Forty Years in South China | Page 8

Monday's conversation, and Tuesday's
bargain, and Wednesday's mirthfulness, and Thursday's controversy,
and Friday's sociality, and Saturday's calculation.
"Through how many thrilling scenes had he passed! He stood, at
Morristown, in the choir that chanted when George Washington was
buried; talked with young men whose grandfathers he had held on his
knee; watched the progress of John Adams' 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 one just like him; remembered when the first steamer
struck the North River with it's wheel buckets; flushed with excitement
in the time of national banks and sub-treasury; was startled at 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 passing merchantmen, and our
'national airs' have been heard on the steeps of the Himalayas; 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; lived to speak the names of eighty children, grandchildren,
and great-grandchildren. Nearly all his contemporaries gone! Aged
Wilberforce said that sailors drink to 'friends astern' until halfway over
the sea, and then drink to 'friends ahead.' So, also, with my father. Long
and varied pilgrimage! Nothing but sovereign grace could have kept
him true, earnest, useful, and Christian through so many exciting
scenes.
"He worked unwearily from the sunrise of youth, to the sunset of old
age, and then in the sweet nightfall of death, lighted by the starry
promises, went home, taking his sheaves with him. Mounting from
earthly to heavenly service, I doubt not there were a great multitude
that thronged heaven's gate to hail him into the skies,--those whose
sorrows he had appeased, whose burdens he had lifted, whose guilty
souls he had pointed to a pardoning God, whose dying moments he had
cheered, whose ascending spirits he had helped up on the wings of
sacred music. I should like to have heard that long, loud, triumphant
shout of heaven's welcome. I think that the harps throbbed with another
thrill, and the hills quaked with a mightier hallelujah. Hail! ransomed
soul! Thy race run,--thy toil ended! Hail to the coronation!"
At the death of David T. Talmage the Christian Intelligencer of October
25, 1865, contained the following contribution from the pen of Dr. T.W.
Chambers, for many years pastor of the Second Reformed Church,
Somerville, New Jersey, now one of the pastors of the Collegiate
Church, New York:
"In the latter part of the last century, Thomas Talmage, Sr., a plain but
intelligent farmer, moved into the neighborhood of Somerville, N.J.,
and settled upon a fertile tract of land, very favorably situated, and
commanding a view of the country for miles around. Here he spent the
remainder of a long, godly, and useful life, and reared a large family of

children, twelve of whom were spared to reach adult years, and to make
and adorn the same Christian profession of which their father was a
shining light. Two of these became ministers of the Gospel, of whom
one, Jehiel, fell asleep several years since, while the other, the
distinguished Samuel K. Talmage, D.D., President of Oglethorpe
University, Georgia, entered into his rest only a few weeks since.
Another son, Thomas, was for an entire generation the strongest pillar
in the Second Church of Somerville.
"One of the oldest of the twelve was the subject of this notice; a man
whose educational advantages were limited to the local schools of the
neighborhood, but whose excellent natural abilities, sharpened by
contact with the world, gave him a weight in the community which
richer and more cultivated men might have envied. In the prime of his
years he was often called to serve his fellow citizens in civil trusts. He
spent some years in the popular branch of the Legislature, and was
afterwards high sheriff of the County of Somerset for the usual period.
In both cases he fulfilled the expectations of his friends, and rendered
faithful service. The sterling integrity of his character manifested itself
in every situation; and even in the turmoil of politics, at a time of much
excitement, he maintained a stainless name, and defied the tongue of
calumny. But it was chiefly in the sphere of private and social relations
that his work was done and his influence exerted. His father's piety was
reproduced in him at an early period, and soon assumed a marked type
of thoroughness, activity and decision, which it bore even to the end.
His long life was one of unblemished Christian consistency, which in
no small measure was due to the influence of his excellent wife,
Catherine Van Nest, a