I was particularly friendly to the Chinese. My brother, John Van Nest Talmage, devoted his life to them. I believed, as my brother did, that they were a great nation.
When he went, my last brother went. Stunned was I until I staggered through the corridors of the hotel in London, England, when the news came that John was dead. If I should say all that I felt I would declare that since Paul the Apostle to the Gentiles a more faithful or consecrated man has not lifted his voice in the dark places of heathenism. I said it while he was alive, and might as well say it now that he is dead. He was the hero of our family. He did not go to China to spend his days because no one in America wanted to hear him preach. At the time of his first going to China he had a call to succeed in Brooklyn, N.Y., the Rev. Dr. Broadhead, the Chrysostom of the American pulpit, a call at a large salary; and there would have been nothing impossible to my brother in the way of religious work or Christian achievement had he tarried in his native land. But nothing could detain him from the work to which God called him long before he became a Christian.
My reason for writing that anomalous statement is that, when a small boy in Sabbath-school, he read a library book, "The Life of Henry Martin." He said to my mother, "I am going to be a missionary." The remark at the time made no special impression. Years after that passed on before his conversion; but when the grace of God appeared to him, and he had entered his studies for the Gospel ministry, he said one day, "Mother, do you remember that years ago I said, 'I am going to be a missionary'?" She replied, "Yes, I remember it." "Well," said he, "I am going to keep my promise." How well he kept it millions of souls on earth and in Heaven have long since heard. When the roll of martyrs is called before the throne, the name of John Van Nest Talmage will be called. He worked himself to death in the cause of the world's evangelisation. His heart, his brain, his hand, his voice, his muscles, his nerves could do no more. He sleeps in the cemetery of Somerville, N.J., so near his father and mother that he will face them when he arises in the resurrection of the just, and, amid a crowd of his kindred now sleeping on the right of them and on the left of them, will feel the thrill of the trumpet that wakes the dead.
You could get nothing from my brother at all. Ask him a question to evoke what he had done for God and the Church, and his lips were as tightly shut as though they had never been opened. Indeed, his reticence was at times something remarkable. I took him to see President Grant at Long Branch, and though they had both been great warriors, the one fighting the battles of the Lord and the other the battles of his country, they had little to say, and there was, I thought, at the time, more silence crowded together than I ever noticed in the same amount of space before.
But the story of my brother's work has already been told in the Heavens by those who, through his instrumentality, have already reached the City of Raptures. However, his chief work is yet to come. We get our chronology so twisted that we come to believe that the white marble of the tomb is the milestone at which the good man stops, when it is only a milestone on a journey, the most of the miles of which are yet to be travelled. The Chinese Dictionary which my brother prepared during more than two decades of study; the religious literature he transferred from English into Chinese; the hymns he wrote for others to sing, although he himself could not sing at all (he and I monopolising the musical incapacity of a family in which all the rest could sing well); the missionary stations he planted; the life he lived, will widen out and deepen and intensify through all time and all eternity.
Never in the character of a Chinaman was there the trait of commercial fraud that assailed our American cities in 1879. It got into our food finally—the very bread we ate was proven to be an adulteration of impure stuff. What an extravagance of imagination had crept into our daily life! We pretended even to eat what we knew we were not eating. Except for the reminder which old books written in byegone simpler days gave us, we should have insisted that the world should believe us if we said black was white. Still, among us there were some who were genuine, but they seemed to be passing away. It was in this year that the oldest author in America died, Richard Henry Dana. He was born in 1788, when literature in this country was just beginning. His death stirred the tenderest emotions. Authorship was a new thing in America when Mr. Dana began to write, and it required endurance and persistence. The atmosphere was chilling to literature then, there was little applause for poetic or literary skill. There were no encouragements when Washington Irving wrote as "Knickerbocker," when Richard Henry Dana wrote "The Buccaneer," "The Idle Man," and "The Dying Raven." There was something cracking in his wit, exalted in his culture. He was so gentle in his conversation, so pure in his life, it was hard to spare him. He seemed like a man who had never been forced into the battle of the world, he was so unscarred and hallowed.
It was just about this time that our Tabernacle in Brooklyn became the storm centre of a law-suit which threatened to undermine us. It was based upon a theory, a technicality of law, which declared that the subscriptions of married women were not legal subscriptions. Our attorneys were Mr. Freeman and Judge Tenney. Theirs was a battle for God and the Church. There were only two sides to the case. Those against the Church and those with the Church. In the preceding eight years, whether against fire or against foe, the Tabernacle had risen to a higher plane of useful Christian work. I was not alarmed. During the two weeks of persecution, the days were to me days of the most complete peace I had felt since I entered the Christian life. Again and again I remember remarking in my home, to my family, what a supernatural peace was upon me. My faith was in God, who managed my life and the affairs of the Church. My work was still before me, there was too much to be done in the Tabernacle yet. The disapproval of our methods before the Brooklyn Presbytery was formulated in a series of charges against the pastor. I was told my enthusiasm was sinful, that it was unorthodox for me to be so. My utterances were described as inaccurate. My editorial work was offensively criticised. The Presbytery listened patiently, and after a careful consideration dismissed the charges. Once more the unjust oppression of enemies had seemed to extend the strength and scope of the Gospel. A few days later my congregation presented me with a token of confidence in their pastor. I was so happy at the time that I was ready to shake hands even with the reporters who had abused me. How kind they were, how well they understood me, how magnificently they took care of me, my people of the Brooklyn Tabernacle!