T. De Witt Talmage Part 3

A distinguished gentleman of the Civil War told me that Abraham Lincoln proposed to avoid our civil conflict by purchasing the slaves of the South and setting them free. He calculated what would be a reasonable price for them, and when the number of millions of dollars that would be required for such a purpose was announced the proposition was scouted, and the North would not have made the offer, and the South would not have accepted it, if made.

"But," said my military friend, "the war went on, and just the number of million dollars that Mr. Lincoln calculated would have been enough to make a reasonable purchase of all the slaves were spent in war, besides all the precious lives that were hurled away in 250 battles."

There ought to be some other way for men to settle their controversies without wholesale butchering.

It was due partly to the national gloom that overspread the people during the Civil War that I took to the lecture platform actively. I entered fully into the lecturing field when I went to Philadelphia, where DeWitt Moore, officer in my church and a most intimate friend, asked me to lecture for the benefit of a Ball Club to which he belonged.

That lecture in a hall in Locust Street, Philadelphia, opened the way for more than I could do as lecturer.

I have always made such engagements subordinate to my chief work of preaching the Gospel. Excepting two long journeys a year, causing each an absence of two Sundays, I have taken no lecturing engagements, except one a week, generally Thursdays. Lecturing has saved my life and prolonged my work. It has taken me from an ever-ringing door-bell, and freshened me for work, railroad travelling being to me a recuperation.

I have lectured in nearly all the cities of the United States, Canada, England, Ireland and Scotland, and in most of them many times. The prices paid me have seemed too large, but my arrangements have generally been made through bureaus, and almost invariably local committees have cleared money. The lecture platform seemed to me to offer greater opportunity for usefulness. Things that could not be said in the pulpit, but which ought to be said, may be said on the lyceum platform. And there was so much that had to be said then, to encourage, to cheer, to brighten, to illumine the sorrow and bereavement. From the first I regarded my lecture tours as an annex to my church. The lecture platform has been to me a pastoral visitation. It has given me an opportunity of meeting hundreds of thousands of people to whom, through the press, I have for many years administered the Gospel.

People have often asked me how much money I received for my lectures.

The amounts have been a great surprise to me, often.

For many years I have been paid from $400 to $1,000 a lecture. The longer the journey the bigger the fee usually. The average remuneration was about $500 a night. In Cleveland and in Cincinnati I received $750.

In Chicago, $1,000. Later I was offered $6,000 for six lectures in Chicago, to be delivered one a month, during the World's Fair, but I declined them.

My expenses in many directions have been enormous, and without a large income for lectures I could not have done many things which I felt it important to do. I have always been under obligation to the press.

Sometimes it has not intended to help me, but it has, being hard pressed for news.

During the Civil War, when news was sufficiently exciting for the most ambitious journalist, they used to come to my church for a copy of my Sermons. News in those days was pretty accurate, but it sometimes went wrong.

On a Sabbath night, at the close of a preaching service in Philadelphia, a reporter of one of the prominent newspapers came into my study adjoining the pulpit and asked of me a sketch of the sermon just delivered, as he had been sent to take it, but had been unavoidably detained. His mind did not seem to be very clear, but I dictated to him about a column of my sermon. He had during the afternoon or evening been attending a meeting of the Christian Commission for raising funds for the hospitals, and ex-Governor Pollock had been making a speech. The reporter had that speech of the ex-Governor of Pennsylvania in his hand, and had the sketch of my sermon in the same bundle of reportorial notes.

He opened the door to depart and said, "Good evening," and I responded, "Good evening." The way out from my study to the street was through a dark alley across which a pump handle projected to an unreasonable extent. "Look out for that pump handle," I said, "or you may get hurt."

But the warning did not come soon enough. I heard the collision and then a hard fall, and a rustle of papers, and a scramble, and then some words of objurgation at the sudden overthrow.

There was no portable light that I could take to his a.s.sistance. Beside that, I was as much upset with cruel laughter as the reporter had been by the pump handle. In this state of helplessness I shut the door. But the next morning newspaper proved how utter had been the discomfiture and demoralisation of my journalistic friend. He put my sermon under the name of ex-Governor Pollock at the meeting of the Christian Commission, and he made my discourse begin with the words, "When I was Governor of Pennsylvania."

Never since John Gutenberg invented the art of printing was there such a riot of types or such mixing up of occasions. Philadelphia went into a brown study as to what it all meant, and the more the people read of ex-Governor Pollock's speech and of my sermon of the night before, the more they were stunned by the stroke of that pump handle.

But it was soon forgotten--everything is. The memory of man is poor. All the talk about the country never forgetting those who fought for it is an untruth. It does forget. Picture how veterans of the war sometimes had to turn the hand-organs on the streets of Philadelphia to get a living for their families! How ruthlessly many of them have been turned out of office that some bloat of a politician might take their place!

The fact is, there is not a man or woman under thirty years of age, who, born before the war, has any full appreciation of the four years martyrdom of 1861 to 1865, inclusive. I can scarcely remember, and yet I still feel the pressure of domestic calamity that overshadowed the nation then.

Since things have been hardened, as was the guardsman in the Crimean War who heartlessly wrote home to his mother: "I do not want to see any more crying letters come to the Crimea from you. Those I have received I have put into my rifle, after loading it, and have fired them at the Russians, because you appear to have a strong dislike of them. If you had seen as many killed as I have you would not have as many weak ideas as you now have."

After the War came a period of great national rejoicing. I shall never forget, in the summer of 1869, a great national peace jubilee was held in Boston, and DeWitt Moore, an elder of my church, had been honoured by the selection of some of his music to be rendered on that occasion. I accompanied him to the jubilee. Forty thousand people sat and stood in the great Colosseum erected for that purpose. Thousands of wind and stringed instruments; twelve thousand trained voices! The masterpieces of all ages rendered, hour after hour, and day after day--Handel's "Judas Maccabaeus," Spohr's "Last Judgment," Beethoven's "Mount of Olives," Haydn's "Creation," Mendelssohn's "Elijah," Meyerbeer's "Coronation March," rolling on and up in surges that billowed against the heavens! The mighty cadences within were accompanied on the outside by the ringing of the bells of the city, and cannon on the common, in exact time with the music, discharged by electricity, thundering their awful bars of a harmony that astounded all nations. Sometimes I bowed my head and wept. Sometimes I stood up in the enchantment, and sometimes the effect was so overpowering I felt I could not endure it.

When all the voices were in full chorus, and all the batons in full wave, and all the orchestra in full triumph, and a hundred anvils under mighty hammers were in full clang, and all the towers of the city rolled in their majestic sweetness, and the whole building quaked with the boom of thirty cannon, Parepa Rosa, with a voice that will never again be equalled on earth until the archangelic voice proclaims that time shall be no longer, rose above all other sounds in her rendering of our national air, the "Star Spangled Banner." It was too much for a mortal, and quite enough for an immortal, to hear: and while some fainted, one womanly spirit, released under its power, sped away to be with G.o.d. It was a marvel of human emotion in patriotic frenzy.

Immediately following the Civil War there was a great wave of intemperance, and bribery swept over our land. The temptation to intemperance in public places grew more and more terrific. Of the men who were prominent in political circles but few died respectably. The majority among them died of delirium tremens. The doctor usually fixed up the case for the newspapers, and in his report to them it was usually gout, or rheumatism, or obstruction of the liver, or exhaustion from patriotic services--but we all knew it was whiskey. That which smote the villain in the dark alley smote down the great orator and the great legislator. The one you wrapped in a rough cloth, and pushed into a rough coffin, and carried out in a box waggon, and let him down into a pauper's grave, without a prayer or a benediction. Around the other gathered the pomp of the land; and lordly men walked with uncovered heads beside the hea.r.s.e tossing with plumes on the way to a grave to be adorned with a white marble shaft, all four sides covered with eulogium.

The one man was killed by logwood rum at two cents a gla.s.s, the other by a beverage three dollars a bottle. I write both their epitaphs. I write the one epitaph with my lead pencil on the shingle over the pauper's grave; I write the other epitaph with a chisel, cutting on the white marble of the senator: "Slain by strong drink." The time came when dissipation was no longer a hindrance to office in this country. Did we not at one time have a Secretary of the United States carried home dead drunk? Did we not have a Vice-President sworn in so intoxicated the whole land hid its head in shame? Judges and jurors and attorneys sometimes tried important cases by day, and by night caroused together in iniquity.

During the war whiskey had done its share in disgracing manhood. What was it that defeated the armies sometimes in the late war? Drunkenness in the saddle! What mean those graves on the heights of Fredericksburg?

As you go to Richmond you see them. Drunkenness in the saddle. In place of the bloodshed of war, came the deformations of character, libertinism!

Again and again it was demonstrated that impurity walked under the chandeliers of the mansion, and dozed on damask upholstery. In Albany, in Harrisburg, in Trenton, in Washington, intemperance was rife in public places.

The two political parties remained silent on the question. Hand in hand with intemperance went the crime of bribery by money--by proffered office.

For many years after the war had been almost forgotten, in many of the legislatures it was impossible to get a bill through unless it had financial consideration.

The question was asked softly, sometimes very softly, in regard to a bill: "Is there any money in it?" And the lobbies of the Legislatures and the National Capitol were crowded with railroad men and manufacturers and contractors. The iniquity became so great that sometimes reformers and philanthropists have been laughed out of Harrisburg, and Albany, and Trenton, and Washington, because they came empty-handed. "You vote for this bill, and I'll vote for that bill."

"You favour that monopoly of a moneyed inst.i.tution, and I'll favour the other monopoly of another inst.i.tution." And here is a bill that is going to be very hard to get through the Legislature, and some friends met together at a midnight banquet, and while intoxicated promised to vote the same way. Here are $5,000 for prudent distribution in this direction, and here are $1,000 for prudent distribution in that direction. Now, we are within four votes of having enough. $5,000 to that intelligent member from Westchester, and $2,000 to that stupid member from Ulster, and now we are within two votes of having it. Give $500 to this member, who will be sick and stay at home, and $300 to this member, who will go to see his great-aunt languishing in her last sickness. The day has come for the pa.s.sing of the bill. The Speaker's gavel strikes. "Senators, are you ready for the question? All in favour of voting away these thousands of millions of dollars will say, 'Ay.'"

"Ay! Ay! Ay! Ay!" "The Ays have it." It was a merciful thing that all this corruption went on under a republican form of government. Any other style of government would have been consumed by it long ago. There were enough national swindles enacted in this country after the war--yes, thirty years afterwards--to swamp three monarchies.

The Democratic party filled its cup of iniquity as it went out of power, before the war. Then the Republican party came along and it filled its cup of iniquity a little sooner; and there they lie, the Democratic party and the Republican party, side by side, great loathsome carca.s.ses of iniquity, each one worse than the other.

These are reminiscences of more than thirty years ago, and yet it seems that I have never ceased to fight the same sort of human temptations and frailties to this very day.

THE FOURTH MILESTONE

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 naturally the laziest man ever born. I am afraid of indolence--as afraid of indolence as any reformed inebriate is afraid of the wine cup. He knows if he shall take one gla.s.s he will be flung back into inebriety. I am afraid, if I should take one long pull of nothing to do, I should stop forever.

My church in Philadelphia was a large one, and it was crowded with lovely people. All that a congregation could do for a pastor's happiness they were doing, and always had done.

We ministers living in Philadelphia at this time may have felt the need for combating indolence, for we had a ministerial ball club, and twice a week the clergymen of all denominations went out to the suburbs of the city and played baseball. We went back to our pulpits, spirits lightened, theology improved, and able to do better service for the cause of G.o.d than we could have done without that healthful shaking up.

The reason so many ministers think everything is going to ruin is because their circulation is lethargic, or their lungs are in need of inflection by outdoor exercise. I have often wished since that this splendid idea among the ministers in Philadelphia could have been emulated elsewhere. Every big city should have its ministerial ball club. We want this glorious game rescued from the roughs and put into the hands of those who will employ it in recuperation.

My life in Philadelphia was so busy that I must have had very little time for keeping any record or note-books. Most of my warmest and life-long friendships were made in Philadelphia, however, and in the retrospect of the years since I left there I have sometimes wondered how I ever found courage to say good-bye.

I was amazed and gratified one day at receiving a call from four of the most prominent churches at that time in America: Calvary Church of Chicago, the Union Church of Boston, the First Presbyterian Church of San Francisco, and the Central Church of Brooklyn. These invitations all came simultaneously in February, 1869. The committees from these various churches called upon me at my house in Philadelphia. It was a period of anxious uncertainty with me. One morning, I remember, a committee from Chicago was in one room, a committee from Brooklyn in another room of my house, and a committee from my Philadelphia church in another room. My wife [B] pa.s.sed from room to room entertaining them to keep the three committees from meeting. It would have been unpleasant for them to meet.

[B] _In 1863, Dr. Talmage married his second wife, Miss Susan C. Whittemore, of Greenport, N.Y. They had five children: May, Edith, Frank, Maud, and Daisy._

At this point my Syracuse remembrance of perplexity returned, and I resolved to stay in Philadelphia unless G.o.d made it very plain that I was to go and where I was to go. An engagement to speak that night in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, took me to the depot. I got on the train, my mind full of the arguments of the three committees, and all a bewilderment. I stretched myself out upon the seats for a sound sleep, saying, "Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do? Make it plain to me when I wake up." When I awoke I was entering Harrisburg, and as plainly as though the voice had been audible G.o.d said to me, "Go to Brooklyn." I went, and never have doubted that I did right to go. It is always best to stay where you are until G.o.d gives you marching orders, and then move on.

I succeeded the Rev. J.E. Rockwell in the Brooklyn Church, who resigned only a month or so before I accepted the call. Mr. Charles Cravat Converse, LL.D., an elder of the Church, presented the call to me, being appointed to do so by the Board of Trustees and the Session, after I had been unanimously elected by the congregation at a special meeting for that purpose held on February 16, 1869. The salary fixed was $7,000, payable monthly.

In looking over an old note-book I carried in that year I find, under date of March 22, 1869, the word "installed" written in my own handwriting. It was written in pencil after the service of installation held in the church that Monday evening. The event is recorded in the minutes of the regular meetings of the church as follows:

"Monday evening, March 22, the Rev. T. DeWitt Talmage having been received as a member of the Presbytery of Na.s.sau, was this evening installed pastor of this church. The Rev. C.S. Pomeroy preached the sermon and proposed the const.i.tutional questions. Rev. Mr. Oakley delivered the charge to the pastor, and Rev. Henry Van d.y.k.e, D.D., delivered the charge to the people; and the services were closed with the benediction by the pastor, and a cordial shaking of hands by the people with their new pastor."

The old church stood on Schemerhorn Street, between Nevins and Power Streets. It was a much smaller church community than the one I had left in Philadelphia, but there was a glorious opportunity for work in it. I remember hearing a minister of a small congregation complain to a minister of a large congregation about the spa.r.s.eness of attendance at his church. "Oh," said the one of large audience, "my son, you will find in the day of judgment that you had quite enough people for whom to be held accountable."

My church in Brooklyn prospered. In about three months from the date of my installation it was too small to hold the people who came there to worship. This came about, not through any special demonstration of my own superior gifts, but by the help of G.o.d and the persecution of others.

During my pastorate in Brooklyn a certain group of preachers began to slander me and to say all manner of lies about me; I suppose because they were jealous of my success. These calumnies were published in every important newspaper in the country. The result was that the New York correspondents of the leading papers in the chief cities of the United States came to my church on Sundays, expecting I would make counter attacks, which would be good news. I never said a word in reply, with the exception of a single paragraph.

The correspondents were after news, and, failing to get the sensational charges, they took down the sermons and sent them to the newspaper.