DR. TALMAGE-THE MISSIONARY.
It would be useless speculation to lay down here what should be the special qualifications of a missionary to the Chinese. The better way is to find them in the concrete, so far as you can do so in an individual, and set Him forth as an example for others. The friend of whom we write would deprecate this, but it is the only way in which we can see him as he was and account for the singularly prominent place he occupied amongst us.
I do not need to say here that he was a man of faith and prayer, earnest and zealous for the spread of Christ's Kingdom; in the face of difficulties and dangers, of disappointments and failures, maintaining an unwavering faith that the Kingdom must come and would yet rule over all.
He had both an intense love for his work and enthusiasm in carrying it on. He came with a definite message to the people to whom the Master had sent him. There was no apologizing for it, no watering it down, no uncertain sound about it with him. Christ and Christ alone can meet the wants and woes of humanity,—Chinese or American or British. He had no doubt about it whatever; and hereby some of us learned that if we had not this message it would have been far better for us to have stayed at home. And this feature marked him all over his course. You felt as you listened to his pleadings that sin and salvation were terms brimful of meaning to him. He had traveled this road, and all his pleadings seemed to be summed up in the one yearning cry, "Come with us and we will do thee good." "This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners." And he would have gone to the end, "of whom I am chief."
Then he had a great love for the people. He made himself acquainted with the family and social conditions of the people. He had not come to Americanize but to Christianize the Chinese. And for this he equipped himself. I never saw him so happy as when he was surrounded by them. He was then in his real element, answering their questions, solving their difficulties, opening up to them the Scriptures, and meeting them wherever he thought they needed to be met. And go to his study when you liked, you almost always found some Chinese Christians there. He was the great referee, to whom they carried home difficulties and family trials, assured that his sympathy and advice would never be denied them. This endeared him to them in an extraordinary manner. We never on such occasions found a trace of impatience with him. What would have annoyed others did not seem to annoy him, and the consequence was that the whole church loved him. There was an inexhaustible well of tenderness in the man's nature, and it was sweetened by the grace of God in his heart.
We sometimes thought he erred by excess in this particular. He was unwilling to think anything but good of them, and was thus apt to be influenced too much by designing and astute Chinamen. Often we have heard it said, "Well, if you won't listen to us, Dr. Talmage will." But, looking back to-day over it all, if it was a fault, it was one that leant to virtue's side. He was wonderfully unsuspicious: and so far as his fellow men were concerned, Chinese or Westerns, the mental process which he almost invariably employed was to try to find out what good there was in a man. And now one loves him all the more for such a Christlike spirit.
Dr. Talmage was thoroughly acquainted with the spoken language of Amoy. Few men, if any, had a more extensive knowledge of its vocables. He spoke idiomatically and beautifully as the Chinese themselves spoke, and not as he thought they should speak. There was no slipshod work with him in this particular. Here was the indispensable furnishing and he must get it. And he did get it in no average measure. This was the prime requisite, and through no other avenue could he get really and honestly to work. There is no royal road to the acquisition of the Chinese language. It is only by dint of hard, plodding, and persevering study one can acquire an adequate acquaintance with it.
And till the last he never gave up his study of it. He was not satisfied, and no true missionary ever will be satisfied with such a smattering of knowledge as may enable him to proclaim a few Christian doctrines. Such superficiality was not his aim or end. And when he first acquired Chinese, it was more difficult to do so. There were no aids in the way of dictionaries or vocabularies.
It may be his knowledge of the language was all the more accurate on this account. He got it from the fountain-head, and not through foreign sources. He was thus qualified to take a prominent place in all the varied work of a mission—in translation, in revision, and in hymnology—departments as important and as influential for attaining the end in view as any other possible department in the Mission.
As a preacher to the Chinese he was unrivaled. The people hung on his lips and never seemed to lose a word. He was in this respect a model to every one of us younger men.
The ideal of the church in China which he had set before him, the goal he desired to reach, was a native, self-governing, self-supporting, and self-propagating church. This is now axiomatic.
It was not so in those early days. The men in Amoy then were men for whom we have to thank God—men ahead of their time, with generous and far-reaching ideas; not working only for their own present, but laying the foundation for a great future. Side by side with him were the brethren of the English Presbyterian Mission, with whom he had the fullest sympathy, and they had the fullest sympathy with him. It is difficult to say who were foremost in pressing the idea of an organized native church. All were equally convinced and strove together for the one great end. After many years of waiting the church grew. Congregations were formed and organized with their own elders and deacons, and in this he took the first steps. He was a born organizer. And then came the next great step, the creation of a Presbytery and the ordination in an orderly manner of native pastors. Some congregations were ready to call and support such pastors, and the men were there, for the careful training of native agents had always been a marked feature of the Amoy Mission. But how was it to be done? Common sense led to only one conclusion. This church must not be an exotic; it must be native, independent of the home churches. And there must be kept in view what was a fact already—the union between the Missions of the "Reformed Church" and of the "English Presbyterian Church." It must be done, and done in this way, and so it was done.
The Presbytery was created with no native pastor in the first instance, but with native elders and the missionaries of both Missions. Then came a struggle that would have tried the stoutest hearts.
The "Reformed Church" in America declined to recognize this newly-created
Presbytery. Dr. Talmage went home and fought the battle and won the day.
To its great honor be it said, the General Synod of the "Reformed Church" rescinded its resolution of the previous year, and allowed their honored brethren, the missionaries, to take their own way. So convinced were the missionaries of the wisdom, yea, the necessity, of the course they had taken, that they were prepared to resign rather than retrace their steps.
But that painful step was not necessary. The Synod of the English Presbyterian Church gave their missionaries a free hand. There is this, however, to be said for the General Synod of the "Reformed Church." It was only love for their agents and deep interest in this Mission that prompted their original action. They feared that by the creation of this native and independent church court, the tie that bound them to the men and the work might be loosened; and when they saw there was no risk of that, they at once acquiesced. But it was Dr. Talmage's irresistible pleadings that won their hearts.
The native church has grown. About twenty native pastors have been ordained, settled, and entirely supported by their own congregations. The Presbytery has grown so large that it has to be divided into two presbyteries; and these, with the Presbytery of Swatow, where brethren of the "English Presbyterian Church" are working, will form the Synod of the native Presbyterian Church in those regions of China.
In connection with all this we must mention another name—the name of one very dear to Dr. Talmage, and of one to whom he was very dear. They were one in heart and soul about this. We refer to the Rev. Dr. Douglas, of the English Presbyterian Mission. They stood side by side during all their work in Amoy.
Dr. Talmage was by a good many years the predecessor in the field. They were both great men, men of very different temperament, and yet united. Not on this point, but on many another, they failed to see eye to eye, but they were always united in heart and aim. True and lasting union can only exist where free play is given to distinct individualities.
And so it has always been with this union, the first, I believe, between Presbyterian Churches in any mission field. And when the history of the Amoy Mission comes to be written, these two men will have a leading place in it; for to them more than to any others do we owe almost all that is distinctive there in union and in methods of work.
And when our beloved father Talmage passed from earth to heaven, what thankfulness must have filled his heart. In the night of his first years in China there were labor and toil, but there was no fruit for him. The dawn came and the first converts of his own Mission were gathered in. When he went to rest, there was a native church; there were native pastors; orderly church courts; a well equipped theological college, the common property of the two Missions; successful medical missionary work, woman's work in all its branches, and a native church covering a more extensive region than he had in the early days dreamt of. And there was another honored Mission in Amoy—that of the London Missionary Society, whose operations have been followed by abundant and singular success. To this Mission he was warmly attached; and he never, so far as we can remember, ceased to show the deepest interest in its work, and the heartiest rejoicing at its success.
And now he has gone, the last, we may say, of the men who began the work of the Presbyterian Mission of Christ in China; but ere he passed away, he knew that men of God were still there with the old enthusiasm and the old appetite for solid and substantial work.
We cannot part with him now without one fond and lingering look behind. Burns, Sandeman, Doty, Douglas, and Talmage; what a galaxy these early pioneers in Amoy were. Few churches have had such gifts from God, few fields more devoted, whole-hearted missionaries. It was a privilege to know them, to work with them, to learn at their feet, unworthy though some of us may be as their successors.
May the Lord of the Harvest rouse His own Church by their memories to greater energy and self denial in the spread of His Kingdom.
Their memories will never die in China. Those who have lately visited Amoy tell us that they who knew them among the Chinese Christians speak lovingly and fondly of those early heroes. And they will tell their children what they were and what they did, and so generation after generation will hear the story, and find how true it is that workers die, but their work never dies. "Their works do follow them."