of Great Britain and they responded and understood.

Before leaving for Russia I met a part of the American colony in London at a reception given by Mr. Lincoln, our Minister to England. We gathered to celebrate the Fourth of July. Mrs. Mackey, Mrs. Paran Stevens, Mrs. Bradley Martin, and Mrs. Bonynge received among others. Phillips Brooks and myself were among the clerical contingent, with such Americans abroad as Colonel Tom Ochiltree, Buffalo Bill, General and Mrs. Williams, A.M. Palmer, Mrs. New, the Consul-General's wife, Mr. and Mrs. John Collins, Senators Farwell and McDonald.

In the famine districts, which were vast enough to hold several nations, a drought that had lasted for six consecutive years had devastated the country. According to the estimate of the Russian Famine Relief Committee we saved the lives of 125,000 Russians.

As at the hunger relief stations the bread was handed out—for it was made into loaves and distributed—many people would halt before taking it and religiously cross themselves and utter a prayer for the donors. Some of them would come staggering back and say:—

"Please tell us who sent this bread to us?" And when told it came from America, they would say: "What part of America? Please give us the names of those who sent it."

My visit to the Czar of Russia, Alexander III., was made at the Imperial Palace. I was ushered into a small, very plain apartment, in which I found the Emperor seated alone, quietly engaged with his official cares. He immediately arose, extended his hand with hearty cordiality, and said in the purest English, as he himself placed a chair for me beside his table, "Doctor Talmage, I am very happy to meet you."

Noticing the magnificent physique of both father and son, I asked the Emperor, when the conversation turned incidentally upon matters of health, what he did to maintain such fine strength in the midst of all the cares of State. He replied, "Doctor, the secret of my strength is in my physical exercise. This I never fail to take regularly and freely every day before I enter upon any of the work of my official duties, and to it I attribute the excellent health which I enjoy."

The Emperor insisted that I should see the Empress and the rest of the Imperial Family, and we proceeded to another equally plain, unpretentious apartment where, with her daughters, we found the Empress. After a long conversation, and just as I was leaving, I asked the Emperor whether there was much discontent among the nobility as a result of the emancipation among the serfs, and he replied, "Yes, all the trouble with my empire arises from the turbulence and discontent of the nobility. The people are perfectly quiet and contented."

My presentation at Peterhoff Palace to Alexander III. and the royal family of Russia was entirely an unexpected event in my itinerary. It was in the nature of a compliment to my mission, to the American people who have contributed so much to the distress in Russia, and to the Christian Church for which this "hardhearted, cruel Czar" had so much respect and so much interest. It was said that in common with all Americans I expected to find the Emperor attired in some bomb-proof regalia. Perhaps I was impressed with the Czar's indifference and fearlessness. Someone said to me that no doubt he was quite used to the thought of assassination. I discovered, in a long conversation that I had with him, that he was ready to die, and when a man is ready why should he be afraid?

The most significant and important outcome of this presentation to the Czar was his pledge to my countrymen that Russia would always remember the generosity of the American people in their future relations. Everywhere in St. Petersburg and Moscow, the Russian and American flags were displayed together on the public buildings, so that I look back upon this occasion with a pardonable impression of its international importance. There was a suggestion of this feeling in an address presented to us by the City Council of St. Petersburg, in which a graceful remembrance was made of that occasion in 1868, when a special embassy from the United States, with Mr. G.V. Fox, a Cabinet officer, at its head, visited St. Petersburg and expressed sympathy for Russia and its Sovereign.

Some people wonder how I have kept in such good humour with the world when I have been at times violently assailed or grossly misrepresented. It was because the kindnesses towards me have predominated. For the past thirty or forty years the mercies have carried the day. If I went to the depot there was a carriage to meet me. If I tarried at the hotel some one mysteriously paid the bill. If I were attacked in newspaper or church court there were always those willing to take up for me the cudgels. If I were falsified the lie somehow turned out to my advantage. My enemies have helped me quite as much as my friends. If I preached or lectured I always had a crowd. If I had a boil it was almost always in a comfortable place. If my church burned down I got a better one. I offered a manuscript to a magazine, hoping to get for it forty dollars, which I much needed at the time. The manuscript was courteously returned as not being available; but that article for which I could not get forty dollars has since, in other uses, brought me forty thousand dollars. The caricaturists have sent multitudes of people to hear me preach and lecture. I have had antagonists; but if any man of my day has had more warm personal friends I do not know his name.