GATHERED GEMS.
A SERIES OF POPULAR SERMONS

BY

Rev. T. De Witt Talmage, D.D.
Pastor of Brooklyn

Tabernacle.

TOGETHER W I T H THE

LIFE OF THIS FAMOUS PREACHER.
TWENTY FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS.

(Copyright, 1889, by J . S. Ogilvie.)

J. S. OGILVIE, PUBLISHER,
57 Rose Street, New York; 182 Wabash Avenue, Chicago.

252
T14g
Table

of C o n t e n t s .

The Wedding Ring Sermons.
1. The Choice of a Wife.
2. The Choice of a Husband.
3. Clandestine Marriages.
4. Matrimonial Harmony or Discord.
5. Marital Duties.
6. Costume and Morals.
7. Duties of Wives to Husbands.
8. Hotels versus Homes.
9. The Domestic Circle.
10. Sisters and Brothers.
11. The Children's Patrimony.
12. "Motherhood."
13. Trials of Housekeeping.

SERMONS ON

Woman and Her Power.
1. Women who Fight the Battle of Life alone.
2. Worldly Marriages.
3. Broken Promises of Marriages.
4. Dominion of Fashion.
5. The Veil of Modesty.
6. Wifely Ambition, Good and Bad.
7. W o m a n ' s Happiness — W h a t Can and W h a t Cannot
Make a W o m a n Happy.

8. The Grandmother.
9. Woman's Opportunity,
10.
The Queens of Home.
11.
Parental Blunders.
12.
Christ the Song.

The Battle for Bread Sermons.
1. The Labor Question.
2. The Treatment of Employes.
3. Hardships of Workingmen.
4. Monopoly and Communism.
5. The W o r s t Foe of Labor.
6. Black Servants of the Sky.

Life ofRev.T.DeWittTalmage,D.D.
Chap.
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1.
2.
3.
4.
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6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.

Birth and Parentage.
His Boyhood.
Entering the Ministry.
He Visits England.
His Return to America.
History of the Brooklyn Tabernacle.
The New Tabernacle.
Midnight Explorations.
Autobiographical Sermon.
The Trial of Dr. Talmage.
Another Visit to Europe.
Hie Return and Welcome Home.
Phrenological Description of Dr. Talmage,

THE WEDDING RING.
T h e C h o i c e o f a Wife.
" I s there never a woman among the daughters of thy
brethren, or among all my people, that thou goest to take a
wife of the uncireumcised Philistines?"—JUDGES xiv., 3.

Samson, the giant, is here asking consent of his
father and mother to marriage with one whom
they thought unfit for him. He was wise in asking their counsel, but not wise in rejecting it.
Captivated with her looks, the big son wanted to
m a n y a daughter of one of the hostile famihes, a
deceitful, hypocritical, whining and saturnine
creature, who afterward made for him a world of
trouble till she quit him forever. In my text his
parents forbade the banns, practically saying:
" When there are so many honest and beautiful
maidens of your own country, are you so hard
put to for a lifetime partner that you propose conjugality with this foreign flirt ? Is there such a
dearth of lilies in our Israelitish gardens that you
must wear on your heart a Philistine thistle ? Do
you take a crabapple because there are no pomegranates ? Is there never a woman among the
daughters of thy brethren, or among all my peo-

8

THE CHOICE OF A WIFE.

pie, that thou goest to take a wife of the uncircumcised Philistines ?"
BEAUTIFUL JEWESSES.

Excuseless was he for such a choice in a land
and amid a race celebrated for female loveliness
and moral worth, a land and a race of which selfdenying Abigail and heroic Deborah, and dazzling
Miriam, and pious Esther, and glorious Euth, and
Mary, who hugged to her heart the blessed Lord,
were only magnificent specimens. The midnight
folded in their hair, the lakes of liquid beauty in
their eye, the gracefulness of spring morning in
their posture and gait, were only typical of the
greater brilliance and glory of their soul. Likewise excuseless is any man in our time who makes
lifelong alliance with any one who, because of her
disposition, or heredity, or habits, or intellectual
vanity, or moral twistification, may be said to be
of the Philistines.
MODERN FEMALE LOVELIOTm

The world never owned such opulence of wornanly character or such splendor of womanly
manners or multitudinous instances of wifely,
motherly, daughterly, sisterly devotion, as it owns
to-day. I have not words to express my admire
tion for good womanhood. "Woman is not only
man's equal, but in affectional and religious nature,
which is the best part of us, she is seventyfive per cent, his superior. Yea, during the last
twenty years, through the increased opportunity
opened for female education3 the women of the

9
country are better educated than the majority of
men; and if they continue to advance mentality
at the present ratio, before long the majority of
men will have difficulty in finding in the opposite
sex enough ignorance to make appropriate consort. If I am under a delusion as to the abundance of good womanhood abroad, consequent
upon my surroundings since the hour I entered
this life until now, I hope the delusion will last
until I embark from this planet. So you will understand, if I say in this course of sermons something
that seems severe, I am neither cynical nor disgruntled.
THE CHOICE OF A WIFE.

NO NEED TO MARRY A FOOL.

There are in almost every farmhouse in the
country, in almost every home of the great town,
conscientious women, worshipful women, selfsacrificing women, holy women, innumerable
Marys, sitting at the feet of Christ; innumerable
mothers, helping to feed Christ in the person of
His suffering disciples; a thousand capped and
spectacled grandmothers Lois, bending over
Bibles whose precepts they have followed from
early girlhood; and tens of thousands of young
woman that are dawning upon us from school and
seminary, that are going to bless the world with
good and happy homes, that shall eclipse all their
predecessors, a fact that will be acknowledged by
all men except those who are struck through with
moral decay from toe to cranium; and more inexcusable than the Samson of the text is that man
who, amid all this unparalleled munificence of

10

THE CHOICE OF A WIFE.

womanhood, marries a fool. But some of you
lire abroad suffering from such disaster, and to
halt others of you from going over the same precipice, I cry out in the words of my text: " Is there
never a woman among the daughters of thy
brethren, or among all my people, that thou goest
to take a wife of the uncircumcised Philistines?"
MARRIAGE NOT FOR ALL.

That marriage is the destination of the human
race is a mistake that I want to correct before I
go further. There are multitudes who never will
marry, and still greater multitudes who are not
fit to marry. In Great Britain to-day there are
nine hundred and forty-eight thousand more
women than men, and that, I understand, is about
the ratio in America. By mathematical and inexorable law, you see, millions of women will
never marry. The supply for matrimony greater
than the demand, the first lesson of which is that
every woman ought to prepare to take care of
herself if need be. Then there are thousands of
men who have no right to marry, because they
have become so corrupt of character that their
offer of marriage is an insult to any good woman.
Society will have to be toned up and corrected on
this subject, so that it shall realize that if a woman who has sacrificed her honor is unfitted for
marriage, so is any man who has ever sacrificed
his purity. What right have you, O masculine
beast! whose life has been loose, to take under
your care the spotlessness of a virgin reared ta

THE CHOICE OP A W I F E .

11

the sanctity of a respectable home? Will a buzzard dare to court a dove?
T H E FIRST STEP.

But the majority of you will marry, and
have a right to marry, and as your religious
teacher [ wish to say to these men, in the choice
of a wife first of all seek divine direction. About
thirty-five yearn ago, when Martin Farquhar
Tupper, the English poet, urged men to prayer
before they decided upon matrimonial association,
people laughed. And some of them have lived to
laugh on the other side of their mouth.
EMINENT BLUNDERERS.

The need of divine direction I argue from the
fact that so many men, and some of them strong
and wise, have wrecked their lives at this juncture. Witness Samson and this woman of Timn a t h ! Witness Socrates, pecked of the historical Xantippe ! Witness Job, whose wife had
nothing to prescribe for his carbuncles but allopathic doses of profanity! Witness Ananias, a
liar, who might perhaps have been cured by a
truthful spouse, yet marrying as great a liar as
himself—Sapphira ! Witness John Wesley, one
of the best men that ever lived, united to one of
the most outrageous and scandalous of women,
who sat in City Road Chapel making mouths at
him while he preached ! Witness the once connubial wretchedness of John Buskin, the great
art essayist, and Frederick W. Robertson, the
great preacher. Witness a thousand

12

THE 0HOI€E OF A WIFE.
HELLS ON EARTH

kindled by unworthy wives, termagants that
scold like a March northeaster; female s) ^endthrifts, that put their husbands into fraudulent
schemes to get money enough to meet the lav*
ishment of domestic expenditure; opium-using
women—about four hundred thousand of them
in the United States—who will have the drug,
though it should cause the eternal damnation of
the wiiole household; heartless and overbearing,
and namby-pamby and unreasonable women,
yet married—married perhaps to good men!
These are the women who build the low clubhouses, where the husbands and sons go because
they can't stand it at home. On this sea of
matrimony, where so many have wrecked, am I
not right in advising divine pilotage ?
NUMEROUS PITFALLS.

Especially is devout supplication needed, because of the fact that society is so full of artifU
cialities that men are deceived as to whom they
are marrying, and no one but the Lord knows.
After the dressmaker, and the milliner, and the
jeweler, and the hair-adjuster, and the dancingmaster, and the cosmetic art have completed
their work, how is an unsophisticated man to
decipher the physiological hieroglyphics, and
make accurate judgment of who it is to whom
he offers hand and heart ? That is what makes
so many recreant husbands. They make an
bonojable marriage contract, but the goods d@-

THE CHOICE OF A WIFE.

13

livered are so different from the sample by which
they bargained. They were simply swindled,
and they backed out. They mistook Jezebel for
Longfellow's Evangeline, and Lucretia Borgia for
Martha Washington.
Aye, as the Indian chief boasts of the scalps he
has taken, so there are in society to-day many
coquettes who boast of the masculine hearts they
have captured. And these women, though they
may live amid richest upholstery, are not go
honorable as the cyprians of the street, for these
advertise their infamy, while the former profess
heaven while they mean hell.
There is so much counterfeit womanhood abroad
it is no wonder that some cannot tell the genuine
coin from the base. Do you not realize you need
divine guidance when I remind you that mistake
is possible in this important affair, and, if made,
is irrevocable ?
A MISTAKE IRREPARABLE.

The worst predicament possible is to be unhappily yoked together. You see it is impossible to
break the yoke. The more you pull apart, the
more galling the yoke. The minister might bring
you up again, and in your presence read the
marriage ceremony backward, might put you on
the opposite sides of the altar from where you
were when you were united, might take the ring
off D the finger, might rend the wedding-veD
f
asunder, might tear out the marriage leaf from
the family Bible record, but all that would fail to

14

THE CHOICE OF A WIFE.

unmarry you. It is better not to make the mistake than to attempt its correction. But men
and women do not reveal all their characteristics
till after marriage, and how are you to avoid
committing the fatal blunder ? There is only one
Being in the universe who can tell you whom to
choose, and that is the Lord of Paradise. He
made Eve for Adam, and Adam for Eve, and both
for each other. Adam had not a large group of
women from whom to select his wife, but it is
fortunate, judging from some mistakes which
she afterward made, that it was Eve or nothing.
There is in all the world some one who was
made for you, as certainly as Eve was made for
Adam. All sorts of mistakes occur because Eve
was made out of a rib from Adam's side. Nobody knows which of his twenty-four ribs was
taken for the nucleus. If you depend entirely
upon yourself in the selection of a wife, there are
twenty-three possibilities to one that you will
select the wrong rib. By the fate of Ahab, whose
wife induced him to steal; by the fate of Macbeth, whose wife pushed him into massacre; by
the fate of James Ferguson, the philosopher,
whose wife entered the room while he was
lecturing and willfully upset his astronomical apparatus, so that he turned to the audience and
said, " Ladies and gentlemen, I have the misfortune to be married to this woman"; by the fate of
Bulwer, the novelist, whose wife's temper was so
incompatible that he furnished her a beautiful
house near London and withdrew from her com-

THE CHOICE OF A WIFE.

U

pany, leaving her with the dozen dogs whom she
entertained as pets; by the fate of John Milton,
who married a termagant after he was blind, and
when some one called her a rose, the poet said:
" I am no judge of flowers, but it may be so, for
I feel the thorns daily"; by the fate of an Englishman whose wife was so determined to dance on
his grave that he was buried in the sea; by the
fate of a village minister whom I knew, whose
wife threw a cup of hot tea across the table because they differed in sentiment—by all these
scenes of disquietude and domestic calamity, we
implore you to be cautious and prayerful before
you enter upon the connubial state, which decides
whether a man shall have two heavens or two
hells, a heaven here and heaven forever, or a hell
now and a hell hereafter.
NOBLE WIVES.

By the bliss of Pliny, whose wife, when her
husband was pleading in court, had messengers
coming and going to inform her what impression
he was making; by the joy of Grotius, whose
wife delivered him from prison under the pretence
of having books carried out lest they be injurious
to his health, she sending out her husband unobserved in one of the bookcases; by the good fortune of Eoland, in Louis' time, whose wife translated and composed for her husband while Secretary of the Interior—talented, heroic, wonderful
Madame Roland; by the happiness of many a
man who has made intelligent choice of one capa*

16

THE CHOICE OF A WIFE.

ble of being prime counselor and companion in
brightness and in grief—pray to Almighty God,
morning, noon, and night, that at the right time
and in the right way He will send you a good,
honest, loving, sympathetic wife; or if she is not
Bent to you, that you may be sent to her.
AVOID MATCHMAKERS.

At this point let me warn you not to let a question of this importance be settled by the celebrated matchmakers flourishing in almost every community. Depend upon your own judgment
civinely illumined. These brokers in matrimony
are ever planning how they can unite impecunious
innocence to an heiress, or celibate woman to
millionaire or marquis, and that in many cases
makes life an unhappiness. How can any human
being, who knows neither of the two parties as
God knows them, and who is ignorant of the
future, give such direction as you require at such
a crisis J
Take the advice of the earthly matchmaker instead of the divine guidance, and you may some
day be led to use the words of Solomon, whose
experience in home life was as melancholy as it
was multitudinous. One day his palace, with its
great wide rooms and great wide doors and great
wide hall, was too small for him and the loud
tongue of a woman belaboring him about some of
his neglects, and he retreated to the housetop to
get relief from the fungal bombardment. And
while there he saw a poor man on one corner of

THE CHOICE OF A WIFE.

17

the roof with a mattress for his only furniture,
and the open sky his only covering. And Soloman envies him and cries out: " I t is better to
d.well in the corner of the housetop than with a
brawling woman in a wide house." And one day
during the rainy season the water leaked through
the roof of the palace and began to drop in a pail
or pan set there to catch it. And at one side of
him all day long the Water went drop ! drop!
drop! while on the other side a female companion
quarreling about this, and quarreling about that;
the acrimonious and petulant words falling, on his
ear in ceaseless pelting—drop! drop ! drop ! and
he seized his pen and wrote : "A continual dropping in a very rainy day and a contentious woman
arealike." If Solomon had been as prayerful a',
the beginning of his life as he was at the close,
how much domestic infelicity he would have
avoided ?
But prayer about this will amount to nothing
unless you pray soon enough. Wait until you
are fascinated and the equilibrium of your soul
is disturbed by a magnetic and exquisite presence, and then you will answer your own prayers,
and you will mistake your own infatuation for
the voice of God.
AVOID SCOFFERS.

If you have this prayerful spirit you will surely
avoid all female scoffers at the Christian religion; and there are quite a number of them in

18

THE CHOICE OF A W I F E .

all communities. It must be told that, though
the only influence that keeps woman from being
estimated and treated as a slave—aye, as a brute
and beast of burden—is Christianity, since where
it is not dominant she is so treated; yet there art
women who will so far forget themselves and
forget their God that they will go and hear lecturers malign Christianity and scoff at the most
sacred things of the soul. A good woman, overpersuaded by her husband, may go once to hear
such a tirade against the Christian religion, not
fully knowing what she is going to hear; but she
will not go twice.
A woman, not a Christian, but a respecter of
religion, said to m e : " I was persuaded by my
husband to go and hear an infidel lecture once,
but going home, I said to h i m : ' My dear husband, I would not go again though my declination
should result in our divorcement forever. 5 " And
the woman was right. If after all that Christ
and Christianity have done for a woman, she can
go again and again to hear such assaults, she is an
awful creature, and you had better not come near
such a reeking lepress. She needs to be washed,
and for three w^eeks to be soaked in carbolic acid,
and for a whole year fumigated, before she is fit
for decent society. While it is not demanded that
a woman be a Christian before marriage, she must
ha\e regard for the Christian religion or she is a
bad woman and unworthy of being your companion in a life charged with such stupendous solemn
nity and vicissitudes.

THE CHOICE OF A WIFE.

11)

TWO ESSENTIAL QUALITIES.

What you want, O m a n ! in a wife, is not a
butterfly of the sunshine, not a giggling nonentity,
not a painted doll, not a gossiping gadabout, not
a mixture of artificialities which leave you in
doubt as to where the humbug ends and the woman begins, but an earnest soul, one that cannot
only laugh when you laugh, but weep when you
weep. There will be wide, deep graves in your
path of life, and you will both want steadying
when you come to the verge of them, I tell you.
When your fortune fails you will want some one
to talk of treasures in heaven, and not charge
upon you with a bitter, " I told you so." As far
as I can analyze it, sincerity and earnestness are
the foundation of all worthy wifehood. Get
that, and you get all. Fail to get that, and you
get nothing but what you will wish you never
had got.
BEAUTY A BENEDICTION.

Don't make the mistake that the man of the
text made in letting his eye settle the question in
which coolest judgment directed by divine wisdom
are all-important. He who has no reason for his
wifely choice except a pretty face is like a man
who should buy a farm because of the dahlias in
the front dooryard. Beauty is % talent, and when
God gives it He intends it as a benediction upon
a woman's face. When the good Princess of
Wales dismounted from the rail train )ast summer,
and I saw her radiant face, I could ujxd^r4tao4

20

THE CHOICE OF A WIFE.

what they told me the day before, that, when at
the great military hospital where are now the
wounded and the sick from the Egyptian and
other wars, the Princess passed through, all the
sick were cheered at her coming, and those who
could be roused neither by doctor nor nurse from
their stupor, would get up on their elbows to look
at her, and wan and wasted lips prayed an a u d i
ble prayer: "God bless the Princess of Wales
Doesn't she look beautiful V
But how uncertain is the tarrying of beauty in
a human countenance ! Explosion of a kerosene
lamp turns it into scarification, and a scoundrel
with one dash of vitriol may dispel it, or Time will
drive his chariot wheels across that bright face,
cutting it up in deep ruts and gullies. But there
is an eternal beauty on the face of some women,
whom a rough and ungallant world may criticise
as homely; and though their features may contradict all the laws of Lavater on physiognomy,
yet they have graces of soul that will keep them
attractive for time and glorious through all
eternity.
There are two or three circumstances in which
the plainest wife is a queen of beauty to her
husband, whatever her stature or profile. By
financial panic or betrayal of business partner, the
man goes down, and returning to his home that
evening, he says: "lam ruined; I am in disgrace
forever; I care not whether I live or die." It i&
ar* agitated story he is telling in the household
tf i t winter night.
He says : " The furniture

THE CHOICE OF A WIFE.

23

must go, the house must go, the social position
must go," and from being sought for obsequiously
they must be cold-shouldered everywhere. After
he ceases talking, and the wife has heard all in
silence, she says: "Is. that all? Why, you had
nothing when I married you, and you have only
come back to where you started. If you think
that my happiness and that of the children depend
on these trappings, you do not know me, though
we have lived together thirty years. God is not
dead, and the National Bank of Heaven has not
suspended payment, and if you don't mind, I don't
care a cent. What little we need of food and raiment the rest of our lives we can get, and I don't
propose to sit down and mope and groan. Mary,
hand me that darning-needle. I declare ! I have
forgotten to set the rising for those cakes ! And
while she is busy at it he hears her humming
Newton's old hymn, " To-morrow :"
" I t can bring with it nothing,
But He will bear us through;
Who gives the lilies clothing
Will clothe His people too;
Beneath the spreading heavens
No creature but is fed;
And He who feeds the ravens
Will give His children bread.
" Though vine nor fig-tree either
Their wonted fruit should bear;
Though all the fields should withe*
Nor flocks nor herds be there;
Yet God the same abiding,
His praise shall tune my voice;
For while in Him confiding
I cannot but rejoice."

22

THE CHOICE OF A WIFE.

The husband looks up in amazement, and says:
" Well, well, you are the greatest woman I ever
saw. I thought you would faint dead away
when I told you." And as he looks at her all the
glories of physiognomy in the court of Louis XV,
on the modern fashion plates, are tame as compared with the superhuman splendors of that
woman's face. Joan of Arc, Mary Antoinette,
and La Belle Hamilton, the enchantment of the
court of Charles II, are nowhere.
A WIFE'S DEATH.

There is another time when the plainest wife
is a queen of beauty to her husband. She has
done the work of life. She has reared her children for God and heaven, and though some of
them may be a little wild they will yet come
back, for God has promised. She is dying, and
her husband stands by. They think over all the
years of their companionship, the weddings and
the burials, the ups and the down, the successes
and the failures. They talk over the goodness of
God and His faithfulness to children's children.
She has no fear about going. The Lord has sustained her so many years she would not dare to
distrust Him now. The lips of both of them
tremble as they say good-by and encourage each
other about an early meeting in a better world.
The breath is feebler and feebler, and stops. Are
you sure of it? Just hold that mirror at the
mouth, and see if there is any vapor gathering on
the surface. Gone! As one of the neighbors

THE CHOICE OF A WIFE.

23

takes the old man by the arm gently and says:
" Come, you had better go into the next room
and rest," he says: " W a i t a moment; I must
take one more look at that face and at those
hands!" Beautiful! Beautiful!
My friends, I hope you do not call that death.
That is an autumnal sunset. That is a crystalline
river pouring into a crystal sea. That is the solo
of human life overpowered by hallelujah chorus.
That is a queen's coronation. That is heaven.
That is the way my father stood at eighty-two,
seeing my mother depart at seventy-nine. Perhaps so your father and mother went. I wondes
if we will die as well?

24

THE CHOICE OF A

HUSBAND

THe C h o i c e o f a H u s b a n d .
"The Lord grant you that ye may find rest, each of you iD
the house of her husband."—RUTH i, 9.

This was the prayer of pious Naomi for Ruth
and Orpah, and is an appropriate prayer now in
behalf of unmarried womanhood. Naomi, the
good old soul, knew that the devil would take
their ^ases in hand if God did not, so she prays:
"Th3 Lord grant you that ye may find rest, each
of you in the house of her husband."
In this series of sermons on "The Marriage
Ring," I, last Sabbath, gave prayerful and Christian advice to men in regard to the selection of a
wife, and to-day I give the same prayerful and
Christian advice to women in regard to the selection of a husband, but in all these sermons saying
much that I hope will be appropriate for all ages
and all classes.
VOLUNTARY

CELIBACY.

I applaud the celibacy of a multitude of women
Who, rather than make unfit selection, have made
none at all. It has not been a lack of opportunity
for marital contract on their part, but their own
culture, and refinement, and their exalted idea as
to what a husband ought to be, have caused their

THE CHOICE OF A HUSBAND.

25

declinature. They have seen so many women
marry imbeciles, or ruffians, or incipient sots, or
life-time incapables, or magnificent nothings, or
men who before marriage were angelic and afterward diabolic, that they have been alarmed and
stood back. They saw so many boats go into tb®
maelstrom that they steered into other witexs.
Better for a woman to live alone, though she ij.v
a thousand years, than to be annexed to one of
these masculine failures with which society is surfeited. The patron saint of almost every family
circle is some such unmarried woman, and among
all the families of cousins she moves around, and
her coming in each house is the morning, and her
going away is the night.
A BENEFICENT SPINSTERHOOD.

In my large circle of kindred, perhaps twenty
families in all, it was an Aunt Phoebe. Paul
gave a letter of introduction to one whom he
calls "Phoebe, our sister," as she went up from
Cenchrea to Eome, commending her for her kindness and Christian service, and imploring for her
all courtesies. I think Aunt Phoebe was named
after her. Was there a sickness in any of the
households, she was there ready to sit up and
count out the drops of medicine. Was there a
marriage, she helped deck the bride for the altar.
Was there a new soul incarnated, she was there
to rejoice at the nativity. Was there a sore bereavement, she was there io console. The children rushed out at her first appearance, crying,

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THE CHOICE OF A HUSBAND.

"Here comes Aunt Phoebe/' and but for parental
interference they would have pulled her down
with their caresses—for she was not very strong,
and many severe illnesses had given her enough
glimpses of the next world to make her heavenly
minded. Her table was loaded up with Baxter's
"Saints' Best," Doddridge's "Kise and Progress,"
and Jay's "Morning and Evening Exercises," and
John Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," and like
books, which have fitted out whole generations
for the heaven upon which they have already
entered.
A GLIMPSE OF HEAVEN.

"De Witt," she said to me one day, "twice in
my life I have been so overwhelmed with the
love of God that I fainted away and could
hardly be resuscitated. Don't tell me there is no
heaven. I have seen it twice." If you would
know how her presence would soothe an anxiety,
or lift a burden, or cheer a sorrow, or leave a blessing on every room in the house, ask any of the
Talmages. She had tarried at her early home,
taking care of an invalid father, until the bloom
of life had somewhat faded; but she could interest
the young folks with some three or four tender passages in her own history, so that we all knew that it
was not through lack of opportunity that she was
not the queen of one household, instead of being
a benediction on a whole circle of households.
At about seventy years of age she made her
last visit to my house, and when she sat in my

THE CHOICE OP A HUSBAND.

27

Philadelphia church I was more embarrassed at
her presence than by all the audience, because I
felt that in religion I had got no further than the
A B 0, while she had learned the whole alphabet,
and for many years had finished the Y and Z,
When she went out of this life into the next,
what a shout there must have been in heaven,
from the front door clear up to the back seat in
the highest gallery ! I saw the other day in the
village cemetery of Somerville, N. J., her restingplace, the tombstone having on it the words
which thirty years ago she told me she would
like to have inscribed there, namely: "The Morning Cometh."
ILLUSTRIOUS SPINSTERS.

Had she a mission in the world ? Certainly. As
much as Caroline Herschel, first amanuensis for
her illustrious brother, and then his assistant in
astronomical calculations, and then discovering
worlds for herself, dying at ninety-eight years of
age, still busy with the stars till she sped beyond
them; as much as had Florence Nightingale, the
nurse of the Crimea; or Grace Darling, the oarswoman of the Long Stone Lighthouse; or Mary
Lyon, the teacher of Mount Holyoke Female
Seminary; or Hannah More, the Christian authoress of England; or Dorothea Dix, the angel of
mercy for the insane ; or Anna Etheridge, among
the wounded of Blackburn's Fort; or Margaret
Breckenridge, at Vicksburg; or Mary Shelton,
distributing roses and grapes and cologne in a

§8

THE CHOICE OP A HUSBAND.

western hospital; or thousands of other glorious
women like them, who never took the marriage
sacrament. Appreciate all this, my sister, and it
will make you deliberate before you rush out of
the single state into another, unless you are sure
of betterment.
A DIFFICULT BUSINESS.

Deliberate and pray. Pray and deliberate. As
I showed you in my former sermon, a man ought
to supplicate Divine guidance in such a crisis.
How much more important that you solicit it! It
is easier for a man to find an appropriate wife
than for a woman to find a good husband. This
is a matter of arithmetic, as I showed in my former
discourse. Statistics show that in Massachusetts
and New York States women have a majority of
hundreds of thousands. Why this is we leave
others to surmise. It would seem that woman is
a favorite with the Lord, and that therefore He
made more of that kind. From the order of the
creation in paradise it is evident that woman is
an improved edition of man. But, whatever be
the reason for it, the fact is certain that she who
selects a husband has a smaller number of people
to select from than he who selects a wife. Therefore a woman ought to be especially careful in her
choice of life-time companionship. She cannot
afford to make a mistake. If a man err in his
selection he can spend his evenings at the club,
and dull his sensibilities by tobacco smoke; but
W#jnap. has no club-room for refuge, and would

THE CHOICE OP A HUSBAND.

29

find it difficult to habituate herself to cigars. If
a woman make a bad job of marital selection, the
probability is that nothing but a funeral can relieve
it. Divorce cases in court may interest the public,
but the love letters of a married couple are poor
reading, except for those who write them. Pray
God that you be delivered from irrevocable mistake !
PARTNERS TO AVOID.

Avoid affiance with a despiser of the Christian
religion, whatever else he may have or may not
have. I do not say he must needs be a religious
man, for Paul says the unbelieving husband is
sanctified by the wife; but marriage with a man
who hates the Christian religion will insure you
a life of wretchedness. He will caricature your
habit of kneeling in prayer. He will speak depreciatingly of Christ. He will wound all the
most sacred feelings of your soul. He will put
your home under the anathema of the Lord God
Almighty. In addition to the anguish with which
he will fill your life, there is great danger that he
will despoil your hope of heaven, and make your
marriage relation an infinite and eternal disaster.
If you have made such engagement, your first
duty is to break it. My word may come just in
rime to save your soul.
HUSBANDS SELDOM REFORM.

Further, do not unite in marriage with a man
©£ bad habits in the idea of reforming him. If

30

THE CHOICE OF A HUSBAND.

now, under the restraint of your present acquaint*
ance, he will not give up his bad habits, after he
has won the prize you cannot expect him to do
so. You might as well plant a violet in the fac#
of a northeast storm with the idea of appeasing
it. You might as well run a schooner alongside
f o a burning ship with the idea of saving the ship.
The consequence will be, schooner and ship will
be destroyed together.
The almshouse could tell the story of a hundred
women who married men to reform them. If by
twenty-five years of age a man has been grappled
by intoxicants, he is under such headway that
your attempt to stop him would be very much
like running up the track with a wheelbarrow to
stop a Hudson Eiver express train. What you
call an inebriate nowadays is not a victim to wine
or whiskey, but to logwood and strychnine and
mix: vomica. All these poisons have kindled their
fires in his tongue and brain, and all the tears of
a wife weeping cannot extinguish the flames.
Instead of marrying a man to reform him, let him
reform first, and then give him time to see
whether the reform is to be permanent. Let him
understand that if he cannot do without his bad
habits for two years he must do without you
forever.
MEN WEDDED TO THE WORLD.

Avoid union with one supremely selfish, or so
wound up in his occupation that he has no room
for another. You occasionally find a man who

THE CHOICE OF A HUSBAND.

31

spreads himself so widely over the path of life
that there is no room for any one to walk beside
him. He is not the one blade of a scissors incomplete without the other blade, but he is a
chisel made to cut his way through life alone, or
a file full of roughness, made to be drawn across
society without any affinity for other files. His
disposition is a lifelong protest against marriage.
Others are so married to their occupation or profession that the taking of any other bride is a case
of bigamy. There are men as severely tied to
their literary work as was Chatterton, whose essay
was not printed because of the death of the Lord
Mayor. Chatterton made out the following account: "Lost by the Lord Mayor's death, in this
essay, one pound eleven shillings and sixpence.
Gained in elegies and essays, five pounds and five
shillings." Then he put what he had gained by
the Lord Mayor's death opposite to what he had
lost, and wrote under it: " And glad he is dead
by three pounds thirteen shillings and sixpence."
When a man is as hopelessly literary as that, he
ought to be a perpetual celibate; his library, his
laboratory, his books, are all the companionship
needed.
Indeed, some of the mightiest men this world
ever saw have not patronized matrimony. Cowper, Pope, Newton, Swift, Locke, Walpole, Gibbon, Hume, Arbuthnot, were single. Some of
these marriage would have helped. The right
kind of a wife would have cured Cowper's gloom,
and given to Newton more practicability, and

32

THE CHOICE OF A HTTSBAND.

been a relief to Locke's overtasked brain. A
Christian wife might have converted Hume and
Gibbon to a belief in Christianity. But Dean
Swift did not deserve a wife, from the way in
which he broke the heart of Jane Waring first,
and Esther Johnson afterward, and last of all
" Vanessa," the great wit of his day, he was
outwitted by his own cruelties.
PREDESTINATION IN MARRIAGE.

Amid so many possibilities of fatal mistake, am
I not right in urging you to seek the unerring wisdom of God—and before you are infatuated? Because most marriages are fit to be made, convinces
us that they are divinely arranged. Almost every
cradle has an affinity toward some other cradle.
They may be on the opposite sides of the earth,
but one child gets out of this cradle, and another
child gets out of that cradle, and with their first
steps they start for each other. They may diverge
from the straight path, going toward the North, or
South, or East, or West. They may fall down,
but the two rise facing each other. They are approaching all through infancy. The one all through
the years of boyhood is going to meet the one who
is coming through all the years of girlhood to
meet him. The decision of parents as to what is
best concerning them, and the changes of fortune,
may for a time seem to arrest
THE TWO JOURNEYS,

but on they go. They may never have seen each
othe*\ They may never have heard of each other-

THE CHOICE! OF A HUSBAND.

33

But the two pilgrims who started at the two cradles
are nearing. After eighteen, twenty, or thirty
years, the two come within sight. At the first
glance they may feel a dislike, and they may
slacken their step; yet something that the world
calls fate, and that religion calls Providence, urges
them on and on. They must meet. They come
near enough to join hands in social acquaintance,
after a while to join hands in friendship, after
a while to join hearts. The delegate from the one
cradle comes up the east side of the church with
her father. The delegate from the other cradle
comes up the west aisle of the church. The
two long journeys end at the snowdrift of the
bridal veil. The two chains made out of many
years are forged together by the golden link which
the groom puts upon the third finger of the left
hand. One on earth, may they be one in heaven!
But there are so many exceptions to the general
rule of natural affinity that only those are safe
who p :ay for a heavenly hand to lead them. Because they depended on themselves and not on
God, there are thousands of women every year
going to the slaughter. In India women leap on
the funeral pyre of a dead husband. We have a
worse spectacle than that in America—women innumerable leaping on the funeral pyre of a living
husband.
THE ADVERTISING BRUTE.

Avoid all proposed alliances through newspaper
idvertisements. *Many w o m c , just for fun, have

34:

THE CHOICE OF A HUSBAND.

answered such advertisements, and have been led
on from step to step to catastrophe infinite. All
the men who write such advertisements are villains and lepers—all, without a single exception.
All! All! Do you answer them just for fun? I
will tell you a safer and healthier fun. Thrust
your hand through the cage at a menagerie, and
stroke the back of a cobra from the East Indies.
Put your head in the mouth of a Numidian lion,
to see if he will bite. Take a glass full of Paris
green mixed with some delightful henbane. These
are safer and healthier fun than answering newspaper advertisements for a wife.
MARRY INDEPENDENT MEN.

My advice is : Marry a man who is a fortune in
himself. Houses, lands, and large inheritance are
well enough, but the wheel of fortune turns so
rapidly that through some investment all these in
a few years may be gone. There are some things,
however, that are a perpetual fortune—good man*
ners, geniality of soul, kindness, intelligence, sympathy, courage, perseverance, industry, and whole
heartedness. Marry such a one and you have
married a fortune, whether he have an income now
of $50,000 a year or an income of $1,000. A bank
is secure according to its capital stock, and not to
be judged by the deposits for a day or a week. A
man is rich according to his sterling qualities,
and not according to the mutability of circum*
stances, which may leave with him a large amounl
of resources to-day and withdraw them to-morrow

THE CHOICE OF A HUSBAND.

35

If a man is worth nothing but money he is poor
indeed. If a man have upright character he is
rich. Property may come and go, he is independent of the markets. Nothing can buy
him out, nothing can sell him out. He may have
more money one year than another, but his better
fortunes never vacillate.
AVOID PERFECT MEN.

Yet do not expect to find a perfect man. If you
find one without any faults, incapable of mistakes,
never iiaving guessed wrongly, his patience nevei
having been perturbed, immaculate in speech, in
temper, in habits, do not marry him. Why ? B ^
@
cause you would enact a swindle. What would
you do with a perfect man, you who are not per^
feet yourself % And how dare you hitch your imperfection fast on such supernatural excellence ?
What a companion you would make for an angel!
In other words, there are no perfect men. There
never was but one perfect pair, and they slipped
down the banks of paradise together. We occasionally find a man who says he never sins? We
know he lies when he says it. We have had financial dealings with two or three perfect men, and
they cheated us wofully. Do not, therefore,
look for an immaculate husband, for you will not
find him.
PLENTY OF GOOD HUSBANDS.

But do not become cynical on this sub j ect. Society has a great multitude of grand rjaen who know

36

THE CHOICE OF A HUSBAND

how to make home happy. When they come t©
be husbands they evince a nobility of nature and
a self-sacrificing spirit that surprise even the wife.
These are the men who cheerfully sit in dark
and dirty business offices, ten feet by twelve, in
summer time hard at work while the wives and
daughters are off at Saratoga, Mount Desert, or
the White Sulphur. These are the men who,
never having had much education themselves,
have their sons at Yale, and Harvard, and Virginia University. These are the men who work
themselves to death by fifty years of age, and go
out to Greenwood leaving large estate and generous life-insurance provision for their families.
There are husbands and fathers here by the
hundreds who would die for their households. If
outlawry should ever become dominant in our
cities they would stand in their doorway, and
with their own arm would cleave down, one by
one, fifty invaders face to face, foot to foot, and
every stroke a demolition. This is what makes an
army in defense of a country fight more desperately than an army of conquest. It is not so much
the abstract sentiment of a flag as it is wife, and
children, and home, that turns enthusiasm into a
fury. The world has such men by the million,
and the homunculi that infest all our communities
must not hinder women from appreciating the
glory of true manhood.
FIDELITY IN ADVERSITY.

% was reading of a bridal reception.

The young

THE CHOICE OF A HUSBAND.

37

man had brought home the choice of his heart in
her elaborate and exquisite apparel. As she stood
in the gay drawing-room, and amid the gay group,
the young man's eyes filled with tears of joy as he
thought that she was his. Years passed by, and
they stood at the same parlor on another festal
occasion. She wore the same dress, for business
had not opened as brightly to the young husband
as he expected, and he had never been able to
purchase for her another dress. Her face was not
as bright and smooth as it had been years before,
and a care-worn look had made its signature on
her countenance. As the husband looked at her
he saw the difference between this occasion and
the former, and he went over where she sat, and
said: "You remember the time when we were
here before. You have the same dress on. Circumstances have somewhat changed, but you
look to me far more beautiful than you did then."
There is such a thing as conjugal fidelity, and
many of you know it in your own homes.
But, after all the good advice we may give you,
we come back to the golden pillar from which we
started, the tremendous truth that no one but God
can guide you in safety about this matter that
may decide your happiness for two worlds, this
and the next. So, my sister, I put your case
where Naomi put that of Euth and Orpah, when
she said : " The Lord grant you that ye may find
rest, each of you in the house of her husbanci."

as

THE CHOICE OF A HUSBAOT),
THE WEDDING.

I imagine the hour for which you pledged your
troth has arrived. There is much merry-making
among your young friends, but there is an undertone of sadness in all the house. Your choice may
have been the gladdest and the best, and the joy of
the whole round of relatives, but when a young
eaglet is about to leave the old nest, and is preparing to put out into sunshine and storm foi
itself, it feels its wings tremble somewhat. So she
has a good cry before leaving home, and at the
marriage father and mother always cry, or feel
like it. If you think it is easy to give up a
daughter in marriage, though it be with brightest
prospects, you will think differently when the day
comes. To have all along watched her from infancy to girlhood, and from girlhood to womanhood, studious of her welfare, her slightest illness
an anxiety, and her presence in your home an everincreasing joy, and then have her go away to some
other home—aye, all the redolence of orange-blossoms, and all the chime of marriage bells, and all
the rolling of wedding march in full diapason, and
all the hilarious congratulations of your friends
cannot make you forget that you are suffering a
loss irreparable. But you know it is all right,
and you have a remembrance of an embarkation
just like it twenty-five or thirty years ago, in
which you were one of the parties ; and, suppress*
ing as far as possible your sadness, you say^
«Good-by."

THE CHOICE OF A HUSBAND.

39

VISIT THE OLD HOME.

I hope that you, the departing daughter, will
not forget to write often home; for whatever
betide you, the old folks will never lose their
interest in your welfare. Make visits to them also
as often, and stay as long as you can, for there
will be changes at the old place after awhile.
Every time you go you will find more gray hairs
on father's head and more wrinkles on mother's
brow; and after awhile you will notice that the
elastic step has become decrepitude. And some
day one of the two pillars of your early home will
fall, and after awhile the other pillar of that home
will fall, and it will be a comfort to yourself, if,
when they are gone, you can feel that while you
are faithful in your new home you never forget
your old home, and the first friends you ever had,
and those to whom you are more indebted than
you ever can be to any one else except to God—
I mean your father and mother. Alexander Pop^
put it in effective rhythm when he s^id :
" M e let t h e t e n d e r office long engage
To rock t h e cradle # of reposing age ;
W i t h lenient arts extend a mother's breath,
Make languor smile- a n d smooth t h e bed of d e a t h ;
Explore t h e t h o u g h t , explain t h e asking eye,
A n d keep awhile one p a r e n t from t h e sky."

And now I commend all this precious and
splendid young womanhood before me to-day to
the God "who setteth the solitary in families.

*Q

CLANDESTINE MARRIAGE.

C l a n d e s t i n e Marriage.
"Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret b
pleasant. But he knoweth not that the dead are there."—v
PROV. ix, 17, 18.

The Garden of Eden was a great orchard of
fruit-bearing trees, bushels, and bushels of round,
ripe, glorious fruit; but the horticulturist and his
wife having it in charge hankered for one special
tree, simply because it was forbidden, starting a
bad streak in human nature, so that children will
now sometimes do something simply because they
are forbidden to do it. This
KINK IN THE HUMAN RACE

is not easily unsnarled. Tell a company that
they may look into any twenty rooms of a large
house, except one, and their chief desire is to see
that one, though all the others were picture galleries and that a garret. If there were in a region
of mineral springs twenty fountains, but the proprietor had fenced in one well against the public,
the one fenced in would be the chief temptation
to the visitors, and they would rather taste of that
than of the other nineteen. Solomon recognized
this principle in the text, and also the disaster that
follows forbidden conduct, when he said: " Stolen
waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is

CLANDESTINE

MARRIAGE.

41

pleasant. But he knoweth not that the dead are
there."
In this course of sermons on "The Marriage
Ring," I this morning aim a point-blank shot at
" Clandestine Marriages and Escapades."
Yonder comes up through the narrows of New
York harbor a ship having all the evidence of
tempestuous passage: salt water mark reaching
to the top of the smoke-stack; mainmast, foremast, mizzenmast twisted off; bulwarks knocked
in; lifeboats off the davit; jib sheets and lee-bowlines missing; captain's bridge demolished; main
shaft broken; all the pumps working to keep from
sinking before they can get to wharfage. That
ship is the institution of Christian marriage,
launched by the Lord grandly from the banks of
the Euphrates, and floating out on the seas for
the admiration and happiness of all nations. But
freeloveism struck it from one side, and Mormonism struck it from another side, and hurricanes
of libertinism have struck it on all sides, until the
old ship needs repairs in every plank and beam,
and sail, and bolt, and clamp, and transom, and
stanchion. In other words, the notions of modern
society must be reconstructed on the subject of
the marriage institution. And when we have got
it back somewhere near what it was when God
built it in Paradise, the earth will be far on toward
resumption of Paradisaical conditions.
DEPLORABLE LAXITY.

Po you ask what is the peed of $, course of sey-

4:2

CLANDESTINE MARRIAGE.

mons on this subject? The man or woman who
asks this question is either ignorant or guilty. In
New England, which has been considered by
many the most moral part of the United States,
there are two thousand divorces per year. And in
Massachusetts, the headquarters of steady habits,
there is one divorce to every fourteen marriages.
The State of Maine, considered by many almost
frigid in proprieties, has in one year four hundred
and seventy-eight divorces. In Vermont, swapping
wives is not a rare transaction. In Connecticut
there are women who boast that they have four
or five times been divorced. Moreover, our boasted Protestantism is, on this subject, more lax than
Roman Catholicism. Roman Catholicism admits
of no divorce except for the reason that Christ admitted as a lawful reason. But Protestantism is
admitting anything and everything, and the larger
the proportion of Protestants in any part of the
country, the larger the ratio of divorce. Do you
not then think that Protestantism needs some
toning up on this subject?
GROWING POPULARITY.

Aye, when you realize that the sacred and
divine institution is being caricatured and defamed by clandestine marriages and escapades all
over the land, does there not seem a call for such
discussion ? Hardly a morning or evening pepar
comes into your possession without reporting
them, and there are fifty of these occurrenceB
where oiie is reported^ because it is the'interest of

CLANDESTINE MARRIAGK

43

all parties to hush them up; the victims are, all
hours of the night, climbing down ladders or crossing over from State to State, that they may reach
laws of greater laxity, holding a reception six
months after marriage to let the public know for
the first time that a half year before they were
united in wedlock. Ministers of religion, and
justices of the peace, and mayors of cities, willingly joining in marriage runaways from other
States and neighborhoods ; the coach-box and the
back seat of the princely landau in flirtation;
telegrams flashing across the country for the
arrest of absconded school misses, who started off
with armfull of books, and taking rail trains to
meet their affianced—in the snow-drifts of the
great storm that has recently passed over the
country some of them, I read, have perished—
thousands of people in a marriage whose banns
have never been published; precipitated conjugality ; bigamy triumphant; marriage a joke;
society blotched all over with a putrefaction on
this subject which no one but the Almighty God
can arrest.
We admit that clandestinity and escapade are
sometimes authorized and made right by parental tyranny or domestic serfdom. There have
been exceptional cases where parents have had
a monomania in regard to their sons and daughters, demanding their celibacy or forbidding relations every way right. Through absurd family
ambition parents have sometimes demanded qualifications and equipment of fortume unreasonable

4A

CLANDESTINE MARRIAGE.

to expect or simply impossible. Children are not
expected to marry to please their parents, but to
please themselves. Given good morals, means of
a livelihood, appropriate age and quality of social
position, and no parent has a right to prohibit a
union that seems deliberate and a matter of the
heart. Eev. Philip Henry, eminent for piety and
good sense, used to say to his children: "Please
God and please yourselves, and you shall neve*
displease me."
A MATRIMONIAL TRA0EDY.

During our Civil "War a marriage was about
to be celebrated at Charleston, S. C , between
Lieutenant de Eochelle and' Miss Anna, the
daughter of ex-Governor Pickens. As the ceremony was about to be solemnized a shell broke
through the roof and wounded nine of the guests,
and the bride fell dying, and, wrapped in her
white wedding robe, her betrothed kneeling at her
side, in two hours she expired. And there has
been many as bright a union of hearts as that
.proposed that the bombshell of outrageous parental
indignation has wounded and scattered and slain.
If the hand offered in marriage be blotched of
intemperance ; if the life of the marital candidate
has been debauched; if he has no visible means
of support, and poverty and abandonment seem
only a little way ahead; if the twain seem entirely unmatched in disposition—protest and forbid and re-enforce your opinion by that of others,
and put all lawful obstacles in the w a y ; but do

CLANDESTINE MARRIAGE].

45

not join that company of parents who have ruined
their children by a plutocracy of domestic crankiness, which has caused more than one elopement.
I know of a few cases where marriage has been
under the red-hot anathema of parents and all the
neighbors, but God approved, and the homes
established have been beautiful and positively
Edenic.
But while we have admitted that there are real
cases of justifiable rebellion, in ninety-nine cases
out of a hundred—yea, in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand, these unlicensed
departures and decampments by moonlight are
ruin, temporal and eternal. It is safer for a woman
to jump off the docks of the East Eiver and depend
on being able to swim to the other shore, or get
picked up by a ferry-boat. The possibilities are
that she may be rescued, but the probability is
that she will not. Eead the story of the escapades
in the newspapers for the last ten years, and find
me a half dozen that do not mean poverty, disgrace, abandonment, police court, divorce, death,
and hell. " Stolen waters are sweet, and bread
eaten in secret is pleasant. But he knoweth not
that the dead are there." Satan presides over
the escapade. He introduces the two parties to
each other. He gets them to pledge their troth.
He appoints where they shall meet. He shows
fchem where they can find officiating minister or
squire. He points out to them the ticket office for
the rail train. He puts them aboard, and when
they are going at forty miles the hour, he jumps

*6

CLANDESTINE MARRIAGE.

off and leaves them in the lurch; for, while Satan
has a genius in getting people into trouble, he has
no genius for getting people out. He induced
Jonah to take ship for Tarshish when God told
him to go to Nineveh, but provided for the recreant
prophet no better landing place than the middle of
the Mediterranean Sea.
THE DIME NOVEL.

The modern novel is responsible for many of
these abscondings. Do you think that young
women would sit up half a night reading novels in
which the hero and heroine get acquainted in the
usual way, and carry on their increased friendliness until, with the consent of parents, the day of
marriage is appointed, and amid the surrounding
group of kindred the vows are taken ? Oh, no !
There must be flight, and pursuit, and narrow escape, and drawn dagger, all ending in sunshine,
and parental forgiveness, and bliss unalloyed and
gorgeous. In many of the cases of escapade the
idea wTas implanted in the hot brain of the woman
by a cheap novel, ten cents' worth of unadulterated perdition.
THE SCHEME OF BAD MEN.

These evasions of the ordinary modes of mar,
riage are to be deplored for the reason that nearly
all of them are proposed by bad men. If the man
behave well he has a character to which he can
refer, and he can say : "If you want to inquire

CLANDESTINE MARRIAGE.

4?

about me there is a list of names of people in the
town or neighborhood where I live." No; the heroes
of escapades are nearly all either bigamists, libertines, or drunkards, or defrauders, or first-class
scoundrels of some sort. They have no character
to lose. They may be dressed in the height of fashion, may be cologned, and pomatumed, and padded, and diamond-ringed, and flamboyant-cravatted, until they bewitch the eye and intoxicate the
olfactories; but they are double-distilled extracts
of villainy, moral dirt and blasphemy. Beware of
them. " Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten
in secret is pleasant. But he knoweth not that
the dead are there."
SOCIAL DEGRADATION.

Fugitive marriage is to be deplored because it almost always implies a woman's descent from a higher social plane to a lower. If the man was not of a
higher plane, or the marriage on an equality, there
would be no objections, and hence no inducement
to clandestiny. In almost all cases it means the
lowering of womanhood. Observe this law: a
man marrying a woman beneath him in society
may raise her to any eminence that he himself
may reach; but if a woman marry a man beneath
her in society she always goes down to his level.
That is a law inexorable, and there are no exceptions. Is any woman so high up that she can
afford to plot for her own debasement. There is
not a State in the American Union that has not

£8

CLANDESTINE

MARRIAGE.

for the last twenty years furnished an instance of
the sudden departure of some intelligent woman
from an affluent home to spend her life with some
one who can make five dollars a day, provided he
keeps very busy. Well, many a man has lived on
five dollars a day and been happy, but he undertakes a big contract when, with five dollars a day,
he attempts to support some one who has lived in
a home that cost twenty thousand per annum.
This has been about the history of most of such
conjunctions of simplicity and extravagance, the
marriage of
OX AND EAGLE.

The first year they get on tolerably well, for it
ds odd and romantic, and assisted by applause of
people who admire outlawry. The second year
the couple settle down into complete dislike of
each other. The third year they separate and
seek for divorce, or5 as is more probable, the man
becomes a drunkard, and the woman a blackened
waif of the street. " Stolen waters are sweet,
and bread eaten in secret is pleasant. But he
knoweth not that the dead are there.' 5
These truant marriages are also to be deplored
because in most instances they are executed in
defiance of parental wisdom and kindness. Most
parents are anxious for the best welfare of a
child. If they make vehement and determined
opposition, it is largely because it is a match
unfit to be made, and they can see for their

CLANDESTINE MARMAGE.

49

iaughter nothing but wretchedness in that direction. They have keener and wiser apprecia^
tion, for instance, of the certain domestic demoli*
tionthat comes from alcoholism in a young man.
They realize what an idiot a woman is who marries a man who has not brains or industry enough
to earn a livelihood for a family. No bureau of
statistics can tell us the number of women who,
after marriage, have to support themselves and
their husbands. If the husband becomes invalid,
it is a beautiful thing to see a wife uncomplainingly by needle, or pen, or yardstick, or washingmachine, support the home. But these great
lazy masculine louts that stand around with hands
in their pockets, allowing the wife with her weak
arm to fight the battle of bread, need to be
regurgitated from society.
REVERSED RELATIONS.

There are innumerable instances in these cities
where the wife pays the rent, and meets all the
family expenses, and furnishes the tobacco and
the beer for the lord of the household. No wonder
parents put on all the brakes to stop such a tram
of disaster. They have too often seen the gold
ring put on the finger at the altar turning out to
be the iron link of a chain of domestic servitude.
What a farce it is for a man who cannot support
himself, and not worth a cent in the world, to
take a ring which he purchased by money stolen
from his grandmother's cupboard, and put it on
the finger of the bride, saying: " With this ring I

50

CLANDESTINE MARRIAGE.

thee wed, and with all my worldly goods I thee
endow."
It is amazing to see how some women will
marry men knowing nothing about them. No
merchant would sell a hundred dollars' worth of
goods on credit without knowing whether the
customer was worthy of being trusted. No m*an
or woman would buy a house with encumbrances
of mortgages, and liens, and judgments against it
uncancelled; and yet there is not an hour of the
day or night for the last ten years there have not
been women by hasty marriage entrusting their
earthly happiness to men about whose honesty
they know nothing, or who are encumbered with
Hens, and judgments, and first mortgages, and second mortgages, and third mortgages of evil habits.
No wonder that in such circumstances parents
in conjugating the verb in question pass from the
subjective mood to the indicative, and from the
indicative to the imperative. In nearly all the
cases of escapade that you will hear of the rest of
your lives there will be a headlong leap over the
barriers of parental common sense and forethought.
" Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in
secret is pleasant. But he knoweth not that the
dead are there."
INVOLVES DECEPTION.

We also deplore these fraudulent espousals and
this sneaking exchange of single life for married
life because it is deception, and that is a corroding
and damning vice. You must deceive your kin«

CLANDESTINE MARRIAGE.

51

clred, you must deceive society, you must deceive
all but God, and Him you cannot deceive. Deception does not injure others so much as it injures
ourselves. Marriage is too important a crisis in
one's life to be decided by sleight of hand, or a
sort of jugglery which says: " Presto, change!
Now you see her, and now you don't."
Better to wait for years for circumstances to
improve. Time may remove all obstacles. The
candidate for marital preferences may change his
habits, or get into some trade or business that
will support a home, or the inexorable father and
mother may be promoted to celestial citizenship.
At the right time have the day appointed. Stand
at the end of the best room in the house with
joined hands, and minister of religion before you
to challenge the world that "if they know of any
reason why these two persons shall not be united,
they state it now or forever hold their peace," and
then start out with the good wishes of all the
neighbors and the halo of Divine sanction. When
you can go out of harbor at noon with all flags
flying, do not try to run a blockade at midnight.
In view of all this I charge you to break up
clandestine correspondence if you are engaged in
it, and ha^e no more clandestine meetings, either
at the ferry, or on the street, or at the house of
mutua2 friends, or at the corner of the woods.
Do not have letters come for you to the post-office
under assumed address. Have no correspondence
that makes you uneasy lest some one by mistake
open your letters. Do not employ terms of en

52

CLANDESTINE MARRIAGE.

dearment at the beginning and close of letters
unless you have a right to use them. That young
lady is on the edge of danger who dares not allovi
her mother to see her letters.
CONFIDE IN PARENTS.

If you have sensible parents take them into
your confidence in all the affairs of the heart.
They will give you more good advice in one hour
than you can get from all the world beside in five
years. They havo toiled for you so long, and
prayed for you so much, they have your best interests at heart. At the same time let parents
review their opposition to a proposed marital
alliance, and see if their opposition is founded on
a genuine wish for the child's welfare, or on some
whim, or notion, or prejudice, or selfishness,
fighting a natural law and trying to make Niagara
run up stream. William Pitt, the Prime Minister
of England in the reign of George III, was always
saying wise things. One day Sir Walter Farquhar called on him in great perturbation. Mr. Pitt
inquired what was the matter, and Sir Walter
told him that his daughter was about to be married to one not worthy of her rank. Mr. Pitt
said: " I s the young man of respectable family?'
" Yes." " Is he respectable in himself?" "Yes."
'' Has he an estimable character?" c 'Yes." c' Why,
then, my dear Sir Walter, make no opposition." The advice was taken, and a happy
married life ensued. Let ministers and officers
$f the law decline officiating at clandestine mar-

CLAM)ESTIKE MARRIAGE.

53

riages. When they are asked to date a marriage
certificate back, as we all are asked, let them
peremptorily decline to say that the ceremony
was in November instead of January, or decline
to leave the date blank, lest others fill oat the
record erroneously. Let a law be passed in all
our States, as it has already beeu in some of the
States, making a license from officers of the law
necessary before we can unite couples, and then
make it necessary to publish beforehand in the
newspapers, as it used to be published in the
New England churches, so that if there be lawful
objection it may be presented, not swinging the
buoy on the rocks after the ship has struck and
gone to pieces.
And here it might be well for me to take all
the romance out of an escapade by quoting a
dozen lines of Eobert Pollock, the great Scotch
poet, where he describes the crazed victim of on*
of these escapades:
44
. . . Yet had she many days
Of sorrow in the world, but never wept.
She lived on alms, and carried in her hand
Some withered stalks she gathered in the spring1.
When any asked the cause she smiled, and said
They were her sisters, and would come and watch
Her grave when she was dead. She never spoko
Of her deceiver, father, mother, home.
Or child, or heaven, or hell, or God ; but still
In lonely places walked, and ever gazed
Upon the withered stalks, and talked to them;
Till, wasted to the shadow of her youth,
Witfc woe too wide to see beyond, she died."

54

CLANDESTINE MARRIAGE*
UNDER THE LIGHT.

But now I turn on this subject an intenser light
We have fifteen hundred lights in this church,
and when by electric touch they are kindled in
the evening service it is almost startling. But
this whole subject of " Clandestine Marriages and
Escapades" I put under a more intense light than
that. The headlight of a locomotive is terrible if
you stand near enough to catch the full glare of it.
As it sweeps around the "Horseshoe Curve" of
the Alleghanies, or along the edges of the Sierra
Nevadas, how far ahead, and how deep down, and
how high up it flashes, and there is infrtaiitaneous
revelation of mountain peak and wild "beasts hieing themselves to their caverns and cascades a
thousand feet tall, or clinging in white terror to
the precipices ! But more intense more far-reaching, more sudden, swifter and more tremendous
is the headlight of an advancing Judgment Day,
under which all the most ridden affairs of life
shall come to discovery and arraignment. I quote
an overwhelming passage of Scripture, in which I
put the whole emphasis on the word "secret."
" God shall bring every work into judgment, with
a very secret thing, whether it be good or evil."
What a time that will be in which the cover
shall be lifted from every home and from every
heart. The iniquity may have been so sly that it
escaped all human detection, but it will be as well
known on that day as the crimes of Sodom and
0oraorpah< unless for Christ's sake it has been for-

CLANDESTINE MARRIAGE.

55

given. All the fingers of universal condemnation
will be pointed at it. The archangel of wrath will
stand there with uplifted thunderbolt ready to
strike it.
The squeamishness and prudery of
earthly society, which hardly allowed some sins
to be mentioned on earth, are past, and the man
who was unclean and the woman who was impure, will, under a light brighter than a thousand
noonday suns, stand with the whole story written
on scalp, and forehead, and cheek; and hands,
and feet; the whole resurrection body aflame and
dripping with fiery disclosures, ten thousand
sepulchral and celestial and infernal voices, crying, "Unclean! Unclean! Unclean!"
All marital intrigues and all secret iniquities
will be published, as though all the trumpets
spoke them, and all the lightnings capitalized
them, and all the earthquakes rumbled them. Oh,
man, recreant to thy marriage vow ! Oh, woman,
in sinful collusion ! What, then, will become of
thy poor soul ? The tumbling Alps, and Pyrenees,
and Mount Washingtons, cannot hide thee from
the consequences of thy secret sins. Better repent
of them now, so that they cannot be brought
against thee. For the chief of sinners there is
pardon, if you ask it in time. But I leave you to
guess what chance there will be for those who on
earth lived in clandestine relations, when on that
day the very Christ who had such high appreciation of the marriage relation that He compared it
to His own relation with the Church, shall appear
at the door of the great hall of the Last Assize,

56

MATRIMONIAL HARMONY OR DISCORD.

and all the multitudes of earth, and hell, and
heaven, shall rise up and cry out from the three
galleries: "Behold, the bridegroom cometh !"

Matrimonial Harmony or Discord.
"Can two walk together unless they be agreed?"—AMOS
iii, 3.

No, Amos, they cannot. They will be tripping
each other up, or pushing each other down.
Married life under such circumstances will be the
sounding of perpetual war-whoop. In this course
of sermons on " The Marriage Ring," I will to-day
speak of the
MUTUAL DUTIES

of husband and wife, preparatory to discourses on
their individual duties.
A church within a church, a republic within a
republic, a world within a world, is spelled by
four letters—Home! If things go right there,
they go right everywhere; if things, go wrong
there, they go wrong everywhere. The door-sill
of the dwelling-house is the foundation of Church
and State. A man never gets higher than his
own garret or lower than his own cellar. In other
words, domestic life overarches and undergirds all
other life. The highest House of Congress is the

MATRIMONIAL HARMONY OR DISCORD.

57

domestic circle ; the rocking-chair in the nursery
is higher than a throne. George Washington
commanded the forces of the United States, but
Mary Washington commanded George. Chrysostom's mother made his pen for him. If a man
should start out and run seventy years in a
straight line he could not get out from under the
shadow of his own mantelpiece. I therefore
talk to you this morning about a matter of infinite
and eternal moment when I speak of your home.
THE SOCIAL BALANCE.

As individuals we are fragments. God makes
the race in part, and then he gradually puts us
together. What I lack, you make u p ; what you
lack, I make u p ; our deficits and surpluses of
character being the cog-wheels in the great social
mechanism. One person has the patience, anather
has the courage, another has the placidity, another
has the enthusiasm; that which is lacking in one
is made up by another, or made up by all. Buffaloes in herds, grouse in broods, quail in flocks,
the human race in circles. God has most beautifully arranged this. It is in this way that he
balances society; this conservative and that radical keeping things even. Every ship must have
its mast, cutwater, taffrail, ballast. Thank God,
then, for Princeton and Andover, for the opposites.
I have no more right to blame a man for being
different from me than a driving-wheel has a right
to blame the iron shaft that holds it to the centre.

58

MATRIMONIAL HARMONY OR DISCORD.

John Wesley balances Calvin's Institutes. A cold
thinker gives to Scotland the strong bones of
theology; Dr. Guthrie clothes them with a throbbing heart and warm flesh. The difficulty is that
we are not satisfied with just the work that God
hath given us to do. The water-wheel wants to
come inside the mill and grind the grist, and the
hopper wants to go out and dabble in the water.
Our usefulness and the welfare of society depend
upon our staying in just the place that God has
put us, or intended we should occupy.
A RELIC OF EDEN.

For more compactness, and that we may be
more useful, we are gathered in still smaller circles
in the home group. And there you have the same
varieties again: brothers, sisters, husband and
wife; all different in temperaments and tastes.
It is fortunate that it should be so. If the
husband be all impulse, the wife must be all
prudence. If one sister be sanguine in her temperament, the other must be lymphatic. Mary
and Martha are necessities. There will be no
dinner for Christ if there be no Martha; there
will be no audience for Jesus if there be no Mary.
The home organization is most beautifully constructed. Eden has gone; the bowers are all
broken down; the animals that Adam stroked
with his hand that morning when they came up
fco get their names have since shot forth tusk and
sting, and growled, panther at panther; in mid-air
iron beaks plunge till with clotted wing and eye-

MATRIMONIAL HARMONY OR DISCORD.

59

less sockets the twain come whirling down from
under the sun in blood and fire. Eden has gone,
but there is just one little fragment left*. It
floated down on the Eiver Hiddekel out of Paradise. It is the marriage institution. It does not,
as at the beginning, take away from man a rib.
Now it is an addition of ribs.
THE HOME ASSAULTED.

This institution of marriage has been defamed
in our day, and influences are abroad trying to
turn this earth into a Turkish harem or a great
Salt Lake City. While the pulpits have been
comparatively silent, novels—their cheapness only
equalled by their nastiness—are trying to educate,
have taken upon themselves to educate, this nation
in regard to holy marriage, which makes or
breaks for time and eternity. Oh, this is not a
question of residence or wardrobe ! It is a question charged with gigantic joy or sorrow, with
heaven or hell. Alas for this new dispensation, of
George Sands! Alas for the mingling of Me
nightshade with the marriage garlands ! Alas for
the venom of adders spit into the tankards ! Alas
for the white frosts of eternal death that kill the
orange blossoms ! The Gospel of Jesus Christ is
to assert what is right and to assert what is
wrong.
THE ASSAULT OF THE SORDID.

Attempt has been made to take the ma.rriage
institution, which was intended for the happiness

60

MATRIMONIAL HARMONY OR DISCORD.

and elevation of the race, and make it a mere
commercial enterprise; an exchange of houses and
lands and equippage; a business partnership of
two; stuffed up with the stories of romance and
knight-errantry, and unfaithfulness and feminine
angelhood. The two after a while have roused
up to find that, instead of the paradise they
dreamed of, they have got nothing but a Van
Amburgh's menagerie, filled with tigers and wild^
cats. Eighty thousand divorces in Paris in one
year preceded the worst revolution that France
ever saw. It was only the first course in that
banquet of hell; and I tell you what you know as
well as I do, that wrong notions on the subject of
Christian marriage are the cause at this day of
more moral outrage before God and man than
any other cause.
There are some things that I want to bring
before you. I know there are those of you who
have had homes set up for a great many years;
and then there are those here who have just established their home. They have only been in it a
few months or a few years. Then there are those
who will, after awhile, set up for themselves a
home, and it is right that I should speak out upon
these themes.
THE BENEFICENT GUEST.

My first counsel to you is, have Jesus in your new
home, if it be a new home, and let Him who was a
guest at Bethany be in your household; let the Divine blessing drop upon your every hope and plan
and expectation. Those young people who begin

MATRIMONIAL HARMONY OR DISCORD.

&\

with God end with heaven. Have on your right
hand the engagement-ring of the divine affection.
If one of you be a Christian, let that one take a
Bible and read a few verses in the evening-time,
and then kneel down and commend yourselves to
Him who setteth the solitary in families. I want
to tell you that the destroying angel passes by
without touching or entering the door-post sprinkled with the blood of the everlasting covenant.
Why is it that in some families they never get
along, and in others they always get along well ?
I have watched such cases, and have come to a
conclusion. In the first instance, nothing seemed
to go pleasantly, and after awhile came devastation, domestic disaster or estrangement. Why 1
They started wrong ! In the other case, although
there were hardships and trials, and some things
that had to be explained, still things went on
pleasantly until the very last. Why ? They started
right!
FORBEARANCE NEEDED.

My advice to you in your home is to exercise to
the very last possibility of your nature the law of
forbearance. Prayers in the household will not
make up for everything. Some of the best people
in the world are the hardest to get along with.
They are people who stand up in prayer-meetings
and pray like angels, who at home are uncompromising and cranky. You may not have everything just as you want it. Sometimes it will be
*le duty of the husband, and sometimes of the
ife, to yield; but both stand punctiliously on

62

MATRIMONIAL HARMONY OR DISCORD.

your rights, and you will have a Waterloo with
no Blucher coming up at nightfall to decide the
conflict.
A GRANDFATHER'S APOLOGY.

Never be ashamed to apologize when you have
done wrong in domestic affairs. Let that be a law
of your household. The best thing I ever heard
of my grandfather, whom I never saw, was this:
that once, having uprighteously rebuked one of
his children, he himself having lost his patience,
and, perhaps having been misinformed of the
child's doings, found out his mistake, and in the
evening of the same day gathered all his family
together, and said: "Now,, I have one explanation
to make, and one thing to say. Thomas, this
morning, I rebuked you very unfairly. I am very
sorry for it. I rebuked you in the presence of the
whole family, and now I ask your forgiveness in
their presence." It must have taken some courage
to do that. It was right, was it not? Never be
ashamed to apologize for domestic inaccuracy.
Find out the points; what are the weak points, if
I may call them so, of your companion, and then
stand aloof from them.
Do not carry the fire of your temper too near the
gunpowder ? 11 the wife be easily fretted by disorder in the household, let the husband be careful
where he throws his slippers. If the husband
come home from the store with his patience all
exhausted, do not let the wife unnecessarily cross
his temper; but both stand up for your rights,
and I will promise the everlasting sound of the

MATRIMONIAL HARMONY OH DISCORD.

63

^rar whoop. Your life will be spent in making
up, and marriage will be to you an unmitigated
curse. Cowper said:
"The kindest and the happiest pair,
Will find occasion to forbear;
And something, every day they live,
To pity, and perhaps forgive."

I advise, also, that you make your chief pleas
ure circle around about that home. It is unfortunate when it is otherwise. If the husband
spend the most of his nights away from home, of
choice, and not of necessity, he is not the head of
the household; he is only the cashier. If the wife
throw the cares of the household in the servant's
lap, and then spend five nights of the week at the
opera or theater, she may clothe her children with
satins and laces and ribbons that would confound
a French milliner, but they are orphans. Oh, it is
sad when a child has to say its prayers alone because mother has gone off to the evening entertainment! In India they bring children and throw
them to the crocodiles, and it seems very cruel;
but the jaws of New York and Brooklyn dissipapation are swallowing down more little children
to-day than all the monsters that ever crawled
upon the banks of the Ganges!
A GODLESS MOTHER'S GRIEF.

I have seen the sorrow of a godless mother on
the death of a child she had neglected. It was not
so much grief that she felt from the fact that the
child was dead as the fact that she had neglected
ft. She said: "If I had only watched over and

64

MATRIMONIAL HARMONY OR DISCORD.

oared for the child, I know God would not have
taken it." The tears came not; it was a dry, blistering tempest—a scorching simoon of the desert.
"When she wrung her hands it seemed as if she would
twist her fingers from their sockets; when she
seized her hair it seemed as if she had, in wild ter
ror, grasped a coiling serpent with her right hand.
No tears! Comrades of the little one came in
and wept over the coffin; neighbors came in, and
the moment they saw the still face of the child the
shower broke. No tears for her. God gives tears
as the summer rain to the parched soul; but in all
the universe the driest and hottest, the most
scorching and consuming thing is a mother's
heart if she has neglected her child when once it
is dead. God may forgive her, but she will never
forgive herself. The memory will sink the eyes
deeper into the sockets, and pinch the face, and
whiten the hair, and eat up the heart with vultures that will not be satisfied, forever plunging
deeper their iron beaks. Oh, you wanderers from
your home, go back to your duty! The brightest
flowers in ail the earth are those which grow in
the garden of a Christian household, clambering
©ver the porch of a Christian home.
MATRIMONIAL

CONGENIALITY.

I advise you also to cultivate sympathy of occupation. Sir James Mackintosh, one of the
most eminent and elegant men that ever lived,
while standing at the very height of his eminence,
said to a great company of scholars: "My wife
made me." The wife ought to *>e the advising

MATRIMONIAL HARMONY OR DISCORD.

6&

partner in every firm. She ought to be interested
in all the losses and gains of shop and store.
She ought to have a right—she has a right—to
know everything. If a man goes into a business
transaction that he dare not tell his wife of, you
may depend that he is on the way either to bankruptcy or moral ruin. There may be some things
which he does not wish to trouble his wife with;
but if he dare not tell her, he is on the road to
discomfiture.
On the other hand, the husband ought to be
sympathetic with the wife's occupation. It is no
easy thing to keep house. Many a woman that
could have endured martyrdom as well as Margaret,
the Scotch girl, has actually been worn out by house
maiiagement. There are a thousand martyrs of
the kitchen. It is very annoying, after the vexations of the day, around the stove or the table, or in
the nursery or parlor, to have your husband say:
" You know nothing about trouble; you ought to
be in the store half an hour." Sympathy of occupation!
If the husband's work cover him with the soot
of the furnace or the odors of leather or soap
factories, let not the wife be easily disgusted at
the begrimed hands or unsavory aroma. Your
gains are one, your interests are one, your losses
are one; lay hold of the work of life with both
hands. Four hands to fight the battles; four
eyes to watch for the danger; four shoulders on
w hich to carry the trials. It is a very sad thing
when the painter has a wife who does not like

66

MATRIMONIAL HARMONY OR DISCORD.

pictures. It is a very sad thing for a pianist
when she has a husband who does not like
music.
GENTEEL BUSINESS.

It is a very sad thing when a wife is not suited
unless her husband has what is called a " genteel
business." So far as I understand a " genteel
business," it is something to which a man goes
at ten o'clock in the morning, and from which he
comes home at two or three o'clock in the afternoon, and gets a large amount of money for
doing nothing. That is, I believe, a " genteel
business;" and there has been many a wife who
has made the mistake of not being satisfied until
the husband has given up the tanning of the hides,
or the turning of the banisters, or the building of
the walls, and put himself in circles where he has
nothing to do but smoke cigars and drink wine,
and get himself into habits that upset him, going
down in the maelstrom, taking his wife and
children with him.
There are a good many trains running from
earth to destruction. They start all the hours of
the day, and all the hours of the night. There
are the freight trains; they go very slowly and
very heavily; and there are the accommodation
trains going on towards destruction, and they stop
very often and let a man get out when he wants
to. But genteel idleness is an express train;
Satan is the stoker, and Death is the engineer;
and though one may come out in front of it and
swing the red flag of " danger," or the lantern of

MATRIMONIAL HARMONY OR DISCORD.

67

God's Word, it makes just one shot into perdition, coming down the embankment with a shout
and a wail and a shriek—crash, crash ! There are
two classes of people sure of destruction: First,
those who have nothing to do; secondly, those
who have something to do, but tire too lazy or toe
proud to do it.
LOVE TO PRESIDE.

I have one more word of advice to give to those
who would have a happy home, and that is, let
love preside in it. When your behavior in the
domestic circle becomes a mere matter of calculation ; when the caress you give is merely the result
of deliberate study of the position you occupy,
happiness lies stark dead on the hearthstone.
When the husband's position as head of the household is maintained by loudness of voice, by
strength of arm, by fire of temper, the republic of
domestic bliss has become a despotism that neither
God nor man will abide. Oh, ye who promised to
love each other at the altar, how dare you commit
perjury? Let no shadow of suspicion come on
your affection. It is easier to kill that flower than
it is to make it live again. The blast from hel]
that puts out that light leaves you in the blackness of darkness forever.
A HOUSE NOT A HOME.

Here are a man and wife ; they agree in nothing else, but they agree they will have a home,
They will have a splendid house, and they think
that if they have a house they will have a home.
Architects m^ke the plan, and the mechanics exe-

68

MATRIMONIAL HARMONY OR DISCORD.

cute i t ; the house to cost one hundred thousand
dollars. It is done. The carpets are spread, lights
are hoisted, curtains are hung, cards of invitation
sent out. The horses in gold-plated harness
prance at the gate; guests come in and take their
places; the flute sounds; the dancers go up and
down ; and with one grand whirl the wealth and
the fashion and the mirth of the great town wheel
amidst the pictured walls.
Ha ! this is happiness. Float it on the smoking
viands ; sound it in the music; whirl it in the
dance ; cast it on the snow of sculpture ; sound it
up the brilliant stairway; flash it in chandeliers. Happiness, indeed. Let us build on the
center of the parlor floor a throne to happiness;
let all the guests, when they come in, bring their
flowers and pearls and diamonds, and throw them
on this pyramid, and let it be a throne; and then
let Happiness, the Queen, mount the throne, and
we will stand around, and, all chalices lifted, we
Will say : " Drink, O Queen. Live forever."
LIGHTS OUT.

But the guests depart, the flutes are breathless,
the last clash of the impatient hoofs is heard in
the distance, and the twain of the household come
back to see the Queen of Happiness on the throne
amid the parlor floor. But, alas, as they come
back the flowers have faded, the sweet odors have
become the smell of a charnel-house, and, instead
of the Queen of Happiness, there sits there the
gaunt form of Anguish, with bitten lip and sunken
eye, and ashes in her hair.

MATRIMONIAL HARMONY OR DISCORD.

69

The romp and joyous step of the dancers who
have left seems rumbling yet, like jarring thunders
that quake the floor and rattle the glasses of the
feast, rim to rim. The spilled wine on the floor
turns into blood. The wreaths of plush have become wriggling reptiles. Terrors catch tangled
in the canopy that overhangs the couch. A strong
gust of wind comes through the hall and the
drawing-room and the bed-chamber, in which all
the lights go out. * And from the lips of the winebeakers come the words: " Happiness is not in us."
And the arches respond: " It is not in us." And
the silenced instruments of music, thrummed on
by invisible fingers, answer: "Happiness is not
in us." And the frozen lips of Anguish break
open, and, seated on the throne of wilted flowers,
she strikes her bony hands together, and groans:
" I t is not in me."
HAPPINESS IN POVERTY.

That very night a clerk with a salary of a
thousand dollars a year—only one t h o u s a n d goes to his home, s e t u p three months ago, just
after the marriage-day. Love meets him at the
door; love sits with him at the table ; love talks
over the work of the day; love takes down the
Bible, and reads of Him who came our souls to
save; and they kneel, and while they are kneeling—right in that plain room, on that plain
carpet—the angels of God build a throne, not
out of flowers that perish and fade away, but out
of garlands of heaven, wreath on top of wreath,
amaranth on amaranth, until the throne is done.

ro

MARITAL DUTIES.

Then the harps of God sounded, and suddenly
there appeared one who mounted the throne, with
eye so bright and brow so fair that the twain knew
it was Christian Love. And they knelt at the
throne, and, putting one hand on each head, she
blessed them, and said: " Happiness is with me!"
And that throne of celestial bloom withered not
with the passing years; and the queen left not
the throne till one day the married pair felt
stricken in years—felt themselves called away,
and knew not which way to go, and the queen
bounded from the throne, and said: " Follow me,
and I will show you the way up to the realm of
everlasting love." And so they went up to sing
songs of love, and walk on pavements of love,
and to live together in mansions of love, and to
rejoice forever in the truth that God is love.

Marital D u t i e s .
"And Isaac went out to meditate in the* field at eventide :
and he lifted up his eyes, and saw, and, behold, the camels
were coming."—GEN. xxiv, 63.

A bridal pageant on the back of dromedaries \
The camel is called the ship of the desert. Its
swinging motion in the distance is suggestive of a
vessel rising and falling with the billows, Though

MARITAL DUTIES.

71

Awkward, how imposing these creatures as they
move along, whether in ancient or modern times,
sometimes carrying four hundred or four thousand
travelers from Bagdad to Aleppo, or from Bassora
to Damascus. In my text comes a caravan. We
notice the noiseless step of the' broad foot, the
velocity of motion, the gay caparison of saddle,
and girth, and awning, sheltering the riders from
the sun, and the hilarity of the mounted passengers, and we cry out: " W h o are they?" Well,
Isaac has been praying for a wife, and it is time
he had one, for he is forty years of age; and his
servant, directed by the Lord, has made a selection
of Eebecca; and, with her companions and
maidens, she is on her way to her new home,
carrying with her the blessing of all her friends.
THE NUPTIAL MEETING.

Isaac is in the fields, meditating upon his proposed passage from celibacy to monogamy. And
he sees a speck against the sky, then groups of
people, and after a while he finds that the grandest
earthly blessing that ever comes to a man is approaching with this gay caravan.
In this fifth discourse on "The Marriage King,"
having spoken of the choice of a lifetime companion, I take it for granted, O man, that your
marriage was divinely arranged, and that the
camels have arrived from the right direction and
at the right time, bringing the one that was intended for your consort—a Rebecca and not a
Jezebel. I proceed to discourse as to how you
aught to treat your wife, and my ambition is to

72

MARITAL DUTIES.

tell you more plain truth than you ever heard m
any three-quarters of an hour in all your life.
THE RESPONSIBILITY UNDERTAKEN.

First of all, I charge you realize your responsibility in having taken her from the custody and
care and homestead in which she was once sheltered. What courage you must have had, and
what confidence in yourself, to say to her practically: " I will be to you more than your father
and mother, more than all the friends you ever
had or ever can have. Give up everything and
take me. I feel competent to see you through
life in safety. You are an immortal being, but
I am competent to defend you and make you
happy. However bright and comfortable a home
you have now, and though in one of the rooms
is the arm-chair in which you rocked, and in the
garret is the cradle in which you were hushed
and the trundle bed in which you slept, and in
the sitting-room are the father and mother who
have got wrinkle-faced, and stoop-shouldered, and
dim-eyesighted in taking care of you, yet you will
do better to come with me." I am amazed that
any of us ever had the sublimity of impudence to
ask such a transfer from a home assured to a home
conjectured and unbuilt.
A RISKY VOYAGE.

You would think me a very daring and hazardous adventurer if I should go down to one of the
piers on the North River, and at a time when there
was a great lack of ship captains, and I should,
witk no knowledge of navigation, propose to tak#

MARITAL DUTIES.

73

a steamer across to Glasgow or Havre, and say:
" All aboard. Haul in the planks and swing out,"
and, passing out into the sea, plunge through
darkness and storm. If I succeeded in getting
charge of a ship, it would be one that would never
be heard of again. But that is the boldness of
every man that proffers marriage. He says : . " I
will navigate you through the storms, the cyclones, the fogs of a lifetime. I will run clear of
rocks and icebergs. I have no experience and I
have no seaport, but all aboard for the voyage of a
lifetime. I admit that there have been ten thousand shipwrecks on this very route, but don't
hesitate. T u t ! Tut! There now. Don't cry.
Brides must not cry at the wedding."
THE WIFE'S TEMERITY.

In response to this the woman, by her action,
practically says : " I have but one life to live, and
I entrust it all to you. My arm is weak, but I will
depend on the strength of yours. I don't know
much of the world, but I rely on your wisdom. I
put my body, my mind, my soul, my time, my
eternity, in your keeping. I make no reserve.
Even my name I resign and take yours, though
mine is a name that suggests all that was honorable in my father, and all that was good in my
mother, and all that was pleasant in my brothers
and sisters. I start with you on a journey which
shall not part except at the edge of your grave or
mine. Ruth, the Moabitess, made no more thorough self-abnegation than I make, when I take
her tremendous words, the pathos of which many

74

MARITAL DUTHS.

centuries have not cooled: ' Entreat me not to
leave thee, or to return from following after thee;
for whither thou goest, I will go, and where thou
lodgest, I will lodge. Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God. Where thou diest will
I die, and there will I be buried. The Lord do so
to me and more also, if aught but death part thee
and me.' Side by side in life. Side by side in the
burying-ground. Side by side in heaven. Before
God and man, and with my immortal soul in the
oath, I swear eternal fidelity."
ENTITLED TO ADMIRATION.

Now, my brother, how ought you to treat her ?
Unless you are an ingrate infinite you will treat
her well. You will treat her better than any one
in the universe except your God. Her name will
have in it more music than in all that Chopin, or
Bach, or Rheinberger composed. Her eyes, swollen
with three weeks of night watching over a child
with scarlet fever, will be to you beautiful as a May
morning. After the last rose petal has dropped
out of her cheek, after the last feather of the
raven's wing has fallen from her hair, after across
her forehead, and under her eyes, and across her
face there are as many wrinkles as there are graves
over which she has wept, you will be able truthfully to say, in the words of Solomon's song: " Behold, thou art fair, my love. Behold thou art fair.y>
And perhaps she may respond appropriately in the
words that no one but the matchless Robert Burns
could ever have found pen or ink, or heart or brain,
to write :

MARITAL DUTIES.

75

" John Anderson, my jo, John,
We clamb the hill thegithe**
And mony a canty day, John,
We've had wi' ane anither.
Now we maun totter down, JohL,
But hand in hand we'll go;
And sleep thegither at the foot,
John Anderson, my jo."

If any one assail her good name, you will have
hard work to control your temper, and if you
should strike him down the sin will not be unpardonable. By as complete a surrender as the
universe ever saw—except that of the Son of God
for your salvation and mine—she has a first
mortgage on your body, mind, and soul, and the
mortgage is foreclosed; and you do not more
thoroughly own your two eyes or your two hands
than she owns you. The longer the journey
Eebekah makes and the greater the risks of her
expedition on the back of the camels, the more
thoroughly is Isaac bound to be kind, and indulgent and worthy.
LOVER'S PROMISES BINDING.

Now, be honest and pay your debts. You
promised to make her happy. Are you making
her happy? You who are an honest man in other
things, and feel the importance of keeping a
contract. If you have induced her into a conjugal partnership under certain pledges of kindness and valuable attention, and then have failed
to fulfill your word, you deserve to have a suit
brought against you for getting goods under
false pretenses, and then you ought to be mulcted

76

MARITAL DUTIES.

in a large amount of damages. Review now all
the fine, beautiful, complimentary, gracious, and
glorious things you promised her before marriage,
and reflect whether you have kept your faith.
Do you say, " Oh, that was all sentimentalism,
and romance, and a joke," and that "they all
talk that way!" Well, let that plan be tried on
yourself. Suppose I am interested in Western
lands, and I fill your mind with roseate speculation,
and I tell you that a city is already laid out on the
farm that I propose to sell you, and that a new
railroad will run close by, and have a depot for
easy transportation of the crops, and that eight or
ten capitalists are going to put up fine residences
close by, and that the climate is delicious, and
that the ground, high up, gives no room for malaria, and that every dollar planted will grow up
into a bush bearing ten or twenty dollars, and
my speech glows with enthusiasm until you rush
off with me to an attorney to have the deed drawn,
and the money paid down, and the bargain completed. You can hardly sleep nights because of
the El Dorado, the Elysium, upon which you are
soon to enter.
A WESTERN EDEN.

You give up your home at the East, you bid
good-by to your old neighbors, and take the train,
and after many days' journey you arrive at a
quiet depot, from which you take a wagon thirty
miles through the wilderness, and reach your
new place. You see a man seated on a wet log
in a swamp, and shaking with the fifteenth at-

MARITAL DUTIES.

77

tack of chills and fever, and ask him who he is.
He says: " I am a real estate agent, having in
charge the property around here." You ask
him where the new depot is. He tells you that
it has not yet been built, but no doubt will be if
the company get their bill for the track through tha
next legislature. You ask him where- the new
city is laid out. He says, with chattering teethi
"If you will wait till this chill is off, I will show
it to you on the map I have in my pocket." You
ask him where the capitalists are going to build
their fine houses, and he says: " Somewhere along
those lowlands out there by those woods, when
the water has been drained off." That night you
aleep in the hut of the real estate agent, and
though you pray for everybody else, you do not
pray for me. Being more fortunate than many
men who go out in such circumstances, you have
money enough to get back, and you come to me,
and out of breath in your indignation, you say:
'' You have swindled me out of everything. What
do you mean in deceiving me about that Western
property?" " Oh," I reply, " t h a t was all right;
that was sentimentalism, and romance, and a
joke. That's the way they all talk."
But more excusable would I be in such deception than you, O man, who by glow of words and
personal magnetism induced a womanly soul into
surroundings which you have taken no care to
make attractive, so that she exchanged her
fathers house for the dismal swamp of married
experience—treeless, flowerless, shelterless, com-

^8

MARITAL DUTIES.

fortless, and Godless. I would not be half %o
much to blame in cheating you out of a farm as
you in cheating a woman out of the happiness of
a lifetime.
LOVERS' ATTENTION!

My brother, do not get mad at what I say, but
honestly compare the promises you made, and see
whether you have kept them. Some of you spent
every evening of the week with your betrothed
before marriage, and since then you spent every
evening away, except you have influenza or some
sickness on account of which the doctor says you
must not go out. You used to fill your conversation with interjections of adulation, and now
you think it sounds silly to praise the one who
ought to be more attractive to you as the years go
by, and life grows in severity of struggle and becomes more sacred by the baptism of tears—tears
over losses, tears over graves. Compare the way
some of you used to come in the house in the
evening, when you were attempting the capture
of her affections, and the way some of you come
into the house in the evening now.
DON'T BE PRE-OCCUPIED.

Then what politeness, what distillation of smiles,
What graciousness, sweet as the peach orchard in
blossom week! Now, some of you come in and
put your hat on the rack and scowl, and say:
"Lost money to-day!" and you sit down at the
table and criticize the way the food is cooked.
You shove back before the others are done eating,
and snatch up the evening paper and read, ob'

MABITAL DUTIES.

79

livious of what has been going on in that home
all day. The children are in awe before the domestic autocrat. Bubbling over with fun, yet they
must be quiet; with healthful curiosity, yet they
must fl.sk no questions. The wife has had enough
annoyances in the nursery, and parlor, and kitchen,
to fill her nerves with nettles and spikes. As you
have provided the money for food and wardrobe,
you feel you have done all required of you.
Toward the good cheer, and the intelligent improvement, and the moral entertainment of that
home, which at the longest can last but a few
years, you are doing nothing. You seem to have
no realization of the fact that soon these children
will be grown up or in their sepulchres, and will
be far removed from your influence, and that the
wife will soon end her earthly mission, and that
house will be occupied by others, and you yourself
will be gone.
Gentlemen, fulfill your contracts. Christian
marriage is an affectional bargain. In heathen
lands a man wins his wife by achievements. In
some countries wives are bought by the payment
of so ni^ny dollars, as so many cattle or sheep. In
one country the man gets on a horse and rides
down where a group of women are standing, and
seizes one of them by the hair, and lifts her,
struggling and resisting, on his horse, and if her
brothers and friends do not overtake her before
she gets to the jungle, she is his lawful wife. In
another land, the masculine candidate for marriage is beaten by the club of the one whom he

80

MARITAL DUTIES.

would make his bride. If he cries out under the
pounding, he is rejected. If he receives the blows
uncomplainingly, she is his by right. Endurance,
and bravery, and skill, decide the marriage in barbarous lands, but Christian marriage is a voluntary
bargain, in which, you promise protection, support, companionship, and love.
THE TERMS OF THE CONTRACT.

Business men have in their fire-proof safes a
file of papers containing their contracts, and sometimes they take them out and read them over to
see what the party of the first part and the party
of the second part really bound themselves to do.
Different ministers of religion have their own peculiar forms of marriage ceremony; but if you
have forgotten what you promised at the altar of
wedlock, you had better buy or borrow an Episcopal Church Service, which contains the substance of all intelligent marriage ceremonies,
when it says: " I take thee to be my wedded wife,
to have and to hold from this day forward, for
better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish till
death us do part, according to God's holy ordinance, and thereto I pledge thee my troth." Would
it not be a good idea to have that printed in tract
form and widely distributed?
NEVER FLIRT.

The fact is, that many men are more kind to
everybody else's wives than to their own wives.
They will let the wife carry a heavy coal scuttle
upstairs, and will at one bound clear the width

MARITAL DUTIES.

81

©f a parlor to pick up some other lady's pockethandkerchief.
There is an evil which I have
seen under the sun, and it is common among
men—namely, husbands in flirtation. The attention they ought to put upon their own wives
they bestow upon others. They smile on them
coyly and askance, and with a manner that seems
to say : " I wish I was free from that old drudge
at home. What an improvement you would be
on my present surroundings!" And bouquets
are sent, and accidental meetings take place, and
late at night the man comes to his prosaic home,
whistling and hilarious, and wonders that the
wife is jealous. There are thousands of men who,
while not positively immoral, need radical correction of their habits in this direction. It is
meanness immeasurable for a man by his behavior to seem to say to his wife: "You can't
help yourself, and I will go where I please, and
admire whom I please, and I defy your criticism."
Why did you not have that put in the bond, O
domestic Shylock? Why did you not have it
understood before you were pronounced husband
and wife that she should have only a part of the
dividend of your affections; that when, as time
rolled on and the cares of life had erased some of
the bright lines from her face, and given unwieldiness to her form, you would have the
reserved right to pay obeisance to cheeks more
rubicund, and figure lither and more agile, and
as you demanded the last pound of patience and
endurance on her part, you could, with the em-

82

MARITAL DUTIES.

phasis of an Edwin Forrest or a Macready, have
tapped the eccentric marriage document, and
have said: "It's in the bond!" If this modern
Rebekah had understood beforehand where she
was alighting, she would have ordered the camel
drivers to turn the caravan backward toward
Padan-aram. Flirtation has its origin either in
dishonesty or licentiousness. The married man
who indulges in it is either a fraud or a rake.
However high up in society such a one may be,
and however sought after, I would not give a
three-cent piece, though it had been three times
clipped, for the virtue of the masculine flirt.
TONE UP.

The most worthy thing for the thousands of
married men to do is to go home and apologize
for past neglects, and brighten up their old love.
Take up the family Bible and read the record of
the marriage day. Open the drawer of relics in
the box inside the drawer containing the trinkets
of your dead child. Take up the pack of yellowcolored letters that were written before you became one. Rehearse the scenes of joy and sorrow
in which you have mingled. Put all these things
as fuel on the altar, and by a coal of sacred fir©
rekindle the extinguished light. It was a blast
from hell that blew it out, and a gale from heaven
will fan it into a blaze.
Ye who have broken marriage vows, speak out J
take your wife into all your plans, your successes,
your defeats, your ambitions. Tell her eveything,
Walk arm-in-^rm with her into places of amuse-

MARITAL DUTIES.

83

rnent, and on the piazza of summer wateringplaces, and up the rugged way of life, and down
through dark ravine, and when one trembles on
the way, let the other be re-enforcement. In no
case pass yourself off as a single man, practicing
gallantries. Do not, after you are fifty years of
age, in ladies' society try to look young-mannish.
RESPECT HER PIETY.

Interfere not with your wife's religious nature.
Put her not in that awful dilemma in which so
many Christian wives are placed by their husbands, who ask them to go to places or do things
which compel them to decide between loyalty to
God and loyalty to the husband. Eather than ask
her to compromise her Christian character, encourage her to be more and more a Christian, for there
will be times in your life when you will want the
help of her Christian resources; and certainly,
when you remember how much influence your
mother had over you, you do not want the mother
of your children to set a less gracious example. It
pleases me greatly to hear the unconverted and
worldly husband say about his wife, with no idea
that it will get to her ears; " There is the most
godly woman alive. Her goodness is a perpetual
rebuke to my waywardness. Nothing on earth
could ever induce her to do a wrong thing. I
hope the children will take after her instead of
after me. If there is any heaven at all, I arp sur-§
she will go there."

84:

MARITAL DUTIES.
THE PRIEST OF THE HOUSEHOLD.

Ay, my brother, do you not think it would be a
wise and a safe thing for you to join her on the
road to heaven ? You think you have a happy
home now, but what a home you would have if
you both were religious. What a new sacredness
it would give to your marital relation, and what a
new light it would throw on the forehead of your
children. In sickness what a comfort. In reverses
of fortune what a wealth. In death what a triumph. God meant you to be the high priest of
your household. Go home to-day and take the
Bible on your lap, and gather all your family yet
living around you, and those not living will hear
of it in a flash, and as ministering spirits will
hover—father and mother and children gone, and
all your celestial kindred. Then kneel down, and
if you can't think of a prayer to offer, I will give
you a prayer—namely: "Lord God, I surrender
to Thee myself and my beloved wife, and these
dear children. For Christ's sake forgive all the
past, and help us for all the future. We have lived
together here; may we live together forever.
Amen and amen !" Dear me, what a stir it would
make among your best friends on earth and in
heaven.
A HUSBAND IMPRISONED.

Joseph the Second, the emperor, was so kind
and so philanthropic that he excited the unbounded lQve of most of his subjects. He abolished
serfdom, established toleration, and lived in the
happiness of his people. One day while on his

MARITAL DUTIES.

85

way to Ostend to declare it a free port, and while
at the head of a great procession, he saw a woman
at the door of her cottage in dejection. The emperor dismounted, and asked the cause of her
grief. She said her husband had gone to Ostend
to see the emperor, and had declined to take her
with him; for as he was an alien he could not understand her loyal enthusiasm, and that it was the
one great desire of her life to see the ruler for whose
kindness, and goodness, and greatness she had an
unspeakable admiration; and her disappointment
in not being able to go and see him was simply
unbearable.
The emperor Joseph took from his pocket a box
decorated with diamonds surrounding a picture of
himself, and presented it to her, and when the
picture revealed to whom she was talking, she
knelt in reverence and clasped her hands in gladness before him. The emperor took the name of
her husband, and the probable place where he
might be found at Ostend, and had him imprisoned for the three days of the emperor's visit, so that
the husband, returning home, found that the wife
had seen the emperor while he had not seen him.
In families of this earth the wife, through the
converting grace of God, has seen the "King in
His beauty," and He has conferred upon her the
pearl of great price, while the husband is an " alien
from the covenant of promise, without God and
without hope in the world," and imprisoned in
worldliness and sin. Oh, that they might, arm-inarm, go this day and §ee Him, who is not only

86

COSTUME AND MORALS.

greater and lovelier than any Joseph of earthly
dominion, but "high over all, in earth, and air,
and sky !" His touch is life. His voice is music.
His smile is heaven.
.

»_#-.

C o s t u m e a n d Morals.
44
Moreover the Lord said, Because the daughters of Zion
Are haughty., and walk with stretched-f orth necks and wanton eyes,'walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling
with their feet: in that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments about their feet, and their
cauls, and their round tires like the moon, the chains, and
the bracelets, and the munlers, the bonnets, and the ornaments of the legs, and the headbands, and the tablets, and
the earrings, the rings, and nose-jewels, the changeable suits
of apparel, and the mantles, and the wimples, and the crisping pins, the glasses, and the fine linen., and the hoods, and
the veils."—ISA. iii, 16, 18-23.

This is a Jerusalem fashion plate. It puts us
two thousand six hundred years back, and sets
us down in an ancient city. The procession of
men and women is moving up and down the gay
streets. It is the height of the fashionable season. The sensible men and women move with
so much modesty that they do not attract our
attention. But here come the haughty daughters of Jerusalem. They lean forward; they
lean very much forward—so far forward as to
be unnatural—teetering, wobbling, wriggling^

COSTUME AND MORALS.

87

flirting, or as my text describes it, they "walk
with stretched-forth necks, walking and mincing
as they go."
See. That is a princess. Look. That is a
Damascus sword-maker. Look. That is a Syrian
merchant. The jingling of the chains, and the
lashing of the head-bands, and the exhibitions of
universal swagger attract the attention of the
Prophet Isaiah, and he brings his camera to bear
upon the scene, and takes a picture for all the
ages. But where is that scene? Vanished. Where
are those gay streets? Vermin-covered population pass through them. Where are the hands,
and the necks, and the foreheads, and the
shoulders, and the feet that sported all that magnificence? Ashes! Ashes!
That we should all be clad is proved by the
opening of
THE FIRST WARDROBE

in Paradise, with its apparel of dark green
That we should all as far as our means allow us
be beautifully and gracefully appareled is proved
by the fact that God never made a wave but He
gilded it with golden sunbeams, or a tree but He
garlanded it with blossoms, or a sky but He studded it with stars, or allowed even the smoke of a
furnace to ascend but He columned, and turreted,
and doled, and scrolled it into outlines of indescribable gracefulness. When I see the apple orchards of the spring and the pageantry of the
autumnal forests, I come to the conclusion that
if; nature ever does join the Churchy while $h$

88

COSTUME AND MORALS.

may be a Quaker in the silence of her worship,
she never will be a Quaker in the style of her
dress. Why the notches of a fern leaf or the
stamen of a water lily? Why, when the day departs, does it let the folding doors of heaven stay
open so long, when it might go in so quickly?
One summer morning I saw an army of a
million spears, each one adorned with a diamond
of the first water—I mean the grass with the dew
on it.
When the prodigal came home his father not
only put a coat on his back, but jewelry on his
hand. Christ wore a beard, Paul, the bachelor
apostle, not afflicted with any sentimentality, admired the arrangement of a woman's hair, when
he said in his epistle: "If a woman have long
hair, it is a glory unto her." There will be fashion
in heaven as on earth, but it will be a different
kind of fashion. It will decide the color of the
dress; and the population of that country, by a
beautiful law, will wear white.
THE GODDESS OF FASHION.

I say these things as a background to my sermon, to show you that I have no prim, precise,
prudish, or cast-iron theories on the subject of
human apparel; but the goddess of fashion has
set up her throne in this country, and at the
sound of the timbrels we are all expected to fall
down and worship. Her altars smoke with the
sacrifice of the bodies and souls of ten thousand
victims.

COSTUME AND MORALS.

89

When I come to count the victims of fashion
I find as many masculine as feminine. Men
make an easy tirade against women, as though
she were the chief worshipper at this idolatrous
shrine, and no doubt some men in the more conspicuous part of the pew have already cast
glances at the more retired part of the pew, their
look a prophecy of a generous distribution. My
sermon shall be as appropriate for one end of the
pew as for the other.
MASCULINE FOLLIES.

Men are as much the idolaters of fashion as
women, but they sacrifice on a different part of
the altar. With men the fashion goes to cigars,
and club-rooms, and yachting parties, and wine
suppers. In the United States the men chew up
and smoke one hundred millions of dollars' worth
of tobacco every year. That is their fashion. In
London not long ago a man died who started in
life with $750,000; but he ate it all up in gluttonies, sending his agents to all parts of the earth
for some rare delicacy for the palate, sometimes
one plate of food costing him three or four hundred
dollars. He ate up his whole fortune, and had only
one guinea left. With that he bought a woodcock, and had it dressed in the very best style, ate
it, gave two hours for digestion, then walked out
on Westminster Bridge and threw himself into
the Thames and died, doing on a large scale what
you and I have often seen done on a small scale.
But men do not abstain from millinery and
elaboration of skirt through any superiority of

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simplicity. It is only because such appendages
would be a blockade to business. What would
sashes and trains three and a half yards long do
in a stock market ? And yet men are the disciples
of custom just as much as women. Some of them
wear boots so tight that they can hardly walk in
the paths of righteousness, and there are men
who buy expensive suits of clothes: and never pay
for them, and who go through the streets in great
smioes of color, like animated checker-boards. I
say these things because I want to show you that
I am impartial in my discourse, and that both
sexes, in the language of the surrogate's office,
"share and share alike."
INDELICATE APPAREL.

As God may help me I am going to set forth
the evil effects of improper dress or an excessive
discipleship of costume. It is a simple truth
that you all know, although the pulpit has not
yet uttered i t : that much of the womanly costume
of our time is the cause of the temporal and
eternal damnation of a multitude of men. There
is a shamelessness among many in what is called
high life that calls for vehement protest. The
strife with many seems to be how near they can
come to the verge of indecency without falling
over. The tide of masculine profligacy will never
turn back until there is a decided reformation in
womanly costume. I am in full sympathy with
the officer of the law who, at a levee in Philadelphia last winter, went up to a so-called lady,
and because of her sparse and incompetent ap

COSTUME AND MORALS.

91

parel, ordered her either to leave the house or
habilitate herself immediately. It is high time
that our good and sensible women make vehement
protest against fashionable indecency, and if the
women of the household do not realize the deplorable extremes of much of the female costume,
that husbands implead their wives on this subject,
and that fathers prohibit their daughters. The
evil is terrific and overshadowing.
STAGE COSTUMES.

I suppose that the American stage is responsible
for much of this. I do not go to theaters, so I
must take the evidence of the actors and managers
of theaters, such as Mr. John Gilbert, Mr. A. M.
Palmer, and Mr. Daniel E. Bandmann. They have
recently told us that the crime of undress is
blasting the theater, which by many is considered
a school of morals, and indeed superior to the
Church, and a forerunner of the millenium. Mr.
Palmer says: "The bulk of the performances on
the stage are degrading and pernicious. The managers strive to come just as near the line as possible without flagrantly breaking the law. There
never have beex>. costumes worn on a stage of this
city, either in a theater, hall, or 'dive,' so improper as those that clothe some of the chorus in
recent comic opera productions." He says in regard to the female performers: " It is not a question whether they can sing, but just how little
they will consent to wear." Mr. Bandmann, who
has been twenty-nino years on the stage, and
before alraost all nationalities, says: " I u n h e s i -

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COSTUME AND MORALS.

tatingly state that the taste of the prosert theater
going people of America, as a body, is of a coarse
and vulgar nature. The Hindoo would turn with
disgust at such exhibitions which are sought after
and applauded on the stage of this country. Our
shop windows are full of, and the walls covered
with, show cards and posters which should be a
disgrace to an enlightened country and an insult
to the eye of a cultured community." Mr. Gilbert
says: "Such exhibition is a disastrous one to the
morals of the community. Are these proper pictures to put out for the public to look at, to say
nothing of the propriety of females appearing in
public dressed like that? It is shameful!"
I must take the testimony of the friends of the
theater, and the confirmation which I see on the
board fences and in the show windows containing
the pictures of the way actresses dress. I suppose
that those representations of play-house costume
are true, for if they are not true, then those highly
moral and religious theaters are swindling the
public by inducing the people to the theater by
promises of spectacular nudity which they do not
fulfill. Now, all this familiarizes the public with
such improprieties of costume, and depresses the
public conscience as to what is allowable and
right.
DRAWING-ROOM RIVALRY.

The parlor and drawing-room are now running
a race with the theater and opera bouffe. They
are now nearly neck and neck in the race, the
latter a little ahead; but the parlor and drawing-

COSTUME AND MORALS.

93

room are gaining on the others, and the probability is they will soon be even, and pass the stand
so nearly at the same time that one half of Pandemonium will clap its hands because opera bouffe
has beaten, and the other half because the
drawing-room has beaten. Let printing-press, and
platform, and pulpit hurl red-hot anathema at the
boldness of much of womanly attire. I charge
Christian women, neither by style of dress nor
adjustment of apparel, to become administrative
of evil. Show me the fashion plates of any age
between this and the time of Louis XVI, of
France, and Henry VIII, of England, and I will
tell you the type of morals or immorals of that
age or that year. No exception to it. Modest
apparel means a righteous people.
Immodest
apparel always means a contaminated and depraved society.
EXTRAVAGANCE.

It is not only such boldness that is to be reprehended, but extravagance of costume. This
latter is the cause of fraud unlimitable and
ghastly. Do you know that Arnold of the Revolution proposed to sell his country in order to
get money to support his home wardrobe? I declare here before God and this people that the
effort to keep up expensive establishments in
this country is sending more business men to
temporal perdition than all other causes combined.
It was this that sent prominent business men to
the watering of stocks, and life insurance presidents to perjured statements about their assets,

94

COSTUME AND MORALS.

and some of them to the penitentiary, and has
completely upset our American finances.
But why should I go to these famous defaultings to show what men will do in order to keep
up great home style and expensive wardrobe, when
you and I know scores of men who are put to their
wit's end and are lashed from January to December in the attempt ? Our Washington politicians
may theorize until the expiration of their terms of
office as to the best way of improving our monetary condition in this country. It will be of no use,
and things will be no better, until we learn to put
on our heads and backs and feet and hands no
more than we can pay for.
AN INCENTIVE TO DISHONESTY.

There are clerks in stores and banks on limited
salaries who, in the vain attempt to keep the wardrobe of their family as showy as other folks' wardrobes, are dying of muffs, and diamonds, andcamel's-hair shawls, and high hats, and they have nothing left except what they give to cigars and wine
suppers, and they die before their time, and they
will expect us ministers to preach about them as
though they were the victims of early piety; and
after a high-class funeral, with silver handles at
the side of their coffin of extraordinary brightness,
it will be found out that the undertaker is cheated
out of his legitimate expenses. Do not send to me
to preach the funeral sermon of a man who dies
like that. I would blurt out the whole truth, and
tell that he was strangled to death by his wife's
ribbons. The country is dressed to death.

COSTUME AND MORALS.

95

You are not surprised to find that the putting up
ef one public building in New York cost millions of
dollars more than it ought to have cost, when you
find that the man who gave out the contracts paid
more than five thousand dollars for his daughter's
wedding dress. Cashmeres of a thousand dollars
each are not rare on Broadway. It is estimated
that there are eight thousand women in these two
cities who have expended on their personal array
two thousand dollars a year.
What are the men to do in order to keep up
such home wardrobes ? Steal—that is the only
respectable thing they can do. During the last
fifteen years there have been innumerable fine
business men shipwrecked on the wardrobe. The
temptation comes in this way: a man thinks more
of his family than all the world outside, and if
they spend the evening in describing to him the
superior wardrobe of the family across the street
that they cannot bear the sight of, the man is
thrown on his gallantry and his pride of family,
and without translating his feelings into plain
language, he goes into extortion and issuing of
false stock and skilful penmanship in writing
somebody else's name at the foot of a promissory
note; and they all go down together—the husband
to the prison, the wife to the sewing-machine, the
children to be taken care of by those who were
called poor relations. Oh, for some new Shakespeare to arise and write
THE TRAGEDY OF CLOTHES.

Act the first of the tragedy: A plain but beau-

96

COSTUME AND MORALS.

tiful home. Enter the newly-married pair. Enter
simplicity of manner and behavior. Enter as
much happiness as is ever found in one home.
Act the second : Discontent with the humble
home. Enter envy. Enter jealousy. Enter de
aire of display.
Act the third : Enlargement of expenses. Em
ter all the queenly dressmakers. Enter the French
milliners.
Act the fourth: The tip-top of society. Enter
princes and princesses of New York life. Enter
magnificent plate and equippage. Enter everything splendid.
Act the fifth and last, winding up the scene.
Enter the assignee. Enter the sheriff. Enter
the creditors.
Enter humiliation. Enter the
wrath of God. Enter the contempt of society.
Enter death. Now, let the silk curtain drop on
the stage. The farce is ended, and the lights ar©
out.
Will you forgive me if I say in tersest shape possible, that some of the men in this country have
to forge, and to perjure, and to swindle, to pay for
their wives' dresses ? I will say it whether you
forgive me or not
CURTAILS BENEVOLENCE.

Again,, extravagant costume is the foe of all
Christian alms-giving. Men and women put so
much in personal display that they often have
nothing for God and the cause of suffering humanity—a Christian man cracking his Palais Eoyal
gloves across the back by shutting up his hand te

COSTUME AND MORALS.

97

hide the one cent he puts into the poor box! a
Christian woman at the story of the Hottentots
crying copious tears into a twenty-five dollar handkerchief, and then giving a two-cent piece to the
collection, thrusting it down under the bills, so
people will not know but it was a ten-dollar gold
piece. One hundred dollars for incense to fashion
—two cents for God. God gives us ninety cents
out of every dollar. The other ten cents, by command of His Bible, belong to Him. Is not God
liberal according to this tithing system laid down
in the Old Testament—is not God liberal in giving
us ninety cents out of a dollar when He takes but
ten ? We do not like that. We want to have
ninety-nine cents for ourselves and one for God.
Now, I would a great deal rather steal ten cents
from you than God. I think one reason why a
great many people do not get along in worldly
accumulation faster is because they do not observe this Divine rule. God says: " Well, if that
man is not satisfied with ninety cents out of a dollar, then I will take the whole dollar, and L wil}
give it to the man or woman who is honest with
me." The greatest obstacle to charity in the
Christian church to-day is the fact that men expend so much on their table, and women so much
on their dress, they have got nothing left for the
work of God and the world's betterment.
DISTRACTS ATTENTION.

Again, extravagant costume is distraction to
public worship. You know very well there are
a good many people who go to church just as they

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go to the races, to see who will come out first.
Men and women with souls to be saved passing
the hour in wondering where that man got his
cravat, or what store that woman patronizes. In
many of our churches the preliminary exercises
are taken up with the discussion of wardrobes. It
is pitiable. Is it not wonderful that the Lord does
not strike the meeting-houses with lightning?
What distraction of public worship. Dying men
and women, whose bodies are soon to be turned
into dust, yet before three worlds strutting like
peacocks. People sitting down in a pew or taking
up a hymn book, all absorbed at the same time in
personal array, to sing:
" R i s e , m y soul and s t r e t c h t h y wings,
T h y b e t t e r portion t r a c e ;
Rise from transitory things
T o w a r d heaven, t h y native place ! w

I adopt the Episcopalian prayer, and say i
"Good Lord deliver us!"
MENTAL IMPOVERISHMENT.

Extravagant costume belittles the intellect.
Our minds are enlarged or they dwindle just in
proportion to the importance of the subject on
which we constantly dwell. Can you imagine
anything more dwarfing to the human intellect
than the study of dress ? I see men on the street
who, judging from their elaboration, I think must
have taken two hours to arrange their apparel.
After a few years of that kind of absorption,
which one of McAllister's magnifying glasses will
be powerful enough to make the roan's character

COSTUME AND MORALS.

99

visible ? What will be left of a woman's intellect
after giving years and years to the discussion of
such questions ? They all land in idiocy. I have
seen men at the summer watering-places through
fashion the mere wreck of what they once were.
Sallow of cheek. Meagre of limb. Hollow at the
chest. Showing no animation save in rushing
across a room to pick up a lady's fan. Simpering
along the corridors the same compliments they
simpered twenty years ago.
BARS HEAVEN.

Yet, j n y friends, I have given you only the
milder phase of this evil. It shuts a great multitude out of heaven. The first peal of thunder
that shook Sinai declared: " Thou shalt have no
other gods before me," and you will have to
choose between the goddess of fashion and the
Christian God. There are a great many seats in
heaven, and they are all easy seats, but not one
seat for the devotee of costume. Heaven is for
meek and quiet spirits. Heaven is for those
who think more of their souls than of their
bodies.
Give up this idolatry of fashion or give up
heaven. What would you do standing beside the
Countess of Huntingdon, whose joy it was to
build chapels for the poor; or with that Christian
woman of Boston, who fed fifteen hundred children of the street, at Fanueil Hall, one New Year's
Day, giving out as a sort of doxology at the end
of the meeting a pair of shoes to *ach one of
them; or those Dorcases c£ modern society who

100

COSTUME AND MORALS.

have consecrated their needles to the Lord, and
who will get eternal reward for every stitch they
take?
PERPETUAL ENVY.

Oh, men and women, give up the idolatry of
costume I The rivalries and the competitions of
such a life are a stupendous wretchedness. You
will always find some one wTith brighter array, and
with more palatial residence, and with lavender
kid gloves that make a tighter fit. And if you
buy this thing and wear it you will wish you had
bought something else and worn it. And the frets
of such a life will bring the crow's feet to your
temples before they are due, and when you come
to die you will have a miserable time.
I have seen men and women of excessive costume die, and I never saw one of them die well.
The trappings off, there they lay on the tumbled
pillow, and there were just two things that
bothered them—a wasted life and a coming
eternity. I could not pacify them, for their
body, mind and soul had been exhausted in the
worship of costume, and they could not appreciate the Gospel. When I knelt by their bedside
they were mumbling out their regrets, and saying: " 0 God! 0 God!" Their garments hung up
in the wardrobe never again to be seen by them.
Without any exception, so far as my memory
serves me, they died without hope, and went into
eternity unprepared. The two most ghastly deathbeds on earth are the one where a man dies
of delirium tremens, and the other wlaere a woman

COSTUME AND MORALS.

101

dies after having sacrificed all her faculties of
body, mind, and soul in the worship of costume.
JUDGMENT TO COME.

My friends, we must appear in judgment to
answer for what we have worn on our bodies as
well as for what repentances we have exercised
with our souls. On that day I see coming in Beau
Brummell of the last century without his cloak;
Aaron Burr, without the letters that to old age
he showed in pride, to prove his early wicked gallantries; and Absolom without his hair; and
Marchioness Pompadour without her titles; and
Mrs. Arnold, the belle of Wall Street^ when that
was the center of fashion, without her fripperies
of vesture.
And in great haggardness they shall go awa)
into eternal expatriation, while among the queens
of heavenly society will be found Vashti, who "wore
the modest veil before the palatial bacchanalians;
and Hannah, who annually made a little coat for
Samuel at the temple; and Grandmother Lois, the
ancestress of Timothy, who imitated her virtue;
and Mary, who gave Jesus Christ to the world;
and many of you, the wives, and mothers, and sisters, and daughters of the present Christian church
who, through great tribulation, are entering into
the kingdom of God. Christ announced who
would make up the royal family of heaven when
He said: " Whosoever doeth the will of God, the
same is my brother^ my sister, my mother,"

10$

DUTIES OF WIVES TO HUSBANDS.

Duties of Wives to Husbands.
" T h e name of his wife was Abigail; and she was a woman
®f good understanding and of a beautiful countenance."—[ SAMUEL XXV, 3.

The ground in Carmel is white, not with fallen
snow, but the wool from the backs of three thousand sheep, for they are being sheared. And I
hear the grinding of the iron blades together, and
the bleating of the flocks, held between the knees
of the shearers while the clipping goes on, and the
rustic laughter of the workmen. Nabal and his
wife Abigail preside over this homestead. David,
the warrior, sends a delegation to apply for aid at
this prosperous time of sheep-shearing, and Nabal
peremptorily declines his request. Eevenge is the
cry. Yonder over the rocks come David and four
hundred angry men with one stroke to demolish
Nabal and his sheepfolds and vineyards. The
regiment marches in double quick, and the stones
of the mountain loosen and roll down, as the soldiers strike them with their swift feet, and the cry
of the commander is, " Forward ! Forward!"
A FAIR PROPITIATOR.

Abigail, to save her husband and his property,
hastens to the foot of the hill. She is armed, not
with sword or spear, but with her own beauty
and self-sacrifice, and when David sees her kneeling at the base of the crag, he cries : " Halt!"
" Halt 1" and the caverns echo i t : " Halt 1" Halt 1"

DUTIES OF WIVES TO HUSBANDS.

103

Abigail is the conqueress. One woman in the
right mightier than four hundred men in the
wrong. A hurricane stopped at the sight of a
water-lily. A dewdrop dashed back Niagara. By
her prowess and tact she has saved her husband,
and saved her home, and put before all ages an
illustrious specimen of what a wife can do if she
be godly, and prudent, and self-sacrificing, and
vigilant, and devoted to the interests of her husband, and attractive.
As, Sabbath before last, I took the responsibility
of telling husbands how they ought to treat their
wives—and, though I noticed that some of the
men squirmed a little in their pew, they endured
it well—I now take the responsibility of telling
how wives ought to treat their husbands. I hope
your domestic alliance was so happily formed that
while married life may have revealed in him some
frailties that you did not suspect, it has also dis
played excellencies that more than overbalanced
them. I suppose that if I could look into the
heart of a hundred wives here present and ask
them where is the kindest and best man they
know of, and they dared speak out, ninety-nine
out of a hundred of them would say : " At the
other end of this pew."
ABIGAIL'S BAD BARGAIN.

I hope, my sister, you have married a man as
Christian and as well balanced as that. But
even if you were worsted in conjugal bargain,
you cannot be worse off than this Abigail in my
text. Her husband was cross and ungrateful, an

104

DUTIES OF WIVES TO HUSBANDS.

inebriate, for on the very evening after her heroic
achievement at the foot of the hill, where she captured a whole regiment with her genial and strategic behavior, she returned home and found her
hus band so drunk that she could not tell him the
story, but had to postpone it nutil the next day.
So, my sister, I do not want you to keep saying
within yourself as I proceed: " That is the way
to treat a perfect husband;" for you are toremem*
ber that no wife was ever worse swindled than
this Abigail of my text. At the other end of her
table sat a mean, selfish, snarling, contemptible
sot, and if she could do so well for a dastard, how
ought you to do with that princely and splendid
man with whom you are to walk the path of life ?
First, I counsel the wife to remember in what
a severe and terrific battle of life her husband is
engaged. Whether in professional, or commercial, or artistic, or mechanical life, your husband
from morning to night is in a Solferino, if not a
Sedan. It is a wonder that your husband has
any nerves or patience or suavity left. To get a
living in this next to the last decade of the nineteenth century is a struggle. If he come home
and sit down preoccupied, you ought to excuse
him. If he do not feel like going out that night
for a walk or entertainment, remember he has
been out all day. You say he ought to leave at
his place of business his annoyances, and come
home cheery. But if a man has been betrayed
by a business partner, or a customer has cheated
him out of a large bill of goods, or a protested

DUTIES OF WIVES TO HUSBANDS.

105

note has been flung on his desk, or somebody
has called him a liar, and everything has gone
wrong from morning to night, he must have great
genius at forgetfulness if he do not bring some
of the perplexity home with him. When you tell
me he ought to leave it all at the store, or bank,
or shop, you might as well tell a storm on the
Atlantic to stay out there and not touch the coast
or ripple the harbor.
RESPECT SELF-SACRIFICE.

Kemember, he is not overworking so much for
himself as he is overworking for you and the children. It is the effect of his success or defeat on
the homestead that causes him the agitation.
The most of men after forty-five years of age live
not for themselves, but for their families. They
begin to ask themselves anxiously the question :
" H o w if I should give out; what would become
of the folks at home ? Would my children ever
get their education % Would my wife have to go
out into the world to earn bread for herself and
our little ones ? My eyesight troubles me; how if
my eyes should fail; my head gets dizzy; how if
I should drop under apoplexy?" The high pressure of business life and mechanical ttfo and
agricultural life is home pressure.
Some time ago a large London firm decided
that if any of their clerks married on a salary less
than £150—that is, $750 a year—he shonld be
discharged, the supposition being that the temptation might be too great for misappropriation. The
large majority of families in America live by

106

DUTIES OF WIVES TO HUSBANDS.

utmost dint of economy, and to be honest and
yet meet one's family expenses, is the appalling
question that turns the life of tens of thousands
of men into martyrdom. Let the wife of the
overborne and exhausted husband remember this,
and do not nag him about that, and say you
might as well have no husband, when the fact
is he is dying by inches that the home may be
kept up.
BE LOVABLE.

I charge also the wife to keep herself as attractive after marriage as she was before marriage.
The reason that so often a man ceases to love
his wife is because the wife ceases to be lovable.
In many cases what elaboration of toilet before
marriage, and what recklessness of appearance
after! The most disgusting thing on earth is a
slatternly woman—I mean a woman who never
combs her hair until she goes out, or looks like a
fright until somebody calls. That a man married
to one of these creatures stays at home as little
as possible is no wonder. It is a wonder that such
a man does not go on a whaling voyage of three
years, and in a leaky ship. Costly wardrobe is
not required; but, O woman! if you are not
willing, by all that ingenuity of refinement can
effect, to make yourself attractive to your husband, you ought not to complain if he seek in
other society those pleasant surroundings which
you deny him.
DO NOT COMPLAIN.

Again I charge you never talk to others about

DUTIES OF WIVES TO HUSBANDS.

19?

the frailties of your husband.* Some people
have a way, in banter, of elaborately describing
to others the shortcomings or unhappy eccentricities of a husband or wife. Ah, the world
will find out soon enough all the defects of
your companion. No need of your advertising
ihem. Better imitate those women who, having
fnade mistake in affiance, always have a veil to
hide imperfections and alleviations of conduct to
mention. We must admit that there are rare
cases where a wife cannot live longer with her
husband, and his cruelties and outrages are the
precursor of divorcement or separation. But until
that day comes, keep the awful secret to yourself
—keep it from every being in the universe except
the God to whom you do well to tell your trouble.
Trouble only a few years at most, and then you
can go up on the other side of the grave, and say:
" 0 Lord, I kept the marital secret. Thou knowest
how well I kept it, and I thank Thee that the
release has come at last. Give me some place
where I can sit down and rest awhile from the
horrors of an embruted earthly alliance, before I
begin the full raptures of heaven." And orders
will be sent out to the usher angels, saying:
" Take this Abigail right up to the softest seat in
the best room of the palace, and let twenty of the
brightest angels wait on her for the next thousand years.
AVOID MEDDLERS.

Further, I charge you, let there be no outside
*AB Abigail did (1 Sam. xxv, 35).

108

DUTIES OF WIVES TO HUSBANDS.

interference with the conjugal relation. Neither
neighbor nor confidential friend, nor brother no*
sister, nor father nor mother, have a right to come
in here. The married gossip will come around,
and by the hour tell you how she manages hex
husband. You tell her plainly that if she will
attend to the affairs of her household you will
attend to yours. What damage some people do
with their tongues. Nature indicates that the
tongue is a dangerous thing, by the fact that it is
shut in, first by a barricade of teeth, and then by
the door of the lips. One insidious talker can
keep a whole neighborhood badly stirred up.
The Apostle Peter excoriated these busybodies in
other people's matters, and St. Paul, in his letter
to the Thessalonians and to Timothy, gives them
a sharp dig, and the good housewife will be on the
lookout for them, and never return their call* and
treat them with coldest frigidity. For this reason
better keep house as soon as possible. Some people are opposed to them, but I thank God for
what are called flats in these cities. They put a
separate home within the means of nearly all the
population. In your married relations you do not
need any advice. If you and your husband have
not skill enough to get along well alone, with all
the advice you can import you will get along
worse. What you want for your craft on this
voyage is plenty of sea-room.
BE INTELLIGENT.

I charge you, also, make yourself the intelligent
*x>mpanion of your husband. What with these

DUTIES OF WIVES TO HUSBANDS,

109

floods of newspapers and books there is no excuse
for the wife's ignorance, either about the present
or the past. If you have no more than a h a l t
hour every day to yourself you may fill your mind
with entertaining and useful knowledge. Let the
merchant's wife read up on all mercantile ques^
tions, and mechanic's wife on all that pertains to
his style of work, and the professional man's wife
on all the legal, or medical, or theological, or political discussions of the day. It is very stupid for
a man, after having been amid active minds al}
day to find his wife without information or opinions on anything. If the wife knows nothing
about what is going on in -the world, after
the tea hour litis passed, and the husband has
read the newspaper, he will have an engagement,
and must " go and see a man." In nine cases
out of ten when a man does not stay at home in
the evening, unless positive duty calls him away,
it is because there is nothing to stay for. H t
would rather talk with his wife than any one else
if she could talk as well.
ADORN THE HOME.

I charge you, my sister, in every way lc- make
your home attractive. I have not enough of
practical knowledge about house adornment to
know just what makes the difference, but here is
an opulent house, containing all wealth of bric-abrac, and of musical instrument; and of painting,
and of upholstery, and yet there is in it a chill
like Nova Zembla. Another home, with one
twentieth part of the outlay, and small supply of

110

DUTIES OF WIVES TO HUSBANDS.

art, and cheapest piano purchasable, and yet, as
you enter it, there comes upon body, mind, and
soul, a glow of welcome and satisfied and happy
domesticity. The holy art of making the most
comfort and brightness out of the means afforded,
every wife should study.
At the seige of Argus, Pyrrhus was killed by
the tile of a root thrown by a woman, and
Abimelech was slain by a stone that a woman
threw from the tower of Thebes, and Earl Montfort was destroyed by a rock discharged at him
by a woman from the walls of Toulouse. But
without any weapon save that of her cold, cheerless household arrangement, any wife may slay
all the attractions of a home circle. A wife and
mother in prosperous circumstances and greatly
admired was giving her chief time to social life.
The husband spent his evenings away. The son,
fifteen years of age, got the same habit, and there
was a prospect that the other children, as they
got old enough, would take the same turn. One
day the wife aroused to the consideration that
she had better save her husband and her boy.
Interesting and stirring games were introduced
into the house. The mother studied up interesting things to tell her children. One morning
the son said: " Father, you ought to have been
home last night. "We had a grand time. Such
jolly games and such interesting stories!" This
went on from night to night, and after awhile
the husband stayed in to see what was going on,
and he finally got attracted and added some*

DUTIES OF WIVES TO HUSBANDS.

Ill

tking of his own to the evening entertainments;
and the result was that the wife and mother saved
her husband and saved her boy and saved herself. Was not that an enterprise worth the attention of the greatest woman that \ ever lived since
Abigail—at the foot of the rock—arrested the four
hundred armed warriors?
THE TRUE SPHERE.

Do not, my sister, be dizzied and disturbed by
the talk of those who think the home circle too
insignificant for a woman's career, and who want
to get you out on platforms and in conspicuous
enterprises. There are woman who have a
special outside mission, and do not dare to interpret me as derisive of their important mission. But my opinion is that the woman who
can reinforce her husband in the work of life, and
rear her children for positions of usefulness, is
doing more for God and the race and her own
happiness than if she spoke on every great platform, and headed a hundred great enterprises.
My mother never made a missionary speech in
her life, and at a missionary meeting I doubt
whether she could have got enough courage to
vote aye or no, but she raised her son John, who
has been preaching the Gospel and translating
religious literature in Amoy, China, for about
forty years. Was not that a better thing to do?
Compare such an one with one of these dieaway, attitudinizing, frivolous, married coquettes
of the modern drawing-room, her heaven an
opera box on the night of Meyerbeer's " Robert

112

DUTIES OF WIVES TO HUSBANDS.

le Diable," the ten commandments an inconve
nience, taking arsenic to improve the complexion,
and her appearance a confused result of belladonna, bleached hair, antimony and mineral acids,
until one is compelled to discuss her character,
and wonder whether the line between a decent
and indecent life is, like the equator, an imaginary line.
A PRESSING WANT.

What the world wants now is about fifty thousand old fashioned mothers, women who shall
realize that the highest, grandest, mightiest institution on earth is the home. It is not necessary that they should have the same old time
manners of the country farmhouse, or wear the
old-fashioned spectacles and apron that her
glorified ancestry wore; but I mean the old
spirit which began with the Hannahs and the
Mother Lois and the Abigails of Scripture days,
and was demonstrated on the homestead where
some of us was reared, though the old house
long ago was pulled down and its occupants scattered, never to meet' until in the higher home
that awaits the families of the righteous. While
there are more good and faithful wives and
mothers now than there ever were, society has.
got a wrong twist on this subject, and there are
influences abroad that would make women believe that there chief sphere is outside instead of
inside the home.
A DEADLY SIN.

Hence in many households children, instead of a

DUTIES OF WIVES TO HUSBANDS.

113

biessing, are a nuisance. It is card case versus
child's primer, carriage versus cradle, social popularity versus domestic felicity. H^nce infanticide
and ante-natal murder so common that all the
physicians, allopathic, hydropathic, homoeopathic,,
and eclectic are crying out in horror, and it is time
that the pulpits joined with the medical profession in echoing and re-echoing the thunder of
Mount Sinai, which says: "Thou shalt not kill,"
and the book of Revelation, which says: "All
murderers shall have their place in the lake which
burnetii with fire and brimstone." And the man.
or the woman who takes life a minute old will as
certainly go straight to hell as the man or woman
who destroys life forty years old. And the wildest,
loudest shriek of Judgment Day will be given at
the overthrow of those who moved in the high
and respected circles of earthly society, yet decreed by their own act, as far as they could privately effect it, the extermination of the advancing generations, abetted in the horrid crime by a
lot of infernal quacks with which modern medicine is infested. When, on the Last Day, the cryers of the Court shall with resounding "Oyez,"
a
O y e z ! " declare the a O y e r and Terminer" of
the Universe opened, and the Judge, with gavel
of thunderbolt, shall smite the nations into silence, and the trial of all the fratricides, and parricides, and matricides, and patricides, and uxoricides, and regicides, and deicides, and infanticides
of the earth shall proceed, none of my hearers or
readers can say that they knew not what they

114

DUTIES OF W I V E S TO HUSBANDS.

were doing. Mighty God! arrest the evil that is
overshadowing this century.
THE HEAD OP THE HOUSEHOLD.

I charge you, my sister, that you take your
husband along with you to heaven. Of course
this implies that you yourself are a Christian. I
must take that for granted. It cannot be possible
that after what Christianity has done for woman,
and after taking the infinitely responsible position
you have assumed as the head of the household,
that you should be in a position antagonistic to
Christ. It was not a slip of the tongue when I
spoke of you as being at the head of the household. We men rather pride ourselves as being at
the head of the household, but it is only a pleasant
delusion. To whom do the children go when they
have trouble? When there is a sore finger to be
bound up or one of the first teeth that needs to be
removed to make way for one that is crowding it
out, to whom does the child go? For whom do
children cry out in the night when they get frightened at a bad dream? Aye, to whom does the husband go when hg has a business trouble great or
too delicate for outside ears? We, the men, are
heads of the household in name, but you, 0 wives!
are the heads of the household in fact, and it is
your business to take your husband with you into
the kingdom of God, and see that house prepared
for heaven.
You can do it! Of course God's almighty grace
alone can convert him, but you are to be the instrument. Some wives keep their husbands o^i

DUTIES OF WIVES TO HUSBANDS.

115

of heaven, and others garner them for it. If your
religion, O wife! is simply the joke of the household; if you would rather go to the theater than
the prayer-meeting; if you can beat all the neighborhood in progressive euchre; if your husband
never sees you kneel at the bedside in prayer before retiring; if the only thing that reminds the
family of your church relations is that on communion-day you get home late to dinner, you will
not be able to take your husband to heaven, for
the simple reason that you will not get there your
self. But I suppose that your religion is genuine,
and that the husband realizes there is in your soul
a divine principle, and that, though you may be
naturally quicker-tempered than he is and have
many imperfections that distress you more than
cney can any one else, still you are destined for
the skies when the brief scenes of this life are
over. How will you take him with you? There
are two oars to that boat—prayer and holy example.
But you say he be ongs to a worldly club, or he
does not believe a word of the Bible, or he is an
inebriate and very loose in his habits? What you
tell me shows that you don't understand that
while you are at the one end of a prayer, the omnipotent God is at the other end, and it is simply a
question whether Almightiness is strong enough
and keeps His word. I have no doubt there will
be great conventions in heaven, called for celebrative purposes, and when in some Celestial
assemblage the saints shall be telling what brought

116

DUTIES OF WIVES TO HUSBANDS.

them to God, I believe that ten thousand times
ten thousand will say: " My wife."
A CONTRAST.

I put beside each other two testimonies of men
concerning their wives, and let you see the contrast. An aged man was asked the reason of his
salvation. "With tearful emotion he said: "My
wife was brought to God some years before myself. I persecuted and abused her because of her
religion. She, however, returned nothing but
kindness constantly, maintaining an anxiety to
promote my comfort and happiness; and it was
her amiable conduct when suffering ill-treatment
from me that first sent the arrows of conviction
to my soul." The other testimony was from a
dying man: "Harriet, I am a lost man. You
opposed our family worship and my secret prayer.
You drew me away into temptation and to neglect
every religious duty. I believe my fate is sealed.
Harriet, you are the cause of my everlasting
ruin." How many glorious married couples in
heaven—Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah,
Lapidoth and Deborah, Isaac and Eebekah, Jacob
and Kachael, Zacharias and Elizabeth, Joseph
and Mary, and many whom we have known as
good as the most of them.
As once you stood in the village or city church
or in your father's house, perhaps under a wedding-bell of flowers, to-day stand up, husband and
wife, beneath the cross of a pardoning Eedeemer,
while* I proclaim the banns of an eternal marriage.
Join your right hands. I pronounce you one forever;

HOTELS VERSUS

HOMES

11?

The circle is an emblem of eternity, and that ig
tJtie shape of the Marriage Eing.

«-•-•

Hotels versus Homes.
" A n d b r o u g h t h i m to a n inn, a n d took care of him. And
on t h e m o r r o w w h e n h e departed, h e took out t w o pence,
and gave t h e m t o t h e host, and said u n t o him, Take care of
h i m : a n d whatsoever t h o u spendest more, w h e n I come
»gain, I will repay t h e e . " — L U K E X, 34, 35.

This is the good Samaritan paying the hotel
bill of a man who had been robbed and almost
killed by bandits. The good Samaritan had
found the unfortunate on a lonely rocky road>
where, to this very day, depredations are soma
times committed upon travelers, and had put
the injured man into the saddle, while this merciful and well-to-do man had walked till they got
to the hotel, and the wounded man was put to bed
and cared for. It must have been a very superior
hotel in its accommodations, for, though in tha
country, the landlord was paid at the rate of what
in our country would be four or five dollars a day,
a penny being then a day's wages, and the two
pennies paid in this case about two days' wages.
Moreover, it was one of those kind-hearted landlords who are wrapped up in the happiness of
their guests, because the good Samaritan leaves the

118

HOTELS VERSUS HOMES.

poor wounded fellow to his entire care, promising
that when he came that way again he would pay
all the bills until the invalid got well.
THE VALUE OF HOTELS.

Hotels and boarding-houses are necessities. In
very ancient times they were unknown, because
the world had comparatively few inhabitants,
who were not much given to travel, and private
hospitality met all the wants of sojourners, as
when Abraham rushed out at Mamre to invite
the three men to sit down to a, dinner of veal; as
when the people were positively commanded to be
given to hospitality; as in many of the places in
the East these ancient customs are practiced today. But we ha^e now hotels presided over by
good landlords, and boarding-houses presided over
by excellent host or hostess, in all neighborhoods, villages, and cities, and it is our congratu^
lation that thpse of our land surpass all other
lands. They rightly become the permanent residences of many people, such as those who are
without families, such as those whose business
keeps them migratory, such as those who ought
not, for various reasons of health or peculiarity
of circumstances, take upon themselves the cares
©f housekeeping.
QUEENLY CATERERS.

Many a man failing sick in one of these boarding-houses or hotels has been kindly watched
and nursed; and by the memory of her own sufferings and losses, the lady at the head of such a
house has done all that a mother could do for a

HOTELS VERSUS HOMES.

119

tdck child, and the slumberless eye of God sees
and appreciates her sacrifices in behalf of the
stranger. Among the most marvelous cases of
patience and Christian fidelity are many of those
who keep boarding-houses, enduring without
resentment the unreasonable demands of their
guests for expensive food and attentions for
which they are not willing to pay an equivalent
—a lot of cranky men and women who are not
worthy to tie the shoe of their queenly caterer.
The outrageous way in which boarders sometimes act to their landlords and landladies show
that these critical guests had bad early rearing,
and that in the making-up of their natures all
that constitutes the gentleman and lady were
left out. Some of the most princely men and
some of the most elegant woman that I know of
to-day keep hotels and boarding-houses.
But one of the great evils of this day is found
in the fact that a large population of our towns
and cities are giving up and have given up their
homes and taken apartments, that they may have
more freedom from domestic duties and more
time for social life, and because they like the
whirl of publicity better than the quiet and privacy of a residence they can call their own. The
lawful use of these hotels and boarding-houses is
for most people while they are in transitu; but
as a terminus they are in many cases demoralization, utter and complete. That is the point at
which families innumerable have begun to disintegrate. There never has been a time when so

120

HOTELS VE&StJS HOMES.

many families, healthy and abundantly able to
support and direct homes of their own, hav^
struck tent and taken permanent abode in these
pubhc establishments. It is an evil wide as
Christendom, and by voice and through the
newspaper press, I utter warning and- burning
protests, and ask Almighty God to bless the word,
whether in the hearing or reading.
PROMOTERS OF GOSSIP.

In these public caravansaries the demon of
gossip is apt to get full sway. All the boarders
run daily the gauntlet of general inspection—
how they look when they come down in the
morning, and when they get in at night, and
what they do for a living, and who they receive
as guests in their rooms, and what they wear,
and what they do not wear, and ho w they eat,
and what they eat, and how much they eat, and
how little they eat. If a man proposes in such
a place to be isolated and reticent and alone,
they will begin to guess about him: Who is he?
Where did he come from? How long is he going
to stay? Has he paid his board? How much
does he pay? Perhaps he has committed some
crime and does not want to be known; there
must be something wrong about him, or he would
speak.
The whole house goes into the detective business. They must find out about him. They
must find out about him right away. If he leave
his door unlocked by accident, he will find that
his rooms have been inspected, his trunk explored,

HOTELS VERSUS HOMES.

121

hi§ letters folded differently from the way they
were folded when he put them away. Who is
he? is the question, asked with intenser interest,
until the subject has become a monomania. The
simple fact is, that he is nobody in particular,
but minds his own business. The best landlords
and landladies cannot sometimes hinder their
places from becoming
A PANDEMONIUM

of whisperers, and reputations are torn to tatters,
and evil suspicions are aroused, and scandals
started, and the parliament of the family is
blown to atoms by some Guy Fawkes who was
not caught in time, as was his English predecessor
of gunpowder reputation.
The reason is, that while in private homes families have so much to keep them busy, in these
promiscuous and multitudinous residences there
ara so many who have nothing to do, and that
always makes mischief. They gather in each
other's rooms, and spend hours in consultation
about others. If they had to walk a half mile
before they got to the willing ear of some listener
to detraction, they would get out of breath before
reaching there, and not feel in full glow of animosity or slander, or might, because of the distance, not go at all. But rooms 20, 21, 22, 23,
24 and 25, are on the same corridor, and when one
carrion crow goes "Caw! Caw!" all the other
crows hear it, and flock together over the same
carcass. "Oh, I have heard something rich! Sit
down and let me tell you all about it." And the

182

HOTELS VERSUS HOMES.

first guffaw increases the gathering, and it has to
be told all over again, and as they separate, each
carries a spark from the altar of Gab to some
other circle, until from the coal-heaver in the
cellar to the maid in the top room of the garret,
all are aware of the defamation, and that evening
all who leave the house will bear it to other
houses, until autumnal fires sweeping across
Illinois prairies are less raging and swift than
that flame of consuming reputation blazing across
the village or city.
Those of us who were brought up in the country know that the old-fashioned hatching of eggs
in the hay mow required four or five weeks of
brooding, but there are new modes of hatching
by machinery, which take less time and do the
work in wholesale. So, while the private home
may brood into life an occasional falsity, and take
a long time to do it, many of the boarding-houses
and family hotels afford a swifter and more mul
titudinous style of moral incubation, and one old
gossip will get.off the nest after one hour's brooding, clucking a flock of thirty lies after her, each
one picking up its little worm of juicy regalement. It is no advantage to hear too much about
your neighbors, for your time will be so much occupied in taking care of their faults that you will
have no time to look after your own. And while
you are pulling the chickweed out of their garden,
yours will get all overgrown with horse sorrel and
mullen stalks.

HOTELS VERSUS HOMES.

123

A WRONG TO CHILDREN.

One of the worst damages that comes from the
herding of so many people into boarding-houses
and family hotels is inflicted upon children. It is
only another way of bringing them up on the
commons. While you have your own private
house you can, for the moist part, control their
companionship and their whereabouts; but by
twelve years of age, in these public resorts, they
will have picked up all the bad things that can be
furnished by the prurient minds of dozens of people. They will overhear blasphemies, and see
quarrels, and get precocious in sin, and what the
bartender does not tell them the porter or hostler
or bell-boy will.
Besides that, the children will go out into this
world without the restraining, anchoring, steadying, and all-controling memory of a home. From
that none of us who have been blessed of such
memory have escaped. It grips a man for eighty
years, if he lives so long. It pulls him back from
doors into which he otherwise would enter. It
smites him with contrition in the very midst
of his dissipations. As the fish already surrounded by
THE LONG WIDE NET

swim out to sea, thinking they can go as far as
they please, and with gay toss of silvery scale they
defy the sportsman on the beach, and after awhile
the fishermen begin to draw in the net, hand over
hand, and hand over hand, and it is a long
while before the captured fins begin to feel the

124:

HOTELS VERSUS HOMES.

net, and then they dart this way and that,
hoping to get out, but find themselves approaching the shore, and are brought up to the
very feet of the .captors. So the memory of an
early home sometimes seems to relax and let
men out further and further from God, and further
and further from shore—five years, ten years,
twenty years, thirty years; but some day they
find an irresistible mesh drawing them back, and
they are compelled to retreat from their prodigality and wandering; and though they make desperate effort to escape the impression, and try to
dive deeper down in sin, after a while are brought
clear back and held upon the Rock of Ages.
If it be possible, O father and mother! let your
sons and daughters go out into the world under
the semi-omnipotent memory of a good, pure
home. About your two or three rooms in a
boarding-house or a family hotel you can cast no
such glorious sanctity. They will think of these
public caravansaries as an early stopping-place,
malodorous with old victuals, coffees perpetually
steaming, and meats in everlasting stew or broil,
the air surcharged with carbonic acid, and corridors along which drunken boarders come staggering at one o'clock in the morning, rapping at
the door till the affrighted wife lets them in. Do
not be guilty of the sacrilege or blasphemy of calling such a place a home.
W H A T A HOME IS.

A home is four walls enclosing one family with
identity of interest, and a privacy from outside

HOTELS VERSUS HOMES.

121

inspection so complete that it is a world in itself, no one entering except by permission—bolted and barred and chained against all outside inquisitiveness. The phrase so often used in law
books and legal circles is mightly suggestive—
every man's house is his castle. As much so as
though it had drawbridge, portcullis, redoubt,
bastion, and armed turret. Even the officer of
the law may not enter to serve a writ, except the
door be voluntarily opened unto him; burglary,
or the invasion of it, a crime so offensive that the
law clashes its iron jaws on any one who attempts
it. Unless it be necessary to stay for longer or
shorter time in family hotel or boarding house—
and there are thousands of instances in which it
is necessary, as I showed you at the beginning—
unless in this exceptional case, let neither wife
uor husband consent to such permanent residence.
HAZARDOUS TO MORALS.

The probability is that the wife will have to
divide her husband's time with public smoking or
reading-room, or with some coquetish spider in
8earch of unwary flies; and if you do not entirely
lose your husband it will be because he is divinely
protected from the disasters that have overwhelmed
thousands of husbands with as good intentions as
yours. Neither should the husband, without imperative reason, consent to such a life unless he is
sure his wife can withstand the temptation of
social dissipation which sweeps across such places
with the force of the Atlantic Ocean when driven
by a September equinox. Many wives give up

126

HOTELS VERSUS HOMES.

their homes for these public residences so that they
may give their entire time to operas, theaters,
balls, receptions, and levees, and they are in a perpetual whirl, like a whip-top spinning round and
round and round very prettily until it loses its
equipoise, and shoots off into a tangent. But the
difference is, in one case it is a top, and in the
other a soul.
THE LARES AND PENATES.

Besides this there is an assiduous accumulation
of little things around the private home which in
the aggregate make a great attraction, while the
denizen of one of these public residences is apt to
say: '' "What is the use ? I have no place to keep
them if I should take them. v Mementoes, bric-abrac, curiosities, quaint chair or cosey lounge,
upholsteries, pictures, and a thousand things that
accrete in a home are discarded or neglected because there is no homestead in which to arrange
them. And yet they are the case in which the
pearl of domestic happiness is set. You can never
become as attached to the appointments of a
boarding-house or family hotel as to those things
that you can call your own, and are associated
with the different members of your household, or
with scenes of thrilling import in your domestic
history. Blessed is that home in which for a
whole lifetime they have been gathering, until
every figure in the carpet, and every panel of the
door, and every casement of the window, has a
chirography of its own, speaking out something
about father or mother, or son or daughter, or

HOTELS VERSUS HOMES.

127

friend that was with us awhile. What a sacred
place it becomes when one can say: " I n that
room such a one was born; in that bed such a one
died; in that chair I sat on the night I heard such
a one had received a great public honor; by that
stool my child knelt for her last evening prayer;
here I sat to greet my son as he came back from
sea voyage; that was father's cane; that was
mother's rocking-chair! What a joyful and pathetic congress of reminiscences!
HOSPITALITY CURTAILED.

The public residence of hotel and boarding house
abolishes the grace of hospitality. Your guest does
not want to come to such a table. No one wants to
run such a gauntlet of acute and merciless hypercriticism. Unless you have a homepf your own you
will not be able to exercise the best rewarded • of all
the graces. For exercise of this graee what blessing came to the Shunamite in the restoration of
her son to life hecause she entertained Elisha, and
to the widow of Zarephathin the perpetual oil well
of the miraculous cruise because she fed a hungry
prophet, and to Eahab in the preservation of her
life at the demolition of Jericho because she entertained the spies, and to Laban in the formation of an interesting family relation because of
his entertainment of Jacob, and to Lot in his
rescue from the destroyed city because of his entertainment of the angels, and to Mary and
Martha and Zaccheus in spiritual blessing because
they entertained Christ, and to Publius in the

island of Melita in the healing of his father be-

128

HOTELS VERSUS HOMES.

cause of the entertainment of Paul, drenched
from the shipwreck, and of innumerable houses
throughout Christendom upon which have come
blessings from generation to generation because
their doors swung easily open in the enlarging,
ennobling, irradiating, and divine grace of hospitality. I do not know what your experience has
been, but I have had men and women visiting at
my house who left benedictions on every room
—in the blessing they asked at the table, in the
prayer they offered at the family altar, in the
good advice they gave the children, in the gospelization that looked out from every lineament
of their countenances; and their departure was
the sword of bereavement.
The Queen of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark
had a royal
CUP OF TEN CURVES,

or lips, each one having on it the name of th#
distinguished person who had drank from it.
And that cup which we offer to others in Christian hospitality, though it be of the plainest
earthenware, is a royal cup and God can read
on all its sides the names of those who have
taken from it refreshment. But all this is impossible unless you have a home of your own.
It is the delusion as to what is necessary for a
home that hinders so many from establishing
one. Thirty rooms are not necessary, nor twenty,
nor fifteen, nor ten, nor five, nor three. In th@
right way plant a table, and couch, and knife, and
f oris, stiid a cup, and a chair, and you can raise a

HOTELS VERSUS HOMES,

12&

young paradise. Just start a home, on however
small a iscale, and it will grow. When King
Cyrus was invited to dine with an humble friend,
the king made the one condition of his coming,
that th6 only dish be one loaf of bread, and the
most imperial satisfactions have sometimes banqueted on the plainest fare.
Do not be caught in the delusion of many
thousands in postponing a home until they can
have an expensive one~ That idea is the devil's
trap that catches men and women innumerable
who will never have any home at all. Capitalists
of America build plain homes for the people.
Let this tenement house system, in which hundreds of thousands of the people of our cities are
wallowing in the mire, be broken up by small
homes, where people can have their own firesides
and their own altar. In this great continent
there is room enough for every man and woman
to have a home. Morals and civilization and religion demand it.
SMALL HOMES NEEDED.

We want done all over this land what George
Peabody and Lady Burdett-Coutts did in England, and some of the large manufacturers of
this country have done for the villages and cities,
in building small houses at cheap rents, so that
the middle classes can have separate homes.
They are the only class not provided for. The
rich have their palaces, and the poor have their
poorhouses, and criminals have their jails; but
vvhat about the honest middle classes, who are

130

HOTELS VERSUS HOMES.

able and willing to work, and yet have small income? Let the capitalists, inspired of God and
pure patriotism, rise and build whole streets of
small residences. The laborer may have, at the
close of the day, to walk or ride further than is
desirable to reach it, but when he gets to his
destination in the eventide, he will find something worthy of being called by that glorious
and impassioned and heaven-descended word—
"Home."
SOMETHING TO SAVE FOR.

Young marriedj man, as soon as you can buy
such a place, even if you have to put on it a
mortgage reaching from base to capstone. The
much-abused mortgage, which is ruin to a reckless man, to one prudent and provident is the
beginning of a competency, and a fortune for the
reason he will not be satisfied until he has paid
it off, and all the household are put on stringent
economies until then. Deny yourself all superfluities and all luxuries until you can say, " Everything in this house is mine, thank God! every
timber, every brick, every foot of plumbing, every
door-sill." Do not have your children born in a
boarding-house, and do not yourself be buried
from one. Have a place where your children can
shout and sing and romp without being overhauled for the racket. Have a kitchen where you
can do something toward the reformation of evil
cookery and the lessening of this nation of dyspeptics. As Napoleon lo^t one of his great battles

HOTELS VERSUS HOMES.

131

by an attack of indigestion, so many men have
such
A DAILY WRESTLE

with the food swallowed that they have no
strength left for the battle of life; and though
your wife may know how to play on all musical
instruments and rival a prima donna, she is not
well educated unless she can boil an Irish potato
and broil a mutton-chop, since the diet sometimes
decides the fate of families and nations.
Have a sitting-room with at least one easychair, even though you have to take turns at sitting in it, and books out of the public library or of
your own purchase for the making of your family
intelligent, and checker-boards and guessing
matches, with an occasional blind man's buff,
which is of all games my favorite. Rouse up your
home with all styles of innocent mirth, and gather
up in your children's nature a reservoir of exuberance that will pour down refreshing streams when
life gets parched, and the dark days come, and
the lights go out, and the laughter is smothered
into a sob.
CHRIST IN THE HOME.

First, last, and all the time, have Christ in your
home. Julius Caesar calmed the fears of an
affrighted boatman who was rowing him in a
stream, by saying: " So long as Caesar is with you
in the same boat, no harm can happen." And
whatever storm of adversity or bereavement, or
poverty, may strike your home, all is well as long
as you have Christ the King onboard.
Ma^

132

HOTELS VERSUS HOMES.

your home so far-rearhing in its influence that
down to the last momont of your children's life
you may hold them wrth a heavenly charm. At
seventy-six years of age the Demosthenes of the
American Senate la^' dying at Washington—I
mean Henry Clay, of Kentucky. His pastor sat
at his bed-side, and ' 'the old man eloquent," after
a long and exciting public life, trans-Atlantic
and cis-Atlantic, ^/as back again in the scenes of
his boyhood, and be kept saying in his dream over
and over again: "My mother! mother! mother!"
May the parental influence we exert be not only
potential but holy, and so the home on earth be
the vestibule of our home in heaven, in which
place may we all meet—father, mother, son,
daughter, brother, sister, grandfather, and grandmother, and grandchild, and the entire group of
precious jnes, of whom we must say in the words
of transporting Charles Wesley:
" One family we dwell in Him,^
One church above, beneath;
Though now divided by the stream—
The narrow stream of death.
One army of the living God,
To His command we bow;
Part of the host have crossed the floo<S?
At& pwt are crossing now,"

THE DOMESTIC

CIRCLE.

133

The D o m e s t i c Circle.
" G o h o m e to t h y friends and tell t h e m h o w great things
t h e L o r d h a t h done for t h e e . " — M A R K V, 19.

There are a great many people longing for
some grand sphere in which to serve God. They
admire Luther at the Diet of Worms, and only
wish that they had some such great opportunity
in which to display their Christian prowess.
They admire Paul making Felix tremble, and
they only wish that they had some such grand
occasion in which to preach righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come; all they want is
only an opportunity to exhibit their Christian
heroism. Now the evangelist comes to us, and
he practically says: " I will show you a place
where you can exhibit all that is grand, and
beautiful, and glorious, in Christian character,
and that is the domestic circle."
EVERY MAN'S

OPPORTUNITY.

If one is not faithful in an insignificant sphere
he will not be faithful in a resounding sphere.
If Peter will not help the cripple at the gate of
the temple, he will never be able to preach three
thousand souls into the kingdom at the Pentecost.
If Paul will not take pains to instruct in the way
of salvation the jailer of the Philippian dungeon,
he will never make Felix tremble. He who is not
faithful in a skirmish would not be faithful in an

134

THE DOMESTIC CIRCLE.

Armageddon. The fact is, we are all placed in
just the position in which we can most grandly
serve God; and we ought not to be chiefly
thoughtful about some sphere of usefulness which
we may after a while gain, but the all-absorbing
question with you and with me ought to b e :
"Lord, what wilt thou have me now and here
to do?"
WHAT A HOME IS.

There is one word in my text around which
the most of our thoughts will this morning revolve. That word is " Home." Ask ten different
men the meaning of t h a t . word, and they will
give you ten different definitions. To one it
means love at the heayih, it means plenty at the
table, industry at the workstand, intelligence at
the books, devotion at the altar. To him it
means a greeting at the door and a smile at the
chair. Peace hovering like wings. Joy clapping
its hands with laughter. Life a tranquil lake.
Pillowed on the ripples sleep the shadows.
Ask another man what home is, and he will
tell you it is want, looking out of a cheerless firegrate, kneading hunger in an empty bread tray.
The damp air shivering with curses. No Bible
on the shelf. Children robbers and murderers
in embryo. Obscene songs their lullaby. Every
face a picture of ruin. Want in the background
and sin staring from the front. No Sabbath
wave rolling over that door-sill. Vestibule of the
pit. Shadow of infernal walls. Furnace for
forging everlasting chains. Faggots for an un-

THE DOMESTIC CIRCLE.

135

ending funeral pile. Awful word ! It is spelled
with curses, it weeps with ruin, it chokes with
woe, it sweats with the death agony of despair.
The word " H o m e " in the one case means
everything bright. The word " H o m e " in the
other case means everything terrific.
I shall speak to you this morning of home as
a test of character, home as a refuge, home as a
political safeguard, home as a school, and home
as a type of heaven.
And in the first place I remark, that home is
a powerful test of character. The disposition in
public may be in gay costume, while in private
it is in dishabille. As play actors may appear in
one way on the stage, and may appear in another
way behind the scenes, so private character may
be very different from public character. Private
character is often public character turned wrong
side out. A man may receive you into his parloi
as though he were a distillation of smiles, and yeff
his heart may be a swamp of nettles. There aro
business men who all day long are mild, ancl
courteous, and genial, and good-natured in commercial life, damning back their irritability, and
their petulance, and their discontent; but at nightfall the dam breaks, and scolding pours forth m
floods and freshets.
HOME MANNERS.

Reputation is only the shadow of character,
and a very small house sometimes will cast a very
long shadow. The lips may seem to drop with
myrrh and cassia, and the disposition to be as

136

THE DOMESTIC CIRCLE.

bright and warm as a sheaf of sunbeams, and
yet they may only be a magnificent show window
to a wretched stock of goods. There is many a
man who is affable in public life and amid commercial spheres who, in a cowardly way, takes
his anger and his petulance home, and drops
them on the domestic circle.
The reason men do not display their bad tercu
per in public is because they do not want to be
knocked down. There are men who hide their
petulance and their irritability just for the saim
reason that they do not let their notes go to protest. It does not pay. Or for the same reason
that they do not want a man in their stock company to sell his stock at less than the right price,
lest it depreciate the value. As at sometimes
the wind rises, so after a sunshiny day there may
be a tempestuous night. There are people who
in public act the philanthropist, who at home act
the Nero with respect to their slippers and their
gown.
AUDUBON'S GREATNESS.

Audubon, the great ornithologist, with gun
and pencil, went through the forests of America
to bring down and to sketch the beautiful birds,
and after years of toil and exposure completed
his manuscript, and put it in a trunk in Philadelphia for a few days of recreation and rest, and
came back and found that the rats had utterly
destroyed the manuscript; but without any discomposure and without any fret or bad temper,
he again picked up his gun and pencil, and visited

THE DOMESTIC CIRCLE.

13?

again all the great forests of America, and reproduced his immortal work. And yet there are
people with the ten thousandth part of that loss
who are utterly unreconcilable, who at the loss of
a pencil or an article of raiment will blow as long
and sharp as a northeast storm.
Now, that man who is affable in public and wha
is irritable in private is making a fraudulent overissue of stock, and he is as bad as a bank that
might have four or five hundred thousand dollars
of bills in circulation with no specie in the vault.
Let us learn to show piety at home. If we have
it not there, we have it not anywhere. If we
have not genuine grace in the family circle, all
our outward and public plausibility merely springs
from a fear of the world or from the slimy, putrid
pool of our own selfishness. I tell you the home
is a mighty test of character. What you are at
home you are everywhere, whether you demonstrate it or not.
HOME A REFUGE.

Again, I remark that home is a refuge. Life
is the United States army on the national road
to Mexico, a long march with ever and anon a
skirmish and a battle. At eventide we pitch our
tent and stack the arms, we hang up the war
cap and lay our head on the knapsack, we sleep
until the morning bugle calls us to marching
and action. How pleasant it is to rehearse the
victories, and the surprises, and the attacks of
the day, seated by the still camp-fire of the home
circle!

188

THE DOMESTIC CIRCLE.

Yea, life is a stormy sea. With shivered masts,
and torn sails, and hulk aleak, we put in at the
harbor of home. Blessed harbor. There we go
for repairs in the dry dock of quiet life. The
candle in the window is to the toiling man the
lighthouse guiding him into port. Children go
forth to meet their fathers as pilots at the
"Narrows' 5 take the hand of ships. The doorsill of the home is the wharf where heavy life is
unladen.
There is the place where we may talk of what
we have done without being charged with selfadulation. There is the place where we may
lounge without being thought ungraceful. There
is the place where we may express affection withcut being thought silly. There is the place where
we may forget our annoyances, and exasperations, and troubles. Forlorn earth pilgrim! no
home ? Then die. That is better. The grave ira
brighter, and grander, and more glorious than this
world with no tent for marchings, with no harbor
from the storm, with no place of rest from thfe
scene of greed, and gouge, and loss, and gain.
God pity the man or the woman who has no home.
A POLITICAL SAFEGUARD.

Further, I remark, that home is a political safeguard. The safety of the State must be built on
the safety of the home. Why cannot France
come to a placid republic ? Ever and anon there
is a threat of national capsize. France as a nation
has not the right kind of a Christian home. The
Christian hearthstone is the only corner-stone for

THE DOMESTIC CIRCLE.

139

a republic. The virtues cultured in the family
circle are an absolute necessity for the State. If
there be not enough moral principle to make the
family adhere, there will not be enough political
principle to make the State adhere. "No home"
means the Goths and Vandals, means the Nomads
of Asia, means the Numideans of Africa, changing from place to place, according as the pasture
happens to change. Confounded be all those
Babels of iniquity which would overtower and
destroy the home. The same storm that upsets
the ship in which the family sails will sink the
frigate of the constitution. Jails and penitentiaries and armies and navies are not our best
defense. The door of the home is the best fortress. Household utensils are the best artillery,
and the chimneys of our dwelling houses are the
grandest monuments of safety and triumph. No
home; no republic.
AS A SCHOOL.

Further, I remark, that home is a school. Old
ground must be turned up with subsoil plough,
and it must be harrowed and re-harrowed, and
then the crop will not be as large as that of the
new ground with less culture. Now, youth and
childhood are new ground, and all the influences
thrown over their heart and life will come up in
after life luxuriantly? Every time you have given
a smile of approbation, all the good cheer of your
life will come up again in the geniality of your
children. And every ebullition of anger and every
uncontrolable display of indignation will be fuel

140

THE DOMESTIC CIRCLE.

to their disposition twenty, or thirty, or forty
years from now—fuel for a bad fire a quarter of
a century from this.
You praise the intelligence of your child too
much sometimes when you think he is not aware
of it, and you will see the result of it before ten
years of age in his annoying affectations. You
praise his beauty, supposing he is not large enough
to understand what you say, and you will find
him standing on a high chair before a flattering
mirror. Words and deeds and example are th$
seed of character, and children are very apt to b$
the second edition of their parents. Abraham
begat Isaac, so virtue is apt to go down in the
ancestral line ; but Herod begat Archelaus, so
iniquity is transmitted. What vast responsibility
comes upon parents in view of this subject.
Oh, make your home the brightest place on
earth, if you would charm your children to the
high path of virtue, and rectitude, and religion,
Do not always turn the blinds the wrong way.
Let the light which puts gold on the gentian and
spots the pansy pour into your dwellings. Do not
expect the little feet to keep step to a dead march.
Do not cover up your walls with such pictures as
West's " Death on a Pale Horse," or Tintoretto's
'' Massacre of the Innocents." Rather cover them,
if you have pictures, with "The Hawking Party,"
and "The Mill by the Mountain Stream," and
"The Fox Hunt," and the "The Children Amid
Flowers," and "The Harvest Scene," and "The
Saturday Night Marketing."

THE DOMESTIC CIRCLE.

141

CHEERFUL HOMES.

Get you no hint of cheerfulness from grasshopper's leap, and lamb's frisk, and quail's
whistle, and garrulous streamlet, which from the
rock at the mountain top clear down to the
meadow ferns under the shadow of the steep,
comes looking for the steepest place to leap off at,
and talking just to hear itself talk? If all the
skies hurtled with tempest and everlasting storm
wandered over the sea, and every mountain
stream went raving mad, frothing at the mouth
with mud foam, and there was nothing but
simoons blowing among the hills, and there were
neither lark's carol nor humming-bird's trill, nor
waterfall's dash, but only a bear's bark, and
panther's scream, and wolf's howl, then you
might well gather into your homes only the
shadows. But when God has strewn the earth
and the heavens with beauty and with gladness,
let us take into our home circles all innocent
hilarity, all brightness, and all good cheer. A
dark home makes bad boys and bad girls in preparation for bad men and bad women.
Above all, my friends, take into your homes
Christian principle. Can it be that in any of the
comfortable homes of my congregation the voice
of prayer is never lifted? What! No supplication at night for protection? What! No thanksgiving in the morning for care ? How, my brother,
my sister, will you answer God in the Day of
Judgment, with reference to your children. It is
a plain question, and therefore I ask it. In, th,e

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THE DOMESTIC CIRCLE.

tenth chapter of Jeremiah God says He will pour
out His fury upon the families that call not upon
His name. 0 parents, when you are dead and
gone, and the moss is covering the inscription of
the tombstone, will your children look back and
think of father and mother at family prayer?
Will they take the old family Bible and open it
and see the mark of tears of contrition and tears of
consoling promise wept by eyes long before gone
out into darkness?
CHILDREN'S CURSES.

Oh, if you do not inculcate Christian principle
in the hearts of your children, and you do not
warn them against evil, and you do not invite
them to holiness and to God, and they wander
off into dissipation and into infidelity, and at
last make shipwreck of their immortal soul, on
their death-bed and in their Day of Judgment
they will curse you. Seated by the register or the
stove, what if on the wall should come out the
history of your children? What a history—the
mortal and immortal life of your loved ones*
Every parent is writing the history of his child.
He is writing it, composing it into a song or
turning it into a groan.
My mind runs back to one of the best of early
homes. Prayer, like a roof, over it. Peace, like
an atmosphere, in it. Parents, personifications
of faith in trial and comfort in darkness. The
two pillars of that earthly home long ago crumbled to dust. .But shall I ever forget that early
home? Yes, when the flower forgets the sun

THE DOMESTIC CIRCLE.

143

that warms it. Yes, when the mariner forgets
the star that guided him. Yes, when love has
gone out on the heart's altar and memory has
emptied his urn into forgetfuhiess. Then, the
home of my childhood, I will forget thee! the
family altar of a father's importunity and a
mother's tenderness, the voices of affection, the
funerals of our dead father and mother, with interlocked arms like intertwining branches of trees
making a perpetual arbor of love, and peace, and
kindness—then I will forget them—then and only
then. You know, my brother, that a hundred
times you hav$ been kept out of sin by the memory of such a scene as I have been describing.
You have often had raging temptations, but you
know what haB held you with supernatural grasp.
I tell you, a man who has had such a good
home as that never gets over it, and a man who
has had a bad early home never gets over it.
Again, I remark, that home is a type of heaven.
To bring us to that home Christ left His home.
Far up and fai* back in the history of heaven there
came a period when its most illustrious citizen
was about to absent Himself. He was not going
to sail from beach to beach; we have often done
that. He was not going to put out from one
hemisphere to another hemisphere; many of us
have done that. But he was to sail from world
to world, the spaces unexplored and the immensities untraveled.
No world had ever hailed
leaven, and so far as we know heaven had never
hailed any other world. I think that the win-

144

THE DOMESTIC CIRCLE.

dows and the balconies were thronged, and that
the pearline beach was crowded with those who
had come to see Him sail out the harbor of light
into the ocean beyond.
THE E X I L E .

Out, and out, and out, and on, and on, and on,
and down, and down, and down, He sped, until
one night, with only one to greet Him, He arrived, His disembarkation so unpretending, so
quiet, that it was not known on earth until the
excitement in the cloud gave intimation that
something grand and glorious had happened?
Who comes there? From what port did He
sail? Why was this the place of His destination?
I question the shepherds, I question the camel
drivers, I question the angels. I have found out!
He was an exile. But the world has had plenty
of exiles—Abraham an exile from Ur of the Chaldees; John an exile from Ephesus; Kosciusko an exile from Poland; Mazzini an exile from Eome; Emmett an exile from Ireland; Victor Hugo an exile
from France; Kossuth an exile from Hungary. But
this one of whom I speak to-day had such resounding farewell and came into such chilling reception
—for not even an hostler went out with his lantern to help Him in—that He is mor& to be celebrated than any other expatriated one of earth or
heaven.
HOMESICKNESS.

It is ninety-five million miles from here to the
sun, and all astronomers agree in saying that our
solar system is only one of the small wheels of

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145

the great machinery of the universe, turning
round some one great center, the center so far distant it is beyond all imagination and calculation;
and if, as some think, that great center in the
distance is heaven, Christ came far from hom€
when He came here. Have you ever thought
of the homesickness of Christ? Some of you
know what homesickness is, when you have been
only a few weeks absent from the domestic
circle. Christ was thirty-three years away from
home. Some of you feel homesickness when you
are a hundred or a thousand miles away from the
domestic circle. Christ was more millions of
miles away from home than you could calculate if
all your life you did nothing but calculate. You
know what it is to be homesick even amid pleasurable surroundings; but Christ slept in huts,
and he was athirst, and he was a-hungered, and
He was on the way from being born in another
man's barn to being buried in another man's
grave. I have read how the Swiss, when they
are far away from their native country, at the
sound of their national air get so homesick that
they fall into melancholy, and sometimes they
die under the homesickness. But, oh, the homesickness of Christ! Poverty homesick for celestial
riches. Persecution homesick for hosanna. Weariness homesick for rest. Homesick for angelic and
archangelic companionship. Homesick to go out
of the night, and the storm, and the world's execration, and all that homesickness suffered to get
us home.

146

THE DOMESTIC CIRCLE.
THE HOME-GATHERING.

At our best estate we are only pilgrims and
strangers here. " Heaven is our home." Death
will never knock at the door of that mansion,
and in all that country there is not a single
grave. How glad parents are in holiday times to
gather their children home again. But I have
noticed that there is almost always a son or a
daughter absent—absent from home, perhaps absent from the country, perhaps absent from the
world. Oh, how glad our Heavenly Father will
be when He gets all His children home with Him
in heaven ! And how delightful it will be for
brothers and sisters to meet after long separation !
Once they parted at the door of the tomb; now
they meet at the door of immortality. Once they
saw only through a glass darkly; now it is face to
face; corruption, incorruption; mortality, immortality. Where are now all their sins and sorrows
and troubles ? Overwhelmed in the Red Sea of
Death while they passed through dry shod.
Gates of pearl, capstones of amethyst, thrones
of dominion, do not stir my soul so much as the
thought of home. Once there let earthly sorrows
howl like storms and roll like seas. Home. Let
thrones rot and empires wither. Home. Let the
world die in earthquake struggle, and be buried
amid procession of planets and dirgo of spheres.
Home.
Let everlasting ages roll irresistible
sweep. Home. No sorrow, no cryirg, no tears,
no death. But home, sweet home, home, beauti-

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117

ful home, everlasting home, home with each
other, home with God.
A DREAM.

One night lying on my lounge, when very tired,
my children all around about me in full romp,
and hilarity, and laughter—on the lounge, half
awake and half asleep, I dreamed this dream : I
was in a far country. It was not Persia, although
more than Oriental luxuriance crowned the cities.
It was not the tropics, although more than tropical fruitfulness filled the gardens. It was not
Italy, although more than Italian softness filled
the air. And I wandered around looking for
thorns and nettles, but I found that none of them
grew there, and I saw the sun rise, and I watched
to see it set, but it sank not. And I saw the
people in holiday attire, and I said : " When will
they put off this and put on workmen's garb, and
again delve in the mine or swelter at the forge ?"
But they never put off the holiday attire.
And I wandered in the suburbs of the city to
find the place where the dead sleep, and I looked
all along the line of the beautiful hills, the place
where the dead might most blissfully sleep, and 1
saw towers and castles, but not a mausoleum or a
monument or a while slab could I see. And I
went into the chapel of the great town, and I
said: " Where do the poor worship, and where
are the hard benches on which they sit V And
the answer was made me :
" W E HAVE NO POOR."

in this country."

And then I wandered oat to

148

THE DOMESTIC CIRCLE.

find the hovels of the destitute, and I found mansions of amber and ivory and gold; but not a tear
could I see, not a sigh could I hear, and I was
bewildered, and I sat down under the branches of
a great tree, and I said: " Where am I % And
whence comes all this scene V
And then out from among the leaves, and up
the flowery paths, and across the bright streams
there came a beautiful group, thronging all about
me, and as I saw them come I thought I knew
their step; and as they shouted I thought I knew
their voices; but then they were so gloriously arrayed in apparel such as I had never before witnessed that I bowed as stranger to stranger. But
when again they clapped their hands and shouted :
" Welcome, welcome," the mystery all vanished,
and I found that time had gone and eternity had
come, and we were all together again in our
new home in heaven. And I looked around, and
said: " A r e we all here V and the voices of
many generations responded : " All here." And
while tears of gladness were raining down our
cheeks, and the branches of the Lebanon cedars
were clapping their hands, and the towers of the
great city were chiming their welcome, we all
together began to leap and shout and sing 'i Home,
home, home, home 1"

SISTERS AND BROTHERS.

149

Sisters and Brothers.
"And his sister stood afar off to know what would becora*
of him."—Ex. ii, 4.

Princess Thermutis, daughter of Pharaoh,
looking out through the lattice of her bathinghouse, on the banks of the Nile, saw a curious
boat on the river. It had neither oar nor helm,
and they would have been useless anyhow. There
was only one passenger, and that a baby boy.
But the Mayflower that brought the Pilgrim
Fathers to America carried not so precious a load.
I'he boat was made of the broad leaves of papyrus
tightened together by bitumen. Boats were sometimes made of that material, as we learn from
Pliny, and Herodotus, and Theophrastus.
MIRIAM'S VIGIL.

"Kill every Hebrew boy when he is born," had
been Pharaoh's order. To save her son, Jochebed,
the mother of little Moses, had put him in that
queer boat and launched him. His sister Miriam
stood on the bank watching that craft with its
precious burden. She was far enough off not to
draw attention to the boat, but near enough to
offer protection. There she stands on the bank.
Miriam the poetess, Miriam the quick-witted ;
Miriam the faithful, though very human, for in
after time she became so mad with that very

150

SISTERS AND BROTHERS.

brother for marrying a woman she did not like,
that she made a great family row, and was struck
with leprosy.
Miriam was a splendid sister, but had her faults,
like all the rest of us. How carefully she watched
the boat containing her brother! A strong wind
might upset it. The buffaloes often found there
might, in a sudden plunge of thirst, sink it. Some
ravenous water-fowl might swoop, and pick his
eyes out with iron beak. Some crocodile or hippopotamus crawling through the rushes might
craunch the babe. Miriam watched and watched,
until Princess Thermutis, a maiden on each side of
her, holding palm leaves over her head to shelter
her from the sun, came down and entered her
bathing-house. When from the lattice she saw
that boat she ordered it brought, and when the
leaves were pulled back from the face of the child
and the boy looked up, he cried aloud, for he was
hungry and frightened, and would not even let
the princess take him. The infant would rather
stay hungry than acknowledge any one of the
court as mother.
AN ADROIT MAIDEN.

Now Miriam, the sister, incognito, no one suspecting her relation to the child, leaps from the
bank and rushes down and offers to get a nurse
to pacify the child. Consent is given, she brings
Jochebed, the baby's mother, incognito, not sure
of the court knowing that she was the mother,
and when Jochebed arrived, the child stopped crying, for its fright was calmed and its hunger ap-

SISTERS AND BROTHERS.

151

peased. You may admire Jochebed, the mother,
and all the ages may admire Moses, but I clap my
hands in applause at the behavior of Miriam, the
faithful, brilliant, and strategic sister!
" Go home," some one might have said to Miriam. " W h y risk yourself out there alone on the
banks of the Nile, breathing the miasma and in
danger of being attacked of wild beast or ruffian;
go home !" No; Miriam, the sister, most lovingly
watched and bravely defended Moses, the brother.
Is he worthy her care and courage? Oh, yes! the
sixty centuries of the world's history have never
had so much involved in the arrival of any ship at
any port as in the landing of that papyrus boat
calked with bitumen. Its one passenger was to
be a non-such in history. Lawyer, statesman, politician, legislator, organizer, conqueror, deliverer.
HEBREW LEGENDS.

He had such remarkable beauty in childhood
that Josephus says when he was carried along
the road people stopped to gaze at him, and
workmen would leave their work to admire him.
When the king playfully put his crown upon this
boy, he threw it off indignantly, and put his foot
on it. The king, fearing that this might be a
sign that the child might yet take down his
crown, applied another test. According to the
Jewish legend, the king ordered two bowls to be
put before the child, one containing rubies, and
the other burning coals. And if he took the
coals he was to live, and if he took the rubies he
was to die. For some reason the child took one

152

SISTERS AND BROTHERS.

©f the coals, and put it in his mouth, so that his
life was spared, although it burned the tongue til]
he was indistinct of utterance ever after. Having come to manhood, he spread open the palms
of his hands in prayer and the Eed Sea parted to
let two million five hundred thousand people
escape. And he put the palms of his hands together in prayer, and the Eed Sea closed on a
strangulated host.
UNIQUE BURIAL.

His life was unutterably grand, his burial must
be on the same scale. God would let neither
man nor saint, nor archangel have anything to
do with weaving for him a shroud or digging for
him a grave. The omnipotent God left His
throne in heaven one day, and if the question
was asked, " Whither is the King of the Universe
going?" the answer was, " I am going down to
bury Moses." And the Lord took this mightiest
of men to the top of a hill, and the day was clear,
and Moses ran his eye over the magnificent range
of country. Here, the valley of Esdraelon, where
the final battle of all nations is to be fought; and
yonder, the mountains Hermon, and Lebanon,
and Gerizim, and hills of Judea; and the village
of Bethlehem there, and the city of Jericho yonder, and the vast stretch of landscape that almost
took the old lawgiver's breath away as he looked

at it.
And then, without a pang, as I learn from the
statement that the eye of Moses was undimmed,
and his natural force unabated, God touched the

SISTERS AND BROTHERS.

153

great lawgiver's eyes and they closed; and his
lungs, and they ceased; and his heart, and it
stopped; and commanded, saying: " To the skies,
thou immortal spirit!" And then one divin©
band was put against the back of Moses, and the
other hand against the pulseless breast, and God
laid him softly down on Mount Nebo, and then
the lawgiver, lifted in the Almighty's arms, was
carried to the opening of a cave and placed in
crypt, and one stroke of the divine hand smoothed
the features into an everlasting calm, and a rock
was rolled to the door, and the only obsequies at
which God did all the offices of priest, and undertaker, and grave-digger, and mourner, were
ended.
THE WORLD INDEBTED.

Oh, was not Miriam, the sister of Moses, doing
a good thing, an important thing, a glorious
thing, when she watched the boat woven of river
plants and made water-tight with asphaltum,
carrying its one passenger? Did she not put all
the ages of time and of a coming eternity under
obligation, when she defended her helpless brother
from the perils aquatic, reptilian, and ravenous?
She it was who brought that wonderful babe and
his mother together so that he was reared to be
the deliverer of his nation, when otherwise, if
saved at all from the rushes of the Nile, he would
have been only one more of the God-defying
Pharaohs; for, Princess Thermutis, of the bathing-house, would have inherited the crown of
Egypt, and as she had no child of her own5 this

154

SISTERS ANB BROTHERS.

adopted child would have come to coronation.
Had there been no Miriam there would have been
no Moses. What a garland for faithful sisterhood!
For how many a lawgiver, and how many a
hero, and how many a deliverer, and how many
a saint, are this world and the Church indebted
to a watchful, loving, faithful, godly sister?
Come up out of the farm-houses, come up out of
the inconspicuous homes! Come up from the
banks of the Hudson, and the Penobscot, and the
Savannah, and the Mobile, and the Mississippi,
and all the other Niles of America, and let us see
you, the Miriams who watched and protected the
leaders inlaw and medicine, and merchandise, and
art, and agriculture, and mechanics, and religion.
If I should ask all these physicians, and attorneys, and merchants, and ministers of religion,
and successful men of all professions and trades5
who are indebted to an elder sister for good influences, and perhaps for an education or a prosperous start, to rise, they would rise by the hundreds
God knows how many of our Greek lexicons and
how much of our schooling was paid for by money
that would otherwise have gone for the replenishing of a sister's wardrobe. While the brother
sailed off for a resounding sphere, the sister
watched him from the banks of self-denial.
THE ELDER SISTER^

POWER.

Miriam was the oldest of the family, Moses and
Aaron, her brothers, are younger. Oh, the power
of the elder sister to help decide the brother's

SISTERS AND BROTHERS.

155

character for usefulness and for heaven ! She can
keep off from her brother more evils than Miriam
could have driven back water-fowls or crocodile
from the ark of bulrushes.
The older sister
decides the direction in which the cradle-boat
shall sail. By gentleness, by good sense, by Christian principle, she can turn it toward the palace,
not of a wicked Pharaoh, but of a holy God ; and
a brighter princess than Thermutis shall lift him
out of peril, even religion, whose ways are ways
of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.
HER TOILSOME LIFE.

The older sister, how much the world owes her.
Born while yet the family was in limited circumstances, she had to hold and take care of her
younger brothers. And if there is anything that
excites my sympathy it is a little girl lugging
round a great fat child, and getting her ears boxed
because she cannot keep him quiet. By the time
she gets to young womanhood she is pale and
worn out, and her attractiveness has been sacrificed on the altar of sisterly fidelity, and she is
consigned to celibacy, and society calls her by an
ungallant name, but in heaven they call her
Miriam.
In most families the two most undesirable
places in the record of births are the first and the
last, the first because she is worn out "with the
cares of a home that cannot afford to hire help,
and the last because she is spoiled as a pet.
Among the grandest equipages that sweep
through the streets of heayeri will be those oo

156

SISTERS AND BROTHERS.

cupied by sisters who sacrificed themselves for
brothers. They will have the finest of the Apcc*
alyptic white horses, and many who on earth
looked down upon them will have to turn out to
let them pass.
HELP TO MAKE MEN.

Let sisters not begrudge the time and care
bestowed on a brother. It is hard to believe that
any boy that you know so well as your brother
can ever turn out anything very useful. Well, he
may not be a Moses. There is only one of that
kind needed for six thousand years. But I tell
you what your brother will be—either a blessing
or a curse to society, and a candidate for happiness or wretchedness. He will, like Moses, have
the choice between rubies and living coals, and
your influence will have much to do with his d&
cision. He may not, like Moses, be the deliverer
of a nation, but he may, after your father and
mother are gone, be the deliverer of a household.
What thousands of homes to-day are piloted by
brothers. There are properties now well invested
and yielding income for the support of sisters
and younger brothers, because the older
brother rose to the leadership from the day
the father laid down to die. Whatever you
do for your brother will come back to you
again.
If you set him an ill-natured, censorious, unaccommodating example, it will recoil
upon you from his own irritated and despoiled
nature. If you, by patience with all his infirmities and by nobility of character, dwell with him

SISTERS AND BROTHERS.

157

in the few years of your companionship, you will
have your counsels reflected back upon you some
day by his splendor of behavior in some crisis
where he would have failed but for you.
TEASING A FAMILY CURSE.

Don't snub him. Don't depreciate his ability.
Don't talk discouragingly about his future. Don't
let Miriam get down off the bank of the Nile,
and wade out and upset the ark of bulrushes.
Don't tease him. Brothers and sisters do not
consider it any harm to tease. That spirit abroad
in the family is one of the meanest and most
devilish. There is a teasing that is pleasurable,
and is only another form of innocent raillery, but
that which provokes, and irritates, and makes the
eye flash with anger, is to be reprehended. It
would be less blameworthy to take a bunch of
thorns and draw them across your sister's cheeky
or to take a knife and draw its sharp edge across
your brother's hand till the blood spurts, for that
would damage only the body, but teasing is the
thorn and the knife, scratching and lacerating
the disposition and the soul. It is the curse of
innumerable households that the brothers tease
the sisters, and the sisters the brothers. Sometimes it is the color of the hair, or the shape of
the features, or an affair of the heart. Sometimes it is by revealing a secret, or by a suggestive
look, or a guffaw, or an "Ahem!" Tease! Tease!
Tease! For God's sake quit it. Christ says, " H e
that hateth his brother is a murderer." Now,
when you, by teasing, make your brother oj

158

SISTERS AND BROTHERS.

sister hate, you turn him or her into a murderer
©r murderess.
BEWARE OF JEALOUSY.

Don't let jealousy ever touch a sister's soul, as
it so often does, because her b:i other gets more
honor or more means. Even Miriam, the heroine
of the text, was struck by that evil passion of
jealousy- She had possessed unlimited influence
over Moses, and now he marries, and not only so
but marries a black woman from Ethiopia, and
Miriam is so disgusted and outraged at Moses,
first, because he had married at all, and next because he had practiced miscegenation, that she is
drawn into a frenzy, and then begins to turn
white, and gets white as a corpse, and then
whiter than a corpse. Her complexion is like
chalk: the fact is, she has the Egyptian leprosy.
And now the brother whom she had defended on
the Nile comes to her rescue in a prayer that
brings her restoration.
Let there be no room in all your house for
jealously, either to sit or stand. It is a leprous
abomination. Your brothers' success, oh sisters,
is your success. His victories will be your victories; for, while Moses the brother led the vocal
music after the crossing of the Eed Sea, Miriam,
the sister, with two glittering sheets of brass uplifted and glittering in the sun, led the instrumental music, clapping the cymbals till the last
frighted neigh of pursuing cavalry horse was
smothered in the wave, and the last Egyptian
helmet went under

SISTERS AND BROTHERS.

159

FAMILY QUARRELS.

How strong it makes a family when all the sisters and brothers stand together, and what an
awful wreck when they disintegrate, quarreling
about a father's will and making the surrogate's
office horrible with their wrangle. Better when
you were little children in the nursery that with
your playhouse mallets you had accidentally
killed each other fighting across your cradle, than
that, having come to the age of maturity, and
having in your veins and arteries the blood of the
same father and mother, you fight each other
across the parental grave in the cemetery.
THE ROTHSCHILDS.

If you only knew it your interests are identical.
Of all the families of the earth that ever stood
together, perhaps the most conspicuous is the
family of the Rothschilds. As Mayer Anselm
Rothschild was about to die in 1812, he gathered
his children about him, Anselm, Solomon,
Nathan, Charles and James, and made them
promise that they would always be united on
'Change. Obeying that injunction they have
been the mightiest commercial power on earth,
and at the raising or lowering of their sceptre,
nations have risen or fallen. That illustrates how
much on a large scale, and for selfish purposes, a
united family may achieve. But suppose that,
instead of a magnitude of dollars as the object, it
be doing good and making salutary impression,
and raising this sunken world, how much more
ennobling. Sister, you do your part, and brother

160

SISTERS AND BROTHERS.

will do his part. If Miriam will lovingly watch
the boat on the Nile, Moses will help her when
leprous disasters strike.
THE FAMILY BOND.

When father and mother are gone, and they
Boon will be, if they have not already made exit,
the sisterly and fraternal bond will be the only
ligament that will hold the family together. How
many reasons for your deep and unfaltering affection for each other. Eocked in the same cradle;
bent over by the same motherly tenderness; toiled
for by the same father's weary arm and aching
brow; with common inheritance of all the family
secrets; and with names given you by parents
who started you with the highest hopes for your
happiness and prosperity—I charge you, be loving
and kind and forgiving. If the sister see that the
brother never wants a sympathizer, the brother
will see that the sister never wants an escort.
Oh, if the sisters of a household knew through
what terrific and damning temptations their
Mother goes in this city life, they would hardly
sleep nights in the anxiety for his salvation. And
if you would make a holy conspiracy of kind
words and gentle attentions and earnest prayers,
that would save his soul from death and hide a
multitude of sins. But let the sister dash off in
one direction in discipleship of the world, and the
brother flee off in another direction in dissipation,
and it will not be long before they will meet
again at the iron gate of Despair, their blistered
feet in the hot ashes of a consumed lifetime, Alas3

SISTERS AND BROTHERS.

161

that brothers and sisters, though living together
for years, very often do not know each other, and.
that they see only the imperfections and none of
the virtues.
A RUSSIAN BANQUET.

General Bauer, of the Russian cavalry, had in
early life wandered off in the army, and the family
supposed he was dead. After he gained a fortune
he encamped one day in Husam, his native place,
and made a banquet, and among the great military men who were to dine, he invited a plain
miller and his wife, who lived near by, and wTho,
affrighted, came, fearing some harm would be
done them. The miller and his wife were placed
one on each side of the general at the table. The
general asked the miller all about his family, and
the miller said that he had two brothers and a
lister.
" N o other brothers?' "My younger
brother went off with the army many years ago,
and no doubt was long ago killed." Then the general said: "Soldiers, I am this man's younger
brother whom he thought was dead." And how
loud was the cheer, and how warm was the
embrace.
Brother and sister, jou need as much of an introduction to each other as they did. You do not
know each other. You think your brother is
grouty and cross and queer, and he thinks you are
selfish and proud and unlovely. Both wrong.
That brother will be a prince in some woman's
eyes, and that sister a queen in the estimation of
some man, That brother is & magnificent fellow,

162

SISTERS AND BROTHERS.

and that sister is a morning in June. Come, let
me introduce you: "Moses, this is Miriam."
" Miriam, this is Moses." Add seventy-five per
cent, to your present appreciation of each other,
and when you kiss good morning do not stick up
your cold cheek, wet from the recent washing, as
though you hated to touch each other's lips in
affectionate caress. Let it have all the fondness
and cordiality of a loving sister's kiss.
BE

AGREEABLE.

Make yourselves as agreeable and helpful to
each other as possible, remembering that soon
you part. The few years of boyhood and girlhood
will soon slip by, and you will go out to homes of
your own, and into the battle with the world and
amid ever changing vicissitudes, and on paths
crossed with graves, and up steps hard to climb,
and through shadowy ravines. But oh, my God
and Saviour, may the terminus of the journey be
the same as the start, namely, at father's and
mother's knee, if they have inherited the kingdom. Then, as in boyhood and girlhood days,
we rushed in after the day's absence with much
to tell of exciting adventure, and father and
-mother enjoyed the recital as much as we who
made it, so we shall on the hillside of heaven rehearse to them all the scenes of our earthly expedition, and they shall welcome us home, as we
say: " Father and mother, we have come, and
brought our children with us." The old revival
hymn described it with glorious repetition^

SISTERS AND BROTHERS.
ii

Brothers
Brothers
Brothers
Will

163

and sisters there will meet,
and sisters there will meet,
and sisters there will meet,
meet to part no more."

I read of a child in the country who was detained at a neighbor's house on a stormy night by
some fascinating stories that were being told him,
and then looked out and saw it was so dark he
did not dare go home. The incident impressed
me the more because in my childhood I had much
the same experience. The boy asked his comrades to go with him, but they dared not. It got
later and later—seven o'clock, eight o'clock, nine
o'clock. " Oh," he said, " I wish I were home!"
As he opened the door the last time a blinding
flash of the storm and a deafening roar overcame
him. But after a while he saw in the distance a
lantern, andlo! his brother was coming to fetch
him home, and the lad stepped out and with swift
feet hastened on to his brother who took him
home, where they were so glad to greet him, and
for a long time supper had been waiting. So
may it be when the night of death comes and our
earthly friends cannot go with us, and we dare
not go alone; may our Brother, our Elder Brother,
our Friend, closer than a brother; come out to
meet us with the light of the promises, which
shall be a lantern to our feet, and then we will go
in to join our loved ones waiting for us, supper
all ready, the marriage supper of the Lamb0

164:

THE CHILDRExNT's PATRIMONY.

The Children's Patrimony.
""Whose son art thou, thou young man?"—1 Sam. xvii, 58.

Never was there a more "unequal fight than that
between David and Goliath. David five feet high;
Goliath ten.
David a shepherd boy, brought
up amid rural scenes; Goliath a warrior by profession.
Goliath a mountain of braggadocia;
David a marvel of humility. Goliath armed with
an iron spear, David armed with a sling with
smooth stones from the brook. But you are not
to despise these latter weapons. There was a
regiment of slingers in the Assyrian army and a
regiment of slingers in the Egyptian army, and
they made terrible execution, and they could cast
a stone with as much precision and force as now
can be hurled shot or shell. The Greeks in their
army had slingers who would throw leaden plummets inscribed with the irritating words, "Take
this!" So it was a mighty weapon David employed
in that famous combat.
A Jewish rabbi says that the probability is that
Goliath was in such contempt for David, that in a
paroxysm of laughter he threw his head back r
and his helmet fell off, and David saw the uncovered forehead, and his opportunity had come,
and taking this sling and swinging it around his
head two or three times, and aiming at that un*

THE CHILDREN'S PATRIMONY.

165

covered forehead, he crushed it in like an egg^
shell. The battle over,
BEHOLD A TABLEAU:

King Saul sitting, little David standing, his fingers
clutched into the hair of decapitated Goliath. AM
Saul sees David standing there holding in his hand
the ghastly, reeking, staring trophy, evidence of
the complete victory over God's enemies, the king
wonders what parentage was honored by such
heroism, and in my text he asks David his pedigree : "Whose son art thou, thou young man ?"
The king saw what you and I see, that this
question of heredity is a mighty question. The
longer I live the more
I BELIEVE IN BLOOD

—good blood, bad blood, proud blood, humble
blood, honest blood, thieving blood, heroic blood,
cowardly blood. The tendency may skip a generation or two, but it is sure to come out, as in a
little child you sometimes see a similarity to a
great-grandfather whose picture hangs on the
wall. That the physical and mental and moral
qualities are inheritable is patent to any one who
keeps his eyes open. The similarity is so striking
sometimes as to be amusing. Great families,
regal or literary, are apt to have the characteristics all down through the generations, and what
is more perceptible in such families may be seen
on a smaller scale in all families. A thousand
years have no power to obliterate the difference.
ROYAL RASCALS.

The large lip of the House of Austria is seen in

166

THE CHILDREN'S PATRIMONY.

all the generations, and is called the Hapsburg lip.
The House of Stuart always means in all generations cruelty and bigotry and sensuality. Witness Queen of Scotts. Witness Charles I and
Charles II. Witness James I and James II, a n d
all the other scoundrels of that imperial line.
Scottish blood means persistence, English blood
means reverence for the ancient, Welsh blood
means religiosity, Danish blood means fondness
for the sea, Indian blood means roaming disposition, Celtic blood means fervidity, Eoman blood
means conquest.
The Jewish facility for accumulation you may
trace clear back to Abraham, of whom the Bible
says, " he was rich in silver and gold and cattle,"
and to Isaac and Jacob, who had the same
FAMILY CHARACTERISTICS.

Some families are characterized by longevity,
and they have a tenacity of life positively Methuselish. Others are characterized by Goliathian
stature, and you can see it for one generation, two
generations, five generations, in all the genera
tions. Vigorous theology runs on in the line of
the Alexanders. Tragedy runs on in the family
of the Kembles. Literature runs on in the line of
the Trollopes. Philanthropy runs on in the line
of the Wilberforces. Statesmanship runs on in
the line of the Adamses. Henry and Catharine
of Navarre religious, all their families religious.
The celebrated family of the Casini, all mathematicians. The celebrated family of the Medici
—grandfather, son and Catharine—all remarkable

THE CHILDREN'S PATRIMONY.

167

for keen intellect. The celebrated family of Gustavus Adolphus, all warriors.
This law of heredity asserts itself without reference to social or political condition, for you
sometimes find the ignoble in high place and the
honorable in obscure place. A descendant of
Edward I a toll-gatherer. A descendant of Edward III a door-keeper. A descendant of the
Duke of Northumberland a trunk-maker. Some
of the mightiest families of England are extinct,
while some of those most honored in the peerage
go back to an ancestry of hard knuckles and
rough exterior. This law of heredity entirely independent of social or political condition.
Then you find avarice and jealousy and sensuality and fraud having full swing in some families. The violent temper of Frederick William is
the inheritance of Frederick the Great. It is not
a theory to be set forth by worldly philosophy
only, but by divine authority. Do you not remember how the Bible speaks of " a chosen generation/ 5 of " t h e generation of the righteous," of
" t h e generation of vipers," of an "untoward
generation," of " a stubborn generation," of " t h e
iniquity of the past visited upon the children unto
the third and fourth generation?" So that the
text comes to-day with the force of a projectile
hurled from mightiest catapult, "Whose son art
thou, thou young man?"
" Well," says some one, " t h a t theory discharges
me from all responsibility. Born of sanctified
parents we are bound to be good and we cannot

168

THE CHILDREN'S PATRIMONY.

help ourselves. Born of unrighteous parentage
we are bound to be eyil and we cannot help
ourselves."
TWO INACCURACIES.

As much as if you should say, " the centripetal
force in nature has a tendency to bring everything to the center, and therefore all things come
to the center. The centrifugal force in nature
has a tendency to throw out everything to the
periphery, and therefore everything will go out
to the periphery." Tou know as well as I know
that you can make the centripetal overcome the
centrifugal, and you can make the centrifugal
overcome the centripetal. As when there is a
mighty tide of good in a family that may be overcome by determination to evil, as in the case of
Aaron Burr, the libertine, who had for father
President Burr, the consecrated; as in the case of
Pierrepont Edwards, the scourge of New York
society seventy years ago, who had a Christian
ancestry; while on the othe * hand some of the
best men and women of this day are those who
have come of an ancestry of w \ich it would not
be courteous to speak in their presence.
YOUR DUTY.

The practical and useful object of this sermon
is to show to you that if you have come of a Christian ancestry, then you are solemnly bound to
preserve aiid develop the glorious inheritance; or
if you have come of a depraved ancestry, then it
is your duty to brace yourself against the evil tendency by all prayer and Christian determination^,

THE CHILDREN'S PATRIMONY.

169

and you are to find out what are the family frailties,
and in arming the castle put the strongest guard
at the weakest gate. With these smooth stones
from the brook I hope to strike you, not where
David struck Goliath, in the head, but where
Nathan struck David, in the heart. " Whose son
art thou, thou young man?"
There is something in the periodical holidays to
bring up
THE OLD FOLKS.

Sometime in the winter holiday, when we are
accustomed to gather our families together, old
times have come back again, and our thoughts
have been set to the tune of " Auld Lang Syne."
The old folks were so busy at such times in making us happy, and perhaps on less resource made
their sons and daughters happier than you on
larger resource are able to make your sons and
daughters happy. The snow lay two feet above
their graves, but they shook off the white blankets
and mingled in the holiday festivities—the same
wrinkles, the same stoop of shoulder under the
weight of age, the same old style of dress or coat,
the same smile, the same tones of voice. I hope
you remember them before they went away. If
not, I hope there are those who have recited to
you what they were, and that there may be in
your house some article of dress or furniture with
which you associate their memories. I want to
arouse the most sacred memories of your heart
while I make the impassioned interrogatory in

170

THE CHILDTMN^ PATRIMONY.

regard to your pedigree: " Whose son art thou,
thou young man?"
I. First, I accost all those who are descended
of a
CHRISTIAN ANCESTRY.

I do not ask if your parents were perfect. There
wee no perfect people now, and I do not suppose
there were any perfect people then. Perhaps
there iras sometimes too much blood in their eye
when they chastised you. But from what I know
of you, you got no more than you deserved, and
perhaps a little more chastisement would have
been salutary. But you are willing to acknowledge, I think, that they wanted to do right.
From what you overheard in conversations and
from what you saw at the family altar and at
neighborhood obsequies, you know that they had
invited God into their heart and life. There was
something that sustained those old people superuaturally. You have no doubt about their destiny.
You expect if you ever get to heaven to meet
them as certainly as you expect to meet the Lord
Jesus Christ.
That early association has been a charm for
you. There was a time when you got right up
from a house of iniquity and walked out into the
fresh air because you thought your mother was
looking at you. You have never been very happy
in sin because of a sweet old face that would
present itself. Tremulous voices from the past
accosted you until they were seemingly audible,
and you looked around to see who spoke. There

THE CHILDREN'S PATRIMONY.

171

was an estate not mentioned in the last will and
testament, a vast estate of prayer and holy example and Christian entreaty and glorious memory.
The survivors of the family gathered to hear the
will read, and this was to be kept, and that was
to be sold, and it was share and share alike.
But there was
AN UNWRITTEN WILL

that read something like this: " In the name of
God, Amen. I, being of sound mind, bequeath
to my children all my prayers for their salvation;
I bequeath to them all the results of a lifetime's
toil; I bequeath to them the Christian religion
which has been so much comfort to me, and I
hope may be solace for them; I bequeath to them
a hope of re-union when the partings of life are
over; share and share alike may they have in
eternal riches. I bequeath to them the wish that
they may avoid my errors and copy anything that
may have been worthy. In the name of God who
made me, and the Christ who redeemed me, and
the Holy Ghost who sanctified me, I make this
my last will and testament. Witness, all ye hosts
of heaven. Witness, time; witness, eternity.
Signed, sealed, and delivered in this our dying
hour. Father and Mothor."
You did not get that will proved at the surrogate's office; but I take it out to-day and I
read it to you; I take it out of the alcoves of
your heart; I shake the dust off it; I ask you will
you accept that inheritance, or will you break the
will? 0 ye of Christian ancestry, you have a re-

172

THE CHILDREN'S PATRIMONY.

sponsibility vast beyond all measurement! God
will not let you off with just being as good as ordinary people when you had such extraordinary
advantage. Ought not a flower planted in a hot^
house be more thrifty than a flower planted outside in the storm? Ought not a factory turned by
the Housatonic do more work than a factory turned by a thin and shallow mountain stream? Ought
not you of great early opportunity be better thai}
those who had a cradle unblessed?
THE CAPITAL ACCOUNT.

A father sets his son up in business. He keeps
an account of all the expenditures. So much for
store fixtures, so much for rent, so much for this,
so much for that, and all the items aggregated,
and the father expects the son to give an account.
Your heavenly Father charges against you all the
advantages of a pious ancestry—so many prayers,
so much Christian example, so many kind entreaties—all these gracious influences one tremendous aggregate, and He asks you for an account of it.
Ought not you to be better than those who had
no such advantages? Better have been a foundling
picked up off the city commons than with such
magnificent inheritance of consecration to turn
out indifferently.
Ought not you, my brother, to be better, having had Christian nurture, than that man who can
truly say this morning: "The first word I remember my father speaking to me was an oath;
the first time I remember my father taking hold

THE CHILDREN'S PATRIMONY.

173

of me was in wrath; I never saw a Bible till I
was ten years of age, and then I was told it was
a pack of lies. The first twenty years of my life
I was associated with the vicious. I seemed to
be walled in by sin and death." Now, my
brother, ought you not—I leave it as a matter of
fairness witih you—ought you not to be far better than those who had no early Christian influence?
Standing as you do between the generation
that is past and the generation that is to come,
are you going to pass the blessing on, or are you
going to have your life the gulf in which that
tide of blessing shall drop out of sight forever?
You are
THE TRUSTEE OF PIETY

in that ancestral line, and are you going to
augment or squander that solemn trust fund?
Are you going to disinherit your sons and
daughters of the heirloom w^hich your parents
left you? Ah! that cannot be possible, that
cannot be possible that you are going to take
such a position as that. You are very careful
about the life insurances, and careful about the
deeds, and careful about the mortgages, and careful about the title of your property, because
when you step off the stage you want your children to get it all. Are you making no provision
that they shall get grandfather and grandmother's
religion? Oh, what a last will and testament you
are making, my brother! " I n the name of God,
Amen. I, being of sound mind, make this my

174

THE CHILDREN'S PATRIMONY.

last will and testament. I bequeath to my children all the money I ever made and all the
houses I own; but I disinherit them, I rob them
of the ancestral grace and the Christian influence that I inherited. I have squandered that
on my own worldliness. Share and share alike
must they in the misfortune and the everlasting
outrage. Signed, sealed and delivered in the presence of God and men and angels and devils and
all the generations of earth and heaven and hell,
March, 1886."
O ye of highly favored ancestry, wake up this
morning to a sense of your opportunity and your
responsibility. I think there must be
AN OLD CRADLE,

or a fragment of a cradle somewhere that could
tell a story of midnight supplication in your
behalf. Where is the old rocking-chair in which
you were sung to sleep with the holy nursery
rhyme? Where is the old clock that ticked
away the moments of that sickness on that awful
night when there were but three of you awake
—you and God and mother? Is there not an old
staff in some closet? is there not an old
family Bible on some shelf that seems to address you, saying: "My son, my daughter, how
can you reject that God who so kindly dealt with
us all our lives and to whom we commended you
in our prayers living and dying! By the memory
of the old homestead, by the family altar, by our
dying pillow, by the graves in which our bodies
sleep while our spirits hover, we beg you to tura

THE CHILDREN'S PATRIMONY.

175

over a new leaf for the new year." Oh, the
power of ancestral piety, well illustrated by a
young man of New York who attended a prayermeeting one night and asked for prayer, and then
went home and wrote down these words:
AN ENTRY IN A DIARY.

" Twenty-five years ago to-night my mother
went to heaven, my beautiful, blessed mother,
and I have been alone, tossed up and down upon
the billows of life's tempestuous ocean. Shall I
ever go to heaven? She told me I must meet her
in heaven. When she took her boy's hand in
hers and turned her gentle, loving eyes on me,
and gazed earnestly and long into my face, and
then lifted them to heaven in that last prayer, she
prayed that I might meet her in heaven. I wonder if I ever shall?
" My mother's prayers! Oh, my sweet, blessed
mother's prayers! Did ever boy have such a
mother as I had? For twenty-five years I have
not heard her pray until to-night. I have heard
all her prayers over again. They have had, in
fact, a terrible resurrection. Oh, how she was
wont to pray! She prayed as they prayed tonight, so earnest, so importunate, so believing.
Shall I ever be a Christian ? She was a Christian.
Oh, how bright and pure and happy was her life!
She was a cheerful and happy Christian. There
is
MY MOTHER'S BIBLE.

I have not opened it for years. Did she believe
I could ever neglect her precious Bible? She

176

THE CHILDREN'S PATRIMONY.

surely thought I would read it much and often.
How often has she read it to me. Blessed
mother, did you pray in vain for your boy? It
shall not be in vain. Ah! no, no, it shall not be
in vain, I will pray for myself. Who has sinned
against so much instructions as I have ? against
so many precious prayers put up to heaven for me
by one of the most lovely, tender, pious, confiding,
trusting of mother's in her heavenly Father's care
and grace? She never doubted. She believed.
She always prayed as if she did. My Bible, my
mother's Bible and my conscience teach what I
am and what I have made myself. Oh, the bitter
pangs of an accusing conscience. I need a Saviour
mighty to save. I must seek him. I will. I am
on the sea of existence, and I can never get off
from it. I am afloat. No anchor, no rudder, no
compass, no book of instructions, for I have put
them all away from me. Saviour of the perishing,
save or I perish."
Do you wonder that the next day he arose in
a prayer-meeting and said: "My brethren, I stand
before you a monument of God's amazing mercy
and goodness, forever blessed be His holy name;
all I have and all I am I consecrate to Jesus, my
Saviour and my God." Oh, the power of ancestral prayer. Hear it! Hear it!
II. But I turn for a moment to those who had
EVIL PARENTAGE,

and I want to tell you that the highest thrones
in heaven, and the mightiest triumphs, and the
brightest clowns will be for those who b.ad evil

THE CHILDREN'S PATRIMONY.

177

parentage, but who by the grace of God conquered.
As useful, as splendid a gentleman as I know of
to-day, had for father a man who died blaspheming
God until the neighbors had to put their fingers in
their ears to shut out the horror. One of the
most consecrated and useful Christian ministers
of to-day, was born of a drunken horse-jockey.
Tide of evil tremendous in some families. It is
like Niagara Eapids, and yet men have clung to a
rock and been rescued.
There is a family in New York whose wealth
has rolled up into many millions that was
founded by a man who, after he had vast estate,
sent back a paper of tacks because they were
two cents more than he expected. Grip and
grind and gouge in the fourth generation—I suppose it will be grip and grind and gouge m. the
twentieth generation. The thirst for intoxicants
has burned down through the arteries of a hundred and fifty years. Pugnacity or combativeness characterize other families. Sometimes
one form of evil, sometimes another form of eviL
But
IT MAY BE RESISTED.

it has been resisted. If the family frailty be avarice, cultivate unselfishness and charity, and teach
your children never to eat an apple without offering somebody else half of it. Is the family frailty
combativeness, keep out of the company of
quick-tempered people, and never answer an impertinent question until you have counted a hundred both ways, and after you have written an

178

THE CHILDREN'S PATRIMONY.

angry letter keep it a week before you send it, and
then burn it up. Is the family frailty timidity and
cowardice, cultivate backbone, read the biography
of brave men like Joshua or Paul, and see if you
cannot get a little iron in your blood. Find out
what the family frailty is, and set body, mind, and
soul in battle array.
CONQUER YOUR W I L L .

I think the genealogical table was put in the first
chapter of the New Testament, not only to show
our Lord's pedigree, but to show that a man may
rise up in an ancestral line and beat back successfully all the influences of bad heredity. See
in that genealogical table that good King Asa
came of vile King Abia. See in t hat genealogical
table that Joseph and Mary and the most illustrious Being that ever touched our world, or ever
will touch it, had in their ancestral line scandallous Rehoboam and Tamar and Bathsheba. If this
world is ever to be Edenized—and it will be—all
the infected families of the earth are to be regenerated, and there will some one arise in each
family line and open a new genealogical table.
There will be some Joseph in the line to reverse
the evil influence of Rehoboam, and there will be
some Mary in the line to reverse the evil influence
of Bathsheba. Perhaps the star of hope may point
down to your manger. Perhaps you are to be the
hero or the heroine that is to put down the brakes
and stop that long train of genealogical tendencies and switch it off on another track from that
on which if has been running for a century, You

THE CHILDREN'S PATRIMONY.

1T9

do that, and I will promise you as fine a palace
as the architects of heaven can build, the archway
inscribed with the words: "More thaai conqueror."
ADOPTED CHILDREN.

But whatever your heredity, let me say, you
may be sons and daughters of the Lord God
Almighty. Estranged children from the homestead come back through the open gate of adoption. There is royal blood in our veins. There
are crow ns in our escutcheon. Our Father is King.
Our Brother is King. We may be kings and
queens unto God forever. Come and sit down on
the ivory bench of the palace. Come and wash in
the fountains that fall into the basins of crystal
and alabaster. Come and look out of the upholstered window upon gardens of azalea and amaranth. Hear the full burst of the orchestra while
you banquet with potentates and victors. Oh,
Mien the text sweeps backward, let it not stop at
the cradle that rocked your infancy,- but at the
cradle that rocked the first world, and when the
text sweeps forward, let it not stop at your grave,
but at the throne on which you may reign forever
and ever. " Whose son art thou, thou young
man ?" Son of God ! Heir of mortality! Take
your inheritance!

180

"MOTHERHOOD. 5 5

" Motherhood."
4

Moreover his mother made him a little coat, and brought
*t 4O him from year to year, when she came up with her husband to offer the yearly sacrifice."—1 Sam. ii, 19.

The stories of Deborah and Abigail are very apt
to discourage a woman's soul. She says within
herself, " It is impossible that I ever can achieve
any such grandeur of character, and I don't mean
to try;" as though a child should refuse to play
the eight notes because he cannot execute a
" William Tell." This Hannah of the text differs
from the persons I just now named. She was an
ordinary woman, with ordinary intellectual capacity, placed in the ordinary circumstances, and
yet, by extraordinary piety, standing out before
all the ages to come, the model Christian mother.
Hannah was the wife of Elkanah, who was a
person very much like herself—unromantic and
plain, never having fought a battle or been the
subject of a marvelous escape. Neither of them
would have been called a genius. Just what you
and I might be, that was Elkanah and Hannah.
The brightest time in all the history of that
family was the birth of Samuel. Although no
star ran along the heavens pointing down to his
birth-place, I think the angels of God stooped at
the coming of so wonderful a prophet.

"MOTHERHOOD.*

181

As Samuel had been given in answer to prayer,
Elkanah and all his family, save Hannah, started
up to Shiloh to offer sacrifices of thanksgiving.
The cradle where the child slept was altar enough
for Hannah's grateful heart, but when the boy
was old enough she took him to Shiloh and took
three bullocks, and an ephah of flour, and a bottle
of wine, and made offering of sacrifice unto the
Lord, and there, according to a previous vow, she
left him; for there he was to stay all the days of
his life, and minister in the Temple.
Years rolled on, and every year Hannah made
with her own hand a garment for Samuel, and
took it over to him. The lad would have got
along well without that garment, for I suppose he
was well clad by the ministry of the Temple ; but
Hannah could not be contented unless she was all
the time doing something for her darling boy.
€v
' Moreover his mother made him a little coat, and
brought it to him from year to year, when she
came up with her husband to offer the yearly
sacrifice."
I.—Hannah stands before you, then, in the first
place, as an industrious mother. There was no
need for her to work. Elkanah, her husband, was
far from poor. He belonged to a distinguished
family; for the Bible tells us that he was the son
of Jeroboam, the son of Elihu, the son of John,
the son of Zuph. " W h o were they?" you say. I
do not know; but they were distinguished people,
no doubt, or their names would not have been
mentioned.

182

MOTHERHOOD."

Hannah might have seated herself with hei
family, and, with folded arms and dishevelled
hair, read novels from year to year, if there had
been any to read; but when I see her making that
garment, and taking it over to Samuel, I know
she is industrious from principle as well as from
pleasure. God would not have a mother become
a drudge or a slave ; He would have her employ
all the helps possible in this day in the rearing of
her children. But Hannah ought never to be
ashamed to be found making a coat for Samuel.
Most mothers need no counsel in this direction.
The wrinkles on their brow, the pallor on their
cheek, the thimble mark on their finger, attest
that they are faithful in their maternal duties.
The bloom and the brightness, and the vivacity
of girlhood, have given place for the grander dignity and usefulness, and industry of motherhood.
But there is a heathenish idea getting abroad in
some of the families of Americans; there are
mothers who banish themselves from the home
circle. For three-fourths of their maternal duties
they prove themselves incompetent. They are
ignorant of what their children wear, and what
fcheir children eat, and what their children read.
They intrust to irresponsible persons these young
immortals, and allow them to be under influences
which may cripple their bodies, or taint their
purity, or spoil their manners, or destroy their
souls.
From the awkward cut of Samuel's coat you
know his mother Hannah did not make it. Out

" MOTHERHOOD."

183

from under flaming chandeliers, and off from imported carpets, and down the granite stairs, there
has come a great crowd of children in this day,
untrained, saucy, incompetent for all practical
duties of life, ready to be caught in the first whirl
of crime and sensuality. Indolent and unfaithful
mothers will make indolent and unfaithful children. You cannot expect neatness and order in
any house where the daughters see nothing but
slatternliness and upside-downativeness in their
parents. Let Hannah be idle, and most certainly
Samuel will grow up idle.
Who are the industrious men in all our occupations and professions? Who are they managing the merchandise of the world, building the
walls, tinning the roofs, weaving the carpets,
making the laws, governing the nations, making
the earth to quake, and heave, and roar, and rattle
with the tread of gigantic enterprises? Who are
they? For the most part they descended from industrious mothers, who, in the old homestead,
used to spin their own yarn, and weave their own
carpets, and plait their own door-mats, and flag
their own chairs, and do their own work. The
stalwart men and the influential women of this
day, ninety-nine out of a hundred of them, came
from such an illustrious ancestry of hard knuckles
and homespun.
And who are these people in society, light as
froth, blown every whither of temptation and
fashion—the peddlers of filthy stories, the dancing
jacks of political parties, the scum of society, the

184

"MOTHERHOOD."

tavern-lounging, the store-infesting, the men of
low wink and filthy chuckle, and brass breastpins, and rotten associations? For the most part
they came from mothers idle and disgusting—the
scandal-mongers of society, going from house to
house, attending to everybody's business but their
own, believing in witches, and ghosts, and horse
shoes to keep the devil out of the churn, and by
a godless life setting their children on the very
verge of hell. The mothers of Samuel Johnson,
and of Alfred the Great, and of Isaac Newton,
and of St. Augustine, and of Richard Cecil, and
of President Edwards, for the most part, were
industrious, hardworking mothers.
Now, while I congratulate all Christian mothers
upon the wealth and the modern science which
may afford them all kinds of help, let me say
that every mother ought to be observant of her
children's walk, her children's behavior, her children's food, her children's books, her children's
companionships. However much help Hannah
may have, I think she ought, every year, at least,
make one garment for Samuel. The Lord have
mercy on a man who is so unfortunate as to have
had a lazy mother !
Again. Hannah stands before you as an intelligent mother. From the way in which she
talked in this chapter, and from the way she managed this boy, you know she was intelligent.
There are no persons in a community who need
to be so wise and well-informed as mothers.
Oh3 this work of culture in children for this

MOTHEKHOOD."

185

world and the next! This child is timid, and it
must be roused up and pushed out into activity.
This child is forward, and he must be held back
and tamed down into modesty and politeness*.
Eewards for one, punishments for another. That
which will make George, will luin John? The
rod is necessary in one case, while a frown of
displeasure is more than enough in another.
Whipping and a dark closet do not exhaust all
the rounds of domestic discipline. There have
been children who have grown up and gone to
glory without ever having had their ears boxed.
Oh, how much care and intelligence are necessary in the rearing of children ! But in this day,
when there are so many books on the subject, no
parent is excusable in being ignorant of the best
mode of bringing up a child. If parents knew
more of dietetics there would not be so many
dyspeptic stomachs, and weak nerves, and incompetent livers among children. If parents knew
more of physiology there would not be so many
curved spines and cramped chests, and inflamed
throats, and diseased lungs, as there are among
children. If parents knew more of art, and were
in sympathy with all that is beautiful, there would
not be so many children coming out in the world
with boorish proclivities. If parents knew more
of Christ, and practiced more of His religion,
there would not be so many little feet already
starting on the wrong road, and all around us
voices of riot and blasphemy would not come up
With such ecstasy of infernal trii^nph.

186

" MOTHERHOOD."

The eaglets in the eyrie have no advantages
over the eaglets of a thousand years ago; the kids
have no superior way of climbing up the rocks
than the old goats taught hundreds of years ago;
the whelps know no more now than did the
whelps of ages ago—they are taught no more by
the lions of the desert; but it is a shame that in
this day, when there are so many opportunities
of improving ourselves in the best manner of cultivating children, that so often there is no more
advancement in this respect than there has been
among the kids and the eaglets and the whelps.
III. Again, Hannah stands before you as a
Christian mother. From her prayers and from
the way she consecrated her boy to God, I know
that she was good. A mother may have the finest
culture, the most brilliant surroundings; but she
is not fit for her duties unless she be a Christian
mother. There may be well-read libraries in the
house, and exquisite music in the parlor, and the
canvas of the best artists adorning the walls, and
the wardrobe be crowded with tasteful apparel,
and the children be wonderful for their attainments, and make the house ring with laughter
and innocent mirth; but there is something woeful-looking in that house, if it be not also the
residence of a Christian mother.
I bless God there are not many prayerless
mothers—not many of them. The weight of
responsibility is so great that they feel the need
of a Divine hand to help, and a Divine voice to
comfort, and a Divine heart to sympathize.

" MOTHERHOOD.

187

Thousands of mothers have been led into the
kingdom of God by the hands of their little children. There were hundreds of mothers who
would not have been Christians had it not been
for the prattle of their little ones. Standing some
day in the nursery they bethought themselves,
" This child God has given me to raise for eternity.
What is my influence upon it? Not being a
Christian myself, how can I ever expect him to
become a Christian ? Lord help me!"
Are their anxious mothers, who know nothing
of the infinite help of religion ? Then I commend to
them Hannah, the pious mother of Samuel. Do not
think it is absolutely impossible that your children
come up iniquitous. Out of just such fair brows,
and bright eyes, and soft hands, and innocent
hearts, crime gets its victims—extirpating purity
from the heart, and rubbing out the smoothness
from the brow, and quenching the luster of the
eye, and shriveling up, and poisoning, and putrefying, and scathing, and scalding, and blasting,
and burning with shame and woe.
Every child is a bundle of tremendous possibilities; and whether that child shall come forth
to life, its heart attuned to the eternal harmonies,
and after a life of usefulness on earth go to a
life of joy in heaven; or whether across it shall
jar eternal discords, and after a life of wrongdoing on earth it shall go to a home of impenetrable darkness and an abyss of immeasurable
plunge, is being decided by nursery song and Sabbath lesson^ and evening prayer, and walkf and

188

#€

MOTHERHOOD."

ride, and look, and frown, and smile. OhT aot*
many children in glory, crowding all the battle*
ments, and lifting a million-voiced hosanna,
brought to God through Christian parentage.
One hundred and twenty clergymen were together, and they were telling their experience and
their ancestry; and of the one hundred and twenty
clergymen, how many of them, do you suppose,
assigned as the means of their conversion the influence of a Christian mother ? One hundred out
of the one hundred and twenty! Philip Doddridge was brought to God by the Scripture lesson
on the Dutch tiles of a chimney fireplace. The
mother thinks she is only rocking a child, but at
the same time she may be rocking the fate of
nations, rocking the glories of heaven. The same
maternal power that may lift the child up may
press a child down.
A daughter came to a worldly mother and said
she was anxious about her sins, and she had been
praying all night. The mother said: " Oh, stop
praying. I don't believe in praying. Get over
all these religious notions and I'll give you a dress
that will cost five hundred dollars, and you may
wear it next week to that party." The daughter
took the dress, and she moved in the gay circle,
the gayest of all the gay, that night; and sure
enough, all religious impressions were gone, and
she stopped praying. A few months after she
came to die, and in her closing moments said:
"Mother, I wish you would bring me that dress
that cost five hundred dollars." The mothej?

" MOTHERHOOD."

189

thought it a very strange request, but she brought
it to please the dying child. "Now," said the
daughter, "mother, hang that dress on the foot
of my bed," and the dress was hung there, on the
foot of the bed. Then the dying girl got up on
one elbow and looked at her mother, and then
pointed to the dress, and said, "Mother, that dress
is the price of my soul!" Oh, what a momentous
thing it is to be a mother.
IV. Again, and lastly, Hannah stands before
you the rewarded mother. For all the coats she
made for Samuel, for all the prayers she offered
for him, for the discipline exerted over him, she
got abundant compensation in the piety, and the
usefulness, and the popularity of her son Samuel;
and that is true in all ages. Every mother gets
full pay for all the prayers and tears in behalf of
her children. That man useful in commercial
life; that man prominent in a profession; that
master mechanic—why, every step he takes in
life has an echo of gladness in the old heart that
long ago taught him to be a Christian, and heroic
and earnest.
The story of what you have done, or what you
have written, of the influence you have exerted,
has gone back to the old homestead—for there is
some one always ready to carry good tidings and
that story makes the needle in the old mother's
tremulous hand fly quicker, and the flail in the
father's hand come down upon the barn floor with
a vigorous thump. Parents love to hear good

190

" MOTHERHOOD."

news from their children. Do you send them good
news always?
Look out for the young man who speaks of his
father as " t h e governor/' the "squire/ 5 or the
" old chap.' 1 Look out for the young woman who
calls her mother her "maternal ancestor/ 5 or the
" old woman." " T h e eye that mocketh at his
father, and refuseth to obey his mother, the ravens
of the valley shall pick it out, and the young
eagles shall eat it."
God grant that all these parents may have the
great satisfaction of seeing their children grow up
Christians. But oh! the pang of that mother who,
after a life of street-gadding and gossip-retailing,
hanging on the children the fripperies and follies
of this world, sees those children tossed out on the
sea of life like foam on the wave, or nonentities in
a world where only bravery and stalwart character
can stand the shock. But blessed be the mother
who looks upon her children as sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty.
Oh! the satisfaction of Hannah, in seeing Samuel serving at the altar; of Mother Eunice in
seeing her Timothy learned in the Scriptures. Thai
is the mother's recompense: to see children coming
up useful in the world, reclaiming the lost, healing
the sick, pitying the ignorant/earnest and useful
in every sphere. That throws a new light back
on the old family Bible whenever she reads it, and
that will be ointment to soothe the aching limbs
of decrepitude, and light up the closing hours of
life's day with the glories of an autumnal sunset

"MOTHERHOOD."

191

There she sits, the old Christian mother, ripe
for heaven. Her eyesight is almost gone, but the
splendors of the Celestial City kindle up her vision.
The gray light of Heaven's morn has struck
through the gray locks which are folded back over
the wrinkled temples. She stoops very much now
under the burden of care she used to carry for her
children. She sits at home, too old to find her way
to the house of God; but while she sits there, all
the past comes back, and the children that forty
years ago tripped around her arm-chair with their
griefs, and joys, and sorrows—those children are
gone now. Some caught up into a better realm,
where they shall never die, and others out in
the broad world, testing the excellency of a
Christian mother's discipline. Her last days are
full of peace; and calmer and sweeter will her spirit
become, until the gates of life shall lift and let
in the worn-out pilgrim into eternal springtide
and youth, where the limbs never ache, and the
eyes never grow dim, and the staff of the exhausted and decrepit pilgrim shall become the palm of
the immortal athlete.

192

TRIALS OF HOUSEKEEPING.

Trials of Housekeeping:.
''Lord, dost Thou not care that my sister hath left me t@
serve alone? Bid her, therefore, that she help me." Luke x, 40,

Yonder is a beautiful village homestead. The
man of the house is dead, and his widow is taking
charge of the premises. This is the widow Martha of Bethany. Yes, I will show you also the
pet of the household. This is Mary, the younger
sister, with a book under her arm, and her face
having no appearance of anxiety or perturbation,
Company has come. Christ stands outside the
door, and, of course, there is a good deal excitement inside the door. The disarranged furniture
is hastily put aside, and the hair is brushed back,
and the dresses are adjusted as well as, in so short
a time, Mary and Martha can attend to these
matters. They did not keep Christ standing at
the door until they were newly appareled, or
until they had elaborately arranged their tresses,
then coming out with their affected surprise as
though they had not heard the two or three previous knockings, saying: " Why, is that you?" No.
They were ladies, and were always presentable,
although they may not have always had on their
best, for none of us always have on our best; if
we did, our best would not be worth having on.
They throw open the door and greet Christ. They

TRIALS OF HOUSEKEEPING.

193

say: "GkKkl morning, Master; come in, and be
seated." Christ did not come alone; Ha had a
group of friends with him, and such an influx of
city visitors would throw any country home into
perturbation. 1 suppose also the walk from the
city had been a good appetizer. The kitchen department that day was a very important department, and I suppose that Martha had no sooner
greeted the guests than she fled to that room.
Mary had no anxiety about household affairs.
She had full confidence chat Martha could get up
the best dinner in Bethany. She seems to say:
" Now let us have a division of labor. Martha,
you cook, and I'll sit down and be good." So you
have often seen a great difference between two
sisters. There is Martha, hard-working, painstaking, a good manager, ever inventive of some
new pastry, or discovering something in the art
of cooking and housekeeping. There is Mary,
also, fond of conversation, literary, so engaged in
deep questions of ethics she has no time to attend
to the questions of household welfare. It is noon.
Mary is in the parlor with Christ. Martha is in
the kitchen. It would have been better if they
had divided the work, and then they could have
divided the opportunity of listening to Jesus; but
Mary monopolizes Christ while Martha swelters
at the fire. It was a very important thing that
thoy should have a good dinner that day. Christ
was hungry, and He did not often have a luxurious
entertainment. Alas, me! if the duty had devolved
upon Mary, what a repast that would have been.

194

TRIALS OF HOUSEKEEPING.

But something went wrong in the kitchen. Perhaps
the fire would not burn, or the bread would not
bake, or Martha scalded her hand, or something
was burned black that ought only to have been
made brown; and Martha lost her patience, and
forgetting the proprieties of the occasion, with
besweated brow, and, perhaps with pitcher in
one hand and tongs in the other, she rushes out
of the kitchen into the presence of Christ, saying:
" Lord, dost Thou not care that my sister hath
left me to serve alone V Christ scolded not a
word. If it were scolding, I should rather have
His scolding than anybody else's blessing. There
was nothing acerb. He knew Martha had almost
worked herself to death to get Him something to
eat, and so He throws a world of tenderness into
His intonation as He seems to say: " My dear
woman, do not worry; let the dinner go; sit down
on this ottoman beside Mary, your younger sister.
Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled
about many things, but one thing is needful."
As Martha throws open that kitchen door, I look
in and see a great many household perplexities
and anxieties.
First, there is the trial of non-appreciation.
That is what made Martha so mad with Mary.
The younger sister had no estimate of her older
sister's fatigues. As now, men bothered with the
anxieties of the store, and office, and shop, or
coming from the Stock Exchange, they say when
they get home: "Oh, you ought to be in our
factory a little while; you ought to have to man-

TRIALS OF HOUSEKEEPING.

195

age eight, or ten, or twenty subordinates, and
then you would know what trouble and anxiety
are." Oh, sir, the wife and the mother has to
conduct at the same time a university, a clothing
establishment, a restaurant, a laundry, a library,
while she is health officer, police, and president of
her realm. She must do a thousand things, and
do them well, in order to keep things going
smoothly, and so her brain and her nerves are
taxed to the utmost. I know there are housekeepers who are so fortunate that they can sit in
an arm-chair in the library, or lie on the belated
pillow, and throw off all the care upon subordinates who, having large wages and great experience, can attend to all of the affairs of the household. Those are the exception. I am speaking
this morning of the great mass of housekeepers—
the women to whom life is a struggle, and who, at
thirty years of age, look as though they were forty,
and at forty look as though they were fifty, and
at fifty look as though they were sixty. The fallen
at Chalons, and Austerlitz, and Gettysburgh, and
Waterloo, are a small number compared with the
slain in the great Armageddon of the kitchen.
You go out to the cemetery, and you will see that
the tombstones all read beautifully poetic, but if
those tombstones would speak the truth, thousands of them would say : "Here lies a woman
killed by too much mending, and sewing, and
baking, and scrubbing, and scouring; the weapon
with which she was slain was a broom, or a sewing machine, or a ladle." You think,

196

TRIALS OF HOUSEKEEPING.

of the world, that you have all the cares and
anxieties- If the cares and anxieties of the household should come upon you for one week, you
would be a fit candidate for Bloomingdale—I mean
insane asylum. The half-rested housekeeper
arises in the "morning. She must have the morning repast prepared at an irrevocable hour. What
if the fire will not light; what if the marketing
did not come; what if the clock has stopped—no
matter, she must have the morning repast at an
irrevocable hour. Then the children must be got
off to school. What if their garments are torn;
what if they do not know their lessons; what if
they have lost a hat or sash—they must be ready.
Then you have all the diet of the day, and perhaps
of several days, to plan; but what if the butcher
has sent meat unmasticable, or the grocer has
sent articles of food adulterated, and what if
some piece of silver be gone, or some favorite
chalice be cracked, or the roof leak, or the plumbing fail, or any one of a thousand things occur—
you must be ready. Spring weather comes, and
there must be a revolution in the family wardrobe; or autumn comes, and you must shut out
the northern blast; but what if the moth has preceded you to the chest; what if, during the year,
the children have outgrown the apparel of last
year; what if the fashions have changed. Your
house must be an apothecary's shop; it must be a
dispensary; there must be medicine, for all sorts
of ailments—something to loosen the croup—
something to cool the burn—something to poultice

TRIALS OF HOUSEKEEPING.

19*?

the inflammation—something to silence the jump*
ing tooth—something to soothe the earache. You
must be in half-a-dozen places at the same time,
or you must attempt to be. If, under all this wear
and tear of life, Martha makes an impatient rush
upon the library or drawing room, be patient, be
lenient. 0, woman, though I may fail to stir up
an appreciation in the souls of others in regard to
your household toils, let me assure you, from th©
kindliness with which Jesus Christ met Martha,
that he appreciates all your work from garret tc*
cellar; and that the God of Deborah, and Hazmab,
and Abigail, and grandmother Lois, and Eliza
beth Fry, and Hannah Moore, is tho God of th(?
housekeeper. Jesus was never married, that He
might be the especial friend and confidante
of a whole world of troubled womanhood. I
blunder; Christ was married. The Bible says that
the Church is the Lamb's wife, and that makes me
know that all Christian women have aright to go
to Christ and tell Him of their annoyances and
troubles, since by His oath of conjugal fidelity He
is sworn to sympathize. George Herbert, the
Christian poet, wrote two or three verses on this
subject:
" The servant by this clause
Makes drudgery Divine;
Who sweeps a room, as for Thy laws,
Makes this and the action fine."

Again; there is the trial of severe economy.
Nine hundred and ninety-nine households out of
the thousand are subjected to it—some under

198

TRIALS OF HOUSEKEEPING.

more, and some under less stress of circumstances,
Especially if a man smoke very expensive cigars,
and take very costly dinners at the restaurants,
he will be severe in demanding domestic economies. This is what kills tens of thousands of
women—attempting to make five dollars do the
work of seven. How the bills come in. The
woman is the banker of the household: she is the
president, the cashier, the teller, the discount
clerk, and there is a panic every few weeks. This
thirty years' war against high prices, this perpetual
study of economies, this life-long attempt to keep
the outgoes less than the income, exhausts millions of housekeepers. Oh, my sister, this is a
part of the Divine discipline. If it were best for
you, all you would have to do would be to open
the front windows and the ravens would fly in
with food; and after you had baked fifty times
from the barrel in the pantry, the barrel, like the
one of Zarepath, would be full; and the shoes of
the children would last as long as the shoes of
the Israelites in the wilderness—forty years.
Besides that, this is going to make heaven the
more attractive in the contrast. They never
hunger there, and consequently there will be
none of the nuisances of catering for appetites.
And in the land of the white robe they never have
to mend anything, and the air in that hill-counfcry
makes everybody well. There are no rents to
pay; every man owns his own house, and a mansion at that. It will not be so great a change for
you to have a chariot in heaven if you have been

TRIALS OF HOUSEKEEPING.

199

in the habit of riding in this world. It will not
be so great a change for you to sit down on the
banks of the river of life, if in this world you had
a country seat; but if you have walked with tired
feet in this world, what a glorious change to
mount celestial equipage; and if your life on
earth was domestic martyrdom, oh, the joy of an
eternity in which you shall have nothing to do
except what you choose to do. Martha has had
no drudgery for eighteen centuries. I quarrel
with the theologians who want to distribute all
the thrones of heaven among the John Knoxes,
and the Hugh Latimers, and the Theban Legion.
Some of the brightest thrones of heaven will be
kept for Christian housekeepers. Oh, what a
change from here to there—from the time when
they put down the rolling-pin to when they take
up the scepter. If Chats worth Park and the Vanderbilt Mansion on Fifth Avenue were to be lifted
into the Celestial City, they would be considered
uninhabitable rookeries, and glorified Lazarus
would be ashamed to be going in and out of either
of them.
There are many housekeepers who could get
along with their toils if it were not for sickness
and trouble. The fact is, one-half of the women
of the land are more or less invalids. The mountain lass, who has never had an ache or pain,
may consider household toil inconsiderable, and
toward evening she may skip away miles to the
fields and drive home the cattle, and she may,
until ten o'clock at night, fill the house with

200

TRIALS OF HOUSEKEEPING.

laughing racket; but oh, to do the work of life
with worn-out constitution, when whoopingcough has been raging for six weeks in the household, making the night as sleepless as the day—
that is not so easy. Perhaps this comes after the
nerves have been shattered by some bereavement
that has left desolation in every room of the house,
and set the crib in the garret, because the occupant has been hushed into a slumber which needs
no mother's lullaby. Oh, she could provide for
the whole group a great deal better than she can
for a part of the group, now the rest are gone.
Though you may tell her God is taking care of
those who are gone, it is mother-like to brood
both flocks; and one wing she puts over the flock
in the house, the other wing she puts over the
flock in the grave.
There is nothing but the old-fashioned religion
of Jesus Christ that will take a woman through
the trials of home life. At first there may be*a
romance or a novelty that will do for a substitute.
The marriage hour has just passed, and the perplexities of the household are more than atoned
by the joy of being together, and by the fact that
when it is late they do not have to discuss the
question as to whether it is time to go. The mishaps of the household, instead of being a matter
of anxiety and reprehension, are a matter of
merriment—the loaf of bread turned into a geological specimen; the slushy custards; the jaundiced
or measly biscuits. It is a very bright sunlight

TRIALS OF HOUSEKEEPING.

201

that falls on the cutlery and the mantel ornaments
of a new home.
But after awhile the romance is all gone, and
then there is something to be prepared for the
table that the book called " Cookery Taught in
Twelve Lessons" will not teach. The receipt for
making it is not a handful of this, a cup of that,
and a spoonful of something else. It is not
something sweetened with ordinary condiments^
or flavored with ordinary flavors, or baked in ordinary ovens. It is the loaf of domestic happiness;
and all the ingredients come down from heaven,
and the fruits are plucked from the tree of life,
and it is sweetened with the new wine of the
kingdom, and it is baked in the oven of home
trial. Solomon wrote out of his own experience.
He had a wretched home. A man cannot be
happy with two wives, much less six hundred;
and he says, writing out of his own experience:
" Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a
stalled ox and hatred therewith."
How great are the responsibilities of housekeepers. Sometimes an indigestible article of
food, by its effec t upon a commander or king, has
defeated an army or overthrown an empire.
Housekeepers, by the food they provide, by the
couches they spiead, by the books they introduce,
by the influence they bring around their home,
are deciding the physical, intellectucal, moral,
eternal destiny of the race. You say your life is
one of sacrifice. I know it. But, my sisters, that
is the only life worth living. That was Florence

202

TRIALS OF HOUSEKEEPING.

Nightingale's life; that was Payson's life ; that
was Christ's life. We admire it in others; but
how very hard it is for us to cultivate ourselves.
When in this city, young Doctor Hutchison, having spent a whole night in a diphtheretic-room for
the relief of a patient, became saturated with the
poison and died, we all felt as if we would like to
put garlands on his grave; everybody appreciates
that. When in the burning hotel at St. Louis, a
young man on the fifth story broke open the door
of the room where his mother was sleeping, and
plunged in amid smoke and fire, crying: " Mother!
where are you?" and never came out, our hearts
applauded that young man. But how few of us
have the Christian-like spirit—a willingness to
suffer for others. A rough teacher in a school
called upon a poor, half-starved lad, who had
offended against the laws of the school, and said:
"Take off your coat directly, sir," The boy refused to take it off. Whereupon the teacher said
again: "Take off your coat, sir," as he swung the
whip through the air. The boy refused; it was
not because he was afraid of the lash—he was
used to that at home—but it was from shame; he
had no undergarment, and as at the third command he pulled slowly off his coat, there went a
sob through the school. They saw then why he
did not want to remove his coat, and they saw
the shoulder blades had almost cut through the
skin, and a stout healthy boy rose up and went to
the teacher of the school, and said: "Oh, sir,
please ckm't hurt this poor fellow; whip me; seQ,

TRIALS OF HOUSEKEEPING.

203

he's nothing but a poor chap; don't you hurt him,
he's poor; whip me." "Well," said the teacher,
"It's going to be a severe whipping; I am willing
feo take you as a substitute." "Well," said the
boy, " I don't care; you whip me, if you will let
this poor fellow go." The stout healthy boy took
the scourging without an outcry. "Bravo!" says
every man; " Bravo!" How many of us are willing to take the scourging, and the suffering, and
the toil, and the anxiety for other people. Beautiful thing to admire, but how little we have of
that spirit. God give us that self-denying spirit,
so that whether we are in humble spheres or in
conspicuous spheres, we may perform our whole
duty—for this struggle will soon be over.
One- of the most affecting reminiscences of my
mother is my remembrance of her as a Christian
housekeeper. She worked very hard, and when
we would come in from summer play, and sit
down at the table at noon, I remember how she
used to come in with beads of perspiration along
the line of gray hair, and how some times she
would sit down at the table, and put her head
against her wrinkled hand and say: "Well, the
fact is, I'm too tired to eat." Long after she
might have delegated this duty to others, she
would not be satisfied unless she attended to the
matter herself. In fact, we all preferred to have
her do so, for somehow things tasted better when
she prepared themr Some time ago, in an ex<
press train, I shot past that old homestead. I
looked out of the window, and tried to peer

204:

TRIALS OF HOUSEKEEPING.

through the darkness. While I was doing so,
one of my old schoolmates, whom I had not seen
for many years, tapped me on the shoulder, and
said : "DeWitt, I see you are looking out at the
scenes of your boyhood." " 0 , yes," I replied,
" I was looking out at the old place where my
mother lived and died." That night, in the cars,
the whole scene came back to me. There was
the country home. There was the noonday table.
There were the children on either side of the table
—most of them gone never to come back. At one
end of the table, my father, with a smile that
never left his countenance even when he lay in
his coffin. It was an eighty-six years' smile—not
the smile of inanimation, but of Christian courage
and Christian hope. At the other end of the table
was a beautiful, benignant, hard-working, aged
Christian housekeeper, my mother. She was
very tired. I am glad she has so good a place to
rest in. " Blessed are the dead who die in the
Lord; they rest from their labors, and their works
do follow them."

WOMAN AND HER POWER.
Women Wlio Fight the Battle of Life
Alone.
" Every wise woman buildeth her house."—PROV. 14: 1.

Woman a mere adjunct to man, an appendix to
the masculine volume, an appendage, a sort of
after-thought, something thrown in to make
things even—that is the heresy entertained and
implied by some men. This is evident to them :
Woman's insignificance, as compared to man, is
evident to them, because Adam was first created,
and then Eve. They don't read the whole story,
or they would find that the porpoise and the bear
and the hawk were created before Adam, so that
this argument, drawn from priority of creation,
might prove that the sheep and the dog were
greater than man. No. Woman was an independent creation, and was intended, if she chose,
to live alone, to walk alone, act alone, think alone,
and fight her battles alone. The Bible says it is
not good for man to be alone, but never says it is
not good for woman to be alone ; and the simple
fact is, that many women who are harnessed for
life in the marriage relation would be a thousandfold better off if they were alone,

8

WOMEN W H O FIGHT THE

Who are these men who, year after year, hang
around hotels and engine-houses and theatre
doors, and come in and out to bother busy clerks
and merchants and mechanics, doing nothing,
when there is plenty to do ? They are
MEN SUPPORTED BY THEIR W I V E S

and mothers. If the statistics of any of our cities
could be taken on this subject, you would find
that a vast multitude of women not only support
themselves, but masculines. A great legion of
men amount to nothing, and a woman by marriage, manacled to one of these nonentities, needs
condolence.
A woman standing outside the
marriage relation is several hundred thousand
times better off than a woman badly married.
Many a bride, instead of a wreath of orange
blossoms, might more properly wear a bunch of
nettles and nightshade, and, instead of the Wedding March, a more appropriate tune would be the
Dead March in Saul, and, instead of a banquet of
confectionery and ices, there might be more appropriately spread a table covered with apples of
Sodom.
THE DOVE AND THE VULTURE.

Many an attractive woman, of good sound sense
in other things, has married one of these men to
reform him. What was the result t Like when
a dove, noticing that a vulture was rapacious and
cruel, set about to reform it, and said, " I have
a mild disposition, and I like peace5 and was

BATTLE OF LIFE ALONE.

9

brought up in the quiet of a dove-cote, and I will
bring the vulture to the same liking by marrying
him." So, one day, after the vulture declared he
would give up his carnivorous habits and cease
longing for blood of flock and herd, at an altar of
rock covered with moss and lichen, the twain were
married, a bald-headed eagle officiating, the
vulture saying, " With all my dominion of earth
and sky, I thee endow, and promise to love and
cherish till death do us part." But one day the
dove in her fright, saw the vulture busy at a carcass, and cried, " Stop t h a t ! did you not promise
me that you would quit your carnivorous and
filthy habits if I married you ?" " Yes," said the
vulture, " b u t if you don't like my way, you can
leave," and with one angry stroke of beak, and
another fierce clutch of claw, the vulture left the
dove eyeless and wingless and lifeless. And a
flock of robins flying past, cried to each other and
said, " See there ! that comes from a dove's
marrying a vulture to reform him."
Many a woman who has had the hand of a
young inebriate offered, but declined it, or who
was asked to chain her life to a man selfish, or
of bad temper, and refused the shackles, will bless
God throughout all eternity that she escaped that
earthly Pandemonium.
ENFORCED CELIBACY.

Besides all this, in our country about one million men were sacrificed in our Civil War, and
that decreed a, million women, to celibacy. Be-

10

WOMEN WHO FIGHT THE

sides that, since the war, several armies of men
as large as the Federal and Confederate armies
put together, have fallen under malt liquors and
distilled spirits, so full of poisoned ingredients
that the work was done more rapidly, and the
victims fell while yet young. And if fifty thousand men are destroyed every year by strong drink
before marriage, that makes in the twenty-three
years since the war one million one hundred and
fifty thousand men slain, and decrees one million
Dne hundred and fifty thousand women to celibacy.
Take, then, the fact that so many women are unhappy in their marriage, and the fact that the
slaughter of two million one hundred and fifty
thousand men, by war and rum combined, decides
that at least that number of women shall be unaffianced for life, my text comes in with a cheer
and a potency and appropriateness that I never
saw in it before when it says, " Every wise
woman buildeth her house ;" that is, let woman
be her own architect, lay out her own plans, be
her own supervisor, achieve her own destiny.
In addressing these women who will have to
fight the battle alone, I congratulate you on
YOUR HAPPY ESCAPE.

Rejoice forever that you will not have to navigate
the faults of the other sex, when you have faults
enough of your own. Think of the bereavements
you avoid, of the risks of unassimilated temper
which you will not have to run, of the cares you
will never have to carry, and of the opportunity of

BATTLE OF LIFE ALONE.

11

outside usefulness from which marital life would
have partially debarred you, and that you are free
to go and come as one who has the responsibilities
of a household can seldom be. God has not given
you a hard lot, as compared with your sisters.
When young women shall make up their minds at
the start that masculine companionship is not a
necessity in order to happiness, and that there is a
strong probability that they will have to fight
the battle of life alone, they will be getting the
timber ready for their own fortune, and their saw
and axe and plane sharpened for its construction, since " Every wise woman buildeth her
house."
As no boy ought to be brought up without
learning some business at which he could earn
a livelihood, so no girl ought to be brought u j
without learning
THE SCIENCE OF SELF-SUPPORT.

The difficulty is that many a family goes sailing
on the high tides of success, and the husband and
father depends on his own health and acumen
for the welfare of his household, but one day he
gets his feet wet, and in three days pneumonia
has closed his life, and the daughters are turned
out on a cold world to earn bread, and there is
nothing practical that they can do. The friends
come in and hold consultation.
"Give music lessons," says an outsider. Yes,
that is a useful calling, and if you have great
genius for it, go on in that direction. Bui there

12

WOMEN WHO FIGHT THE

are enough music teachers now starving to death
in all our towns and cities, to occupy all the piano
stools and sofas and chairs and front-door steps of
the city. Besides that, the daughter has been
playing only for amusement, and is only at the
foot of the ladder, to the top of which a great
multitude of masters on piano and harp and flute
and organ have climbed.
" P u t the bereft daughters as saleswomen in
stores," says another adviser. But there they
must compete with salesmen of long experience,
or with men who have served an apprenticeship
in commerce and who began as shop boys at
ten years of age. Some kind-hearted dry goods
man, having known the father, now gone, says,
" We are not in need of any more help just now,
but send your daughters to my store, and I will do
as well by them as possible. Very soon the question comes up, Why do not the female employes
of that establishment get as much wages as the
male employes ? For the simple reason, in many
cases, the females were suddenly flung by misfortune behind that counter, while the males have
from the day they left the public school been
learning the business.
How is this evil to be cured ? Start clear back
in the homestead and
TEACH YOUR DAUGHTERS

that life is an earnest thing, and that there is a
possibility, if not a strong probability, that they
will have to fight the battle of life alone. Let

BATTLE OP LIFE ALONE.

13

every father and mother say to their daughters,
"Now, what would you do for a livelihood if
what I now own were swept away by financial
disaster, or old age, or death should end my
career ?"
"Well, I could paint on pottery and do such
decorative work." Yes, that is beautiful, and if
you have genius for it go on in that direction.
But there are enough busy at that now to make a
line of hardware from here to the East Eiver and
across the bridge.
"Well, I could make recitations in public and
earn my living as a dramatist ; I could render
King Lear or Macbeth till your hair would rise on
end, or give you Sheridan's Eide or Dickens'
Pickwick." Yes, that is a beautiful art, but ever
and anon, as now, there is an epidemic of dramatization that makes hundreds of households
nervous with the cries and shrieks and groans of
young tragediennes dying in the fifth act, and
the trouble is that while your friends would like
to hear you, and really think that you could surpass Eistori and Charlotte Cushman and Fanny
Kemble of tha past, to say nothing of the present,
you could not, in the way of living, in ten years
earn ten cents.
My advice to all girls and all unmarried women,
whether in affluent homes or in homes where
most stringent economies are grinding, is to learn
to do some kind of work that the world must
have while the world stands. I am glad to see a
marvelous change for the better, and that women

H

WOMEN WHO FIGHT THE

have found out that there are hundreds of practical
THINGS THAT A WOMAN CAN DO

for a living if she begins soon enough, and that
men have been compelled to admit it. You and I
can remember when the majority of occupations
were thought inappropriate for women ; but our
Civil War came, and the hosts of men went
forth from North and South ; and to conduct the
business of our cities during the patriotic absence,
women were demanded by the tens of thousands
to take the vacant places ; and multitudes of women, who had been hitherto supported by fathers
and brothers and sons, were compelled from that
time to take care of themselves. From that time
a mighty change took place favorable to female
employment.
Among the occupations appropriate for woman
I place the following, into many of which she has
already entered, and all the others she will enter:
Stenography, and you may find her at nearly all
the reportorial stands in our educational, political
and religious meetings. Savings banks, the work
clean and honorable, and who so great a right to
toil there, for a woman founded the first savings
bank—Mrs. Priscilla Wakefield ? Copyists, and
there is hardly a professional man that does not
need the service of her penmanship ; and, as
amanuensis, many of the greatest books of our
day have been dictated for her writing. There
tjiey are as florists and confectioners and music

BATTLE OF LIFE ALONE.

15

teachers and book-keepers, for which they are
specially
QUALIFIED BY PATIENCE AND ACCURACY ;

and wood-engraving, in which the Cooper Institute has turned out so many qualified ; and telegraphy, for which she is specially prepared, as
thousands of the telegraphic offices will testify.
Photography, and in nearly all our establishments
they may be found thereat cheerful work. As
workers in ivory and gutta-percha and gum
elastic and tortoise-shell and gilding, and in
chemicals, in porcelain, in terra cotta. As postmistresses, and the President is given them appointments all over the land.
As proof-readers, as translators, as modelers,
as designers, as draughtwomen, as lithographers,
as teachers in schools and seminaries, for which
they are especially endowed,
THE FIRST TEACHER.

of every child, by Divine arrangement, being a
woman. As physicians, having graduated after
a regular course of study from the female colleges
of our large cities, where they get as scientific and
thorough preparation as any doctors ever had, and
go forth to a work which no one but women could
so appropriately and delicately do. On the lecturing platform; for you know the brilliant success of Mrs. Livermore and Mrs. Hallowell and
Mrs. Willard and Mrs. Lathrop.
As physiological lecturers to their own sex, for which ser-

16

WOMEN WHO FIGHT THE

vice there is a demand appalling and terrific.
As preachers of the Gospel, and all the protests
of ecclesiastical courts cannot hinder them, for
they have a pathos and a power in their religious utterances that men can never reach.
Witness all those who have heard their mother
pray.
0, young women of America ! as many of you
will have to fight your own battles alone, do not
wait until you are flung of disaster, and your
father is dead, and all the resources of your family have been scattered ; but now, while in a good
house and environed by all prosperities, learn how
to do some kind of
WORK THAT THE WORLD MUST HAVE.

as long as the world stands. Turn your attention from the embroidery of fine slippers, of which
there is a surplus, and make a useful shoe. Expend the time in which you adorn a cigar-case in
learning how to make a good, honest loaf of bread.
Turn your attention from the making of flimsy
nothings to the manufacturing of important somethings.
Much of the time spent in young ladies' seminaries in studying what are called the "higher
branches," might better be expended in teaching
them something by which they could support
themselves. If you are going to be teachers, or if
you have so much assured wealth that you can
always dwell in those high regions, trigonometry
of course, metaphysics of course, Latin and Greek

BATTLE OF LIFE ALONE.

17

and German and French and Italian of course, and
a hundred other things of course; but if you are
not expecting to teach, and your wealth is not established beyond misfortune, after you have
learned the ordinary branches, take hold of that
kind of study that will pay in dollars and cents
in case you are thrown on your own resources.
Learn to do something better than anybody
else.
Buy Virginia Penny's book, entitled " T h e Employments of Women," and learn there are five
hundred ways in which a woman may earn a
living.
"No, n o ! " says some young woman, " I will
not undertake anything so
UNROMANTIC AND

COMMONPLACE

as that." An excellent author writes that after lie
had, in a book, argued for efficiency in womanly
work in order to success, and positive apprenticeship by way of preparation, a prominent chemist
advertised that he would teach a class of women
to become druggists and apothecaries if they
would go through an apprenticeship as men do ;
and a printer advertised that he would take a class
of women to learn the printer's trade if they would
go through an apprenticeship as men do, and how
many, according to the account of the authoress,
do you suppose applied to become skilled in the
druggist business and printing business ? Not
pne !

18

WOMEN W H O FIGHT THE

" B u t , " you ask, " w h a t would my father and
mother say if they saw I was doing such
UNFASHIONABLE W O R K ? "

Throw the whole responsibility upon the pasto*
of the Brooklyn Tabernacle, who is constantly
hearing of young women in all these cities, who,
unqualified by their previous luxurious surround
ings for the awful struggle of life into which
they have been suddenly hurled, seemed to have
nothing left them but a choice between starvation
and damnation. There they go along the street
seven o'clock in the wintry mornings, through the
slush and storm, to the place where they shall
earn only half enough for subsistence, the
daughters of once prosperous merchants, lawyers,
clergymen, artists, bankers and capitalists, who
brought up their children under the infernal delusion that it was not high-tone for women to
learn a profitable calling. Young women ! take
this affair in your own hand, and let there be an
insurrection in all prosperous families of Brooke
lyn and New York and Christendom on the part
of the daughters of this day, demanding knowledge in occupations and styles of business by
which they may be their own defence and their
own support if all fatherly and husbandly and
brotherly hands forever fail them. I have seen
TWO SAD SIGHTS,

the one a woman in all the glory of her young life,
stricken by disease, and in a week lifeless in a

BATTLE OF LIFE ALONE.

19

home of which she had been the pride. As her
hands were folded over the still heart and her
eyes closed for the last slumber, and she was
taken out amid the lamentations of kindred and
friends, I thought that was a sadness immeasurable. But I have seen something compared with
which that scene was bright and songful. It was
a young woman who had been all her days amid
wealthy surroundings, by the visit of death and
bankruptcy to the household turned out on a
cold world without one lesson about how to get
food or shelter, and into the awful whirlpool of
city life, where strong ships have gone down, and
for twenty years not one word has been heard
from her.
Vessels last week went out on the Atlantic
Ocean looking for a shipwrecked craft that was
left alone and forsaken on the sea a few weeks
ago, with the idea of bringing it into port. But
who shall ever bring again into the harbor of
peace and hope and heaven that lost womanly
immortal, driven in what tempest, aflame in what
conflagration, sinking into what abyss ? 0 God,
help ! O Christ, rescue !
My sisters, give not your time to learning fancy
work which the world may dispense with in hard
times, but connect your skill with
THE INDISPENSABLES OF LIFE.

The world will always want something to wear
and something to eat, and shelter and fuel for the
body, and knowledge for the mind, and religion

20

WOMEN W H O FIGHT THE

for the soul. And all these things will continue
to be the necessaries, and if you fasten your energies upon occupations and professions thus related,
the world will be unable to do without you. Kemember, that in proportion as you are skillful in
anything, your rivalries become less. For unskilled toil, women by the millions. But you may
rise to where there are only a thousand ; and still
higher, till there are only a hundred; and still
higher, till there are only ten ; and still higher, in
some particular department, till there is only a
unit, and that yourself. For a while you may
keep wages and a place through the kindly sympathy of an employer, but you will eventually get
no more compensation than you can make yourself worth.
Let me say to all women who have already entered upon the battle of life, that the time is coming when woman shall not only get as much
salary and wages as men get, but for certain
styles of employment women will have higher
salary and more wages, for the reason that for
some styles of work they have more adaptation.
But this
JUSTICE W I L L COME TO WOMAN

not through any sentiment of gallantry, not because woman is physically weaker than man, and,
therefore, ought to have more consideration shown
her, but because through her finer natural taste
and more grace of manner, and quicker perception,
and more delicate touchy and more educate^

BATTLE OF LIFE ALONE.

21

adroiti) ass, she will, in certain callings, be to her
employer worth ten per cent more, or twenty per
cent more than the other sex. She will not get
it by asking for it, but by earning itj and it shall
be hers by lawful conquest.
Now, men of America, be fair, and
GIVE THE WOMEN A CHANCE.

Are you afraid that they will do some of your
work, and hence harm your prosperities ? Remember that there are scores of thousands of men
doing women's work. Do not be afraid ! God
knows the end from the beginning, and He knows
how many people this world can feed and shelter,
and when it gets too full He will end the world,
and, if need be, start another. God will halt the
inventive faculty, which, by producing a machine
that will do the work of ten or twenty or a hundred men and women, will leave that number of
people without work. I hope that there will
not be invented another sewing machine, or
reaping machine, or corn thresher, or any other
new machine, for the next five hundred years.
We want no more wooden hands and iron
hands and steel hands and electric hands substituted for men and women, who would otherwise do the work and get the pay and earn the
livelihood.
But God will arrange all, and all we have to do
is to do our best and trust Him for the rest. Let
me cheer all women fighting the battle of life
alone, with the fact of thousands of

22

WOMEN W H O FIGHT THE

WOMEN WHO HAVE WON

the day. Mary Lyon, founder of Mount Holyoke
Female Seminary, fought the battle alone;
Adelaide Newton, the tract distributor, alone;
Fidelia Fisk, the consecrated missionary, alone ;
Dorothea Dix, the angel of the insane asylums,
alone ; Caroline Herschel, the indispensable reinforcement of her brother, alone ; Maria Takrzewska, the heroine of the Berlin hospital, alone ;
Helen Chalmers, patron of the sewing-schools for
the poor of Edinburgh, alone. And thousands
and tens of thousands of women, of whose bravery
and self-sacrifice and glory of character the world
has made no record, but whose deeds are in the
heavenly archives of martyrs who fought the
battle alone, and, though unrecognized for the
short thirty or fifty or eighty years of their earthly existence, shall through the quintillion ages of
the higher world be pointed out with the admiring
cry, " These are they who came out of great tribulation and had their robes washed and made
white in the blood of the Lamb."
Let me also say, for the encouragement of all
women fighting the battle of life alone, that their
conflict will soon end. There is one word written
over the faces of many of them, and that word is
Despair. My sister, you need
APPEAL TO CHRIST,

who comforted the sisters of Bethany in their

(Jomestic t?ouble, ajid who in His l&st hours foi got

BATTLE OF LIFE ALONE.

23

all the pangs of His own hands and feet and heart,
as he looked into the face of maternal anguish,
and called a friend's attention to it, in substance
saying, "John, I cannot take care of her any
longer. Do for her as I would have done, if I had
lived. Behold thy mother!'' If, under the pressure of unrewarded and unappreciated work, your
hair is whitening and the wrinkles come, rejoice
that you are nearing the hour of escape from your
very last fatigue, and may your departure be as
pleasant as that of Isabella Graham, who closed
her life with a smile and the word "Peace."
The daughter of a regiment in any army is all
surrounded by bayonets of defence, and, in the
battle, whoever falls, she is kept safe. And you
are the daughter of the regiment commanded by
the Lord of Hosts. After all, you are not fighting
the battle of life alone. All heaven is on your
side. You will be wise to appropriate to yourself
the words of sacred rhythm:
One who has known in storms to sail
I have on board;
Above the roaring of the gale
I hear my Lord.
He holds me ; when the billows smite
I shall not fall.
If short, 'tis sharp; if long, 'tis light |
He tempers all.

24

WORLDLY MARRIAGES.

W o r l d l y Marriages.
" And there was a man in Maon whose possessions were in
Carmel, and the man was very great, and he had three thousand sheep and a thousand goats."—1 SAM. 25 : 2.

My text introduces us to a drunken bloat of
large property. Before the day of safety deposits
and government bonds and national banks, people had their investment in flocks and herds, and
this man, Nabal, of the text, had much of his
possessions in live-stock. He came also of a distinguished family, and had glorious Caleb for an
ancestor. But this descendant was a sneak, a
churl,
A SOT AND A FOOL.

One instance to illustrate : It was a wool-raising
country, and at the time of shearing a great feast
was prepared for the shearers ; and David and his
warriors, who had in other days saved from destruction the threshing-floors of Nabal, sent to
him, asking, in this time of plenty, for some bread
for their starving men. And Nabal cried out:
" W h o is David?" As though an Englishman
had said, " Who is Wellington V or a German
should say, " Who is Von Moltke V or an American should say, " Who is Washington V Nothing
did Nabal give to the starving men, and that
night the scoundrel lay dead drunk at home \ aud

WORLDLY MARRIAGES.

25

the Bible gives us a full-length picture of him,
sprawling and maudlin and helpless.
Now that was the man whom Abigail, the lovely and gracious and good woman, married—a
tuberose planted beside a thistle, a palm-branch
twined into a wreath of deadly nightshade. Surely that was not one of the matches made in
heaven ! We throw up our hands in horror at
that wedding. How did she ever consent to link
her destinies with such a creature ? Well, she
no doubt thought that it would be an honor to be
associated with an aristocratic family ; and no one
can despise a great name. Beside this, wealth
would come, and with it
CHAINS OF GOLD

and mansions lighted by swinging lamps of aromatic oil, and resounding with the cheer of banqueters, seated at tables laden with wines from
the richest vineyards, and fruits from ripest
orchards, and nuts threshed from foreign woods,
and meats smoking in platters of gold, set on by
slaves in bright uniform.
Before she plighted her troth with this dissipated man, she sometimes said to herself: " How
can I endure him ? To be associated for life with
such a debauchee I cannot and will not!" But
then again she said to herself : " It is time I was
married, and this is a cold world to depend on,
and perhaps I might do worse, and maybe I will
make a sober man out of him, and marriage is a
lottery, anyhow." And when, one day, this rep-

26

WORLDLY MARRIAGES.

resentative of a great house presented himself in
a parenthesis of sobriety, and with an assumed
gentility »and gallantry of manner, and with
promises of fidelity and kindness and selfabnegation, a June morning smiled on a March
squall, and the great-souled woman surrendered her happiness to the keeping of this infamous son of fortune, whose possessions were
in Carmel; " a n d the man was very great, and
he had three thousand sheep and a thousand
goats."
Behold here a domestic tragedy repeated every
hour of every day, all over Christendom—marriage for worldly success, without regard to character ; so Marie Jeanne Philipon, the daughter of
the humble engraver, became
THE FAMOUS MADAME ROLAND

of history, the vivacious and brilliant girl, united
with the cold, formal, monotonous man, because
he came of an affluent family of Amiens, and
had lordly blood in his veins. The day when,
through political revolutions, this patriotic woman
was led to the scaffold, around which lay piles of
human heads that had fallen from the axe, and
she said to an aged man whom she had comforted
as they ascended the scaffold, " Go first, that you
may not witness my death," and then, undaunted,
took her turn to die—that day was to her only the
last act of a tragedy of which her marriage day
was the first.

WORLDLY MARRIAGES.

27

Good and genial character in a man is
THE VERY FIRST REQUISITE

for a woman's happy marriage. Mistake me not
as depreciative of worldly prosperities. There is a
religious cant that would seem to represent poverty as a virtue, and wealth as a crime. I can take
you through a thousand mansions, where God is
as much worshipped as He ever was in a cabin.
The Gospel inculcates the virtues which tend toward wealth. In the millennium we will all
dwell in palaces, and ride in chariots, and sit at
sumptuous banquets, and sleep under rich embroideries, and live four or five hundred years, for, if
according to the Bible, in those times a child shall
die a hundred years old, the average of human
life will be at least five centuries.
The whole tendency of sin is toward poverty,
and the whole tendency of righteousness is toward
wealth. Godliness is profitable for the life that
'now is, as well as for that which is to come. No inventory can be made of the picture-galleries consecrated to God, and of sculpture and of libraries,
and pillared magnificence, and of parks and fountains and gardens in the ownership of good men
and women. The two most lordly residences in
which I was ever a guest, had morning and evening prayers, all the employes present, and all day
long there was an air of cheerful piety in the conversation and behavior. Lord Radstock carried
the Gospel to the Eussian nobility. Lord Oavan
and Lord Cairns spent their vacation in evangelis-

28

WORLDLY MARRIAGES.

tic services. Lord Congleton became missionary
to Bagdad. And the Christ who was born in at
Eastern* caravansary has lived in a palace.
W H A T RICHES CAN DO.

It is a grand thing to have plenty of money; and
horses that don't compel you to take the dust of
every lumbering and lazy vehicle; and books of history that give you a glimpse of all the past; and
shelves of poetry to v> hich you may go and ask
Milton or Tennyson or Spencer or Tom Moore or
Robert Burns to step down and spend an evening
with you ; and other shelves to which you may
go while you feel disgusted with the shams of the
world, and ask Thackeray to express your chagrin,
or Charles Dickens to expose Pecksniffianisn, or
Thomas Carlyle to thunder your indignation ; or
the other shelves where the old Gospel writers
stand ready to warn and cheer us, while they
open doors into that City which is so bright the
noonday sun is abolished.
There is no virtue in owning a horse that takes
four minutes to go a mile, if you can own one
that can go in a little over two minutes and a half ;
no virtue in running into the teeth of a northeast
wind with thin apparel if you can afford furs;
NO VIRTUE IN BEING POOR

when you can honestly be rich. There are names
of men and women that I have only to mention,
and they suggest not only wealth, but religion
^nd generosity and philanthropy, such as Amos

WORLDLY MARRIAGES.

29

Lawrence, James Lenox, Peter Cooper, William
E. Dodge, Lord Shaftesbury, Miss Catherine
Wolf and Mrs. Astor. A recent writer says, that
of fifty leading business men in one of our Eastern
cities, and of the fifty leading business men of one
of our Western cities, three-fourths of them are
Christians.
The fact is, that about all the brain and the
business genius is on the side of religion. Infidelity is incipient insanity. All infidels are cranks.
Many of them talk brightly, but you soon find that
in their mental machinery there is a screw loose.
When they are not lecturing against Christianity
they are sitting in bar-rooms, squirting tobacco
juice, and when they get mad swear till the place
is sulphurous. They only talk to keep their courage up, and at best will feel like the infidel who
begged to be buried with his Christian wife and
daughter, and when asked why he wanted such
burial, replied: " I f there be a resurrection of the
good, as some folks say there will be, my Christian wife and daughter will somehow get me up
and take me along with them."
Men may pretend to despise religion, but they
are rank hypocrites. The sea-captain was right
when he came up to the village on the seacoast,
and insisted on paying ten dollars to the church,
although he did not attend himself. When asked
his reason, he said that he had been in the habit
of carrying cargoes of oysters and clams from that
place, and he found, since that church was built^
the people were more honest than they used to bo

30

WORLDLY MARRIAGES.

for before the church was built, he often found the
load, when he came to count it, a thousand clams
short. Yes, godliness is profitable for both
worlds. Most of the great, honest,
PERMANENT WORLDLY SUCCESSES

are by those who reverence God and the Bible.
But what I do say is that if a man have nothing
but social position and financial resources, a
woman who puts her happiness by marriage in
his hands, re-enacts the folly of Abigail when she
accepted disagreeable Nabal, " whose possessions
were in Carmel; and the man was very great, and
he had three thousand sheep, and a thousand
goats."
If there be good moral character accompanied
by affluent circumstances, I congratulate you. If
not, let the morning lark fly clear of the Rocky
Mountain eagle.
THE SACRIFICE OF WOMAN

on the altar of social and financial expectation is
cruel and stupendous. I sketch you a scene you
have more than once witnessed. A comfortable
home, with nothing more than ordinary surroundings ; but an attractive daughter carefully and
Ohristianly reared. From the outside world comes
in a man with nothing but money,unless you count
profanity and selfishness and fondness for champagne and general recklessness as a part of his possessions. He has his coat collar turned up when

WORLDLY MARRIAGES.

31

there is no chill in the air, but because it gives him
an air of abandon ; and eyeglass, not because he
is near-sighted, but because it gives a classical appearance ; and with an attire somewhat loud, a
cane thick enough to be the club of Hercules and
clutched at the middle, his conversation interlarded with French phrases inaccurately pronounced,
and a sweep of manner indicating that he was not
born like most folks, but terrestrially landed. By
ARTS LEARNED OF THE DEVIL

he insinuates himself into the affections of the
daughter of that Christian home. All the kindred congratulate her on the almost supernatural
prospects. Eeports come in that the young man
is fast in his habits, that he has broken several
young hearts, and that he is mean and selfish and
cruel. But all this is covered up with the fact
that he has several houses in his own name, and
has large deposits at the bank, and, more than all,
has a father worth many hundred thousand dollars and very feeble in health, and may any day
drop off, and this is the only son; and a round
dollar held close to one's eye is large enough to
shut out a great desert, and how much more will
several bushels of dollars shut o u t !
The marriage day comes and goes. The wedding ring was costly enough, and the orange
blossoms fragrant enough, and the benediction
solemn enough, and the wedding march stirring
enough. And the audience shed tears of sympathetic gladness, supposing that the craft con-

S2

WORLDLY MARRIAGES.

taining the two has sailed off on a placid lake,
although God knows that they are
LAUNCHED ON A DEAD SEA,

its waters brackish with tears, and ghastly with
ghastly faces of despair, floating to the surface and
then going down. There they are, the newly
married pair, in their new home. He turns out to
be a tyrant. Her will is nothing, his will everything. Lavish of money for his own pleasure, he
begrudges her the pennies he pinches out into her
trembling palm. Instead of the kind words she
left behind in her former home, now there are
complaints and fault-findings. He is the master,
and she the slave.
The worst villain on earth is the man who, having captured a woman from her father's house,
and after the oath of the marriage altar has been
pronounced, says, by his manner if not his words :
" I have you now in my power. What can you
do ? My arm is Stronger than yours. My voice
is louder than yours. My fortune is greater than
yours. My name is mightier than yours. Now
crouch before me like a dog. Now crawl away
from me like a reptile. You are nothing but a
woman, anyhow. Down, you miserable wretch!"
Can halls of mosaic, can long lines of Etruscan
bronze, or statuary by Palmer and Powers and
Crawford and Chantry and Canova, can galleries
rich from the pencil of Bierstadt and Church and
Kenset and Cole and Cropsey, could flutes played
on by an Ok Bull, or pianos fingered by a Gotts

WORLDLY MARRIAGES.

33

chalk, or solos warbled by a Sonntag, could wardrobes like that of a Marie Antoinette, could jewels
like those of a Eugenie, make a wife in such a
companionship happy ?
IMPRISONED IN A CASTLE 1

Her gold bracelets are the chains of a lifelong
servitude. There is a sword over her every feast,
not like that of Damocles staying suspended, but
dropping through her lacerated heart. Her wardrobe is full of shrouds for deaths which she dies
daily, and she is buried alive, though buried
under gorgeous upholstery. There is one word
that sounds under the arches, and rolls along the
corridors, and weeps in the falling fountains, and
echoes in the shutting of every door, and groans
in every note of stringed and wind instrument :
" W o e ! Woe!" The oxen and sheep, in olden
times, brought to a temple of Jupiter to be sacrificed, used to be covered with ribbons and
flowers—ribbons on the horns and flowers on
the neck.
But the floral and ribboned decoration did not
make the stab of the butcher's knife less deathful,
and all the chandeliers you hang over such a woman, and all the robes with which you enwrap
her, and all the ribbons with which you adorn
her, and all the bewitching charms with which
you embank her footsteps, are the ribbons and
flowers of a horrible butchery.
As it to show how wretched a good woman may

34

WORLDLY MARRIAGES.

be in splendid surroundings, we have two recent
illustrations,
TWO DUCAL PALACES

in Great Britain. They are the focus of the best
things that are possible in art, in literature, in
architecture, the accumulation of other estates,
until their wealth is beyond calculation, and their
grandeur beyond description. One of the castles
has a cabinet set with gems that cost two
million five hundred thousand dollars, and the
walls of it bloom with Rembrandts and Claudes
and Poussins and Guidos and Raphaels, and there
are Southdown flocks in summer grazing on its
lawns, and Arab steeds prancing at the doorways
on the " first open day at the kennels." From
the one castle the duchess has removed with her
children, because she can no longer endure the
orgies of her husband, the duke, and in the other
castle the duchess remains, confronted by insults
and abominations, in the presence of which I do
not think God or decent society requires a good
woman to remain.
Alas for those ducal country-seats ! They on
a large scale illustrate what on a smaller scale
may be seen in many places, that without moral
character in a husband, all the accessories of
wealth are to a wife's soul tantalization and
mockery. When Abigail finds Nabal, her husband, beastly drunk, as she comes home from interceding for his fortune and life, it was no alleviation that the old brute had in possessions

WORLDLY MARRIAGES.

35

Carmel, and " was very great, and had three
thousand sheep, and one thousand goats," and he
the worst goat among them. The animal in his
nature seized the soul and ran off with it. Before
things are right in this world
GENTEEL VILLAINS

are to be expurgated. Instead of being welcomed
into respectable society because of the amount of
stars and garters and medals and estates they represent, they ought to be fumigated two or three
years before they are allowed, without peril to
themselves, to put their hands on the door-knob
of a moral house. The time must come when a
masculine estray will be as repugnant to good
society as a feminine estray, and no coat-of-arms
or family emblazonry or epaulet can pass a
Lothario unchallenged among the sanctities of
home life.
By what law of God or common sense, is Absalom better than a Delilah, a Don Juan better than
a Messalina ? The brush that paints the one
black must paint the other black.
But what a spectacle it was when last summer
much of " watering-place " society went wild with
enthusiasm over an unclean foreign dignitary,
whose name in both hemispheres is a synonym for
profligacy, and princesses of American society
from all parts of the land had him ride in their
carriages and sit at their tables, though they knew
him to be a portable lazaretto, a charnel house of
moral putrefaction, his breath a typhoid, his foot

36

WORLDLY MARRIAGES.

that of a Satyr and his touch death! Here is an
evil that men cannot stop, but women may.
K E E P ALL SUCH OUT

of your parlors, have no recognition for them in
the street, and no more think of allying your life
and destiny with theirs than " gales from Arabia "
would consent to pass the honeymoon with an
Egyptian plague. All that money or social position a bad man brings to a woman in marriage is a
splendid despair, a gilded horror, a brilliant agony,
a prolonged death; and the longer the marital
union lasts, the more evident will be the fact, that
she might better have never been born. Yet you
and I have been at brilliant weddings, where, before the feast was over, the bridegroom's tongue
was thick, and his eyes glassy, and his step a
stagger, as he clicked glasses with jolly comrades,
all going, with lightning express train, to the
fatal crash over the embankment of a ruined life
and a lost eternity.
Woman, join not your right hand with such a
right hand. Accept from such a one no jewel for
finger or ear, lest that sparkle of precious stone
turns out to be the eye of a basilisk; and let not
the ring come on the finger of your right hand,
lest that ring turns out to be one link of a chain
that shall bind you in never-ending captivity. In
the name of God and heaven and home, in the name
of all time and all eternity, I forbid the banns !
Consent not to join one of the many regiments of

WORLDLY MARRIAGES.

87

women who have married for worldly success
without regard to moral character.
If you are ambitious, O woman, for noble affiancing, why not
MARRY A KING ?

And to that honor you are invited by the Monarch
of heaven and earth, and this day a voice from the
sky sounds forth : " As the bridegroom rejoiceth
over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee."
Let Him put upon thee the ring of this royal
marriage. Here is an honor worth leaching after.
By repentance and faith you may come into a
marriage with the Emperor of universal dominion,
and you may be an Empress unto God forever,
and reign with Him in palaces that the centuries
cannot crumble, or cannonades demolish.
High, worldly marriage is not necessary for
woman, or marriage of any kind, in order to
your happiness. Celibacy has been honored by
the best Being that ever lived and His greatest
apostles—Christ and Paul. What higher honor
could single life on earth have ? But what you
need, 0 woman, is to be affianced forever and
forever, and the banns of that marriage I am this
moment here and now ready to publish. Let the
angels of heaven bend from their galleries of light
to witness, while I pronounce you one—a loving
God and a forgiven soul.
One of the most stirring passages in history with
which I am acquainted, tells us how Cleopatra,
the exiled Queen of Egypt, won the sympathies of

38

WORLDLY MARRIAGES.

Julius Caesar, the conqueror, until he became the
bridegroom, and she the bride. Driven from hex
throne, she sailed away on the Mediterranean Sea
in a storm, and when the large ship anchored, she
put out with one womanly friend in a small boat,
until she arrived at Alexandria, where was Caesar,
the great general. Knowing that she would not
be permitted to land or pass the guards on the
way to Caesar's palace, she laid upon the bottom
of the boat some shawls and scarfs and richly
dyed upholstery, and then lay down upon them,
and her friend wrapped her in them, and she was
admitted ashore in this wrapping of goods, which
was announced as
A PRESENT

FOR CJESAR.

This bundle was permitted to pass the guards of
the gates of the palace, and was put down at tho
feet of the Eoman general. When the bundle
was unrolled, there rose before Caesar one w7hose
courage and beauty and brilliancy are the astonishment of the ages. This exiled Queen of Egypt
told the story of her sorrows, and he promised her
that she should get back her throne in Egypt and
take the throne of wifely dominion in his own
heart. Afterward they made a triumphal tour
in a barge that the pictures of many art galleries
have called "Cleopatra's Barga," and "that barge
was covered with silken awning, and its deck was
soft with luxuriant carpets, and the oars were silver-tipped, and the prow was gold-mounted, and
the air was redolent with the spicery of tropical

WORLDLY MARRIAGES.

39

gardens, and resonant with the music that made
the night glad as the day.
You may rejoice, 0 woman, that you are not a
Cleopatra, and that the One to whom you may be
affianced had none of the sins of Caesar, the Conqueror. But it suggests to me how you, a sou],
exiled from happiness and peace, may find your
way to the feet of the Conqueror of earth and sky.
Though it may be a dark night of spiritual agitation in which you put out into the harbor of peace,
you may sail, and when all the wrappings of fear
and doubt and sin shall be removed you will be
found at the feet of Him who will put you on a
throne to be acknowledged as His in the day when
all the silver trumpets of the sky shall proclaim :
" Behold the Bridegroom cometh ;" and in a barge
of light you sail with Him the river whose source
is the foot of the throne, and whose mouth is at
the sea of glass mingled with fire.

4:0

BROKEN PROMISES OF MARRIAGE.

B r o k e n P r o m i s e s o f Marriage.
" I have opened my mouth unto the Lord, and I cannot go
back."—JUDGES 11: 35.

General Jephthah, the Commander-in-chief of
the Israelitish forces, is buckling on the sword for
the extermination of the pestiferous Ammonites,
and looking up to the sky, he promises that if God
will give him the victory, he will put to death and
sacrifice as a burnt offering the first thing that
comes out from the door of his homestead when
he goes back. The hurrahing of triumph soon
runs along the line of all the companies, regiments
and divisions of Jephthah's army. A worse beaten
enemy than those Ammonites never strewed any
plain with their carcasses. General Jephthah,
fresh from his victory, is now on his way home. As
he comes over the hills and through the valleys,
the whole march for his men is a cheer, but for
him
A GREAT ANXIETY,

for he remembers his vow to slay and burn the
first thing that comes forth from his house to
greet him after his victory. Perhaps it may be
the old watch-dog that shall first come o u t ; and
who could get heart to beat out the life of a faith-

BROKEN PROMISES OF MARRIAGE.

41

ful creature like that, as he comes fawning and
barking and frisking, and putting up his paw
against his master in merry welcome after long
absence ? No ; it was not that which came forth
to meet Jephthah. Perhaps it may be a young
dove let out from its cage in the General's home,
which, gaining its liberty, may seem to rejoice in
public gladness and flutter on the shoulder of the
familiar head of the household. But who could
have the heart to slay such a winged innocent ?
N o ; it was not that which came forth to meet
Jephthah. Or it may be some good neighbor that
will rush out to greet him after having first been
in to tell the family of the near approach of the
General. But who could slay a neighbor who had
come on the scene to rejoice over the reunited
household 1 No ; it was not that which came
forth to meet Jephthah.
As he advances upon his home the door opens,
and out of it comes one whose appearance under
other circumstances would have been an indescribable joy, but under
THE PLEDGE OF A SACRIFICE

becomes a horror which blanches his cheek and
paralyzes his form and almost hurls him flat to
the earth. His child, his only child, his daughter
comes skipping out to greet him, her step keeping
time to a timbrel which she shakes and smites.
Did ever a conqueror's cheer end in such a bitter
groan?
All the glories of victorious war are blotted out

42

BROKEN PROMISES OF MARRIAGE.

from Jephthah's memory, and his banner is folded in grief, and his sword goes back into the
scabbard with a dolorous clang, and the muffled
drum takes the place of the cymbals, and the
"tremolo" the place of the trumpet, and he cries
out: " Alas, my daughter, thou has brought me
very low, and thou art one of them that trouble
me; for I have opened my mouth to the Lord,
and I cannot go back." During two months, amid
the mountains, without shelter, the maidens who
would have been at her wedding, ranged with
Jephthah's daughter up and down, bewailing her
coming sacrifice.
Commentators and theologians are in dispute
as to whether that girl was slain or not, and as
to whether, if she were slain, it was right or
wrong in Jephthah to be the executioner, a
discussion into which I shall not be diverted
from
THE OVERMASTERING

CONSIDERATION

that we had better look out what we promise,
better be cautious what engagements we make,
better that in regard to all matters of betrothal
and plighted vow we feel the responsibility, lest
we have either to sacrifice the truth or sacrifice
an immortal being, and we be led to cry out
with the paroxysm of a Jephthah: "I have
opened my mouth unto the Lord, and I cannot go
back."
There is one ward in almost all the insane asylums, and a large region in almost every ceme-

BROKEN PROMISES OF MARRIAGE.

43

tery, that you need to visit. They are occupied by
the men and women who are the
VICTIMS OF BROKEN PROMISES

of marriage. The women in those wards and in
those mortuary receptacles are in the majority,
because woman lives more in her affections than
does man, and laceration of them, in her case, is
more apt to be a dementia and a fatality. In some
regions of this land the promise of marriage is
considered to have no solemnity or binding force.
It was only made in fun. They may change their
mind. The engagement may stand until some
one more attractive in person, or opulent in
estate, appears on the scene ; then the rings are
returned, and the amatory letters, and all relationship ceases. And so there are ten thousand
Jephthah's daughters sacrificed as burnt offerings. The whole subject needs to be taken out
of the realm of comedy into tragedy, and men and
women need to understand that, while there are
exceptions to the rule, once having solemnly
pledged- to each other he&rt and hand, the forfeiture and abandonment of that pledge makes
the transgressor in the sight of God a perjurer,
and so the Day of Judgment will reveal it. The
one has lied to the other ; and all liars shall have
their place in the lake that burneth with fire and
brimstone. If a man or woman make
A PROMISE IN THE BUSINESS WORLD

is there any moral obligation to fullfil it % If a

44

BROKEN PROMISES OF MARRIAGE.

man sign a note for five hundred dollars, ought he
to pay it ? If a contract be signed involving the
building of a house, or the furnishing of a bill of
goods, ought they to stand by that contract ?
" Oh, yes," always answered. Then I ask the
further question : Is the heart, the happiness, the
welfare, the temporal and eternal destiny of a man
or woman worth as much as the house, worth
five hundred dollars, worth anything ? The realm
of profligacy is filled with men and women as a
result of the wrong answer to that question. The
most aggravating, stupendous and God-defying
lie is a lie in the shape of a broken espousal.
But suppose a man changes his mind, ought he
not back out ? Not one in ten thousand^
W H A T I F I CHANGE MY MIND

about a promissory note, and decline to pay it,
and suddenly put my property in such shape that
you could not collect your note ? How would you
like that 1 That, you say, would be a fraud. So
is the other a fraud, and punish it God will certainly, as you live, and just as certainly if you do
not live. I have known men, betrothed to loving
and good womanhood, resigning their engagement, and the victim went down in hasty consumption, while suddenly the recreant man would
go up the aisle of a church in brilliant bridal party, and the two promised " I will," with a solemnity that seemed ensurance of a lifetime happiness. But the simple fact was, that was the first
act of a Shakesperian play entitled " Taming the

BROKEN PROMISES OB1 MARRIAGE.

45

Shrew." He found out, when too late, that he
had not married into the family of the " Graces/'
but into the family of the " Furies." To the day
of his death the murder of his first betrothal followed him.
The Bible extols one who " sweareth to his own
hurt and changeth not." That is, when you make
a promise, keep it at all hazards. There may be
cases where deception has been used at the time
of engagement, and extraordinary circumstances
where the promise is not binding, but in nine
hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand,
engagement is
AS BINDING AS MARRIAGE.

Robert Burns, with all his faults, well knew the
force of a marital engagement. In obedience to
some rustic idea, he standing on one side of the
brook Ayr, and Mary Campbell on the other, they
bathed their hands in the water and then put them
on the boards of a Bible, making their pledge of
fidelity. On the cover of the Old Testament of
that book, to this day in Robert Burns' handwriting may be found the words, " Lev. 19 : 12.
c
Ye shall not swear by my name falsely ; I am
the Lord.' " And on the cover of the New Testament in his own handwriting : " Matt. 5 : 33 :
' Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths.' "
Suppose a ship-captain offers his services to take
a ship out to sea. After he gets a little way he
oomes alongside of a vessel with a more beautiful

46

BROKEN PROMISES OP MARRIAGE.

flag, and which has perhaps a richer cargo, and is
bound for a more attractive port. Suppose he
rings a bell for the engineer to slow up, and the
screw stops. Now I see the captain being lowered over the side of the vessel into a small boat,
and he crosses to the
GAYER AND WEALTHIER CRAFT,

and climbs up the sides, and is seen walking the
bridge of the other !§hip. I pick up his resigned
speaking-trumpet and I shout through i t : " Captain, what does this mean ? Did you not promise
to take this ship to Southampton, England ?"
" Y e s , " says the captain, " b u t I have changed
my mind, and I have found I can do better, and
I am going to take charge here. I shall send back
to you all the letters I got while managing that
ship, and everything I got from your ship, and it
will be all right." You tell me that the worst fate
for such a captain as that is too good for him.
But it is just what a man or woman does who
promises to take one through the voyage of life,
across the ocean of existence, and then breaks
the promise.
What American society needs to be taught is
that betrothal is an act so solemn and tremendous
that all men and women must stand back from it
until they are sure it is right, and sure that it is
best, and sure that no retreat will be desired.
Before that promise of lifetime companionship,
any amount of romance that you wish, any ardor
of friendship, any coming or going. But

BROKEN PROMISES OF MARRIAGE.

47

ESPOUSAL IS A GATE,

a golden gate, which one should not pass, unless
he or she expects never to return. Engagement
is the porch of which marriage is the castle, and
you have no right in the porch if you do not mean
to pass into the castle. The trouble has always
been that this whole subject of affiance has been
relegated to the realm of frivolity and joke, and
considered not worth a sermon, or even a serious
paragraph. And so the massacre of human lives
has gone on, and the devil has had it his own
cruel way, and what is mightily needed is that
pulpit and platform and printing-press all speak a
word of unmistakable and thunderous protest on
this subject of infinite importance.
We put clear out into thin poesy and light reading the marital engagements of Petrarch and his
Laura, Dante and his Beatrice, Chaucer and his
Philippa, Lorenzo de Medici and his Lucretia,
Spencer and his Rosalind, Waller and his Saccharissa, not realizing that it was the style of
their engagement that
DECIDED THEIR HAPPINESS

or wretchedness, their virtue or their profligacy.
All the literary and military and religious glory of
Queen Elizabeth's reign cannot blot out from one
of the most conspicuous pages of history her infamous behavior toward Seymour and Philip and
Melville and Leicester and others. All the ecclesiastical robes that D e w $wift §ver rustled

48

BROKEN PROMISES OF MARRIRGE.

through consecrated places cannot hide from intelligent people of all ages the fact that by promises
of marriage, which he never fulfilled, he broke
the heart of Jane Waring after an engagement
of seven years, and the heart of Stella after
an engagement of fourteen years, and the poetic
stanzas he dedicated to their excellences only
make the more immortal his own perfidy.
" B u t suppose I should make a mistake," says
some man or woman, " and I find it out after the
engagement and before marriage V My answer
is, you have
NO EXCUSE FOR A MISTAKE

on this subject. There are so many ways of finding out all about the character and preferences
and dislikes and habits of a man or woman, that
if you have not brain enough to form a right
judgment in regard to him or her, you are not so
fit a candidate for the matrimonial altar as you
are for an idiot asylum. Notice what society
your especial friend prefers, whether he is industrious or lazy, whether she is neat or slatternly,
what books are read, what was the style of ancestry, noble or depraved; and if there be any
unsolved mystery about the person under consideration, postpone all promise until the mystery
is solved.
Jackson's Hollow, Brooklyn, was part of the
city not built on for many years, and every time
I crossed it I said to myself or to others, why is
not this land built on? I found out afterward

BROKEN PROMISES OP MARRIAGE.

49

that the title to the land was in controversy, and
no one wanted to build there until that question
was decided. Afterward I understood the title
was settled, and now buildings are going up all
over it. Do not build your happiness for this
world on a character, masculine or feminine, that
has not a settled and undisputed title to honor
and truth and sobriety and righteousness.
0 woman, you have more need to pause before
making such an important promise than man, because if you make a mistake it is worse for you.
If a man blunder about promise of marriage or
go on to an unfortunate marriage, he can spend
his evenings away, and can go to the club or the
Republican or Democratic headquarters, and absorb his mind in city or state or national elections,
smoke himself stupid or drink himself drunk.
But there is no place of regular retreat for you,
0 woman, and you could not take narcotics or
intoxicants and keep your respectability. Before you promise, pray and think and study
and advise. There will never again in your
earthly history be a time when you so much need
God.
It seems to me that the world ought to cast out
from business credits and from good neighborhood
those who boast of the number of hearts they
have won, as the Indian boasts of the number of
scalps he has taken. If a man will lie to a
woman and a woman will lie to a man about so
important a matter as that of a lifetime's welfare, they will lie about a bill of goods and ii$

50

BROKEN PROMISES OF MARRIAGE.

about finances and lie about anything. Society
to-day is brim full of gallants and man-milliners
and
CARPET KNIGHTS AND COQUETTES,

and those most God forsaken of all wretches—
flirts. And they go about drawing-rooms and
the parlors of watering-places, simpering and
bowing and scraping and whispering, and then
return to the club-rooms, if they be men, or to
their special gatherings, if they be women, to
chatter and giggle over what was said to them in
confidence. Condign punishment is apt to come
upon them, and they get paid in their own coin.
I could point you to a score whom society has let
drop very hard, in return for their base traffic in
human hearts.
And here my idea widens, and I have to say,
not only to those who have made a mistake in
solemn promise of marriage, but to those who
have already at the altar been pronounced one
when they are two, or in diversity of taslos and
likes and dislikes are neither one nor two, but
a dozen—make the best you can of an awful
mistake. And here let me answer letters that
come from every State of the American Union,
and from across the sea, and are coming year
after year from men and women who are terrifically allianced and tied together in a hard
knot—a very hard knot. The letters run something like this : " What ought I to do ? my husband m a drunkard/' "My wife is a gad about

BROKEN PROMISES OF MARRIAGE.

51

and will not stay at home." " M y companion is
ignorant, and hates books, and I revel in them."
" I like music, and a piano sets my husband
crazy." " I am fond of social life, and my husband is a recluse." " I am trying to be good, and
my life-long associate is very bad; what shall I
do ?" My answer is, there are certain good
reasons for divorcement. The Bible recognizes
them ; but it must be
THE VERY LAST RESORT,

and only after all reasonable attempts at reclamation and adjustment have proved a dead failure.
When such attempts fail, it is generally because
of meddlesome outsiders; and women tell the
wronged wife how she ought to stand on her
rights, and men tell the wronged husband how he
ought to stand on his rights. And let husband
and wife, in an unhappy marriage relation, stand
punctiliously on their rights, and there will be no
readjustment, and only one thing will be sure to
them, and that is a hell on earth.
If you are unhappily married, in most cases I
advise you to make the best you can of an awfully
bad bargain. Do not project your peculiarities
more than is necessary. Perhaps you may have
some faults of your own, which the other party in
the marital alliance may have to suffer. You are
in the same yoke. If you pull aside, the yoke
will only twist your neck. Better pull ahead.
The world is full of

52

BROKEN PROMISES OF MARRIAGE.
PEOPLE WHO MADE MISTAKES

about many things, and among other things about
betrothal and marriage, and yet have been
tolerably happy and very useful in the strength of
God, and by the grace promised in every time of
need, if those who seek it conquer the disadvantageous circumstances. I am acquainted with
lovely women, married to contemptible men, and
genial men yoked with termagants inspired of the
devil. And yet, under these disadvantages my
friends are useful and happy. God helps people
in other kinds of martyrdom and to sing in the
flame, and He will help you in your lifelong misfortune.
Remember the patience of Job. What a wife
he had! At a time when he was one great
blotch of eruptions, and liis property was destroyed by a tornado, and, more than all, bereavement
had come and the poor man needed all-wise
counsel, she advised him to go to cursing and
swearing. She wanted him to poultice his boils
with blasphemy. But he lived right on through
his
MARITAL DISADVANTAGES,

recovered his health and his fortune, and raised a
splendid family, and the closing paragraph of the
Book of Job has such a jubilance that I wonder
people do not oftener read i t : " So the Lord
blessed the latter end of Job iriore than his beginning."

BROKEN PROMISES OF MARRIAGE.

53

Now, my badly married friend of either sex, if
Job could stand it by the help of God, then
YOU CAN STAND IT

by the same divine reinforcement. You have
other relations, O woman, beside the wifely relation. If you are a mother, train up your chiL
dren for God and heaven. If you are a member
of a church, help move on its enterprises. You
can get so much of the grace of God in yout
heart, that all your home trials will seem insig^
nificant. How little difference does it make what
your unrighteous husband calls you, if God calls
you His child, and you are an heiress of whole
kingdoms beyond the sky ?
Immerse yourself in some kind of outside
usefulness, something that will enlist youi
prayers, your sympathies, your hand, your needle,
your voice. Get your heart on fire with love
to God and the disenthrallment of the human
race, and the troubles of your home will b&
blotted out in the glory of your consecrated life.
I cry out to you, 0 woman, as Paul exclaims in
his letter to the Corinthians: " W h a t knowest
thou, 0 wife, whether thou shalt save thy husband ?" And if you cannot save him, you can
help in the grander, mightier enterprise of helping save the world. Out of the awful mistake
of your marriage rise into the sublimest life of
self-sacrifice for God and suffering humanity. Instead of settling dowiato mope over your domestic

M

BROKEN PROMISES OF MARRIAGE.

woes, enlist your energies for the world's redemption.
Some parts of Holland keep out the ocean only
by dykes or walls of stout masonry.
THE DUTCH ENGINEER

having these dykes in charge was soon to be married to a maiden living in one of the villages, the
existence of which depended on the strength of
these dykes. And there was to be a great feast
in one of the villages that approaching evening,
in honor of the coming bridegroom. That day a
great storm threatened the destruction of the
dykes, and hence the destruction of thousands of
lives in the villages sheltered by that stone wall.
The ocean was in full wrath, beating against the
dykes, and the tides and the terror were still rising. " Shall I go to the feast," says the engineer,
"or shall I go and help my workmen take care of
the dykes ?" " Take care of the dykes," he said
to himself, " I must and will." As he appeared
on the wall, the men working there were exhausted, and shouted: "Here comes the engineer.
Thank God! Thank God !"
The walls was giving way, stone by stone, and
the engineer had a rope fastened around his body,
and some of the workmen had ropes fastened
around their bodies, and were let down amid the
wild surges that beat the wall. Everything was
giving way. "More stones!" cried the men.
"More mortar !" But the answer came : "There
m no more !" " Then/' cried the engineer^ " take

BROKEN PROMISES OF MARRIAGE.

55

off your clothes and with them stop the holes in
the wall." And so in the chill and darkness and
surf it was don<>, and with the workmen's apparel
the openings in the wall were partially filled.
But still the tide rose, and still the ocean reared
itself for more awful stroke and for the overwhelming of thousands of lives in the villages.
" Now we have done all we can/' said the engineer, " down on your knees, my men, and pray
to God for help." And on the trembling and
parting dykes they prayed till the wind changed
and the sea subsided, and the villages below,
which, knowing nothing of the peril, were full of
romp and dance and hilarity, were gloriously
saved.
WHAT WE WANT

in this work of walling back the ocean of poverty
and drunkenness and impurity and sin is the help
of more womanly and manly hands. O, how the
tides come in ! Atlantic surge of sorrow after
Atlantic surge of sorrow, and the tempests of
human hate and Satanic fury are in full cry. O
woman of many troubles, what are all the feasts
of worldly delight, if they were offered you, compared with the opportunity of helping build and
support barriers which sometimes seem giving
way through man's treachery and the world's
assault ?
O WOMAN, TO THE DYKES !

Bring prayer, bring tears, bring cheering words !
Help! Help ! And having done all, kneel with

66

BROKEN PROMISES OF MARRIAGE.

us on the quaking wall until the God of the wind
and the sea shall hush the one and silence the
other. To the dykes! Sisters, mothers, wives,
daughters, of America, to the dykes ! The mightiest catholicon for all the wounds and wrongs of
woman or man is complete absorption in the work
to rescue others. Save some man, some woman,
some child ! In that effort you will forget or be
helped to bear your own trials, and in a little
while God will take you up out of your disturbed
and harrowing conjugal relation of earth into a
heaven all the happier because of preceding distress. When Queen Elizabeth of England was
expiring it was arranged that the exact moment
of her death should be signalled to the people by
the dropping of a sapphire ring from a window
into the hands of an officer, who carried it at the
top of his speed to King James of Scotland. But
your departure from the scene of your earthly
woes, if you are ready to go, will not be the dropping of a sapphire to the ground, but the setting
of a jewel in the King's coronet. Blessed be His
glorious name forever!

DOMINION OF FASHION.

5T

Dominion of Fashion.
" The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth to a
man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment : for all
that do so are abomination unto the Lord thy God,"—DEUT.
22: 5.

God thought womanly attire of enough importance to have it discussed in the Bible. Paul the
Apostle, by no means a sentimentalist, and
accustomed to dwell on the great themes of God
and the resurrection, writes about the arrangement of woman's hair and the style of her jewelry ;
and in my text, Moses, his ear yet filled with the
thunder at Mount Sinai, declares that womanly attire must be in marked contrast with masculine
attire, and infraction of that law excites the indignation of high heaven.
Just in proportion as
the morals of a country or an age are depressed is
that law defied. Show me the fashion plates of
any century from the time of the Deluge to this,
and I will tell you the exact state of public morals.
BLOOMERISM

in this country years ago seemed about to break
down this divine law, but there was enough of
good in American society to beat back the indecency. Yet ever and anon we have imported from
France, or perhaps invented on this side the sea, a

58

DOMINION OF FASHION.

style that proposes as far as possible to make
women dress like men ; and thousands of young
women catch the mode, until some one goes a
little too far in imitation of masculinity, and the
whole custom, by the good sense of American
womanhood, is obliterated.
The costumes of the countries are different, and
in the same country may change, but there is a
divinely ordered dissimilarity which must be forever observed. Any divergence from this is
administrative of vice and runs against the keen
thrust of the text, which says: "The woman
shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man,
neither shall a man put on a woman's garment,
for all that do so are abomination unto the Lord
thy God."
Many years ago a French authoress, signing
herself George Sand, by her corrupt but brilliant
writings depraved homes and libraries innumerable, and was a literary grandmother of all the
present French and American authors, who have
written things so much worse that they have
made her putrefaction quite presentable. That
French authoress put on masculine attire. She
was consistent. Her writings and her behavior
were perfectly accordant.
My text abhors masculine women and
• WOMANISH MEN.

What a sickening thing it is to see a man copying
ihe speech, the walk, the manner of a woman.
The trouble is that they do not imitate a sensible

DOMINION OF FASHION.

59

*romn&, bul some female imbecile. And they
gimper, and they go with mincing step, and lisp,
and scream at nothing, and take on a languishing
look, and bang their hair, and are the nauseation
of honest folks of both sexes. 0 man, be a man !
You belong to quite a respectable sex. Do not
try to cross over, and so become a hybrid ; neither
one nor the other, but a failure, half-way between.
Alike repugnant are
MASCULINE

WOMEN.

They copy a man's stalking gait and go down
the street with the stride of a walking-beam.
They wish they could smoke cigarettes, and some
of them do. They talk boisterously, and try to
sing bass. They do not laugh, they roar. They
cannot quite manage the broad profanity of the
sex they rival, but their conversation is often a
half-swear ; and if they said " 0 Lord " in earnest
prayer as often as they say it in lightness they
would be high up in sainthood. "Withal there is
an assumed rugosity of apparel, and they wear a
man's hat, only changed by being in two or three
places smashed in and a dead canary clinging to
the general wreck, and a man's coat tucked in
here and there according to an unaccountable
aesthetics. 0 woman, stay a woman ! You also
belong to a very respectable sex. Do not try to
cross ov«sr. If you do you will be a failure as a
woman md only a nondescript of a man. We
already aave enough intellectual and moral

60

DOMINION OF FASHION.

bankrupts in our sex without your coming ovei
to make worse the deficit.
My text also sanctions fashion. Indeed, it sets
a fashion. There is a great deal of senseless
CANT ABOUT FASHION.

A woman or man who does not regard it is unfit
for a good neighborhood. The only question is
what is right fashion and what is wrong fashion.
Before I stop I want to show you that fashion has
been one of the most potent of reformers and one
of the vilest of usurpers. Sometimes it has been
an angel from heaven, and at others it has been
the mother of abominations. As the world grows
better there will be as much fashion WA now, but
it will be a righteous fashion. In the future life
white robes always have been and always will be
in the fashion.
There is a great outcry against this submission
to social custom, as though any consultation of
the tastes and feelings of others were deplorable ;
but without it the world would have neither law,
order, civilization nor common decency. There
has been
A CANONIZATION OF BLUNTNESS.

There are men and women who boast that they
can tell you all they know and hear about you,
especially if it be unpleasant. Some have mistaken rough behavior for frankness, when the
two qualities do not belong to the same family.
You have no right, with your eccentricities, to

DOMINION OF FASHION.

61

crash in upon the sensitiveness of others. There
is no virtue in walking with hoofs over fine
carpets. The most jagged rock is covered with
blossoming moss. The storm that comes jarring
down in thunder strews rainbow colors upon the
sky and silvery drops on the orchard.
There are men who pride themselves on their
capacity to "stick" others. They say, " I have
brought him down ; didn't I make him squirm !"
Others pride themselves on their outlandish
apparel. They boast of being out of the fashion.
They wear a queer hat. They ride in an odd
carriage. By dint of perpetual application they
would persuade the world that they are perfectly
indifferent to public opinion. They are more
proud of being " out of fashion " than others are
of being in. They are utterly and universally disagreeable. Their rough corners have never been
worn off. They prefer a hedgehog to a lamb.
The accomplishments of life are in no wise productive of effeminacy or enervation. Good manners and a respect for the tastes of others are
indispensable. The Good Book speaks favorably
of those who are a "peculiar" people ; but thai
does not sanction the behavior of queer people.
There is no excuse, under any circumstances, for
not being the lady or gentleman.
RUDENESS IS SIN.

We have no words too ardent t<? express our
admiration for the refinements of se iety. There
is no law, moral or divine, to forbM elegance of

62

DOMINION OF FASHION,

demeanor, or ornaments of gold, or gems for the
person, artistic display in the dwelling, gracefulness of gait and bearing, polite salutation or
honest compliments; and he who is shocked or
offended by these had better, like the old Scythians,
wear tiger-skins and take one wild leap back into
midnight barbarism. As Christianity advances
there will be better apparel, higher styles of architecture, more exquisite adornments, sweeter
music, more correct behavicr and more thorough
ladies and gentlemen.
But there is another story to be told. Wrong
fashion is to be charged with many of the worst
evils of society, and its path has often been
strewn with the bodies of the slain. It has set up
A FALSE STANDARD

by which people are to be judged. Our common
sense, as well as all the divine intimations on the
subject, teach us that people ought to be esteemed
according to their individual and moral attainments. The man who has the most nobility of
soul should be first, and he who has the least of
such qualities should stand last. No crest or
shield or escutcheon can indicate one's moral
peerage. Titles of Duke, Lord, Esquire, Earl,
Viscount or Patrician ought not to raise one into
the first rank. Some of the meanest men I have
ever known had at the end of their name D.D.,
LL.D. and F.U.S. Truth, honor, charity, heroism, self-sacrifice, should win highest favor; but
inordinate fashion says : " Count not a woman's

DOMINION OF FASHION.

ea

virtues ; count her adornments." "Look not at
the contour of the head, but see the way she
combs her hair." " A s k not what noble deeds
have been accomplished by that man's hand; but
is it white and soft ?" Ask not what good sense
is in her conversation, but " I n what was she
dressed V9 Ask not whether there was hospitality
and cheerfulness in the house, but " I n what style
do they live V
As a consequence, some of the most ignorant
and vicious men are at the top, and some of the
most virtuous and intelligent at the bottom.
During the last war we suddenly saw men hurled
up into the highest social positions. Had they
suddenly reformed from evil habits, or graduated
in science, or achieved some good work for
society ? No: they simply had obtained a Government contract ! This accounts for the utter
chagrin which people feel at the treatment they
receive when they lose their property. Holdup
your head
AMID FINANCIAL

DISASTER

like a Christian ! Fifty thousand subtracted from
a good man leaves how much ? Honor ; truth ;
faith in God ; triumphant hope; and a kingdom
of ineffable glory, over which he is to reign forever
and ever. If the owner of millions should lose a
penny out of his pocket would he sit down on a
curbstone and cry ? And shall a man possessed
of everlasting fortunes wear himself out with
grief because he has lost worldly treasure ? You

64

DOMINION OF FASHION.

have only lost that in which hundreds of wretched
misers surpass you ; and you have saved that
which the Caesars and the Pharaohs and the Alexanders could never afford. And yet society thinks
differently, and you see the most intimate friendships broken up as the consequence of financial
embarrassments.
Proclamation has gone forth: "Velvets must
go up and plain apparel must come down/' and
the question i s : " H o w does the coat fit ?" not
" Who wears it V The power that bears the tides
of excited population up and down our streets, and
rocks the world of commerce, and thrills all nations, transatlantic and cisatlantic, is clothes. It
decides the last offices of respect; and how long
the dress shall be totally black ; and when it may
subside into spots of grief on silk, calico or gingham. Men die in good circumstances, but by
reason of extravagant funeral expenses are wellnigh insolvent before they get buried.
Wrong fashion is productive of a most
RUINOUS

RIVALRY.

The expenditure of many households is adjusted
by what their neighbors have, not by what they
themselves can afford to have ; and the great
anxiety is as to who shall have the finest house
and the most costly equipage. The weapons used
in the warfare of social life are not Minie rifles,
and Dahlgren guns, and Hotchkiss shells, but
chairs and mirrors and vases, and Gobelins and
Axmipsters. Many household establishments

DOMINION OF FASHION.

65

are like a racing steamboat, propelled at the utmost
strain and risk, and just coming to a terrific explosion. " W h o cares/' say they, "if we only
come out ahead ?" There is no one cause to-day
of more financial embarrassment and of more dishonesty than this determination at all hazards to
liye as well as or better than other people. There
are persons who will risk their eternity upon one
pier mirror, or who will dash out the splendors of
heaven to get another trinket.
There are scores of men in the dungeons of the
penitentiary who risked honor, business, everything, in the effort to shine like others. Though
the heavens fall they must be " i n the fashion."
The most famous frauds of the day have resulted
from this feeling. It keeps hundreds of men
struggling for their commercial existence. The
trouble is that some are caught and incarcerated
if their larceny be small. If it be great they escape
and build their castle on the'Ehine.
Again : Wrong fashion makes people unnatural
and untrue. It is a factory from which has come
forth more hollow and unmeaning
FLATTERIES AND HYPOCRISIES

than the Lowell mills ever turned out shawls and
garments. Fashion is the greatest of all liars. It
has made society insincere. You know not what
to believe. When people ask you to come, you do
not know whether or not they want you to come.
When they send their regards, you do not know
whether it is an expression of their heart, or an

66

DOMINION OF FASHION.

external civility. We have learned to take almost
everything at a discount. Word is sent, "Not
at h o m e / ' when they are only too lazy to dress
themselves. They say: "The furnace has just
gone out," when in truth they have had no fire in
it all winter. They apologize for the unusual
barrenness of their table, when they never live any
better. They decry their most luxurious enter
tainments to win a shower of approval. They
apologize for their appearance, as though it were
unusual, when always at home they look just so.
They would make you believe that some nice
sketch on the wall was the work of a masterpainter. " I t was an heir-loom, and once hung on
the walls of a castle ; and a duke gave it to their
grandfather." People who will not lie about anything else will lie about a picture. On a small
income we must make the world believe that we
are affluent, and our life becomes a cheat, a counterfeit and a sham.
Few people are really natural and unaffected.
When I say this I do not mean to slur cultured
manners. It is right that we should have more
admiration for the sculptured marble than for
the unhewn block of the quarry. From many
circles in life fashion has driven out vivacity.
A FROZEN DIGNITY

instead floats about the room, and iceberg grinda
against iceberg. You must not laugh outright ;
it is vulgar. You must smile. You must not dash
rapidly across th^ room; you must glide. Ther®

DOMINION OF FASHION.

67

is a round of bows and grins and flatteries, and
oh's and ah's and simperings, nambypambyism
—a world of which is not worth one good, round,
honest peal of laughter. From such a hollow
round the tortured guest retires at the close of the
evening, and assures his host that he has enjoyed
himself,
Thus social life has been contorted and deformed,
until, in some mountain cabin, where rustics
gather to the quilting or the apple-paring, there is
more good cheer than in all the frescoed icehouses
of the metropolis. We want in all the higher
circles of society more warmth of heart and
naturalness of behavior, and not so many refrigerators.
Again: Wrong fashion is
INCOMPATIBLE W I T H HAPPINESS.

Those who depend for their comfort upon the
admiration of others are subject to frequent
disappointment. Somebody will criticise their
appearance, or surpass them in brilliancy, or will
receive more attention. Oh, the jealousy and
detraction and heart-burnings of those wiio
move in this bewildered maze ! Poor butterflies ? Bright wings do not always bring happiness. " She that liveth in pleasure is dead while
she liveth." The revelations of high life that
come to the challenge and the fight are only the
occasional croppings out of disquietudes that
are, underneath, like the stars of heaven for
multitude, but like the demons of ihs pit for

68

DOMINION OF FASHION.

hate. The misery that will to-night in the cellar cuddle up in the straw is not so utter as the
princely disquietude which stalks through splendid drawing-rooms, brooding over the sights and
offences of luxurious life. The bitterness of life
seems not so unfitting when drunk out of a
pewter mug as when it pours from the chased
lips of a golden chalice. In the sharp crack of
the voluptuary's pistol, putting an end to his
earthly misery, I hear the confirmation that in a
hollow, fastidious life there is no peace.
Again: Devotion to wrong fashion is
PRODUCTIVE OF PHYSICAL DISEASE,

mental imbecility and spiritual withering. Apparel insufficient to keep out the cold and the
rain, or so fitted upon the person that the functions of life are restrained ; late hours filled with
excitement and feasting; free draughts of wine
that make one not beastly intoxicated, but only
fashionably drunk ; and luxurious indolence—are
the instruments by which this unreal life pushes
its disciples into valetudinarianism and the
grave. Along the walks of prosperous life death
goes a-mowing—and such harvests as are reaped!
Materia Medica has been exhausted to find curatives for these physiological devastations. Dropsies, cancers, consumptions, gout and almost
every infirmity in all the realm of pathology have
been the penalties paid. To counteract the damage, Pharmacy has gone forth with medicament,
panacea, elixir, embrocation, salve and cataplasm-

DOMINION OF FASHION.

69

To-night, with swollen feet upon cushioned
ot ,oman, and groaning with aches innumerable,
will be the votary of luxurious living, not half
so happy as his groom or coal-heaver. Wrong
fashion is the world's undertaker, and drives
thousands of hearses to Greenwood and Laurri
Hill and Mount Auburn.
But, worse than that, this folly is an
INTELLECTUAL DEPLETION.

This endleos study of proprieties and etiquette
patterns and styles, is bedwarfing to the intel
lect. I never knew a woman or a man of ex
treme fashion that knew much. How belittling
the study of the cut of a coat, or the tie of a cravat, or the wrinkle in a sleeve, or the color of a
ribbon! How they are worried if something
gets untied, or hangs awry, or is not nicely adjusted ! With a mind capable of measuring the
height and depth of great subjects ; able to unravel mysteries, to walk through the universe,
to soar up into the infinity of God's attributes—
hovering perpetually over a new style of cloak.
I have known men, reckless as to their character
and regardless of interests momentous and eternal, exasperated by the shape of a vest-button.
Worse than all—this folly is not satisfied until
it extirpates every moral sentiment and
BLASTS THE SOUL.

A wardrobe is the rock upon which many a soul
h&s been riven. The excitement of a luxurious

70

DOMINION OF FASHION.

life has been the vortex that has swallowed up
more souls than the Maelstrom off Norway ever
destroyed ships. What room for elevating themes
in a heart filled with the trivial and unreal!
Who can wonder that in this haste for sun-gilded
baubles and winged thistle-down men and women
should tumble into ruin ? The travelers to destruction are not all clothed in rags. In the wild
tumult of the Last Day—the mountains falling,
the heavens flying, the thrones uprising, the
universe assembling ; amid the boom of the last
great thunder-peal, and under the crackling of a
burning world—what will become of the disciple
of fashion ?
THE WORLDLING'S CAREER.

But watch the career of one thoroughly artificial. Through inheritance, or, perhaps, his own
skill, having obtained enough for purposes of display, he feels himself thoroughly established. He
sits aloof from the common herd, and looks out
of his window upon the poor man and says:
" Put that dirty wretch off my steps immediately !'" On Sabbath days he finds the church, but
mourns the fact that he must worship with so many
of the inelegant, and says : " They are perfectly
awful! That man that you put in my pew had a
coat on his back that did not cost five dollars."
He struts through life unsympathetic with
trouble, and says: ilI cannot be bothered." Is
delighted with some doubtful story of Parisian
life, but thinks there are some very indecent

DOMINION OP FASHION.

71

things in the Bible. Walks arm in arm with
the successful man of the world, but does not
know his own brother. Loves to be praised for
his splendid house, and when told that he looks
younger, says: "Well, really, do you think
so?'
But the brief strut of his life is about over.
Up-stairs he dies. No angel wings hovering
about him. No Gospel promises kindling up the
darkness; but exquisite embroidery, elegant pictures, and a bust of Shakspeare on the mantel.
The pulses stop. The minister comes in to read
of the Resurrection, that day when the dead
shall come up—both he that died on the floor and
he that expired under princely upholstery. He
is carried out to burial. Only a few mourners,
but a great array of carriages. Not one common
man at the funeral. No befriended orphan to
weep a tear on his grave. No child of want
pressing through the ranks of the weeping, saying : " He is the last friend I have."
What now ? He was a great man. Shall not
chariots of salvation come down to the other side
of the Jordan and escort him up to the palace ?
Shall not the angels exclaim: " T u r n out! A
prince is coming?" Will the bells chime % Will
there be harpers with their harps, and trumpeters
with their trumpets ?
No! No! No! There will be a shudder, as
though a calamity had happened. Standing on
heaven's battlement, a watchman will see something shoot past, with fiery downfall, and shriek:

72

DOMINION OF FASHION.

" Wandering star—for whom is reserved the
blackness of darkness !" But sadder yet is the
CLOSING OF A WOMAN'S LIFE

that has been worshipful of worldliness, all th$
wealth of a lifetime's opportunity wasted. What
a tragedy! A woman on her dying pillow,
thinking of what she might have done for God
and humanity, and yet having done nothing!
Compare her demise with that of a Harriet Newell, going down to peacefully die in the Isle ol
France, reviewing her lifetime sacrifices for thfc
redemption of India; or the last hours of Elizabeth Hervey, having exchanged her bright New
England home for a life at Bombay amid stolid
heathenism, that she might illumine it, saying in
her last moments : "If this is the dark valley, it
has not a dark spot in i t ; all is light, light!" OT
the exit of Mrs. Lennox, falling under sudden
disease at Smyrna, breathing out her soul with
the last words, "Oh, how happy!" or the departure of Mrs. Sarah D. Comstock, spending her
life for the salvation of Bu/mah, giving up her
children that they might come home to America
to be educated, and saying as she kissed them
good-by, never to see them again, " 0 Jesus! I
do this for Thee !" or the going of ten thousand
good women, who in less resounding spheres have
lived not for themselves, but for God and the
alleviation of human suffering
That was a brilliant scene when, in 1485, in
the campaign for the capture of Ronda,

DOMINION OF FASHION.

73

QUEEN ELIZABETH OF CASTILE,

on horseback, side by side with King Ferdinand,
rode out to review the troops. As she, in bright
armor, rode along the lines of the Spanish host,
and waved her jewelled hand to the warriors,
and ever and anon uttered words of cheer to the
worn veterans who, far away from their homes,
were risking their lives for the kingdom, it was
a spectacle that illumines history. But more
glorious will be the scene when that consecrated
Christian woman, crowned in heaven, shall review the souls that on earth she clothed and fed
and medicined and evangelized, and then introduced into the ranks celestial. As on the white
horse of victory, side by side with the king, this
queen unto God forever shall ride past the lines
of those in whose salvation she bore a part, the
scene will surpass anything ever witnessed on
earth in the life of Joan of Arc, or Penelope, or
Semiramis, or Aspasia, or Marianne, or Margaret
of Anjou. Ride on, victor !

u

THE VEIL OF MODESTY.

T h e Veil o f Modesty.
" The Queen Vashti refused to come. "—ESTHER 1:12.

If you will accept my arm I will escort you
into a throne-room. In this fifth sermon of the
series of sermons there are certain womanly
excellencies which I wish to commend, but instead of putting them in dry abstraction, I present you their impersonation in one who seldom
gets sermonic recognition. We stand amid
THE PALACES OF SHUSHAN.

The pinnacles are aflame with the morning
light. The columns rise festooned and wreathed,
the wealth of empires flashing from the grooves ;
the ceilings adorned with images of bird and
beast, and scenes of prowess and conquest. The
walls are hung with shields, and emblazoned
until it seems that the whole round of splendors
is exhausted. Each arch is a mighty leap of
architectural achievement. Golden stars shining
down on glowing arabesque. Hangings of embroidered work, in which mingle the blueness of
the sky, the greenness of the grass, and the whiteness of the sea-foam. Tapestries hung on silver
rings, wedding together the pillars of marble.
Pavilions reaching out in every direction. These
for repose, filled with luxuriant couches, in which

THE VEIL OF MODESTY.

75

weary limbs sink until all fatigue is submerged.
Amazing spectacle ! It seems as if a billow of
celestial glory had dashed clear over heaven's
battlements upon this metropolis of Persia.
In connection with this palace there is a garden, where the mighty men of foreign landg are
SEATED AT A BANQUET.

Under the spread of oak and linden and acacia
the tables are arranged. The breath of honeysuckle and frankincense fills the air. The waters
of Eulaeus filling the urns, and sweating outside
the rim in flashing beads amid the traceries.
Wine from the royal vats of Ispahan and Shiraz,
in bottles of tinged shell, and lily-shaped cups of
silver, and flagons and tankards of solid gold.
The music rises higher, and the revelry breaks
out into wilder transport, and the wine has
flushed the cheek and touched the brain, and
louder than all other voices are the hiccough of
the inebriates, the gabble of fools, and the song
of the drunkards. In another part of the palace,
QUEEN VASHTI

is entertaining the princess of Persia at a banquet. Drunken Ahasuerus says to his servants:
'* You go out and fetch Vashti from that banquet
with the women, and bring her to this banquet
with the men, and let me display her beauty."
The servants immediately start to obey the king's
command; but there was a rule in Oriental
society that no woman might appear in public

76

THE V E I L OF MODESTY.

without having her face veiled. Yet here was a
mandate that no one dare dispute, demanding
that Vashti come in unveiled before the multitude.
However, there was in Vashti's soul a principle
more regal than Ahasuerus, more brilliant than
the gold of Shushan, of more wealth than the
realm of Persia, which commanded her to disobey
this order of the king; and so all the righteousness, holiness and
MODESTY OF HER NATURE

rises up into one sublime refusal. She says:
"I will not go into the banquet unveiled." Of
course Ahasuerus was infuriated; and Vashti,
robbed of her position and her estate, is driver
forth in poverty and ruin, to suffer the scorn of
a nation, and yet to receive the applause of
after generations who shall rise up to admire this
martyr to kingly insolence. Well, the last vestige
of that feast is gone ; the last garland has faded ;
the last arch has fallen; the last tankard has
been destroyed, and Shushan is a ruin; but as
long as the world stands there will be multitudes
of men and women, familiar with the Bible, who
will come into this picture gallery of God, and
admire the divine portrait of Vashti the queen,
Vashti the veiled, Vashti the sacrifice, Vashti the
silent.
In the first place, I want you to look upon
Vashti the queen. A blue ribbon rayed with
white, drawn around her forehead, indicated

THE VEIL OF MODESTY.

77

HER QUEENLY POSITION.

It was no small honor to be queen in such a realm
as that. Hark to the rustle of her robes ! See
the blaze of her jewels ! And yet, my friends, it
is not necessary to have palace and regal robes in
order to be queenly. When I see a woman with
stout faith in God, putting her foot upon all
meanness and selfishness and godless display,
going right forward to serve Christ and the race
by a grand and glorious service, I say: " That
woman is a queen," and the ranks of heaven look
over the battlements upon the coronation; and
whether she come up from the shanty on the
commons or the mansion of the fashionable
square, I greet her with a shout! "All hail! Queen
Vashti!" What glory was there on the brow of
Mary of Scotland, or Elizabeth of England, or
Margaret of France, or Catherine of Russia, compared with the worth of some of our Christian
mothers, many of them gone into glory ?—or of
Ruth, who toiled under a tropical sun for poor
old, helpless Naomi ?—or of Mrs. Adoniram Judson, who kindled the lights of salvation amid the
darkness of Burmah ?—or of Mrs. Hemans, who
poured out her holy soul in words which will
forever be associated with hunter's horn, and
captive's chain, and bridal hour, and lute's throb,
and curfew's knell, at the dying day ?—and scores
and hundreds of women, unknown on earth, who
have given water to the thirsty, and bread to the
hungry, and medicine to the sick, and smiles to

78

THE VEIL OF MODESTY.

the discouraged—their footsteps heard along dark
lane, and in Government hospital, and in almshouse corridor, and by prison gate % There may
be no royal robe—there may be no palatial
surroundings. She does not need them; for all
charitable men will unite with the crackling
lips of fever-struck hospital and plague-blotched
lazaretto in greeting her as she passes : " Hail,
Queen Vashti." Among the
QUEENS WHOM I HONOR

are the female day-school teachers of this land.
I put upon their brow the coronet. They are the
sisters and the daughters of our towns and cities,
selected out of a vast number of applicants, because of their especial intellectual and moral endowments. There are in none of your homes
women more worthy. These persons, some of
them, come out from affluent homes, choosing
teaching as a useful profession; others, finding
that father is older than he used to be, and that
his eyesight and strength are not as good as once,
go to teaching to lighten his load. But I tell you
the history of the majority of the female teachers
in the public schools when I say: "Father is
dead." After the estate was settled, the family,
that were comfortable before, are thrown on their
own resources.
It is hard for men to earn a living in this day,
but it is harder for women—their health not so
rugged, their arms not so strong, their opportu
laities fewer. These persons after tremblingly

THE VEIL OF MODESTY.

79

going through the ordeal of an examination as to
their qualifications to teach, half-bewildered step
over the sill of the public school to do two things—
instruct the young and earn their own bread.
HER WORK IS WEARING

to the last degree. The management of forty
or fifty fidgety and intractable children, the
suppression of their vices and the development
of their excellencies, the management of rewards and punishments, the sending of so many
bars of soap and fine-tooth combs on benignant
ministry, the breaking of so many wild colts for
the harness of life, sends her home at night weak,
neuralgic, unstrung, so that of all the weary people in your cities for five nights of the week,
there are none more weary than the public-school
teachers. Now, for God's sake, give them a fair
chance. Throw no obstacles in the way. If they
come out ahead in the race, cheer them. If you
want to smite any, smite the male teachers; they
can take up the cudgels for themselves. But
keep your hands off of defenceless women.
Father may be dead but there are enough brothers
left to demand and see that they get justice.
Within a stone's throw of this building there
died years ago one of the principals of our public
schools. She had been twenty-five years at that
post. She had left the touch of refinement on a
multitude of the young. She had, out of her
slender purse, given literally thousands of dollars
for the destitute who came under her observation

80

THE VEIL OF MODESTY.

as a school teacher. A deceased sister's children
were thrown upon her hands, and she took care
of them. She was a kind mother to them, while
she mothered a whole school. Worn out with
nursing in the sick and dying room of one of the
household, she herself came to die. She closed
the school-book and at the same time the volume
of her Christian fidelity.
QUEENS ARE ALL SUCH,

and whether the world acknowledges them or not,
heaven acknowledges them. When Scarron, the
wit and ecclesiastic, as poor as he was brilliant,
was about to marry Madame de Maintenon, he
was asked by the notary what he proposed to
settle upon Mademoiselle.
The reply w a s :
" Immortality ! the names of the wives of kings
die with them: the name of the wife of Scarron
will live always." In a higher and better sense,
upon all women who do their duty God will settle
Immortality! Not the immortality of earthly
fame, which is mortal, but the immortality
celestial. And they shall reign for ever and ever !
Oh, the opportunity which every woman has of
being a queen! The longer I live the more I
admire good womanhood. And I have come to
form my opinion of the character of a man by
his appreciation or non-appreciation of woman.
If a man have a depressed idea of womanly
character he is a bad man, and there is no exception to the rule.
The writings of Goethe can never have any

THE VEIL OF MODESTY.

81

such attractions for me as Shakespeare, because
nearly all the womanly characters of the great
German have some kind of turpitude. There is
his Mariana, with her clandestine scheming; and
his Mignon, of evil parentage, yet worse than her
ancestors ; and his Theresa, the brazen; and his
Aurelia, of many intrigues ; and his Philina, the
termagant; and his Melina, the tarnished; and
his baroness ; and his countess ; and there is seldom a womanly character in all his voluminous
writings that would be worthy of residence in a
respectable coal cellar, yet pictured and dramatized, and emblazoned till all the literary world is
compelled to see. No ! No! Give me William
Shakespeare's idea of woman ; and I see it in Desdemona, and Cordelia, and Rosalind, and Imogen,
and Helena, and Hermione, and Viola, and
Isabella, and Sylvia, and Perdita, all of them
with enough faults to prove them human, but
enough kindly characteristics to give us the
author's idea of womanhood ; his Lady Macbeth
only a dark background to bring out the supreme
loveliness of his other female characters.
Again, I want you to consider
VASHTI THE VEILED.

Had she appeared before Ahasuerus and his
court on that day, with her face uncovered, she
would have shocked all the delicacies of Oriental society, and the very men who in their
intoxication demanded that she come, in their
sober moments "would h#ve despised her. As

82

THE VEIL OF MODESTY.

some flowers seem to thrive best in the dark
lane and in the shadow, and where the sun does
not seem to reach them, so God appoints to
most womanly natures a retiring and unobtrusive spirit. God once in a while does call an
Isabella to a throne, or a Miriam to strike the
timbrel at the front of a host, or a Marie Antoinette to quell a French mob, or a Deborah to stand
at the front of an armed battalion, crying out:
" Up! Up! This is the day in which the Lord will
deliver Sisera into thy hands." And when women
are called to such out-door work, and to such
heroic positions, God prepares them for i t ; and
they have iron in their soul, and lightnings in
their eye, and whirlwinds in their breath, and the
borrowed strength of the Lord Omnipotent in
their right arm.
But these are exceptions. Generally, Dorcas
would rather make a garment for the poor boy;
Rebecca would rather fill the trough for the camels; Hannah would rather make a coat for
Samuel; the Hebrew maid would rather give a
prescription for Naaman's leprosy; the woman
of Sarepta would rather gather a few sticks to
cook a meal for famished Elijah; Phoebe would
rather carry a letter for the inspired Apostle;
Mother Lois would rather educate Timothy in the
Scriptures. When I see a woman going about
her daily duty—with cheerful dignity presiding
at the table; with kind and gentle, but firm,
discipline presiding in the nursery; going out into
the world without any blast of trumpets^ follow*

THE VEIL OF MODESTY.

83

ing in the footsteps of Him who went about doing
good—I say: "This is Vashti with a veil on."
But when I see
WOMAN OF UNBLUSHING BOLDNESS,

loud-voiced, with a tongue of infinite clitterclatter, with arrogant look, passing through the
street with a masculine swing, gayly arrayed in
a very hurricane of millinery, I cry out, " Vashti
has lost her veil." WhQn I see a woman struggling for political preferment, and rejecting the
duties of home as insignificant, and thinking the
offices ofJ wife, mother and daughter of no importance, and trying to force her way on up into
conspicuity, I say: "Ah, what a pity: Vashti
has lost her veil." When I see a woman of
comely features, and of adroitness of intellect,
and endowed with all that the schools can do
for one, and of high social position, yet moving
in society with superciliousness and hauteur, as
though she would have people know their place,
and an undefined combination of giggle and
strut and rodomontade, endowed with allopathic
quantities of talk, but only homeopathic infinitessimals of sense, the terror of dry-goods clerks
and railroad conductors, discoverers of significant
meanings in plain conversation, prodigies of badness and innuendo—I say: " Vashti has lost her
veil."
But do not misinterpret what I say into a de~
preciatiop. of the work of those glorious and

84:

THE YEIL OF MODESTY.

DIVINELY CALLED WOMEN,

who will not be understood till after they are
dead, women like Susan B. Anthony, who are
giving their life for the betterment of the condition
of their sex. Those of you who think that women
have, under the laws of this country, an equal
chance with men, are ignorant of the laws. A
gentlemen writes me from Maryland, saying:
"Take the laws of this State. A man and wife
start out in life, full of hope in every respect, by
t^heir joint efforts, and, as is frequently the case,
through the economic ideas of the wife, succeed
in accumulating a fortune, but they have no
children; they reach old age together, and then
the husband dies. What does the law of this
State do then ? It says to the widow, ' Hands off
your late husband's property; do not touch it;
the State will find others to whom it will give
that, but you, the widow, must not touch it,
only so much as will keep life within your aged
body, that you may live to see those others enjoy
what rightfully should be your own.' And the
State seeks the relatives of the deceased husband,
whether they be near or far, whether they were
ever heard of before or not, and transfers to them,
singly or collectively, the estate of the deceased
husband and living widow."
Now, that is a specimen of unjust laws in all
the States concerning womanhood. Instead of
flying off to the discussion as to whether or not
the giving of the right of voting to women wil]

THE VEIL OF MODESTY.

85

correct these laws, let me say to men, be gallant
enough, and fair enough, and honest enough and
righteous enough, and God-loving enough to correct these wrongs against women by your own
masculine vote. Do not wait for woman suffrage
to come, if it ever does come, but, so far as you
can touch ballot boxes and legislatures, and congresses, begin the reformation. But until justice
is done to your sex by the laws of all the States,
and women of America take the platforms and
the pulpits, no honorable man will charge Vashti
with having lost her veil.
Again : I want you this morning to consider
VASHTI THE SACRIFICE.

Who is this that I see coming out of that palace
gate of Shnshan ? It seems to me that I have
seen her before. She comes homeless, houseless,
friendless, trudging along with a broken heart.
Who is she ? It is Vashti the sacrifice. Oh, what
a change it was from regal position to a wayfarer's crust! A little while ago approved and
sought for ; now none so poor as to acknowledge
her acquaintanceship. Vashti the sacrifice. Ah,
you and I have seen it many a time. Here is a
home empalaced with beauty. All that refinement and books and wealth can do for that home
has been done; but Ahasuerus, the husband and
the father, is taking hold on paths of sin. He is
gradually going down. After a while he will
flounder and struggle like a wild beast in the
hunter's net—further away from God, further

86

THE TEIL OF MODESTY.

away from the right.
the children will turn
hold song will become
heart. The old story
taurs

Soon the bright apparel of
to rags; soon the housethe sobbing of a broken
over again. Brutal Cen-

BREAKING UP THE MARRIAGE

feast of Lapithae. The house full of outrage and
cruelty and abomination, while trudging forth
from the palace gate are Vashti and her children.
There are homes represented in this house this
morning that are in danger of such a breaking
up. 0, Ahasuerus, that you should stand in a
home, by a dissipated life destroying the peace
and comfort of that home. God forbid that your
children should ever have to wring their hands,
and have people point their finger at them as they
pass down the street, and say: " There goes a
drunkard's child.'' God forbid that the little feet
should ever have to trudge the path of poverty
and wretchedness. God forbid that any evil
spirit, born of the wine-cup or the brandy-flask,
should come forth and uproot that garden, and,
with a blasting, blistering, all-consuming curse,
shut for ever the palace gate against Vashti and
the children.
Oh, the women and the men of sacrifice are
going to take the brightest coronals of heaven !
This woman of the text gave up palatial residence,
gave up all for what she considered right. Sacrifice ! Is there anything more sublime ? A
steamer called the Prairie Belle, burning on the

THE VEIL OF MODESTY.

87

Mississippi River. Bludso, the engineer, declared
he would keep the bow of the boat to the shore
till all were off, and he kept his promise. At his
post, scorched and blackened, he perished, but he
saved all the passengers. Two verses of pathetic
poetry describe the scene, but the verses are a
little rough, and so I change a word or two :
" Through the hot, black breath of the burning
Jim Bludso's voice was heard.
And they all had trust in his stubbornness,
And knew he would keep his word.
And sure's you're born they all got off
Afore the smoke-stacks fell;
And Bludso's ghost went up above,
In the smoke of the Prairie Belle,
•' He weren't no saint, but at Judgment
I'd run my chance with Jim,
Longside of some pious gentlemen
That wouldn't shake hands with him.
H«'d seen his duty, a dead sure thing,
And went for it there and then,
And Christ is not going to be too hard
On a man that died for men."

Once more: I want you to look at Vashti the
silent. You do not hear any outcry from this
woman as she goes forth from the palace gate.
From the very dignity of her nature you know
there will be no vociferation. Sometimes in life
it is necessary to make a retort; but there are crises
when the most triumphant thing to do is to keep
silence. The philosopher, confident in his newly
discovered principle, waited for the coming of
more intelligent generations, willing that the men

88

THE VEIL OF MODESTY.

should laugh at the lightning-rod and cotton-gin
and steamt Dilt—l^titing for long years through
the scoffing of philosphical schools, in grand and
MAGNIFICENT SILENCE.

Galileo, condemned by mathematicians and monks
and cardinals, caricatured everywhere, yet waiting and watching with his telescope to see the
coming up of stellar reinforcements, when the
stars in their courses would fight for the Copernican system; then sitting down in their complete
blindness and deafness to wait for the coming
generations who would build his monument and
bow at his grave.
The reformer, execrated by his contemporaries,
fastened in a pillory, the slow fires of public contempt burning under him, ground under the
cylinders of the printing-press, yet calmly waiting
for the day when purity of soul and heroism of
character will get the sanction of earth and the
plaudits of heaven. Affliction, enduring without
any complaint the sharpness of the pang, and the
violence of the storm, and the heft of the chain,
and the darkness of the night—waiting until a
divine hand shall be put forth to soothe the pang,
and hush the storm, and release the captive. A
wife abused, persecuted, and a perpetual exile
from every earthly comfort—waiting, waiting,
until the Lord shall gather up His dear children in
a heavenly home, and no poor Vashti will ever be
thrust out from the palace gate. Jesus, in silence,
and answering not a word, drinking the gall,.

THE VEIL OF MODESTY.

8$

bearing the Cross, in prospect of the rapturous
consummation when
" Angels throng His chariot wheel,
And bore Him to His throne :
Then swept their golden harps and sung,
The glorious work is done»"

An Arctic explorer found a ship floating helplessly about among the icebergs, and going on board
he found that the captain was frozen at his logbook,
and the helmsman was frozen at the wheel, and the
men on the lookout were frozen in their places.
That was awful, but magnificent. All the Arctic
blasts and all the icebergs could not drive them
from their duty. Theirs was
A SILENCE LOUDER THAN THUNDER.

And this old ship of a world has many at their
posts in the awful chill of neglect, and frozen of
the world's scorn, and their silence shall be the
eulogy of the skies and be rewarded long after this
weather-beaten craft of a planet shall have made
its last voyage.
THE PALACE GATF OF HEAVEN !

You can endure the hardships and the privations
and the cruelties and the misfortunes of this life,
if you can only gain admission there. Through
the blood of the everlasting covenant, you go
through those gates, or never go at all. When
Rome was besieged, the daughter of its ruler saw
the golden bracelets on the left arm of the enemy,

90

THE VEIL OF MODESTY.

and she sent word to them that she would betray
her city and surrender it to them, if they would
only give her those bracelets on their left arms.
They accepted the proffer, and by night, this
daughter of the ruler of the city opened one of the
gates. The army entered, and, keeping their
promise, threw upon her their bracelets, and also
their shields, until under the weight she died.
Alas, that all through the ages the same folly has
been repeated, and for the trinkets and glittering
treasures of this world men and women swing
open the portals of their immortal soul for an everlasting surrender, and die under the shining submergement.
Through the rich grace of our Lord Jesus Christ
may you be enabled to imitate the example of
Rachel and Hannah and Abigail and Deborah
and Mary and Vashti. Am©ix!

WIFELY AMBITION, GOOD AND BAD.

91

Wifely A m b i t i o n , G o o d a n d B a d .
" Arise and eat bread, and let thine heart be merry : I will
give thee the vineyard of Naboth."—1 KINGS 21:7.

One day King Ahab, looking out of the window
of his palace at Jezreel, said to his wife, Jezebel :
" We ought to hare these royal gardens enlarged.
If we could only get that fellow, Naboth, who
owns that vineyard out there, to trade or sell, we
could make it a kitchen garden for our palace."
" Fetch in Naboth," says the king to one of his
servants.
The plain gardener, wondering why he should
be called into the presence of his majesty, comes
in, a little downcast in his modesty, and with
very obsequious manner, bows to the king.
The king says: "Naboth, I want to trade vineyards with you.
I WANT YOUR VINEYARD

for a kitchen garden, and I will give a great deal
better vineyard in place of i t ; or, if you prefer
money for it, I will give you cash."
"Oh, no," says Naboth, " I cannot trade off
my little place, nor can I sell it. It is the old
homestead; I got it of my father, and he of his
father, and I cannot let the old place go out of
my hands."

92

WIFELY AMBITION, GOOD AND BAD.

In a great state of petulancy, King Ahab went
into the house and flung himself on the bed, and
turned his face to the wall, in a great pout.
His wife, Jezebel, comes in, and she says:
" What is the matter with you ? Are you sick Vs
" Oh," he says, " I feel very blue. I have set
my heart on getting that kitchen garden, and
Naboth will neither trade nor sell, and to be de*
feated by a common gardener is more than I can
stand."
"Oh, pshaw!" says Jezebel, "don't go on in
that way. Get up and eat your dinner, and stop
moping. I will get for you that kitchen garden."
Then Jebezel borrowed her husband's signet,
or seal—for then, as now, in those lands, kings
never signed their names, but had a ring with the
royal name engraved on it, and that impressed
on a royal letter or document, was the signature.
She stamped her husband's name on a proclamation, which resulted in getting
NABOTH TRIED FOR TREASON

against the king, and two perjured witnesses
swore their souls away with the life of Naboth,
and he was stoned to death, and his property
came to the crown, and so Jezebel got for her
husband and herself the kitchen garden. But
while the wild street dogs were rending the dead
body of poor Naboth, Elijah, the prophet, tells
them of other canines that will, after a while,
have a free banquet, saying: " Where dogs lick

WIFELY AMBITION, GOOD AND BAD.

93

the blood of Naboth, shall dogs lick thy blood,
even thine."
And sure enough, three years after, Ahab,
wounded in battle, his chariot dripping with the
carnage, dogs stood under it lapping his life's
blood. And a little afterward his wife, Jezebel,
who had been his chief adviser in crime, stands
at her palace window and sees Jehu, the enemy,
approaching to take possession of the palace.
And to make herself look as attractive as possible,
and queenly to the very last, she decorated her
person, and according to Oriental custom closed
her eyes and ran a brush dipped in a black powder
along the long eyelashes, and then from the window she glared her indignation upon Jehu. As
he rode to the gates in his chariot he shouted to
the slaves in her room: "Throw her down!"
But no doubt the slaves halted a moment from
such
WORK OF ASSASSINATION,

yet, knowing Queen Jezebel could be no more to
them, and the conqueror Jehu would be everything, as he shouted again, " Throw her down,"
they seized her and bore her struggling and cursing to the window casement, and hurled her forth
till she came tumbling to the earth, striking it
just in time to let Jehu's horses trample her
and the chariot wheels roll over her. While Jehu
is inside at the table refreshing himself after the
excitement, he ordered his servants to go out and
bury the dead queen. But the wild street dogs

94

W I F E L Y AMBITION, GOOD AND BAD.

had for the third time appeared on the scene, and
they had removed all her body except those parts
which in all ages dogs are by a strange instinct or
brutal superstition kept from touching after death
—the palms of the hands and the soles of the
feet.
All this appalling scene of ancient history was
the result of
A W I F E ' S BAD ADVICE

to a husband, of a wife's struggle to advance her
husband's interests by unlawful means. Ahab
and Jezebel got the kitchen garden of Naboth, but
the dogs got them. The trouble all began when
this mistaken wife aroused her husband out of his
melancholy by the word of the t e x t : " Arise, and
eat bread, and let thine heart be merry: I will
give thee the vineyard."
The influence suggested by this subject is an
influence you never before heard discoursed on
and may never hear again, but a most potent and
semi-omnipotent influence, and decides the course
of individuals, families, nations, centuries, and
eternities. I speak of wifely ambition, good and
bad. How important that every wife have her
ambition—an elevated, righteous and divinely
approved ambition.
And here let me say, what I am most anxious
for is that woman, not waiting for the rights denied her or postponed, promptly and decisively
employ the rights she already has in possession.

WIFELY AMBITION, GOOD AND BAD.

96

Some say she will be in fair way to get all he*
rights when she gets the
RIGHT TO THE BALLOT-BOX.

I wish that the experiment might be tried and
settled. I would like to see all women vote, and
then watch the result. I do not know that it would
change anything for the better. Most wives and
daughters and sisters would vote as their husbands and fathers and brothers voted. Nearly
all the families that I know are solidly Republican or Democratic or Prohibition. Those families
all voting would make more votes but no difference
in the results. Besides that, as now, at the polls
men are brought up by the thousands, women
would be brought up by the thousands. The more
voters the more opportunities for political corruption. We have several million more voters now
than are for the public good.
We are told that female suffrage would correct
TWO EVILS,

the rum business, and the insufficiency of woman's
wages. About the rum business I have to say that
multitudes of women drink, and it is no unusual
thing to see them in the restaurants so overpowered with wine and beer that they can hardly
sit up, while there are so many so-called respectable restaurants where they can go and take their
champagne and hot toddy all alone. Mighty
temperance' voters those women would make '
Besides that^ the wives of the rum-sellers would

96

WIFELY AMBITION, GOOD AND BAD.

have to vote in the interest of their husband's
business, or have a time the inverse of felicitous.
Besides that, millions of respectable and refined
women in America would probably not vote at
all, because they do not want to go to the polls,
and, on the other hand, womanly roughs would
all go to the polls, and that might make woman's
vote on the wrong side. There is not much prospect of the expulsion of drunkenness by f emale
suffrage.
As to woman's wages to be corrected by woman's vote, I have not much faith in that.
WOMEN ARE HARDER ON WOMEN

than men are. Masculine employers are mean
enough in treatment of women, but if you want
to hear beating down of prices and wages in
perfection, listen how some women treat washerwomen and dressmakers and female servants.
Mrs. Shylock is more merciless than Mr. Shylock.
Women, I fear, will never get righteous wages
through woman's vote, and as to unfortunate
womanhood, women are far more cruel and unforgiving than men are. After a woman has
made shipwreck of her character, men generally
drop her, but women do not so much drop her as
hurl her with the force of a catapult clear out and
off and down and under.
I have not much faith that woman will ever
get merciful consideration and justice through
woman suffrage, yet I like experiments, and
some of my friends^ in whose judgment I have

WIFELY AMBITION, GOOD AND BAD.

97

confidence, are so certain that alleviation would
come by such process that I would, if I had the
power, put in every woman's hand the vote. I
cannot see what right you have to make a woman
pay taxes on her property to help support city,
State and national Government, and yet deny her
the opportunity of helping decide who shall be
Mayor, Governor or President. But let every
wife, not waiting for the vote she may never get,
or, getting it, find it outbalanced by some other
vote not fit to be cast, arise now in the might of
the eternal God and wield the power of a sanctified wifely ambition for a good approximating the
infinite.
No one can so inspire a man to noble purposes
as a noble woman, and no one so thoroughly degrade a man as a wife of unworthy tendencies.
While in my text we have illustration of wifely
ambition employed in the wrong direction, in
society and history are instances of
WIFELY AMBITION TRIUMPHANT

in right directions. All that was worth admiration in the character of Henry VI. was a reflection of the heroics of his wife Margaret. William,
Prince of Orange, was restored to the right path
by the grand qualities of his wife Mary. Justinian, the Roman emperor, confesses that his wi$e
laws were the suggestion of his wife Theodora.
Andrew Jackson, the warrior and President, had
his mightest reinforcement in his plain wife,
whose inartistic attire was the amusement of th©

98

W I F E L Y AMBITION, GOOD AND BAD.

elegant circles in which she was invited. Washington who broke the chain that held America in
foreign vassalage, wore for forty years a chain
around his own neck, that chain holding the miniature likeness of her who had been his greatest
inspiration, whether among the snows at Valley
Forge or the honors of the Presidential chair.
Pliny's pen was driven through all its poetic
and historical dominions by his wife, Calpurnia,
who sang his stanzas to the sound of flute, and
sat among audiences enraptured at her hushand's
genius, herself the most enraptured.
Pericles
said he got all his eloquence and statesmanship
from his wife. When the wife of Grotius rescued
him from long imprisonment at Lovestein by
means of a bookcase that went in and out, carrying his books to and fro, he was one day transported, hidden amid the folios; and the women of
beseiged Weinsberg getting permission from the
victorious army to take with them so much of
their valuables as they could carry, under cover
of the promise shouldered and took with them as
the most important valuables, their husbands—
both achievements in a literal way illustrated
what thousands of times has been done in a
figurative way, that wifely ambition has been the
salvation of men.
De Tocqueville, whose writings will be potential and quoted while the world lasts, ascribes
his successes to his wife and says : " Of all the
blessings which God has given to me, the greatest of all in my eyes is to have lighted on Mari^

WIFELY AMBITION, GOOD AND BAD,

99

Motley." Martin Luther says of his wife: U I
would not exchange my poverty with her for all
the riches of Croesus without her." Isabella of
Spain, by her superior faith in Columbus, put
into the hand of Ferdinand, her husband, America.
John Adams, President of the United States, said
of his wife : "She never byword or look di£<
couraged me from running all hazards for the
Salvation of my country's liberties."
THOMAS CARLYLE

spent the last twenty years of his 2ife in trying
by his pen to atone for the fact that during his
wife's life he never appreciated her influence on
his career and destiny. Alas, that having taken
her from a beautiful home and a brilliant career,
he should have buried her in the home of a recluse
and scolded her in such language as only a dyspeptic genius could manage, until one day while
in her invalidism riding in Hyde Park, her pet
dog got run over, and under the excitement the
coachman found her dead. Then the literary
giant woke from his conjugal injustice, and wrote
the lamentations of Craigen-Puttock and Cheyne
Row. The elegant and fullsome epitaphs that
husbands put upon their wives' tombstones are
often an attempt to make up for lack of appreciative words that should have been uttered in the
ears of the living. A whole Greenwood of monumental inscriptions will not do a wife so much
good after she has quit the world as one plain
sentence like that which Tom Hood wrote to hi$

100

WIFELY AMBITION, GOOD AND BAD.

living wife when he said : " I never was anything
till I knew you."
0 woman, what is your wifely ambition, noble
or ignoble ? Is it
HIGH SOCIAL POSITION ?

That will then probably direct your husband, and
he will climb and scramble and slip and fall and
rise and tumble, and on what level or in what
depth, or on what height he will, after a while,
be found, I cannot even guess. The contest for
social position is the most unsatisfactory contest
in all the world, because it is so uncertain about
your getting it, and so insecure a possession after
you have obtained it, and so unsatisfactory even
if you keep it. The whisk of a lady's fan may
blow it out. The growl of one bear, or the bellowing of one bull on Wall Street, may scatter it.
Is the wife's ambition the political preferment
of her husband ? Then that will probably direct
him. What
A GOD-FORSAKEN REALM

is American politics, those best know who have
dabbled in them. After they have assessed a
man who is a candidate for office, which he does
not get, or assessed him for some office attained,
and he has been whirled round and round and
round and round among the drinking, smoking,
swearing crowd, who often get control of public
affairs, all that is left of his self-respect or moral
stamina would find plenty of room on a geomet-

WIFELY AMBITIUN, GOOD AND BAB.

101

rical point, which is said to have neither length,
breadth or thickness. Many a wife has not been
satisfied till her husband went into politics, but
would afterward have given all she possessed to
get him out.
I knew a highly moral man, useful in the
church and possessor of a bright home. He had
a useful and prosperous business, but his wife did
not think it genteel. There were
ODORS ABOUT THE BUSINESS,

and sometimes they would adhere to his garments
when he returned at night. She insisted on his
doing something more elegant, although he was
qualified for no business except that in which he
was engaged. To please her he changed his business, and, in order to get on faster, abandoned
church attendance, saying, after he had made a
certain number of hundreds of thousands of
dollars he would return to the church and its
services. Where is that family to-day ? Obliterated. Although succeeding in business for which
he was qualified, he undertook a style of merchandise for which he had no qualification, and soon
went into bankruptcy. His new style of business
put him into evil association. He lost his morals
as well as his money. He broke up not only his
own home, but broke up another man's home,
and from being a kind, pure, generous, moral
man as any of you who sit here to-day, has besome a homeless, penniless libertine. His wife's

102

WIFELY AMBITION, GOOD AND BAD.

ambition for a more genteel business destroyed
him, disgraced her, and blighted their child.
But suppose, now, there be in our homes, as
thank God there are in hundreds of homes here
represented, on
THE WIFE'S THRONE

one who says not only by her words, but more
powerfully by her actions: " M y husband, our
destinies are united ; let us see where industry,
honesty, and common sense and faith in God will
put us. I am with you in all your enterprises. I
cannot be with you in person as you go to your
daily business, but I will be with you in my
prayers. Let us see what we can achieve by having God in our hearts, and God in our rtlives, and
God in our home. Be on the side of everything
good. Go ahead and do your best, and though
everything should turn out different from what
we have calculated, you may always count on
two who are going to help you, and God is one
and I am the other." That man may have feeble health, and may meet with many obstacles
and business trials, but he is coming gloriously
through, for he is reinforced and inspired and
spurred on by a woman's voice.
Some of us could tell of what influence upon
us has been a wifely ambition consecrated to
righteousness. As
MY WIFE

is out of town, and will not shake her head be-

WIFELY AMBITION, GOOD AND* BAD.

103

cause I say it in public, I will state that in my
own professional life I have often been called of
God as I thought, to run into the very teeth of
public opinion, and all outsiders with whom I
advised told me I had better not, it would ruin
me and ruin my church, and at the same time I
was receiving nice little letters threatening me
with dirk and pistol and poison if I persisted in
attacking certain evils of the day, until the Commissioner of Police considered it his duty to take
his place in our Sabbath services with forty
officers scattered through the house for the
preservation of order ; but in my home there has
always been one voice to say: " G o ahead, and
diverge not an inch from the straight line. Who
cares, if only God is on our side ?" And though
sometimes it seemed as if I was going out
against nine hundred iron chariots, I went ahead
cheered by the domestic voice: " U p ! for this
is the day in which the Lord hath delivered
Sisera into thine hands."
A man is no better than his wife will let him be*
O wives of America, swing your sceptres / of
wifely influence for God and good homes! Do
not urge your husbands to annex Naboth's vineyard to your palace of success, whether right or
wrong, lest the dogs that come out to destroy
Naboth come out also to devour you. Righteousness will pay best in life, will pay best in
death, will pay best in the judgment, will pay
best through all eternity.

104:

WIFELY AMBITION, GOOD AND BAD.
EXTINCT FAMILIES.

In our effort to have the mother of every
household appreciate her influence over her
children, we are apt to forget the wife's influence over the husband. In many households
the influence upon the husband is the only
home influence. In a great multitude of the
best and most important and most talented
families of the earth, there have been no descendants. There is not a child or a grandchild,
or any remote descendant of Washington, or
Charles Sumner, or Shakespeare, or Edmund
Burke, or Pitt, or Lord Nelson, or Cowper, or
Pope, or Addison, or Johnson, or Lord Chatham,
or Grattan, or Isaac Newton, or Goldsmith, or
Swift, or Locke, or Gibbon, or Walpole, or
Canning, or Dryden, or Moore, or Chaucer, or
Lord Byron, or Walter Scoot, or Oliver Cromwell, or Garrick, or Hogarth, or Joshua Reynolds, or Spencer, or Lord Bacon, or Macaulay.
Multitudes of the finest families of the earth
are extinct. As though they had done enough
for the world by their genius or wit or patriotism or invention or consecration, God withdrew
them. In multitudes of cases all woman's opportunity for usefulness is with her contemporaries. How important that it be an improved
opportunity!
While the French warriors on their way to
Rheims had about concluded to give up attacking
the castle at Troyes, because it was so heavily
garrisoned,

WIFELY AMBITION, GOOD AND BAD.

105

JOAN OF ARC

entered the room and told them they would be
inside the castle in thaee days. " W e would
willingly wait six days/' said one of the leaders.
" S i x ! " she cried out, " y o u shall be in it tomorrow," and under her leadership, on the morrow they entered. On a smaller scale, every man
has garrisons to subdue and obstacles to level, and
every wife may be an inspired Joan of Arc to her
husband.
"What a noble, wifely ambition, the determination, God helping, to accompany her companion
across the stormy sea of this life and together gain
the wharf of the Celestial City! Coax him along
with you! You cannot drive him there.
You
cannot nag him there; but you can coax him there.
That is God's plan. He coaxes us all the way—
coaxes us out of our sins, coaxes us to accept
pardon, coaxes us to heaven. If we reach that
blessed place, it will be through a prolonged and
divine coaxing. By the same process take your
companion, and then you will get there as well,
and all your household. Do just the opposite of
your neighbor. Her wifely
AMBITION ALL FOR THIS WORLD,

and a disappointed and vexed and unhappy
creature she will be all the way. Her residence
may be better than yours for the few years of
earthly stay, but she will move out of it, as to her
body, into a house about five and a half feet long

106

W I F E L Y AMBITION, GOOD AND BAD.

and about three feet wide and two feet high; and
concerning her soul's destiny you can make your
own prognostication. Her husband and her sons
and daughters, who all, like her, live for this
world, will have the same destiny for the body
and the soul. You, having had a
SANCTIFIED AND ENNOBLED

wifely ambition, will pass up into palaces, and
what becomes of your body is of no importance,
for it is only a scaffolding, pulled down now that
your temple is done. You will stand in the everlasting rest and see your husband come in, and
see your children come in, if they have not preceded you. Glorified Christian wife ! Pick up
any crown you choose from off the Kings footstool and wear it; it was promised you long ago,
and with it cover up all the scars of your earthly
conflict.
Sixteen miles from Petersburg, Russia, was
one of the royal palaces, and there one night
Catherine the Empress entertained Prince Henry.
It was severe winter and deep snow, and
THE

EMPRESS AND THE

PRINCE

rode in magnificence of sleigh and robe and canopy
never surpassed, followed by two thousand sleighs
laden with the first people of Russia, the whole
length of the distance illumed by lamps and dazzling temples built for that one night, and imitations of mosques and Egyptian pyramids ; and
people of all nations, in all styles of costume,

WIFELY AMBITION, GOOD AND BAD.

107

standing on platforms along the way and watching the blaze of the pyrotechnics. At the palace
the luxuries of kingdoms were gathered and
spread, and at the table the guests had but to
touch the center of a plate and, by magical
machinery, it dropped and another plate came up
loaded with still richer viands. But all that scene
of the long ago shall be eclipsed by the greater
splendors that will be gathered at the banquet
made by the heavenly King for those consecrated
women who come in out of the winter and snowy
chill of their earthly existence into the warm
and illumined palaces of heaven. With the King
himself and all the potentates, yourself robed and
crowned, you will sit at a table compared with
which all the feasts of Kenilworth and St. Cloud
and the Alhambra were a beggar's crust. And
the platter of one royal satisfaction touched at the
center shall disappear only to make room for a
beggar's crust; and the golden plate of one royal
satisfaction, touched at the center, shall disappear
only to make room for the coming up of some
richer and grander regalement.

108

WHAT CAN AND WHAT CANNOT

W o m a n ' s Happiness—What Can a n d W h a t
Cannot Make a W o m a n Happy.
"She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth, **~1
TIMOTHY

5:6.

The editor of a Boston newspaper, a few days
ago wrote me the terse questions : " What is the
road to happiness ?" and " Ought happiness be the
chief aim of life V My answer was : "The road
to happiness is the continuous effort to make
others happy. The chief aim of life ought to be
usefulness, not happiness, but
HAPPINESS ALWAYS FOLLOWS USEFULNESS."

This morning's text in a strong way sets forth the
truth that a woman who seeks in worldly advantage her chief enjoyment, will come to disappointment and death. " She that liveth in pleasure is
dead while she liveth,"
My friends, you all want to be happy. You
have a great many recipes by which it is proposed
to give you satisfaction—solid satisfaction. At
times you feel a thorough unrest. You know as
well as older people what it is to be depressed.
As dark shadows sometimes fall upon the geography of the s.chool girl as on the page of the spectacled philosopher. I have seen as cloudy days
in May as in November. There are no deeper

MAKE A WOMAN HAPPY.

109

sighs breathed by the grandmother than by the
granddaughter. I correct the popular impression
that people are happier in childhood and youth
than they ever will be again. If we live aright,
the older the happier.
THE HAPPIEST WOMAN

that I ever knew was a Christian octogenarian; her
hair white as white could be; the sunlight of heaven
late in the afternoon gilding the peaks of snow.
I have to say to a great many of the young
people that the most miserable time you are ever
to have is just now. As you advance in life,
as you come out into the world and have youi*
head and heart all full of good, honest and practical Christian work, then you will know what it
is to begin to be happy, There are those who
would have us believe that life is chasing thistledown and gasping bubbles. We have not found
it so. To many of us it has been discovering
diamonds larger than the Kohinoor, and I think
that our joy will continue to increase until nothing short of everlasting jubilee of heaven will
be able to express it.
Horatio Greenaugh, at the close of the hardest
life a man ever lives—the life of an American
artist—wrote : "I don't want to leave this world
until I give some sign that, born by the grace of
God in this land, I have found life to be a very
cheerful thing, and not the dark and bitter thing
with which my early prospects were clouded."
Albert Barnes^ the good Christian,, knowp the

110

WHAT CAN AND WHAT CANNOT

world over, stood in his pulpit in Philadelphia, at
seventy or eighty years of age, and said : " This
world is so very attractive to me, I am very sorry
I shall have to leave it."
I know that Solomon said some very dolorous things about this world, and three times
declared : "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity/' I
suppose it was a reference to tfeose times in
his career when his seven hundred wives almost
pestered the life out of him. But I would rather
turn to the description he gave after his conversion, when he says in another place: " Her
ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths
are peace." It is reasonable to expect it will be
so. The longer the fruit hangs on the tree, the
riper and more mellow it ought to grow. Hear,
then, while I discourse upon some of the
MISTAKES W H I C H YOUNG PEOPLE MAKE

in regard to happiness, and point out to the young
women what I consider to be the source of complete satisfaction.
And, in the first place, I advise you not to
build your happiness upon mere social position.
Persons at your age, looking off upon life, are
apt to think that if, by some stroke of what is
called good luck, you could arrive in an elevated
and affluent position, a little higher than that in
which God has called you to live, you would be
completely happy. Infinite mistake ! The palace floor of Ahasuerus is red with the blood of

Vashti's broken heart,

There have beeji no

MAKE A WOMAN HAPPY

111

more scalding tears wept than those which coursed
the cheeks of Josephine. If the sob of unhappy
womanhood in the great cities could break
through the tapestried wall, that sob would come
along your streets to-day like the simoom of the
desert. Sometimes I have heard in the rustling
of the robes on the city pavement the hiss of the
adders that followed in the wake. You have
come out from your home, and you have looked
up
AT THE GREAT HOUSE,

and coveted a life under those arches, when perhaps, at that very moment, within that house,
there may have been the wringing of hands, the
start of horror, and the very agony of hell. I
knew of such a one. Her father's house was
plain, most of the people who came there were
plain ; but, by a change in fortune such as sometimes comes, a hand had been offered that led
her into a brilliant sphere. All the neighbors
congratulated her upon her grand prospects ; but
what an exchange ! On her side it was a heart
full of generous impulse and affection. On his
side it was a soul dry and withered as the stubble
of the field. On her side it was a father's house,
where God was honored and the Sabbath light
flooded the rooms with the very mirth of heaven.
On his side it was a gorgeous residence and the
coming of mighty men to be entertained there;
but within it were revelry and godlessness.
Hardly had the orange-blossoms of the marriage

112

W H A T CAN AND W H A T CANNOT

feast lost their fragrance, than the night of discontent began to cast its shadow.
CRUELTIES AND UNKINDNESSES

changed all those splendid trappings into a hollow
mockery. The platters of solid silver, the caskets
of pure gold, the headdress of gleaming diamonds,
were there ; but no God, no peace, no kind words,
no Christian sympathy. The festal music that
broke on the captive's ear turned out to be a
dirge, and the wreath in the plush was a reptile
coil, and the upholstery that swayed in the wind
was the wing of a destroying angel, and the
bead-drops on the pitcher were the sweat of
everlasting despair. O, how many rivalries and
unhappinesses among those who seek in social
life their chief happiness !
All that this world can do for you in silver, in
gold, in Axminsfcer plush, in Gobelin tapestry, in
wide halls, in lordly acquaintanceship, will not
give you the ten thousandth part of a grain of
solid satisfaction. The English lord, moving in
the very highest sphere, was one day found seated
with his chin on his hand and his elbow on the
window-sill, looking out and saying : " 0, I wish
I could exchange places with that dog !" Mere
social position will never give happiness to a
woman's soul. I have had wide and continuous
observation, and I tell the young women that they
who build on mere social position their soul's
immortal happiness are building on the sand.
puppose that a young woman expends the

M^iKE A WOMAN HAPPY.

113

brightness of her early life in this unsatisfactory
struggle and omits
THE PRESENT OPPORTUNITY

of usefulness in the home circle: what a mistake ! So surely as the years roll around, that
home in which you now dwell will become extinct. The parents will be gone, the property
will go into other possession, you yourself will
be in other relationships, and that home which
only a year ago, was full of congratulation, will
be extinguished. When that period comes, you
will look back to see what you did or what you
neglected to do in the way of making home
happy. It will be too late to correct mistakes.
If you did not smooth the path of your parents
toward the t o m b ; if you did not make their
last days bright and happy ; if you allowed your
younger brother to go out into the world unhallowed by Christian and sisterly influences ;
if you allowed the younger sisters of your family to come up without feeling that there had
been a Christian example set them on your part—
there will be nothing but bitterness of lamentation. That bitterness will be increased by all
the surroundings of that home ; by every chair,
by every picture, by the old-time mantel ornaments, by everything you can think of as connected with that home. All these things will
rouse up agonizing memories. Young women,
have you anything to do in the way of

114

WHAT CAN AND WHAT CANNOT
MAKING YOUR FATHER'S HOME HAPPY ?

Now is the time to attend to it, or leave it for
ever undone. Time is flying very quickly away.
I suppose you notice the wrinkles are gathering
and accumulating on those kindly faces that
have so long looked upon you; there is frost in
the locks ; the foot is not as firm in its step as
it used to be ; and they will soon be gone. The
heaviest clod that ever falls on a parent's coffinlid is the memory of an ungrateful daughter. 0,
make their last days bright and beautiful. Do
not act as though they were in the way. Ask
their counsel, seek their prayers, and after long
years have passed and you go out to see the
grave where they sleep, you will find growing all
over the mound something lovelier than cypress,
something sweeter than the rose, something
chaster than the lily—the bright and beautiful
memories of filial kindness performed ere the
dying hand dropped on you a benediction, and
you closed the lids over the weary eyes of the
worn-out pilgrim.
Better that, in the hour of your birth, you
had been struck with orphanage, and that you
had been handed over into the cold arms of the
world, rather than that you should have been
brought up under a father's care and a mother's
tenderness, at last to scoff at their example and
deride their influence; and on the day when
you followed them in long procession to the
tomb, to find that you are followed by a still

MAKE A WOMAN HAPPY.

115

larger procession of unfilial deeds done and
wrong words uttered. The one procession will
leave its burden in the tomb and disband ; but
that longer
PROCESSION OF GHASTLY MEMORIES

will forever march and forever wail. 0, it is a
good time for a young woman when she is in
her father's house. How careful they are of
her welfare ! How watchful those parents of all
her interests! Seated at the morning repast,
father at one end of the table, children on either
side and between, but the years will roll on,
and great changes will be effected, and one will
be missed from one end of the table, and another
will be missed from the other end of the table.
God pity that young woman's soul who, in that
hour, has nothing but regretful recollections.
I go further, and advise you not to depend
/br enjoyment upon mere
PERSONAL ATTRACTIONS.

It would be sheer hypocrisy, because we may
iiot have it ourselves, to despise, or affect to
despise, beauty in others. When God gives it,
He gives it as a blessing and as a means of usefulness. David and his army were coming
down from the mountains to destroy Nabal and
his flocks and vineyards. The beautiful Abigail, the wife of Nabal, went out to arrest him
when he came down from the mountains, and
she succeeded. Coming to the foot of the hill,

116

WHAT CAN AND WHAT CANNOT

she knelt. David with his army of sworn men
came down over the cliffs, and when he saw her
kneeling at the foot of the hill he cried, "Halt !5'
to his men, and the caves echoed i t : " Halt!
halt!" That one beautiful woman kneeling at
the foot of the cliff had arrested all those armed
troops. A dew-drop dashed back Niagara.
The Bible sets before us the portraits of Sarah
and Rebecca and Abishag, and Job's daughters,
and say : "They were fair to look upon." By
out-door exercise, and by skillful arrangement of
apparel, let women make themselves attractive.
The sloven has only one mission, and that is to
excite our loathing and disgust. But alas ! for
those who depend upon personal charms for their
happiness. Beauty is such a subtle thing, it does
not seem to depend upon facial proportions or
upon the sparkle of the eye or upon the flush of
the cheek. You sometimes find it among irregular
features.
IT IS THE SOUL SHINING THROUGH

the face that makes one beautiful. But alas ! for
those who depend upon mere personal charms.
They will come to disappointment and to a great
fret. There are so many different opinions about
what are personal charms; and then sickness and
trouble and age do make such ravages ! The
poorest god that a woman ever worships is her
own face. The saddest sight in all the world is a
woman who has built everything on good looks,
when the charms begin to vanish. 0, how they

MAKE A WOMAN HAPPY.

117

try to cover the wrinkles and hide the ravages
of time ! When Time, with iron-shod feet, steps
on a face
THE HOOF-MARKS

remain, and you cannot hide them. It is silly to
try to hide them. I think the most repulsive fool
in the world is an old fool! Why, my friends,
should you be ashamed of getting old ? It is a
sign—it is prima facie evidence that you have
behaved tolerable well, or you would not have
lived to this time. The grandest thing, I think,
is eternity, and that is made up of countless
years.
When the Bible would set forth the attractiveness of Jesus Christ, it says: "His hair was
white as snow." But when the color goes from
the cheek, and the lustre from the eye, and the
spring from the step, and the gracefulness from
the gait, alas ! for those who built their time and
their eternity upon good looks.
But all the
passage of years cannot take out of one's face
benignity and kindness, and compassion and
faith.
Culture your heart and you culture your face.
The brightest glory that ever beamed from a woman's face is the religion of Jesus Christ. In the
last war two hundred wounded soldiers came to
Philadelphia one night, and came unheralded, and
they had to extemporize a hospital for them, and
the Christian women of my church, and of other
churches went out that night to take care of the

118

W H A T CAN AND W H A T CANNOT

poor wounded fellows. That night I saw a Chris*
tian woman
IN THE WARDS OF THE HOSPITAL,

her sleeves rolled up ready for hard work, her hair
dishevelled in the excitement of the hour. Her
face was plain, very plain; but after the wounds
were washed and the new bandages were put
round the splintered limbs, and the exhausted boy
fell off into his first pleasant sleep, she put her
hand on his brow and he started in his dream, and
said, " 0 , I thought an angel touched m e ! "
There may have been no classic elegance in the
features of Mrs. Harris, who came into the hospital
after the "Seven Days" awful fight, as she sat
down by
A WOUNDED DRUMMER-BOY,

and heard him soliloquize: " A ball through my
body, and my poor mother will never again see
her boy. What a pity it is !" And she leaned
over him and said: " Shall I be your mother, and
comfort you V And he looked up and said, "Yes,
I'll try to think she's here. Please to write a long
letter to her and tell her all about it, and send her
a lock of my hair and comfort her. But I would
like you to tell her how much I suffered—yes, I
would like you to do that, for she would feel so for
me. Hold my hand while I die." There may
have been no classic elegance in her features, but
all the hospitals of Harrison's Landing and Fortress
Monroe would have agreed that she was beautiful,

MAKE A WOMAN HAPPY.

119

and if any rough man in all that ward had insulted
her some wounded soldier would have leaped
from his couch on his best foot, and struck him
dead with a crutch.
Again: I advise you not to depend for happiness upon
THE FLATTERIES OF MEN.

It is a poor compliment to your sex that so many
men feel obliged, in your presence, to offer unmeaning compliments. Many capable of elegant
and elaborate conversation elsewhere, sometimes
feel called upon at the door of the drawing-room
to drop their common sense and to dole out sickening flatteries. They say things about your dress
and about your appearance, that you know, and
they know, are false. They say you are an
angel. You know you are not. Determined to
tell the truth in office, and store and shop, they
consider it honorable to lie to a woman. The
same thing that they told you on this side of the
drawing-room, three minutes ago they said to
some one on the other side of the drawing-room.
0, let no one trample on your self-respect. The
meanest thing on which a woman can build her
happiness is the flatteries of men.
Again: I charge you not to depend for happiness upon
THE DISCIPLESHIP OF WORLDLINESS.

I have seen men as vain of their old-fashioned
and eccentric hat as your brainless fop is proud

120

WHAT CAN AtfD WHAT CANNOT

of his dangling fooleries. Fashion sometimes
makes a reasonable demand of us, and then we
ought to yield to it. The daisies of the field
have their fashion of color and leaf; the honeysuckles have their fashion of ear-drop ; and the
snowflakes flung out of the winter heavens have
their fashion of exquisiteness. After the summer
shower the sky weds the earth with ring of rain,
bow. And I do not think we have a right to despise the elegancies and fashions of this world,
especially if they make reasonable demands upon
us ; but the discipleship and worship of fashion is
death to the body, and death to the soul.
T am glad the world is improving. Look at
the fashion plates of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and you will find that the world
is not so extravagant and extraordinary now as
it was then, and all the marvellous things that
the granddaughter will do will never equal that
done by the grandmother. Go still farther back,
to the Bible times, and you find that in those
times fashion wielded a more terrible sceptre.
You have only to turn to the third chapter of
Isaiah, a portion of the Scriptures from which I
once preached to you, to read :
THE JEWISH FASHION PLATE.

" Because the "daughters of Zionare haughty, and
walk with stretched-f orth necks and wanton eyes,
walking and mincing as they go, and making a
tinkling with their feet: In that day the Lord
will take away the bravery of their tinkling orna-

MAKE A WOMAN HAPPY.

121

ments about their feet, and their cauls, and their
round tires like the moon, the chains, and the
bracelets, and the mufflers, and bonnets, and the
head-bands, and the tablets, and the ear-rings,
the rings, and the nose-jewels, the changeable
suits of apparel, and the mantles, and the wimples, and the crisping pins, the glasses, and the
fine linen, and the hoods, and the veils." Only
think of a woman having all that on ! I am glad
that the world is getting better and that fashion
which has dominated in the world so ruinously in
other days has, for a little time, for a little degree
at any rate, relaxed its energies.
All the splendors and the extravaganza of this
world dyed into your robe, and flung over your
shoulder, cannot wrap peace around your heart
for a single moment. The gayest wardrobe will
utter no voice of condolence in the day of trouble
and darkness. The woman is grandly dressed,
and only she, who is wrapped in the robe of a
Saviour's righteousness. The home may be very
humble, the hat may be very plain, the frock may
be very coarse; but the halo of heaven settles in
the room when she wears it, and the faintest touch
of the resurrection angel will change that garment
into raiment of exceeding white, so as no fuller on
earth could whiten it. I come to you, young
woman, to-day, to say that this world cannot make
you happy. I know it is a bright world,-with
glorious sunshine, and golden rivers, and fireworked sunset, and bird orchestra, and the darkest
cave has its crystals, and the wrathiest wave has

122

WHAT CAN AND WHAT CANNOT

its foam wreath, and the coldest midnight its
flaming aurora ; but God will put out all these
lights with the blast of His own nostrils, and
the glories of this world will perish in
THE FINAL CONFLAGRATION.

You will never be happy until you get your sin
forgiven, and allow Christ Jesus to take full possession of your soul. He will be your friend in
every perplexity. He will be your comfort in
every trial. He will be your defender in every
strait. I do not ask you to bring, like Mary, the
spices to the sepulchre of a dead Christ, but to
bring you all to the foot of a living Jesus. His
word is peace. His look is love. His hand is
help. His touch is life. His smile is heaven. O,
come, then, in flocks and groups. Come, like the
south wind over banks of myrrh. Come, like the
morning light, tripping over the mountains.
Wreathe all your affections on Christ's brow, set
all your gems in Christ's coronet, let this Sabbath
air rustle with the wings of rejoicing angels and
the towers of God ring out the news of souls
saved
" This world its fancied pearl may crave,
'Tis not the pearl for me;
'Twill dim its lustre in the grave,
'Twill perish in the sea.
But there's a pearl of price untold,
Which never can be bought with gold;
O, that's the pearl for me."

The snow was very deep, and it was still falling

MAKE A WOMAN HAPPY.

123

rapidly, ^rhen, in the first year of my Christian
ministry, I hastened
TO .SEE A YOUNG WOMAN DIE.

It was a very humble home. She was an orphan ;
her father had been shipwrecked on the banks of
Newfoundland. She had earned her own living.
As I entered the room I saw nothing attractive.
No pictures. No tapestry. Not even a cushioned
chair. The snow on the window casement was
not whiter than the cheek of that dying girl. It
was a face never to be forgotten. Sweetness and
majesty of soul, and faith in God, had given her
a matchless beauty, and the sculptor who could
have caught the outlines of those features, and
frozen them into stone, would have made himself
immortal. With her large, brown eyes she looked calmly into the great eternity. I sat down by
her bedside and said : "Now tell me all your
troubles, and sorrows, and struggles, and doubts."
She replied : " I have no doubts or struggles. It
is all plain to me. Jesus has smoothed the way
for my feet. I wish when you go to your pulpit
next Sunday, you will tell the people that
RELIGION W I L L MAKE THEM HAPPY.

" 0 death, where is thy sting? Mr. Talmage, I
wonder if this is not the bliss of dying V I said,
" Yes, I think it must be." I lingered around the
couch. The sun was setting, and her sister lighted a candle. She lighted the candle for me. The
dying girl, the dawn of heaven in her face, needed

121

WOMAN'S HAPPINESS.

no candle. I rose to go, and she said : %11 thank
you for coining. Good night! When we meet
again it will be in heaven—in heaven ! Good
night ! good night !" For her it was a good night
to tears, good night to poverty, good night to
death ; but when the sun rose again it was good
morning. The light of another day had burst in
upon her soul. Good morning ! The angels were
singing her welcome home, and the hand of Christ
was putting upon her brow a garland. Good
morning! Her sun rising. Her palm waving.
Her spirit exulting before the throne of God.
Good morning ! Good morning ! The white lily
of poor Margaret's cheek had blushed into the rose
of health immortal, and the snows through which
we carried her to the country graveyard were
symbols of that robe which she wears, so white
that no fuller on earth could whiten it.
My sister, my daughter, may your last end b%
like hers!

THE GRANDMOTHER.

125

The Grandmother.
" The unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in
shy grandmother Lois."—2 TIM. 1 : 5 ,

In this love-letter which Paul, the old minister,
is writing to Timothy, the young minister, the
family record is brought out. Paul practically
says : " Timothy, what a good grandmother you
had! You ought to be better than most folks,
because not only was your mother good, but your
grandmother. Two preceding generations of piety
ought to give you a mighty push in the right direction." The fact was that Timothy needed encouragement. He was in poor health, having a
weak stomach, and was dyspeptic, and Paul prescribed for him a tonic, " a little wine, for thy
stomach's sake"—not much wine, but a little
wine, and only as a medicine. And if the wine
then had been as much adulterated with logwood
and strychnine as our modern wines, he would
not have prescribed any.
But Timothy, not strong physically, is encouraged spiritually by the recital of grandmotherly
excellence, Paul hinting to him, as I hint this day
to you, that God sometimes gathers up, as in a
reservoir away back of the active generations of
to-day, a godly influence, and then in response to
prayer, lets down the power of children and

126

THE GRANDMOTHER.

grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
The
world is woefully in want of a table of statistics
in regard to what is the protractedness and immensity of
INFLUENCE OF ONE GOOD WOMAN

in the church and world. We have accounts of
how much evil has been wrought by Margaret,
the mother of criminals, who lived near a hundred
years ago, and of how many hundreds of criminals her descendants furnished for the penitentiary
and the gallows, and how many hundreds of
thousands of dollars they cost this country in
their arraignment and prison support, as well as
in the property they burglarized or destroyed.
But will not some one come out with brain comprehensive enough, and heart warm enough, and
pen keen enough to give us the facts in regard to
some good woman of a hundred years ago, and
let us know how many Christian men and women
and reformers and useful people have been found
among her descendants, and how many asylums
and colleges and churches they built, and how
many million dollars they contributed for humanitarian and Christian purposes ?
The good women whose tombstones were
I lanted in the eighteenth century are more
ALIVE FOR GOOD

hi the nineteenth century than they were before,
as the good women of this nineteenth century will
t>e more alive for good in the twentieth century

THE GRANDMOTHER.

127

than now. Mark you, I have no idea that the
grandmothers were any better than their granddaughters. You cannot get very old people to
talk much about how things were when they
were boys and girls. They have a reticence and a
non-committalism which makes me think they
feel themselves to be the custodians of the reputation of their early comrades. While our dear
old folks are rehearsing the follies of the present,
if you put them on the witness-stand and crossexamine them as to how things were seventy
years ago, the silence becomes oppressive.
A celebrated Frenchman by the name of Volney
visited this country in 1796, and he says of
WOMAN'S DIET

in those times : " I f a premium was offered for
a regimen most destructive to health, none
could be devised more efficacious for these ends
than that in use among these people." That
eclipses our lobster salad at midnight. Everybody talks about the dissipations of modern
society, and how womanly health goes down
under it, but it was worse a hundred years ago,
for the chaplain of a French regiment in our
Revolutionary war wrote in 1782, in his book of
American women, saying: "They are tall and
well proportioned, their features are generally
regular, their complexions are generally fair and
without color. At twenty years of age the
women have no longer the freshness of youth.
At thirty or forty they are decrepit." In 1812

128

THE GRANDMOTHER.

a foreign consul wrote a book entitled, " A Sketch
of the United States at the Commencement of
the Present Centuay," and he says of the women
of those times: " At the age of thirty all their
charms have disappeared." One glance at the
portraits of the women a hundred years ago and
their style of dress makes us wonder how they
ever got their breath. All this makes me think
that the express rail train is no more an improvement on the old canal-boat, or the telegraph no more an improvement on the old-time
saddlebags, than the women of our day are an
improvement on the women of the last century."
But still, notwithstanding that those times
were so much worse than ours, there was
A GLORIOUS RACE OF GODLY WOMEN

seventy and a hundred years ago, who held the
world back from sin and lifted it toward virtue?
and without their exalted and sanctified influence before this, the last good influence would
have perished from the earth. Indeed, all over
this land there are seated to-day—not so much
in churches, for many of them are too feeble to
come—a great many aged grandmothers. They
sometimes feel that the world has gone past
them, and they have an idea that they are of
little account. Their head sometimes gets aching from the racket of the grandchildren downstairs or in the next room. They steady themselves by the banisters as they go up and down.
When they get a cold, it hangs on to them

THE GRANDMOTHER.

129

longer than it used to. They cannot bear to
have the grandchildren punished, even when
they deserve it, and have so relaxed their ideas
of family discipline that they would spoil all the
youngsters of the household by too great
leniency.
These old folks are the resort when great
troubles come, and there-is a calming and soothing power in the touch of an aged hand that is
almost supernatural. They feel they are almost
through with the journey of life, and read the old
book more than they used to, hardly knowing
which is the most they enjoy, the Old Testament
or the New, and often stop and dwell tearfully
over the family record half way between. We
hail them to-day, whether in the house of God,
or at the homestead. Blessed is that household
that has in it a grandmother Lois. "Where she is,
angels are hovering round, and God is in the room.
May her last days be like those lovely autumnal
days that we call Indian summer.
I never knew the joy of having a grandmother;
that is the disadvantage of being the youngest
child of the family. The elder members only have
that benediction. But though she went up out of
this life before I began it, I have heard of her faith
in God, that brought all her children into the kingdom and two of them into the ministry, and then
brought all her grandchildren into the kingdom,
myself the last and least worthy. Is it not time
th&t you and I do two things, swing open a picturegallery of the wrinkled faces and stooped shoulders

130

THE GRANDMOTHER.

of the past, and call down from their heavenly
thrones the godly grandmothers; to give them
our^ thanks, and then persuade the mothers of today that they are living for all time, and. that
against the sides of every cradle in which a child
is rocked beat
THE TWO ETERNITIES?

Here we have an untried, undiscussed and unexplored subject. You often hear about your influence upon your own children—I am not
talking about that. What about your influence
upon the twentieth century, upon the thirtieth
century, upon the fortieth century, upon the year
two thousand, upon the year four thousand, if the
world last so long ? The world stood four thousand years before Christ came ; it is not unreasonable to suppose that it may stand four thousand
years after His arrival. Four thousand years the
world swung off in sin, four thousand years it
may be swinging back into righteousness. By
the ordinary rate of multiplication of the world's
population in a century, your descendants will be
over three hundred, and by two centuries at least
over fifty thousand, perhaps two hundred thousand, and upon every one of them you, the
mother of to-day, will have an influence for good
or evil. And if in four centuries your descendants
shall have with their names filled a scroll of hundreds of thousands, will some angel from heaven
to whom is given the capacity to calculate the
number of the stars of heaven and the sands of

THE GRANDMOTHER.

131

the seashore, step down and tell us how many
descendants you will have in the four thousandth
year of the world's possible continuance ?
Do not let the grandmothers any longer think
that they are retired, and sit clear back out of
sight from the world, feeling that they have no
relation to it. The mothers of the last century are
to-day in the senates, the parliaments, the palaces,
the pulpits, the banking houses, the professional
chairs, the prisons, the almshouses, the company
of ^midnight brigands, the cellars, the ditches of
this country. You have been thinking about the
importance of having the right influence upon one
nursery. You have been thinking about the importance of getting those two little feet on the
right path. You have been thinking of your
child's destiny for the next eighty years, if it should
pass on to be an octogenarian. That is well, but
my subject sweeps a thousand years, a million
years, a quadrillion of years. I cannot stop at
one cradle ; I am looking at the cradles that reach
all around the world and across all times. I am
not talking of mother Eunice, I am talking of
grandmother Lois.
The only way you can tell the force of a current
fe by sailing up stream; or the force of an ocean
wave, by running the ship against it. Eunning
along with it we cannot appreciate the force. In
ESTIMATING MATERNAL INFLUENCE

we generally run along with it down the stream
of time, and so we don't understand the full force.

132

THE GRANDMOTHER.

Let us come to it from the eternity side, after it
has been working on for centuries, and see all the
good it has done and all the evils it has accomplished multiplied in magnificent or appalling
compound interest. The difference between that
mother's influence on her children now, and the
influence when it has been multiplied in hundreds
of thousands of lives, is the difference between the
Mississippi river way up at the top of the continent, starting from the little lake Itasca, seven
miles long and one wide, and its mouth at the
Gulf of Mexico, where navies might ride. Between the birth of that river and its burial in the
sea, the Missouri pours in, and the Ohio pours in,
and the Arkansas pours in, and the Red and
White and Yazoo rivers pour in, and all the States
and Territories between the Alleghany and Rocky
mountains make contribution. Now, in order to
test the power of a mother's influence, we need to
come in off of the ocean of eternity and sail up toward the one cradle, and we will find ten thousand
tributaries of influence pouring in and pouring
down. But it is, after all,
ONE GREAT RIVER OF POWER

rolling on and rolling forever. Who can fathom
it ? Who can bridge it ? Who can stop it ?
Had not mothers better be intensifying their
prayers ? Had they not better be elevating by
their example ? Had they not better be rousing
themselves with the consideration that by their
faithfulness or neglect they are starting an in-

THE GRANDMOTHER.

133

fluence which will be stupendous after the last
mountain of earth is flat, and the last sea has
been dried up, and the last flake of the ashes of a
consumed world shall have been blown away, and
all the telescopes of other worlds directed to
the track around which our world once swung,
shall discover not so much as a cinder of the
burned-down and swept-off planet ?
In Ceylon there is a granite column thirty-six
square feet in size, which is thought, by the
natives, to decide the world's continuance. An
angel with robe spun from zephyr is once a century
to descend and sweep the hem of that robe across
the granite, and when, by that attrition the colupin
is worn away, they say time will end. But, by
that process, that granite column would be worn
out of existence before mother's influence will
begin to give way.
MOTHERS SOWING SEED.

If a mother tell a child he is not good, some
bugaboo will come and catch him, the fear excited
may make the child a coward, and the fact that he
finds there is no bugaboo may make him a liar,
and the echo of that false alarm may be heard
after fifteen generations have been born and
expired. If a mother promises a child a reward
for good behavior, and after the good behavior
forgets to give the reward, the cheat may crop
out in some faithlessness half a thousand years
further on. If a mother culture a child's vanity,
and eulogize his curls, and extol the night-black

134

THE GRANDMOTHER.

or sky-blue or nut-brown of the child's eyes, and
call out in his presence the admiration of spectators,
pride and arrogance may be prolonged after half a
dozen family records have been obliterated. If
a mother express doubt about some statement of
the Holy Bible in a child's presence, long after the
gates of this historical era have closed and the
gates of another era have opened, the result may
be seen in a champion blasphemer.
But, on the other hand, if a mother walking
with a child see a suffering one by the wayside
and says: " M y child, give that ten-cent piece to
that lame boy," the result may be seen on the
other side of the following century in some George
Miiller building a whole village of orphanages. If
a mother sit almost every evening by the trundlebed of a child and teach it lessons of a Saviour's
love and a Saviour's example, of the importance
of truth and the horror of a lie, and the virtues of
industry and kindness and sympathy and selfsacrifice, long after the mother has gone, and the
child has gone, and the lettering on both the tombstones shall have been washed out by the storms
of innumerable winters, there may be standing,
as a result of those trundle-bed lessons, flaming
evangels, world-moving reformers, seraphic
Summerfields, weeping Paysons, thundering
Whitefields, emancipating Washingtons.
Good or bad influence may skip one generation
or two generations, but it will be sure to land in
THE THIRD OR FOURTH GENERATIONS,

just as the Ten Commandments, speaking of the

«;>w\V}

THE GRANDMOTHER.

135

\ s t a t i o n vf (xod on families, says nothing about
the second generation, but entirely skips the
second and speaks of the third and fourth generation : "Visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon
the third and fourth generations of them that
hate me." Parental influenee> right and wrong,
may jump over a generation, but it will come
down further on, as sure as you sit there and I
stand here. Timothy's ministry was projected by
his grandmother Lois. There are men and women
here, the son and daughter of the Christian Church,
who are such as a result of the consecration of
great-great-grandmothers. Why, who do you
think the Lord is ? You talk as though His menr
ory was weak. He can no easier remember a
prayer five minutes than he can five centuries.
This explains what we often see—some man 01
woman distinguished for her benevolence when
the father and mother were distinguished foi
penuriousness; or you see some young man or
woman with a bad father and a hard mother come
out gloriously for Christ, and make the
church sob and shout and sing under their exhortations.
We stand in corners of the vestry
and whisper over the matter and say : " How is
this, such great piety in sons and daughters of
such parental worldliness and sin ?" I will explain it to you if 5rou will fetch me the old family
Bible containing the full record. Let some septuagenarian look with me clear upon the page of
births and marriages, and tell me who that
woman was with the old-fashioned name of

136

THE GRANDMOTHER,

Jemima or Betsy or Mehitabel. Ah, there she is,
the old grandmother or great-grandmother, who
had enough
RELIGION TO SATURATE A CENTURY.

There she is, the dear old soul, grandmother
Lois. In our beautiful Greenwood (may we all
sleep there when our work is done, for when I
get up in the Resurrection morning, I want my
congregation all about me)—in Greenwood there
is the resting-place of George W. Bethune, once
a minister of Brooklyn Heights, his name never
spoken among intelligent Americans without
suggesting two things—eloquence and evangelism. In the same tomb sleeps his grandmother,
Isabella Graham, who was the chief inspiration
of his ministry. You are not surprised at the
poetry, and pathos and pulpit power of the grandson when you read of the faith and devotion of
his wonderful ancestress. When you read
THIS GRANDMOTHER'S

LETTER,

in which she poured out her widowed soul in
longing for a son's salvation, you will not wonder
that succeeding generations have been blessed:
" N E W YORK, May 20,

1791.

" This day my only son left me in bitter wringings of heart; he is again launched on the ocean,
God's ocean. The Lord saved him from shipwreck, brought him to my home and allowed me
once more to indulge my affections over him.
He has been with me but a short time5 and ill

THE GRANDMOTHER.

187

have I improved i t ; he is gone from my sight,
and my heart bursts with tumultuous grief.
Lord, have mercy on the widow's son, ' the only
son of his mother.'
" I ask nothing in all this world for him ; I repeat my petition—save his soul alive, give him
salvation from sin. It is not the danger of the
seas that distresses me ; it is not the hardships he
must undergo ; it is not the dread of never seeing
him more in this world ; it is because I cannot discern the fulfilment of the promise in him, I cannot
discern the new birth, nor its fruit, but every
symptom of captivity to Satan, the world and
self-will. This, this is what distresses m e ; and
in connection with this, his being shut out from
ordinances at a distance from Christians; shut up
with those who forget God, profane His name,
and break his Sabbaths : men who often live and
die like beasts, yet are accountable creatures,
who must answer for every moment of time and
every word, thought, and action.
" 0 Lord, many wonders hast Thou shown m e :
Thy ways of dealing with me and mine have not
been common ones ; add this wonder to the rest.
Call, convert, regenerate and establish a sailor in
the faith. Lord, all things are possible with
Thee ; glorify Thy son and extend His kingdom by
sea and land; take the prey from the strong. I
roll him over upon Thee. Many friends try to
comfort me : miserable comforters are they all.
Thou art the God of consolation; only confirm to
iaae Thy precious word, OIL which Thou causedst

1C8

THE GRANDMOTHER.

me to hope in the day when Thou saidst to me,
' Leave thy fatherless children, I will preserve
them alive.' Only let this life be a spiritual life,
and I put a blank in Thy hand as to all temporal
things.
" I wait for thy salvation,
Amen."
With such a grandmother, would you not have
* right to expect a George W. Bethune ? and all
the thousands converted through his ministry
may date ihe saving power back to Isabella Graham.
God fill the earth, and the heavens with such
grandmothers ; we must some day go up and
thank the^e dear old souls. Surely, God will let
us go up, and tell them of the results of their influence. Among our
FIRST QUESTIONS iN HEAVEN

Will be " where is grandmother ?" They will point
her out, for we would hardly know her even if
we had seen her on earth, so bent over with years
once, and there so straight, so dim of eye through
the blinding of earthly tears, and now her eye as
clear as heaven, so full of aches and pains once,
and now so agile with celestial health, the wrinkles blooming into carnation roses, and her step
like the roe on the mountains. Yes, I must see
her, my grandmother on my father's side, Mary
McCoy, descendant of the Scotch. When I first
spoke to an audience in Glasgow, Scotland, and
felt somewhat diffident, being a stranger, I beg&u

THE GRANDMOTHER.

13*

by telling them my grandmother was a Scotch
^oman, and then there went up a shout of wel
come which made me feel as easy as I do here
I must see her.
You must see those women of the early nine
teenth century and the eighteenth century, thf
answer of whose prayers is in your welfare to-day
GOD BLESS ALL THE AGED WOMEN

up and down the land and in all lands! What a
happy thing, Pomponius Atticus, to say, when
making the funeral address of his mother:
" Though I have resided with her sixty-seven
years, I was never once reconciled to her, because
there never happened the least discord between us^
and consequently, there was no need of reconcilia
tion." Make it as easy for the old folks as you
can. When they are sick, get for them the best
doctors. Give them your arm when the streets
are slippery. Stay with them all the time you
can. Go home and see the old folks. Find the
place for them in the hymn-book.
Never be
ashamed if they prefer styles of apparel a little antiquated. Never say anything that implies they
are in the way. Make the road for the last mile
as smooth as you can. Oh m y !
HOW YOU W I L L MISS HER

when she is gone. I would give the house from
over my head to see mother. I have so many
things I would like to tell her, things, that have
happened in twenty-four years since she wept

140

THE GRANDMOTHER.

away. Morning, noon and night let us thank
God for the good influences that have come down
from good mothers all the way back. Timothy,
don't forget your mother Eunice, and don't forget
your grandmother Lois. And hand down to
others this patrimony of blessing. Pass along the
coronets. Make religion an heirloom from generation to generation. Mothers of America, consecrate yourselves to God, and you will help consecrate all the ages following ! Do not dwell so
much on your hardships that you miss your
chance of wielding an influence that shall look
down upon you from the towers of an endless
future.
I know Martin Luther was right when he consoled his wife over the death of their daughter, by
saying : " Don't take on so, wife ; remember that
this is a hard world for girls/' Yes ; I go further
and say : It. is
A HARD WORLD FOR WOMEN.

Aye, I go further and say: It is a hard world for
men. But for all women and men who trust their
bodies and souls in the hand of Christ, the shining
gates will soon swing open. Don't you see the
sickly pallor on the sky? That is the pallor on the
cold cheek of the dying night. Don't you see the
brightening of the clouds? That is the flush on the
warm forehead of the morning.
Cheer up, you
are coming within sight of
THE CELESTIAL CITY.

Cairo, capital of Egypt, was called "City of

THE GRANDMOTHER.

141

Victory." Athens, capital of Greece, was called
" City of the Violet Crown;" Baalbeck, was called
" City of the Sun;" London, was called " T h e
City of Masts." Lucian's imaginary metropolis
beyond the Zodiac was called "The City of Lanterns." But the city to which you journey hath
all these in one, the victory, the crowns, the masts,
of those that have been harbored after the storm.
Aye, all but the lanterns and the sun, because
they have no need of any other light, since the
Lamb is the light thereof.

,42

WOMAN'S OPPORTUNITY.

W o m a n ' s Opportunity.
" So God created man in His own image, in the image of God
created He him; male and female created He then."—GEN 1; 27.

In other words, God, who can make no mistake,
made man and woman for specific work, and to
move in particular spheres—man to be regnant in
his realm, woman to be dominant in hers. The
boundary line between Italy and Switzerland,
between England and Scotland, is not more
thoroughly marked than this distinction between
the empire masculine and the
EMPIRE

FEMININE.

So entirely dissimilar are the fields to which
God called them, that you can no more compare
them than ]^ou can oxygen and hydrogen, water
and grass, trees and stars. All this talk about the
superiority of one sex to the other sex is an everlasting waste of ink and speech. A jeweler may
have a scale so delicate that he can weigh the dust
of diamonds, but where are the scales so delicate
that you can weigh in them affection against
affection, sentiment against sentiment, thought
against thought, soul against soul, a man's word
against a woman's word %
You come out with your stereotyped remark,
tj?$ rnan is superior to woman in intellect axid

WOMAN'S OPPORTUNITY.

14

then I open on my desk the swarthy, iron-typed
thunder-bolted writings of Harriet Martineau, and
Elizabeth Browning, and George Eliot. You come
on with your stereotyped remark about woman's
superiority to man in the item of affection, but I
ask you where were there more capacity to love
than in John the disciple, and Robert McCheyne,
the Scotchman, and John Summerfield, the Methodist, and Henry Martin, the missionary?
The
heart of those men was so large that after you had
rolled into it two hemispheres, there was room still
left to marshal the hosts of heaven, and set up
the throne of the eternal Jehovah. I deny to
man the throne intellect. I deny to woman the
throne affectional. No human phraseology will
ever define the spheres, while there is an intuition by which we know when a man is in his
realm, and when a woman is in her realm, and
when either of them is out of it. No bungling legislature ought to attempt to make a definition, or to say, "This is the line, and that is
the line."
MY THEORY

is that if woman wants to vote, she ought to vote,
and that if a man wants to embroider and keep
house, he ought to be allowed to embroider and
keep house. There are masculine women and
there are effeminate men. My theory is, that you
have no right to interfere with anyone's doing
anything that is righteous. Albany and Washington might as well decree by legislation how high a
\ffiwft4htfBBhef should fly, or how deep a tadd*

144

WOMAN'S OPPORTUNITY,

should plunge, as to try to seek out the height or
depth of a woman's duty. The question of capacity will settle finally the whole question, the
whole subject. When a woman is prepared to
preach, she will preach, and neither Conference noi
Presbytery can hinder. When a woman is prepared to move in highest commercial spheres, she
will have great influence on the Exchange, and no
Boards of Trade can hinder her. I want woman
to understand that heart and brain can overfly
any barrier that politicians may set up, and that
nothing can keep her back or keep her down but
the question of capacity. I know there are
WOMEN OF MOST UNDESIRABLE NATURE,

who wander up and down the country—having
no homes of their own, or forsaking their own
homes—talking about their rights ; and we know
very well that they themselves are fit neither to
vote, nor fit to keep house. Their mission seems
to be to humiliate the two sexes at the thought of
what any one of us might become. No one would
want to live under the laws that such women
would enact, or to have cast upon society the
children that such women would raise. But I
shall show you this morning that the best rights
that women can own, she already has in her possession, that
HER POSITION

In this country at this time is not one of commiseration, but one of congratulation; that thf

WOMAN'S OPPORTUNITY.

145

grandeur and power of her realm have never yet
been appreciated ; that she sits to-day on a throne
so high, that all the thrones of earth piled on top
of each other would not make for her a footstool.
Here is the platform on which she stands. Away
down below it are the ballot-box, and the Congressional assemblage and the legislative hall.
Woman always has voted and always will vote.
Our great-grandfathers thought they were by
their votes putting Washington into the presidential chair. No. His mother, by the principles she taught him, and by the habits she inculcated, made him President. It was a Christian
mother's hand dropping the ballot when Lord
Bacon wrote, and Newton philosophized, and
Alfred the Great governed, and Jonathan Edwards thundered of judgment to come. How
many men there have been in high political station, who would have been insufficient to stand
the test to which their moral principle was put,
had it not been for a wife's voice that encouraged
them to do right, and a wife's prayer that
sounded louder than the clamor of partisanship !
Why, my friends, the right of suffrage, as we
men exercise it, seems to be a feeble thing. You,
a Christian man, come up to the ballot-box, and
you drop your vote. Eight after you comes a
libertine or a sot—the offscouring of the street
—and he drops his vote ; and his vote counteracts
yours. But if in the quiet of home life a daughter by her Christian demeanor, a wife by her industry, a mother by her faithfulness, caste a vote

146

WOMAN'S OPPORTUNITY.

in the right direction, then nothing can resist it,
and the influence of that vote will throb through
the eternities.
My chief anxiety then is, not that woman have
other rights accorded her; but that she, by the
grace of God, rise up to the appreciation of the
GLORIOUS RIGHTS

she already possesses. This morning I shall only
have time to speak of one grand and all-absorb*
ing right that every woman has, and that is to
make home happy. That realm no one has ever
disputed with her. Men may come home at noon
or at night, and they tarry a comparatively little
while ; but she, all day long, governs it, beautifies
it, sanctifies it. It is within her power to make it
the most attractive place on earth. It is the only
calm harbor in this world. You know as well as
I do, that this outside world, and the business
world is a long scene of jostle and contention.
The man who has a dollar struggles to keep i t ;
the man who has it not struggles to get it. Prices
up. Prices down. Losses. Gains. Misrepresentations. Gougings. Underselling.
Buyers
depreciating; salesmen exaggerating. Tenants
seeking less rent; landlords demanding more.
Gold fidgety. Struggles about office. Men who
are in trying to keep in ; men out trying to get in.
Slips. Tumbles. Defalcations. Panics. Catastrophes. 0 woman! Thank God you have a
home, and that

WOMAN'S OPPORTUNITY.

147

YOU MAY BE QUEEN

in it. Better be there than wear Victoria's coronet. Better be there than carry the purse of a
princess. Your abode may be humble, but you
can by your faith in God and your cheerfulness
of demeanor, gild it with splendors such as an
upholsterer's hand never yet kindled. There are
abodes in the city—humble, two stories, four
plain unpapered rooms; undesirable neighborhood ; and yet there is a man here this morning
who would die on the threshold rather than
surrender it. Why ? It is home. Whenever
he thinks of it, he sees angels of God hovering
around it. The ladders of heaven are let down to
this house. Over the child's rough crib there are
the chantings of angels, as those that broke over
Bethlehem.
IT is HOME.

These children may come up after a while, and they
may win high position, and they may have an affluent residence; but they will not until their dying day forget that humble roof, under which their
father rested, and their mother sang, and thalr
sisters played. Oh, if you would gather up all
tender memories, all the lights and shades of the
heart, all banquetings and reunions, all filial, fraternal, paternal, and conjugal affections, and you
had only just four letters to spell out that height
and depth and length and breadth and magnitude
and eternity of meaning, you would, with stream-

148

WOMAN'S OPPORTUNITY.

ing eyes, and trembling voice, and agitated
hand, write it out in those four living capitals,
H-O-M-E.
What right does woman want that is grander
than to be queen in such a realm ? Why, the
eagles of heaven cannot fly across that dominion.
Horses, panting and with lathered flanks, are not
swift enough to run to the outpost of that realm.
They say that the sun never sets upon the English
empire; but I have to tell you that on this
realm of woman's influence, eternity never marks
any bound. Isabella fled from the Spanish throne,
pursued by the nation's anathema : but she who
is queen in a home will never lose her throne, and
death itself will only be the annexation of heavenly principalities.
When you want to get your grandest
IDEA OF A QUEEN,

you do not think of Catharine of Eussia, or of
Anne of England, or of Maria Theresa of Germ any;
but when you want to get your grandest idea of a
queen, you think of the plain woman who sat opposite your father at the table, or walked with him
arm-in-arm down life's pathway; sometimes to
the thanksgiving banquet, sometimes to the grave,
but always together—soothing your petty griefs,
correcting your childish waywardness, joining in
your infantile sports, listening to your evening
prayers, toiling for you with needle, or at the
spinning wheel, and on cold nights t r a p p i n g you
up snug and warm. And then at last on that day

WOMAN'S OPPORTUNITY.

149

when she lay in the backroom dying, and you saw
her take those thin hands with wnich she toiled
for you so long, and put them together in a dy-.
ing prayer that commended you to God whom she
had taught you to trust—0, she was the queen !
The chariots of God came down to fetch her ; and
as she went in all heaven rose up. You cannot
think of her now without a rush of tenderness that
stirs the deep fountains of your soul, and you feel
as much a child again as when you cried on her
lap ; and if you could bring her back again to
speak just once more your name as tenderly as
she used to speak it, you would be willing to
throw yourself on the ground and kiss the sod
that covers her, crying : '' Mother ! mother !"
Ah! she was the queen—
SHE W A S THE QUEEN.

Now, can you tell me how many thousand miles
a woman like that would have to travel dawn before she got to the ballot-box ? Compared with
this work of training kings and queens for God
and eternity, how insignificant seems all this work
of voting for aldermen and common councilmen,
and sheriffs, and constables, and mayors, and
presidents. To make one Buch grand woman as
I have described, how many thousand would you
want of those people who go in the round of godlessness and fashion and dissipation, distorting
their body until in their monstrosities they seem to
outdo the dromedary and hippopotamus ! going
as far toward disgraceful apparel as they dare go,

150

WOMAN^S OPPORTUNITY.

so as not to be arrested of the police- their behavior a sorrow to the good and a caricature of
the vicious, and an insult to that God who made
them women and not gorgons; and tramping on
down through a frivolous and dissipated life, to
temporal and eternal damnation. O, woman,
with the lightning of your soul, strike dead at
your feet all these allurements to dissipation and
to fashion. Your immortal soul cannot be fed
upon such garbage.
God calls you up to empire and dominion. Will
you have it ? 0, give to God your heart; give to
God your best energies; give to God all your culture ; give to God all your refinement; give yourself to Him, for
THIS WORLD AND THE NEXT.

Soon all these bright eyes will be quenched, and
these voices will be hushed. For the last time
you will look upon this fair earth, father's hand,
mother's hand, sister's hand, child's hand, will be
no more in yours. It will be night, and there will
come up a cold wind from the Jordan, and you
must start. Will it be a lone woman on a trackless moor? Ah, no, Jesus will come up in that
hour and offer His hand, and He will say: " You
stood by Me when you were well; now I will not
desert you when you are sick." One wave of
His hand, and the storm will drop; and another
wave of His hand, and midnight shall break
into midnoon; and another wave of his hand,
and the chamberlains of God will come down

WOMAN'S OPPORTUNITY.

151

from the treasure-houses of heaven, with robes
lustrous, blood-washed, and heaven-glinted, in
which you will array yourself for the marriagesupper of the Lamb. And then with Miriam, who
struck the timbrel by the Red Sea ; and with Deborah, who led the Lord's host into the fight; and
with Hannah, who gave her Samuel to the Lord;
and with Mary, who rocked Jesus to sleep while
there were angels singing in the air; and with
Florence Nightingale, who bound up the battlewounds of the Crimea, you will, from the chalice
of God, drink to the soul's eternal rescue.
One twilight, after I had been playing with the
children for some time, I laid down on the lounge
to rest: and half asleep and half awake,
I SEEMED TO DREAM

this dream : It seemed to me that I was in a fardistant land—not Persia, although more than
Oriental luxuriance crowned the cities; nor the
tropics, although more than tropical fruitfulness
filled the gardens ; nor Italy—although more than
Italian softness filled the air. And I wandered
around, looking for thorns and nettles, but I found
none of them grew there. And I walked forth
and I saw the sun rise, and I said: " When will
it set again ?" and the sun sank not. And I saw
all the people in holiday apparel, and I said:
" W h e n will they put on workingmen's garb
again, and delve in the mine, and swelter at the
forge V But neither the garments nor the robeg
did they put off.

152

WOMAN'S OPPORTUNITY.

And I wandered in the suburbs, and I said*
"Where do they bury the dead of this great city V
And I looked along by the hills where it would be
most beautiful for the dead to sleep, and I saw
castles, and towns, and battlements; but not a
mausoleum, nor monument, nor white slab could
I see. And I went into the great chapel of the
town, and I said: "Where do the poor worship V
" Where are the benches on which they sit V And
a voice answered: " W e have no poor in this great
city." And I wandered out, seeking to find the
place where were the hovels of the destitute, and
I found mansions of amber and ivory and gold,
but no tear did I see or sigh hear.
I was bewildered; and I sat under the shadow
of a great tree, and I said, " W h a t am I, and
whence comes all this V And at that moment
there came from among the leaves, skipping up
the flowery paths and across the sparkling waters,
a, very bright and sparkling group; and when I
saw their step I knew, and when I heard their
voices I thought I knew them ; but their apparel
was so different from anything I had ever seen, I
bowed, a stranger to strangers. But after a while,
when they clapped their hands, and shouted,
"WELCOME! WELCOME!"

the mystery was solved, and I saw that time had
passed, and that eternity had come, and that God
had gathered us up into a higher home; and I
Baid, " Are all here V and the voices of innumer
able generations answered: " A l l here." Ajad

WOMAN'S OPPORTUNITY.

153

while tears of gladness were raining down our
cheeks, and the branches of the Lebanon cedars
were clapping their hands, and the towers of the
great city were chiming their welcome, we began
to laugh, and sing, and leap, and shout, " H o m e !
Home! Home!"

154

THE QUEENS OF HOME.

T h e Queens of Home.
"There are three-score queens."—SOLOMON'S SONG, 6:8.

So Solomon, by one stroke, set forth the imperial character of a true Christian woman. She is
not a slave, not a hireling, not a subordinate, but
a queen. In a former sermon I showed you that
crown and courtly attendants and imperial wardrobe were not necessary to make a queen ; but
that graces of the heart and life will give coronation to any woman. I showed you at some length
that woman's position was higher in the world
than man's, and that although she had often been
denied the right of suffrage, she always did vote
and always would vote by her influence ; and that
her chief desire ought to be that she should have
grace rightly to rule in the dominion which she
has already won. I began an enumeration of
some of her rights, and this morning I resume the
subject.
I. In the first place, woman has the special and
superlative right—not again going back to what I
have already said—woman has the special and superlative right of blessing and
COMFORTING THE SICK.

What land, what street, what house, has not
felt the smitings of disease ? Tens of thousands of

THE QUEENS OF HOME.

155

sick beds! What shall we do with them? Shall
man, with his rough hand and clumsy foot, go
stumbling around the sick-room, trying to soothe
the distracted nerves and alleviate the pains of the
tossing patient ? The young man at college may
scoff at the idea of being under maternal influence;
but at the first blast of typhoid fever on his cheek,
he says, " Where is mother?" Walter Scott wrote
partly in satire and partly in compliment:
" Oh woman, in our hours of ease,
Uncertain, coy and hard to please;
When pain and anguish wring the brow.
A ministering angel thou."

I think the most pathetic passage in all the Bible is the description of the lad who went out to
the harvest field of Shunem and got sun-struck—
throwing his hands on his temples and crying out:
" Oh my head ! my head !" And they said : "Carry him to his mother." And then the record i s :
"He sat on her knees till noon, and then died."
It is an awful thing to be ill away from home in a
strange hotel, once in a while men coming in to
look at you, holding their hand over their mouth
for fear they will catch the contagion. How
roughly they turn you in bed. How loudly they
talk. How you long for
THE MINISTRIES OF HOME.

I know one such who went away from one of
the brightest of homes, for several weeks' business
absence at the West. A telegram came at midnight that he was on his deathbed far away frorg

156

THE QUEENS OF HOME.

home. By express train the wife and daughters
went westward; but they went too late. He feared
not to die, but he was in an agony to live until his
family got there. He tried to bribe the doctor to
make him live a little while longer. He said : " I
am willing to die, but not alone." But the pulses
fluttered, the eyes closed, and the heart stopped.
The express trains met in the midnight; wife and
daughters going westward—lif eless remains of husband and father coming eastward. Oh, it was a
sad,pitiful, overwhelming spectacle ! When we are
sick we want to be sick at home.
When the
time comes for us to die we want to die at home.
The room may be very humble, and the faces that
look into ours may be very plain ; but who cares
for that ? Loving hands to bathe the temples.
Loving voices to speak good cheer. Loving lips
to read the promises of Jesus.
IN OUR LAST DREADFUL WAR,

men cast the cannon, men fashioned the musketry, men cried to the hosts, u Forward, march!"
men hurled their battalion on the sharp edges of
the enemy, crying, "Charge! charge!" but
woman scraped the lint, woman administered the
cordials, woman watched by the dying couch,
woman wrote the last message to the home
circle, woman wept at the solitary burial, attended by herself and four men with a spade. We
greeted the generals home with brass bands and
triumphal arches and wild huzzas ; but the story
is too good to be written anywhere, save in the

THE QUEENS OF HOME.

15

chronicles of heaven, of Mrs. Brady, who cam
down among the sick in the swamps of tht
Chickahominy; of Annie Eoss, in the coopershop hospital; of Margaret Breckinridge, who
came to men who had been for weeks with their
wounds undressed—some of them frozen to the
ground, and when she turned them over, those
that had an arm left, waved it and filled the air
with their " hurrah !"—of Mrs. Hodge, who came
from Chicago, with blankets and with pillows
until the men shouted, " Three cheers for the
Christian Commission!
GOD BLESS THE WOMEN

at home;" then sitting down to take the last
message : "Tell my wife not to fret about me,
but to meet me in heaven; tell her to train up
the boys whom we have loved so well; tell her
we shall meet again in the good land ; tell her to
bear my loss like the Christian wife of a Christian soldier"—and of Mrs. Shelton, into whose
face the convalescent soldier looked, and said :
" Your grapes and cologne cured me." Men did
their work with shot and shell and carbine and
howitzer; women did their work with socks and
slippers and bandages and warm drinks and
Scripture texts and gentle strokings of the hot
temples and stories of that land where they never
have any pain. Men knelt down over the
wounded and said, " O n which side did you
fight ?" Women knelt down over the wounded
and said, " W h e r e are you hurt? What nice

158

THE QUKENS OF HOME.

thing can I make for you to eat ? What makes
you cry V To-night, while we men are sound
asleep in our beds, there will be a fight in yonder loft; there will be groaning down that dark
alley; there will be cries of distress in that cellar. Men will sleep, and women will watch.
II. Again: woman has a special right to take
CARE OF THE POOR.

There are hundreds and thousands of them all
over the land. There is a kind of work that men
cannot do for the poor. Here comes a group of
little barefoot children to the door of the Dorcas
society. They need to be clothed and provided
for. Which of these directors of banks would
know how many yards it would take to
make that little girl a dress % Which of these
masculine hands could fit a hat to that little
girl's head ? Which of the wise men would know
how to tie on that new pair of shoes ? Man
sometimes gives his charity in a rough way, and
it falls like the fruit of a tree in the East, which
fruit comes down so heavily that it breaks the
skull of the man who is trying to gather it. But
woman glides so softly into the house of destitution and finds out all the sorrows of the place,
and puts so quietly the donation on the table,
that all the family come out on the front steps
as she departs, expecting that from under her
shawl she will thrust out two wings and go right
up toward heaven, from whence she seems to
have come down.

THE QUEENS OF HOME.

159

O, Christian young woman! if you would
make yourself happy, and win the blessing of
Christ, go out
AMONG THE DESTITUTE.

A loaf of bread or a bundle of socks may make a
homely load to carry, but the angels of God will
come out to watch, and the Lord Almighty will
give His messenger hosts a charge, saying:
" Look after that woman; canopy her with your
wings, and shelter her from all harm;" and while
you are seated in the house of destitution and
suffering, the little ones around the room will
whisper,'' Who is she ? Ain't she beautiful!" and if
you will listen right sharply, you will hear dripping
down through the leaky roof, and rolling over the
rotten stairs, the angel chant that shook Bethlehem:
'"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace,
good-will to men." Can you tell me why a Christian woman, going down among
THE

HAUNTS OF INIQUITY,

on a Christian errand, never meets with any indignity ? I stood in the chapel of Helen Chalmers,
the daughter of the celebrated Dr. Chalmers, int
the most abandoned part of the city of Edinburgh,
and I said to her as I looked around upon the
fearful surroundings of that place: "Do you come
here nights to hold a service V " 0 , yes,"shesaid.
"Can it be possible that you never meet with an
insult while performing this Christian errand V
"Never," she said, "never." That young woman
who has her fathar by her side, walking down the

160

THE QUEENS OF HOME.

street, armed police at each corner, is not so well
defended as that Christian woman who goes forth
on Gospel work into the haunts of iniquity, carrying the Bibles and bread. God, with the red right
arm of His wrath omnipotent, would tear to
pieces anyone who should offer indignity. He
would smite him with lightnings, and drown him
with floods, and swallow him with earthquakes,
and damn him with eternal indignations.
Some one said: ' ; I dislike very much to see
that Christian woman teaching those bad boys in
the mission schools. I am afraid to have her instruct them." u S o , " said another man, " I am
afraid too." Said the first: " I am afraid they
will use vile language before they leave the place."
" Ah," said the other man, " I am not afraid of
that. What I am afraid of is, that if any of those
boys should use a bad word in her presence, the
other boys would tear him to pieces and kill him
on the spot." That woman is the best sheltered
who is sheltered by the Lord God Almighty,
and you need never fear going anywhere where God
tells you to go.
It seems as if the Lord had ordained woman for
an especial work in the
SOLICITATION OF CHAKITIES.

Backed up by barrels in which there is no flour,
and by stoves in which there is no fire, and by
wardrobes in which there are no clothes, a woman
is irresistible; passing on her errand, God says to
her: '' You go into that bank or store or shop and

THE QUEENS OF HOME.

161

get the money." She goes in and gets it. The man
is hard-fisted, but she gets it. She could not help
but get it. It is decreed from eternity she should
get it. No need of your turning your back and
pretending you don't hear: you do hear. There is
no need of your saying you are begged to death.
There is no need of your wasting your time, and
you might as well submit first as last. You had
better right away take down your cheque-book,
mark the number of the cheque, fill up the blank,
sign your name, and hand it tocher. There is no
need of wasting time. Those poor children on the
back street have been hungry long enough. That
sick man must have some farina. That consumptive must have something to ease his cough. I
meet this delegate of a relief society coming out of
the store of such a hard-fisted man, and I say:
"Did you get the money ? "Of course," she says,
" I got the money; that's what I went for. The
Lord told me to go and get it, and he never sends
me on a fool's errand."
III. Again: I have to tell you that it is a woman's
specific
RIGHT TO COMFORT

under the stress of dire disaster. She is called the
weaker vessel; but all profane as well as sacred
history attests that when the crisis comes she is
better prepared than man to meet the emergency.
How often you have seen a woman who seemed to
be a disciple of frivolity and indolence, who, under
one stroke of calamity, changed to a heroine. Oh,
what a great mistake those busin ess men make who

162

THE QUEENS OP HOME*

never tell their business troubles to their wives.
There comes some great loss to their store, or some
of their companions in business play them a sad
trick, and they carry the burden all alone. He is
asked in the household again and again : What
is the matter ? But he believes it is a sort of
Christian duty to keep all that trouble within his
own soul. Oh, sir ! your first duty was to tell
your wife all about it. She, perhaps, might not
have disentangled your finances, or extended your
credit, but she would have helped you to bear
misfortune. You have no right to carry on one
shoulder that which is intended for two. There
are business men here who know what I mean.
There came
A CRISIS IN YOUR AFFAIRS.

You struggled bravely and long; but after a while
there came a day when you said, "Here I shall
have to stop ;" and you called in your partners,
and you called in the most prominent men in your
employ, and you said : " W e have got to stop."
You left the store suddenly. You could hardly
make up your mind to pass through the street
and over on the ferry-boat. You felt everybody
would be looking at you, and blaming you and
denouncing you. You hastened home. You told
your wife all about the affair. What did she say ?
Did she play the butterfly ? Did she talk about the
silks and the ribbons and the fashions ? No. She
came up to the emergency. She quailed not under
the stroke. She offered to go out of the comfort-

THE QtfE'ENS OF HOME.

168

able house into a smaller one, and wear the old
cloak another winter. She was one who understood your affairs without blaming you. You
looked upon what you thought was a thin, weak
woman's arm holding you u p : but while you
looked at that arm, there came into the feeble
muscles of it the strength of the eternal God. No
chiding. No fretting. No telling you about the
beautiful house of her father, from which you
brought her ten, twenty, or thirty years ago.
You said: " Well, this is the happiest day of my
life. I am glad I have got from under my burden.
My wife don't care—I don't care." At the moment you were exhausted,
GOD SENT A DEBORAH

to meet the host of the Amalekites and scatter
them like chaff over the plain. There are sometimes women who sit reading sentimental novels,
and who wish that they had some grand field in
which to display their Christian powers. 0, what
grand and glorious things they could do if they
only had an opportunity! My sister, you need
not wait for any such time. A crisis will come
in your affairs. There will be a Thermopylae
in your own household where God will tell you to
stand. There are scores and hundreds of households to-day where as much bravery and courage
are demanded of women as was exhibited by
Grace Darling, or Marie Antoinette, or Joan of
Arc.
IV. Again : I remark it is woman's right to

164

THE QUEENS OF HOME.
BEING TO US THE KINGDOM

of heaven. It is easier for a woman to be a Chris^
tian than for a man. Why ? You say she ia
weaker. No. Her heart is more responsive to
the pleadings of Divine love. She is in vast majority. The fact that she can more easily become
a Christian, I prove by the statement that threefourths of the members of the churches in all Christendom are women. So God appoints them to be
the chief agencies in bringing this world back to
God. I may stand here and say the soul is immortal. There is a man who will refute it. I
may stand here and say we are lost and undone
without Christ. There is a man who will refute
it. I may stand here and say there will be a
judgment day after a while. Yonder is some one
who will refute it. But a Christian woman in a
Christian household, living in the faith and the
consistency of Christ's gospel—nobody can refute
that. The greatest sermons are not preached on
celebrated platforms; they are preached with an
audience of two or three, and in private home life.
A consistent, consecrated Christian service is an
unanswerable demonstration of God's truth.
A sailor came slipping down the ratlines one
night, as though something had happened, and
the sailors cried : " What's the matter ?" He said :
" M Y MOTHER'S PRAYERS HAUNT ME

like a ghost." Home influences, consecrated
Christian home influences, are the mightiest of
all influences upon the soul. There are men here

THE QUEENS OF HOME.

165

to-day who have maintained their integrity, not
because they were any better naturally than
some other people, but because there were home
influences praying for them all the time. They
got a good start. They were launched on the
world with the benedictions of a Christian mother.
They may track Siberian snows, they may plunge
in African jungles, they may fly to the earth's
end—they cannot go so far and so fast, but the
prayers will keep up with them.
I stand before women to-day who have the
eternal salvation of their husbands in their right
hand. On the marriage day you took an oath
before men and angels that you would be faithful
and kind until death did you part, and I believe
you are going to keep that oath; but after that
parting at the grave, will it be an eternal separation ? Is there any such thing as
AN IMMORTAL MARRIAGE,

making the flowers that grow on the top of the
sepulchre brighter than the garlands which at
the marriage banquet flooded the air with aroma 1
Yes ; I stand here as a priest of the most high
God, to proclaim the banns of an immortal union
for all those who join hands in the grac'e of Christ.
O woman, is your husband, your father, youi
son, away from God ? The Lord demands their
redemption at your hands. There are prayers for
you to offer, there are exhortations for you to give,
there are examples for you to set, and I say now^
as Paul said to the Corinthian woman: " W h a t

166

THE QUEENS OF HOME.

knowest thou, but thou canst save thy hus
band!"
A man was dying; and he said to his wife:
" Rebecca, you wouldn't let me have family prayers ; you laughed about all that, and you got me
away into worldliness ; and now I'm going to die,
and my fate is sealed, and you are the cause of
my ruin V 0 woman, what knowest thou but
thou canst destroy thy husband ? —are there not
some here who have
KINDLY INFLUENCES

at home ? Are there not some here who have
wandered far away from God, who can remember
the Christian influences in their early home % Do
not despise those influences, my brother. If you
die without Christ what will you do with your
mother's prayers, with your wife's importunities,,
with your sister's entreaties ? What will you do
with the letters they used to write to you, with the
memory of those days when they attended you so
kindly in times of sickness ? Oh, if there be just
one strand holding.you from floating off on that
dark sea, I would just like this morning to take
hold of that strand and pull you to the beach!
For the sake of your wife's God, for the sake of
your mother's God, for the sake of your daughter's
God, for the sake of your sister's God, come this
day and be saved.
V. Lastly : I wish to say that one of the specific
rights of woman is, through the grace of Christ,
finally to reach heaven. 0, what a multitude of

^ E

QtfEffiffS OF HOME.

167

WOMEN IN HEAVEN !

M&*y, Christ's mother, in heaven, Elizabeth Fry
in heaven, Charlotte Elizabeth in heaven, the
mother of Augustine in heaven, the Countess of
Huntington—who sold her splendid jewels to
build chapels—in heaven, while a great many
others, who have never been heard of on earth,
or known but little, have gone into the rest and
peace of heaven. What a rest! What a change it
was from the small room, with no fire and one window (the glass broken out), and the aching side
and wornout eyes, to the " house of many mansions !" No more stitching until twelve o'clock
at night, no more thrusting of the thumb by the
employer through the work, to show it was not
done quite right. Plenty of bread at last ! Heaven
for aching heads! heaven for broken hearts!
heaven for anguish-bitten frames! No more
sitting up until midnight for the coming of staggering steps! No more rough blows across the
temples ! No more sharp, keen bitter curses !
Some of you will have no rest in this world. It
will be toil and struggle and suffering all the way
up. You will have to stand at your door fighting
back the wolf with your own hand, red with carnage. But God has a crown for you. I want you
to realize this morning that He is now making it,
and whenever you weep a tear, He sets another
gem in that crown; whenever you have a
pang of body or soul, He puts another gem
in that crown, until, after a while, in all th&
tiara there will be no room for another splendor,

168

THE QUEENS OF HOME.

and God will say to his angel: "The crown is
done ; let her up, that she may wear it." And as
the Lord of Eighteousness puts the crown upon
your brow, angel will cry to angel, " Who is she ?"
and Christ will say: " I will tell you who she is.
She is the one that came up out of great tribulation, and had her robe washed and made white in
the blood of the Lamb." And then God will spread
A BANQUET,

and He will invite all the prmcipalitiesof heaven
to sit at the feast, and the tables will blush with
the best clusters from the vineyards of God and
crimson with the twelve manner of fruits from the
Tree of Life, and waters from the fountains of the
rock will flash from the golden tankards, and the
old harpers of heaven will sit there, making music
with their harps, and Christ will point you out,
amid the celebrities of heaven, saying : "She suffered with Me on earth, now we are going to be
glorified together." And the banqueters, no longer
able to hold their peace, will break forth with congratulation: " H a i l ! hail!" And there will be
handwritings on the wall—not such as struck the
Babylonian nobleman with horror—but fire-tipped
fingers, writing in blazing capitals of light and
love, " God hath wiped away all tears from all
faces !"

PARENTAL BLUNDERS.

169

Parental Blunders.
" He fell from off the seat backward by the side of the gate,
and his neck brake, and he died ; for he was an old man, and
heavy."—1 SAM. 4:18.

This is the end of a long story of parental neglect. Judge Eli was a good man, but he let his two
boys, Hophni and Phinehas, do as they pleased;
and, through over-indulgence, they went to ruin.
The blind old Judge, ninety-eight years of age, is
seated at the gate, waiting for the news of an important battle, in which his two sons were at the
front. An express is coming, with tidings from the
battle.
THIS BLIND NONAGENARIAN

puts his hand behind his ear, and listens, and
cries: " What meaneth the noise of this tumult ?"
An excited messenger, all out of breath with the
speed, said to him: "Our army is defeated; the
sacred chest, called the ark, is captured; and your
sons are dead on the field!" No wonder the
father fainted and expired. The domestic tragedy
in which these two sons were the tragedians, had
finished its fifth and last act. " H e fell from off
the seat backward, by the side of the gate, and
his neck brake, and he died: for he was an old
man, and heavy."
Eli had mad© 9?x awful mistake in regard to hip

170

PARENTAL BLUNDERS.

children. The Bible distinctly says: " H i s sons
made themselves vile, and he restrained them
not." Oh, the ten thousand mistakes in rearing
children—mistakes of parents, mistakes of teachers in day-school and Sabbath classes, mistakes
which we all make. Will it not be useful to con sider them ?
AMERICA'S FUTURE CONQUERORS.

This country is going to be conquered by a
great army, compared with which that of Baldwin the First, and Xerxes, and Alexander, and
Grant, and Lee, all put together, were in numbers
insignificant.
They will capture all our pulpits, storehouses, factories, and halls of legislation;
all our shipping, all our wealth and all our honors.
They will take possession of all authority, from
the United States Presidency down to the humblest
constabulary—of everything between the Atlantic
and Pacific oceans. They are on the march now,
and they halt neither day nor night. They will
soon be here, and all the present active population
of this country must surrender and give way. I
refer to the great army of children. Whether
they shall take possession of everything for good
or for bad, depends upon the style of preparation
through which they pass.
Cicero acknowledges he kept in his desk a collection of prefaces for books, which prefaces he
could at any time attach to anything he wanted
to publish for himself or others ; and all parents
and teachers have all prepare^ the preface Q£ every

PARENTAL BLUNDERS.

171

young life under their charge, and not only the
preface but the appendix, whether the volume be
a poem or a farce. Families and schools and
legislatures are in our day busily engaged in discussing what is the best mode of educating children. Before this question every other dwindles
into insignificance, while dependent upon the
proper solution is the welfare of governments and
ages eternal. Macaulay tells of the war which
Frederick the Second made against Queen Maria
Theresa. And one day she appeared before the
august Diet, wearing mourning for her father and
held up in her arms before them her child, the Archduke. This so wrought upon the officers and
deputies of the people that, with half-drawn
swords, they broke forth in the war-cry : " Let us
die for our Q ueen, Maria Theresa!" So this morning,
realizing that the boy of to-day is to be the ruler
of the future, the popular sovereign, I hold him
before the American people to arouse their enthusiasm in his behalf, and to evoke their oath
for his defence, his education, and his destiny.
If a parent, you will remember when you were
aroused to these great responsibilities, and when
you found that you had not done all required,
after you had admired the tiny hands, and the
glossy hair, and the bright eyes that lay in the
cradle, you suddenly remembered that that
hand would yet be raised to bless the world with
its benediction, or to smite it with a curse. In
Ariosto's great poem there is a character called
Ruggiero3 who has a shield of insufferable spkfl

172

PARENTAL BLUNDERS,

dor, but it is kept veiled, save on certain occasions ; and when uncovered, it startled and
overwhelmed its beholder, who before had no
suspicion of its brightness. My hope to-day is
to uncover the destiny of your child or student,
about which you may have no special appreciation, and flash upon you the splendors of its
immortal nature. Behold, the shield and the
sword of the coming conflict!
I propose in this discourse to set forth what I
consider to be some of
THE ERRORS PREVALENT

in the training of children.
First, I remark that many err in too great severity or too great leniency of family government.
Between parental tyranny and ruinous laxativeness of discipline there is a medium. Borne
times the father errs on the one side and the
mother on the other side. Good family government is all-important. Anarchy and misrule in
the domestic circle is the forerunner of anarchy
and misrule in the state. In the attempt to avoid
all this, and bring the children under propel
law and regulations, parents have sometimes
carried themselves with great rigor. John Howard, who was merciful to the prisons and lazarettos, was merciless in the treatment of his
children. John Milton knew everything but
how to train his family. Severe and unreasonable was he in his carriage toward them.
He
made them read to him in four or five lan-

PARENTAL BLUNDERS,

173

guages, but would not allow them to learn any
of them ; for. he said, that one tongue was enough
for a woman. Their reading was mechanical
drudgery, when, if they had understood the
languages they read, the employment of reading might have been a luxury. No wonder his
fcfoildren despised him, and stealthily sold his
books and hoped for his death. In all ages there
is need of a society for prevention of
CRUELTY TO CHILDREN.

When Barbara was put to death by her father
because she had countermanded his order, and
had three windows put in a room instead of two,
this cruel parent was a type of many who have
acted the Nero and the Eobespierre in the home
circle. The heart sickens at what you sometimes
see, even in families that pretend to be Christian
—perpetual scolding, and hair-pulling, and earboxing, and thumping, and stamping, and faultfinding, and teasing, until the children are vexed
beyond bounds and growl in the sleeve, and pout,
and rebel, and vow within themselves that in
after days they will retaliate. That child's nature
is too delicate to be worked upon by sledgehammer, and
GOUGE AND PILE DRIVERS.

Such fierce lashing, instead of breaking the
high mettle to bit and trace, will make it dash
off the more uncontrollable.
Many seem to
think that children are flax—not fit for use till

174

PARENTAL BLUNDERS.

they have been hetched and swingled.
Some
one talking to a child said: " I wonder what
makes that tree out there so crooked."
The
child replied: " I suppose it was trod on while
it was young." In some families all the discipline is concentrated upon one child's head. If
anything is done wrong, the supposition is that
George did it.
He broke the latch.
He
left open the gate. He hacked the bannisters. He
whittled sticks on the carpets. And George
shall be the scapegoat for all misunderstandings
and suspicions. In many a household there is
such a one singled out for suspicion and castigation. All the sweet flowers of- his soul blasted
under this perpetual north-east storm, he curses
the day in which he was born.
A mother was passing along the street one day,
and came up to her little child, who did not see
her approach, and her child was saying to her playm a t e : " You good-for-nothing little scamp, you
come right into the house this minute or I will
beat you till the skin comes off." The mother
broke in saying : " W h y , Lizzie, I am surprised
to hear you talk like that to anyone!" "Oh,"
said the child, " I was only playing, and he is my
little boy, and I am scolding him, as you did me
this morning." Children are apt to be echoes of
their parents. Safer in a Bethlehem manger
among cattle and camels with gentle Mary to
watch the little innocent than the most extravagant nursery over which God's star of peace neveE

PARENTAL BLUNDERS.

175

Yet we may rush to the other extreme and rule
children by
TOO GREAT LENIENCY.

The surgeon is not unkind because notwithstanding the resistance of his patient he goes straight on
with firm hand and unfaltering heart to take off
the gangrene. Nor is the parent less affectionate
and faithful because, notwithstanding all violent
remonstrances on the part of the child, he with
the firmest discipline advances to the cutting off
of its evil inclinations. The Bible says : " Chasten
thy son while there is hope, and let not thy soul
spare for his crying." Childish rage unchecked
will, after awhile, become a hurricane. Childish
petulance will grow up into misanthropy. Childish rebellion will develop into the lawlessness of
riot and sedition. If you would ruin the child,
dance to his every caprice and stuff him with confectionery. Before you are aware of it that boy
of six years will go down the street, a cigar in his
mouth and ready on any corner with his comrades
to compare pugilistic attainments. The parent
who allows the child to grow up without ever
having learned the great duty of obedience and
submission has prepared a cup of burning gall for
his own lips, and appalling destruction for his
descendant. Eemember Eli and his two sons,
Hophni and Phinehas.
A second error prevalent in the training of children is a laying out of a theory and following it
without arranging it to varieties of disposition^ every family you will find striking

176

PARENTA1 BLUNDERS.
DIFFERENCES O^ TEMPERAMENT.

This child is too timid, £nd that too bold and this
too miserly, and that too wasteful; this too inactive and that too boisterous. Now, the farmer
who should plant corn and wheat and turnips in
just the same way, then put them through one
hopper and grind them in the same mill, would
not be so much of a fool as the parents who should
attempt to discipline and educate all their children
in the same manner. It needs a skillful hand to
adjust these checks and balances. The rigidity of
government which is necessary to hold in this impetuous nature would utterly crush that flexile
disposition while the gentle reproof that would
suffice for the latter, would, when used on the
former, be like attempting to hold a champing
Bucephalus with reins of gossamer.
God gives us in the disposition of each child a
hint as to how we ought to train him, and, as
God in the mental structure of our children indicates what mode of training is the best, He also
indicates in the disposition their future occupation.
Do not write down that child as dull, because it
may not now be as brilliant as your other children
or as those of your neighbor. Some of the mightiest men and women of the centuries had a stupid
childhood. Thomas Aquinas was called at school
" t h e dumb ox," but afterwards demonstrated his
sanctified genius and was called " t h e angel of
the schools " and " t h e eagle of Brittany." Kindness and patience with a child will conquer almost
anything, and they are virtues so Christlike that

PARENTAL BLUNDERS.

17T

they are inspiring to look at. John Wesley's kiss
of a child on the pulpit stairs turned Matthias
Joyce from a profligate into an evangel.
The third error prevalent in the training of
children is the
ONE-SIDED DEVELOPMENT

of either the physical, intellectual or moral
nature at the expense of the others.
Those,
for instance, greatly mistake who, while they are
faithful in the intellectual and moral culture of
children, forget the physical. The bright eyes
half quenched by night study, the cramped chest
that comes from too much bending over school
desks, the weak side resulting from sedentariness
of habit, pale cheeks and the gaunt bodies of multitudes of children attest that physical development does not always go along with intellectual
and moral. How do you suppose all those treasures of knowledge the child gets will look in shattered casket ? And how much will you give for the
wealthiest cargo when it is put in a leaky ship f
From this infinite blunder of parents, how many
have come out in life with a genius that could
have piled Ossa upon Pelion and mounted upon
them to scale the heavens, and have laid down
panting with physical exhaustion before a molehill. They who might have thrilled senates and
marshalled armies and startled the world with the
shock of their scientific batteries, have passed
their fives in picking up prescriptions for indigestion. They owned all the thunderbolts of Jupiter,

178

PARENTAL BLUNDERS.

but could not get out of their rocking-chair to use
them. George Washington in early life was a
poor speller, and spelled hat h-a-double-t and a
ream of paper he spelled "rheam," but he kne^
enough to spell out the independence of this coun
try from foreign oppression. The knowledge of the
schools is important, but there are other things
quite as important.
Just as great is the wrong done when the mind
is cultivated and
THE HEART NEGLECTEB,

The youth of this day are seldom denied any
scholarly attainments. Our schools and seminaries are ever growing in efficiency, and the students
are conducted through all the realms of philosophy
and art and language and mathematics. The
most hereditary obtuseness gives way before the
onslaught of adroit instructors. But there is a development of infinite importance which mathematics and the dead languages cannot effect.
The more mental power, the more capacity for evil
unless coupled with religious restraint.
Whether knowledge is a mighty good or an un^
mitigated evil, depends entirely upon which course
it takes. The river rolling on between round banks
makes all the valley laugh with golden wheat and
rank grass, and catching hold the wheel of mill
and factory, whirls it with great industries. But,
breaking away from resti pints and dashing over
banks in red wrath, it w&siiGQ away harvests from
their moorings and m^Kes t.be valleys shrink with

PARENTAL BLUNDERS.

179

catastrophe. Fire in the furnace heats the house
or drives the steamer; but, uncontrolled, warehouses go down in awful crash before it, and in a
few hours half a city will lie in black ruin, walls
and towers and churches and monuments. You
must accompany the education of the intellect
with the education of the heart, or you are rousing
up within your child an energy which will be blasting and terrific. Better a wicked dunce than a
wicked philosopher.
The fourth error often committed in the training of children, is the
SUPPRESSION OF CHILDISH SPORTFULNESS.

Parents, having for a good many years been
jostled about in the rough world, often lose their
vivacity, and are astonished to see how their children can act so thoughtlessly of the earnest world
all about them. That is a cruel parent who quenches any of the light in a child's soul. Instead of arresting its sportfulness, go forth and help him
trundle the hoop, and fly the kite, and build the
snow castle. Those shoulders are too little to carry a burden, that brow is too young to be wrinkled,
those feet are too sprightly to go along at a funeral
pace. God bless their young hearts ! now is the
time for them to be sportful.
The fifth error in the training of childhood is
the postponement of its moral culture until too
late.
Multitudes of children, because of their
precocity, have been urged into depths of study
where they ought not to go, and their intellects

ISO

PARENTAL BLUNDERS.

have been overburdened and overstrained and
battered to pieces against Latin grammars and
algebras, and coming forth into practical life they
will hardly rise to mediocrity, and there is now a
stuffing and cramming system of education in the
schools of our country that is deathful to the
teachers who have to enforce it, and destructive
to the children who have to submit to the process.
You find children at nine and ten years of age
with school lessons only appropriate for children
of fifteen. If children are kept in school and
studying from nine to three o'clock, no home
study, except music, ought to be required of them.
Six hours of study is enough for any child. The
rest of the day ought to be devoted to recreation
and pure fun. But you cannot begin too early
the
^lORAL CULTURE

of a child or on too complete a scale. You can
look back upon your own life and remember what
mighty impressions were made upon you at five
or six years of age. Oh, that child does not sit so
silent during your conversation to be influenced
by it. You say he does not understand. Although
much of phraseology is beyond his grasp, he is
gathering up from your talk influences which will
affect his immortal destiny. From the question he
asks long afterward you find he understood all
about what you were saying. The song with
which you sing the child to sleep will echo through
all its life and ring back from the very arches of
heaven.

PARENTAL BLUNDERS.

181

I think that often the first seven years of a
child's life decide whether it shall be irascible,
waspish, rude, false, hypocritical, or gentle, truthful, frank, obedient, honest and Christian. The
present generations of men will pass off very
much as they are now. Although the gospel is
offered them, the general rule is that drunkards
die drunkards, thieves die thieves, libertines die
libertinesTherefore to the youth we turn.
Before they sow wild oats get them to sow wheat
and barley. You fill the bushel measure with
good corn, and there will be
NO ROOM FOR HUSKS.

Glorious Alfred Cookman was converted at ten
years of age. At Carlisle, Pennsylvania, during
the progress of a religious meeting in the Methodist
Church, while many were kneeling at the foot of
the altar, this boy knelt in a corner of the church
all by himself and said : " Precious Saviour, thou
art saving others, 0, wilt thou not save me ?" A
Presbyterian elder knelt beside him and led him
into the light. Enthroned Alfred Cookman ! Tell
me from the skies, were you converted too early ?
But I cannot hear his answer. It is overpowered
by the huzzas of the thousands who were brought
to God through his ministry. Isaac Watts, the
great Christian poet, was converted at nine years
of age. Eobert Hall, the great Baptist evangelist,
was converted at twelve years of age. Jonathan
Edwards, the greatest of the American logicians,
wa$ converted at seven years of age.

182

PARENTAL BLUNDERS.

Oh, for one generation of holy men and women.
Shall it be the next ? Fathers and mothers, you,
under God, are to decide whether from your
families shall go fortfy cowards, inebriates,
counterfeiters, blasphemers, and whether there
shall be those bearing your image and carrying
your name festering in the low haunts of vice,
and floundering in dissipation, and making the
midnight of their lives horrid with a long howl of
ruin, or whether from yonr family altars shall come
the Christians, the reformers, the teachers, the
ministers of Christ, the comforters of the troubled,
the healers of the sick, the enacters of good laws,
the founders of charitable institutions, and a
great many who shall in the humble spheres of
toil and usefulness serve God and the best interests of the human race.
You cannot as parents shirk the responsibility.
God has charged you with a mission, and all the
thrones of heaven are waiting to see whether you
will do your duty. We must not forget that it is
not so much what we teach our children as what
we are in their presence. We wish them to be
better than we are, but the probability is that they
will only be reproductions of ourselves. German
literature has much to say of
THE " SPECTRE OF BROCKEN."

Among those mountains travelers in certain
conditions of the atmosphere see themselves copied
on a gigantic scale in the clouds. At first the
travelers do not realize that it is themselves on a

PARENTAL BLUNDERS.

183

larger scale. When they lift a hand or move the
head this monster spectre does the same, and
with such enlargement of proportions that the
scene is most exciting, and thousands have gone
to that place just to behold the spectre of Brocken.
The probability is that some of our faults which we
consider small and insignificant, if we do not put an
end to them, will be copied on a large scale in
the lives of our children, and perhaps dilated and
exaggerated into spectral proportions. You need
not go as far off as the Brocken to see that process.
The first thing in importance in the education
of our children is to make ourselves, by the grace
of God, fit examples for them to copy. From
your side that son or daughter, bone of your bone,
heart of your heart, the father's brow his brow,
the mother's eye his eye, shall go forth to an
eternal destiny. What will be your joy if at last
you hear their feet in the same golden highway and
hear their voices in the same rapturous song,
illustrations, while the eternal ages last, of what
a faithful parent could under God accomplish. I
was reading of
A DYING MOTHER

who had all her children about her, and took each
one of them by the hand, and asked them to meet
her in heaven, and with tears and sobs such as
fchose only know who have stood by the deathbed
of a good old mother. They all promised. But
there wa£ a young man of nineteen^ who had

184

PARENTAL BLUNDERS.

been very wild and reckless, and hard and proud,
and when she took his hand she said : " Now, my
boy, I want you to promise me before I die, that
you will become a Christian and meet me in
heaven." The young man made no answer, for
there was so much for him to give up if he made
and kept such a promise.
But the aged mother persisted in saying : "You
won't deny me that before I go, will you ? This
parting must not be forever. Tell me now you
will serve God and meet me in the land where
there is no parting." Quaking with emotion he
stood, making up his mind and halting and hesitating, but at last his stubbornness yielded and he
threw his arms around his mother's neck and said:
" Yes, mother ; I will, I will." And as he finished
the last word of his promise her spirit ascended.
I thank God the young man kept his promise.
Yes, he kept it. May God give all mothers and
fathers the gladness of their children's salvation.
For all who are trying to do their duty as parents, I quote the tremendous passage:." Train
up a child in the way in which he should go, and
when he is old he will not depart from it." If
through good discipline and prayer and godly example you are acting upon that child, you have
the right to expect him to grow up virtuous. And
how many tears of joy you will shed when you
see your child honorable and just and truthful and
Christian and successful—a holy man amid a
world of dishonesty, a godly woman in a world
of frivolous pretension. When you. come to <lie

PARENTAL BLUNDERS.

185

they will gather to bless your last hours. They
will push back the white locks on your cold forehead and say : " W h a t a good father he always
was to me ?" They will fold your hands peacefully
and say: " Dear mother ! She is gone. Her trou
bles are all over. Don't she look beautiful i"

186

CHRIST THE SONG.

Christ the Song.
" Now will I sing to my Well Beloved a song concerning my
Beloved."—ISA. 5:.

The most fascinating theme for a heart properlyattuned is the Saviour. There is something in the
morning light to suggest Him, and something in
the evening shadow to speak his praise. The
flower breathes Him, the star shines Him, the
cascade proclaims Him, all the voices of nature
chant Him. Whatever is grand, bright and beautiful, if you listen to it, will speak His praise.
When I come in the summer-time and pluck 3
flower, I think of Him who is " t h e Eose of Sha~
ron and the Lily of the Valley." When I see in
the fields a lamb, I say, "Behold the Lamb of God
that taketh away the sin of the world." When,
in very hot weather, I come under a projecting
cliff, I say :
"Rock of ages cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee !"

Over the old-fashioned pulpits there was *
sounding-board. The voice of the minister rose
to the sounding-board, and then was struck back
again upon the ears of the people. And the ten
thousand voices of earth rising, find
THE HEAVENS A SOUNDING BOARD

wtuch strike back to the ear of all the nations tfej

CHRIST THE SONG.

IP'

praises of Christ. The heavens tell His glory, and
the earth shows His handiwork. The Bible thrills
with one great story of redemption. Upon a
blasted and faded paradise it poured the light of a
glorious restoration. It looked upon Abraham
from the ram caught in the thicket. It spoke in
the bleating of the herds driven down to Jerusalem for sacrifice. It put infinite pathos into the
speech of uncouth fishermen. It lifted Paul into
the seventh heaven; and it broke upon the ear of
St. John with the brazen trumpets and the doxolo
gy of the elders, and the rushing wings of the
seraphim.
Instead of waiting until you get sick and worn
out before you speak the praise of Christ, while
your heart is happiest, and your step is lightest,
and your fortunes smile, and your pathway blossoms, and the overarching heavens drop upon you
benediction, speak praises of Jesus.
THE ELECTRIC WORD.

The old Greek orators, when they saw their audiences inattentive and slumbering, had one word
with which they would rouse them up to the great
est enthusiasm. In the midst of their orations
they would stop and cry out, "Marathon!" and
the people's enthusiasm would be unbounded. My
hearers, though you may have been borne down
with sin, and though trouble and trial and temptation may have come upon you, and you feel
hardly like looking up, methinks there is one
grand, royal, imperial word that ought tp rous^

188

CHRIST THE SONG.

your soul to infinite rejoicing, and that word is
" Jesus!"
Taking the suggestion of the text ? I shall speak
to you of Christ, our song. I remark, in the first
place, that Christ ought to be
THE CRADLE SONG.

What our mothers sang to us when they put us to
sleep is singing yet. We may have forgotten the
words ; but they went into the fibre of our soul,
and will forever be a part of it. It is not so
much what you formally teach your children
as what you sing to them. A hymn has wings
and can fly everywhither. One hundred and
fifty years after you are dead, and "Old Mortality " has worn out his chisel in re-cutting your
name on the tombstone, your great-grandchildren will be singing the song which this afternoon you sing to your little ones gathered about
your knee. There is a place in Switzerland
where, if you distinctly utter your voice, there
come back ten or fifteen echoes, and every
Christian song sung by a mother in the ear of
her child shall have ten thousand echoes coming
back from all the gates of heaven.
Oh, if
mothers only knew the power of this sacred
spell, how much oftener the little ones would be
gathered, and all our homes would chime with
the songs of Jesus !
PRESERVING POWER.

W@ want some counteracting influence upon

CHRIST THE SONG.

189

our children.
The very moment your child
steps into the street, he steps into the path of
temptation.
There are foul-mouthed children
who would like to besoil your little ones. It wil]
not do to keep your boys and girls in the house
and make them house-plants ; they must have
fresh air and recreation. God save your children from the scathing, blasting, damning influence of the streets ! I know of no counteracting influence but the power of Christian
culture and example. Hold before your little
ones the pure life of Jesus ; let that name be the
word that shall exorcise evil from their hearts.
Give to your instruction all the fascination of
music, morning, noon and night; let it be Jesus,
the cradle-song.
This is important if your children grow up,
but perhaps they may not. Their pathway may
be short, Jesus may be wanting that child.
Then there will be a soundless step in the dwelling, and the youthful pulse will begin to flutter,
and little hands will be lifted for help. You
cannot help. And a great agony will pinch at
your heart, and
THE CRADLE WILL BE EMPTY,

and the nursery will be empty, and the world
will be empty, and your soul will be empty. No
little feet standing on the stairs. No toys scattered on the carpet. No quick following from
room to room.
No strange and wondering
questions. No upturned face, with laughing blue

190

CHRIST THE SONG.

eyes, come for a kiss; but only a grave, and a
wreath of white blossoms on the top of i t ; and
bitter desolation, and a sighing at nightfall with
no one to put to bed, and a wet pillow and a
ferave and a wreath of white blossoms on the
top of it. The heavenly Shepherd will take that
lamb safely, anyhow, whether you have been
faithful or unfaithful; but would it not have
been pleasanter if you could have heard from
those lips the praises of Christ? I never read
anything more beautiful than this about a child's
departure. The account said, " She folded her
hands, kissed her mother good-bye, sang her
hymn, turned her face to the wall, said her little
prayer, and then died."
Oh, if I could gather up in one paragraph the
last words of the little ones who have gone out
from all these Christian circles, and I could
picture the calm looks and the folded hands and
sweet departure, methinks it would be grand and
beautiful as one of heaven's doxologies!
I next speak of Christ as
THE OLD MAN'S SONG.

Quick music loses its charm for the aged ear.
The school-girl asks for a schottische or a glee ;
but her grandmother asks for "Balerma" or the
"Portuguese Hymn." Fifty years of trouble
have tamed the spirit, and the keys of the
music-board must have a solemn tread. Though
the voice may be tremulous, so that grandfather
Will not trust it irr church, still he has the

CHRIST THE SONG.

191

psalm-book open before him, and he sings with
his soul. He hums his grandchildren asleep
with the same tune he sang forty years ago in
the old country meeting-house. Some day the
choir sings a tune so old that the young people
do not know i t ; but it starts the tears down the
cheek of the aged man, for it reminds him of
the revival scene in which he participated, and
of the radiant faces that long since went to dust,
and of the gray-haired minister leaning over the
pulpit, and sounding the good tidings of great joy#
I was one Thanksgiving-day in my pulpit, in
Syracuse, New York, and the Rev. Daniel Waldo,
at ninety-eight years of age, stood beside me.
The choir sang a tune. I said, " I am sorry they
sang that new tune ; nobody seems to know it."
" Bless you, my son," said the old man, " I heard
that seventy years ago !"
There was a song to-day that touched the life
of the aged with holy fire, and kindled a glory on
their vision that our younger eyesight can not
see. It was
THE SONG OF SALVATION.

Jesus, who fed them all their lives long; Jesus,
who wiped away their tears ; Jesus, who stood
by them when all else failed ; Jesus, in whose
name their marriage was consecrated, and whose
resurrection has poured light upon the graves of
their departed.
Blessed the Bible in which
spectacled old age reads the promise, " I will
never leave you, never forsake y o u ! " Blessed

192

CHRIST THE SONG.

the staff on which the worn-out pilgrim totters
on toward the welcome of his Redeemer! Blessed
the hymn-book in which the faltering tongue and
the failing eyes find Jesus, the old man's song.
I speak to you again of Jesus as
THE NIGHT SONG.

Job speaks of him who giveth songs in the night.
John Welch, the old Scotch minister, used to put
a plaid across his bed on cold nights, and some
one asked him why he put that there. He said,
" Oh, sometimes in the night I want to sing the
praise of Jesus, and to get down and pray ; then
I just take that plaid and wrap it around me, to
keep myself from the cold." Songs in the night!
Night of trouble has come down upon many of
you. Commercial losses put out one star, slanderous abuse put out another star; domestic
bereavement has put out a thousand lights, and
gloom has been added to gloom, and chill to chill,
and sting to sting, and one midnight has seemed
to borrow the fold from another midnight to
wrap itself in more unbearable darkness; but
Christ has spoken peace to your heart, and you
can sing:
"Jesus, lover of my soul,
Let me to thy bosom fly,
While the billows near me roll,
While the tempest still is high.
Hide me, oh, my Saviour ! hide
Till the storm of life is past,
Safe into the haven guide;
Oh, receive my soul at l a s t /

CHRIST THE SONG.

193

Songs in the night! Songs in the night ! For
the sick, who have no one to turn the hot pillow,
no one to put the taper on the stand, no one to
put ice on the temple, or pour out the soothing
anodyne, or utter one cheerful word—yet songs
in the night!
FOR THE POOR

who freeze in the winter's cold, and swelter in
the summer's heat, and munch the hard crusts
that bleed the sore gums, and shiver under
blankets that cannot any longer be patched, and
tremble because rent-day is come and they may
be set out on the sidewalk, and looking into the
starved face of the child and seeing famine there
and death there, coming home from the bakery,
and saying, in the presence of the little famished
ones, " Oh, my God, flour has gone u p ! "
Yet songs in the night! Songs in the night!
For the widow who goes to get the back pay of
her husband, slain by the "sharp-shooters," and
knows it is the last help she will have, moving
out of a comfortable home in desolation, death
turning back from the exhausting cough, and
the pale cheek, and the lustreless ; eye, and
refusing all relief. Yet songs in the night!
Songs in the night! For the soldier in the fieldhospital, no surgeon to bind up the gun-shot
fracture, no water for the hot lips, no kind hand
to brush away the flies from the fresh wound,
no one to take the loving farewell, the groaning
of others poured into his own groan, the bias-

194

CHRIST THE SO>TG.

phemy of others plowing up his own spirit, the,
condensed bitterness of dying away from homo
among strangers.
Yet songs in the night !
Songs in the night! " A h ! " said one dying
soldier, "tell my mother that last night there
was not one cloud between my soul and Jesus."
Songs in the night! Songs in the night!
THE SABBATH SONG.

The Sabbath day has come. From the altars of
ten thousand churches has smoked up the savor
of sacrifice. Ministers of the gospel are now
preaching in plain English, in broad Scotch, in
flowing Italian, in harsh Choctaw. God's people
have assembled in Hindoo temple, and Moravian
church and Quaker meeting-house and sailors'
Bethel and kings' chapel and high-towered cathedral. They sang, and the song floated off amidst
the spice groves or struck the icebergs, or floated
off into the western pines or was drowned in the
clamor of the great cities. Lumbermen sang it,
and the factory-girls and the children in the Sabbath-class and the trained choir in great assemblages. Trappers, with the same voice with which
they shouted yesterday in the stag-hunt, and mariners with throats that only a few days ago sounded in the hoarse blast of the sea hurricane, they sang
it. One theme for the sermons. One burden for
song; Jesus for the invocation ; Jesus for the
Scripture lessons. ; Jesus for the baptismal font;
Jesus for the sacramental cup; Jesus for the
benediction. But the day will go by. It will roll

CHRIST THE SONG.

195

away on swift wheels of light and love. Again
the churches will be lighted. Tides of people
again setting down the streets. Whole families
coming up the church aisle. We must have one
more sermon, two prayers, three songs and one
benediction. What shall we preach to-night %
What shall we read ? What shall it be, children ?
Aged men and women, what shall it be ? Young
men and maidens, what shall it be ? If you choose
to break the silence of this auditory, there would
come up thousands of quick and jubilant voices,
crying out, " Let it be Jesus ! Jesus !"
WE SING HIS BIRTH,

the barn that sheltered Him, the mother that
nursed Him, the cattle that fed besides Him, the
angels that woke up the shepherds, shaking light
over the midnight hills. We sing His ministry—
the tears He wiped away from the eyes of the orphans ; the lame men that forgot their crutches ;
the damsel who, from the bier, bounded out into
the sunlight, her locks shaking down over the
flushed cheek; the hungry thousand who broke
the bread as it blossomed into larger loaves—that
miracle by which a boy with five loaves and two
fishes became the sutler for a w^hole army. We
sing His sorrows—His stone-bruised feet, His aching heart, His mountain loneliness, His desert
hunger, His storm-pelted body, the eternity of anguish that shot through His last moments, and
the immeasurable ocean of torment that heaved up
against His cross in one foaming, wrathful, om-

196

CHRIST THE SONG.

nipotent surge, the sun dashed out, and the dead,
shroud-wrapped, breaking open their sepulchres,
and rushing out to see what was the matter. We
SING HIS RESURRECTION—

the guard that could not keep Him, the sorrow of
His disciples : the clouds piling up on either side
in pillared splendors as he went through, treading
the pathless air, higher and higher, until He
came to the foot of the throne, and all heaven
kept jubilee at the return of the Conqueror. I say
once more, Christ is
THE EVERLASTING SONG.

The very best singers sometimes get tired; the
strongest throats sometimes get weary ; and
many who sang very sweetly do not sing now;
but I hope, by the grace of God, we will, after a
while, go up and sing the praises of Christ where
we will never be weary. You know there are
some songs that are especially appropriate for the
home circle. They stir the soul, they start the
tears, they turn the heart in on itself and keep
sounding after the tune has stopped, like some
cathedral bell, which, long after the tap of the
brazen tongue has ceased, keeps throbbing on the
air. Well, it will be a home song in heaven ; all
the sweeter because those who sang with us in
the domestic circle on earth shall join that great
harmony.
" J e r u s a l e m , m y h a p p y home,
Name ever dear to me ;
W h e n shall my labors have an end
In joy and peace in t h e e ? "

CHRIST THE SONG.

197

You know there is no such time on a farm as
when they get the crops in ; and so in heaven it
will be a harvest song on the part of those who
on earth sowed in tears and reaped in joy. Lift
up your heads, ye everlasting gates, and let the
sheaves come in ! Angels shout all through the
heavens, and multitudes come down the hills, crying, " Harvest home ! harvest home !''
There is nothing more bewitching to one's ear
than the song of sailors far out at sea, whether in
day or night, as they pull away at the ropes—the
music is weird and thrilling. So the song in
heaven will be
A SAILOR'S SONG.

They were voyagers once and thought they could
never get to shore, and before they could get
things snug and trim the cyclone struck them.
But now they are safe. Once they went with
damaged rigging, guns of distress booming through
the storm; but the pilot came aboard, and he
brought them into the harbor. Now they sing of
the breakers passed, the light-houses that showed
them where to sail, the pilot that took them
through the straits, the eternal shore on which
they landed. Ay, it will be
THE CHILDREN'S SONG.

You know very well that the vast majority of our
face die in infancy, and it is estimated that eighteen thousand millions of the little ones are standing before God. When they shall rise up about
the throne to sing, the millions and the millions of

198

CHRIST THE SONG.

the little ones—ah ! that will be music for you !
These played in the streets of Babylon and Thebes;
these plucked lilies from the foot of Olivet while
Christ was preaching about them ; these waded
in Siloam ; these were victims of Herod's massacre;
these were thrown to crocodiles or into the fire ;
these came up from Christian homes; and these
were foundlings on the city commons—children
everywhere in all that land; children in the
towers, children on the sea of glass, children on
the battlements. Ah, if you do not like children,
do not go there. They are in vast majority, and
what a song when they lift it around the throne!
THE HEAVENLY SONG.

The Christian singers and composers of all ages
will be there to join in that song. Thomas Hasting will be there. Lowell Mason will be there.
Bradbury will be there. Beethoven and Mozart
w ill be there.. They who sounded the cymbals and
the trumpets in the ancient temples will be there.
The forty thousand harpers that stood at the ancient dedication will be there. The two hundred
singers that assisted on that day will be there.
Patriarchs who lived amidst threshing-floors, shepherds who watched amidst Chaldean hills, prophets
who walked with long beards and coarse apparel,
pronouncing woe against ancient abominations,
will meet the more recent martyrs who went up
with leaping cohorts of fire ; and some will speak
of the Jesus of whom they prophesied, and others
of the Jesus for whom they died. Oh, what a

CHRIST THE SONG.

199

song ! It came to John upon Patmos ; it came to
Calvin in the prison ; it dropped to John Knox in
the fire; and sometimes that song has come to
your ear, perhaps, for I think it sometimes breaks
over the battlements of heaven.
A Christian woman, the wife of a minister of
the Gospel, was dying in the parsonage near the
old church, where on Saturday night the choir
used to assemble and rehearse for the following
Sabbath, and she said, " H o w strangely sweet
the choir rehearses to-night; they have been rehearsing there for an hour." "No," said some
one about her, "The choir is not rehearsing tonight." "Yes," she said " I know they are, I hear
them sing ; how very sweetly they sing !" It was
not a choir of earth that she heard, but
THE CHOIR OF HEAVEN.

I think that Jesus sometimes sets ajar the door
of heaven, and a passage of that rapture greets
our ears. I winder, will you sing that song ?
Will I sing it ? Not unless our sins are pardoned,
and we learn now to sing the praise of Christ, will
we ever sing it there. The first great concert that
I ever attended was in New York, when Julien, in
the "Crystal Palace," stood before hundreds of
singers and hundreds of players upon instruments.
Some of you may remember that occasion; it was
the first one of the kind at which I was present,
and I shall never forget it. I saw that one man
standing, with the hand and foot, wield that great
harmony, beating the time. It was overwhelming;.

200

CHRIST THE SONG.

But oh,
THE GRANDER SCENE

when they shall come from the East, and from
the West, and from the North, and from the South,
" a great multitude that no man can number,"
into the temple of the skies, host beyond host, and
Jesus shall stand before that host to conduct the
harmony, with His wounded hands and His
wounded feet! Like the voice of many waters,
like the voice of mighty thunderings, they shall
cry, " Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive blessings, and riches, and honor, and glory,
and power, world without end. Amen and Amen !"
Oh, If my ear shall hear no other sweet sounds,
may I hear t h a t ! If I join no other assemblage,
may I join that ?
I was reading of the battle of Agincourt, in
which Henry V. figured ; and it is said after the
baMe was won, gloriously won, the king wanted
to acknowledge the divine interposition and he
ordered the chaplain to read the hundred and
fifteenth Psalm of David ; and when he came to the
words, "Not unto us, 0, Lord, but unto thy
name be the praise," the king dismounted, and all
the cavalry dismounted, and all the great hosts,
officers and men, threw themselves on their faces.
Oh, at the story of the Saviour's love and the
Saviour's deliverance, shall we not prostrate ourselves before Him now, hosts of earth and hosts
of heaven, falling upon our faces, and crying,
" Not unto us., not unto us, but unto Thy name be
the glory!"

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.
THE LABOR QUESTION.
" T h e earth was without form and void ; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit
of God moved upon the face of the waters."—Genesis 1:2.

O U T in space there hung a great chunk of
rock and mud and water and shell. Thousands
of miles in diameter, more thousands of miles
in circumference. A great mass of ugliness,
confusion, and distortion, uselessness, ghastliness, and horror. It seemed like a great commons on which smashed-up worlds were
dumped. It was what poetry and prose, scientist and Christian agree in calling chaos. Out
of that black, rough, shapeless egg our beautiful world was hatched. God stood over that
original

4

T H E BATTLE FOR BREAD.

ANARCHY

OF

ELEMENTS

and said : "Atlantic Ocean, you go right away
and lie down there ! Pacific Ocean, you sleep
there ! Caucasian range of mountains, you
stand there! Mount Washington, you be sentinel there ! Mont Blanc, you put on your coronet of crystal there ! Mississippi, you march
there, and Missouri you marry it there !" And
H e gathered in His Almighty hands the sand
and mud and rock, and rolled and heaved and
moulded and dented and compressed them into
shape, and then dropped them in four places ;
and the one was Asia, and another was Europe,
and another Africa, and another America,
North and South.
SOCIAL CHAOS

THREATENED.

That original chaos was like the confusion
and anarchy into which the human race ever
and anon has a tendency to plunge. God has
said : " Let there be light of law, light of justice, light of peace, light of love !" " N o !
N o !" say anarchic voices, " l e t there be darkness, let there be cut-throatery, let there be
eternal imbroglio, let there be chaos."
Sugh a social condition many are expecting

T H E BATTLE FOR BREAD.

5

because of the overshadowing contest between
Labor and Capital; there has not been an intelligent man or woman during the last two
months who has not asked the question,
" Shall we have bloody revolution in this
country ?" I have heard many answer the
question in the affirmative ; I answer it in the
negative.
T H E C H U R C H AS

PEACEMAKER.

There may be and there have been terrific
outbursts of popular frenzy, but there will be no
anarchy, for the Church of Christ, the mightiest
and grandest institution of the planet, shall, laying hold of the strength of the eternal God,
come out, and putting one hand on the shoulder of Labor, and the other on the shoulder of
Capital, say, " I come in the name of the God
who turned chaos into magnificent order, to
settle this dispute by the principles of eternal
justice and kindness; and now I command you,
take your hands off of each other's throats."
The only impartial institution on this subject is
the Church, for it is made up of both capitalists
and laborers, and was founded by Christ, who
was a carpenter, and so has a right to speak for
all laborers, and who owns the earth and the

6

T H E BATTLE FOR BREAD.

solar system and the universe, and so can speak
for the capitalists.
As for myself, as an individual I have a right
to be heard. My father was a farmer and my
grandfather, and they had to work for a living ;
and every dollar I own I earned by the sweat of
my own brow, and I owe no man anything, and
if any obligation has escaped my memory, come
and present your bill when I descend from this
pulpit, and I will pay you on the spot. I am
going to say all that I think and feel on this
subject, and without any reservation, asking
your prayers that I may be divinely directed in
this important series of Sabbath morning discourses.
That Labor has gfievances I will show you
plainly before I get through this course of sermons. That Capital has had outrages committed upon it I will make evident beyond dispute. But there are right and wrong ways of
attempting a reformation.
When I say there will be no return to social
chaos, I do not underrate the awful
P E R I L OF T H E S E

TIMES.

W e must admit that the tendency is toward revolution, Great throngs gather at some points

T H E B A T T L E FOR BREAD.

7

of disturbance in almost all our cities. Railtrains hurled over the rocks. Workmen beaten
to death within sight of their wives and children. Factories assailed by mobs. T h e faithful police of our cities exhausted by vigilance
night and day. In some cases the military
called o u t
T h e whole country asking the
question, " W h a t next ?" A part of Belgium
one great riot. Germany and Austria keeping
their workmen quiet only by standing armies
so vast that they are eating out the life of those
nations. T h e only reason that Ireland is in
peace is because she is hoping for H o m e Rule
and the triumphs of Gladstonism. T h e labor
quarrel is hemispheric, aye, a world-wide quarrel, and the whole tendency is toward anarchy.
But one way in which we may avoid anarchy
is by letting the people know
W H A T ANARCHY IS.

W e must have the wreck pointed out in order
to steer clear of it. Anarchy is abolition of
right of property. It makes your store and
your house and your money and your family
mine, and mine yours. It is wholesale robbery.
It is every man's hand against every other man.
It is arson and murder and rapine and lust and

8

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

death triumphant. It means no law, no church,
no defence, no rights, no happiness, no God.
It means hell let loose on earth, and society a
combination of devils incarnate. It means extermination of everything good and the coronation of everything infamous. Do you want it ?
Will you have it ? Before you let it get a good
foothold in America take a good look at the
dragon.
Look at Paris, where for a few days it held
sway, the gutters red with blood and the walks
down the street a stepping between corpses, the
Archbishop shot as he tries to quell the mob,
and every man and woman armed with knife or
pistol or bludgeon. Let this country take one
good, clear, scrutinizing look at anarchy before
it is admitted, and it will never be allowed to
set up its reign in our borders. N o ; there is
too much good sense dominant in this country
to permit anarchy. All good people will, together with the officers of civil government,
cry " Peace!" and it will be re-established.
Meanwhile, my brotherly counsel is to
THREE CLASSES OF LABORERS.

First, to those who are at work. Stick to it.
Do not amid the excitement of these times drop

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

9

your employment, hoping that something better will turn up. H e who gives up work now,
whether he be railroad man, mechanic, farmer,
clerk, or any other kind of employee, will probably give it up for starvation. You may not
like the line of steamers that you are sailing in,
but do not jump overboard in the middle of the
Atlantic. Be a little earlier than usual at your
post of work while this turmoil lasts, and attend
to your occupation with a little more assiduity
than has ever characterized you.
My brotherly counsel, in the second place, is
to those who have resigned work. It is best
for you and best for everybody to go back immediately. Do not wait to see what others do.
Get on board the train of national prosperity
before it starts again, for start it will, start soon
and start mightily. Last year in the city of
N e w York there were 45 general strikes and
177 shop strikes. Successful strikes, 97; strikes
lost, 34; strikes pending at th6 time the statistics were made, 59; strikes compromised, 32.
Would you like me to tell you who will make
the most out of the present almost universal
strike ? I can and will. Those will make the
most out of it who go first to work.
My third word of brotherly advice is to the

lift

THE 3ATTLE FOR BREAD.

neaily two mill! ;n people who could not get
work before this trouble began, and who have
themselves and their families to support, to go
now and take the vacated places. Go in and
take those places a million and a half strong.
Green hands you may be now, but you will
not be green hands long. My sentiment is full
liberty for all who want to strike to do so, and
full liberty for all who want to take the vacated
places. Other industries will open for those
who are now taking vacation, for we have only
opened the outside door of this continent, and
there is room in this country for eight hundred
million people, and for each one of them a
home and a livelihood and a G o d !
PLENTY OF ROOM.

So, however others may feel about this excitement, as wide as the continent, I am not scared
a bit. The storm will hush. Christ will put
His foot upon it as upon agitated Galilee. As
at the beginning, chaos will give place to order
as the Spirit of God moves upon the waters.
But hear it, workingmen of America ! Your
first step toward light and betterment of condition will be an assertion of your individual independence from the dictation of your fellow-

T H E BATTLE FOR BREAD.

II

workmen. You are a free man, and let no
organization come between you and your best
interests. Do not let any man, or any body of
men, tell you where you shall work, or where
you shall not work, when you shall work, or
when you shall not work. If a man wants to
belong to a labor organization, let him belong.
If he does not want to belong to a labor organization, let him have perfect liberty to stay out.
You own yourself. Let no man put a manacle
on your hand or foot or head or heart.
I belong to a ministerial association that
meets once a week. I love all the members
very much. W e may help each other in a hundred ways, but when that association shall tell
me to quit my work and go somewhere else ;
that I must stop right away because a brother
minister has been badly treated down in Texas,
I will say to that ministerial association, " G e t
thee behind me, Satan !" Furthermore, I have
a right to resign my pastorate of this church
and say to the people, " I decline to work for
you any longer. I am going. Good-by." But
I have no right, after I have quit this pulpit, to
linger around the doors on Sunday mornings
and evenings with a shot-gun to intimidate or
hinder the minister who comes to take my

12

rHE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

place. I may quit my place and continue to be
a gentleman, but when I interfere with my successor in this pulpit I become a criminal, and
deserve nothing better than thin soup in a tin
bowl in Sing Sing Prison. Your first duty,
oh laboring man, is to your family ! Let no one
but Almighty God dictate to you how you
shall support them. Work when you please,
where you please, at what you please, and allow
no one for a hundred millionth part of a second
to interfere with your right. When we emerge
from the present unhappiness, as we soon will,
wre shall find many tyrannies broken, and Laboi
and Capital will march shoulder to shoulder.
MUTUAL DEPENDENCE.

This day I declare the mutual dependence of
Labor and Capital. An old tentmaker put it
just right—I mean Paul—when he declared :
" T h e eye cannot say to the hand, I have no
need of thee." You have examined some elaborate machinery—a thousand wheels, a thousand
bands, a thousand levers, a thousand pulleys,
but all controlled by one great water-wheel, all
the parts adjoined so that if you jarred one part
you jarred all the parts. Well, society is a great
piece of mechanism, a thousand wheels, a thou-

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

13

sand pulleys, a thousand levers, but all controlled by one great and ever-revolving force—
the wheel of God's providence. The professions interdependent, all the trades interdependent Capital and Labor interdependent,
so that the man who lives in a mansion on the
hill, and the man who breaks cobble-stones at
the foot of the hill, affect each other's misfortune or prosperity. Dives cannot kick Lazarus without hurting his own foot. They who
throw Shadrach into the furnace, get their own
faces scorched and blackened. N o such thing
as independence. Smite society at any one
point and you smite the entire community.
IDENTICAL INTERESTS.

Relief will come to the working-classes of this
country through a better understanding between
Capital and Labor. Before the contest goes
much further it will be found that their interests
are identical; what helps one helps both; what
injures one injures both. Until the crack of
doom there will be no relief for the workingclasses until there is a better understanding between Labor and Capital and this war ends.
Every speech that Capital makes against Labor
is an adjournment of our national prosperity.

14

T H E BATTLE FOR BREAD.

Every speech that Labor makes against Capital
is an adjournment of our national prosperity.
The capitalists of the country, so far as I know
them, are successful laborers. If the capitalists
in this house to-day would draw their gloves,
you would see the broken finger-nail, the scar
of an old blister, here and there a stiffened
finger-joint.
The great publishers of New
York and Philadelphia, so far as I know them,
were book-binders or printers on small pay.
The carriage manufacturers of the country used
to sandpaper the wagon-bodies in the wheelwright's shop.
PHILANTHROPIC

CAPITALISTS.

Peter Cooper was a glue-maker. N o one
begrudged him his millions of dollars, for he
built Cooper Institute and swung open its
doors for every poor man's son, and said to the
day laborer: " Send your boy up to my Institute if you want him to have a splendid education." And a young man of this church was
the other day walking in Greenwood Cemetery,
and he saw two young men putting flowers on
the grave of Peter Cooper. M y friend supposed the young men were relatives of Peter
Cooper, and decorated his grave for that reason.

T H E BATTLE FOR BREAD.

15

" N o , " they said, " w e put these flowers on his
grave because it was through him we got our
education." Abraham Van Nest was a harnessmaker in New York. Through economy and
industry and skill he got a great fortune. H e
gave away to help others hundreds of thousands
of dollars. I shall never forget the scene when
I, a green country lad, stopped at his house,
and after passing the evening with him he came
to the door and came outside and said : " Here,
De Witt, is fifty dollars to get books with.
Don't say anything about it." A n d I never
did till the good old man was gone. Henry
Clay was " t h e Mill-boy of the Slashes." H u g h
Miller, a stone-mason; Columbus, a weaver;
Halley, a soap-boiler ; Arkwright, a barber;
the learned Bloomfield, a shoemaker; Hogarth, an engraver of pewter plate, and
Horace Greeley started life in New York
with ten dollars and seventy-five cents in his
pocket.
The distance between Capital and Labor is
not a great gulf over which is swung a Niagara
suspension bridge; it is only a step, and the
laborers here will cross over and become capitalists, and the capitalists will cross over and
become laborers. Would to God they would

16

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

shake hands while they are crossing, these from
one side, and those from the other side.
WHO THE COMBATANTS ARE.

The combatants in this great conflict between Capital and Labor are chiefly, on the
one side, the men of fortune, and, on the other
hand, men who could get labor, but will not
have it, will not stick to it. It is the hand cursing the eye, or the eye cursing the hand. I
want it understood that the laborers are tho
highest style of capitalists. Where is their in
vestment? In the b a n k ? N o . In railroad
stock ? No. Their muscles, their nerves, their
bones, their mechanical skill, their physical
health, are the highest kind of capital. The
man who has two feet, and two ears, and two
eyes, and ten fingers, owns a machinery that
puts into nothingness Corliss's engine and all
the railroad rolling stock, and all the carpet
and screw and cotton factories on the planet.
I wave the flag of truce this morning between
these contestants. I demand a cessation of
hostilities between Labor and Capital. What
is good for one is good for both. W h a t is bad
for one is bad for both.

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

17

CO-OPERATION.

Again, relief will come to the workingclasses of this country through co-operative
association. I am not now referring to tradesunions. W e may hereafter discuss that question. But I refer to that plan by which laborers
become their own capitalists, taking their surpluses and putting them together and carrying
on great enterprises. In England and Wales
there are seven hundred and sixty-five co-operative associations, with three hundred thousand
members, with a capital of fourteen millions of
dollars, doing business in one year to the
amount of fifty-seven millions dollars. In Troy,
N . Y., there was a co-operative iron foundry
association. It worked well long enough to
give an idea of what could be accomplished
when the experiment is fully developed.
You say that there have been great failures in
that direction. I admit it. Every great movement at the start is a failure. The application
of steam power a failure, electro-telegraphy a
failure, railroading a failure, but after awhile the
world's chief successes.
I hear some say,
" Why, it is absurd to talk of a surplus to be
put into this co-operative association, when men

i8

T H E BATTLE FOR BREAD.

can hardly get enough to eat and wear and take
care of their families. ,, I reply, Put into my
hand the money spent in the last five years in
this country by the laboring classes for rum and
tobacco, and I will start a co-operative institution of monetary power that will surpass any
financial institution in the United States.
TAKEN

INTO

CONFIDENCE.

Again, I remark, that relief will come to the
working-classes through more thorough discovery on the part of employers that it is best
for them to let their employes know just how
matters stand. The most of the capitalists of
to-day are making less than six per cent, less
than five per cent., less than four per cent, on
their investments. Here and there is an anaconda swallowing down everything, but such are
the exceptions. It is often the case that employes blame their employer because they suppose he is getting along grandly, when he is
oppressed to the last point of oppression. I
knew a manufacturer who employed more than
a thousand hands. I said to him : " Do you
ever have any trouble with your workmen ? do
you have any strikes?"
" N o , " he said.
" W h a t ! in this time of angry discussion be-

T H E BATTLE FOR BREAD.

19

tween Capital and Labor, no trouble ?" " None
at all—none."
I said: " H o w is that?"
" Well," he said, " I have a way of my own.
Every little while I call my employes together
and I say,—' Now, boys, I want to show you
how matters stand. W h a t you turned out this
year brought so much. You see it isn't as much
as we got last year. I can't afford to pay you as
much as I did. Now, you know I put all my
means in this business. W h a t do you think
ought to be my percentage, and what wages
ought I to pay you ? Come, let us settle this.
And," said that manufacturer, " w e are always
unanimous. When we suffer, we all suffer
together. W h e n we advance, we advance together, and my men would die for me." But
when a man goes among his employes with
a supercilious air, and drives up to his factory
as though he were the autocrat of the universe,
with the sun and the moon in his vest-pockets,
moving amid the wheels of the factory, chiefly
anxious lest a greased or smirched hand should
touch his immaculate broadcloth, he will see at
the end he has made an awful mistake. I
think that employers will find out after awhile
that it is to their interest, as far as possible, to
explain matters to their employes. You 6e

20

T H E BATTLE FOR BRFAP.

frank with them, and they will be frank with
you.
Again, I remark, relief will come to the
laboring classes through the religious rectification of the country. Labor is appreciated and
rewarded just in proportion as a country is
Christianized. Show me a community that is
thoroughly infidel, and I will show you a community where wages are small. Show me a
community that is thoroughly Christianized,
and I will show you a community where wages
are comparatively large. H o w ' d o I account
for it ? The philosophy is easy. Our religion
is a democratic religion. I t makes the owner
of the mill understand he is a brother to all the
operatives in that mill. Born of the same
heavenly Father, to lie down in the same dust,
to be saved by the same supreme mercy. N o
putting on of airs in the sepulchre or in the
judgment.
A n engineer in a N e w England factory gets
sleepy, and he does not watch the steam-gauge,
and there is a wild thunder of explosion, and
the owner of the mill and one of the workmen
are slain. The two slain men come up toward
the gate of heaven. The owner of the mill
knocks at the gate. The celestial gate-keeper

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

21

cries, " W h o is there?" The reply comes, " I
was the owner of a factory at Fall River, where
there was an explosion just now, and I lost my
life, and I want to come in." " W h y do you
want to come in, and by what right do you
come in?" asks the celestial gate-keeper.
" Oh," says the man, " I employed two or three
hundred hands ! I was a great man at Fall
River.'5 " Y o u employed two or three hundred
men," says the gate-keeper, " b u t how much
Christian grace did you employ ?" " N o n e at
all," says the owner of the mill. " Step back,"
says the celestial gate-keeper ; " no admittance
here for you." Right after comes up the poor
workman. H e knocks at the gate. The shining
gate-keeper says, " W h o is there?" H e says,
" I am a poor workman; I come up from the
explosion at Fall River; I would like to enter."
" What is your right to come in here ?" asks the
shining gate-keeper. The workman says, " I
heard that a shining Messenger came forth from
your world to our world to redeem i t ; I have
been a bad man ; I used to swear when I hurt
my hand with the wheel; I used to be angry ; I
have done a great many wrong things, but I
confessed it all to the Messenger that came
from your country, and after I confessed it H Q

22

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

told me to come up here; and that you may
know I have aright to come, there is His name
on the palm of my hand; here is his name
on my forehead." Then there is a sound of
working pulleys, and the gates lift, and the
workingman goes in. There was a vast difference between the funerals at Fall River. The
owner of the mill had a great funeral. The
poor workingman had a small funeral. The
man who came up on his own pompous resources was shut out of heaven. The poor
man, trusting to the grace of Jesus Christ, entered. So, you see, it is
A DEMOCRATIC

RELIGION.

1 do not care how much money you have, you
have not enough money to buy your way
through the gate. My friends, you need to
saturate our populations with the religion of
Christ, and wages will be larger, employers will
be more considerate, all the tides of thrift will
set in. I have the highest authority for saying
that godliness is profitable for the life that now
is. It pays for the employer. It pays for the
employd The hard hand of the wheel and
the soft hand of the counting-room will clasp
each other yet. They will clasp eaoh other in

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

23

congratulation. They will clasp each other on
the glorious morning of the Millennium. The
hard hand will say, " I ploughed the desert into
a garden;" the soft hand will reply, " I fur
nished the seed." The one hand will say, " 1
thrashed the mountains ;" the other hand will
say, " I paid for the flail." The one hand will
say, " I hammered the spear into a pruninghook;" and the other hand will answer, " I
signed the treaty of peace that made that possible." Then Capital and Labor will lie down
together, and the lion and the lamb, and the
leopard and the kid, and there will be nothing
to hurt or destroy in all God's holy mount, for
the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.

24

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

THE TREATMENT OF EMPLOYES.
" I f ye bite and devour one another, take heed
that ye be not consumed one of another."—Gal. 5:15.
" Look not every man on his own things, b u t every
man also on the things of others.—Phil. 2:4.

T H E labor agitation will soon quiet. The
mills will again open, the railroads resume their
traffic, our national prosperities again start. Of
course, the damage done by the strikes cannot
immediately be repaired. Wages will not be
so high as they were. Spasmodically they may
be higher, but they will drop lower. Strikes,
whether right or wrong, always injure laborers
more than the capitalists. You will see this in
the starvation of next winter. Boycotting and
violence and murder never pay. They are different
STAGES OF ANARCHY.

God never blessed murder. The worst use
you can put a man to is to kill him9 Blow up
to-morrow all the country seats on the banks
of the Hudson, and all the fine houses on
Madison Square, and Brooklyn Heights, and

T H E BATTLE FOR BREAD.

25

Brooklyn Hill, and Rittenhouse Square, and
Beacon Street, and all the bricks and timber
and stones will just fall back on the bare head
of American labor.
T h e worst enemies of the working classes in
the United States and Ireland are their
demented coadjutors.
Assassination — the
assassinations of Lord Frederick Cavendish
and Mr. Burke in Phoenix Park, Dublin, Irelond, in the attempt to avenge the wrongs of
Ireland, only turned away from that afflicted
people millions of sympathizers. The attempts
to blow up the House of Commons, in London, had only this effect—to throw out of employment tens of thousands of innocent Irish
people in England. In this country the torch
put to the factories that have discharged hands
for good or bad reasons; obstructions on the
rail-tracks, in front of midnight express trains,
because the offenders do not like the president
of the company ; strikes on shipboard the hour
they were going to sail, or in printing offices
the hour the paper was to go to press, or in the
mines the day the coal was to be delivered, or
on house scaffoldings so the builder fails in
keeping his contract—all these are only a hard
blow on the head of American labor, and crip-

26

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

pie its arms, and lame its feet, and pierce its
heart. Traps sprung suddenly upon employers
and violence never took one knot out of the
knuckles of toil, or put one farthing of wages
into a callous palm.
Barbarism will never
cure the wrongs of civilization. Mark t h a t !
A KING THREATENED

BY A

MILLER.

Frederick the Great admired some land near
his palace at Potsdam, and he resolved to get
it. It was owned by a miller. H e offered the
miller three times the value of the property.
T h e miller would not take it because it was the
old homstead, and he felt much as Naboth
felt about his vineyard when Ahab wanted it.
Frederick the Great was a rough and terrible
man, and he ordered the miller into his
presence, and the king with a stick in his hand
—a stick with which he sometimes struck the
officers of State—said to the miller : " Now, I
have offered you three times the value of that
property, and if you won't sell it I'll take it anyhow." The miller said : " Your Majesty, you
won't." " Yes," said the king, " I will take it."
" Then," said the miller, " if your Majesty does
take it I will sue you in the Chancery Court."
A t that threat Frederick the Great yielded his

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

2?

infamous demand. And the most imperious
outrage against the working classes will yet
cower before the law. Violence and opposition
to the law will never accomplish anything, but
righteousness and according to the law will accomplish it.
THE WIDENING

CHASM.

But gradually the damages done the laborer
by the strikes will be repaired, and some important things ought now to be said. The
whole tendency of our times, as you have
noticed, is to make the chasm betweeu employer and emyloye wider and wider. In olden
time the head man of the factory, the master
builder, the capitalist, the head man of the
firm, worked side by side with their employes,
working sometimes at the same bench, dining
at the same table ; and there are those here
who can remember the time when the clerks of
large commercial establishments were accustomed to board with the head men of the firm.
All that is changed, and the tendency is to
make the distance between employer and employe wider and wider. The tendency is to
make the employe feel that he is wronged by
the success of the capitalist, and to make the

28

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

capitalist feel : " Now, my laborers are only
beasts of burden ; I must give so much money
for so much drudgery, just so many pieces of
silver for so many beads of sweat." In othei
words, the bridge of sympathy is broken down
at both ends. That feeling was well described
by Thomas Carlyle when he said : " Plugson,
of St. Dolly Undershot, buccaneer-like, says to
his m e n : ' Noble spinners, this is the hundredth thousand we have gained, wherein I
mean to dwell and plant my vineyards. The
hundred thousand pound is mine, the daily
wage was yours. Adieu, noble spinners ; drink
my health with this groat each, which 1 give
you over and above."
Now, what we want is to rebuild that bridge
of sympathy, and I put the trowel to one of the
abutments to-day, and I preach more especially
this morning to employers as such, although
what I have to say will be appropriate to all
who are in the house.
THREE BRUTAL

PRINCIPLES.

The outrageous behavoir of a multitude of
laborers toward their employers during the last
three months—behavior infamous and worthy
of most condign punishment—may have in-

T H E BATTLE FOR BREAD.

29

duced some employers to neglect the real
Christian duties that they owe to those whom
they employ. Therefore I want to say to you
whom I confront face to face, and those to
whom these words may come, that all shipowners, all capitalists, all commercial firms, all
master builders, all housewives, are bound to be
interested in the entire welfare of their subordinates. Years ago some one gave three prescriptions for becoming a millionaire: First,
spend your life in getting and keeping the earnings of other people ; secondly, have no anxiety
about the worriments, the losses, the disappointments of others; thirdly, do not mind the fact
that your vast wealth implies the poverty of a
great many people. Now, there is not a man
in my audience who would consent to go out
into life with those three principles to earn a
fortune. It is your desire to do your whole
duty to the men and women in your service.
THE

R A T E OF

PAY.

First of all, then, pay as large wages as are
reasonable and as your business will afford.
N o t necessarily what others pay, certainly not
what your hired help, say you must pay, for
that is tyranny on the part of labor unbearable,

30

T H E BATTLE FOR BREAD.

The right of a laborer to tell his employer
what he must pay implies the right of an employer to compel a man into a service whether
he will or not, and either of those ideas is
despicable. When an employer allows a laborer to say what he must do or have his business
ruined, and the employer submits to it, he does
every business man in the United States a
wrong, and yields to a principle which, carried
out, would dissolve society. Look over your
affairs, and put yourselves in imagination in
your laborer's place, and then pay him what before God and your own conscience you think
you ought to pay him.
" God bless yous " are well in their place,
but they do not buy coal nor pay house rent
nor get shoes for the children. A t the same
time you, the employer, ought to remember
through what straits and strains you got the
fortune by which you built your store or run
the factory. You are to remember that you
take all the risks and the employe takes none,
or scarcely any. You are to remember that
there may be reverses in fortune, and that some
new style of machinery may make your machinery valueless, or some new style of tariff set
your business back hopelessly and forever.

T H E BATTLE FOR BREAD.

31

You must take all that into consideration, and
then pay what is reasonable.
BIBLE

INJUNCTIONS.

Do not be too ready to cut down wages. As
far as possible pay all, and pay promptly.
There is a great deal of Bible teaching on this
subject. Malachi: " I will be a swift witness
against all sorcerers, and against all adulterers,
and against those who oppress the hireling in
his wages." Leviticus : " T h o u shalt not keep
the wages of the hireling all night unto the
morning."
Colossians : " Masters, give unto
your servants that which is just and equal ;
knowing that ye also have a Master in heaven."
So you see it is not a question between you
and your employ^ so much as it is a question
between you and God,
Do not say to your employes : " Now, if
you don't like this place get another," when
you know they cannot get another. A s far as
possible once a year visit at their homes your
clerks and your workmen. That is the only
way you can become acquainted with their
wants. You will by such process find out that
there is a blind parent or a sick sister being
supported. Y o u will find some of your young

32

T H E BATTLE FOR BREAD.

men in rooms without any fire in winter, and in
summer sweltering in ill-ventilated apartments.
You will find how much depends on the wages
you pay or withhold.
BENEFICENT

EMPLOYERS.

Moreover, it is your duty as employer, as far
as possible, to mould the welfare of the employe. You ought to advise him about investments, about life insurance, about savings
banks. You ought to give him the benefit of
your experience.
There are hundreds and
thousands of employers in this country and
England, I am glad to say, who are settling in
the very best possible way the destiny of their
employes. Such men as Marshall, of L e e d s ;
Lister, of Bradford; Akroyd, of Halifax ; and
men so near at home it might offend their
modesty, if I mentioned their names. These
men have built reading-rooms, libraries, concert
halls, afforded croquet lawns, cricket grounds,
gymnasiums, choral societies for their employes,
and they have not merely paid the wages on
Saturday night, but through the contentment
and the thrift and the good morals of their
employes, they are paying wages from generation to generation forever,

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

33

Again, I counsel all employers to look well
after the physical health of their subordinates.
Do not put on them any unnecessary fatigue.
I never could understand why the drivers on
our city cars must stand all day when they
might just as well sit down and drive. It seems
to me most unrighteous that so many of the
female clerks in our stores should be compelled
to stand all day, and through those hours when
there are but few or no customers. These people have aches and annoyance and weariness
enough without putting upon them additional
fatigue. Unless those female clerks must go
up and down on the business of the store, let
them sit down.
Then, I would have you carry out this sanitary idea, and put into as few hours as possible
the work of the day. Some time ago—whether
it has been changed I know not—there were
one thousand grocer clerks in Brooklyn who
went to business at five o'clock in the morning
and continued until ten o'clock at night. Now,
that is inhuman. It seems to me all the merchants in all departments ought, by simultaneous movement, to come out in behalf of the
early closing theory. These young men ought
to have an opportunity of going to the Mercan-

34

T H E BATTLE FOR BREAD.

tile Library, to the reading-rooms, to the con*
cert hall, to the gymnasium, to the church.
They have nerves, they have brains, they have
intellectual aspirations, they have immortal
spirits.
If they can do a good round day's
work in the ten or eleven hours, you have no
right to keep them harnessed for seventeen.
But, above all, I charge you, O employers !
that you look after the moral and spiritual welfare of your employes. First, know where
they spend their evenings. That decides everything. You do not want around your money
drawer a young man who went last night to
see Jack Sheppard / A man that comes into
the store in the morning ghastly with midnight revelry is not the man for your store.
The young man who spends his evenings in the
society of refined women, or in musical or artistic circles, or in literary improvement, is the
young man for your store.
THE

GUARDIAN OF

EMPLOYES.

Do not say of these young m e n : " If they
do their work in the business hours, that is all
I have to ask." God has made you that man's
guardian. I want you to understand that
many of these young men are orphans, or worse

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

35

than orphans, flung out into society to struggle for themselves. A young man is pitched
into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, and a
plank is pitched after him, and then he is told
to take that and swim ashore. Treat that
young man as you would like to have your son
treated if you were dead. Do not tread on
him. Do not swear at him. Do not send
him on a useless errand. Say " Good-morning" and " Good-night" and " Good-by." You
are deciding that man's destiny for two \vorlds.
One of my earliest remembrances is of
OLD A R T H U R

TAPPAN.

There were many differences of opinion
about his politics, but no one who ever knew
Arthur Tappan, and knew him well, doubted
his being an earnest Christian. In his store in
N e w York he had a room where every morning he called his employes together, and he
prayed with them, read the Scriptures to them,
sang with them, and then they entered on the
duties of the day. On Monday morning the
exercises differed, and he gathered the young
men together and asked them where they had
attended church, what had been their Sabbath
experiences, and what had been the sermon,

36

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

Samuel Budgett had the largest business in
the west of England. H e had in a room of his
warehouse a place pleasantly furnished with
comfortable seats and " Fletcher's Family Devotions" and Wesleyan Hymn-books, and he
gathered his employes together every morning, and having sung, they knelt down and
prayed side by side—the employer and the employes. Do you wonder at that man's success, and that though thirty years before he
had been a partner in a small retail shop in a
small village, at his death he bequeathed many
millions. God can trust such a man as that
with plenty of money.
SIR TITUS SALT

had wealth which was beyond computation,
and at Saltaire, England, he had a church and
a chapel built and supported by himself—the
church for those who preferred the Episcopal
service, and the chapel for those who preferred
the Methodist service. A t the opening of one
of his factories he gave a great dinner, and there
were thirty-five hundred people present, and in
his after-dinner speech he said to these people
gathered : " I cannot look around me and see
this vast assemblage of friends and work-people

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

37

without being moved. I feel greatly honored
by the presence of the nobleman at my side,
and I am especially delighted at the presence
of my work-people. I hope to draw around
me a population that will enjoy the beauties of
this neighborhood—a population of well-paid,
contented, happy operatives. I have given instructions to my architects that nothing is to
be spared to render the dwellings of the operatives a pattern to the country, and if my life is
spared by Divine Providence, I hope to see
contentment, satisfaction, and happiness around
me."
That is Christian character demonstrated,
There are others in this country and in other
lands on a smaller scale doing their best for
their employes. They have not forgotten
their own early struggles. They remember
how they were discouraged, how hungry they
were, and how cold and how tired they were,
and though they may be sixty or seventy years
of age, they know just how a boy feels between
ten and twenty, and how a young man feels
between twenty and thirty. They have not
forgotten it. Those wealthy employers were
not originally let down out of heaven with pulleys of silk in a wicker basket, satin-lined,

38

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

fanned by cherubic
roughest cradle, on
put her violent foot
cold world. Those
with boys.

wings. They started iA
whose rocker misfortune
and tipped them into the
old men are sympathetic

LOOK AFTER THE

FOREMAN.

But you are not only to be kind to tho§e
who are under you—Christianly kind—but you
are also to see that your boss workman, and
your head clerks, and your agents, and your
overseers in stores are kind to those under
them. Sometimes a man will get a little brief
authority in a store or in a factory, and whilr
they are very courteous to you, the capitalist*
or to you, the head man of the firm, they are
most brutal in their treatment of those undei
them. God only knows what some of the
lads suffer in the cellars and in the lofts of
some of our great establishments. They have
no one to appeal to. The time will come when
their arm will be strong, and they can defend
themselves, but not now. Alas ! for some of
the cash boys and the messenger boys and the
boys that sweep the store. Alas ! for some
of them. Now, you capitalist, you, the head
man of the firm, must look, supervise, see

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

39

those all around you, investigate all beneath
you.
BE MERCIFUL.

And, then, I charge you not to put unnecessary temptation in the way of your young men.
Do not keep large sums of money lying around
unguarded. Know how much money there is
in the till. Do not have the account books
loosely kept. There are temptations inevitable to young men, and enough of them, without your putting any unnecessary temptations
in their way. Men in Wall Street, having
thirty years of reputation for honesty, have
dropped into Sing Sing and perdition, and you
must be careful how you try a lad of fifteen.
A n d if he do wrong, do not pounce on him
like a hyena. If he prove himself unworthy of
your confidence, do not call in the police, but
take him home, tell why you dismissed him to
those who will give him another chance.
Many a young man has done wrong once who
will never do wrong again. A h ! my friends, I
think we can afford to give everybody another
chance, when God knows we should all have
been in perdition if H e had not given us ten
thousand chances.
Then, if in moving around your factory, or

40

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

mill, or barn, or store you are inexorable witfc
young men, God will remember it. Some
day the wheel of fortune will turn, and you
will be a pauper, and your daughter will go to
the workhouse, and your son will die on the
scaffold. If in moving among your young
men you see one with an ominous pallor of
cheek, or you hear him coughing behind the
counter, say to him : " Stay home a day or two
and rest, or go out and breathe the breath of
the hills." If his mother die, do not demand
that on the day after the funeral he be in the
store. Give him, at least, a week to get over
that which he will never get over.
A BRAVE G E N E R A L .

Employers, urge upon your employes, above
all, a religious life. So far from that, how is
it, young men ? Instead of being cheered on
the road to heaven, some of you are caricatured,
and it is a hard thing for you to keep your
Christian integrity in that store or factory
where there are so many hostile to religion.
Ziethen, a brave general under Frederick the
Great, was a Christian. Frederick the Great
was an infidel. One day Ziethen, the venerable, white-haired general, asked to be excused

T H E BATTLE FOR BREAD.

41

from military duty that he might attend the
holy sacrament. H e was excused. A few
days after Ziethen was dining with the king and
with many notables of Prussia, when Frederick the Great, in a jocose way, said: " W e l l ,
Ziethen, how did the sacrament of last Friday
digest ?" The venerable old warrior arose, and
said : " For your Majesty I have risked my
life many a time on the battle-field, and for
your Majesty I would be willing any time to
die; but you do wrong when you insult the
Christian religion. You will forgive me if I,
your old military servant, cannot bear in silence
any insult to my Lord and my Saviour. ,,
Frederick the Great leaped to his feet, and he
put out his hand, and he said : " Happy Ziethen, forgive me, forgive me !"
Oh, there are many being scoffed at for their
religion ! and I thank God there are many
men as brave as Ziethen. Go to heaven yourself, O employer! Take all your people with
you. Soon you will be through buying and
selling, and through with manufacturing and
building, and God will ask you : •' Where are
all those people over whom you had so great
influence ? Are they here ? Will they be
here ?" O shipowners ! into what harbor will

42

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

your crew sail ? Oh, you merchant grocers!
are those young men that under your care are
providing food for the bodies and families of
men, to go starved forever ? Oh, you manufacturers of this United States ! with so many
wheels flying, and so many bands pulling, and
so many new patterns turned out, and so many
goods shipped, are the spinners, are the carmen,
are the draymen, are the salesmen, are the
watchers of your establishments working out
everything but their own salvation ? Can it be
that, having those people under your care five,
ten, twenty years, you have made no everlasting
impression for good on their immortal souls ?
God turn us all back from such selfishness, and
teach us to live for others and not for ourselves. Christ sets us the example of sacrifice,
and so do many of His disciples.
A SELF-SACRIFICING PHYSICIAN.

One summer in California a gentleman who
had just removed from the Sandwich Islands
told me this incident. H e said one of the
Sandwich Islands is devoted to lepers. People
getting sick of the leprosy on the other islands
are sent to that isle of lepers. They never
come off. They are in different stages of dis-

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

43

ease, but all who die on that island die of
leprosy.
On one of the islands there was a physician
who always wore his hand gloved, and it was
often discussed why he always had a glove on
that hand under all circumstances. One day
he came to the authorities, and he withdrew
his glove, and he said to the officers of the law:
" You see on that hand a spot of the leprosy,
and that I am doomed to die. I might hide
this for a little while and keep away from the
isle of lepers; but I am a physician, and I can
go on that island and administer to the sufferings of those who are farther gone in the disease, and I should like to go now. It would
be selfish in me to stay amid these luxurious
surroundings when I might be of so much help
to the wretched. Send me to the isle of the
lepers." They, seeing the spot of leprosy, of
course took the man into custody. H e bade
farewell to his family and his friends. It was
an agonizing farewell. H e could never see
them again. H e was taken to the isle of the
lepers, and there wrought among the sick until
prostrated by his own death, which at last came.
Oh, that was magnificent self-denial, magnificent sacrifice, only surpassed by that of Him

44

.THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

who exiled Himself from his home in heaven
to this leprous island of a world, that H e might
physician our wounds, and weep our griefs, and
die our deaths, turning the isle of a leprous
world into a great blooming, paradisical garden ! Whether employer or employe, let us
catch that spirit.

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

HARDSHIPS O F

45

WORKINGMEN.

"So the carpenter encouraged the goldsmith, and
he that smootheth with the hammer him that smiteth
the anvil."—Isa. 41:7.

You have seen in factories a piece of mechanism passing from hand to hand, and from
room to room, and one mechanic will smite it,
and another will flatten it, and another will
chisel it, and another will polish it, until the
work be done. And so the prophet describes
the idols of olden times as being made, part of
them by one hand, part of them by another
hand. Carpentry comes in, gold-beating comes
in, smithery comes in, and three or four styles
of mechanism are employed. " So the carpenter encouraged the goldsmith, and he that
smootheth with the hammer him that smote
the anvil." When they met, they talked over
their work, and they helped each other on with
it. It was a very bad kind of business ; it was
making idols which were an insult to the Lord
of heaven. I have thought if men in bad work
can

46

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

ENCOURAGE EACH OTHER,

ought not men engaged in honest artisanship
and mechanism speak words of good cheer ?
Men see in their own work hardships and
trials, while they recognize no hardships or
trials in anybody else's occupation.
Every
man's burden is the heaviest, and every wo,
man's task is the hardest. W e find people
wanting to get other occupations and professions. I suppose, when the merchant comes
home at night, his brain hot with the anxieties
of commercial toil, disappointed and vexed,
agitated about the excitements in the money
markets, he says, " Oh, I wish I were a mechanic ! When his day's work is done, the
mechanic lies down ; he is healthy in body,
healthy in mind, and healthy in soul, but I
can't sleep;" while, at that very moment, the
mechanic is wishing he was a banker or a merchant. H e says, " T h e n I could always have
on beautiful apparel; then I could move in
the choicest circles; then I could bring up my
children in a very different sphere from that
in which I am compelled to bring them up."
Now, the beauty of our holy religion is that

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

47

GOD LOOKS D O W N UPON ALL

the occupations and professions, and while I
cannot understand your annoyances and you
cannot understand mine, God understands
them all. H e knows all about the troubles
of these men mentioned in my text—the carpenter who encouraged the goldsmith, and he
that smootheth with the hammer, and the
gold-beaters.
I will speak this morning of the general
hardships of the working-classes. You may
not belong to this class, but you are bound as
Christian men and women to know their sorrows and sympathize with them, and as political economists to come to their rescue. There
is great danger that the prosperous classes,
because of the bad things that have been said
by the false friends of labor, shall conclude
that all this labor trouble is a " hullabaloo"
about nothing. Do not go off on that tangent. You would not, neither would I, submit without protest to the oppressions to
which many of our laborers are subjected.
ANARCHISTS REPUDIATED.

You do a great wrong to the laboring classes
if you hold them responsible for the work of

48

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

the scoundrelly Anarchists. You cannot hate
their deeds more thoroughly than do all the
industrial classes. A t the head of the chief
organ of the Knights of Labor, in big letters,
I find the following vigorous disclaimer:
" Let it be understood by all the world thar
the Knights of Labor have no affiliation, association, sympathy or respect for the band of
cowardly murderers, cut-throats, and robbers,
known as Anarchists, who sneak through the
country like midnight assassins, stirring up the
passions of ignorant foreigners, unfurling the
red flag of anarchy and causing riot and bloodshed. Parsons, Spies, Fielding, Most, and all
their followers, sympathizers, aiders, and abettors, should be summarily dealt with. They
are entitled to no more consideration than wild
beasts. T h e leaders are cowards and their followers are fools."
You may do your duty toward your employes, but many do not, and the biggest
business firm in America to-day is Grip,
Gouge,
GRIND AND COMPANY.

Look, for instance, at the woes of the womanly toilers, who have not made any strike and

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

49

who are dying by the thousands, and dying
by inches. I read a few lines from the last
Labor Report, just out, as specimens of
what female employes e n d u r e : " Poisoned
hands and cannot work.
H a d to sue the
man for fifty cents!"
A n o t h e r : " About
four months of the year can, by hard work,
earn a little more than three dollars per week"
A n o t h e r : " She now makes wrappers at one
dollar per dozen ; can make eight wrappers per
day." A n o t h e r : " W e girls in our establishment have the following fines imposed : for
washing your hands, twenty-five cents; eating
a piece of bread at your loom, one dollar; also
sitting on a stool, taking a drink of water, and
many trifling things too numerous to mention." " Some of the worst villains of our cities
are the employers of these women. They beat
them down to the last penny, and try to cheat
them out of that. The woman must deposit a
dollar or two before she gets the garments to
work on. When the work is done it is sharply
inspected, the most insignificant flaw is picked
out, and the wages refused and sometimes the
dollar deposited not given back. The Woman's Protective Union reports a case where
one of the poor souls, finding a place where

5C)

T H E BATTLE FOR BREAD.

she could get more wages, resolved to change
employers, and went to get her pay for work
done. The employer says, ' I hear you are going to leave me ?' ' Y e s / she said, 'and I have
come to get what you owe me.' H e made no
answer. She said : 4 Are you not going to pay
me ?' ' Yes/ he said, ' I will pay you/ and he
kicked her down stairs." I never swore a word
in all my life, but I confess that when I read
that I felt a stirring within me that was not at
all devotional.
UNDERPAID

WOMEN.

By what principle of justice is it that women in many of our cities get only two thirds
as much as men, and in many cases only half ?
Here is the gigantic injustice, that for work
equally well, if not better done, woman receives far less compensation than man. Start
with the National Government.
Women
clerks in Washington get nine hundred dollars
for doing that for which men receive eighteen
hundred dollars. The wheel of oppression is
rolling over the necks of thousands of women
who are at this moment in despair about what
they are to do. Many of the largest mercantile establishments of our cities are accessory

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

51

to these abominations, and from their large
establishments there are scores of souls being
pitched off into death, and their employers
know it. Is there a God ? Will there be a
judgment ? I tell you, if God rises up to redress woman's wrongs, many of our large establishments will be swallowed up quicker than a
South American earthquake ever took down a
city. God will catch these oppressors between
the mill-stones of His wrath, and grind them
to powder.
W h y is it that a female principal in a
school gets only eight hundred and twenty-five
dollars for doing work for which a male principal gets sixteen hundred and fifty dollars ? I
hear from all this land the wail of womanhood
Man has nothing to answer to that wail but
flatteries.
H e says she is an angel. She is
not. She knows she is not. She is a human
being who gets hungry when she has no food,
and cold when she has no fire. Give her no
more flatteries; give her justice ! There are
sixty-five thousand sewing-girls in New York
and Brooklyn.
Across the sunlight comes
their death groan. It is not such a cry as
comes from those who are suddenly hurled out
of life, but a slow, grinding, horrible wasting

52

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

away. A t a large meeting of these women
held in a hall in Philadelphia, grand speeches
were delivered, but a needlewoman took the
stand, threw aside her faded shawl, and with
her shrivelled arm hurled a very thunderbolt
of eloquence, speaking out the horrors of her
own experience. Stand at the corner of a
street at six or seven o'clock in the morning,
as the women go to work. Many of them
had no breakfast except the crumbs that were
left over from the night before, or the crumbs
they chew on their way through the street.
Here they come !
T H E W O R K I N G - G I R L S O F N E W YORK

and Brooklyn. These engaged in head work,
these in flower-making, in millinery, paper-box
making; but, most overworked of all and least
compensated, the sewing-women.
W h y do
they not take the city cars on their way up ?
They cannot afford the five cents. If, concluding to deny herself something else, she gets
into the car, give her a seat. You want to see
how Latimer and Ridley appeared in the fire.
Look at that woman and behold a more horrible martyrdom, a hotter fire, a more agonizing
death. Ask that woman how much she gets

T H E BATTLE FOR BREAD.

S3

for her work, and she will tell you six cents for
making coarse shirts and finds her own thread.
I % speak more fitly of woman's wrongs because she has not been heard in the present
agitation. You know more of what men have
suffered. I said to a colored man who, in
Missouri, last March, came into my room in
the morning to build my fire: " Sam, how
much wages do you people get around here ?"
H e replied: " T e n dollars a month, sir!" I
asked : " Have you a family ?" " Yes," said he,
"wife and children." Think of it—a hundred
and twenty dollars a year to support a family
on ! My friends, there is in this world
SOMETHING AWFULLY

ATWIST.

W h e n I think of these things, I am not bothered
as some of my brethren with the abstract questions as to why God let sin come into the
world. The only wonder with me is that God
don't smash this world up and start another in
place of it.
One great trial that the working-classes feel
is
PHYSICAL

EXHAUSTION.

There are athletes who go out to their work at
six or seven o'clock in the morning, and come

54

T H E BATTLE FOR BREAD.

back at night as fresh as when they started.
They turn their back upon the shuttle or the
forge or the rising wall, and they come away
elastic and whistling. That is the exception.
I have noticed that when the factory bell taps
for six o'clock, the hard-working man wearily
puts his arm into his coat-sleeve and starts for
home. H e sits down in the family circle, resolved to make himself agreeable, to be the
means of culture and education to his children,
but in five minutes he is sound asleep. H e is
fagged out—strength of body, mind, and soul
utterly exhausted. H e rises in the morning
only half rested from the toil. Indeed, he will
never have any perfect rest in this world until
he gets into one narrow spot which is the only
perfect rest for the human body in this world.
I think they call it a grave !
Has toil frosted the color of your cheeks?
Has it taken all spontaneity from your laughter? Has it subtracted the spring from your
step and the lustre from your eye until it has
left you only half the man you were when you
first put your hand on the hammer and your
foot on the wheel ? To-morrow, in your place
of toil, listen, and you will hear a voice above
the hiss of the furnace and the groan of the

T H E BATTLE FOR BREAD.

55

foundry and the clatter of the shuttle—a voice
not of machinery, nor of the task-master, but
the voice of an all-sympathetic God, as H e
says, " Come unto Me, all you who labor and
are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Let
all men and women of toil remember that this
work will soon be over. Have they not heard
that there is a great holiday coming? Oh,
that home, and no long walk to get to i t ! Oh,
that bread, and no sweating toil necessary to
earn i t ! Oh, these deep wells of eternal rapture, and no heavy buckets to draw up ! I
wish they would put their head on this pillow
stuffed with the down from the wing of all
God's promises: " T h e r e remaineth a rest for
the people of God."
Do you say, " W e have sewing-machines
now in our great cities, and the trouble is
gone ?" N o ; it is not. I see a great many
women wearing themselves out amid the hardships of the sewing-machine. A Christian man
went into a house of a good deal of destitution
in N e w York, and he saw a poor woman there
with a sick child, and he was telling the woman
how good a Christian she ought to be, and how
she ought to put her trust in God. " Oh," she
said, " I have no G o d ; I work from Monday

56

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

morning until Saturday night and I get no
rest, and I never hear anything that does my
soul any good ; and when Sunday comes, I
haven't aay bonnet that I can wear to church,
and I have sometimes got down to pray and
then I got up, saying to my husband, * My
dear, there's no use of my praying; I am so
distracted I can't pray ; it don't do any good !'
Oh, sir, it is very hard to work on as we people do from year to year, and to see nothing
bright ahead, and to see the poor little child
getting thinner and thinner, and my man a l
most broken down, and to be getting no nearer
to God, but to be getting farther away from
him ! Oh, if I were only ready to die P May
God comfort all who toil with the needle and
the sewing-machine, and have compassion on
those borne down under the fatigues of life.
Another great trial is
PRIVATION OF TASTE

and sentiment. I do not know of anything
much more painful than to have a fine taste for
painting and sculpture and music and glorious
sunsets and the expanse of the blue sky, and
yet not to be able to get the dollar for the oratorio, or to get a picture, or to buy one's way

THE BATTLF, FOR BREAD.

$?

into the country to look at the setting sun and
at the bright heavens. While there are men in
great affluence, who have around them all kinds
of luxuries in art, themselves entirely unable to
appreciate these luxuries—buying their books
by the square foot, their pictures sent to them
by some artist who is glad to get the miserable
daubs out of the studio—there are multitudes
of refined, delicate women, wTho are born artists, and shall reign in the kingdom of heaven
as artists, who are denied every picture and
every sweet song and every musical instrument.
Oh, let me cheer such persons by telling them
to look up and behold the inheritance that God
has reserved for them !
A HEART-BREAKING

PICTURE.

Then there are a great many who suflfer not
only in the privation of their taste, but in the
apprehensions and the oppressive surroundings
of life that were well described by an English
writer. H e said : " To be a poor man's child,
and look through the rails of the playground,
and envy richer boys for the sake of their many
books, and yet to be doomed to ignorance. T o
be apprenticed to some harsh stranger, and feel
forever banished from a mother's tenderness

58

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

and a sister's love. To work when very weary,
and work when the heart is sick and the head
is sore. To see a wife or a darling child wasting away, and not to be able to get the best
advice. To think that the better food or purer
air might set her up again, but that food you
cannot buy, that air you must never hope to
breathe. T o be obliged to let her die. T o
come home from the daily task some evening,
and see her sinking. To sit up all night in
hope to catch again those precious words you
might have heard could you have afforded to
stay at home all day, but never hear them. T o
have no mourners at the funeral, and even to
have to carry on your own shoulder through
the merry streets the light deal coflfin. To see
huddled into a promiscuous hole the dust which
is so dear to you, and not venture to mark the
spot by planted flower or lowliest stone."
But I have no time this morning longer to
dwell upon the hardships and the trials of those
who toil with hand and foot, for I must go on
to oflfer some grand and
GLORIOUS ENCOURAGEMENTS

for such; and the first encouragement is, that
one of the greatest safeguards against evil is

THE B—TLE FOR BREAD.

59

plenty to do. When men sin against the law
of their country, where do the police detectives
go to find them ? Not amid the dust of factories, not among those who have on their
" overalls," but among those who stand with
their hands in their pockets around the doors
of saloons and restaurants and taverns. Active
employment is one of the greatest sureties for
a pure and upright life. There are but very
few men with character stalwart enough to endure consecutive idleness.
I see a pool of wa£er in the country, and I
say, "Thou slimy, fetid thing, what does all
this mean ? Didn't I see you playing with
those shuttles and turning that grist-mill ?"
"Oh, yes/' says the water, " I used to earn my
living." I say again, " Then what makes you
look so sick? Why are you covered with this
green scum ? Why is your breath so vile ?"
" Oh," says the water, " I have nothing to do.
I am disgusted with shuttles and wheels. I am
going to spend my whole lifetime here, and
while yonder stream sings on its way down the
mountain side* here I am left to fester and die
accursed of God because I have nothing to
do!" Sin is

6o

T H E BATTLE FOR BREAD.

AN OLD

PIRATE

that bears down on vessels whose sails are flapping idly in the wind. The arrow of sin has
hard work to puncture the leather of an old
working-apron. Be encouraged by the fact
that your shops, your rising walls, your anvils
are fortresses in which you may hide, and from
which you may fight against the temptations of
your life. Morning, noon, and night, Sundays
and week-days, thank God for plenty to do.
Another encouragement is the„ fact that their
families are going to have the very best opportunity for development and usefulness. That
may sound strange to you, but
THE CHILDREN

OF

FORTUNE

are very apt to turn out poorly. In nine cases
out of ten the lad finds out if a fortune is coming, by twelve years of age ; he finds out there
is no necessity of toil, and he makes no struggle,
and a life without struggle goes into dissipation
or stupidity. You see the sons of wealthy parents going out into the world, inane, nerveless,
dyspeptic, or they are incorrigible and reckless,
while the son of the porter that kept the gate
learns his trade, gets a robust physical consti-

T H E BATTLE FOR BREAD.

61

tution, achieves high moral culture, and stands
in the front rank of Church and State.
W h o are the men mightiest in our Legislatures and Congress and Cabinets ? Did they
walk up the steep of life in silver slippers ? Oh,
no. The mother put him down under the tree
in the shade, while she spread the hay. Many
of these mighty men ate out of an iron spoon
and drank out of the roughest earthenware—
their whole life a forced march. They never
had any luxuries until, after awhile, God gave
them affluence and usefulness and renown as a
reward for their persistence. Remember, then,
that though you may have poor surroundings
and small means for the education of your children, they are actually starting under better
advantages than though you had a fortune to
give them. Hardship and privation are not a
damage to them, but an advantage. Akenside
rose to his eminent sphere from his father's
butcher-shop. Robert Burns started as a shepherd. Prideau used to sweep Exeter College.
Gifford was a shoemaker, and the son of every
man of toil may rise to heights of intellectual
and moral power if he will only trust God and
keep busy.
Again, I offer as encouragement that you

62

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

have so many opportunities of gaining information. Plato gave thirteen hundred dollars
for two books. The Countess of Anjou gave
two hundred sheep for one volume. Jerome
ruined himself financially by buying one copy
of Origen. Oh, the contrast ! Now there are
tens of thousands of pens gathering up information. Typesetters are calling for "copy."
All our cities, quake with the rolling cylinders
of the Harpers and the Appletons and the Lippincotts and the Petersons and the Ticknors,
and you now buy more than Benjamin Franklin ever knew for fifty cents ! There are people who toil from seven o'clock in the morning
until six o'clock at night who know more about
anatomy than the old physiologists, and who
know more about astronomy than the old philosophers. If you should take the learned men
of two hundred years ago and put them on one
bench, and take twenty children from the common schools in Brooklyn and put them down
on the other bench, the children could examine
the philosophers, and the philosophers could
not examine the children. " A h ! " says Isaac
Newton, coming up and talking to some intelligent lad of seven years, " W h a t is that ?" " Oh,
that is a rail-train !" " W h a t is that; ?" " That

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

63

is a telegraph." "What is that?" " It is a
telephone." " Dear me! I think I shall go
back to my bed in the dust, for I am bewildered and my head turns." Oh, rejoice that
you have all these opportunities of information
spread out before you, and that, seated in your
chair at home, by the evening light, you can
look over all nations and see the ascending
morn of a universal day.
TOIL A DISCIPLINE.

One more encouragement: Your toils in this
world are only intended to be a discipline by
which you shall be prepared for heaven. " Behold, I bring you glad tidings of great joy,"
and tell you that Christ, the carpenter of Nazareth, is the workingman's Christ. You get
His love once in your heart, O workingman !
and you can sing on the wall in the midst of
the storm, and in the shop amid the shoving of
the plane, and down in the mine amid the
plunge of the crowbar, and on shipboard while
climbing ratlines. If you belong to the Lord
Jesus Christ, He will count the drops of sweat
on your brow. He knows every ache and every
pain you have ever suffered in your worldly
occupation. Are you weary? He will give

64

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

you rest. Are you sick ? H e will give you
health. Are you cold ? H e will wrap around
you the warm mantle of His eternal love.
A n d besides that, my friends, you must remember, that all this is
ONLY PREPARATORY

a prefatory and introductory. I see a great
multitude before the throne of God. W h o are
t h e y ? " O h , " you say, " those are princes;
they must have always been in a royal family;
they dress like princes, they walk like princes,
they are princes; there are none of the common people there ; none of the people that
ever toiled with hand and foot !" A h ! you are
mistaken. W h o is that bright spirit before the
throne ? Why, that was a sewing-girl who,
work as she could, could make but two shillings the day. W h a t are those kings and
queens before the throne ? Many of them
Went up from Birmingham mills and from
Lowell carpet factories.
THE SONG OF THE REDEEMED.

A n d now I hear a sound like the rustling of
robes, and now I see a taking up of harps as
though they were going to strike a thanksgiving

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

65

anthem, and all the children of the saw, and the
disciples of the shuttle are in glorious array,
and they lift a song so clear and sweet I wish
you could hear it. It would make the pilgrim's
burden very light, and the pilgrim's journey
very short. N o t one weak voice or hoarse
throat in that great assemblage. The accord
is as perfect as though they had been all eternity practising, and I ask them what is the
name of that song they sing before the throne,
and they tell me it is the song of the redeemed
working-people.
And the angel cries o u t :
" W h o are these so near the throne ?" and the
answer comes b a c k : " These are they who
came out of great tribulation, and had their
robes washed and made white in the blood of
the Lamb."

66

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

MONOPOLY AND COMMUNISM.
" T h y land shall be married."—Isa. 62:4.

As the greater includes the less, so does the
circle of future joy around our entire world include the epicycle of our own republic. Bold,
exhilarant, unique, divine imagery of the text !
So many are depressed by the labor agitation,
and think everything in this country is going to
pieces, I preach this morning a sermon of good
cheer, and anticipate the time when the Prince
of Peace and the Heir of Universal Dominion
shall take possession of this nation and " Thy
land shall be married."
In discussing the final destiny of this nation,
it makes all the difference in the world whether
we are on the way to a funeral or a wedding.
The Bible leaves no doubt on this subject. In
pulpits, and on platforms, and in places of public concourse I hear so many of the muffled
drums of evil prophecy sounded, as though we
were on the way to national interment, and beside Thebes, and Babylon, and Tyre in the cemetery of dead nations our republic was to be en-

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

67

tombed, that I wish you to understand it is not
to be obsequies, but nuptials; not fnausoleum,
but carpeted altar; not cypress, but orange
blossoms ; not requiem, but wedding march, for
" T h y land shall be married." I propose to
name some of
THE

SUITORS

who are claiming the hand of this republic.
This land is so fair, so beautiful, so affluent, that
it has many suitors, and it will depend much
upon your advice whether this or that shall be
accepted or rejected.
I. In the first place, I remark: There is a
greedy, all-grasping monster who comes in as
suitor seeking the hand of this republic, and
that monster is known by the name of
MONOPOLY.

His sceptre is made out of the iron of the railtrack and the wire of telegraphy. H e does
everything for his own advantage and for the
robbery of the people. Things have gone on
from bad to worse, until in the three Legislatures
of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsyvania,
for the most part, monopoly decides everything.
If monopoly favor a law, it passes. If monopoly

65

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

oppose a law, it is rejected. Monopoly stands
in this railroad depot, putting into his pockets
in one year two hundred millions of dollars in
excess of all reasonable charges for service.
Monopoly holds in his one hand the steampower of locomotives, and in the other the
electricity of swift communication. Monopoly
decides nominations and elections—city elections, State elections, national elections. With
bribes he secures the votes of legislators—giving them free passes, giving appointments to
needy relatives to lucrative positions, employing them as attorneys, if they are lawyers ; carrying their goods fifteen per cent less if they are
merchants ; and if he finds a case very stubborn,
as well as very important, puts down before him
the hard cash of bribery.
But Monopoly is not so easily caught now as
when, during the term of Mr. Buchanan, in one
of our States a certain railway compay procured
a donation of public land. It was found out that
thirteen of the Senators of that State received
one hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars
among t h e m ; sixty members of the Lower
House of that State received five thousand and
ten thousand dollars each ; the Governor of the
State received fifty thousand dollars; his clerk

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

69

received five thousand dollars ; the LieutenantGovernor received ten thousand dollars ; all the
clerks of the Legislature received five thousand
dollars each, while fifty thousand dollars were
divided amid the lobby agents.
That thing on a larger or smaller scale, is all
the time going on in some of the States of th§
Union, but it is not so blundering as it used to
be, and therefore not as easily exposed or arrested. I tell you that
THE

SHADOWING

CURSE

of the United States to-day is monopoly. H e
puts his hand upon every bushel of wheat; upon
every sack of salt; upon every ton of coal; andevery man, woman, and child in the United
States feels the touch of that moneyed despotism. I rejoice that in twenty-four States of the
Union already anti-monopoly leagues have been
established, God speed them in their work of
liberation! I wish that this question might be
the qeestion of our Presidential elections, and
that we compel the political parties to recognize
it on their platforms.
I have nothing to say against capitalists. A
man has a right to all the money he can make
honestly. There is not a laborer in the land

yO

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

that would not be worth a million dollars if he
could. I have nothing to say against corporations as such—without them no great enterprise
would be possible ; but what I do say is that the
same principles are to be applied to capitalists
and to corporations that are applied to the poorest man and the plainest laborer.
W h a t is
wrong for me is wrong for great corporations.
If I take from you your property without adequate compensation I am a thief, and if a railway damage the property of the people without
any adequate compensation that is a gigantic
theft. What is wrong on a small scale is wrong
on a large scale. Monopoly in England has
ground hundreds and thousands of her best
people into semi-starvation, and in Ireland has
driven multitudinous tenants almost to madness.
EUROPEAN LAND SHARKS.

Five hundred acres in this country make an
immense farm. When you read that in Dakota
Territory Mr. Cass has a farm of 15,000 acres,
and Mr. Grandon, 25,000 acres, and Mr. Dairy mpie, 40,000 acres, your eyes dilate, even
though these farms are in great regions thinly
inhabited. But what do you think of this which
I take from the Doomsday Book, showing what

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

JI

monopoly is on the other side the sea ? I give
it as a warning of what it would do on this side
the sea, if in some lawful way the tendency is
not resisted. In Scotland, J. G. M. Heddle
owns 50,400 acres; Earl of Wemyss, 52,000
acres ; Duke of Montrose, 68,000 acres ; Cameron of Lochiel, 109,500 acres ; Sir C. W.Ross,
110,400 acres ; Earl of Fife, 113,000 acres ; the
Mackintosh, 124,000 acres ; Lord MacDonald,
130,000 acres ; Earl of Dalhousie, 136,000 acres;
Macleodof Macleod, 141,700 acres ; Sir K.Mackenzie, of Gairlock, 164,680 acres; Duke of
Argyle, 175,000 acres ; Duke of Hamilton, 183000 acres ; Duke of Athole, 194,000 acres ; Duke
of Richmond, 255,000 acres ; Earl of Stair, 270000 acres ; Mr. Evan Baillie, 300,000 acres ; Earl
of Seafield, 306,000 acres; Duke of Buccleugh,
432,183 acres; Earl of Breadalbane, 437,696
acres; Mr. A. Matheson, 220,433 acres ; and Sir
J. Matheson, 406,070 acres ; Duchess of Sutherland, 149,879 acres; and Duke of Sutherland,
M7 6 >343 acres.
THE RESULT.

Such monpolies imply an infinite acreage of
wretchedness. There is no poverty in the
United States like that in England, Ireland, and

72

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

Scotland, for the simple reason that in those
lands monopoly has had longer and larger sway.
Last summer in Edinburgh, Scotland, after
preaching in Synod Hall, I preached in the Grass
Market and to the wretched inhabitants of the
Cowgate and the Canongate, the audience exhibiting the squalor, and sickliness, and despair
that remains in one's mind like one of the
visions of Dante's Inferno.
Great monopolies in any land imply great privation. The time will come when our Government will have to limit the amount of accumulation of property. Unconstitutional, do you say ?
Then constitutions will have to be changed until they allow such limitation. Otherwise the
work of absorption will go on, and the large
fishes will eat up the small fishes, and the shad
will swallow up the minnows, and the porpoise
swallow the shad, and the whales swallow the
porpoises, and a thousand greedy men will own
all the world.
But would a law of limitation of wealth be
unrighteous ? If I dig so near my neighbor's
foundations, in order to build my house, that I
endanger his, the law grabs me. If I have a
tannery or a chemical factory, the malodors of
which injure residents in the neighborhood, the

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

73

law says: " Stop that !" If I drain off a river
from its bed, and divert it to turn my mill
wheel, leaving the bed of the river a breeding
place for malaria, the laws says
" Q U I T THAT OUTRAGE!

And has not a good Government a right to say
that a few men shall not gorge themselves on
the comfort, and health, and life of generations ?
Your rights end where my rights begin.
Monopoly, brazen-faced, and iron-fingered,
vulture-hearted monopoly, offers his hand to this
republic. H e stretches it out over the lakes,
and up the Pennsylvania, and the Erie, and the
New York Central railroads, and over the telegraph poles of the continent, and says : " Here
is my heart and hand ; be mine forever." Let
the millions of the people, North, South, East,
and West, forbid the banns of that marriage—
forbid them at the ballot-box, forbid them on
the platform, forbid them by great organizations, forbid them by the overwhelming sentiments of an outraged nation, forbid them by the
protest of the Church of God, forbid them by
prayer to high heaven. That Herod shall not
have this Abigail. It shall not be to all devouring monopoly that this land is to be married.

74

T H E BATTLE FOR BREAD.

II. Another suitor claiming the hand of this
republic is
NIHILISM.

H e owns nothing but a knife for universal
blood-letting and a nitro-glycerine bomb for
universal explosion, H e believes in no God,
no government, no heaven, and no hell, except
what he can make on earth. H e slew the Czar
of Russia, keeps Emperor William, of Germany,
practically imprisoned, killed Abraham Lincoln,
would put to death every king and president on
earth, and if he had the power would climb up
until he could drive the God of Heaven from
His throne and take it himself—the tcniversal
butcher. In France it is called communism ;
in the United States it is called Socialism ; in
Russia it is called Nihilism.
That last is the
most graphic and descriptive term. It means
complete and eternal smash-up.
Where does this monster live ? In St. Louis,
in Chicago, in Brooklyn, in New York, and in
all the villages and cities of this land. The
devil of destruction is an old devil, and he is to
be seen at every great fire where there is anything to steal, and at every shipwreck where
there is anything valuable floating ashore, and

T H E BATTLE FOK BREAD.

75

at every railroad accident where there are overcoats and watches to be purloined. On a small
scale I saw it in my college days, when, in our
literary society in New York University, we had
an exquisite and costly bust of Shakespeare,
and one morning we found a hole bored into
the lips of the marble and a cigar inserted.
There has not for the last century been a fine
picture in your art gallery, or a graceful statue
in your parks, or a fine frescoe on your wall, or
a richly bound volume in your library, but
would have been despoiled if the hand of ruffianism could have got at it without peril of incarceration.
The philosophy of the whole business is, that
there is a large number of people who either
through their laziness or their crime own nothing, and are mad at those who through industry
and wit of their own, or of their ancestors, are
in possession of large resources. The honest
laboring-classes never had anything to do with
such murderous enterprises. It is the villainous classes who would not work if they had
plenty of work offered them at large wages.
Many of these suppose that by the demolition
of law and order they would be advantaged,
and the parting of the ship of State would allow

76

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

them as wreckers to carry off the cargo. It
offers its hand to this fair republic. It proposes
to tear to pieces the ballot-box, the legislative
hall, the Congressional assembly. It would
take this land and divide it up, or rather
DIVIDE IT

DOWN.

It would give as much to the idler as to the
worker, to the bad as to the good. Nihilism !
This panther, having prowled across other lands,
has set its paws on our soil, and it is only waiting for the time in which to spring upon its
prey. It was Nihilism that massacred the heroic policemen of Chicago and St. Louis a few
days ago and that burned the railroad property
at Pittsburgh during the great riots ; it was
Nihilism that slew black people in our Northern cities during the war; it was Nihilism that
again and again in San Francisco and in N e w
York mauled to death the Chinese; it is Nihilism that glares out of the windows of the
drunkeries upon sober people as they go by.
Ah ! its power has never yet been tested. It
would, if it had the power, leave every church,
chapel, cathedral, schoolhouse, college, and
home in ashes.
Let me say, it is

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

JJ

THE WORST ENEMY

of the laboring-classes in any country. The
honest cry for reform lifted by oppressed laboring men is drowned out' [by the vociferations
for anarchy. The criminals and the vagabonds
who range through our cities talking about their
rights, when their first right is the penitentiary
—if they could be hushed up, and the downtrodden laboring men of this country could be
heard, there would be more bread for hungry
children. Let not our oppressed laboring men
be beguiled to coming under the bloody banner
of Nihilism. It will make your taxes heavier,
your wages smaller, your table scantier, your
children hungrier, your suffering greater.
Yet this Nihilism, with feet red of slaughter,
comes forth and offers its hand for the republic.
Shall the banns be proclaimed ? If so, where
shall the marriage altar be ? and who will be the
officiating priest ? A n d what will be the music ?
That altar will have to be white with bleached
skulls, the officiating priest must be a dripping
assassin, the music must be the smothered groan
of multitudinous victims, the garlands must be
twisted of nightshade, the fruit must be apples
of Sodom, the wine must be the blood of S t

78

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

Bartholomew's massacre. N o ! It is not to
Nihilism, the sanguinital monster, that this land
is to be married.
I I I . Another suitor for the hand of this nation is
INFIDELITY.

Mark you that all anarchists are infidels. N o t
one of them believes in the Bible, and very
rarely any of them believe in a God. Their
most conspicuous leader was the other day
pulled by the leg from under a bed in a house
of infamy, cursing and blaspheming. The police of Chicago, exploring the dens of the anarchists, found dynamite, and vitriol, and Tom
Paine's "Age of Reason," and obscene pictures,
and complimentary biographies of thugs and
assassins, but not one Testament, not one of
Wesley's hymn-books, not one Roman Catholic
breviary. There are two wings to infidelity :
the one calls itself Liberalism, and appears in
highly literary magazines, and is for the educated and refined; the other wing is in the form
of Anarchy, and is for the vulgar. But both
wings belong to the same old filthy vulture—
infidelity ! Elegant infidelity proposes to conquer this land to itself by the pen ; Anarchy
proposes to conquer it by bludgeon and torch.

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

79

W h e n the midnight ruffians despoiled the
grave of A. T. Stewart, in St. Mark's churchyard, everybody was shocked ; but infidelity
proposes something worse than that—the robs
bing of all the graves of Christendom of the
hope-of a resurrection. It proposes to chisel
out from the tombstones of your Christian
dead the words, "Asleep in Jesus," and to substitute the words, "Obliteration—annihilation/'
Infidelity proposes to take away from this
country the book that makes the difference between the United States and the United Kingdom of Dahomey, between American civilization and Bornesian cannibalism.
The only impulse in the right direction that
this world has ever had has come from the Bible.
It was the mother of Roman law and of
healthful jurisprudence. That book has been
the mother of all reforms and all charities—mother of English Magna Charta and American Declaration of Independence. I tell you
that
THE WORST ATTEMPTED CRIME

of the century is the attempt to destroy this
book; yet infidelity, loathsome, stenchful, leprous, pestiferous, rotten monster, stretches out

8o

T H E BATTLE FOR BREAD.

its hand, ichorous with the second death, to
take the hand of this republic.
A n d this suitor presses his case appallingly.
Shall the banns of that marriage be proclaimed ?
" N o ! " say the home missionaries of the West
—a martyr band, of whom the world is not
worthy, toiling amid fatigues, and malaria, and
starvation. " N o ! not if we can help it. By
what we and our children have suffered we forbid the banns of that marriage !" " N o !" say
all patriotic voices; " o u r institutions were
bought at too dear a price, and were defended
at too great a sacrifice, to be so cheaply surrendered/' " N o !" says the God of Bunker Hill,
and Independence Hall, and Gettysburg; " I
did not start this nation for such a farce."
''No," cry ten thousand voices; " t o infidelity
this land shall not be married !"
I V . But there is
ANOTHER

SUITOR

that presents his hand for the hand of this republic. H e is mentioned in the verse following
my text, where it says: "As the bridegroom
rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee." It is not my figure, it is the

T H E BATTLE FOR BREAD.

81

figure of the Bible. As often princesses at their
birth are
PLEDGED

IN

TREATY

of marriage to princes or kings of earth, so this
nation at its birth was pledged to Christ for
Divine marriage. Before Columbus and his
hundred and twenty men embarked on the
Santa Maria, the Pinta, and the Nina, for their
wonderful voyage, what was the last thing they
did ? They kneeled down and took the holy
sacrament of the Lord Jesus Christ. After they
caught the first glimpse of this country, and the
gun of one ship had announced it to the other
vessels that land had been discovered, what was
the song that went up from all the three decks ?
a
Gloria in Excelsis." After Columbus and his
hundred and twenty men had stepped from the
ships' decks to the solid ground, what did they
do ? They all knelt and consecrated the New
World to God.
W h a t did the Huguenots do after they landed
in the Carolinas ? What did the Holland refugees do after they had landed in New York ?
What did the Pilgrim Fathers do after they
landed in New England ? With bended knee,
and uplifted face, and heaven-besieging prayer

82

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

they took possession of this country for God.
H o w was the first American Congress opened ?
By prayer in the name of Jesus Christ. From
its birth this nation was pledged for holy marriage with Christ.
And, then, see how good God has been to us !
Just open the map of the continent and see
how it is shaped for immeasurable prosperities.
Navigable rivers, more in number and greater
than of any other land, rolling down on all
sides into the sea, prophesying large manufactures and easy commerce. Look at the great
ranges of mountains timbered with wealth on
the top and sides, metalled with wealth underneath. One hundred and eighty thousand
square miles of coal, four hundred and eighty
thousand square miles of iron. All fruits, all
minerals, all harvests. Scenery displaying an
autumnal pageantry that no land on earth pretends to rival.
N o South American earthquakes. N o Scotch mists. N o London fogs.
N o Egyptian plagues. N o Germanic divisions.
The people of the United States are happier
than any people on earth. It is the testimony
of every man that has travelled abroad. For
the poor, more sympathy; for the industrious
more opportunity. Oh, how good God was tq

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S3

our fathers, and how good H e has been to us
and our children !
W e have during the past six or seven years
TURNED A NEW LEAF

in our national history by the sudden addition
of millions of foreigners. A t Kansas City I
was told by a gentleman who had opportunity
for large investigation, that a great multitude
had gone through there, averaging in worldly
estate eight hundred dollars. I was told in the
city of Washington by an officer of the Government, who had opportunity for authentic
investigation, that thousands and thousands had
gone, averaging one thousand dollars in possession each. I was told by the Commissioner
of Emigration that twenty families that had arrived at Castle Garden brought eighty-five thousand dollars with them. Mark you, families,
not tramps—additions to the national wealth,
not subtractions therefrom. I saw some of
them reading their Bibles and their hymn-books,
thanking God for His kindness in helping
them cross the sea. They will turn your Territories into States, and your wildernesses into
gardens, if you will build for them churches,

84

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

and establish for them schools, and send Christian missionaries.
Are you afraid this continent is going to be
overcrowded with this population ? Ah ! that
shows you have not been to Oregon, that shows
that you have not been to Texas. A fishingsmack to-day on Lake Ontario might as well
be afraid of being crowded by other shipping
before night as for any one of the next ten generations of Americans to be afraid of being
overcrowded by foreign populations in this
country. The one State of Texas is far larger
than all the Austrian Empire, yet the Austrian
Empire supports thirty-five million people. The
one State of Texas is larger than all France,
and France supports thirty-six million people.
The one State of Texas far surpasses in size the
Germanic Empire, yet the Germanic Empire
supports forty-one million people. I tell you
the great want of the Territories and of the
Western States is more population.
While some may stand at the gates of the
city, saying : " Stand back !" to foreign populations, I press out as far beyond those gates as
I can press out beyond them, and beckon to
foreign nations, saying: "Come, come !" "But,"
say you, " I am so afraid that they will bring

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

85

their prejudices for foreign Governments, and
plant them here." Absurd. They are sick of
the Governments that have oppressed them,
and they want free America. Give them the
great gospel of welcome. Throw around them
all Christian hospitalities. They will add their
industry and hard-earned wages to this country,
and then we will dedicate all to Christ, " and
thy land shall be married."
THE SITE FOR THE NUPTIALS.

But where shall the marriage altar be ? Let
it be the Rocky Mountains, when through artificial and mighty irrigation, all their tops shall
be covered, as they will be, with vineyards, and
orchards, and grain fields. Then let the Bostons, and the New Yorks, and the Charlestons
of the Pacific Coast come to the marriage altar
on the one side, and then let the Bostons, and
the New Yorks, and the Charlestons of the
Atlantic Coast come to the marriage altar on
the other side, and there between them let this
bride of nations kneel; and then if the organ
of the loudest thunders that ever shook the
Sierra Nevadas on the one side, or moved the
foundations of the Alleghanies on the other
side, should open full diapason of wedding

86

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

march, that organ of thunders could not drown
the voice of Him who should take the hand of
the bride of nations, saying : "As a bridegroom
rejoiceth over a bride, so thy God rejoiceth
over thee." "And so thy land shall be married."

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

Zj

THE WORST FOE OF LABOR.
* He that earneth wages, earneth wages to put it
fato a bag with holes."—Haggai i: 6.

I N Persia, under the reign of Darius Hystaspes, the people did not prosper. v They made
money, but did not keep it. They were like people who have a sack in which they put money,
not knowing that the sack is torn, or eaten of
moths, or in some way made incapable of
holding valuables. A s fast as the coin was put
in one end of the sack it dropped out of the
other. It made no difference how much wages
they got, for they lost them. " H e that earneth
wages, earneth wages to put it into a bag with
holes."
WHAT

HAS BECOME O F T H E

BILLIONS

and billions of dollars in this country paid to
the working classes ? Some of these moneys
have gone for house rent, or the purchase of
homesteads, or wardrobe, or family expenses, or
the necessities of life, or to provide comforts in
old age. What has become of other billions ?

88

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

Wasted in foolish outlay. Wasted at the gaming-table. Wasted in intoxicants. Put into a
bag with a hundred holes.
Gather up the money that the working classes
have spent for rum during the last thirty years,
and I will build for every workingman a house,
and lay out for him a garden, and clothe his
sons in broadcloth and his daughters in silks,
and stand at his front door a prancing span of
sorrels or bays, and secure him a policy of lifeinsurance, so that the present home may be
well maintained after he is dead. T h e most
persistent, most overpowering enemy of the
working classes is intoxicating liquor. It is
the anarchist of the centuries, and has boycotted and is now boycotting the body and
mind and soul of American labor. It is to it
a worse foe than monopoly, and worse than associated capital.
It annually swindles industry out of a large
percentage of its earnings. It holds out its
blasting solicitations to the mechanic or operative on his way to work, and at the noon-spell,
and on his way home at eventide ; on Saturday,
when the wages are paid, it snatches a large part
of the money that might come to the family,
and sacrifices it among the saloon-keepers.

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89

Within eight hundred yards of Sands Street
Methodist Church, Brooklyn, it has fifty-four
saloons, and is plotting now for another. Stand
the saloons of this country side by side, and it is
carefully estimated they would reach from New
York to Chicago. Forward, march, says the
rum power, and take possession of the American
nation !
The rum business is pouring its vitriolic and
damnable liquids down the throats of hundreds
of thousands of laborers, and while the ordinary
strikes are ruinous both to employers and employees,
I PROCLAIM A STRIKE

universal against strong drink, which, if kept
up, will be the relief of the working classes and
the salvation of the nation. I will undertake
to say that there is not a healthy laborer in the
United States who, within the next ten years,
if he will refuse all intoxicating beverage and
be saving, may not become a capitalist on a
small scale. Our country in a year spends one
billion five hundred million and fifty thousand
dollars for rum. Of course the working classes
do a great deal of this expenditure. Careful
statistics show that the wage-earning classes of

go

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

Great Britain expend in liquors one hundred
million pounds, or five hundred million dollars
a year. Sit down and think, O workingman !
how much you have expended in these directions. Add it all up. Add up what your
neighbors have expended, and realize that instead of answering the beck of other people you
might have been your own capitalist. When
you deplete a workingman's physical energy
you deplete his capital.
THE STIMULATED WORKMAN

gives out before the unstimulated workman.
My father said : " I became a temperance man
in early life, because I noticed in the harvestfield that, though I was physically weaker than
other workmen, I could hold out longer than
they. They took stimulants, I took none." A
brickmaker in England gives his experience in
regard to this matter among men in his employ.
H e says, after investigation : " T h e beer-drinker
who made the fewest bricks made six hundred
and fifty nine thousand; the abstainer who
made the fewest bricks, seven hundred and
forty-six thousand. The difference in behalf of
the abstainer over the indulger, eighty-seven
thousand." There came a very exhausting time

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

gi

in the British Parliament. The session was prolonged until nearly all the members got sick or
worn out. Out of six hundred and fifty-two
members only two went through undamaged ;
they were teetotalers.
When an army goes out to the battle the
soldier who has water or coffee in his canteen
marches easier and fights better than the soldier
who has whiskey in his canteen. Rum helps a
man to fight when he has only one contestant,
and that at the street corner. But when he goes
forth to maintain some great battle for God and
his country, he wants no rum about him. W h e n
the Russians go to war a corporal passes along
the line and smells the breath of every soldier.
If there be in his breath a taint of intoxicating
liquor, the man is sent back to the barracks.
W h y ? H e cannot endure fatigue. All our
young men know this. When they are preparing for a regatta, or for a ball club, or for an
athletic wrestling, they abstain.^ Our working
people will be wiser after a while, and the money
they fling away on hurtful indulgences they will
put into co-operative associations, and so become
capitalists. If the workingman put down his
wages and then take his expenses and spread
them out, so they will just equal, he is not wise.

92

T H E BATTLE FOR BREAD.

I know workingmen who are in a perfect fidget
until they get rid of their last dollar.
A COSTLY

SACQUE.

The following circumstances came under our
observation : A young man worked hard to earn
his six or seven hundred dollars yearly. Marriage day came. The bride had inherited five
hundred dollars from her grandfather. She
spent every dollar of it on the wedding dress.
Then they rented two rooms in a third story.
Then the young man took extra evening employment ; almost exhausted with the day's
work, yet took evening employment. It almost
extinguished his eyesight. W h y did he add
evening employment to the day employment ?
T o get money. W h y did he want to get
money ? T o lay up something for a rainy day?
No. T o get his life insured, so that in case of
his death his wife would not be a beggar? N o .
H e put the extra evening work to the day work
that he might get a hundred and fifty dollars to
get his wife a sealskin coat. The sister of the
bride heard of this achievement, and was not to
be eclipsed. She was very poor, and she sat up
working nearly all the nights for a great while
until she bought a sealskin coat, I have not

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93

heard of the result on that street. The street
was full of those who are on small incomes, but
I suppose the contagion spread, and that everybody had a sealskin coat, and that the people
came out and cried, practically, not literally:
" Though the heavens fall, we must have a sealskin coat!"
I was out West, and a minister of the Gospel
told me, in Iowa, that his church and the neighborhood had been impoverished by the fact that
they put mortgages on their farms in order to
send their families to the Philadelphia Centennial, It was not respectable not to go to the
Centennial. Between such evils and pauperism
there is a very short step. The vast majority of
children in your almshouses are there because
their parents are drunken, or lazy, or recklessly
improvident.
I have no sympathy for skinflint saving, but
I plead for
CHRISTIAN PRUDENCE.

You say it is impossible now to lay up anything
for a rainy day. I know it, but we are at the
daybreak of national prosperity. Some people
think it is mean to turn the gas low when they
go out Of the parlor. They feel embarrassed if

94

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

the door-bell rings before they have the hall
lighted. They apologize for the plain meal, if
you surprise them at the table. Well, it is mean
if it is only to pile up a miserly hoard. But if
it be to educate your children, if it be to give
more help to your wife when she does not feel
strong, if it be to keep your funeral day from
being horrible beyond all endurance, because it
is to be the disruption and annihilation of the
domestic circle—if it be for that, then it is magnificent.
There are those who are kept in poverty because of their own fault. They might have been
well off, but they smoked or chewed up their
earnings, or they lived beyond their means,
while others on the same wages and on the
same salaries went on to competency. I know
a man who was all the time complaining of his
poverty and crying out against rich men, while
he himself keeps two dogs, and chews and
smokes, and is full to the chin with whiskey and
beer. Wilkins Micawber said to David Copperfield, " Copperfield, my boy, one pound income, expenses twenty shillings and sixpence ;
result, misery. But, Copperfield, my boy, one
pound income, expenses nineteen shillings and
gix pence; result, happiness/' But, 0 wprk-

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95

ingman of America, take your morning dram,
and your noon dram, and your evening dram,
and spend everything you have over for tobacco and excursions, and you insure poverty
for yourself and your children forever!
If by some generous fiat of the capitalists of
this country, or by a new law of the Govern*
ment of the United States, twenty-five per
cent, or fifty per cent, or one hundred per
cent were added to the wages of the working
classes of America, it would be no advantage
to hundreds of thousands of them unless they
stopped strong drink. Aye, until they quit
that evil habit, the more money, the more ruin,
the more wages, the more holes in the bag.
My plea this morning is to those working
people who are in a
DISCIPLESHIP TO WHISKEY

bottle, the beer-mug, and the wine-flask. A n d
what I say to them will not be more appropriate to the working classes than to the business
classes, and the literary classes, and the professional classes, and all classes, and not with the
people of one age more than of all ages. Take
one good square look at the suffering of the
man whom strong drink has enthralled, and re-

g6

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

member that toward that goal multitudes are
running. The disciple of alcoholism suffers the
LOSS OF SELF-RESPECT.

Just as soon as a man wakes up and finds
that he is the captive of strong drink, he feels
demeaned. I do not care how reckless he acts.
H e may say, " I don't care ;" he does care. H e
cannot look a pure man in the eye unless it is
with positive force of resolution. Three-fourths
of his nature is destroyed; his self-respect is
g o n e ; he says things he would not otherwise
say; he does thing he would not otherwise do.
When a man is nine-tenths gone with strong
drink, the first thing he wants to do is to persuade you that he can stop any time he wants to.
H e cannot. The Philistines have bound him
hand and foot, and shorn his locks, and put out
his eyes, and are making him grind in the mill
of a great horror. H e cannot stop. I will
prove it. H e knows that his course is bringing
ruin upon himself. H e loves himself. If he
could stop he would. H e knows his course is
bringing ruin upon his family. H e loves them.
H e would stop if he could. H e cannot. Perhaps he could three months or a year ago, not
now. Just ask him to stop for a month. H e

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

97

c a n n o t ; he knows he cannot, so ne does not
try.
I had a friend who was for
FIFTEEN YEARS GOING

DOWN

under this evil habit. H e had large means.
H e had given thousands of dollars to Bible
societies and reformatory institutions of all
sorts. H e was very genial, very generous, and
very lovable, and whenever he talked about
this evil habit he would say, " I can stop any
time." But he kept going on, going on, down,
down, down. His family would say, " I wish
you would stop." " Why," he would reply, " I
can stop any time if I want to." After a while
he had delirium tremens; he had it twice ; and
yet, after that, he said, " I could stop at any
time if I wanted to." H e is dead now. What
killed him ? Rum ! Rum ! And yet among
his last utterances was, " I can stop at any
time." H e did not stop it, because he could
not stop it. Oh, there is a point in inebriation
beyond which if a man goes he cannot s t o p !
One of these victims said to a Christian man,
" Sir, if I were told that I couldn't get a drink
until to-morrow night unless I had all my

93

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

fingers cut off, I would say, ' Bring the hatchet
and cut them off now.' " I have a dear friend
in Philadelphia whose nephew came to him one
day, and, when he was exhorted about his evil
habit, said, " Uncle, I can't give it up. If there
stood a cannon and it was loaded, and a glass
of wine were set on the mouth of that cannon,
and I knew that you would fire it off just as I
came up and took the glass, I would start, for
I MUST HAVE I T . "

Oh, it is a sad thing for a man to wake up in
this life and feel that he is a captive ! H e says,
" I could have got rid of this once, but I can't
now. I might have lived an honorable life and
died a Christian death ; but there is no hope for
me now ; there is no escape for me. Dead, but
not buried. I am a walking corpse, I am an
apparition of what I once was. I am a caged
immortal beating against the wires of my cage
in this direction ; beating against the cage until there is blood on the wires and blood upon
my soul, yet not able to get out. Destroyed
without remedy !"
I go on, and say that the disciple of rum
suffers from the

T H E BATTLE FOR BREAD.
LOSS OF

99

HEALTH.

The older men in the congregation may remember that some years ago Dr. Sewell went
through this country and electrified the people
by his lectures, in which he showed the effects
of alcoholism on the human stomach. H e had
seven or eight diagrams by which he showed
the devastation of strong drink upon the physical system. There were thousands of people
that turned back from that ulcerous sketch,
swearing eternal abstinence from everything
that could intoxicate.
God only knows what the drunkard suffers.
Pain files on every nerve, and travels every
muscle, and gnaws every bone, and burns with
every flame, and stings with every poison, and
pulls at him with every torture. What reptiles
crawl over his creeping limbs ! W h a t fiends
stand by his midnight pillow ! W h a t groans
tear his ear ! W h a t horrors shiver through his
soul! Talk of the rack, talk of the Inquisition, talk of the funeral pyre, talk of the crushing Juggernaut—he feels them all at once.
Have you ever been in the ward of
THE

HOSPITAL

where these inebriates are dying, the stench of

IOO

T H E BATTLE FOR BREAD.

their wounds driving back the attendants, their
voices sounding through the night ?
The
keeper comes up and says, " Hush, now, be
still! Stop making all this noise!" But it is
effectual only for a moment, for as soon as the
keeper is gone they begin again, " Oh, God !
Oh, God ! Help ! Help ! Rum ! Give me
rum ! Help ! Take them off me ! Take them
off me ! Oh, God!" A n d then they shriek,
and they rave, and they pluck out their hair by
handfuls, and bite their nails into the quick, and
then they groan, and they shriek, and they
blaspheme, and they ask the keepers to kill
t h e m — " S t a b m e ! Smother m e !
Strangle
me ! Take the devils off me !" Oh, it is no
fancy sketch ! That thing is going on now all
up and down the land, and I tell you further
that this is going to be the death that some of
you will die. I know it. I see it coming.
Again, the inebriate suffers through the
LOSS O F

HOME.

I do not care how much he loves his wife and
children, if this passion for strong drink has
mastered him, he will do the most outrageous
things ; and if he could not get drink in any

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

IOI

other way, he would sell his family into eternal bondage.
How many homes have been
broken up in that way no one but God knows.
Oh, is there anything that will so destroy a man
for this life and damn him for the life that is to
come ? I hate that strong drink. With all
the concentrated energies of my soul I hate i t
Do not tell me that a man can be happy when
he knows that he is breaking his wife's heart and
clothing his children with rags. Why, there
are on the roads and streets of this land to-day
little children, barefooted, unwashed, and unkempt—want on every patch of their faded
dress and on every wrinkle of their prematurely old countenances, who would have been in
churches to-day, and as well clad as you are,
but for the fact that rum destroyed their
parents and drove them into the grave. O
rum, thou foe of God, thou despoiler of homes,
thou recruiting officer of the pit, I hate thee !
But my subject takes a deeper tone, and
that is, that the unfortunate of whom I speak
suffers from the
LOSS O F ' THE SOUL.

The Bible intimates that in the future world,

102

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

if we are unforgiven here, our bad passions and
appetites, unrestrained, will go along with us
and make our torment there. So that, I suppose, when an inebriate wakes up in the last
world, he will feel an infinite thirst clawing on
him. Now, down in the world, although he
may have been very poor, he could beg or he
could steal five cents with which to get that
which would slake his thirst for a little while ;
but in eternity where is the rum to come from ?
Oh, the deep, exhausting, exasperating, everlasting thirst of the drunkard in hell! Why, if
a fiend came up to earth for some infernal work
in a grog-shop, and should go back taking on
its wing just one drop of that for which the
inebriate in the lost world longs, what excitement would it make there ! Put that one drop
from off the fiend's wing on the tip of the
tongue of the destroyed inebriate; let the
liquid brightness just touch i t ; let the drop be
very small, if it only have in it the smack of
alcoholic drink; let that drop just touch the
lost inebriate in the lost world, and he would
spring to his feet and cry, " That is rum, aha !
That is rum !" And it* would wake up the
echoes of the damned—" Give me rum ! Give
me rum ! Give me rum !" In the future world

T H E BATTLE FOR BREAD.

103

I do not believe that it will be the absence of
God that will make the drunkard's sorrow. I
do not believe that it will be the absence of
light. I do not believe that it will be the absence of holiness. I think it will be the absence
of rum. Oh, " look not upon the wine when
it is red, when it moveth itself aright in the
cup, for at the last it biteth like a serpent, and
it stingeth like an adder."
It is about time that we have
ANOTHER

WOMAN'S

CRUSADE

like that which swept through Ohio ten or
twelve years ago. With prayer and song the
women went into the groggeries, and whole
neighborhoods, towns, and cities were redeemed
by their Christian heroics.
Thirty women
cleared out the rum traffic from a village of one
thousand inhabitants.
If thirty women, surcharged of the Holy Ghost, could renovate a
town of a thousand, three thousand consecrated
women, resolved to give themselves no peace
until this crime was extirpated from this city,
could in six months clear out three fourths of
the grog-shops of Brooklyn. If there be three
thousand women now in this city who will put

104

T H E BATTLE FOR BREAD.

their hands and their hearts to the work, I will
take the contract for driving out all these moral
nuisances from the city—at any rate, three
fourths of them—in three months. If, when
that host of three thousand consecrated women
is marshalled, there be no one to lead them,
then, as a minister of the Most High God, I
will offer to take my position at the front of
the host, and I will cry to them, " C o m e on,
ye women of Christ, with your songs and your
prayers ! Some of you take the enemy's right
wing and some the left wing. Forward ! The
Lord of Hosts is with us ; the God of Jacob is
our refuge ! Down with the dram-shops !"
But not waiting for those mouths of hell to
close, let me advise the working and the business classes, and all classes, to stop strong drink.
While I declared some time ago that there was
a point beyond which a man could not stop, I
want to tell you that while a man cannot stop
in his own strength, the Lord God by His
grace can help him to stop at any time. I was
in a room in New York where there were
many men who had been reclaimed from
drunkenness. I heard their testimony, and for
the first time in my life there flashed out a
truth I never understood. They said, " W e

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

105

were victims of strong drink. W e tried to give
it up, but always failed ; but somehow since we
gave our hearts to Christ, H e has taken care of
us." I believe that the time will soon come
when the grace of God will show its power not
only to save man's soul, but his body, and reconstruct, purify, elevate, and redeem it.
I verily believe that, although you feel grappling at the roots of your tongues an almost
omnipotent thirst, if you will give your heart to
God, H e will help you by His grace to conquer. Try it. It is
YOUR

LAST

CHANCE.

I have looked off upon the desolation. Sitting in our religious assemblages there are a
good many people in awful peril; and, judging
from ordinary circumstances, there is not one
chance in five thousand that they will get clear
of it. There are men in my congregation from
Sabbath to Sabbath of whom I must make the
remark, that if they do not change their
course, within ten years they will, as to their
bodies, lie down in drunkards' graves; and as
to their souls, lie down in a drunkard's perdition. I know that is an awful thing to say, but
I cannot help saying it.

IC6

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

Oh, beware ! You have not yet been captured.
Beware ! Whether the beverage be
poured in golden chalice or pewter mug, in the
foam at the top, in white letters, let there be
spelled out to your soul, " Beware !" W h e n
the books of Judgment are open, and ten million drunkards come up to get their doom, I
want you to bear witness that I, this morning,
in the fear of God and in the love for your soul,
told you, with all affection and with all kindness, to beware of that which has already exerted its influence upon your family, blowing
out some of its lights—a premonition of the
blackness of darkness forever.
Oh, if you could only hear this morning Intemperance with drunkards' bones drumming
on the head of the liquor-cask the Dead March
of immortal souls, methinks the very glance of
a wine-cup would make you shudder, and the
color of the liquor would make you think of
the blood of the soul, and the foam on the top
of the cup would remind you of the froth on
the maniac's lip ; and you would go home from
this service and kneel down and pray God that,
rather than your children should become captives of this evil habit, you would like to carry
them out some bright spring day to the ceme-

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

I07

tery, and put them away to the last sleep, until at the call of the south wind the flowers
would come up all over the grave — sweet
prophecies of the resurrection ! God has a
balm for such a wound; but what flower of
comfort ever grew on the blasted heath of a
drunkard's sepulchre ?

108

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

BLACK SERVANTS O F T H E SKY.
" And the ravens brought him bread and flesh in
the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening."—
i Kings, xvii. 6.

T H E ornithology of the Bible is a very interesting study. The stork which knoweth her
appointed time. The common sparrows teaching the lesson of God's providence. The ostriches of the desert, by careless incubation,
illustrating the recklessness of parents who do
not take enough pains with their children. The
eagle symbolizing riches which take wings and
fly away. The pelican emblemizing solitude.
The bat, a flake of the darkness. The night
hawk, the ossifrage, the cuckoo, the lapwing,
the osprey, by the command of God in Leviticus, flung out of the world's bill of fare.
I would like to have been with Audubon as
he went through the woods, with gun and pencil, bringing down and sketching the fowls of
heaven, his unfolded portfolio thrilling all
Christendom. W h a t

T H E BATTLE FOR BREAD.
WONDERFUL

IO9

CREATURES

of God the birds are ! Some of them, this
morning, like the songs of heaven let loose,
bursting through the gates of heaven. Consider
their feathers, which are clothing and conveyance at the same time ; the nine vertebrae of the
neck, the three eyelids to each eye, the third
eyelid an extra curtain for graduating the light
of the sun. Some of these birds scavengers and
some of them orchestra. Thank God for quail's
whistle, and lark's carol, and the twitter of the
wren, called by the ancients
THE

K I N G OF BIRDS,

because when the fowls of heaven went into a
contest as to who should fly the highest, and the
eagle swung nearest the sun, a wren on the back
of the eagle, after the eagle was exhausted,
sprang up much higher, and so was called by
the ancients the king of birds. Consider those
of them that have golden crowns and crests,
showing them to be feathered imperials. And
listen to the humming-bird's serenade in the ear
of the honeysuckle. Look at the belted kingfisher, striking like a dart from sky to water.
Listen to the voice of the owl, giving the keynote to all croakers. And behold the condor

no

T H E BATTLE FOR BREAD.

among the Andes, battling with the reindeer.
I do not know whether an aquarium or aviary
is the best altar from which to worship God.
There is an incident in my text that baffles
all the ornithological wonders of the world.
The grain crop had been cut off. Famine was
in the land. In a cave by the brook Cherith
sat a minister of God,
ELIJAH,

WAITING

for something to eat. W h y did he not go to
the neighbors ? There were no neighbors ; it
was a wilderness. W h y did he not pick some
of the berries? There were none. If there
had been, they would have been dried up.
Seated one morning at the mouth of his cave,
the prophet sees a flock of birds approaching.
Oh, if they were only partridges, or if he only
had an arrow with which to bring them down !
But as they come nearer, he finds they are not
comestible, but unclean, and the eating of them
would be spiritual death. The strength of their
beak, the length of their wings, the blackness
of their color, their loud, harsh " cruck !
cruck!" prove them to be ravens.
They whirr around about the prophet's head,
and then they come on fluttering wing and

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

Ill

pause on the level of his lips, and one of the
ravens brings bread, and another raven brings
meat, and after they have discharged their tiny
cargo they wheel past, and others come, until
after awhile the prophet has enough, and these
black servants of the wilderness table are gone.
For six months, and some say a whole year,
morning and evening, a breakfast and
A SUPPER-BELL

sounded as these ravens rang out on the air
their "cruck ! cruck !" Guess where they got
the food from. The old rabbins say they got it
from the kitchen of King Ahab. Others say
that the ravens got their food from pious
Obadiah, who was in the habit of feeding the
persecuted. Some say that the ravens brought
the food to their young in the trees, and that
Elijah had only to climb up and get i t Some
say that the whole story is improbable; for
these were carnivorous birds, and the food they
carried was the torn flesh, of living beasts, and
that ceremonially unclean; or it was carrion,
and it would not have been fit for the prophet.
Some say they were not ravens at all, but that
the word translated " ravens" in my text ought
to have been translated " Arabs ;" so it would

112

T H E BATTLE FOR BREAD.

have read, " The Arabs brought bread and flesh
in the morning, and bread and flesh in the
evening." Anything but admit the Bible to be
true.
H e w away at this miracle until all the miracle
is gone. Go on with the depleting process, but
know, my brother, that you are robbing only
one man—and that is yourself—of one of the
most comforting, beautiful, pathetic, and triumphant lessons in all the ages. I can tell you
WHO THESE PURVEYORS WERE

—they were ravens. I can tell you who
freighted them with provisions—God. I can
tell you who launched them—God. I can tell
you who taught them which way to fly—-God.
I can tell you who told them at what cave to
swoop—God. I can tell you who introduced
raven to prophet and prophet to raven—God.
There is one passage I will whisper in your ear,
for I would not want to utter it aloud, lest
some one should drop down under its power—
" I f any man shall take away from the words
of the prophecy of this book, God shall take
away His part out of the book of life and out
of the Holy City."
While, then, this morning we watch the

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

113

ravens feeding Elijah, let the swift dove of
God's Spirit sweep down the sky with divine
food, and on outspread wing pause at the lip of
every soul hungering for comfort.
O n the banks of what rivers have been the
great battles of the world ? While you are
looking over the map of the world to answer
that, I will tell you that
THE GREAT CONFLICT

to-day is on the Thames, on the Hudson, on the
Mississippi, on the Kennebec, on the Savannah,
on the Rhine, on the Nile, on the Ganges, on
the Hoang-Ho. It is a battle that has been
going on for six thousand years. The troops
engaged in it are fourteen hundred millions
and those who have fallen are vaster in nurrber than those who march. It is a battle for
bread.
Sentimentalists sit in a cushioned chair, in
their pictured study, with their slippered feet
on a damask ottoman, and say that this world
is a great scene of avarice and greed. It does
not seem so to me. If it were not for the
ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES

of the cases, nine tenths of the stores, factories,

114

T H E

BATTLE FOR BREAD.

shops, banking-houses of the land would be
closed to-morrow. W h o is that man delving in
the Colorado hills? or toiling in a New England
factory ? or going through a roll of bills in the
bank ? or measuring a fabric on the counter ?
H e is a champion sent forth in behalf of some
home circle that has to be cared for, in behalf
of some church of God that has to be supported,
in behalf of some asylum of mercy that has to
be sustained. W h o is that woman bending
over the sewing-machine, or carrying the bundle,
or sweeping the room, or mending the garment,
or sweltering at the washtub ? That is Deborah,
one of the Lord's heroines, battling against
Amalekitish want, which comes down with iron
chariot to crush her and hers.
T H E GREAT

QUESTION

with the vast majority of people to-day is not
" H o m e Rule," but whether there shall be any
home to rule; not one of tariff but whether
they shall have anything to tax. The great
question with the vast majority of people is,
" H o w shall I support my family ? How shall
I meet my notes ? H o w shall I pay my rent ?
H o w shall I give food, clothing, and education
to those who are dependent upon me ?" Oh,

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

I Ig

if God would help me to-day to assist you in
the solution of that problem, the happiest man
in this house would be your preacher ! I have
gone out on a cold morning with expert sportsmen to hunt for pigeons ; I have gone out on
the meadows to hunt for quail; I have gone
out on the marsh to hunt for reed-birds; but
this morning I am out for ravens.
I. Notice, in the first place in the story of
my text, that these winged caterers came to
Elijah
DIRECTLY

FROM

GOD.

" I have commanded the ravens that they
feed thee," we find God saying in an adjoining
passage. They did not come out of some other
cave. They did not just happen to alight there.
God freighted them, God launched them, and
God told them by what cave to swoop. That
is the same God that is going to supply you.
H e k your Father. You would have to make
an elaborate calculation before you could tell
me how many pounds of food and how many
yards of clothing would be necessary for you
and your family ; but God knows without any
calculation. You have a plate at His table,
and you are going to be waited on, unless you

Il6

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

act like a naughty child, and kick, and scramble,
and pound saucily the plate and try to upset
things.
God has a vast family, and everything is
methodized, and you are going to be served if
you will only wait your turn. God has already
ordered all the suits of clothes you will ever
need, down to the last suit in which you shall
be laid out. God has already ordered all the
food you will ever eat, down to the last crumb
that will be put in your mouth in the dying
sacrament. It may not be just the kind of food
or apparel we would prefer.
THE SENSIBLE PARENT

depends on his own judgment as to what ought
to be the apparel and the food of the minor in
the family. The child would say, "Give me
sugars and confections." "Oh, no," says the
parent; " you must have something plainer
first." The child would say, "Oh, give me
these great blotches of color in the garment."
" No," says the parent; " that wouldn't be suitable."
Now, God is our Father and we are minors,
and He is going to clothe us and feed us,
although he may not always yield to our infan*

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

I17

tile wish for sweets and glitter. These ravens
of the text did not bring pomegranates from
the glittering platter of King Arab. They
brought bread and meat. God had all the
heavens and the earth before Him and under
Him, and yet he sends this plain food, because
it was best for Elijah to have it. Oh, be
strong, my hearer, in the fact that the same
God is going to supply y o u ! It is never
" h a r d times" with Him.
His ship never
breaks on the rocks. His banks never fail.
H e has the supply for you and H e has the
means for sending it. H e has not only the
cargo, but the ship. If it were necessary, H e
would swing out from the heavens a flock of
ravens reaching from His gate to yours, until
the food would be flung down the sky from
beak to beak and from talon to talon.
II. Notice again in this story of the text,
that the ravens did not allow Elijah to hoard
up a surplus. They did not bring enough on
Monday to last all the week. They did not
bring enough one morning to last until the
next morning. They came twice a day, and
brought just enough for one time. You know
as well as I, that

118

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.
THE GREAT FRET

of the world is that we want a surplus ; we want
the ravens to bring enough for fifty years.
You have more confidence in the Fulton Bank,
or Nassau Bank, or Bank of England than you
have in the Royal Bank of Heaven. You say,
" All that is very poetic, but you may have the
black ravens ; give me the gold eagles." W e
had better be content with just enough. If in
the morning your family eat up all the food
there is in the house, do not sit down and cry
and say, " I don't know where the next meal is
to come from.'' About five, or six, or seven
o'clock in the morning just look up, and you
will see two black spots on the sky, and you
will hear the flapping of wings, and instead of
Edgar A. Poe's insane raven alighting on the
chamber door, •" only this and nothing more/'
you will find Elijah's two ravens, or two ravens
of the Lord, the one bringing bread and the
other bringing meat—plumed butcher and
baker.
God is infinite in resource. When the city
of Rochelle was besieged and the inhabitants
were dying of the famine, the tides washed up
on the beach as never before, and as never

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

II9

since, enough shell-fish to feed the whole city0
God is good. There is no mistake about that.
History tells us that in 1555 in England there
was a great drought. The crops failed ; but in
Essex, on the rocks, in a place where they had
neither sown nor cultured, a great crop of peas
grew until they filled a hundred measures; and
there were blossoming vines enough, promising
as much more.
But why go so far ? I can give you
A FAMILY INCIDENT.

Some generations back there was a great
drought in Connecticut, New England. The
water disappeared from the hills, and the farmers living on the hills drove their cattle down
toward the valleys, and had them supplied at
the wells and fountains of the neighbors. But
these after a while began to fail, and the neighbors said to Mr. Birdseye, of whom I shall
speak, " You must not send your flocks and
herds down here any more ; our wells are giving
out." Mr. Birdseye, the old Christian man,
gathered his family at the altar, and with his
family he gathered the slaves of the household
—for bondage was then in vogue in Connecticut—and on their knees before God they cried

I20

T H E BATTLE FOR BREAD.

for water; and the family story is, that chere
was weeping and great sobbing at that altar
that the family might not perish for lack of
water, and that the herds and flocks might not
perish.
The family rose from the altar. Mr. Birdseye, the old man, took his staff and walked out
over the hills, and in a place where he had
been scores of times, without noticing anything
particular, he saw the ground was very dark,
and he took his staff and turned up the ground,
and water started; and he beckoned to his
servants, and they came and brought pails and
buckets until all the family and all the flocks
and the herds were cared for ; and then they
made troughs reaching from that place down to
the house and barn, and the water flowed, and
it is a living fountain to-day.
N o w I call that old grandfather Elijah, and
I call that brook that began to roll then, and is
rolling still, the brook Cherith ; and the lesson
to me and to all who hear it is, when you are
in great stress of circumstances
PRAY AND DIG,

dig and pray, and pray and dig. How does that
passage go ? " The mountains shall depart and

T H E BATTLE FOR BREAD.

121

the hills be removed, but My loving-kindness
shall not fail." If your merchandise, if your
mechanism, if your husbandry, fail, look out for
ravens. If you have in your despondency put
God on trial and condemned Him as guilty of
cruelty, I move this morning for a new trial. If
the biography of your life is ever written, I
will tell you what the first chapter, and the
middle chapter, and the last chapter will be
about, if it is written accurately. The first
chapter about mercy, the middle chapter about
mercy, the last chapter about mercy. The
mercy that hovered over your cradle. The
mercy that will hover over your grave. The
mercy that will cover all between.
I I I . Again, this story of the text impresses
me that relief came to this prophet with the
most unexpected and with seemingly impossible
conveyance. If it had been a robin-redbreast,
or a musical meadow lark, or a meek turtledove, or a sublime albatross that had brought
the food to Elijah, it would not have been so
surprising. But no. It was a bird so fierce and
inauspicate that we have fashioned one of our
most forceful and repulsive words out of it—
ravenous. That bird has a passion for picking
put the eyes of men and of animals, It loves

122

T H E BATTLE FOR BREAD.

to maul the sick and the dying. It swallows
with vulturous guzzle everything it can put its
beak on ; and yet all the food Elijah gets for
six months or a year is from ravens. So your
supply is going to come from
AN

UNEXPECTED

SOURCE.

You think some great-hearted, generous man
will come along and give you his name on the
back of your note, or he will go security for
you in some great enterprise. N o , he will not.
Grod will open the heart of some Shylock
toward you. Your relief will come from
the most unexpected quarter. The Providence
which seemed ominous will be to you more
than that which seemed auspicious. It will not
be a chaffinch with breast and wing dashed with
white and brown and chestnut; it will be a
black raven.
Here is where we all make our mistake, and
that is in regard to
T H E COLOR OF GOD'S

PROVIDENCE.

A white providence comes to us, and we say,
" Oh, it is mercy !" Then a black providence
comes towards us, and we say, " Oh, that is
disaster !" The white providence comes to you,

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

123

and you have great business success, and you
%ave fifty thousand dollars, and you get proud,
and you get independent of God, and you begin to feel that the prayer, " Give me this day
my daily bread," is inappropriate for you, for
you have made provision for a hundred years.
Then a black providence comes, and it sweeps
everything away, and then you begin to pray,
and you begin to feel your dependence, and begin to be humble before God, and you cry out
for treasures in heaven. The black providence
brought you salvation. The white providence
brought you ruin. That which seemed to be
harsh, and fierce, and dissonant wTas your greatest mercy. It was a raven. There was
A CHILD

BORN

in your house. All your friends congratulated you. The other children of the family
stood amazed looking at the new-comer, and
asked a great many questions, genealogical and
chronological You said—and you said truthfully—that a white angel flew through the
room and left the little one there. That little
one stood with its two feet in the very sanctuary of your affection, and with its two hands it
took hold of the altar of your soul. But one

124

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

day there came one of the three scourges of
children—scarlet-fever, or croup, or diphtheria—
and all that bright scene vanished. The chattering, the strange questions, the pulling at the
dresses as you crossed the floor—all ceased.
A s the great Friend of children stooped
down and leaned toward that cradle, and took
the little one in His arms and walked away
with it into the bower of eternal summer, your
eye began to follow Him, and
YOU FOLLOWED THE TREASURE

H e carried, and you have been following them
ever since ; and instead of thinking of heaven
only once a week, as formerly, you are thinking
of it all the time, and you are more pure and
tender-hearted than you used to be, and you
are patiently waiting for the daybreak. It is
not self-righteousness in you to acknowledge
that you are a better man than you used to be
—you are a better woman than you used to be.
W h a t was it that brought you the sanctifying
blessing ? Oh, it was the dark shadow on the
nursery ; it was the dark shadow on the short
grave ; it was the dark shadow on your broken
heart; it was the brooding of a great black
trouble ; it was a raven—it was a raven ! Pea?

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

125

Lord, teach this people that white providences
do not always mean advancement, and that
black providences do not always mean retrogression.
Children of God, get up out of your despondency. The Lord never had so
MANY RAVENS

as H e has this morning, Fling your fret and
worry to the winds. Sometimes under the vexations of life you feel like my little girl of four
years, who said, under some childish vexation,
" Oh, I wish I could go to heaven and see God
and pick flowers!" H e will let you go when
the right time comes to pick flowers. Until
then, whatever you want, pray for. I suppose
Elijah prayed pretty much all the time. Tremendous work behind him. Tremendous work
before him. God has no spare ravens for idlers
or for people who are prayerless. I put it in
the boldest shape possible, and I am willing to
risk my eternity on i t : ask God in the right
way for what you want, and you shall have it
if it is best for you.
Mrs. Jane Pithey, of Chicago, a well-known
Christian woman, was left by her husband a
widow with one half dollar and a cottage. Sh§

126

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

was palsied, and had a mother ninety years of
age to support. The widowed soul every day
asked God for all that was needed in the household, and the servant even was astonished at
the precision with which God answered the
prayers of that woman, item by item, item by
item. One day, rising from the family altar,
the servant said, "You have not asked for coal,
and
THE COAL IS OUT."

Then they stood and prayed for the coal.
One hour after that the servant threw open the
door and said, " The coal has come." A generous man, whose name I could give you, had
sent—as never before and never since—a supply of coal. You cannot understand it. I do.
Ravens! Ravens!
My friend, you have a right to argue from
precedent that God is going to take care of you.
Has H e not done it two or three times every
day ? That is most marvellous. I look back
and I wonder that God has given me food
three times a day regular all my lifetime, never
missing but once, and then I was lost in the
mountains; but that very morning and that
very night I met the ravens.

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

127

Oh, the Lord is so good that I wish all this
people would
TRUST HIM

with the two lives—the life you are now living
and that which every tick of the watch and
every stroke of the clock inform you is approaching. Bread for your immortal soul comes
to-day. See ! They alight on the platform.
They alight on the backs of all the pews. They
swing among the arches. Ravens! Ravens!
" Blessed are they that hunger after righteousness, for they shall be filled." T o all the sinning, and the sorrowing, and the tempted deliverance comes this hour. Look down, and you
see nothing but your spiritual deformities.
Look back, and you see nothing but wasted
opportunity. Cast your eye forward, and you
have a fearful looking for judgment and fiery
indignation which shall devour the adversary.
But look up, and you behold the whipped
shoulders of an interceding Christ, and the face
of a pardoning God, and the irradiation of an
opening heaven. I hear the whirr of their
wings. Do you not feel the rush of the air on
your cheek ? Ravens ! Ravens !
There is only one question I want to ask:

128

THE BATTLE FOR BREAD.

How many of this audience are willing to trust
God for the supply of their bodies, and trust
the Lord Jesus Christ for the redemption of
their immortal souls ? Amid the clatter of the
hoofs and the clang of the wheels of the judgment-chariot, the whole matter will be demonstrated.

LIFE
OF

KEY. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

C H A P T E R I.
BIRTH AND P A R E N T A G E .

THOMAS D E W I T T TALMAGE was born in Boundbrook,

Somerset County, N e w Jersey, J a n u a r y 7, 1832. H e was
the youngest of twelve children, of whom five were girls.
In personal appearance he is a little above t h e medium
height, with blue eyes and sandy hair and complexion. H e
dresses very plainly b u t neatly, and in private life rather
resembles an off-hand merchant than a clergyman. His
father (David T. Talmage) was noted for his remarkably
good judgment, firmness, deep piety and activity in Christian life. His mother, Catherine Talmage, was a woman
of great strength of character and sweetness of disposition,
and a frequent attendant upon the sick and the poor within,
the circle of her influence. Dr. Talmage says : " A t eightythree years of age my father exchanged earth for heaven.
The wheat was ripe, and it has been harvested. N o painter's pencil, no poet's rhythm could describe that magnifi-

8

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

cent sunsetting. It was no hurricane blast let loose, but a
gale from heaven, t h a t drove into the dust the blossoms of
that almond tree! His death furnished lessons for me to
learn, and for the many friends who knew him. As the
child of his old age, I pay an humble tribute to my father,
who took me into his watchful care, and to my mother,
whose parental faithfulness succeeded in bringing my erring
feet to the Cross, and kindled in my soul the anticpation
of immortal blessedness! I must therefore not fail to speak
of my father's death. Methinks the old family Bible
which I brought away from home would rebuke my silence,
and the very walls of my youthful home would tell the
story of my ingratitude. Therefore, I must speak, even
with a broken utterance, and in terms which may seem too
strong for some who have never had the opportunity of
gathering the fruit of a luxuriant almond tree. In the
death of my father I discover the beauty of old age.
" Solomon announced that ' the almond tree shall flourish.'
Now, it is well known that in the month of J a n u a r y Palestine is adorned with the blossoming of the almond tree.
It breathes its life into that winter month, as a promise of
God sometimes lights up and sweetens the coldness and desolation of a sorrowing spirit. I t was not a useless tree,
made just to bloom and die, or, like the willow by the
water-courses, to stand weeping into the stream; but it disputed with terebinth and cassia, for a high place in the commerce of the world. Its wealth bore down the dromedaries of the desert, and in ships of Tarshish struggled with
the sea. Its rugged trunk parted into gracefulness of branch,
and burst into a lavishness of bloom, till the Temple imitated it in the golden candlestick, and Jeremiah beheld its
branches shaking in his dream! The pomegranate had more
pretentious color, and rung out its fragrance with red bios-

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

9

soming bells; but the almond tree stood in simple white, as
if, while born of earth, it aspired to take on the apparel of
those who dwell in ' raiment exceeding white,' so as no
fuller of earth can white them! W h e n the almond tree
was in full bloom it must have looked like some tree before
our window on a winter's morning, after a nightfall of
snow, when its brightness is almost insufferable, every
stem a white and feathery plume. A row of almond trees
in full bloom must have roused up all the soul's sense
of purity; when they began to scatter their blossoms, as
one by one they fell, it must have seemed like the first
struggling flakes of a chill day, coming thicker and faster,
until the herbage, still deeply tinged with autumnal coloring, is covered, and the hills and mountains, that were of
scarlet, become as white as snow.
" N o w the reader will see Solomon's meaning. He was
given a full-length portrait of an aged man. B y striking
figures of speech he sets forth the trembling and decrepitude, and then comes to describe the whiteness of his locks,
by the blossoming of the almond tree. I t is the master
touch of the picture, for the reader will see in that one sentence not only the appearance of the hair, but an announcement of the beauty of old age. The white locks of a bad
man are but the gathered frosts of the second death, but
a ' hoary head is a crown of g l o r y ' if it be found in the
way of righteousness. There may be no color in the cheek,
no luster in the eye, no spring in the step, no firmness in
the voice, and yet around the head of every old man whose
life has been upright and Christain there hovers a glory
brighter than ever shook on the white tops of the almond
tree. If the voice quiver it is because God is changing it
into a tone fit for the celestial choir. If the back stoop, it
is only because the body is just about to lie down in peaceful

10

LIFE OF REV. T. DE W I T T TALMAGE, IXD.

sleep. If the hand tremble, it is because God is unloosing
it from worldly disappointments, to clasp it on ringing harp
and waving palm. If the hair is turned, it is only the gray
dawn of Heaven's day streaming through the scant locks.
If the brow, once adorned by a luxuriance of auburn or
raven, is smitten with baldness, it is only because God is
preparing a place to set the everlasting crown. The falling
of this aged Christian's staff will be the signal for the
heavenly gate to swing open. The scattering of the almond
blossoms will only discover the setting fruit.
Elijah's
flaming equipage were too tame for this ascending spirit.
The arms of Jesus are grander than bounding horses of
fire.
" The old age of my father revealed the beauty of a cheerful spirit. I never remember to have heard him utter a
a gloomy expression. This was not because he had no perception of the pollutions of society. H e abhored anything
like impurity, or fraud, or double-dealing. He never failed
to lift up his voice against sin, when he saw it. H e was
terrible in his indignation against wrong, and had an iron
grip for the throat of him who trampled on the helpless.
Better meet a lion robbed of her whelps than him, if you
had been stealing'the bread out of the mouth of the fatherless. I t required all the placidity of my mother's voice to
calm him. when once the mountain storm of his righteous
wrath was in full blast; while as for himself, he would
submit to more imposition, and say nothing, than any man
I ever knew.
" But while sensitive to the evils of society, he felt confident that all would be righted. W h e n he prayed, you
could hear in the very tones of his voice the expectation
that Christ Jesus would utterly destroy all iniquity and fill
the earth with His glory.
" My Christian father, too, was not a misanthrope, did not

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

11

think that everything was going to ruin; but considered the
world a very good place to live in. He never sat moping or
despondent, but took things as they were, knowing that
God could and would make them better. W h e n the heaviest surge of calamity came upon him, he met it with as
cheerful a countenance as ever a bather at the beach met
the incoming Atlantic, rising up on the other side of the
wave stronger than when it smote him. W i t h o u t ever being charged with frivolity, he sang, and whistled, and
laughed. H e knew about all the cheerful tunes that were
ever printed in old ' New-Brunswick Collection,' and the
' Shumway,' and the sweetest melodies that Thomas Hastings ever composed. I think that every pillar in the Somerville and Boundbrook churches knew his happy voice. He
took the pitch of sacred song on Sabbath morning, and lost
it not through all the week. I have heard him sing ploughing
amid the aggravations of a ' new ground,' even while serving writs, examining deeds, going to arrest criminals, in the
house and by the way, at the barn and in the street.
" W h e n the church choir would break down, everybody
looked around to see if he were not ready with ' Woodstock,' ' Mount Pisgah,' or ' TJxbridge.' A n d when all his
familiar tunes failed to express the joy of his soul, he
would take up his pen, draw five long lines across the sheet,
put in the notes, and then, to the tune that he called
' Boundbrook,' begin to sing—
As when the weary traveler gains
The height of some o'eiiooking hill,
His strength revives, if 'cross the plains
He eyes his home, though distant still..
Thus, when the Christian pilgrim views,
By faith, his mansion in the skies,
The sight his fainting strength renews,
And wings his speed to reach the prize.

12

LIFE OF REV. T. BE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.
' 'Tis there/ lie says, ' I am to dwell
With Jesus in the realms of day
There I shall hid my cares farewell,
And He shall wipe my tears away.'

But few families fall heir to so large a pile of well-studied
note-books.
" He was ready at proper times for all kinds of innocent
amusement. He often felt a merriment that not only
touched the lips, but played upon every fiber of the body,
and rolled down into the very depths of his soul with long
reverberations. N o one that ever I knew understood more
fully the science of a good laugh. He was not only quick
to recognize hilarity when created by others, but was always ready to do his share towards making it. Before extreme old age, he could outrun and outleap any of his children. He did not hide his satisfaction at having outwalked some one who boasted of his pedestrianism, or at
having been able to swing the scythe after all the rest of
the harvesters had dropped from exhaustion; or having, in
legislative hall, tripped up some villainous scheme for robbing the public treasury.
" W e never had our ears boxed, as some children I wot of,
for the sin of being happy. In long winter nights it was
hard to tell who enjoyed sportfulness the better—the children who romped on the floor, or the parents who, wTith
lighted countenance, looked at them. Great indulgence
and leniency characterized his family rule, but the remembrance of at least one correction more emphatic than
pleasing proves that he was not like Eli of old, who had
wayward sons and restrained them not.
In the multitude
of his witticisms there were no flings at religion, no caricatures of good men, no trifling with the things of eternity.
His laughter was not the 'crackling of thorns under a

LIFE OF REV. T. DE W I T T TALMAGE, D.D.

13

pot,' but the merry heart that doeth good like a medicine.
F o r this all the children in the community knew him; and
to the last day of his walking out, when they saw him
coming down the lane, shouted: ' Here comes grandfather! '
]STo gall, no acerbity, no hypercriticism. If there was a
bright side to anything, he always saw it; and his name, in
all the places where he dw^elt, will long be a synonym for
exhilaration of spirit.
" But whence this cheerfulness ? Some might ascribe it
all to natural disposition. No doubt there is such a thiug
as sunshine of temperament. God gives more brightness
to the almond tree than to the cypress. While the pool
putrefies under the summer sun, God ,slips the rill off the
rocks with a frolicsomeness that fills the mountain with
echo. No doubt constitutional structure had much to do
with this cheerfulness. He had, by a life of sobriety, preserved his freshness and vigor.
You know that good
habits are better than speaking-tubes to the ear; better
than a staff to the hand; better than lozenges to the
throat; better than warm baths to the feet; better than
bitters for the stomach. His lips had not been polluted
nor his brain befogged by the fumes of the noxious weed
that has sapped the life of whole generations, sending even
ministers of the Gospel to untimely graves, over which the
tombstone declared, ' Sacrificed by over-work in the Lord's
vineyard;' when, if the marble had not lied, it would have
said: 'Killed by villainous tobacco!' H e abhored anything that could intoxicate, being among the first in this
country to join the crusade against alcoholic beverages.
W h e n urged, during a severe sickness, to take some stimulus, he said: ' N o ! if I am to die, let me die sober!' The
swill of the brewery had never been poured around the
roots of this thrifty almond. To the last week of his life

14

LIFE OF REV. T. EE W I T T TALMAGE, D.D.

his ear could catch a child's whisper, and at fourscore years
his eyes refused spectacles, although he would sometimes
have to hold the book off on the other side of the light, as
octogenarians are wont to do. No trembling of the bands,
no rheum in the eyes, no knocking together of the knees,
no hobbling on crutches with what polite society terms
rheumatism in the feet, but what everybody knows is nothing but gout. Death came, not to fell the gnarled trunk of
a tree worm-eaten and lightning-blasted, but to hew down
a Lebanon cedar, whose fall made the mountains tremble
and the heavens ring. But physical health could not account for half of this sunshine.
" Seventy-eight years ago a coal from the heavenly altar
had kindled a light that shone brighter and brighter to the
perfect day. Let Almighty grace for nearly three-quarters
of a century triumph in a man's soul, and do you wonder
that he is happy? For twice the length of your life and
mine he had sat in the bower of the promises, plucking the
round, ripe clusters of Eshcol. While others bit their
tongue for thirst, he stood at the wells of salvation and
put his lips to the bucket that came up dripping with the
fresh, cool, sparkling waters of eternal life. This joy was
not that which breaks in the bursting bubble of the champagne glass, or that which is thrown out with the orangepeelings of a midnight bacchanalia, but the joy which,
planted by a Saviour's pardoning grace, mounts up higher
and higher, till it rolls forth in the acclaim of the hundred
and forty and four thousand who have broken their last
chain and wept their last sorrow. O mighty God! How
deep, how wide, how high the joy Thou kindlest in the
heart of the believer!
" Let not his cheerfulness give you the idea that he never
had trouble. But few men have so serious and overwhelm-

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

15

ing a life struggle. He went out into the world without
means, and with no educational opportunity save that
which was afforded him in the winter months, in an old,
dilapidated school-house, from instructors whose chief
work was to collect their own salary. Instead of postponing the marriage relation, as modern society compels a
young man to postpone it, until he can earn a fortune and
be able, at commencement of the conjugal relation, to keep
a companion like the lilies of the field, that toil not nor
spin, though Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like
one of these—he chose an early alliance with one who would
not only be able to enjoy the success of life, but who would
with her own willing hands help to achieve it. And so,
while father ploughed the fields, and threshed the
wheat^ and broke the flax, and husked the corn, my
mother stood for Solomon's portraiture when he said:
' She riseth also while it is yet night and giveth
meat to her household.
She layeth her hands to the
spindle, and her hands hold the distaff. She is not afraid
of the snow for her household, for all her household are
clothed with scarlet. Her children arise up and call her
blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her.
Many
daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them
all.' So that the limited estate of the New Jersey farmer
never foundered on millinery establishments and confectionery shops. And though we were some years of age before we heard the trill of a piano, we knew well all about
the song of c The Spinning Wheel.' There were no lords,
or baronets, or princes in our ancestral line. None wore
stars, cockade, or crest. There was once a family coat-ofarms, but we were none of us wise enough to tell its meaning. Do our best, we cannot find anything about our forerunners, except that they behaved well, came over from

16

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

Wales or Holland a good while ago, and died when their
time came. Some of them may have had fine equipage
and caparisoned postilion, but the most of them were sure
only of footmen!
" My father started in life belonging to the aristocracy of
hard knuckles, but had this high honor, that no one could
despise: he was the son of a father who loved God and
kept His commandments. W h a t is the House of Hapsburg,
or Stuart, compared with the honor of being a son of the
Lord God Almighty ? Two eyes, two hands and two feet
were the capital my father started writh. F o r fifteen years
an invalid, he had a fearful struggle to support his large
family. Nothing but faith in God upheld him. His recital
of help afforded and deliverances w r rought was more like a
romance than a reality. He walked through many a desert,
but every morning had its manna, and every night its pillar
of lire, and every hard rock a rod that could shatter it into
crystal fountains at his feet. More than once he came to
his last dollar; but right behind that last dollar he found
Him who owns the cattle on a thousand hills, and out of
the palm of whose hand all the fowls of heaven peck their
food, and who hath given to each one of his disciples a warrant deed for the whole universe in the wTords, 'All are yours.'
" The path that led him through financial straits prepared
him also for sore bereavements. The infant of days was
smitten, and he laid it into the river of death with as much
confidence as infant Moses was laid into the ark of the Nile,
knowing that soon from the royal palace a shining one
would come to fetch it.
" In an island of the sea, among strangers, almost unattended, death came to a beloved son; and though I remember the darkness that dropped on the household when the
black-sealed letter was opened, I remember also the utter•<
ances of Christian submission,

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

17

" Another, bearing his own name, just on the threshold of
manhood, his heart beating high with hope, falls into the
dust; but above the cries of early widowhood and the desolation of that dark day I hear the patriarch's prayer commending children and children's children to the Divine
sympathy.
" But a deeper shadow fell across the old homestead. The
' golden w e d d i n g ' had been celebrated nine years before.
My mother looked up, pushed back her spectacles, and said:
' J u s t think of it, father? W e have been together fiftynine years?' The twain stood together like two trees of
the forest with interlocked branches. Their affections had
taken deep root together in many a kindred grave. Side
by side, in life's great battle, they had fought the good
fight and won the day. But death comes to unjoint this
alliance. God will not any longer let her suffer mortal ailments. The reward of righteousness is ready, and it must
be paid. But what tearing apart! W h a t rending up!
W h a t will the aged man do without this other to lean on?
W h o can so well understand how to sympathize and counsel? W h a t voice so cheering as hers to conduct him down
the steep of old age? My mother's death! ' O h ! ' she
said, in her last moments, ' father, if you and I could only
go together, how pleasant it would b e ! ' But the hush of
death came down one autumnal afternoon, and for the first
time in my life, on my arrival home, I received no maternal
greeting, no answer of the lips, no pressure of the hand.
God had taken her.
"In this overwhelming shock the patriarch stood confident,
reciting the promises and attesting the Divine goodness.
Oh! sirs, that was Faith, Faith! ' Thanks be unto God,
who giveth us the victory!'
<' He had not retired from the field. He had been busy so

18

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

long, you could not expect him idle now. The faith I have
described was not an idle expectation that sits with its
hands in its pockts idly waiting, but a feeling which gathers up all the resources of the soul, and hurls them upon
one grand design. He was among the first who toiled
in Sabbath Schools, and never failed to speak the praise of
these institutions. No storm or darkness ever kept him
away from prayer-meeting. In the neighborhood where
he lived, for years he held a devotional meeting. Oftentimes the only praying man present, before a handful of attendants, he would give out the hymn, read the lines, conduct the music, and pray. Then read the Scriptures, and
pray again. Then lead forth in the Doxology with an enthusiasm as if there were a thousand people present, and all the
church members had been doing their duty. He went forth
visiting the sick, burying the dead, collecting alms for the
poor, inviting the ministers of religion to his household, in
which there was, as in the house of Shunem, a little room
over the wall, with bed and candlestick for any passing
Elisha. He never shuddered at the sight of a subscription
paper, and not a single great cause of benevolence had
arisen within the last half century which he did not bless
with his beneficence. Oh! this was not a barren almond
tree that blossomed. His charity was not like the
bursting of the bud of a famous tree in the South,
that fills the whole forest with its racket; nor was it a
clumsy thing like the fruit, in some tropical clime,
that crashes down, almost knocking the life out of
those who gather it; for in his case the right hand
knew not what the left hand did. The churches of God, in
whose service he toiled, have arisen as one man to declare
his faithfulness and to mourn their loss. He stood in the
front of the holy war, and the courage which never trem-

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

19

bled or winced in the presence of temporal danger induced
him to dare all things for God. In church matters, he was
not afraid to be shot at. Ordained, not by the laying on of
human hands, but by the imposition of a Savior's love, he
preached by his life in official position, and legislative hall,
and commercial circles, a practical Christianity. He showed
that there was such a thing as honesty in politics. He slandered no party, stuifed no ballot-box, forged no naturalization papers, intoxicated no voters, told no lies, surrendered
no principle, countenanced no demagogism. He called
things by their right names; and what others styled prevarication, exaggeration, misstatement, or hyperbole, he
called a lie. Though he was far from being undecided in
his views, and never professed neutrality, or had any consort with those miserable men who boast howr well they
can walk on both sides of a dividing line and be on neither,
yet even in the excitements of election canvass, when his
name was hotly discussed in public journals, I do not think
his integrity was ever assaulted. Starting every morning
with a chapter of the Bible, and his whole family around
him on their knees, he forgot not, in the excitements of the
world, that he had a God to serve and a heaven to win. The
morning prayer came up on one side of the day, and the
evening prayer on the other side, and joined each other in
an arch above his head, under the shadow of which he
walked all the day. The Sabbath worship extended into
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 he had passed! H e
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. W a t c h e d the pro-

20

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

gress of John Adam's 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 its wheel-buckets. Flushed with excitement in the
time of National Banks and Sub-Treasury. W a s startled
at the birth of telegraphy. Saw the United States grow
from a speck on the world's map till all nations dip their
fiag at our passing merchantmen, and our ' National Airs '
have been heard on the steeps of the Himalayas. W a s
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, grand-children, and
great-grandchildren. Nearly all his contemporaries gone.
Aged Wilberforce said that sailors drink to ' friends astern'
until half way over the sea, and then drink to ' friends
ahead.' W i t h him it had a long time been '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 unweariedly from the sunrise of youth to the
sunset of old age, and then in the 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 was 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 Le had cheered, whose ascending spirits he
had helped up on wings of sacred music. I should like to

LIFE OF REV. T. DE W I T T TALMAGE, D.D.

21

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!* T h y race run—thy toil ended! Hail to
the coronation!
" Now, after such a life, what sort of death would you
have expected ? Will God conduct a voyager through so
many storms, and then let him get shipwrecked coming up
the harbor? Not such an one is my God and Savior. The
telegraph thrilled with tidings north, south, east, west, that
brought, in the rushing rail-train, his kindred together. The
hour for which this aged servant of God had waited patiently had come, and he rejoiced with a joy at which the
tongue faltered. There was no turning from side to side
on the pillow, as if looking for escape from grim pursuers,
but gazing up and around as if looking out for the chariot
of K i n g Jesus. The prayer which the older sons had heard
him make fifty years ago, asking that at last he might have
4
nothing to do but d i e / was literally answered. All his
children, save that one which he sent forth with his blessing a few months ago, in the good ship ' Surprise,' to proclaim the glories of the Messiah on the other side of the
earth, were present—some to pray; some to hold his hand;
some to bathe his brow. All to watch, and wait, and weep,
and rejoice. He asked about my children. Talked about
the past. Expressed his anticipations of the future. Slept
sweetly as a child ever slept in the arms of its mother.
Then broke forth with the utterance: 'Goodness
and
mercy have followed me all the days of my life!' The
Bible that he had studied for so many years, now cast its
light far on into the valley, until the very gate of heaven
flashed upon his vision. Some one quoted the passage, ' This
is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation, that

22

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D»

Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners.' 'Of
whom I am the chief,' responded the dying Christian. W e
said, ' T o live is Christ.' He answered, ' T o die is gain;'
and, lest we did not understand him, he repeated, ' T o die
is g a i n ! ' And, as if the vision grew more enrapturing, he
continued to say, ' T o die is g a i n ! ' Ministers of the Gospel came in, and, after the usual greeting, he said, ' P r a y ,
Pray.'
" W e sang some of his favorite hymns, such as:
Jesus can make a dying bed
Feel soft as downy pillows are,
While on His breast I lean my bead,
And breathe my life out sweetly there.
H e would seem almost to stop breathing in order to listen,
and then at the close would signify that he remembered the
old tune fright well. He said: ' I shall be gone soon, but
not too soon.' Some one quoted: ' Though I w a l k t h r o u g h
the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.' And
he replied: ' T h y rod and T h y staff they comfort me.' ' Can
you testify of God's faithfulness ?' said another. H e answered: ' Y e s ! I have been young and now I am old, yet
have I never seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.' He said: ' I have it good; I could not have
it any better; I feel well—all is well.' Again, and again,
and again, he repeated, ' A l l is well!' Then, lifting his
hand, exclaimed: ' P e a c e ! peace!'
" On the morning of October, 27, 1871, just three years
from the day when the soul of his companion sped into
the heavens, it was evident that the last moment had come.
Softly the news came to all the sleepers in the house, and
the quick glance of lights from room to room signaled the
coming of the death-angel. W e took out our watches and
said, ' F o u r o'clock and fifteen minutes!' The pulse flut-

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

23

tered, as a tree-branch lifts and falls at the motion of a
bird's wing about to cleave its way into the heavens. N o
quick start of pain; no glassy stare; but eyelid lightly
closed, and calm lip, and white blossoms of the almond tree.
From the stand we turned over the old timepiece that he
had carried so long, and which he thought always went
right, and announced ' J u s t four o'clock and twenty minu t e s ! ' The tides of the cold river rising. Felt the wrist,
but no pulse; the temples, but no stir; the heart, but no
action. W e listened, but heard nothing. Still! still! The
gates of the earthly prison-house silently open, wider and
wider.
Free! Clear the way for a conquering spirit!
Shout upward the tidings! F o u r o'clock and thirty minutes! W i t h o u t a groan or a sigh, he had passed upward
into light. ' And when Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons, he gathered up his feet into the bed, and
yielded up the ghost, and was gathered unto his people.'
" The day for burial came. An autumnal Sabbath was let
down clear from heaven. A t the first gush of the dawn we
said: ' T h i s is just the day in which for a-Christian to be
buried!' F a d i n g leaf, indeed, under foot told of the decaying body, but streaming sunshine spoke of resurrection
joy. They came tottering on their staff—old comrades
who, in 1812, had marched beside him, drilling in the field,
ready for heroic strife. They came—the poor whose rent
he had paid to keep their children from the blasts of winter. They came—the erring men whom he had bailed out of
prison. They came—the children who had watched his step,
and played with his cane, and had often wondered what
new attraction grandfather would unfold from his deep
pockets. They came—the ministers of religion who had
sat with him in church courts, and planned for the advancement of religion.

24

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D D.

" Passing along the roads where he had often gone, and by
the birthplace of most of his children, we laid him down to
rest, just as the sun was setting in the country graveyard,
close beside her with whom for more than half a century
he had walked, and prayed, and sung, and counselled. It
seemed as if she must speak a greeting. But no voice
broke the sod, no whisper ran through the grass, no word
of recognition was uttered. Side by side, Jacob and Rachel
were buried. Let one willow overarch their graves. Instead of two marble slabs, as though these of whom we
speak were twain, let there be but a single shaft, for they
were one. Monument not pretentious, but plain, for they
were old-fashioned people. On one side the marble set the
date of their coming and going. On this side the name of
David—the husband and father. On that third side the
name of Catherine—the wife and mother. Then there will
be but one side unchiselled. How shall we mark it ? W i t h
a story of Christian zeal and self-sacrifice for God ? N o !
F a t h e r and mother would shake their heads if they were
awake to read it. This rather let it be: ' T h e morning
cometh.'—Isaiah xxi. 12.
" Henceforth we shall be orphans. Sad thing, even at
manhood, to become fatherless and motherless. No one
but God can make np for the loss of a father's counsel and
a mother's tenderness. Hope thou in God!
Weeping
may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.
Quaint John Bunyan caught a glimpse of the glorious ending of all earthly trial when he said: ' J u s t as the gates
were open to let in the men, I looked in after them, and
behold, the city shone like the sun; the streets were also
paved with gold, and in them walked many men with
crowns on their heads, and golden harps to sing praises
withal. And after that they shut up the gates; which,
when I had seen, I wished myself among them.'

CHAPTER

II.

MY BOYHOOD.

" T H E Old Cradle! W e were all rocked in that. F o r
about fifteen years that cradle was going much of the time.
W h e n the older child was taken out, a smaller child was
put in. The crackle of the rockers is pleasant yet in my
ears. There I took my first lessons in music as mother
sang to me. Have heard what you would call far better
singing since then, but none that so thoroughly touched me.
She never got five hundred dollars per night for singing
three songs at the Academy, with two or three encores
grudgef ully thrown in; but without pay she sometimes sang
all night, and came out whenever encored, though she had
only two little ears for an audience. I t was a low, subdued
tone, that sings to me yet across forty years.
" Y o u see the edge of that rocker, worn quite deep?
That is where her foot was placed while she sat with her
knitting or sewing, on summer afternoons, while the bees
hummed at the door and the shout of the boy at the oxen
was heard afield. From the way the rocker is worn, I think
that sometimes the foot must have been very tired and the
ankle very sore; but I do not think she stopped for that.
W h e n such a cradle as that got a-going it kept on for years.
" Scarlet fever came in at the door, and we all had it; and
oh, how the cradle did go! W e contended as to who should
lie in it, for sickness, you know, makes babies of us all.
But after a while we surrendered it to Charlie. He was too
old to lie in it, but he seemed so very, very sick; and with him

26

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT 1 TALMAGE, D.D.

in the cradle it was ' R o c k ! ' ' Rock!' ' R o c k ! ' But one day,
just as long ago as I can remember, the cradle stopped.
W h e n a child is asleep there is no need of rocking. Charlie
was asleep. He was sound asleep. Nothing would wake
him. H e needed taking up. Mother was too weak to do
it. The neighbors came in to do that, and put a flower,
fresh out of the garden dew, between the two still hands.
The fever had gone out of the cheek and left it white, verywhite—the rose exchanged for the lily. There was one
less to contend for the cradle. I t soon started again, and
with a voice not quifre so firm as before, but more tender,
the old song came back: ' B y e ! bye! bye!' which meant
more than ' II Trovatore,' rendered by opera troupe in the
presence of an American audience, all leaning forward and
nodding to show how well they understood Italian.
" T h e r e was a wooden canopy at the head of the old
cradle that somehow got loose and was taken off. But our
infantile mind was most impressed with the face w^hich
much of the time hovered over us. Other women sometimes looked in at the child and said, ' That child's hair will
be red!' or, ' W h a t a peculiar chin!' or, ' D o you think that
child will live to grow u\> ?' and although we were not old
enough to understand their talk, by instinct Ave knew it was
something disagreeable, and began to cry till the dear, sweet,
familiar face again hovered and the rainbow arched the sky.
Oh, we never get away from the benediction of such a
face! It looks at us through storm and night. I t smiles
all to pieces the world's frown. After forty-seven years
of rough tumbling on the world's couch, it puts us in the cradle again and hushes us as with the very lullaby of heaven.
'' Let the old cradle rest in the garret. It has earned its
quiet. The hands that shook up its pillow have quit work.
The foot that kept the rocker in motion is through with its

LIFE OF KEY. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

27

journey. The face that hovered has been veiled from mortal sight. Cradle of blessed memories! Cradle that sooothed
so many little griefs! Cradle that kindled so many hopes!
Cradle that rested so many fatigues!"
" P R A Y E R S I N BOYHOOD.

" I had many sound thrashings when I was a boy (not as
many as I ought to have had, for I wTas the last child, and
my parents let me off), but the most memorable scene in
my childhood was father and mother at morning and evening prayers. I cannot forget it, for I used often to be
squirming around on the floor and looking at them while
they were praying.
" LEAP-FROG.

" The funniest play that I ever joined in at school, and one
that sets me a-laughing now as I think of it so that I can
hardly write, is ' leap-frog.' I t is unartistic and homely.
It is so humiliating to the boy who bends himself over and
puts his hands down on his knees, and it is so perilous to
the boy, who, placing his hands on the stooped shoulders,
attempts to fly over. But I always preferred the risk of
the one who attempted to leap rather than the humiliation
of the one who consented to be vaulted over. It was often
the case that we both failed in our part and we went down
together. For this Jack Snyder carried a grudge against
me and wonld not speak, because he said I pushed him
down a-purpose! But I hope he has forgiven me by this
time, for he has been out as a missionary. Indeed, if Jack
will come this way, I will right the wrong of olden time b y
stooping down in my study and letting him spring over me
as my children do.
" Almost every autumn I see that old-time school-boy feat
repeated. Mr, So-and-so says, ' You make me governor and

28

LIFE OF REV. T. EE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

I will see that you get to be senator. Make me mayor and I
will see that you become assessor. Get me the office of
street-sweeper and you shall have one of the brooms. You
stoop down and let me jump over you, and then I will
stoop down and let you jump over me. Elect me deacon,
and you shall be trustee. You write a good thing about
me, and I will write a good thing about you.'
" BOYS' TROUBLES.

" W e feel sorry for boys, because they are not exempt
from troubles; and one of the worst is suppressed hilarity.
To want to laugh, and still maintain gravity; to see the
minister's wig getting twisted, and yet look devotional; to
discover a mouse in prayer-time, and yet not titter; to see
the young bride and groom in church t r y to look like old
married people; to have the deacon drop the contribution
plate and spill the pennies, and yet look sorry for the misfortune; in a word, to be a boy with fun from the top hair
on the crown of the head to the tip-end of the great toe,
and yet make no demonstration, is a trial with which we
are deeply sympathetic. To sit on a long bench at school
with eight or ten other boys, all able to keep quiet only by
utmost force of resolution, and something happen that
makes all the rest snicker, while you abstain, requires an
amount of heroic endurance we never reached. I remember well how a rattan feels when it arrives in the open palm
at the rate of sixty miles an hour. In my first ten years I
suppressed enough giggles, smiles, chuckles, and yells to
have ruined me for all time. I so often retired from the
sitting-room, when we had company, to the wood-shed,
where my mirth would be no disturbance to anything but
the ash-barrels, that I have all allowance to make for that
age of life which is apt to be struck through with titter. I
still feel the boy in my nature when ludicrous things hap-

LIFE OF REV. T. BE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

29

pen, as when a city exquisite came into the prayer-meeting,
whisk-cane in hand, and fanciful eye-glass on, looked sublimely around on the audience as much as to say, ' I suppose
you all see that I am h e r e / and then sat down where a chair
had just before stood, but from which place the usher had
inadvertently removed it. Had it not been, for an extemporized cough and sneeze and active use of the pocket-handkerchief on my part, I should have been hopelessly ruined.
" M Y FIRST BOOTS.

" I have seen many days of joy, but I remember no such
exhiliration as that felt by me on the day when I mounted
my first pair of boots. T o appreciate such an era in life,
we must needs have been brought up in the country. Boys
in town come to this crisis before they can appreciate the
height and depth of such an acquisition. The boot period
is the dividing line between babyhood and boyhood. Before the boots, I am trampled upon by comrades and stuck
with pins, and I walk with an air of apology for the fact
that I am born at all. Robust school-fellows strike me
across the cheek, and when I turn towards them, they cry,
' W h o are you looking at?' or what is worse than any possible insult, is to have somebody chuck me under the chin,
and call me 'Bub.' Before the crisis of boots, the country
boy carries no handkerchief. This keeps him in a state of
constant humiliation. , W h a t e v e r crisis may come in the
boy's history—no handkerchief.
" But at last the age of boots dawns upon a boy. Henceforth, instead of always having to get out of the way, he
will make others get out of his wTay. H e will sometimes
get the Scripture lesson confused, and when smitten on the
right cheek will turn and give it to his opponent on the left
cheek also. Indeed, I do not think that there is any regulation, human or divine, demanding that a boy submit to the

30

LIFE OF REY. T. DE WITT TALMAGEp D.D.

school-bully. I think we should teach our boy to avoid all
quarrel and strife; but, nevertheless, to take care of himself. I remember, with deep satisfaction, how that, after
J i m Johnson had knocked my hat in the mud, and spat in
my face, and torn my new coat, I felt called upon to vindi^
cate the majesty of my new boots. That, however, was before I had any idea of ever becoming a minister. B u t
when the time spoken of in a boy's life comes, look out how
you call him ' B u b . ' He parts his hair on the side, has the
end of his white handkerchief sticking out of the top of his
side-pocket as if it were accidentally arranged so, has a dignified and manly mode of expectoration, and walks down
the road with long strides, as much as to say, (Clear the
track for my boots!'
" I t was Sabbath-day when I broke them in. Oh! the
rapture of that moment when I laid hold of the straps at
one end, and with my big brother pushing at the other the
boot went on! I fear that I got but little advantage that
day from the services. All the pulpit admonition about
worldliness and pride struck the toes of my boots, and fell
back. I trampled under my feet all good counsels. I had to
repent that, while some trust in horses and some in chariots,
I put too much stress upon leather. Though my purchase
was so tight in the instep that, as soon as I got to the
woods, I went limping on m y way, I felt t h a t in such a
cause it was noble to suffer.
" F o r some reason, boots are not what they used to be.
You pay a big price, and you might walk all day without
hearing once from them; but the original pair of which I
tell spoke out for themselves. No one doubted whether you
had been to church after you had once walked up the aisle
in company with such leather, It was the pure eloquence
of calf-skin,

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

31

"OUR DENTIST.

" In boyhood, after my crying all night, laudanum and
camphor and everything else having failed, father took me
to the village doctor. The doctor led me to his back piazza,
and I sat down on the step. W h e t h e r I was promised candy or a ride or a new pair of boots I do not remember, but
suffice it to say the inducement did not seem adequate to
pay for the sufferings proposed. The doctor brought out a
long pair of forceps. There w^ere in its very looks twists and
grips and clutches that made the toothache instantly stop.
Then I argued the uselessness of extraction, because it did
not ache a bit! They did not allow me to finish the argument.
I was never more logical in my life. I had laid down the
two propositions of a syllogism.
First, painless teeth
ought not to be extracted; secondly, this is a painless
tooth; but before I could draw the conclusion the doctor
had begun to draw the tooth. I, sitting on the step, and he
standing back and above me, took my head between his
knees, one knee tight against each ear. The memory of
those knees wTill never fade away from me. They seemed
to me the ne plus ultra of all knees. H e had hard work to
get into my mouth, for it was so full of exclamation, or what
boys call ' holla,' a word so expressive that I never found
its synonyme. But getting his hand on one side the unrestrained yell, and his turn-key on the other, he went in.
" But at last the cold steel was laid aside the sore gums,
and while I was clutching the doctor's arm, and biting his
fingers as hard as I could, and kicking indiscriminately in
all directions, and giving him a look as much as to say,
' O l d fellow, if I live to get over this, won't I give it to
you,' the doctor, with knees still more tightly braced, gave
one resolute pull, and it seemed as if the roots of my neck
had given away, and the jawbone had forsaken its socket^

32

LIFE OF R E \ r . T. DE W I T T TALMAGE, D.D.

and everything, down to the last joint of the toe, had been
dislocated, grubbed out, smashed, caved in, and annihilated with a general convulsion. The operation was successful. The dentist only did his duty, and has been for some
years in the good place where teeth never ache and they
never use forceps; but my memory of him is not ecstatic.
I do not take him into my hope of future recognition. I
can think of live hundred people whom we would rather
meet than he.
"SEEING

A- GHOST.

" I never met but one ghost in all my life. It was a very
dark night, and I was seven years of age. There was a
German cooper, who, on the outskirts of the village, had a
shop. It was an interesting spot, and I frequented it.
There was a congregation of barrels, kegs, casks and firkins,
that excited my boyish admiration. There the old man
stood, day after day, hammering away at his trade. He
was fond of talk, and had his head full of all that was
weird, mysterious and tragic. During the course of his life
he had seen almost as many ghosts as firkins; had seen
them in Germany, on the ocean, and in America.
" One summer afternoon, perhaps having made an unusually lucrative bargain in hoop-poles, the tide of his discourse bore everything before it. I hung on his lips entranced. I noticed not that the shadows of the evening
were gathering, nor rememberd that we were a mile from
home. He had wrought up my boyish imagination to the
tip-top pitch. He had told me how doors opened when
there was no hand on the latch, and the eyes of a face in a
picture winked one windy night; and how intangible objects in white would glide across the room, and headless
trunks ride past on phantom horses; and how boys on the
way home at night were met by a sheeted form, that

LIFE OF REV. T, DE W I T T TALMAGE, D.D.

33

picked them up and carried them off, so that they never
were heard of, their mother going around as disconsolate as
the woman in the ' Lost Heir,' crying ' Where's Billy ?'
" This last story roused me to my whereabouts, and I felt
I must go home. My hair, that usually stood on end, took
the strictly perpendicular. My flesh crept with horror of
the expedition homeward. My faith in everything solid
had been shaken. I believed only in the subtile and in the
intangible. W h a t could a boy of seven years old depend
upon if one of these headless horsemen might at any moment ride him down, or one of these sheeted creatures pick
him up ?
" I started up the road barefooted. I was not impeded
by any useless apparel. It took me no time to get under
way. I felt that if I must perish, it would be well to get
as near the doorsill of home as possible. I vowed that, if
I was only spared this once to get home, I would never again
allow the night to catch me at the cooper's. The ground
flew under my feet. No headless horseman could have kept
up. Not a star was out. It was the blackness of darkness.
I had made half the distance and was in the ' hollow'—the
most lonely and dangerous part of the way—and felt that
in a minute more I might abate my speed and take fuller
breath. But, alas! no such good fortune awaited me.
Suddenly my feet struck a monster—whether beastly, human, infernal or supernal, witch, ghost, demon, or headless
horseman I could not immediately tell. I fell prostrate,
m y hands passing over a hairy creature; and, as my head
struck the ground, the monster rose up, throwing my feet
into the air. To this day it would have been a mystery,
had not a fearful bellow revealed it as a cow which had laid
down to peaceful slumber in the road, not anticipating the
terrible collision, She wasted no time, but started up the

34

LIFE OF REV. T. DE W I T T TALMAGE,

D.D.

road. I having by experiment discovered which end of me
was up, joined her in the race. I knew not but t h a t it was
the first installment of disasters. And, therefore, away we
went, cow and boy; but the cow beat. She came into town
a hundred yards ahead. I have not got over it yet, t h a t I
let that cow beat. T h a t was the first and last ghost I ever
met.
" M Y FIRST AND LAST CIGAR.

" The time had come in our boyhood which we thought
demanded the capacity to smoke. The old people of the
household could abide neither the sight nor smell of the
Virginia weed. W h e n ministers came there, not by positive injunction, but by a sort of instinct as to what would
be safest, they whiffed their pipes on the back steps. If
the house could not stand sanctified smoke, you may know
how little chance there was for boyish cigar-puffing.
" B y some rare good fortune which put in my hands three
cents, I found access to a tobacco store. As the lid of the
long, narrow, fragrant box opened, and for the first time I
owned a cigar, my feelings of elation, manliness, superiority
and anticipation can scarcely be imagined, save by those
who have had the same sensation. My first ride on horseback, though I fell off before I got to the barn, and my
first pair of new boots (real squeakers), I had thought
could never be surpassed in interest; but when I put the
cigar to my lips and stuck the lucifer match to the end of
the weed and commenced to pull with an energy that
brought every facial muscle to its utmost tension, my satisfaction with this world was so great, m y temptation was
never to want to leave it.
" The cigar did not burn well. I t required an amount of
suction t h a t tasked my determination to the utmost. You
see that my worldly means bad limited me to a quality t h a t

LIFE OF REV. T. IDE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

35

cost only three cents. But I had been taught that nothing
great was accomplished without effort, and so I puffed
away! Indeed, I had heard my older brothers in their
Latin lessons say, Omnia vincet labor; which translated
means, ' I f you want to make anything go, you must
scratch for it.'
" W i t h these sentiments I passed down the village street
and towards my country home. My head did not feel exactly right, and the street began to rock from side to side, so
that it was uncertain to me which side of the street I was on.
So I crossed over, but found myself on the same side that I
was on before I crossed over. Indeed, I imagined that I was
on both sides at the same time, and several fast teams driving between. I met another boy, who asked me why I
looked so pale, and I told him I did not look pale, but that
he was pale himself.
" I sat down under the bridge, and began to reflect on the
prospect of early decease, and on the uncertainty of all
earthly expectations. I had determined to smoke the cigar
all up, and thus get the worth of my money; but I was
obliged to throw three-fourths of it away, yet knew just
where I threw it, in case I felt better the next day.
" Getting home, the old people were frightened, and demanded that I state what kept me so late, and what was the
matter with me. N o t feeling that I was called to go into
particulars, and not wishing to increase m y parents' apprehension that I was going to turn out badly, I summed up
the case with the statement that I felt miserable at the pit
of the stomach. I had mustard plasters administered, and
careful watching for some hours, when I fell asleep, and
forgot my disappointment and humiliation in being obliged
to throw away three-fourths of my first cigar. Being naturally reticent, I have never mentioned it until this time.

36

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.B,

" But how about my last cigar ? It was three o'clock,
Sabbath morning, in my Western home. I had smoked
three or four cigars since tea. A t that time I wrote my
sermons, and took another cigar with each new head of discourse. I thought I was getting the inspiration from above,
but was getting much of it from beneath. My hand
trembled along the line, and, strung up to the last tension
of nerves, I finished my work and started from the room.
A book standing on the table fell over, and although it was
not a large book, its fall sounded to my excited system like
the crack of a pistol. As I went down the stairs their creaking made my hair stand on end. As I flung myself on a
sleepless pillow, I resolved, God helping, that I had
smoked my last cigar, and committed my last sin of nightstudy.
" I kept my promise. W i t h the same resolution went overboard coffee and tea. T h a t night I was born into a new
physical, mental, and moral life. Perhaps it may be better
for some to smoke, and study nights, and take exciting
temperance beverages; but I am persuaded that if thousands of people who now go moping,and nervous, and halfexhausted through life, down with ' sick head-aches' and
rasped by irritabilities, would try a good large dose of abstinence, they would thank God for this paragraph of personal experience, and make the world the same bright place
I find it—a place so attractive that nothing short of
heaven would be good enough to exchange for it.
" T h e first cigar made me desperately sick;, the throwing
away of my last made me gloriously well. F o r the croaking of the midnight owl had ceased, and the time of the
singing of birds had come."

CHAPTER III
E N T E R I N G T H E MINISTRY.

D R . TALMAGE'S parents bestowed great care upon his
early culture, but he was nevertheless a marvel of eccentricities from his earliest childhood. He was always remarkable for enthusiasm in mental labor, and for his
devotion to all those branches of intellectual attainment for
which he felt the greatest fondness. He passed through
the University of N e w York, and graduated with distinction, especially in belles lettres. And on graduation day,
when he delivered an address in Niblo's Garden, he was
received with immense applause, the majority of the audience rising to their feet. He openly professed religion at
the age of eighteen years, but in his early manhood he
adopted the legal profession. After a brief experience of
the law, however, he entered the New Brunswick Theological Seminary, and prepared for the ministry, deeply
regretting the time which he considered as lost in pursuing
his original choice. After his ordination, Dr. Talmage
preached for three years at Belleville, N e w Jersey, three
years at Syracuse, N . Y., and seven years at Philadelphia,
laboring to the great profit and prosperity of the congregation of which he was pastor. In his first pastorate at Belleville he became convinced of the necessity of making Jesus
Christ the main pivot of his sermons as essential to
success, and he has frequently declared that his success is
mainly due to his having constantly preached "Christ and
H i m crucified."

38

LIFE OF REV. T. DE W I T T TALMAGE, D.D.
BEGINS E X T E M P O R A N E O U S

SPEAKING.

" I entered the ministry with a mortal horror of extemporaneous speaking. Each week I wrote two sermons and a
lecture all out, from the text to the amen. I did not dare
to give out the notice of a prayer-meeting unless it was on
paper. I was a slave to manuscript, and the chains were
galling ; and three months more of such work would have
put me in the graveyard. I resolved on emancipation. The
Sunday night was approaching when I intended to make
violent rebellion against this bondage of pen and paper. I
had an essay about ten minutes long on some Christian subject, which I proposed to preach as an introduction to the
sermon, and resolved, at the close of that brief composition,
to launch out on the great sea of extemporaneousness.
" I t so happened that the coming Sabbath night was to be
eventful in the village. The trustees of the church had
been building a gasometer at the back of the church, and
the night I speak of, the building was for the first time to be
lighted in the modern way. The church was, of course,
crowded—not so much to hear the preacher as to see how
the gas would burn. Many were unbelieving, and said
that there would be an explosion, or a big fire, or that in
the midst of the service the lights would go out. Several
brethren, disposed to h a n g on to old customs, declared that
candles and oil were the only fit materials for lighting a
church, and they denounced the innovation as indicative of
vanity on the part of the new-comers. They used oil in the
ancient Temple, and it was that which ran down on Aaron's
beard, and anything that was good enough for the whiskers
of an old-time priest was good enough for a country meeting-house. These sticklers for the oil were present t h a t
night, hoping—and I think some of them were secretly
praying—that the gas might go out.

LIFE OF KEV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

39

" W i t h my ten-minute manuscript I went into the pulpit,
all in a tremor. Although the gas did not burn as brightly
as its friends had hoped, still it was bright enough to show
the people the perspiration that stood in beads on my forehead. I began my discourse, and every sentence gaye me the
feeling that I was one step nearer the gallows. I spoke
very slowly, so as to make the ten-minute notes last fifteen
minutes. During the preaching of the brief manuscript
I concluded that I had never been called to the ministry.
I was in a hot bath of excitement. People noticed my
trepidation, and supposed it was because I was afraid the
gas would go out. Alas ! My fear was that it would not
go out. As I came towards the close of my brief I joined
the anti-gas party, and prayed that before I came to the
last written line something would burst, and leave me in the
darkness. Indeed, I discovered 'an encouraging flicker amid
the burners, which gave me the hope that the brief which
lay before me would be long enough for all practical purposes, and that the hour of execution might be postponed
to some other night. As I came to the sentence next to
the last the lights fell down to half their size, and I could
just manage to see the audience as they were floating away
from my vision. I said to myself, i W h y can't these lights
be obliging, and go out entirely ? ' The wish was gratified.
As I finished the last line of my brief, and stood on the
verge of rhetorical destruction, the last glimmer of light
was extinguished. ' It is impossible to proceed,' I cried
o u t ; ' receive the benediction !'
" I crawled down the pulpit in a state of exhiliration; I
never before saw such handsome darkness. The odor of
the escaping gas was to me like 'gales from Araby.' Did
a frightened young man ever have such fortunate deliverance ? The providence was probably intended to humble
the trustees, yet the scared preacher took advantage of it.

40

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE 3 D.D.

" But after I got home I saw the wickedness of being in
such dread. As the Lord got me out of that predicament,
I resolved never again to be cornered in one similar. Forthwith the thraldom was broken, I hope never again to be
felt. How demeaning that a man with a message from the
Lord Almighty should be dependent upon paper-mills and
gasometers! Paper is a non-conductor of Gospel electricity. If a man has a five-thousand-dollar bill of goods to
sell a customer, he does not go up to the purchaser and say,
6
I have some remarks to make to you about these goods,
but just wait till I get out my manuscript.' Before he got
through reading the argument the customer would be in
the next door, making purchases from another house.
" W h a t cowardice! Because a few critical hearers sit
with lead pencils out to mark down the inaccuracies of extemporaneousness, shall the pulpit cower ? While the great
congregation are ready to take the bread hot out of the
oven, shall the minister be crippled in his work because the
village doctor or lawyer sits carping before him ? To
please a few learned ninnies a thousand ministers sit
writing sermons on Saturday night till near the break of
day, their heads hot, their feet cold, and their nerves
a-twitch. Sermons born on Saturday night are apt to have
the rickets. Instead of cramping our chests over writingdesks, and being the slaves of the pen, let us attend to our
physical health, that we may have more pulpit independence.
" Which thoughts came to me this week as I visited again
the village church aforesaid, and preached out of the same
old Bible in which, years ago, I laid the ten-minute manuscript, and I looked upon the same lights that once behaved
so badly. But I found it had been snowing since the time I
lived there, and heads that then were black are white now,

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMA&E, D.D.

41

and some of the eyes which looked up to me that memorable night when the gasometer failed us, years ago, are
closed now, and for them all earthly lights have gone out
forever.
" HOW I TOOK E X E R C I S E .

" Soon after entering the ministry I was reading, one day,
on the importance of physical exercise. The subject flashed
upon me so overpoweringly that I resolved on a gymnasium
in the garret of my country parsonage. I speedily extemporised such an institution, and with coat off and slippers
on began exercise. I ran and jumped and swung and lifted
and climbed and took frightful positions. Several times
there was a knock at the door, and fears expressed for the
demolition of the parsonage. But I dislike to stop after I
have started in anything. So I kept on jerking away at the
pulleys and walking the horizontal bars and bending over
backward till my head touched the floor, and going through
all varieties of tumbling. The second day my exercise was
excruciating, because of sore ligaments and muscles. On
the third day I resigned for ever the duties of that particular gymnasium. I sat two days with my feet upon a pillow, in a state of disgust with all those who had written on
the subject of sanitary conditions. I doubted whether physical exercise was of any advantage after all. It certainly
had been a damage to me. Against all the learned advocates on the other side, I had before me two immovable
arguments in the shape of two crippled legs. I would have
continued that quiet position still longer, but Sunday had
come, and I must preach. Getting to church was one of
the most difficult enterprises I ever conducted. I went early,
for the pulpit was to be climbed, and I did not desire to excite the sympathy of the audience. There was no one in
church but the sexton, and I waited till he went to ring the

4:2

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

bell before I began to climb the sacred hill. The six steps
seemed like the sides of the Matterhorn for difficult ascent.
The first step up I took sidewise, the second backward, the
the third by a strong pull on the banisters. I then stopped
to rest and wipe the perspiration from my brow, all flushed
with the manly achievements of the last five minutes. Nothing but the fact that I was half-way up, and that it would
hurt me as much to go down as to go up, encouraged me in
the work of ascent. But the last two steps were stimulated by the sound of advancing feet in the vestibule, and an
indisposition on my part to create unseemly mirth in church,
or t o tempt any one to irreverent laughter at an ambassador
from the skies. The audience coming in were surprised to
find their pastor so early waiting for them. If I had that
day taken the text nearest to my heart, it would have been
Paul's advice to a young minister by the name of Timothy,
* Bodily exercise profiteth little.'
" I learned by these experiences that anything overdone
had better not be done at all. Gymnasiums are grand
things; but let common sense dictate quantities and qualities, and do not allow the dumb-bells to drag down the
shoulders, nor had you better hang by your feet to a ring till
you get black in the face. Fencing is good; but do not
be rough, nor play with loafers. Pedestrianism is healthful; but do not forget that the road back is a little farther
than the road out, though it may be the same road. Hunting is good, if you do not shoot sparrows, nor go to sleep
on the edge of a marsh. Rowing is good, if you do not
take a bottle in the boat, nor pull so hard that you get
aneurismal trouble with the heart. W h e n I forsook the
fitful and extravagant use of gymnastics, and came to their
gradual and intelligent use, I found them, next to religion,
the best panacea for all earthly ills. I have put down all

LIFE OF REV. T. DE W I T T TALMAGE, D.D.

43

the burdens of the last twenty years at the door of the
gymnasium, or hung them on the horizontal bars, or demolished them with the butt end of dumb-bells, or fastened
them, as so many Mazeppas, to the wooden horse bounding
off the precipices of forgetfulness. Let not, therefore,
the wrenched muscles and swollen feet of the Belleville
parsonage trip up any one on his way to the gymnasium.
Only do not take so much of anything at once that you cannot take any more of it again. Moderation is a big word,
which it takes some of us a long time to learn how to spell."
CATCHING T H E BAY MAKE.

" I t may be a lack of education on my part, but I confess
to a dislike for horse-races. I never attended but three;
the first in my boyhood, the second at a country fair, where
I was deceived as to what would transpire, the third last
Sabbath morning. I see my friends flush with indignation
at this last admission; but let them wait a moment before
they launch their verdict.
" My horse was in the pasture-field. I t was almost time
to start for church, and I needed the animal harnessed. The
boy came in saying it was impossible to catch the bay
mare, and calling for my assistance. I had on my best
clothes, and did not feel like exposing myself to rough
usage; but I vaulted the fence with pail of water in hand,
expecting to t r y the effect of rewards rather than punishments. The horse came out generously to meet me. I said
to the boy, ' She is very tame. Strange you cannot catch
her.' She came near enough to cautiously smell the pail,
when she suddenly changed her mind, and with one wild
snort dashed off to the other end of the field.
" W h e t h e r she was not thirsty, or was critical of the manner of presentation, or had apprehensions of my motive, or

44:

LIFE OF REV. T. DE W I T T TALMAGE, D.D.

was seized with desire for exercise in the open air, she gave
us no chance to guess. I resolved upon more caution of
advance and gentler voice, and so laboriously approached
her; for though a pail of water is light for a little way, it
gets heavy after you have gone a considerable distance,
though its contents be half spilled.
" This time I succeeded in getting her nose inserted into
the bright beverage. I called her by pet names, addressing
her as ' P o o r Dolly!' not wishing to suggest any pauperism
b y that term, but only sympathy for the sorrows of the
brute creation, and told her that she was the finest horse
that ever was. It seemed to take well. Flattery always
does with horses.
" I felt that the time had come for me to produce the
rope halter, which with my left hand I had all the while
kept secreted behind my back. I put it over her neck,
when the beast wheeled, and I seized her by the point
where the copy-books say we ought to take Time, namely,
the forelock. But I had poor luck. I ceased all caressing
tone, and changed the subjunctive mood for the imperative.
There never was a greater divergence of sentiment than at
that instant between myself and the bay mare. She pulled
one way, I pulled the other. Turning her back upon me
she ejaculated into the air two shining horse-shoes, both the
shape of the letter O, the one interjection in contempt for
the ministry and the other in contempt for the press.
" But catch the horse I must, for .1 was bound to be at
church, though just then I did not feel at all devotional. I
resolved, therefore, with the boy, to run her down; so, by
way of making an animated start, I slung the pail at the*
horse's head and put out on a Sunday morning horse-race.
Every time she stood at the other end of the field waiting
for me to come up. She trotted, galloped and careered

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

45

about me with an occasional neigh cheerfully given to encourage me in the pursuit. I was getting more and more
unprepared in body, mind and soul for the sanctuary.
Meanwhile, quite a household audience lined the fence, the
children and visitors shouted like excited Romans in an
amphitheatre at a contest with wild beasts, and it was uncertain whether the audience was in sympathy with me or
the b a y mare.
" A t this unhappy juncture she who some years ago took
me for c better or for worse' came to the rescue, finding me
in the latter condition. She advanced to the field with a
w r ash-basin full of water, offering that as a sole inducement,
and gave one call when the horse w e n t out to meet her, and
under a hand not half so strong as mine gripping the mane
the refractory beast was led to the manger.
" Standing with my feet in the damp grass and my new
clothes wet to a sop I learned then and there how much depends on the way you do a thing. The proposition I made
to the bay mare was far better than that offered by my
companion, but mine failed and hers succeeded. Not the
first nor the last time that a wash-basin has beaten a pail.
So some of us go all through life clumsily coaxing and
awkwardly pursuing things which we want to halter and
control. W e strain every nerve, only to find ourselves befooled and left far behind, while some Christian man or
woman comes into the field and by easy art captures that
which evaded us.
" I heard a good sermon t h a t day, but it was not more
impressive than the fatiguing lesson of the pasture-field,
which taught us t h a t not more depends upon the thing you
do than upon t h e way you do it. T h e difference between
the clean swath of that harvester in front of our house and
the ragged work of his neighbor is in the way he swings

46

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

the scythe, and not in the scythe itself. There are ten men
with one talent apiece who do more good than the one man
with ten talents. A basin properly lifted may accomplish
more than a pail unskillfully swung. A minister for an
hour in his sermon endeavors to chase down those brutish
in their habits, attempting to place them under the harness
of Christian restraint, and perhaps miserably fails, when
some gentle hand of sisterly or motherly affection laid upon
the wayward one brings him safely in.
" There is a knack in doing things. If all those who
plough in State and Church had known how to hold the
handles, and turn a straight furrow, and stop the team
at the end of the field, the world would long ago have been
ploughed into an Eden. W h a t many people want is gumption—a word as yet undefined; but if you do not know what
it means, it is very certain you do not possess the quality it
describes. W e all need to follow Christian tact. T h e boys
in the Baskinridge school-house laughed at W m . L. Dayton's impediment of spech, b u t that did not hinder him from
afterwards making court-room and Senate-chamber thrill
under the spell of his words.
" In my early home there was a vicious cat that would
invade the milk-pans, and we, the boys, chased her with
hoes and rakes, always hitting the place where she had been
just before, till one day father came out with a plain
stick of oven-wood, and with one little clip back of the ear,
put an end to all of her nine lives. You see everything depends upon the style of the stroke, and not upon the elaborateness of the weapon. The most valuable things you t r y
to take will behave like the bay mare; but what you cannot overcome by coarse persuasion, or reach at full run,
you can catch with apostolic guile. Learn the first-rate
art of doing secular or Christian work, and then it matters
not whether your weapon be a basin or a pail,"

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

47

BUYS A COW.

" I was spending my summers in the country, and must
have a cow. There were ten or fifteen cows to be sold.
There were reds, and piebalds, and duns, and browns, and
brindles, short horns, long horns, crumpled horns, and no
horns. But I marked for our own a cow t h a t was said to
be full-blooded, whether Alderney, or Durham, or Galloway, or Ayrshire, I will not tell, lest some cattle-fancier
feel insulted by what I say; and if there is any grace that I
pride myself on, it is prudence and a determination always
to say smooth things. ' How much is bid for this magnificent, full-blooded c o w ? ' cried the auctioneer. 'Seventyfive dollars,' shouted some one. I made it eighty. H e
made it ninety. Somebody else quickly made it a hundred.
After the bids had risen to one hundred and twenty-five
dollars, I got animated, and resolved that I would have t h a t
cow if it took my last cent. ' One hundred and forty doldollars^ shouted m y opponent. The auctioneer said it was
the finest cow he had ever sold; and not knowing much
about vendues, of course I believed him. It was a good deal
of money for a minister to pay, but then I could get the whole
matter off my hands b y giving ' a note.' I n utter defiance
of everything, I cried out, c One hundred and fifty dollars!'
6
Going at that,' said the auctioneer. ' Going at that! once!
twice! three times! gone! Mr. Talmage has it.' I t was
one of the proudest moments of my life. There she stood,
tall, immense in the girth, horns branching graceful as a
tree-branch, full-uddered, silk-coated, pensive-eyed.
" I hired two boys to drive her home, while I rode in a
carriage. N o sooner had I started than the cow showed
what turned out to be one of her peculiarities—great speed
of hoof. She left the boys, outran my horse, jumped the
fence, frightened nearly to death a group of school chil-

48

LIFE OF KEY. T. DE W I T T TALMAGE, IXD.

dren, and by the time I got home we all felt as if we had
been out all day on a fox chase.
" W e never had any peace with that cow. She knew
more tricks than a juggler. She could let down any bars,
open any gate, outrun any dog, and ruin the patience of
any minister. I had her a year, and yet she never got over
wanting to go to the vendue. Once started out of the yard
she was bound to see the sheriff. I coaxed her with carrots, and apples, and cabbage, and sweetest stalks, and the
richest beverage of slops, but without avail.
" A s a milker she was a failure. 'Mike,' who lived just
back of our place, would come in at nights from his ' Kerry
cow,' a scraggy runt that lived on the commons, with his
pail so full he had to carry it cautiously lest it spilt over.
But after our full-blooded had been in clover to her eyes all
day Bridget would go out to the barn-yard, and t u g and
pull for a supply enough to make two or three custards. I
said, ' Bridget you don't know how to milk. Let me try.' I
sat down by the cow, tried the full force of dynamics, but
just at the moment when my success was about to be demonstrated, a sudden thought took her somewhere between
the horns, and she started for the vendue, with one stroke
of her back foot upsetting the small treasure I had accumulated, and leaving me a mere wreck of what I once was.
" She had, among other bad things, a morbid appetite.
Notwithstanding I gave her the richest herbaceous diet, she
ate everything she could put her mouth on. She was fond
of horse-blankets and articles of human clothing. I found
her one day at the clothes-line nearly choked to death, for
she had swallowed one leg of something and seemed dissatisfied that she could not get down the other. The most
perfect nuisance that I ever had about my placn was that
full-blooded.

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

49

" H a v i n g read in our agricultural journal of cows that
were slaughtered yielding fourteen hundred pounds, meat
weight, we concluded to sell her to the butcher. I set a
high price upon her and got it; that is, I took a note for it,
which is the same thing. My bargain with the butcher was
the only successful chapter in my bovine experiences. The
only taking off in the whole transaction was that the butcher
ran away, leaving me nothing but a specimen of poor chirography, and I already had enough of that among my
manuscripts.
" My friend, never depend on high-breeds. Some of the
most useless of cattle had ancestors spoken of in the 'Commentaries of Caesar.' T h a t Alderney whose grandfather
used to gaze on a lord's park in England may not be worth
the grass she eats.
" Do not depend too much on the high-sounding name of
Durham or Devon. As with animals, so with men. Only
one President ever had a President for a son. Let every
cow make her own name, and every man achieve his own
position. It is no great credit to a fool that he had a wise
grandfather. Many an Ayrshire and Hereford has had the
hollow-horn and the foot-rot. Both man and animal are
valuable in proportion as they are useful. iMike's'
cow
beat my full-blooded.
" M Y DOG IN

TROUBLE.

" I sat in the country parsonage, on a cold winter day,
looking out of the back window towards the house of a
neighbor. She was a model of kindness, and a most convenient neighbor to have. I t was a rule between us that
when either house was in want of anything it should borrow of the other. The rule worked well for the parsonage,
but rather badly for the neighbor, because on my side of

50

LIFE OF REV. T. DE W I T T TALMAGE, D.D.

the fence I had just begun to keep house, and needed to
borrow everything, while I had nothing to lend, except a
few sermons, which the neighbor never tried to borrow,
from the fact that she had enough of them on Sundays.
There is no danger that your neighbor will burn a hole in your
new brass kettle if you have none to lend. It will excite
no surprise to say, that I had an interest in all that happened on the other side of the parsonage fence, and t h a t
any injury inflicted on so kind a woman would rouse my
sympathy.
" On the wintry morning of which I speak my neighbor
had been making ice-cream; but there being some defect
in the machinery, the cream had not sufficiently congealed,
and so she set the can of the freezer containing the luxury
on her back steps, expecting the cold air would completely
harden it. W h a t was my dismay to see that my dog Carlo,
on whose~early education I was expending great care, had
taken upon himself the office of ice-cream inspector, and
was actually busy with the freezer! I hoisted the window
and shouted at him, but Jiis mind was so absorbed in his
undertaking he did not stop to listen. Carlo was a greyhound, thin, gaunt, and long-nosed, and he was already
making his way on down towards the bottom of the can.
His eyes and all his head had disappeared in the depths of
the freezer. Indeed, he was so far submerged t h a t when
he heard me, with quick and infuriate pace, coming up close
behind him, he could not get his head out, and so started
with the incumbrance on his head, in what direction he
knew not. No dog was ever in a more embarrassing position—freezer to the right of him, freezer to the left of him,
freezer on the top of him, freezer under him.
" So, thoroughly blinded, he rushed against the fence,
then against the side of the house, then against a tree. He

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

51

barked as though he thought he might explode the nuisance
with loud sound, but the sound was confined in so strange
a speaking-trumpet that he could not have known his own
voice. His way seemed hedged up. F r i g h t and anger and
remorse and shame whirled him about without mercy.
" A feeling of mirthfulness, which sometimes takes me
on most inappropriate occasions, seized me, and I sat down
on the ground powerless at the moment when Carlo most
needed help. If I only could have got near enough I would
have put m y foot on the freezer, and, taking hold of the
dog's tail, dislodged him instantly; but this I was not permitted to do. A t this stage of the disaster my neighbor
appeared with a look of consternation, her cap strings flying in the cold wind. I tried to explain, but the aforesaid
untimely hilarity hindered me. All I could do was to
point to the flying freezer and the adjoining dog, and ask
her to call off her freezer, and, with assumed indignation,
demand what she meant by trying to kill my greyhound.
" The poor dog's every attempt at escape only wedged
himself more thoroughly fast. But after a while, in time
to save the dog, though not to save the ice-cream, my
neighbor and myself effected a rescue. Edwin Landseer,
the great painter of dogs and their friends, missed his best
chance by not being there when the parishioner took hold
of the freezer and the pastor seized the dog's tail, and, pulling mightily in opposite directions, they each got possession
of their own property.
u
Carlo was cured of his love for luxuries, and the sight
of a freezer on the back steps till the day of his death
would send him howling away.
" Carlo found, as many people have found, that it is
easier to get into trouble than to get out. Nothing could
be more delicious than while he was eating his way in, but

52

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

what must have been his feelings when he found it impossible to get out! While he was stealing the freezer the
freezer stole him.
44
Better moderate our desires. Carlo had that morning
as good a breakfast as any dog need to have. It was a law
of the household that he should be well fed. H a d he been
satisfied with bread and meat all would have been well.
But he sauntered out for luxuries. He wanted ice-cream.
He got it, but brought upon his head the perils and damages of which I have written. As long as we have reasonable wants we get on comfortably, but it is the struggle
after luxuries that fills society with distress and populates
prisons and sends hundreds of people stark mad. Dissatisfied with a plain house and ordinary apparel and respectable
surroundings, they plunge their head into enterprises and
speculations from which they have to sneak out in disgrace.
Thousands of men have sacrificed honor and religion for
luxuries, and died with the freezer about their ears.
" Our poor old Carlo is dead now. W e all cried when we
found that he would never frisk again at our coming nor
put up his paw against us. But he lived long enough to
preach the sermon about caution and contentment of which
I have been the stenographer.
" L E S S O N S FROM MY DOGS.

" I said when I lost Carlo, that I would never own another
dog. W e all sat around, like big children, crying about it;
and what made the grief worse, we had no sympathizers.
Our neighbors were glad of it, for he had not always done
the fair thing with them. One of them had lost a chicken
when it w^as stuffed and all ready for the pan, and suspicions were upon Carlo. I was the only counsel for the
defendant; and while I had to acknowledge that the cir-

LIFE OF REV. T. DE W I T T TALMAGE, D.D.

53

cumstantial evidence was against him, I proved his general
character for integrity, and showed that the common and
criminal law were on our side, Coke and Blackstone in our
favor, and a long list of authorities and decisions: II.
Revised Statutes, New York, 132, § 27; also, W a t c h v.
Towser, Crompton and Meeson, p. 375; also, State of New
Jersey v. Sicem Blanchard. W h e n I made these citations,
my neighbor and his wife, who were judges and jurors in
the case, looked confounded; and so I followed up the advantage I had gained with the law maxim, iVbn minus ex
dolo quam ex culpa qidsque hac lege tenetur, which I found
afterwards was the wrong Latin, but it had its desired
effect, so that the jury did not agree, and Carlo escaped
with his life; and on the way home, he went spinning round
like a top, and punctuating his glee with a semicolon made
by both paws on my new clothes. Yet, notwithstanding
all his predicaments and frailties, at his decease we resolved
in our trouble that we would never own another dog. But
this, like many other resolutions of our life, has been
broken; and here is Nick, the Newfoundland, lying sprawling on the mat. He has a jaw set with strength, an eye
mild, but indicative of the fact that he does not want too
many familiarities from strangers; a nostril large enough
to snuff a wild duck across the meadows, knows how to
shake hands, and can talk with head, and ear, and tail, and
—save an unreasonable antipathy to cats—is perfect, and
always goes with me in my wTalk out of town.
" H e knows more than a great many people. Never do
we take a walk, but the poodles, and rat-terriers, and the
grizzly curs with stringy hair and damp nose, get after
him. They tumble off the front door-step, and out^of
kennels, and assault him front and rear. I have several
times said to him (not loud enough for Presbytery to hear),

54
6

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, B . B .

Nick ! why do you stand all this ? Go at them ! ' He
never takes my advice. He lets them bark and snap, and
passes on unprovokedly without a sniff or growl. He seems
to say: ' T h e y are not worth minding. Let them bark. It
pleases them and don't hurt me. I started out for a six
mile tramp, and I cannot be diverted. Newfoundlands
like me have a mission. My father pulled three drowning
men to the beach, and my uncle on my mother's side saved
a child from the snow. If you have anything brave, or
good, or great for me to do, just clap your hands and point
out the work, and I will do it, but I cannot waste my time
on rat-terriers.' If Nick had put that in doggrel, I think it
would have read well. I t wras wise enoagh to become the
dogma of a school. Men and women are more easily
diverted from the straight course than is Nick. No useful
people escape being barked at.
" If these men go right on their way, they perform their
mission and get their reward, but one-half of them stop
and make attempt to silence the literary, political, and ecclesiastical curs that snap at them. Many an author has got
a drop of printer's ink spattered in his eye, and collapsed.
If a fool, no amount of newspaper or magazine puffery can
set you u p ; and if you are useful, no amount of newspaper
or magazine detraction can keep you down. F o r every position there are twenty aspirants; only one man can get it;
forthwith the other nineteen are on the offensive. People
are silly enough to think that they can build themselves
up with the bricks they pull out of your wall. Pass on
and leave them. W h a t a waste of powder for a hunter to
go into the wood to shoot black flies, or for a man of great
fcrork to notice infinitesimal assault. My Newfoundland
would scorn to be seen making a drive at a black-and-tan
terrier.

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, B.D.

55

"Lesson for dogs and men: Keep out of fights. If you
see a church contest, or a company of unsanctified females
overhauling each other's good name, until there is nothing
left of them but a broken hoop-skirt and one curl of back
hair, you had better stand clear. Once go in, and your own
character will be an invitation to their muzzles. Nick's
long, clean ear was a temptation to all the dogs. You will
have enough battles of your own, without getting a loan of
conflicts at twenty per cent, a month. W h e n Nick and I
take a country walk, and pass a dog-fight, he comes close
up by my side, and looks me in the eye with one long wipe
of the tongue over his chops, as much as to say, ' Easier to
get into a fight than to get out of it. Better jog along our
own way;' and then I preach him a short sermon from
Proverbs xxvi. 17, ' H e that passeth by, andmeddleth with
strife belonging not to him, is like one that taketh a dog
by the e a r s . ' "

CHAPTER
I

VISIT

IV.

ENGLAND

.

" M Y friend looked white as the wall, flung the ' London.
T i m e s ' half across the room, kicked one slipper into the
air, and shouted, ' Talmage, where on earth did you come
f r o m ? ' as this summer I stepped into his English home.
' J u s t come over the ferry to dine with you,' I responded.
After some explanation about the health of my family,
which demanded a sea voyage, and this necessitated my
coming, we j)lanned two or three excursions.
" A t eight o'clock in the morning we gathered in the parlor in the ' R e d Horse H o t e l ' at Stratford-on-Avon.
Two
pictures of Washington Irving, the chair in which the
father of American literature sat, and the table on which
he wrote, immortalizing his visit to that hotel, adorn the
room. F r o m thence we sailed forth to see the clean, quaint
village of Stratford. It was built just to have Shakespeare
born in. W e have not heard that there wTas any one else
ever born there, before or since. If, by any strange possibility, it could be proved that the great dramatist was born
anywhere else, it would ruin all the cab-drivers, guides,
and hostelries of the place.
" W e went of course to the house where Shakespeare first
appeared on the stage of life, and enacted the first act of
his first play. Scene the first: E n t e r J o h n Shakespeare,
the father; Mrs. Shakespeare, the mother; and the old
nurse, with young William.
" A very plain house it is. Like the lark, which soars

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

57

highest but builds its nest lowest, so with genius; it has humble beginnings. I think ten thousand dollars would be a
large appraisement for all the houses where the great poets
were born. But all the world comes to this lowly dwelling.
W a l t e r Scott was glad to scratch his name on the window,
and you may see it now. Charles Dickens, Edmund Kean,
Albert Smith, Mark Lemon and Tennyson, so very sparing
of their autographs, have left their signatures on the wall.
There are the jambs of the old fire-place where the poet
warmed himself and combed wool, and began to triink
for all time. Here is the chair in which he sat while presiding at the club, forming habits of drink which killed
him at the last, his own life ending in a tragedy as terrible
as any he ever wrote. Exeunt wine-bibbers, topers, grogshop keepers, Drayton, Ben Jonson, and William Shakespeare. Here also is the letter which Richard Quyney sent
to Shakespeare, asking to borrow thirty pounds. I hope he
did not lend it; for if he did, it was a dead loss.
" W e went to the church where the poet is buried. I t
dates back seven hundred years, but has been often restored. I t has many pictures, and is the sleeping place of
many distinguished dead; but one tomb within the chancel absorbs all the attention of the stranger. For hundreds
of years the world has looked upon the unadorned stone
lying flat over the dust of William Shakespeare, and read
the epitaph written by himself:
'' ' Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbeare
To dig the dust enclosed here;
Bleste be ye man yt spares these stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones.'
" Under such anathema the body has slepi securely. A
sexton once looked in at the bones, but did not dare touch
thenij lest his ' quietus should be made with a bare bodkin,'

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LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D D.

" From the church door we mounted our carriage; and
crossing the Avon on a bridge which t h e Lord Mayor of
London built four hundred years ago, we started on one of
the most memorable rides of my life. The country looked
fresh and luxuriant from recent rains. The close-trimmed
hedges, the sleek cattle, the snug cottages, the straggling
villages with their historic inns, the castle from whose park
Shakespeare stole the deer, the gate called ' Shakespeare's
stile,' curious in the fact that it looks like ordinary bars of
fence, but as you attempt to climb over, the whole thing
gives way, and lets you fall flat, righting itself as soon as
it is unburdened of you; the rabbits darting along the
hedges, undisturbed, because it is unlawful, save for
licensed hunters, to shoot, and then not on private propert y ; the perfect weather, the blue sky, the exhilirating breeze,
the glorious elms and oaks by the w^ay—make it a day
that will live when most other days are dead.
" A t two o'clock we came in sight of Kenilworth Castle.
Oh, this is the place to stir the blood. I t is the king of
ruins. Warwick is nothing, Melrose is nothing, compared
with it. A thousand great facts look out through the
broken windows. Earls and kings and queens sit along the
shattered sides of the banqueting-halls. The stairs are
wrorn deep with the feet that have clambered them for eight
hundred years. As a loving daughter arranges the dress of
an old man, so every season throws a thick mantle of ivy
over the mouldering wall. The roof t h a t caught and
echoed back the merriment of dead ages has perished.
Time hasstruck his chisel into every inch of the structure.
" B y the payment of only threepence you find access to
places where only the titled were once permitted to walk.
You go in, and are overwhelmed with the thoughts of past
glory and present decay. These halls were promenaded by
Richard Cceur de Lion; in this chapel burned the tomb"

LIFE OF R E T . T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

59

lights over the grave of Geoffrey de Clinton; in these dungeons kings groaned; in these doorways duchesses fainted.
Scene of gold, and silver, and scroll-work, and chiselled
arch, and mosaic. Here were heard the carousals of the
Round Table; from those very stables the caparisoned
horses came prancing out for the tournament; through that
gateway, strong, weak, heroic, mean, splendid Queen Elizabeth advanced to the castle, while the waters of the lake
gleamed under torch-lights, and the battlements were
aflame with rockets; and cornet, and hautboy and trumpet,
poured out their music on the air; and goddesses glided out
from the groves to meet her; and from turret to foundation
Kenil worth trembled under a cannonade, and for seventeen
days, at a cost of of five thousand dollars a day, the festival was kept. F o u r hundred servants standing in costly
livery; sham battles between knights on horseback; jugglers
tumbling on the grass; thirteen bears baited for the amusement of the guests; three hundred and twenty hogsheads
of beer consumed; till all Europe applauded, denounced, and
stood amazed.
" W h e r e is the glory now? W h a t has become of the
velvet ? W h o wears the jewels ? W o u l d Amy Robsart
have longed to get into the castle had she known its coming
r u i n ? W h e r e are those who were waited ori, and those
who waited ? W h a t has become of Elizabeth the visitor,
and Robert Dudley the visited ? Cromwell's men dashed
upon the scene ; they drained the lakes ; they befouled the
banquet-hall; they turned the castle into a tomb, on whose
scarred and riven sides ambition and cruelty and lust may
well read their doom. ' So let all thine enemies perish, O
Lord ; but let them that love Thee be as the sun when he
goeth forth in his m i g h t . ' "
THOMAS CARLYLE.

" I n Chelsea, a suburb of London, and on a narrow street,

60

LIFE OF REV. T. DE W I T T TALMAGE, D.D.

with not even a bouse in front, but, instead tbereof, a long
range of brick wall, is tbe bouse of Thomas Carlyle. You
go through a narrow hall and t u r n to the left, and are in
the literary workshop where some of the strongest thunderbolts of the world have been forged. The two front windows have on them scant curtains of reddish calico, b u n g
at the top of the lower sash, so as not to keep the sun from
looking down, but to hinder the street from looking in.
" The room has a lounge covered with the same material,
and of construction such as you would find in the plainest
bouse among the mountains. It looks as if it had been
made by an author not accustomed to saw or hammer,
and in the interstices of mental work. On the wall are a
few woodcuts in plain frames or pinned against the wall;
also a photograph of Mr. Carlyle taken one day, as his
family told me, when he had a violent toothache and could
attend to nothing else. I t is his favorite picture, though it
gives him a face more than ordinarily severe and troubled.
" I n long shelves, unpainted and unsheltered by glass or
door, is the library of the world-renowned thinker. The
books are worn, as though he bad bought them to read.
Many of them are uncommon books, tbe titles of which I
never saw before. American literature is almost ignored,
while Germany monopolizes many of the spaces. I noticed
the absence of theological works, save those of Thomas
Chalmers, whose name and genius he well-nigh worships.
The carpets are old and worn and faded—not because be
cannot afford better, but because he would have his home a
perpetual protest against the world's sham. I t is a place
not calculated to give inspiration to a writer. ISTo easychairs, no soft divans, no wealth of upholstery, but simply
a place to work and stay. Never having heard a word
about it, it was nevertheless just such a place as I expected,"

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

61

WORKS OF ART.

" None can forget the place, or the day, or the hour, when
he first gazed on a genuine work of one of the old masters.
W e had seen for years pieces of canvas which pretended to
have come frdtn Italy or Germany, and to be three or four
hundred years old. The chief glory of them was that they
were cracked, and wrinkled, and dull, and inexplicable, and
had great antiquity of varnish, immensity of daub, and infinity of botch. The great grandfather of the exhibition
got the heirloom from a Portuguese pedlar, who was
wrecked at Venice in the middle of the last century, and
went ashore just as one of the descendants of the celebrated
Braggadocio Thundergusto, of the fourteenth century, was
hard up for money, and must have a drink or die.
" But I find in my diary this record:
" ' J u n e 30, 1870, at two o'clock, P . M., in the National
Gallery of Scotland, I first saw a Titian.
" ' J u l y 9, 1870, at ten minutes to three o'clock, in the
National Gallery of England, first saw a Murillo.'
" I t seemed to require a sacred subject to call out the
genius of the old masters. On secular themes they often
failed. They knew not, as do the moderns, how to pluck
up a plant from the earth and make it live on canvas. Delmonico, for the adornment of a shoulder of bacon, with his
knife cuts out of a red beet a rose more natural than the
forget-me-not of old Sigismond Holbein, or the lily by Lo
Spagna. Their battle-pieces are a Cincinnati slaughterhouse. Their Cupid scenes are merely a nursery of babies
that rush out from the bath-tub into the hall before their
mother has time to dress them. The masters failed with a
fiddle, but shook the earth with a diapason. Give them a
' Crucifixion ' or a ' Judgment,' and they triumph,"

C H A P T E R V.
MY R E T U R N TO AMERICA.

[ I N company with Dr. Talmage, on "board the " Gallia,"
up the Channel, he remarked to us that he had recently
passed the steamship " Greece," in which vessel he once
encountered, with seven hundred other souls on board, a
terrific cyclone when returning, home from England. His
powerful description of that event, written at the time, we
now present to our readers.—ED.]
" The steamer ' Greece' of the National Line swung out
into the river Mersey at Liverpool, bound for N e w York.
W e had on board seven hundred, crew and passengers. W e
came together strangers—Englishmen, Irishmen, Italians,
Swedes, Norwegians, Americans. Two flags floated from
the masts: British and American ensigns. So may they
ever float, and no red hand of war ever snatch either of
them down! In the same prayer that we put up for our
own national prosperity, we will send up the petition, i God
save the Queen!' W e had a new vessel, or one so thoroughly
remodeled that the voyage had around it all the uncertainties of a trial trip. The great steamer felt its way cautiously out into the sea. The pilot was discharged; and
committing ourselves to the care of Him who holdeth the
winds in His fist, we were fairly started on our voyage of
three thousand miles. It was rough nearly all the way—
the sea with strong buffeting disputing out path. But one
week ago last night, at eleven o'clock, after the lights had
been put out, a cyclone—a wind just made to tear ships to

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

63

pieces—caught us in its clutches. It came down so suddenly that we had not time to take in the sails, or to fasten
the hatches. You must know that the bottom of the
Atlantic is strewn with the ghastly work of cyclones. Oh!
they are cruel winds. They have hot breath, as though
they came up from infernal furnaces. Their merriment is
the cry of affrighted passengers. Their play is the foundering of steamers. And when a ship goes down they laugh
until both continents hear them. They go in circles, or, as
I describe them with my hand—rolling on! rolling on!
W i t h finger of terror writing on the white sheet of the
wave this sentence of doom: ' Let all that come within this
circle perish! Brigantines, go down! Clippers, go down!
Steamships, go down!' And the vessel, hearing the terrible
voice, crouches in the surf, and as the waters gurgle through
the hatches and portholes, it lowers away, thousands of feet
down, further and further, until at last it strikes the bottom; and all is peace, for they have landed. Helmsman,
dead at the wheel! Engineer, dead amid the extinguished
furnaces!
Captain, dead in the gangway!
Passengers,
dead in the cabin! Buried in the great cemetery of dead
steamers, beside the ' City of Boston,' the ' Lexington,' the
(
President,'
the ' C a m b r i a ' — w a i t i n g for the archangel's
trumpet to split up the decks, and wrench open the cabindoors, and unfasten the hatches.
" I thought that I had seen storms on the sea before;
b a t all of them together might have come under one wing
of that cyclone. W e were only eight or nine hundred miles
from home, and in high expectation of soon seeing our
friends, for there was no one on board so poor as net to
have a friend. But it seemed as if we were to be disappointed. The most of us expected then and there to die.
There were none who made light of the peril, save two: one

64

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

was an Englishman, and he was drunk, and the other was
an American, and he was a fool! Oh! what a time it was!
A night to make one's hair turn white. W e came out of
the berths, and stood in the gangway, and ]ooked into the
steerage, and sat in the cabin. While seated there, we
heard overhead something like minute-guns. It was the
bursting of the sails. W e held on with both hands to keep
our places, Those who attempted to cross the floor came
back bruised and gashed. Cups and glasses were dashed
to fragments; pieces of the table, getting loose, swung
across the saloon. It seemed as if the hurricane took that
great ship of thousands of tons and stood it on end, and
said: /Shall I sink it, or let it go this once?' And then it
came down with such force that the billows trampled over
it, each mounted on a fury. W e felt that everything depended on the propelling screw. If that stopped for an
instant, we knew the vessel would fall off into the trough
of the sea and sink; and so we prayed that the screw, which
three times since leaving Liverpool had already stopped,
might not stop now. Oh! how anxiously we listened for
the regular thump, thump, thump of the machinery, upon
which our lives seemed to depend. After a while some one
said: ' The screw is stopped!' N o ; its sound had only been
overpowered by the uproar of the tempest, and we breathed
easier again when we heard the regular pulsations of the
overtasked machinery going thump, thump, thump.
At
three o'clock in the morning the water covered the ship
from prow to stern, and the skylights gave way! The
deluge rushed in, and we felt that one or two more waves
like that must swamp us forever.
As the water rolled
backward and forward in the cabins, and dashed against
the wall, it sprang half-way up to the ceiling.
Rushing through the skylights as it came in with such ter-

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

65

rific roar, there went up from the cabin a shriek of horror
which I pray God I may never hear again. I have dreamed
the whole scene over again, but God has mercifully kept
me from hearing that one cry. Into it seemed to be compressed the agony of expected shipwreck. It seemed to
say: 'I shall never get home again! My children shall be
orphaned, and my wife shall be widowed! I am launching now into eternity! In two minutes I shall meet my
God!'
" There were about five hundred and fifty passengers in
the steerage; and as the waters rushed in and touched the
furnaces, and began violently to hiss, the poor creatures in
the steerage imagined that the boilers were giving way.
Those passengers writhed in the water and in the mud,
some praying, some crying, all terrified. They made a rush
for the deck. An officer stood on deck, and beat them back
with blow after blow. I t was necessary. They could not
have stood an instant on the deck. Oh! how they begged
to get out of the hold of the ship! One woman with a child
in her arms rushed up and caught hold of one of the officers
and cried: ' D o let me out! I will help you! Do let me out!
I cannot die here.' Some got down and prayed to the Virgin Mary, saying: ' O blessed Mother! keep us! Have
mercy on us!' Some stood with white lips and fixed gaze,
silent in their terror. Some wrung their hands, and cried
out; <0 God! what shall I do? what shall I do?' The time
came when the crew could no longer stay on the deck, and
the cry of the officers was: 'Below! all hands below!' Our
brave and sympathetic Captain Andrews—whose praise I
shall not cease to speak while I live—had been swept by the
hurricane from his bridge, and had escaped very narrowly
with his life. The cyclone seemed to stand on the deck,
waving its wing, crying; ' This ship is mine! I have cap-

66

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

tured it! Ha! ha! I will command it. If God will permit, I will sink it here and now! By a thousand shipwrecks,
I swear the doom of this vessel!' There was a lull in the
storm; but only that it might gain additional fury. Crash!
went the life-boat on one side. Crash! went the life-boat
on the other side. The great booms got loose, and as with
the heft of a thunder-bolt, pounded the deck and beat the
mast—the jib-boom, studding-sail boom, and square-sail
boom, with their strong arms, beating time to the awful
march and music of the hurricane!
"Meanwhile the ocean became phosphorescent. The
whole scene looked like fire. The water dripping from the
rigging; there were ropes of fire; and there were masts of
fire; and there wTas a deck of fire. A ship of fire, sailing on
a sea of fire, through a night of fire. O, my God! let me
never see anything like it again!
" Everybody prayed. A lad of twelve years of age got
down and prayed for his mother. ' If I should give up,'
he said, ' I do not know what would become of mother.'
There were men who, I think, had not prayed for t h i r t y
years, who then got down on their knees. W h e n a man
who has neglected God all his life feels that he has come to
his last time, it makes a very busy night. All our sins and
shortcomings passed through our minds. My own life
seemed unsatisfactory. I could only say; ' H e r e Lord, take
me as I am. I cannot mend matters now. Lord Jesus,
thou didst die for the chief of sinners. That's me! Into
T h y hands I commit myself, my wife, and children at
home, the Tabernacle, the College—all the interests of T h y
kingdom. It seems, Lord, as if my work is done, and poorly
done, and upon Thy infinite mercy I cast myself, and in
this hour of shipwreck and darkness commit myself and her
whom I hold by the hand to Thee, O Lord Jesus! praying

LIFE OF REV. T, DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

6?

that it may be a short struggle in the water, and that at the
same instant we may both arrive in glory!' Oh! I tell you,
a man prays straight to the mark when he has a cyclone
above him, an ocean beneath him, and eternity so close to
him that he can feel its breath on his cheek.
" The night was long. A t last we saw the dawn looking
through the port-holes. As in the olden time, in the fourth
watch of the night, Jesus came walking on the sea, from
wave-cliff to wave-cliff; and when He puts His foot upon a
billow, though it may be tossed up with might, it goes
down. He cried to the winds, Hush! They knew His
voice. The waves knew his foot. They died away. And
in the shining track of his feet I read these letters on scrolls
of foam and fire—* The earth shall be filled with the knowledge of God as the waters fill the sea.' The ocean calmed.
The path of the steamer became more and more mild; until,
on the last morning out, the sun threw around about us a
glory such as I never witnessed before. God made a pavement of mosaic, reaching from horizon to horizon, for all
the splendors of earth and heaven to walk upon—a pavement bright enough for the foot of a seraph—bright
enough for the wheels' of the archangel's chariot. As a
parent embraces a child, and kisses away its grief, so, over
that sea, that had been writhing in agony in the tempest,
the morning threw its arms of beauty and of benediction;
and the lips of earth and heaven met. As I came on deck—
it was very early, and we were nearing the shore—I saw a
few sails against the sky. They seemed like the spirits of
the night walking the billows. I leaned over the taffrail of
the vessel, and said : ' T h y way, O God, is in the sea, and
T h y path in the great waters.'
" I t grew lighter. The clouds were hung in purple clusters along the sky; and, as if those purple clusters were

68

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

pressed into red wine and poured out upon the sea, every
wave turned into crimson. Yonder, fire-cleft stood opposite
to fire-cleft; and here, a cloud rent and tinged with light,
seemed like a palace, with flames bursting from the windows. The whole scene lighted up, until it seemed as if
the angels of God were ascending and descending upon
stairs of fire, and the wave-crests, changed into jasper, and
crystal, and amethyst, as they were flung towards the
beach, made me think of the crowns of heaven cast before
the throne of the great Jehovah. I leaned over the taffrail
again, and said, with more emotion than before: ' T h y way,
O God, is in the sea, and T h y path in the great
waters!'
" S o , I thought, will be the going off of the storm and
night of the Christian's life. The darkness will fold its
tents and away! The golden feet of the rising morn will
come skipping upon the mountians, and all the wrathful
billows of the world's woe break into the splendors of
eternal joy.
" A n d so we came into the harbor. The cyclone behind
us. Our friends before us. God, who is always good, all
around us! And if the roll of the crew and the passengers
had been called, seven hundred souls would have answered
to their names. ' A n d so it came to pass, that we all escaped safe to land.'
" To that God, who delivered me and my comrades, to
that God, I commend you. W a i t not for the storm and
darkness, before you fly to Him. Go to Him now, and seek
his pardon. Find refuge in his mercy.
" And may God grant that when all our Sabbaths on
earth are ended, we may find that, through the rich mercy
of our Lord Jesus Christ, we all have weathered the
gale.

LIFE OF REV. T. DE W I T T TALMAGE, D.D.
"Into

the harbor of heaven now we glide,
Home at last!
Softly we drift on the bright silver tide,
Home at last!
Glory to God! All our dangers are o'er;
We stand secure on the glorified shore.
Glory to God! we will shout evermore.
Home at last!
Home at last I ' "

69

C H A P T E R VI.
T H E HISTORY OF T H E BROOKLYN

TABERNACLE.

T H E church which is popularly known as the Brooklyn
Tabernacle, but whose corporate title is the Central Presbyterian Church, has a history which, as a specimen of remarkably and rapidly achieved success, has so many points of brilliancy that it is not to be wondered at that it has already
filled a large place in the local historic records, in which
have been noted the great achievements in church enterprises that form so distinguishing a characteristic of Brooklyn. This rapid and remarkable growth, however, relates
exclusively to its present pastorate. Previous to that its
advance was slow, and its career without remarkable incident. Like most of the churches of that city, it had its
inception in a mission Sunday-school. This school was
organized by certain members of the Second Presbyterian Church, then under the care of the Rev. J. S.
Spencer. A leader in the movement was Mr. J o h n R.
Morris, the senior elder of the church just named. H e was
chosen its first superintendent on J u l y 19, 1834, and the
school was held in a building in Prince street, and was
known as the Prince Street Mission. This enterprise was
prosecuted amid many various discouragements through a
period of thirteen years. I t culminated on April 13, 1849,
when a church was organized with twenty-five members,
under the corporate title of the Central Presbyterian
Church of Brooklyn. Worship was held in the Sundayschool room for some months. The congregation then pur-

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE. D.D.

71

chased the building which, in 1833, had been erected for a
church by S. A. Willoughby, Esq., at the corner of Willoughbyand Pearl Streets, and which had been used b y khe
Fifth Presbyterian Church. This building is now known as
the Central Auction Sales Room. The Rev. Nathaniel C.
Locke was installed as the first pastor of the new church,
and under his ministrations about fifty persons were added
to its membership. Mr. Locke withdrew in 1850, and was
succeeded by the Rev. Calvin Edson Rockwell, D.D., who
was installed February 13,1851. After a lapse of two years,
the congregation determined to erect a new house of worship. A sale of the Willoughby Street property was effected on J a n u a r y 24, 1853. In order to have a house of
worship for immediate use, the congregation erected a temporary building, to which they gave the name of the Tabernacle. I t was placed at the corner of State and Kevins
streets, and was opened for public worship April 3, 1853.
The building of the permanent structure in Schermerhorn
street, near Kevins street, which then took the name of
the Central Presbyterian Church, and which is now known
as the Lay College Building, was begun, its corner-stone
being laid November 4, 1853. As then completed, and as it
stands to-day, it is a brick structure ninety-nine by sixty-two
feet. The main auditorium contains one hundred and fortyfour pews on the ground floor and forty-two in the gallery.
The edifice has a basement the full size of the building. Its
front is decorated with a portico of the Grecian Doric
order. Its cost was about thirty thousand dollars. This
edifice is now occupied by the present Tabernacle Congregation for the Sunday-school, the Lay College, prayermeetings and church sociables. F o r some time after the
erection of this church considerable success attended the
ministrations of the Rev. Dr. Rockwell. In the winter of

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LIFE OF KEY. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.-

1855 an extensive revival occurred, during which a large
number were added to the membership. In the succeeding
years a decline followed these successes. The great popularity and power of Rev. Dr. Cuyler, whose church was so
near by, drew away numbers, and a want of interest began
to tell sadly upon the condition of affairs in the Central
Presbyterian Church. The Rev. Dr. Rockwell continued
on until 1868, when he felt it to be his duty to resign. The
church w^as without a minister for a year following, and
during that time its members dwindled rapidly, until, it is
said, only nineteen persons had the courage to make an effort to get a first-class minister and to resuscitate the
church. Among those who did much to rouse the courage
of this handful of faithful ones was J u d g e E. C. Converse, a gentleman of great faith, eloquence and influence. H e cast about him for a minister whose power as a
preacher and a worker would build up the church. Through
connections and acquaintances in the city of Philadelphia,
the attention of J u d g e Converse was drawn to the then already rising local fame of the Rev. T. De W i t t Talmage,
then pastor of the First Reformed Church of that city.
Mr. Converse determined on a vigorous effort to obtain
Dr. Talmage as the minister of the Central Presbyterian
Church. I t seemed like a forlorn hope that a pulpit orator,
whose fame was already beginning to fill the land, would
heed, much less accept, a call from a poor struggling
church. Be the result what it might, J u d g e Converse felt
that the needs of the Central Presbyterian Church demanded the highest effort, and, besides, he felt that the
rising preacher could win a noble fame, and do as glorious
a work in Brooklyn as anywhere else. Emboldened by the
faithful J u d g e Converse, his associates commissioned him
to be the bearer of a call to Dr. Talmage. It did not damp

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

73

the ardor of his hopes to find when he reached the home of
Dr. Talmage that four other calls, backed by great influence and power, were already ahead of that which he bore.
One was from a leading church in San Francisco, another
was from Boston, and another from Chicago, and H. M.
Smith, the present editor-in-chief of the " Union," was one
of the committee from that city, wdio carried that call to
Dr. Talmage. Now that that gentleman, whose mission at
the time resulted only in keen disappointment, has, like
Dr. Talmage, become a resident of Brooklyn, and identified
with its material and religious interests, he is no doubt
abundantly satisfied with the choice of the calls then made.
Dr. Talmage has told to a few friends what a struggle of
contending influences was produced in his mind by the presentation of those five calls, and the beseeching cry not to
leave them set up by the church in the midst of which he
was so happily situated, and by which he was so greatly
beloved. After repeated prayer for three days, he decided
in favor of Brooklyn.
The moment he made and announced his decision, his
mind grew at ease, and though many of his congregation
came to him with tears in their eyes to induce him to
change his determination, he never wavered, as he saw his
way clear. His first sermon under his present pastorate
was preached on March 7, 1869, from the text, ' G o d is
love.' His fame as a preacher had preceded him to Brooklyn, and from the very first every service he conducted
was largely attended. Before the close of his first year the
church saw that it would be necessary to construct a larger
building to accommodate the crowds who flocked to hear
him. The work of building a new edifice was begun in
J u n e of the following year, 1870, and completed in three
months. This rapidity of construction was due to a re-

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LIFE OF REY. T. DE W I T T TALMAGE, D.D.

markable peculiarity of design from an original plan made
and elaborated by Dr. Talmage himself. The principal
idea was that of a half-circle auditorium, with the platform
placed midway between the two ends of the arc connecting
the extremes of the semi-circle, and the passage-ways or
aisles radiating out from the platform, and the floor rising
from the platform outwardly. The construction of the
building was also unique and peculiar. A rough wooden
frame formed the exterior outline of the building. This
frame was inclosed by strips of corrugated sheet iron so
lapped as to form a continuous covering. The frame being
covered in this way, both on the inside and the outside,
gave to the structure the appearance of one-half of an iron
cylinder set on end. The roof over the structure was supported by a series of eight pillars extending in semi-circular
form along a radius drawn parallel to the outer radius, and
about half-way from the platform to the main entrance.
The organ, a splendid one by Hook of Boston, who built
the Plymouth Church organ, was, as in the present Tabernacle, placed at the back of the platform, and the organist's bank of keys and pedals were situated immediately in
front of the platform.
This new style of church auditorium was not only
original with Dr. Talmage, but it was revolutionary in
character. I t upset the whole previous theory of church
architecture and church seating. The superior acoustic
properties of buildings thus internally arranged, and the
advantages they possess in the matter of obtaining a good
view of the speaker, were soon rendered so apparent that
the style has since become exceedingly and deservedly
popular. Many new churches have since adopted this plan.
Among them m a y b e mentioned the Central Congregational
(Rev, Dr. Scudder's), and the younger Dr. Tyng-s Church,

LII'L; C: 1 I ; E Y . T . D E W I T T T A L M A G E ,

D.D.

75

at Forty-second street and Madison avenue, New York.
A church is now being built at Toronto, which is a perfect
fac-simile of the present Tabernacle.
The old Tabernacle had no gallery. It had seats for two
thousand nine hundred persons, and by bringing in camp stools three thousand four hundred persons could be seated
in it. During its construction Dr. Talmage w^as allowed
leave of absence to visit Europe. H e was escorted down
the bay on the day of his departure by a large number of
his congregation, and among the last sounds borne on his
ears, as the escort-boat turned to go back to Brooklyn*
were cheers for the Tabernacle, which the congregation
had promised to have ready against his return. The congregation nobly redeemed their pledge; the old Tabernacle
was completed early in September, 1870, and dedicated on
Sunday, the 26th of the same month. The dedication sermon was preached by Dr. Talmage himself, in the presence
of about four thousand people. Among the ministers who
assisted on the occasion were the Rev. Messrs. Lockwood,
Edward Eggleston, D.D., Callum, Butler, and Taylor.
The text of the sermon was Luke xiv. 23, (Compel them to
come in.' From that time on, the history of the church
was a constant series of successes. Many things about its
edifice and its church management were regarded as experiments, and yet all of them had the happiest results. Beside
the innovation of the church structure itself, *Dr. Talmage
set aside the practice of choir-singing, so much then in
vogue, and insisted that all the Church music in the
Tabernacle should be exclusively congregational. He also
enunciated the principle of free pews, and carried it into
practical effect.
THE OLD TABERNACLE ENLARGED.

During the following year the old Tabernacle was enlarged by an addition which increased its sitting capacity

V6

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

about five hundred. It was re-dedicated on Sunday, September 10, 1871.
The dedication sermon was preached by the venerable
Rev. Dr. Stephen H. T y n g ; the Rev. Dr. Irenaeus S. Prime,
of the New York " Observer," and the Rev. J . H y a t t
Smith, assisted at the service. The Rev. B. I. Ives, of the
Methodist Church, made an appeal for pecuniary aid, and
succeeded in obtaining pledges of sixteen thousand dollars
towards the removal of the debt. A t that time the whole
cost of the edifice, including the organ, was about eighty
thousand dollars, nearly all of which was paid, or pledged
to be paid, by responsible members of the church. On a
certain Saturday afternoon, a few days antecedent to
Christmas of 1872, the church session met at the residence
of Major B. R. Corwin, and having settled up the finances
for the year, separated, congratulating themselves that they
had passed through a series of glorious successes.
T H E OLD TABERNACLE

BURNED.

As the members of the Tabernacle congregation were
preparing to assemble for worship on Sunday morning,
December 22, 1872, they were startled and saddened at
finding their house enveloped in flames. A t half-past ten,
the time of commencing service, the building was falling
in ruins before their eyes.
The fire broke out in less than an hour before, but so rapid
was its progress that in thirty minutes the entire edifice was
involved and doomed to destruction, despite the efforts of
the firemen. The intelligence of the disaster spread rapidly
over the city, and immediately expressions of sympathy
flowed in from other churches to the houseless congregation. Ten of them offered their own edifices to the Tabernacle people for services in the afternoon and evening, in-

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

77

eluding Plymouth Church, the Classon, Clinton and Lafayette Avenue Churches, the Elm Place Congregational, the
First and Second Presbyterian, two Baptist, and one Methodist Church. The invitation of Mr. Beecher's church was
accepted, and the congregation attended services there in
the evening, the occasion drawing a crowded audience. The
pastor, Rev. T. D e W i t t Talmage, preached the sermon he
had intended for the morning, alluding first, as follows, to
the event of the day:
" In the village where I once lived, on a cold night, there
was a cry of fire. House after house was consumed. But
there was in the village a large hospitable dwelling, and
as soon as the people were burned out they came into
this common center. The good man of the house stood at
the door and said, ' Come in,' and the little children as
they were brought to the door, some of them wrapped in
blankets and shawls, were taken up to bed, and the old
people that came in from their consumed dwellings were
seated around the lire. And the good man of the house
told theni that all would be well. This is a very cold day
to be burned out. But we come into this hospitable home
to-night, and gather around this great warm fire of Christian kindness and love, and it is good to be here. The
Lord built the Tabernacle and the Lord let it burn down.
Blessed be the name of the Lord! W e don't feel like sitting down in discouragement, although the place was very
dear. Our hearts there were filled with comfort; and to us,
many a time, did Jesus appear—His face radiant as the sun.
To-day, when Christian sympathy came in from Plymouth
Church, and from ten other churches of the city, all offering their houses of worship to us, I must say I was deeply
moved. Tell me not that there is no kindness between
churches, or that there is no such thing as Christian brother-

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LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

hood. Blessed be the tie that binds our hearts in Christian
love!"
A. CARD FROM

DR. TALMAGE TO THE
LONDON.

" CHRISTIAN AGE,"

" Our Free Tabernacle is in ruins. W e do not feel as if
our work is yet done. W e want a place to preach and hear
the old-fashioned gospel of pardon and help for all men,
through Jesus. W e have during the past two years built
the Tabernacle and sustained the Lay College. Hence, we
have no financial strength left to meet this disaster. I ask
the people, North, South, East and West, who love the
cause of God, to help us out of this misfortune.
" W e want large help, and we want it immediately.
" T . D E W I T T TALMAGE."

That the readers of the Christian Age promptly and generously responded to this appeal will be seen by the following letter;
A L E T T E R FROM DR. TALMAGE.

In acknowledgment of the contributions from the readers of
the Christian Age towards the erection of the JVew Tabernacle:
" B R O O K L Y N , April 23, 1873.

" My dear Mr.
Dickinson:
" I cannot tell you how grateful I am to you, and the
readers of the ' Christian Age,' for the very handsome contribution just received from you towards the rebuilding of
our Tabernacle. My congregation feel your kindness very
much. Convey to all our transatlantic friends our thanks
and love; and tell them if they ever have a big fire over
there, to let us know.
" The rebuilding has already begun, and we shall have a
church by the latter part of next September very much

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

79

larger than before—holding at least 2,000 more than our
former Tabernacle.
" You ask for lectures, &c. If you desire to open a literary column for me, I will fill it for a year with articles
somewhat secular, but all having a moral, and most of them
a religious bearing. I will send you, as the first instalment
of articles, the American edition of ' Crumbs Swept U p ; '
one-half of which have never been published in England. I
will mark in the index those more appropriate; and, also,
other sketches as I may prepare them, such as ' Sink or
or Swim,' an article which you published.
" W e last night closed the year of our Tabernacle Free
Lay College. W e have six hundred students preparing for
different kinds of Christian work. It has been a very prosperous year, and students have accomplished much good in
their preaching stations. I will send you, with the next
mail, my address at the close of the session. W i t h i n the
last few weeks I have received many letters from England
and Scotland, giving me encouraging accounts of how God
is blessing my sermons and books to the comfort and salvation of men. Your ' Christian Age ' must go almost everywhere.
" The Lord prosper your printing-press.
"Yours, &c,
" T. D E W I T T TALMAGE.
THINGS NOT BUKNED U P .

" T h e Brooklyn Tabernacle is gone! The bell that hung
in its tower last Sabbath morning r a n g its own funeral
knell. On that day we gathered from our homes with our
families to hear what Christ had of comfort and inspiration
for His people. W e expected to meet cheerful smiles and
warm handshakings, and the triumphant song, and the large

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LIFE OF REV. T. DE W I T T TALMAGE, D.I).

brotherhood that characterized that blessed place ; but
coming to the doors, we found nothing but an excited
populace and a blazing church. People who had given
until they deeply felt it, saw all the results of their benevolence going down into ashes, and, on that cold morning, the
tears froze on the cheeks of God's people as they saw they
were being burned out. Brooklyn Tabernacle is gone!
The platform on which it was my joy to stand with messages
of salvation; the pews in which you listened and prayed,
and wept and rejoiced; the altars around which you and
your children were consecrated in baptism; the communiontable where we celebrated the Savior's love—all that scene
which to us was the shining gate of heaven, is gone! I
will not hide the loss. If I ever forget the glorious Sabbaths we spent there, and the sweet reunions, and the
mighty demonstrations of God's spirit among the people,
may my right hand forget her cunning, and my soul be left
desolate! But we have not come here to sound a dirge.
' All things work together for good to them that love God.'
Sorrows are loathsome things, but they are necessary.
They are leeches that suck out the hot inflammation from
the soul. ' Weeping may endure for a night, but joy
cometh in tbe morning.' I could cover up all this place
with promises of hope and peace, and comfort and deliverance. Hallelujah! for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.
" I am here to-night not to preach a formal sermon, but
to tell you of some things that last Sabbath were not
burned up.
" First, the spirit of Christian brotherhood was not consumed. You never greeted the members of our church
with such cordiality as this week on the street, in cars, and
on the ferries. You stood on no cold formalities. The
people who during the last two years sat on the other side

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

81

of the aisle, whose faces were familiar to you, but to whom
you had never spoken, you greeted them this week with
smiles and tears, as you said: ' W e l l , the old place is gone.'
You did not want to seem to cry, and so you swept the
sleeve near the corner of the eye, and pretended it was the
sharp wind that made your eyes weak. Ah! there was
nothing the matter with your eyes; it was your soul bubbling over. I tell you that it is impossible to sit for two
or three years around the same church fireside and not have
sympathies in common. Somehow you feel that you would
like those people on the other side of the aisle, about whom
you know but little, prospered and pardoned, and blessed
and saved. You feel as if you are in the same boat, and
you want to glide up the same harbor, and want to disembark at the same wharf. If you put gold and iron and lead
and zinc in sufficient heat, they will melt into a conglomerate mass; and I really feel that last Sabbath's fire has
fused us all, grosser and finer natures, into one. It seems
as if we all had our hands on a wire connected with an
electric battery, and when this church sorrow started, it
thrilled through the whole circle, and we all felt the shock.
The oldest man and the youngest child could join hands in
this misfortune. Grandfather said: ' I expected from those
altars to be buried;' and one of the children last Sabbath
cried: ' I don't want the Tabernacle to burn, I have been
there so many times.' You may remember that over the
organ we had the words: ' One Lord, one faith, one baptism.' That was our creed. Well, that is all burned down,
but the sentiment is engraved with such durability in our
soul that no earthly fire can scorch it, and the flames of the
judgment-day will have no power to burn it.
" A n o t h e r thing that did not burn up is the cross of
Christ. T h a t is used to the fire. On the dark day when

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LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

Jesus died, the lightning struck it from above, and the
flames of hell dashed up against it from beneath. That
tearful, painful, tender, blessed cross still stands. On it
we hang all our hopes; beneath it we put down all our sins;
in the light of it we expect to make the rest of our pilgrimage. W i t h i n sight of such a sacrifice, who can feel he has
it hard? In the sight of such a symbol, who can be discouraged, however great the darkness that may come down
upon him ? Jesus lives ! The loving, patient, sympathizing,
mighty Jesus ! It shall not be told on earth, or in hell, or in
heaven, that three Hebrew children had the Son of God
beside them in the fire, and that a whole church was forsaken by the Lord when they went through a furnace one
hundred and fifty-three feet front by one hundred deep.
O Lord Jesus ! shall we take out of T h y hand the flowers,
and the fruits, and the brightness, and the joys, and then
turn away because Thou dost give us one cup of bitterness
to drink ? Oh ! no, Jesus, we will drink it dry. But how
it is changed ! Blessed Jesus, what hast thou put into the
cup to sweeten it ? W h y , it has become the wine of heaven,
and our souls grow strong. I come down to-night, and
place both of my feet deep down into the blackened ashes
of our consumed church, and I cry out with an exhiliration
that I never felt since the day of my soul's emancipation:
' Victory ! victory ! through our Lord Jesus Christ.
" 'Your liarps, ye trembling saints,
Down from the willows take;
Loud to the praise of Love divine
Bid every string awake.'
" I remark, again, that the catholicity of the Christian
churches has not been burned up. W e are in the Academy
to-day, not because we have no other place to go. Last
Sabbath morning, at nine o'clock, we had but one church;

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

83

now we have twenty-five at our disposal. Their pastors
and their trustees say: ' Y o u may take our main audience-rooms, you may take our lecture-rooms, you may
take our church parlors, you may baptize in our baptisteries, and sit on our anxious seats.' Oh! if there be
any larger-hearted ministers or larger-hearted churches
anywhere than in Brooklyn, tell me where they are,
that I may go and see them before I die. The millennium has come. People keep wondering when it is coming.
I t has come. The lion and the lamb lie down together, and
the tiger eats straw like an ox. I should like to have seen
two of the old-time bigots with their swords fighting through
that great fire on Schermerhorn street last Sabbath. I am
sure the swords would have melted, and. they who wielded
them would have learned war no more. I can never say a
word against any other denomination of Christians.
I
thank God I never have been tempted to do it. I cannot
be a sectarian. I have been told I ought to be, and I have
tried to be, but I have not enough material in me to make
such a structure. Every time I get the thing most done,
there comes a fire, or something else, and all is gone.
The angels of God sing out on this Christmas air: ' G l o r y
to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward
men.' I do not think the day is far distant when all the
different branches of the Presbyterian Church will be one,
and all the different branches of the Methodist Church will
be one, and all the different branches of the Episcopal
Church will be one. I do not know, but I see on the horizon the first gleam of the morning which shall unite all
evangelical denominations in one organization; churches
distinguished from each other, not by a variety of creeds,
but difference of locality, as it was in the time of the
Apostles. It was then the Church of Thyatira, and the

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LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

Church of Thessalonica, and the Church of Antioch, and
the Church of Laodicea. So, I do not know but that in
the future history, and not far off either, it may be simply
a distinction of locality and not of creed, as the Church of
New York, the Church of Brooklyn, the Church of Boston,
the Church of Charlestown, the Church of Madras, the
Church of Constantinople.
" My dear brethren, we cannot afford to be severely divided. Standing in front of the great foes of our common
Christianity, we want to put on the whole armor of God,
and march down in solid column, shoulder to shoulder, one
Commander, one banner, one triumph.
" 'The trumpet gives a martial strain:
Oh Israel! gird thee for a fight;
Arise, the combat to maintain,
Arise, and put thy foes to flight.'
" I have to announce, also, among the things not burned
up is Heaven. Fires may sweep through other cities—we
heard the tolling of the bell as we came in to-night; but I
am glad to know that the New Jerusalem is fire-proof.
There will be no engines rushing through those streets;
there will be no temples consumed in that city. Coming
to the doors of that church, we will find them open, resonant with songs, and not cries of fire. O my dear brother
and sister! if this short lane of life comes up so soon to
that blessed place, what is the use of our worrying? I have
felt a good many times this last week like Father Taylor,
the sailor-preacher. He got into a long sentence while he
was preaching one day, and lost himself, and could not find
his way out of the sentence.
He stopped, and said:
' Brethen, I have lost the nomination of this sentence, and
things are generally mixed up, but I am bound for the
kingdom anyhow.' And during this last week, when I saw

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

85

the rushing to and fro, and the excitement, I said to myself: C I do not know just where we shall start again, but I
am bound for the kingdom anyhow.' I do not want to go
just yet. I want to be pastor of this people until I am
about eighty-nine years of age, but I have sometimes
thought that there are such glories ahead that I might be
persuaded to go a little earlier; for instance, at eighty-two
or eighty-three; but I really think that if we could have
an appreciation of what God has in reserve for us, Ave would
want to go to-night, stepping right out of the Academy of
Music into the glories of the skies. Ah! that is a good
land. W h y , they tell me that in that land they never have
a heart-ache. They tell me that a man might walk five
hundred years in that land and never see a tear, nor hear a
sigh. They tell me of our friends who have left us and
gone there t h a t their faces are radiant as the sun. And
they tell me that there is no winter there, and that they
never get hungry or cold, and that the sewing girl never
wades through the December snow-bank to her daily toil,
and that the clock never strikes twelve for the night, but
only twelve for the day.
" See that light in the window ? I wonder who set it
there. c Oh !' you say, < my father that went into glory
must have set that light in the window.' No, guess again.
(
My mother, who died fifteen years ago in Jesus, I think
must have set that light there.' No, guess again. You
say: ' M y darling little child that last summer I put away
for the resurrection, I think she must have set that light
there in the window.' No, guess again. Jesus set it there,
and He will keep it burning until the day we put our finger
on the latch of the door, and go in to be at home forever.
Oh ! when my sight gets black in death, put on my eyelids
that sweet ointment. W h e n in the last weariness I cannot

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LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

take another step, just help me to put my foot on that
door-sill. W h e n my ear catches no more the voices of wife
and child, let me go right in to have my deafness cured by
the stroke of the harpers, whose fingers fly over the strings
with the anthems of the free. Heaven never burns down !
The fires of the last day, that are already kindled in the
heart of the earth, but are hidden because God keeps down
the hatches—those internal fires will after a while break
though the crust, and the plains and the mountains and the
seas will be consumed, and the flames will fling their long
arms into the skies, but all the terrors of a burning world
will do no more harm to that heavenly temple than the fires
of the setting sun which kindle up the window glass of
the house on yonder hill-top. Oh, blessed land ! But I
do not want to go there until I see the Brooklyn Tabernacle rebuilt. You say, ' Will it be ?' You might as well
ask me if the sun will rise to-morrow morning, or if the
next spring will put garlands on its head. You and I may
not do it—you and I may not live to see it; but the Church
of God does not stand on two legs nor a thousand legs. I
am here to tell you that among the things not burned up is
our determination, in the strength and help of God, to go
forward.
" Y o u say: ' W h e r e are you going to get the means ? '
Don't know. The building of the Tabernacle within two
years, and then an enlargement, at great expense, within
that same time, and the establishment and the maintenance
of the Lay College, have taken most of our funds. Did I
say just now that I did not know where the funds are to
come from ? I take that back. I do ! I do ! from the
hearts of the Christian people, and the lovers of the cause
of morality, all over this land. I am sure they will help
us, and we shall go on, and the new structure shall rise.

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

87

How did the Israelites get through the Red Sea ? I suppose somebody may have come and said: ' T h e r e is no need
of trying; you will get your feet wet, you Avill spoil your
clothes, yo.u will drown yourselves. W h o ever heard of
getting through such a sea as that ? ' H o w did they get
through it ? Did they go back ? No ! Did they go to
the right ? No ! Did they go to the left ? No ! They
went forward in the strength of the Lord Almighty, and that
is the way we mean to get through the R e d Sea. Do you tell
me that God is going to let the effort for the establishment of
a free Christian church in Brooklyn fail ? W h y , on the
dedication day of our Tabernacle, I was not more confident
and was not so happy as I am now. T h a t building did its
work. W e wanted to support a free Christian church;
we did it, and got along pleasantly and successfully, and
demonstrated the fact. The building is gone. The ninetyfive souls received at the first communion in t h a t building
more than paid us for all the expenditure. W e only put
up the Tabernacle for two years. Do you know that ?
Here sits a member of the Board of Trustees right under
me, and he remembers that when wTe built we said: ( W e
shall put it up for two years, it will be a temporary residence, and at the close of that time we will know how large
a building we want, and what style of building we want.'
But having put it up, we liked it so well, we concluded to
stay there permanently. But God decided otherwise, and
I take it as one of the providential indications of that fearful disaster that we are to build a larger church, and ask
all the people to come in and be saved. You know how we
were crowded, and pushed, and jammed in that building ;
and last summer some of us talked about an enlargement,
but we found it impossible without changing the whole
structure of the building. The difficulty now-is gone; and

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LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

if the people North, South, East and W e s t wTill help us, we
shall build on a larger scale, and the hundreds and thousands who have wanted to be with us, but could not, shall
have room for themselves and families, where they may
come and be comforted in their sorrows, and by the grace
of the Lord Jesus, find out the way to heaven. Do you
tell me that the human voice cannot reach more people
than we used to have there ? I t is a mistake. I have been
wearing myself out for the last two years in trying to keep
my voice in. Give me room where I can preach the glories
of Christ and the grandeurs of heaven.
" The old iron-clad has gone down by a shot midships.
W e will build next time of brick. The building shall be
amphitheatrical in shape; it shall be very large; it shall be
very plain. W h e t h e r the material will be any better than
the one used in the old structure, I cannot say, for there are
four things that God has demonstrated within a short time
are not fire proof. One is corrugated iron; witness the
Brooklyn Tabernacle. Another is brick; witness the fire
last week in Centre street, New York. Another is Joliet
stone; witness Chicago. Another is Quincy granite; witness Boston. W h y , when God rises up to burn anything, a
stone wall is shavings. Hear that, O you men who are
building on nothing but earthly f oundations. The people
will rise up, and all our friends North, South, East and
West, who have been giving us their sympathies, will translate their sympathies and their ' G o d bless y o u ' s ' into
' greenbacks,' and next winter the people will cry out: ' The
glory of the second temple is greater than the first.'
" There was a king of olden time who prided himself on
doing that which his people thought impossible; and it
ought to be the joy of the Christian Church to accomplish
that which the world thinks cannot be done.

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

89

" But I want you to know that it will require more prayer
than we have ever offered, and more hard work than we
have ever put forth. Mere skirmishing around the mercyseat will not do. W e have got to take the kingdom of
heaven by violence. W e have got to march on, breaking
down all bridges behind us, making retreat impossible.
Throw away your knapsack if it impedes your march.
Keep your sword-arm free. Strike for Christ and His
kingdom while you may. No people ever had a better mission than you are sent on. Prove yourselves worthy. If I
am not fit to be your ]eader, set me aside. The brightest
goal on earth that I can think of is a country parsonage
amid the mountains. But I am not afraid to lead you. I
have a few hundred dollars, they are at your disposal. I
have good physical health, it is yours as long as it lasts.
I have an enthusiasm of soul; I will not keep it back from
your service. I have some faith in God, and I shall direct
it toward the rebuilding of our new spiritual home. Come
on, then! I will lead you. Come on, ye aged men, not yet
passed over Jordan! Give us one more lift before you go
into the promised land. You men in mid-life, harness all
your business faculties to this enterprise. Young men, put
the fire of your soul in this work. Let women consecrate
their persuasiveness and persistence to this cause, and they
will be preparing benedictions for their dying hour and
everlasting rewards; and if Satan really did burn that Tabernacle down, as some people say he did, he will find it the
poorest job he ever undertook.
" Good-bye, Old Tabernacle! your career was short but
blessed; your ashes are precious in our sight. In the last
day may we be able to meet the songs there sung, and the
prayers there offered, and the sermons there preached!
Good-bye, old place, where some of us first felt the Gospel

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peace, and others heard the last message ere they fled away
into the skies! Good-bye, Brooklyn Tabernacle of 1870!
" B u t welcome our new church (I see it as plainly as though
it were already built)! Your walls firmer; your gates
wider; your songs more triumphant; your ingatherings
more glorious. Rise out of the ashes, and greet our waiting vision. Burst on our souls, O day of our church's resurrection! By your altars, may we be prepared for the
hour when the fire shall try every man's work of what sort
it is. Welcome, Brooklyn Tabernacle of 1873! "

C H A P T E R VII.
T H E N E W TABERNACLE.

UNDISMAYED by the loss, while the smoke of the ruins
was yet arising, measures were adopted for the erection of
a new Tabernacle, and for raising funds for that purpose.
The sympathy of the surrounding congregations was warm
and hearty. The congregation sought a temporary home
in the Academy of Music, and for fourteen months they
worshiped there. The very first service was preceded by a
prayer-meeting held in the directors' room of the Academy,
followed by a general prayer-meeting at the close of the
sermon. These prayer-meetings were prominent features
of religious worship as conducted by Dr. Talmage during
the time he occupied the Academy of Music, and are still
continued.
Architect John Welsh was called upon to furnish plans
for the new Tabernacle. H e emphatically made it a labor
of love, and set himself studiously to the task of evolving
designs, which, while they carried out the main features of
the old Tabernacle, would introduce many improvements.
That he succeeded most admirably is the universal verdict
of all who have visited the new Tabernacle. The cornerstone of the new edifice was laid June, 1873, in the presence
of a great crowd of people. The services were conducted
by the Rev. Dr. Prime, of the Presbyterian Church; Rev.
Dr. Dowling, of the Baptist Church; and the Rev. Dr.
W a r d , of the Congregational Church. The erection of the
building was pushed with the utmost dispatch, and the

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LIFE OF REV. T. DE W I T T TALMAGE, D D.

building committee received the hearty plaudits of the
congregation for the energy and efficiency displayed by
them in forwarding the work. It was completed and dedicated on February 22, 1874, in the presence of the largest
congregation that ever assembled in the city. The dedicatory sermon was preached by the Rev. Byron Sunderland,
D.D., chaplain of the United States Senate, on the text,
" The glory of this latter house shall be greater than that
of the former, saith the Lord of hosts," Haggai ii. 9. The
ministers who assisted at this service were the Rev. Dr.
Duryea, Rev. Dr. Crooks, Rev. Dr. Dowling, Rev. Dr.
French, Rev. Dr. Ball, and Rev. Henry W a r d Beecher. As
on the occasion of the dedication of the former Tabernacle,
the Rev. Dr. Ives, of the Methodist Church, made the appeal
for pecuniary aid, and in response to their appeal some forty
thousand dollars were pledged. The Brooklyn Tabernacle
is the largest Protestant church in America. I t is in the
form of a Greek cross, with a front on Schermerhorn street
of one hundred and fifty feet, while the length of the transverse section is one hundred and tAvelve feet. The lower
floor furnishes sitting accommodation for thirty-one hundred persons, and the gallery for fifteen hundred. About
five hundred persons can be accommodated with camp
chairs and standing-room. The gallery is supported by iron
columns, and is reached by stairways from the front
porches. Three beautiful arched windows, highly ornamented with stained glass, throw a flood of soft light upon the
auditorium in the daytime. Three magnificent chandeliers
and a series of bracket lights attached to the wall shed a
blaze of brilliant light over the audience assembled in the
evening. All these lights are simultaneously lighted b y
means of an electric apparatus. Among the valuable peculiarities of the building is its many entrances. There are

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93

twenty-two in all, and so ready and convenient that an audience of five thousand persons can pass out of the building in
four minutes. Another remarkable peculiarity is its excellent
ventilation. Perfectly uniform heat can be maintained, and
at the same time complete purity of the atmosphere be preserved. I t is regarded by the best judges in America as
the most perfect audience-chamber on the continent, especially in regard to accoustic properties, and in affording advantages to every sitter to see the speaker, and in its means
to preserve the purity of its internal atmosphere. The organ
is the largest ever built by its makers, Jardine and Sons.
Every conceivable improvement known to organ-builders
at the time of its construction was incorporated into it.
Among its novel features is the " Vox Humana," which is
regarded as a nearer approach to the real human voice than
anything which has been previously invented. Another
novelty is the chime of bells ordered from London. Still
another is the "song trumpet," whose clear tones have all
the ring of a cornet. Under the touch of that master of harmonies, Professor George W . Morgan, aided by the voices
of five thousand people, the church melodies of the Brooklyn Tabernacle have seldom been equaled in any place of
Divine worship. The building, with the ground, cost one
hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and will accommodate
five thousand people.
DR. TALMAGE'S SIXTH

ANNIVERSARY.

" Standing before you this morning, preaching my sixth
anniversary sermon as your pastor—a style of sermon in
which the preacher is generally expected to be more than
usually personal—I have to tell you that the burdens of
life are getting to me less and less, and that as the years
pass on I have fewer and still fewer anxieties. In beautiful

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D.I\

Belleville, on the banks of the Passaic, where I began
my Christian ministry, it seemed as if all the work came
down on my young shoulders. Going to the West, the
field was larger and the care less. Going to Philadelphia,
the field was still larger and the care still less. And standing to-day, as I do, among hundreds of warm personal
friends, whose hands and feet and hearts are all willing to
help, I have less anxiety than I ever had. I have taken the
advice of Jethro, and have gathered around me a great many
with whom I expect to divide all the care and the responsibility; and though sometimes, what with the care of this
church wrhere we have a perpetual religious awakening, and
the conducting of a religious weekly newspaper, and the
conducting of the Lay College, people have often addressed
me in words similar to those of the text: ' T h o u wilt surely
wear away; this thing is too heavy for thee,' I am glad to
tell you that I am in perfect health and ready to recount to
you what the Lord has been doing in all these days of our
sojourn together, between 1869 ai?d 1875.
" It is now six years since I preached to you my opening
sermon, on the text, ' God is Jove.' I wish I could pour
out my soul this morning in a doxology of praise to God
and of gratitude to this people. The difference between
these years has been that the second was happier to me
than the first, and the third than the second, and the fourth
than the third, and the fifth than the fourth, and the sixth
than the fifth. God has led us through many vicissitudes.
W e are in the third church in six years; crowded out of the
first, burned out of the second, by the mercy of God led
into the third. W e look back to the solitary service
six years ago in. the old chapel, with a congregation that
almost couid be accommodated on this platform.
For
many y*#rx? \he Aurcli ^;id been in strife until the three or

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95

four parties had exterminated each other, leaving an expanse of empty pews, a wheezy organ, a cramped-up pulpit,
and a steeple the laughing-stock of the town. My personal
friends applied to me an emphatic word of four letters,
and two letters alike, in expressing my folly in undertaking
this enterprise. Indeed it seemed heavier than to start
entirely new, for there were widespread prejudices in regard to the church. Still we went on. B y the blessing of
God in three or four weeks our church was filled, and it is
astonishing how well an old building looks when it is all
occupied, for there is no power in graceful arch, or in carved
pillar, or in exquisite fresco to adorn a place like an audience
of beaming countenances. I had rather preach in a full
barn than in a sparsely-attended cathedral. E m p t y pews
are non-conductors of Gospel electricity. People came in
from all ranks and conditions, and, in looking over the
audience to-day, I cannot see more than four or five families
who were with us six years ago. Some of them have been
advanced into the better society of heaven, while some of
them dropped off because they thought we were going too
fast and they could not keep up. W e went on gathering
the people in from all ranks and conditions, until we have
here to-day the rich and the poor, the wise and the ignorant;
those who toil with pen, with printing-press, with yardstick, and with hammer. Enough physicians—allopathic,
homoeopathic, hydropathic, and eclectic—to treat us in all
our disorders. Enough lawyers to defend us in all our
legal contests. Enough artists to cover our walls with
pictures. Enough merchants to give us the necessary fabrics,
whether foreign or domestic. Enough mechanics to build
and polish, and make comfortable for us our residences.
And I will say that never did there come together in one
church a crowd of more genial, intelligent, sympathetic.

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enthusiastic, and warm-hearted Christian people than those
which assemble here. W e are all of one mind and heart.
W e cordially greet all who come, and give a God-speed to
those who go. W h e n anybody does not like the music, or
the preaching, or the plan on which our church is conducted,
we say ' Good-bye' as cheerfully as when he came we said
' How do you d o ? ' This church is now so large, that if a
man wants to make trouble, such a small portion hear of it
that he soon gives up the undertaking as a dead failure.
" W e are all now together. W e tarried long enough in
the old tabernacle to learn how to conduct a larger church.
Then, when it was time for us to graduate from that, we
got our diploma in red scroll of flame, signed, sealed, and
delivered on one cold December day, in 1872. W h e n that
conflagration took place, through inadequate insurance consequent upon the style of material of which the old building was constructed, we lost everything save our faith in
God and our determination to go ahead.
W e tarried in
the Academy of Music long enough to gather up hundreds
of the best families of our congregation who are worshiping with us to-day, and to get a baptism of the Holy Ghost
such as was never poured out on any church on this continent. W e came into this building with the blessing of
God, and with the blessing of all denominations of Christians in this land and in Great Britain; and since we have
been here the Lord has mightily blessed us, pouring out
His Spirit from Sabbath to Sabbath, so that I can ask you,
well knowing what your answer will be, whether you have
made any too great sacrifices for Christ and His kingdom ?
D u r i n g these six years the Lord has sorely tried us; in the
first place, by calling us to build a church with a new congregation t h a t had not at all been consolidated; then by
the demolition of that building; then by taking us a mile

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97

off from the center of our congregation, to worship in another building; then b y the almost superhuman effort of
putting up this building during a financial depression such
as never before afflicted this country. If God had not
helped the architect, and helped the trustees, and helped
the people, we should have perished in the undertaking;
and while I wish to-day to recognize the indomitable perseverance and sacrifices of the congregation, I must say, to
God belongs the glory. He planned this structure, making
it perfect in acoustics; raising money for the building out
of the very jaws of a national panic; filling the house with
worshipers. O, let us praise Him now and let us praise
Him forever. I say you are not sorry for any of the sacrifices or toils through which you have gone. W e have had
so perpetually the blessing of God in this church that it
excites no remark when from a single service hundreds of
souls step out into the kingdom of Jesus. There are in
almost all the towns and cities of this country those residents who in this building first woke up to their spiritual
necessities. Letters come from north and south, and east
and west, from the Canadas, and from both sides the sea,
telling me of this fact. O that to-day we might make some
fitting expression to the Lord! Shall it be in carved words
upon the pillars ? Shall it be in wreaths upon the wall ?
Shall it be in the organ's open diapason ? All that is well,
but rather let it be that our hearts shall rise to God in an
intense and all-conquering acclamation of thanksgiving.
W e are trying here to maintain a well-balanced church,
and for that reason we have in all departments of Christian
service the old and the young. I t is a bad thing for a
church when the old people have all the management, or
when the young people have all the management. In the
one case the church will go on too slow, in the other it will

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go too fast. W e want the fast men to keep the slow men
from going too slow, and the slow men to keep the fast
people from going too fast. Here are many of the aged.
They have come down to us from another day. N o t on
their brow the snows of many winters, as people often say,
but the white crocuses of an everlasting spring-time into
which they are about to blossom. And how many of the
young coming to us Sabbath by Sabbath! W e want them
all equipped for God. W e want them for flying artillery
in a double-quick march. W h e n there is a storming party
to be made up, we want to wheel them into line—old men
for counsel, young men for action.
" W e are also trying to maintain a musical church. W e
have an inborn antipathy to anything like stilted and
precise song in the house of God. W e like oratorios, orchestras, concerts, and prima donnas in their
places; but we want vociferous singing in the house of the
Lord. David cries out; ' Sing aloud unto God.' In other
words, do not hum or mumble it. O for an anthem strong
enough to surge the whole audience on the beach of heaven!
Persuaded that we could not do the work so well by the
use of a choir, we have called into the service of the church
two Bible instruments—the organ and the cornet, and so
the music of the church has been sustained, and led, and
developed. O what grand and glorious singing we have
had during the past years; even people who had bronchitis
forgetting their infirmity, and lifting aloud their voice before God; people who could not sing a note opening their
mouth, reckless as to what kind of a sound came out of it;
but the little discord is overwhelmed in the great symphony
—a chirp drowned in the great rush of waters. And yet
we feel this morning that we have not done what we might,
or ought, or will do, in this department of Christian service.

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99

W e want more heart under it, more soul flung into it. W e
want the whole audience roused up to the sound of jubilee.
W e want the people to come from their homes on Sabbath
with hymn-books, and after the preacher shall announce
the hymn, we want them to find the right page and clear
their throats, and at the first throb of the cornet on the
air stretch themselves up to the magnificence and glory of
this exercise. History tells us of a shout the Persian host
lifted so loud that the eagles that were flying through the
air were stunned, and dropped to the earth. O that there
might go up such a congregational anthem from this house
of the Lord as shall make all heaven drop in blessing on our
souls! I take partly the words of the Bible, and partly my
own words, and say; ' W h y are ye so slack to go up and
possess the orchards, and the vineyards, and the mountains
of sacred song?' O that the music of heaven and earth
might join midway the arches! Rise, O song of earth! Descend, O song of heaven!
" Still further: we are trying to maintain in this place a
church aggressive and revolutionary. W h y build or maintain any other church in this city of churches, where there
are enough to accommodate all the people who are disposed
to go to the house of God on the Sabbath, and perhaps more
than enough? If you have nothing particular, nothing
unique, nothing different, then what a waste of bricks, and
brawn, and brain. But we have an idea of a church. W e
have built this house of God as a place where we mean to
bombard iniquity. W e want to smash sin without any
apology for smashing it. W e have started in this line and
we mean to keep on, and study to be as well pleased with
curses as blessings from the people. If there are any of you
who do not like to go to a church which is assaulted of many
newspapers, and of the outside world, who cannot understand

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LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

its policies and its principles, stand clear of this church.
W e mean until the day of our death, and for a few
days after, to keep society stirred up by the discussion of
themes vital to its interests, and vital to the interests of the
immortal soul. During the past six months theatrical people
have been after us, and the Spiritualists have been after us,
and the Unitarians have been after us, and the Universalists have been after us—one of their prominent men recently
saying that he did not think there would be any hell except
for one man, and that the pastor of the Brooklyn Tabernacle! But still we go on, as God gives us strength, and
health, and spirit to do His will. W e have only taken, as
it were, the outside casement of this great rampart of iniquity. On! on! ' I f God be for us, who can be against
us ?'
" Still further: we are trying here to maintain a generous
church. W e have as a church been able to do b u t little for
outside charities, for the reason that we have been all the
time building churches or enlarging them. But we are
trying to maintain an organism on the voluntary principle.
W e believe that a church can be educated up to the duty
and the joy of giving. W e put no premium on financial
meanness. W e believe t h a t people ought to give to the
cause of God every farthing they can possibly give. Moreover, we believe that all can give something, and that the
vast majority of the people could give more in our churches
than they do and be better off. W e believe that the grandest investment a man ever makes for this world, or the
world to come, is what he gives to the Church of God,
since Christ pays him back five-fold, ten-fold, fifty-fold, a
hundred-fold. In other words, we believe t h a t a man is
better off in this world if he is generous, and well-off just
in proportion as he is generous; and we believe that those

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101

people who give the most in proportion to their means will
after a while have the finest houses on earth and the grandest mansions in heaven. The stingy people keep poor, the
generous get rich, as a general rule. It is the old principle
of the Bible: ' Cast thy bread upon the waters, and it shall
return to thee after many days.' So I believe if a man
takes the old Bible principle, and gives one-tenth of all his
income to the cause of God, he has an insurance of prosperity such as the signature of the Bank of England cannot give him. I believe our congregation will yet rise up
to the positive rapture of giving. W e believe that men
can be so built on a large scale of heart, that they will
look over their property, and then say: ' I will give so
much towards my spiritual culture. I will give so much
towards the spiritual culture of my wife. I will give so
much towards the spiritual culture of my children. I will
give so much towards the spiritual culture of those who
have little or no means. How small it seems, this that I
am giving to Christ who gave everything to me. I wish it
were five hundred thousand times more.' Yes, we believe
that the time will come when people will be so educated in
this matter of Christian generosity, that instead of deciding
by what other people give, or what people give in other
churches, they shall give according to their own appreciation of the height, and depth, and length, and breadth, and
infinity of their spiritual advantages. Do you not wish you
had given that three thousand dollars to the cause of Christ
that went down in Northern Pacific Bonds ?
" I believe the time will come in the Church when the passing of a contribution plate or a subscription paper will kindle
up the faces of the people as by the illumination of a great
satisfaction. But now how many of us begrudge the few
dollars we give to the Lord, and only give when we seem to

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LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D,D>

be compelled to give, and so keep ourselves poor at the
store and rob ourselves of eternal dividends. Under the
old dispensation, as I intimated, the people gave one-tenth
of their property to the Lord, but that was a far inferior
dispensation to the one we have; and yet how few in this day
who receive a thousand dollars a year give a hundred to God;
how few who receive five thousand give five hundred to God;
how few who receive a hundred thousand give ten thousand
to God. Those Jews, under their dark dispensation, gave
one-tenth for a mere taper of spiritual life and light, while
we do not give as much as that though we have noonday
radiating the atmosphere. I really think that if those old
Jews gave one-tenth for their half-and-half advantages, we
ought to give one-fifth for the glorious privileges which
God in this day has bestowed upon us. W e talk a great
deal about the evangelization of this world and the salvation of men; but there is more talk than contribution, and
I do not believe that the prayer of a man for the salvation
of this world ever amounts to anything unless he by his
own generosity shows that he is in earnest in the matter.
I like the style of Elias Van Bendeschatten, the old man
who came into a meeting of the General Synod of the Reformed Church in 1814, and after there had been a great
many long and brilliant speeches made about the education
of young men to the ministry, got up and said he would
like to speak. The people looked chagrined. They thought
to themselves: ' H e can't speak.' ' M r . President, I will
give eight hundred and forty dollars in cash towards that
object, and thirteen thousand dollars in bonds.' And then
sat down. While the theory is abroad in many of the
churches that men give only as they are compelled to give,
I believe that the people can be educated up to a grand
and glorious voluntary contribution for the support of the

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103

Gospel of Jesus; but I cannot make the people believe this
without your help. Remember the words of J e t h r o to his
son-in-law. Come, let us all rally in this one respect and
try partly to pay God for our Bibles, for our churches, for
our families, for our hopes of heaven. If we do not carry
out this principle, there will come up after awhile a stronger
generation to execute this commission of Christ, and then
they will look back and say: ' A h what a shrivelled-up
minister and people that must have been in the Brooklyn
Tabernacle in 1875 ! W h e n the Lord opened before them
an opportunity of carrying out a Gospel principle, they had
not the courage to carry it out.' I do not expect to bother
this world much after I go out of it, but I must start the
suspicion that if ever the auctioneer's hammer cracks on
the back of one of these pews, it will wake me up quicker
than the prophet Samuel was awakened by the W i t c h of
Endor.
" Still further: we are here trying to build and organize,
and keep up a soul-saving church. I mention this last because it is first. ' A n d the first shall be last.' I have by
argument, and illustration, and caricature in these last six
years tried to create in your soul an unutterable disgust for
much of the religion of this day, and to lead you back, so
far as God gave me strength to do it, to the old religion of
Jesus Christ and His apostles. I have tried to show you
that the meanest cant in all the world is the cant of skepticism, and that you ought to stop apologizing for Christianity since it is the duty of those who do not believe in
Christianity to apologize to you, and that the biggest
villains in the universe are those who want to rob us of
that grand old Bible, and that there is one idea in a church
that ought to swallow up all other ideas, and that is the
soul-saving idea. ' B u t , ' you say, ' a r e you not going to

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LIFE OP REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

pay any attention to those who have entered into the kingdom of God and have really become Christians ? ' My
theory is, the way to develop a man for this world, and for
the world to come, is to throw him chin deep in Christian
work, and if after a man has been drawn out of the mire
of his sin on to the ' Rock of Ages,' he wants to jump back,
then he will have to j u m p ; I am not going to stand and
watch him ! I believe the great work of the Christian
Church is to bring men out of their sin into the hope and
the joys of Christ's salvation, and then if with all the advantages of this century, with open Bible and the constant
plying of the Holy Ghost, a man cannot grow in grace, he
is not worth a great deal of culture. W e want this a
church set apart for the one grand object of bringing men
out of their sin into the hope of the Gospel. There will in
this coming year be two hundred thousand strangers who
will be seated within these gates. H o w many of them will
you bring to Christ b y your prayers and your personal
solicitations ? Will you bring a score, or will it be a hundred or a thousand ? I must tell you that compared with
this work of saving immortal souls all other work is cold,
and stale, and insipid. To this one work, God helping me,
I consecrate the remaining days and years of my life, and I
ask you to join with me in this crusade for the redemption
of immortal souls.
" N o w can it be possible that six years of my pastorate
have passed away never to return ? How many squandered
days and years—squandered by you and by me. God forgive us for the past and help us to be more faithful for the
future. Through what a variety of scenes we have gone !
I have stood by you in times of sickness and by the graves
of your dead. W h e n you came back from exhausting sickness t h a t we feared would be fatal, I praised God that the

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105

color came back to your cheek and the spring to your step.
And some of you in the past six years have passed through
dire bereavements. How few of the families of my congregation have not been invaded ! How many of the old
people have gone in the last two or three years! They
went away so gently that they had ended the second or
third stanza in eternal glory before you knew they were
gone. And, oh, how many of the bright dear children have
gone! The very darlings of your heart. You tried to hold
on to them with your stout arms, and you said: ' O Lord,
spare them. I can't give them u p ; I can't give them up.
Let me keep them a little longer.' But they broke away
from your arms into the light of heaven. I t seemed as if
Jesus and the angels determined to have them there and
then. But we have tried to make this church a comforting
place for all the broken-hearted. O how many of them
there are! W e have tried to fill the song, and the sermon,
and the prayer fflwith the solace of God's promises, and so it
shall be hereafter. It is no mere theory with me. I have
had enough trouble of my own to know how to comfort
those who are desolate, and it is my ambition to be to you
a son of consolation. Standing as we do at the open portals of another pastoral year, let us to-day make a new vow
of consecration. Let us be faithful to God and faithful to
each other; for soon we must part, and all these pleasant
scenes in which we have mingled will vanish forever. B y
the throne of God, our work all done, our sorrows all ended,
may we be permitted to talk over the solemn, delightful,
and disciplinary occurrences of this my pastoral year in
Brooklyn."

C H A P T E R VIII.
MIDNIGHT EXPLORATIONS.

D R . TALMAGE'S " midnight explorations" in Brooklyn
and New York, and his discourses describing the temptations and vices of city life, as seen by him in the haunts of
vice, and his scorching exposure of " leprosy in the highest
places of society," produced the greatest excitement all
over the country. He states the reasons which led him to
take this somewhat perilous step, as follows:—"I, as a minister of religion, felt I had a Divine commission to explore
the iniquities of our cities. I did not ask counsel of my
session, or of my presbytery, or of the newspapers, but,
asking the companionship of three prominent police officials and two of the elders of my church, I unrolled my
commission, and it said: 'Son of man, dig into the wall;
and when I had digged into the wall, behold a door; and
he said, Go in and see the wicked abominations that are
done here; and I went in, and saw, and beheld!' Brought
up in the country and surrounded by much parental care,
I had not, until this autumn, seen the haunts of iniquity. By the grace of God defended, I had never sowed
any ' w i l d oats.' I had somehow been able to tell, from
various sources, something about the iniquities of the great
cities, and to preach against them; but I saw, in the destruction of a great multitude of the people, that there
must be an infatuation and a temptation that had never
been spoken about, and I said, ' I will explore.' I saw tens
of thousands of men being ruined, and, if there had been

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107

a spiritual percussion answering to the physical percussion,
the whole air w^ould have been full of the rumble, and roar,
and crack, and thunder, of the demolition, and this moment,
if we should pause in our service, we should hear the crash,
crash! J u s t as in the sickly season you sometimes hear the
bell at the gate of the cemetery ringing almost incessantly,
so I found that the bell at the gate of the cemetery where
lost souls are buried was tolling by day and tolling by
night. I said, ' I will explore.' I went as a physician goes
into a small-pox hospital, or a fever hospital, to see what
practical and useful information I might get. T h a t would
be a foolish doctor who would stand outside the door of an
invalid writing a Latin prescription. W h e n the lecturer in
a medical college is done with his lecture he takes the
students into the dissecting-room, and he shows them the
reality. I am here this morning to report a plague, and to
tell you how sin destroys the body, and destroys the mind,
and destroys the soul. ' O h ! ' say you, ' a r e you not afraid
that, in consequence of your exploration of the iniquities
of the city, other persons may make exploration, and do
themselves damage?' I reply: ' If, in company with the
Commissioner of Police, and the Captain of Police, and
the Inspector of Police, and the company of two Christian
gentlemen, and not with the spirit of curiosity, but that
you may see sin in order the better to combat it, then, in
the name of the eternal God, go! But, if not, then stay
away.' Wellington, standing in the battle of Waterloo
when the bullets w7ere buzzing around his head, saw a
civilian on the field. He said to him, ' Sir, what are you
doing here? Be off.' ' W h y , ' replied the civilian,' there is
no more danger here for me than there is for you.' Then
Wellington flushed up, and said, ' G o d and my country demand that I be here, but you have no errand here,' Now

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LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

I, as an officer in the army of Jesus Christ, went on this
exploration, and on this battle-field.. If you bear a like
commission, go; if not, stay away. But you say, ' Don't
you think that somehow your description of these places
will induce people to go and see for themselves?'
I
answer; 4 Yes, just as much as the description of the yellow
fever at Granada would induce people to go down there
and get the pestilence. I t was told us there were hardly
enough people alive to bury the dead, and I am going
to tell you a story in these Sabbath morning sermons
of places where they are all dead or dying.
And
I shall not gild iniquities.
I shall play a dirge and
not an anthem, and while I shall not put faintest blush
on fairest cheek, I will kindle the cheeks of many a
man into a conflagration, and I will make his ears tingle.
B u t you say, (Don't you know that the papers are criticising you for the position you take? I say, Yes; and do
you know how I feel about it? There is no man who is
more indebted to the newspaper press than I am. My business is to preach the truth, and the wider the audience the
newspaper press gives me, the wider my field is. As the
press of the United States, and the Canadas, and of England, and Ireland, and Scotland, and Australia, and N e w
Zealand, are giving me every week nearly three million
souls for an audience, I say I am indebted to the press, anyhow. G o o n ! To the day of my death I cannot pay them
what I owe them. So slash away, gentlemen. The more
the better. If there is anything I despise it is a dull time.
Brisk criticism is a coarse Turkish towel, with which every
public man needs every day to be rubbed down, in order to
keep healthful circulation. Give my love to all the secular
and religious editors, and full permission to run their pens
clear through my sermons, from introduction to application,"

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109

There can be no doubt that the sermons which Dr. Talmage preached on " The N i g h t Side of City Life," and
which have been widely circulated, produced not only a deep
and wide sensation, but also strong opposition and enmity
to the preacher. I t was impossible that such burning exposures of the sins and sorrows of city life could fail to stir
up some of the bitterest feelings that human nature is capable of. So great was the anxiety of the public to hear those
sermons that the church was thronged beyond description,
the streets around blockaded with people, so that carriages
could not pass, Dr. Talmage himself gaining admission
only by the help of the police. The sermons are marvellous exhibitions of the preacher's descriptive powers, sparkling with graceful images and illustrative anecdotes, terrible
in their earnestness, and uncompromising in their denunciations of sin and wickedness among high and low, sparing
neither rich nor poor.
W e think it only right that our readers should have the
opportunity of judging of the character of these sermons,
and therefore we give the substance of one, entitled " The
Lepers of High Life."
" I noticed in my midnight explorations with these high
officials that the haunts of sin are chiefly supported by men
of means and wealth. The young men recently come from
the country, of whom I spoke last Sabbath morning, are on
small salary, and they have but little money to spend in
sin, and if they go into luxuriant iniquity the employer finds
it out by the inflamed eye and the marks of dissipation, and
they are discharged. The luxuriant places of iniquity are
supported by men who come down from the fashionable
avenues of N e w York, and cross over from some of the
finest mansions of Brooklyn. Prominent business men
from Boston, and Philadelphia, and Chicago, and Cincin-

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LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

nati patronize these places of sin. I could call the names
of prominent men in one cluster who patronize these places
of iniquity, and I may call their names before I get through
this course of sermons, though the fabric of New York
and Brooklyn society tumble into wreck. J u d g e s of
courts, distinguished lawyers, officers of the Church,
political orators standing on different platforms talking
about God and good morals until you might suppose them
to be evangelists expecting a thousand converts in one
night. Call the roll of dissipation in the haunts of iniquity
any night, and if the inmates will answer, you will find
there stockbrokers from W a l l street, large importers from
Broadway, iron merchants, leather merchants, cotton merchants, hardware merchants, wholesale grocers, representatives from all the commercial and wealthy classes. Talk
about the heathenism below Canal street! There is a
worse heathenism above Canal street. I prefer that kind
of heathenism which wallows in filth and disgusts the
beholder rather than that heathenism which covers up its
walking putrefaction with camel's-hair shawl and pointlace, and rides in turn-outs worth three thousand dollars,
liveried driver ahead and rosetted flunky behind. W e have
been talking so much about the Gospel for the masses, now
let us talk a little about the Gospel for the lepers of society,
foi* the millionaire sots, for the portable lazzarettos of upper-tendom. It is the iniquity that comes down from the
higher circles of society that supports the haunts of crime,
and is gradually turning our cities intoSodoms and Gomorrahs waiting for the fire and brimstone tempest of the Lord
God who whelmed the cities of the plain. W e want about
five hundred Anthony Comstocks to go forth and explore and
expose the abominations of high life. For eight or ten
years there stood within sight of the most fashionable New

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

Ill

York drive a Moloch temple, a brown-stone hell on earth,
which neither the mayor, nor the judges, nor the police
dared touch, when Anthony Comstock, a Christian man of
less than average physical stature, and with cheek scarred
by the knife of a desperado whom he had arrested, walked
into that palace of the devil on Fifth avenue, and in the
name of the eternal God put an end to it, the priestess presiding at the orgies retreating by suicide into the lost world,
her bleeding corpse found in her own bath-tub. May the
eternal God have mercy on our cities. Gilded sin comes
down from these high places in the upper circles of iniquity,
and then on gradually down until, in five years, it makes
the whole course, from the marble pillar on the brilliant
avenue clear down to the cellars of W a t e r street. One of
the officers on that midnight exploration said to me, ' Look
at them now, and look at them three years from now, when
all this glory has departed; they'll be a heap of rags in the
station house.' Another of the officers said to me, ' That
is the daughter of one of the wealthiest families in Madison Square.'
" B u t I have something more amazing to tell you than that
the men of means and wealth support these haunts of iniquity, and that is that they are chiefly supported by heads
of families—fathers and husbands, with the awful perjury
of broken marriage vows upon them, with a niggardly stipend left at home for the support of their families, going
forth with their thousands for the diamonds and wardrobe and equipage of iniquity.
In the name of Heaven, I
denounce this public iniquity. Let such men be hurled out
of decent circles. Let them be hurled out from business
circles. If they will not repent, overboard with them! I
lift one-half of the burden of malediction from the unpitied head of offending woman and, hurl it on the

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blasted pate of offending man!
Society needs a new
division of its anathema. By what law of justice does
burning excoriation pursue offending woman down the
precipices of destruction, while offending man, kid-gloved,
walks in refined circles, invited up if he has money, advanced into political recognition, while all the doors of
high life open at the first rap of his gold-headed cane ? I
say, if you let one come back, let them both come back.
If one must go down, let both go down. I give you as my
opinion that the eternal perdition of all other sinners will
be a heaven compared with the punishment everlasting of
that man who, turning his back upon her whom he swore
to protect and defend until death, and upon his children,
whose destiny may be decided by his example, goes forth
to seek affectional alliances elsewhere. For such a man the
portion will be fire, and hail, and tempest, and darkness,
and anguish, and despair forever, forever, forever! My
friends, there has got to be a reform in this matter or
American society will go to pieces. Under the head of
i
incompatibility of temper,' nine-tenths of the abomination
goes on. W h a t did you get married for if your dispositions are incompatible? ' O h ! ' you say, C I rushed into it
without thought.' Then you ought to be willing to suffer
the punishment for making a fool of yourself! Incompatibility of temper! You are responsible for at least a half
of the incompatibility. W h y are you not honest and willing to admit either that you did not control your temper,
or that you had already broken your marriage oath ? In
nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of the thousand,
incompatibility is a phrase to cover up wickedness already
enacted. I declare in the presence of the world that heads
of families are supporting these haunts of iniquity. I wish
there might be a police raid lasting a great while, that they

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113

would just go down through all these places of sin and
gather up all the prominent business men of the city, and
march them down through the street followed by about
twenty reporters to take their names and put them in full
capitals in the next day's paper! Let such a course be
undertaken in our cities, and in six months there would be
eighty per cent off your public vice. I t is not now the
young men that need so much looking after; it is their
fathers and mothers. Let heads of families cease to patronize places of iniquity, and in a short time they would
crumble to ruin."
W e request the attention of our readers to the following
extract from an American journal published at the time the
sermons were being delivered:
" The religious and secular newspapers, with great unanimity, ridicule and condemn Dr. Talmage's lectures on the
haunts of sin in N e w York. To this the doctor made reply in his last sermon, and spoke of the 'sublime fury
with which the clergymen mount their war-horses and
charge down upon century-old sins or sinners. They hurl
sulphur at Sodom, and fire at Gomorrah, but when they
come to handle modern sins, they take out dainty handkerchiefs, wipe gold-rimmed spectacles, and put kid gloves on
their hands.' N o w we should like to know what objections
our religious contemporaries have to the preacher's course
in investigating the facts, verifying Solomon's assertion
that such paths take hold on hell, and most earnestly warning the unwary against them.
W e would not advise
another exploration of the gilded hells, but let the minister
ask his medical friend to show him the end of such paths,
in the hospitals and asylums, slums and cellars, and, our
word for it, it will touch his tongue with a live coal of zeal.
H e will try to save young men as he never beforetried,"

C H A P T E R IX.
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SERMON, OR HOW MINISTERS A R E LIED
ABOUT.

[Our readers will see by this sermon something of what Dr. Talmage has had to contend with in the course of his remarkable career
as a Christian minister, and it will also help to prepare for a more
righteous judgment upon the merits of the Trial which has just
taken place, and of which an account is given farther on.—ED.]
" Y o u may not know that this is a double anniversary.
I t is nearly ten years since I became pastor of this church.
Besides, on Tuesday, J a n u a r y 7, of this year (1879) I was
forty-seven years of age. This being a double anniversary,
you will not be surprised if my sermon this morning is
autobiographical. I started life in an old-fashioned Christian family, where they had prayers morning and night,
and always asked a blessing on meals; and there was no
exception to the rule, for, if my father was sick or away,
my mother led, and while sometimes, when my father led,
we found it hard to repress childish restlessness, there was
something in the tones of my mother, and there was something in the tears which always choked her utterance before
she got through with the prayer, that was irresistible. The
fact is that mothers get their hearts so wound around their
children that when they think of their future, and the trials
and temptations to which they may be subjected, they cannot control their emotions as easily as men do. While he
had a very sympathetic nature, I never saw my father cry
but once, and that was when they put the lid over my

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115

mother. Her hair was white as the snow, and her face was
very much wrinkled, for she had worked very hard for us
all, and had had many sicknesses and bereavements. I do
not know how she appeared to the world, nor what artists
may have thought of her features, but to us she was perfectly beautiful. There were twelve of us children, but
six of them are in heaven. I started for the legal profession with an admiration for it which was never cooled, for
I cannot now walk along by a court-house, or hear an attorney address a jury without having all my pulses accelerated
and my enthusiasm arroused. I cannot express my admiration for a profession adorned with the names of Marshall,
and Story, and Kent, and Rufus Choate, and John McLean.
But God converted my soul, and put me into the ministry
by a variety of circumstances, shutting me up to that
glorious profession. And what a work it is! I thank God
every day for the honor of being associated with what I
consider the most elevated, educated, refined, and consecrated band of men on this planet—the Christian ministry.
I know, I think, about five thousand of them personally,
and they are as near perfection as human nature ever gets
to be. Some of them on starvation salaries, and with worn
health, and amid ten thousand disadvantages, trying to
bring comfort and pardon to the race. I am proud to have
my name on the roll with them, though my name be at the
very bottom, and am willing to be their servant for Jesus'
sake. But we all have work. ' To every man his work.'
I will not hide the fact that it has been the chief ambition
of my ministry to apply a religion six thousand years old
to the present day—a religion of four thousand years B. C.
to 1869 and 1870 A. D. So I went to work to find the oldest religion I could see. I sought for it in my Bible, and I
found it in the Garden of Eden, where the serpent's head

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is promised a bruising by the heel of Christ. I said, ' That
is the religion,' and I went to work to see what kind of
men that religion made, and I found Joshua, and Moses,
and Paul, and John the Evangelist, and John Bunyan, and
J o h n Wesley, and John Summerfield, and five hundred
other Johns as good or approximate. I said: ' Ah! that is
the religion I want to preach—the Edenic religion that
bruises the serpent's head.' That is what I have been trying to do. The serpent's head must be bruised. I hate
him. I never see his head but I throw something at it.
T h a t is what I have been trying to do during these courses
of sermons, to bruise the serpent's head, and every time I
bruised him he hissed, and the harder I bruised him the
harder he hissed. You never trod on a serpent but he
hissed. But I trod on him with only one foot. Before
I get through I shall tread on him with both feet.
If God will help me I shall bruise the oppression, and the fraud, and the impurity coiled up amid our
great cities. Come now, God helping me, I declare a war
of twenty-five years against iniquity and for Christ, if God
will let me live so long. To this conflict I bring every
muscle of my body, every faculty of my mind, every passion of my soul. Between here and my grave there shall
not be an inch of retreat, of indifference, or of compromise. After I am dead, I ask of the world and of the
church only one thing—-not for a marble slab, not for a
draped chair, not for a long funeral procession, not for a
flattering ovation. A plain box in a plain wagon will be
enough, if the elders of the church will stand here and say
that I never compromised with evil, and always presented
Christ to the people. Then let Father Pearson, if he be
still alive, pronounce the benediction, and the mourners go
home. I do not forget that my style of preaching and my

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117

work in general have been sometimes severely criticised by
some of my clerical brethren. I t has come to be understood that at installations and at dedications I shall be
assailed. I have sometimes said to prominent men in my
church, ' G o down to such and such an installation, and
hear them excoriate Talmage.' And they go, and they are
always gratified! I have heard that sometimes in Brooklyn,
when an audience gets dull through lack of ventilation in
the church, the pastor will look over towards Brooklyn
Tabernacle, and say something that will wake all the people
up, and they will elbow each other, and say, ' That's Talm a g e ! ' You see, there are some ministers who want me
to work just the way they do; and, as I cannot see my
duty in their direction, they sometimes call me all sorts of
names. Some of them call me one thing, and some call
me another; but I think the three words that are most
glibly used in this connection are ' mountebank,'' sensationalism,' 'buffoonery,' and a variety of phrases showing that
some of my dear clerical brethren are not happy. Now, I
have the advantage of all such critical brethren in the fact
that I never assault them though they assault me. The
dear souls! I wish them all the good I can think of—large
audiences, large salaries, and houses full of children, and
heaven to boot! I rub my hands all over their heads in
benediction. You never heard me say one word against
any Christian worker, and you never will. The fact is,
that I am so busy in assaulting the powers of darkness
that I have no time to stop and stab any of my own regiment in the back. Now, there are two ways in which
I might answer some of the critical clergy. I might
answer them by the same bitterness and acrimony and
caricature with which some of them have assaulted me;
but would that advance our holy religion?
Do you

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not know that there is nothing that so prejudices people
against Christianity as to see ministers fighting?
It
takes two to make a battle, so I will let them go
on. It relieves them, and does not hurt me! I suppose
that in the war of words I might .^oe their equal, for
nobody has ever charged me with lack of vocabulary!
But then, you plainly see that if I assaulted them with
the same bitterness with which they assaulted me, no
good cause wrould be advanced. There is another way, and
that is by giving them kindly, loving, and brotherly advice.
' A h ! * you say, ' that's the way; that's a Christian way.'
Then I advise my critical brethren of the clergy to remember what every layman knowTs, whether in the church or
in the w^orld, that you never build yourself up by trying to
pull anybody else down. You see, my dear critical brethren—and I hope the audience wTill make no response to
what I am saying—you see, my dear critical brethren, you
fail in two respects wrhen you try to do that. First, you
do not build yourselves u p ; and secondly, you do not pull
anybody else down. Show me the case in five hundred
years where any pulpit, or any church, has been built up by
bombarding some other pulpit. The fact is, we have an
immense membership in this church, and they are all my
personal friends. Then, we have a great many regular attendants who are not church members, and a great many
occasional attendants, from all parts of the land, and those
people know that I never give any bad advice in this place,
and that I always give good advice, and that God by conversion saves as many souls in this church every year as
H e saves in any other church. Now, my dear critical brethren of the clergy, why assault all these homes throughout the
world ? W h e n you assault me, you assault them. Besides
that, 4 To every man his work.' I wish you all prosperity,

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119

critical brethren. You, for instance, are metaphysical.
May you succeed in driving people into heaven by raising
a great fog on earth. You are severely logical. Hook the
people into glory by the horns of a dilemma. You are anecdotal. Charm the people to truth by capital stories well
told. You are illustrative. Twist all the flowers of the
field and all the stars of heaven into your sermons. You
are classical. Wield the club of Hercules for the truth, and
make Parnassus bow to Calvary. Your work is not so
much in the pulpit as from house to house, b y pastoral visitation. The Lord go with you as you go to take tea with
the old ladies, and hold the children in your lap and tell
them how much they look like their father and mother! Stay
all the afternoon and evening, and if it is a damp night, stay
all night! All prosperity to you in this pastoral work, and
may you b y that means get the whole family into the kingdom of God. You will reach people I never will reach,
and I will reach people you never will reach. Go ahead.
In every possible way, my dear critical brethren of the
clergy, I will help you. If you have anything going on in
your church—lecture, concert, religious meeting—send me
the notice and I will read it here with complimentary remarks, and when you call me a hard name I will call you
a blessed fellow, and when you throw a brickbat at me—
an ecclesiastical brickbat—then I will pour holy oil on your
head until it runs down on your coat collar! There is nothing
so invigorates and inspires me as the opportunity to say
pleasant things about my clerical brethren. God prosper you,
my critical brethren of the ministry, and put a blessing on
your head, and a blessing in your shoe, and a blessing in
your gown—if you wear one—and a blessing before you,
and a blessing behind you, and a blessing under you, and a
blessing on the top of you, so that you cannot get out until

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you mount into heaven, where I appoint a meeting with
you on the north side of the river, under the tree of life, to
talk over the honor we had on earth of working each one
in his own way. ' To every man his work.' W e ought to
be an example, my critical brethren, to other occupations.
H o w often we hear lawyers talking against lawyers, and
doctors talking against doctors, and merchants talking
against merchants. You would hardly go into a store on
one side of the street to get a merchant's opinion of a merchant on the other side of the street in the same line of
business. W e ought, in the ministry, to be examples to
all other occupations. If we have spites and jealousies, let
us hide them forever. If we have not enough divine grace
to do it, let common worldly prudence dictate.
" But during these ten years in which I have preached to
you, I have not only received the criticism of the world,
b u t I have often received its misrepresentation, and I do
not suppose any man of any age escapes if he be trying to
do a particular work for God and the Church. I t was said
that Rowland Hill advertised he would on the following
Sabbath make a pair of shoes in his pulpit, in the presence
of his audience, and that he came into the pulpit with a
pair of boots and a knife, and having shaved off the top of
the boots, presented a pair of shoes. I t was said that
Whitefield was preaching one summer day, when a fly
buzzed around his head, and that he said, c The sinner will
be destroyed as certainly as I catch that fly.' He clutched
at the fly and missed it. The story goes that then he said
that after all perhaps the sinner might escape through salvation ! T w e n t y years ago the pictorials of London were
full of pictures of Charles Spurgeon astride the rail of a
pulpit, riding down in the presence of the audience to show
how easy it was to go into sin; and then the pictorials

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121

represented him as climbing up the railing of the pulpit to
show how hard it was to get to heaven. Mr. Beecher was
said to have entered his pulpit one warm day, and, wiping
the perspiration from his forehead, to have said, ' I t ' s h o t ! '
with an expletive more emphatic than devotional! Lies !
L i e s ! All of them lies. N o minister of the Gospel
escapes. Certainly I have not escaped ! A few years ago,
when I was living in Philadelphia, I came to unite in holy
marriage Dr. Boynton, the eloquent geological lecturer,
with a lady of N e w York. I solemnized the marriage
ceremony in the parlors of the Fifth Avenue Hotel. The
couple made their wedding excursion in a balloon that
left Central P a r k within the presence of five thousand
people. W h e n I got back to Philadelphia I saw in the
papers that I had disgraced the holy ordinance of marriage by performing it a mile high, above the earth, in a
balloon! And there are thousands of people to this
day who believe that I solemnized that marriage above
the clouds. About eight or nine years ago, in our chapel,
at a Christmas festival one week night, amid six or eight
hundred children roaring happy, with candies and oranges
and corn-balls, and with the representation of a star in
Christmas-greens right before me, I said, ' Boys, I feel like
a morning-star.' I t so happened that that phrase is to be
found in a negro song, and two days afterward it appeared
over the name of a man who said he was ' a member of a
neighboring church;' that I had the previous Sunday night,
in my pulpit, quoted two or three verses from 'Shoo Fly!'
And, moreover, it went on to say that we sang that every
Sunday in our Sunday school! And as it was supposed
that ' a member of a neighboring c h u r c h ' would not* lie,
grave editorials appeared in prominent newspapers deploring the fact that the pulpit should be so desecrated, and

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that the Sabbath schools of this country seemed to be going
to ruin. Some years ago, in the New York ' Independent,'
I wrote an article denouncing the exclusiveness of churches,
and making a plea for the working classes. In the midst
of that article there were two ironical sentences, in which
I expressed the disgust which some people have for anybody
that works for a living. Some enemy took these two ironical sentences and sent them all around the world as my sentiments of disgust with the working classes, and a popular
magazine of the country, taking these two ironical sentences
as a text, went on to say that I preached every Sunday with
kid gloves and swallow-tail coat (!), and that I ought to remember that if ever I got to heaven I should have to be
associated with the working classes, and be with the fishermen apostles, and Paul, the tent-maker. T o this very day
I get letters from all parts of the earth, containing little
newspaper scraps, saying; ' D i d you really say that? H o w
is it possible you can so hate the working classes? How
can you make that accord with the words of sympathy you
have recently been uttering in behalf of their sorrows?' A
few years ago I preached a series of sermons here on good
and bad amusements. There appeared a sermon as mine
denouncing all amusements, representing that all actors,
play-actors and actresses were dissolute without exception,
and that all theatrical places were indecent, and that every
man who went to a theatre lost his soul, and that it was
wrong even to go to a zoological garden, and a sin to look
at a zebra. I never preached one word of the sermon!
Every word of that sermon was written in a printing-office
by a man who had never seen me, or seen Brooklyn Tabernacle—every word of it except the text; that he got by
sending to another printing-office. In the State of Maine
a religious paper has a letter from a clergyman, who says

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123

that I came into this pulpit on Sabbath morning with Indian
dress, feathers on my head, and scalping-knife in my hand,
and that the pulpit was appropriately adorned with
arrows, and Indian blankets, and buffalo-skins; and
the clergyman in that letter goes on, with tears, to
ask, ' W h a t is the world coming to?' and asks if ecclesiastical authority somehow cannot be evoked to
stop such an outrage. W h y do I state these things ? To
stop them ? Oh, no. But for public information. I do
not want to stop them. They make things spicy ! Besides that, m y enemies do more for me than my friends can.
I long ago learned to harness the falsehood and abuse of
the world for Christian service. I thought it would be a
great privilege if I could preach the gospel through the
secular press beyond these two cities. The secular press of
these two cities, as a matter of good neighborhood and of
home news, have more than done me justice; and I thank
them for it. If they put the Gospel as I preach it in their
reportorial columns, I should be very mean and ungrateful
if I objected to anything in the editorial columns. I have
felt if this world is ever brought to God, it will be by the
printing press; and while I have for many years been allowed
the privilege of preaching the Gospel through the religious
press all around the world, I wanted to preach the Gospel
through the secular press beyond these cities, to people who
do not go to church and who dislike churches. My enemies
have given me the chance. They have told such monstrous lies about this pulpit and about this church that they
have made all the world curious to know what really is said
here. They have opened the way before me everywhere in
all the cities of this land, so that now the very best,
the most conscientious, and the most leading papers
of the country allow me, week by week, to preach

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LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

repentance and Christ to the people. And first of all, now,
I thank the secular press of these two cities for their kindness, and after that I publicly thank—for I shall never have
any opportunity of doing so save this—the Boston ' Herald,' the Cincinnati 'Enquirer,' the Philadelphia ' Press,'
the ' Times' of Philadelphia, the Albany ' Argus,' the
' Inter-Ocean' of Chicago, the ' Advance' of Chicago, the
' Courier-Journal' of Louisville, the ' Times-Journal' of
St. Louis, the ' Dispatch,' of Pittsburg, the Reading Eagle,'
Pennsylvania; the H e n r i e t t a ' J o u r n a l ' o f Texas, t h e ' E v a n gel' of San Francisco, the 'Telegraph' of St. John,
Canada, the ' Guardian' of Toronto, Canada, the
' Christian Age,' the 'Christian Herald,' and the 'Christian Globe,' of London, the 'Southern Cross' of Melbourne,
Australia, 'Town and Country' of Sidney, Australia; the
' W o r d s of Grace' of Sydney, Australia, and many others
all around the world. And I want to tell you that when I
was called here to this place, while I received the call from
nineteen people, my enemies now give me the opportunity
every week of preaching the Gospel to between seven and
eight million souls. They have excited the curiosity to see
and hear what I would say, and then the leading, the honorable newspapers of the country have gratified that curiosity. Go on, mine enemies ! If you can afford it in your
soul I can. So God makes the wrath of men to praise Him,
and while I thank my friends I thank my enemies.
" But, while the falsehoods to which I have referred may
somewhat have stirred your humor, there is a falsehood
which strikes a different key, for it invades the sanctity
of my home; and, when I tell the story, the fair-minded
men and women and children of the land will be indignant.
I will read it, so that if any one may want to copy it they
can after. (Reading from manuscript). It has been stated

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125

over and over again in private circles, and in newspapers
hinted, until tens of thousands of people have heard the
report, that sixteen or seventeen years ago I went sailing
on the Schuylkill River with my wife and her sister (who
was my sister-in-law); that the boat capsized, and that
having the opportunity of saving either my wife or her
sister, I let my wife drown and saved her sister, I marrying
her in sixty days! I propose to nail that infamous lie on
the forehead of every villain, man or woman, who shall
utter it again, and to invoke the law to help me. One
beautiful morning, my own sister by blood relation, Sarah
Talmage Whiteknack, and her daughter, Mary, being on a
visit to us in Philadelphia, I proposed that we go to Fairmount P a r k and make it pleasant for them. W i t h my wife
and my only daughter—she being a little child—and my
sister, Sarah, and her daughter, I started for Fairmount.
Having just moved to Philadelphia I was ignorant of the
topography of the suburbs. Passing along by the river I
saw a boat and proposed a row. I hired the boat and we
got in, and not knowing anything of the dam across the
river, and unwarned by the keeper of the boat of any
danger, I pulled straight for the brink, suspecting nothing
until we saw some one wildly waving on the shore as
though there were danger. I looked back, and lo! we were
already in the current of the dam. W i t h a terror that you
cannot imagine I tried to back the boat, but in vain. W e
went over. The boat capsized. My wife instantly disappeared and was drawn under the dam, from which her body
was not brought until days after; I, not able to swim a
stroke, hanging on the bottom of the boat, my niece hanging on to me, my sister, Sarah, clinging to the other side of
the boat. A boat from shore rescued us. After an hour of
effort to resuscitate my child, who was nine-tenths dead—'

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LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

and I can see her blackened body yet, rolling over the
barrel, such as is used for restoring the drowned—she
breathed again. A carriage came up, and leaving my wife
in the bottom of the Schuylkill River, and with my little
girl in semi-unconsciousness, and blood issuing from her
nostril and lip, wrapped in a shawl on my lap, and with my
sister, Sarah, and her child in the carriage, we rode to our
desolate home. Since the world was created a more ghastly
and agonizing calamity never happened. A n d t h a t is the
scene over which some ministers of the Gospel, and men
and women pretending to be decent, have made sport. My
present wife was not within a hundred miles of the place.
So far from being sisters, the two were entire strangers.
T h e y never heard of each other, and not until nine
months after that tragedy on the Schuylkill did I even
know of the existence of my present wife.
Nine
months after that calamity on the Schuylkill, she was introduced to me by my brother, her pastor, Rev. Goyn
Talmage, now of P o r t Jervis, New York. My first wife's
name was Mary R. Avery, a member of the Reformed
Church, Harrison street, South Brooklyn, where there are
many hundreds of people who could tell the story. My
present wife, I say, was not within a hundred miles of the
spot. Her name was Susie Whittemore, and she was a
member of the Reformed Church in Greenpoint, Brooklyn,
where multitudes could tell the story. W i t h multitudes of
people on the bank of the Schuylkill who witnessed my
landing on that awful day of calamity, and hundreds of
people within half an hour's walk of this place who knew
Mary Avery, and hundreds of people in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, who knew my present wife, Susie Whittemore—what
do you think, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers,
editors and reporters, of a lie like that manufactured out of

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127

the whole cloth? I never have spoken of this subject before, and I never shall again; but I give fair notice that, if
any two responsible witnesses will give me the name of any
responsible person after this affirming this slander, I will
pay the informant one hundred dollars, and I will put upon
the criminal, the loathsome wretch who utters it, the full
force of the law.
" But while I have thus referred to falsehoods and criticisms, I want to tell you that in the upturned faces of my
congregation, and in the sympathy of a church always indulgent, and in the perpetual blessing of God, my ten
years' experience in Brooklyn have been very happy. Now,
as to the future—for I am preaching my anniversary sermon—as to the future, I want to be of more service. My
ideas of a sermon have all changed. My entire theology
has condensed into one word, and that a word of four letters, and that word is 'help.' Before I select my text,
when I come to this pulpit, when I rise to preach, the one
thought is, H o w shall I help the people? And this coming
year I mean, if God will give me His Spirit, to help young
men. They have an awful struggle, and I want to put my
arm through their arm with a tight grip, such as an older
brother has the right to give to a younger brother, and I
want to help them through. Many of them have magnificent promise and hope, I am going to cheer them on up
the steps of usefulness and honor. God help the young
men! I get letters every week from somebody in the country, saying, ' M y son has gone to the city; he is in such a
bank, or store, or shop. Will you look after him? He was
a good boy at home but there are many temptations in the
city. P r a y for him, and counsel him.' I want to help the
old. They begin to feel in the Avay; they begin to feel
neglected, perhaps. I want at the edge of the snow-bank

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LIFE OF REY. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

of old age to show them the crocus. I want to put in their
hands the staff and the rod of the Gospel. God bless your
gray hairs. I want to help these wives and mothers in the
struggle of housekeeping, and the training of their children
for God and for Heaven. I want to preach a Gospel as appropriate to Martha as to Mary. God help the martyrs of the
kitchen, and the martyrs of the drawing-room, and the martyrs of the nursery, and the martyrs of the sewing-machine.
I want to help merchants; whether the times are good or
bad, they have a struggle. I want to preach a sermon
that will last them all the week; when they have notes to
pay, and no money to pay them with; when they are abused
and assaulted. I want to give them a Gospel as appropriate for W a l l street, and Broadway, and Chestnut street,
and State street, as for the communion table. I want to
help dissipated men who are trying to reform. Instead of
coming to them with a patronizing air that seems to say,
' H o w high I am up, and how low you are down,' I want to
come to them with a manner which seems to say, c If I had
been in the same kind of temptation, I might have done
worse.' I have more interest in the lost sheep that bleats
on the mountain than in the ninety-nine sheep asleep in
the fold. I want to help the bereft.
Oh! they are all
around us. I t seems as if the cry of orphanage and childlessness and widowhood would never end.
Only last
Wednesday we carried out a beautiful girl of twenty years.
Fond parents could not cure her. Doctors could not cure
her. Oceanic voyage to Europe could not cure her. She
went out over that road over which so many of your loved
ones have gone. Oh! we want comfort. This is a world
of graves. God make me the sun of consolation to the
troubled. Help for one. Help for all. Help now. While
this moment the sun rides mid heaven, may the eternal
noon of God's pardon and comfort flood your soul."

CHAPTER

X.

T H E TRIAL.

W E now come to what we doubt not is the most painful
event in Dr. Tannage's life. To be the subject of gossip
and tittle-tattle, to have one's sayings and doings criticised
and sometimes misrepresented, is the lot of all public men;
but, we regret to say, Dr. Talmage has been called to pass
through a much severer trial than any that could have arisen
from such causes as these. W e will not attribute unworthy
motives to those who have been the chief actors in this
movement directed against Dr. Talmage, we will hope that
they believe they were discharging a great public duty in
the course which they have been pursuing. Indeed, we feel
assured that neither party can look back upon the scenes
which were reported as taking place during the trial, without
deep sorrow for the scandal brought upon the Christian ministry and the Christian name itself. A private conference
of the brethren with Dr. Talmage would have been enough
to answer every purpose, when the " common fame " charges
against Talmage might have been inquired into, and a
right decision arrived at in the interests of truth and
charity. But unhappily this was not done, and the world
now rings with the Brooklyn Presbytery Scandal. From
the first of this painful matter it has seemed to us that to
proceed against a Christian minister merely on the ground
of " common fame " was unworthy a body of men such as
the Brooklyn Presbytery. W a s there ever a zealous servant of God, since the world began, "that " common f a m e "

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LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

has not more or less calumniated ? Has it not been the lot
of God's servants in all ages to be reviled and slandered by
" common fame ? " Yea, was it not thus that the life of
the Master Himself was taken away ? The " common
f a m e " of the Scribes and Pharisees, the priests and the
rulers of Jerusalem, alleged that Jesus was " a wine-bibber
and a friend of publicans and sinners;" that He had " a
devil and was mad;" that He said He would destroy the
temple; that He was seditious, and stirred up the people to
rebellion against Csesar; that He was a blasphemer, &c.
It was upon " common f a m e " that He was apprehended
and crucified. W e candidly confess that the manner in
which the prosecuting party proceeded against Talmage
has never ceased to appear to us as cowardly and mean;
that under the assumption of " common f a m e " was concealed a dislike to the man, and a desire to strike him down,
which dared not show itself in a fair and honest and manly
encounter. W e say this without any reference whatever
to the merits of the case, and without the slightest wish to
create prejudice. The Brooklyn Presbytery has decided
by a majority of five that Talmage is innocent of the
charges made against him, and the same majority have
passed a resolution expressing confidence in his character,
and esteem and regard for him and his work; and so far
these are weighty testimonies in his favor, which ought at
the least to procure for him such treatment as an acquitted
man deserves; but the case is not thereby terminated. The
minority in the Presbytery have appealed to the higher
court in the Presbyterian Church, the Synod, and in consequence of that appeal the whole case must be gone into
again before the larger court; and therefore respect for that
court as well as for Talmage himself precludes our saying
more at present. It is evident from Talmage's declaration

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181

before the Presbytery that he was not unprepared for hostile action. He said, " W e have been ready for trial for
nine years in the Brooklyn Tabernacle. T h e air has been
full of the threats of the Presbytery towards us. W e have
been committed and committed, and not to be ready for
trial at this time would be a very strange thing. One
month ago I stood up here and demanded investigation and
trial. I said, ' I am here now prepared to answer any and
every question put to me, and I want an investigation. A n
investigation for forty-seven years.' But I was not
heard. I want an investigation—not for one year, but
for forty-seven years. All the facts concerning my life
—between God and my soul there are ten thousand sins
and imperfections—but between myself and my church, and
between myself and my brethren, I challenge investigation.
I waive the ten days which I have a right to demand to prepare for trial. I am ready now, with the documents in my
pocket, and with witnesses here to prove that atrocious
crimes have been committed against me as a minister of the
Lord Jesus Christ." These do not read like the words of a
man who had anything to conceal or fear. The charge
against Dr. Talmage consisted of the following specifications:
Specification I—In that he acted deceitfully, and made
statements which he knew to be false, in the matter of his
withdrawal from the editorship of the " Christian at W o r k , "
in the month of October, 1876.
Specification II—In that, at various times, he published,
or allowed to be published by those closely associated with
him, without contradicting them, statements which he
knew to be false, or calculated to give a false impression,
in defense of his action and statements referred to in the
first specification.

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LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

Specification III—In
that he repeatedly made public
declarations, in various and emphatic forms of speech, from
his pulpit, that the church of which he was pastor was a
free church, and that the sittings were assigned without
reference to the dollar question, although he knew such declarations to be false.
Specification IV—In
that, in the winter of 1876-7, he
falsely accused J. W . Hathaway of dishonest practices, and
afterwards denied that he had done so.
Specification V—In that, in the early part of the year
1878, he endeavored to obtain false subscriptions towards
the payment of the debt of the church, to be deceitfully
used for the purpose of inducing others to subscribe.
Specification VI—In
that, in the year 1878, he ateted
and spoke deceitfully in reference to the matter of the reengagement of the organist of the Tabernacle Presbyterian
Church.
Specification VII—In
that he publicly declared, on Sunday, February 2, 1879, that all the newspapers said he was
to be arraigned for heterodoxy, and used other expressions
calculated to give the impression that he expected to be
arraigned on that charge, although he knew that he would
be arraigned, if at all, on the charge of falsehood, thereby
deceiving the people.
The prosecution was conducted b y the Rev. A r t h u r
Crosby and Rev. Archibald McCullough. The defense was
committed to the Rev. Dr. Spear, a venerable minister of
the new school, who certainly had not been prejudiced in
Talmage's favor. Dr. Spear said:
" I have heard of him and talked about him, and said
some things adverse to him which, if I had known him
as well as I now do, I would not have said. I find
t h a t I was mistaken in some very important respects

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133

He is not in all particulars the man that I supposed
he was, and
not the man
that
the
common
fame I heard said he was. I took him to be odd,
strange, startling and sensational by design, study and art;
b u t I now see, as I did not then see, t h a t N a t u r e has given
him such forms of thought and modes of expression as
must carry along with them much of what very sober
people call indiscretion and imprudence. I looked upon
him as a man whom it would be well to chisel, and
straighten, and put into a more comely shape; but I did
not then see, as I do now, that he has an emotional and
intellectual organization remarkably unique; his own, and
not another's, and that he cannot be trimmed, cramped or
frozen without undermining the foundation of his great
powers. I did not then see, as I do now, that he is and
must be himself, however much the critics may snarl at
him; and that when and where he is himself there is in him
an immense amount of that which is good and strong. I
regarded him as a genius of his own t y p e ; but I did not see
the peculiarities and infirmities, just as natural as the
genius, which sometimes shade the clear luster of the latter. I did not see, as I now do, the fervor and rush of his
emotional nature that necessarily involve some imprudence,
that will not permit the tongue to measure its own words
with the most perfect exactitude, and that will not wait for
the cool and careful analysis of deliberate judgment. He
is one of those men who often make the air tremble with
vibrations too rapid for their own counting. And as to his
heart, I was greatly mistaken. I did not then see, as I now
do, its natural simplicity, its generous overflow, its unsuspecting artlessness, and, unless I am now mistaken, its
honest zeal for God and man. My affections have been
drawn towards him in this hour of his trouble, and this is
the reason why I am before you to plead his cause."

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LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

Subsequently the sixth and seventh specifications were
withdrawn. The trial lasted six weeks and attracted general attention and much comment, not only because of the
eminence of the accused minister and the nature of the
charges preferred against him, but on account of the manner in which the whole affair wTas conducted. It ended, as
we have already stated, in a verdict of acquittal by a
majority of five. At the close of the trial Dr. Talmage
delivered the following address:
" M R . MODERATOR— C I think myself happy because I
shall be permitted to answer for myself this day before
thee, touching all the things whereof I have been accused,
because I know thee to be expert in all customs and questions.' Conscious as I have been of my thorough integrity,
I am glad that the Presbytery have come to the same mind.
You w^ill all, as Christian brethren, want to know how I
feel now. First, a sense of gratitude." (Here Dr. Talmage
extended thanks to the Moderator, to his counsel and to
the press).
" How do I feel towards my severe opponents in this
Presbytery ? I feel well. I would, if need be, go any
distance to serve them. By the blessing of God I shall
come out of this trial without the slightest grudge. I
feel that these opponents have done me no harm. They
have opened for me wider fields of usefulness. They have
marshaled all Christian people and the world on my side.
W h a t e v e r they meant God has turned it for good. Every
blowT struck has somehow passed my head and knocked
open a new door of work. H o w do I feel towards Brothers
Yan Dyke and Crosby and Greene and Dr. Sherwood ? I
feel as though I wrould like to meet them all in heaven,
although I cim not very anxious to meet them the first two
or three days ! I t is only through the help of God that I

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135

have not lost my temper. I have had no surprise in the
final vote. Three newspaper gentlemen, before one word
of evidence was taken on this trial, gave me the names of
those who would finally vote against me, and they made
but one mistake, and that in the case of a clergyman who
came to my side. My only surprise was that after raking
over my entire life of forty-seven years they have been able
to establish nothing against me. I am not as good as that
would seem to make me out. I could have given my prosecutors material for fifty specifications against myself, to
all of which I would have pleaded guilty. I shall go out
of this trial with an increased hatred for everything like
sectarianism.
" N o t only have I had the sympathy of the entire Presbyterian Church—a handful of this Presbytery excepted—but
I have had the sympathy of the Methodist, the Baptist, the
Congregational, the Reformed, the Episcopalian, and the
Catholic Churches. I never had any sectarianism in my
soul, but I have less now. Indeed, though I am a Protestant, in one respect I prefer-the Catholic Church. They
have only one pope, while in our Protestant denominations
there are a hundred, and I think at least one for each presbytery and classis and consociation. Never have I had
such full appreciation of the fact that God has His children
in all denominations. ' I believe in God the F a t h e r Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth, and in Jesus Christ,
and in the Communion of Saints.'
" Never have I had such opportunity of cultivating patience as during these six weeks. A few summers ago I
k y down in the woods and fell asleep. W h e n I woke up I
found a caterpillar on my foot, an ant crawling up my
sleeve, and spiders weaving their webs across my body—
one web across my boot, one across my knee, one across my

136

LIFE OF REV. T. I)E WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

waist, one across my chin, one across my nose, one acrossmy forehead—just seven specifications ! But I got up and
shook myself, and took a good wash, and felt well. I call
you to witness that I have for six weeks lain quietly and
allowed all sorts of spiders to crawl over me, and said
nothing; but I think it is about time for me to get up and
shake myself. I got no harm from my experience in the
woods. I expect to get no harm from my experience in the
Presbytery. I pronounce my benediction upon all this
body. I have no complaint to make. There are two or
three regrets I might mention. I regret that when, years
ago, I offered to leave this whole matter to a committee,
t h a t committee was refused. I regret also that when, two
months ago, a committee of five was appointed, they heard
my enemies but would not hear one of my friends. I
offered in one afternoon to show them the falsity of all the
charges, but they would not give me one second to the
hearing of one of my friends, while they spent two weeks
in gathering up the venom of my enemies. That is a regret
in which all fair-minded men will share.
" The actions of that committee have made more infidels
than all of them will ever be able to make Christians. A t
some of the committee I was not much surprised, but I
would have thought that the senior member of it would
have been very careful about making the scandal of this
trial, because of his own past experience. There has been
much discussion as to whether my church and its pastor
would leave the Presbyterian denomination on account of
the atrocity attempted on me. I was born in the Presbyterian Church, the Reformed Church being one branch of
the great Presbyterian family. I shall go with my people
wherever they go. I believe in them as much as they believe in me. A more highly-educated, refined and con-

LIFE OF KEY. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

137

servative group of men and women is not to be found on
this planet. I hope for the present they will stay in this
denomination (Yan Dyke's). The power that was the bane
of this Presbytery is now broken, and there is going to be
more room for free action. The thumbscrews are going out
of modern ecclesiasticism. A great many things have transpired in the Presbytery that are no more Presbyterianism
than they are South Sea cannibalism. More liberty of
thought and deed hereafter in the Brooklyn Presbytery.
W e cannot all work the same way. Some of the brethren
have said t h a t they do not like my way of preaching. I
just as much dislike theirs. They do not sanction mine. I
could not endure theirs. It is certain t h a t as many people
like mine as theirs. My way of preaching is poor enough;
but I know theirs will never save the world! God seems
to have blessed my work as much as He has theirs; but I will
make a bargain with them. I will let them have their
way if they will let me have mine. It has been said on this
trial that I have eccentricities. If so, they are natural. I
have never cultured but one eccentricity, and that is, never
to pursue any one engaged in Christian work! I t makes
but little difference to me whether a fisherman uses Conroy
tackle with fly of golden pheasant, or a crooked stick which
he cut out of the woods with his own jack-knife, if he only
catches the fish. Get men into the Kingdom of God. W h o
cares about the way you get them in? Six years ago I went
to the Adirondacks with a hunting and fishing apparatus
loaned me by a friend. The apparatus was worth about
five hundred dollars. If the trout and the deer of Saranac
Lake and J o h n Brown's Tract could have understood my
baggage, they would have been very apprehensive. Such
reels! Such bait boxes! Such cartridges! Such Bradford
flies! Such pocket flasks for soda water and lemonade!

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LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

Suffice it to say I did not interfere with the happiness of the
piscatory or zoological world. While I was laboriously
getting ready, a mountaineer with an old blunderbuss shot
three deer. I found that splendid apparatus did not imply
great execution. W h a t is true in the woods is true in the
Church. All our elaborate and costly theological apparatus
is a failure if we cannot catch souls.
" On this trial my methods have been criticised because
some of you do not understand what my theory of preaching is. W h e n I go into the pulpit I say, ' During this one
hour and a half I am going to see how many people I can
help, and help right away.' W e all want help. Our children are dead, and we want to know whether there is any
place this side or the other of the sun where we can get
them into our arms again. To most of us life is a struggle,
and we w^ant a Christ to sympathize with us in the struggle.
Five hundred thousand people in Brooklyn who want help.
Twelve hundred millions of a race wanting help. Eternal
God help us to help them. Brethren, I preach the best I
can. You could not stand it to hear me preach, and I
would not for a salary of five thousand dollars a year sit
and hear some of you preach. If you want me different
you will have to make me over again; but if you do undertake the job of making me over again, like unto which of
these presbyters will you make me? Do let me have a
choice of models.
" This is certain: I will hereafter be more intense in my
way. I have been stupid long enough in sermonizing; I
am hereafter going to be interesting, if such a thing is possible. The brethren say I am orthodox, and I admit that
they are orthodox; but I give them notice that I am hereafter going to be orthodox in a more interesting way. No
more humdrum for me. I have learned this from the news-

LIFE OF REV. T. BE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

139

papers of the country. W h y do all the people read the
newspapers? Because the newspapers are interesting. How
are we to get our churches thronged with worshipers? By
making our religious services interesting. Hereafter count
me out of the old way of doing things. I have been asked
whether I intend to withdraw from this Presbytery. I
might, perhaps, but for brother Yan Dyke's assertion that
he should withdraw in case of my acquittal. W h a t would
become of the Presbyterian Church if we should both
leave it? I think perhaps I had better stay and watch the
wreck. But I must adjourn most of what I have to say to
my own pulpit, where I feel more at home and have larger
audiences. Meanwhile I pray for you and your families all
happiness and prosperity. I commend you to God and to
the W o r d of His grace, which is able to build you up and
give you an inheritance among all them that are sanctified."
On this extraordinary trial the Rev. Henry W a r d Beecher
commented as follows in his paper, the " Christian Union":
" W i t h the majority the verdict seems to have been a
matter of calm and deliberate conviction, while the minority,
if we may judge from their arguments, were not wholly
free from passion and vindictive sentiment.
" In truth, however, the Brooklyn Presbytery, rather than
Dr. Talmage, has been on trial, and ecclesiasticism more
than either. The unbelieving world has looked on, at first
with curiosity, and then with anything but reverence or even
respect, at the proceedings of this ' Court of Jesus Christ.'
It has wondered what example of charity, mutual forbearance, mutual consideration, and, above all, of disinterested
and dispassionate love of truth and equal justice, the Church
had to show to the world, and it has been amazed at the
extraordinary example actually presented. How, it has

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LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

asked, do the disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ proceed in
order to learn the truth concerning a disciple accused of unchristian conduct? To the answer given it has listened
either with sorrowful silence or with open derision.
" It is simply astonishing t h a t in this nineteenth century
a body of Christian ministers can devise no method more
in accord with the spirit and principles inculcated by Jesus
Christ for the determination of the t r u t h of c common
f a m e ' respecting a brother, than this modified form of
Anglo-Saxon paganism. Imagine the question of Paul's
orthodoxy, or J o h n Mark's consistency, left to be determined b y appointing P e t e r to stretch every nerve to prove
him guilty, J o h n to employ every stratagem to prove him
innocent, and the rest of the apostles to decide between
them after the sacred sparring-match was over!
" W h a t method could we propose? In the absence of
any better suggestion, we think it might be well for the
disciples of Christ to t r y the method which Christ recommended. If any brother felt himself personally injured by
Dr. Talmage, or felt t h a t a more serious injury had been
inflicted on the Churches of Christ by his conduct, he might
go to him alone to remonstrate; if that did no good, he
might take one or two discreet brethren, and make, with
their aid, a more vigorous attempt to rectify the wrong;
and, if that also failed, he might then leave Dr. Talmage
alone, and if necessary make a public statement why he
chose to do so. This is not a method very much in vogue
in any Christian denomination as yet. I t affords no field
for forensic displays, and no opportunity for newspaper
notoriety. W e will not say that even some better method
of dealing with Christian ministers accused by that ' devil's
advocate' of modern society, 'common fame,' may not be
discovered or invented in the future. But we think we are

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

14:1

quite prepared to say that trial by wager of battle in a
' Court of Jesus C h r i s t ' is not such an invention as will
commend itself to the average unbeliever as any improvement on Christ's forgotten plan."
In the " Christian World " of London, under date J u n e
6, 1879, an article appeared from the pen of the Rev. Dr.
Parker of the City Temple, Holborn, which was generally
regarded as a kind of " summing up " against Dr. Talmage.
But since then Dr. Parker has published a sort of recantation of that judgment, and as the change in his mind
was wrought by a visit from the Rev. Charles Wood,
of Buffalo, United States, a Presbyterian minister, and
now in England as one of the representatives of the American Presbyterians to the General Assembly of the Church of
Scotland, we think it only fair to Dr. Parker and Dr. Talmage to give the article referred t o : " M y readers will
unanimously bear me witness that from first to last I have
had only kind words for Dr. Talmage. Some time since it
was rumored that he had acted a very singular part in
the matter of a fatal accident on an American river. He
made a complete and triumphant reply, which I reproduced, adding a few words of most hearty sympathy and
interest. W h e n I was in Brooklyn six years ago, Dr. Talmage received me most kindly; he asked me to preach to
his people; he said kind things in his paper; and, in short,
he showed all possible friendliness. These are things which
I do not easily forget, so when this trial business came up
my whole heart went out after Talmage and my confidence
in him was unreserved. I had made up my mind to ask
him to preach in the City Temple, and to show him all
hospitality and affection.
Whilst in this state of mind
the ' New York Evangelist' came into my hands, and it contained the first and only connected and apparently complete

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LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D D.

statement of the trial I had seen, and I perused it with
eager interest. Being almost wholly ignorant of Presbyterian methods of procedure, I supposed that Dr. Van
D y k e was making the formal accusation, and that Dr. Talmage said about all he had to say in self-explanation and
defence. Van Dyke's statement was so clear, so moderate,
and so detailed, and Dr. Talmage's speech was so off-handed
and so jocular, that I began to fear that there was more
substance in the accusation than I at first supposed. But
on Saturday night last the Rev. Charles Wood called upon
me, and gave me a copy of the speech which had been
used by Dr. Talmage's counsel, that I might see exactly
how the defense stood. I have learned that Dr. Yan D y k e
is a near neighbor of Dr. Talmage's, that he is a good and
able man, but that his congregation is small. I do not
know the effect of this upon an American Presbyterian,
b u t I do know exactly what it would be in the case of
some English Congregationalists. The effect would be a
most virulent and unreasoning prejudice against the successful man, and all sorts of snarling criticisms would be
passed upon him. If ' John Strong,' for example, were in
Yan Dyke's position, nothing would be too venomous or
cruel for him to say; as for a few perversions here and
there, they would be of very small account if the object
in view, namely, the torment of the successful man, required their aid. It has come to pass that Yan Dyke
has done exactly what ' J o h n Strong' has done; that
is to say, he has, under a feigned name, written a letter
to a Philadelphia newspaper respecting Talmage, which
letter is, in my opinion, shamefully disgraceful.
The
man who could write such a letter, under an assumed
name, about a brother minister and a near neighbor, is
capable of making any accusation, and ought not to be

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

143

listened to for one moment. I hate cowardice. I have
suffered so much from it myself, and have seen so frequently the damnable treatment of one minister by another,
envy and jealousy of the vilest kind being in common
use, t h a t I am determined to denounce it by speech and pen
wherever I find it. Had I read Yan Dyke's letter first I
should certainly never have read his speech. H e wrote to
Philadelphia, signed himself ' Augustin,' and said the
meanest things of his nearest neighbor. Turning from this,
let me ask, ' W h o was Dr. Talmage's counsel ? ' The answer
is, ' Dr. Spear, of Brooklyn.' Dr. Spear is an old-school
Presbyterian, who had no particular liking either for Talmage or his methods; a venerable, quiet, cautious man, who
has lived an obscurely public life, honored and beloved by
his own people. Dr. Spear comes out of this trial with a
real love for Dr. Talmage, thinking him far enough from a
perfect man, b u t still giving him his affection and confidence. I no sooner got hold of Dr. Spear's speech than I
went at once to the charge about leaving c The Christian at
W o r k ' dishonorably. T h a t was the principal charge in
my opinion. I have read the defense, and it now appears
(1) that the newspaper was very far from being a financial
success; (2) that Dr. Talmage had given notice to leave it;
(3) that the paper was sold without Dr. Talmage's knowledge; (4) that Dr. Talmage was not told to whom it was
sold; (5) that on hearing of the sale he went down to the
office after the paper was made up and took out an article
to make room for a very short valedictory, saying that he
was going over to another paper, and leaving his address.
Of course, it was very singular that on the very day of this
being done, there was to have been an advertisement in the
1
Christian at Work,' referring to the paper to which Talmage was going, of which advertisement, however, Tal-

144:

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

mage says he knew nothing, and no proof has been given
that he did know of it. Now all this puts a very different
complexion upon the matter from that which it was made
at first to bear. If I was asked to sit down and find all the
fault I could with the case, even as Dr. Spear puts it, I could
find a good deal of very serious fault; on the other hand,
Talmage had suffered (so he said) a good deal of provocation, the paper was not a success in his hands, he had given
notice to leave it, and he was forced by others into very
sudden action. I dare not say that I should be a better
man under the circumstances, and therefore I cannot condemn Talmage. W h a t the other defenses may be I cannot
say, for I have not yet read them. I instinctively go over
to the side of the man who is accused. I have always done
this, and I hope always to do so. I hate the accusatory
spirit; it is devil-born, and infinitely detestable. A t the
same time I like to get at the reality of the case, and have
the full consent of my own mind in giving any man my support. Possibly I may return to the subject next week;
meanwhile, I vote that the first charge is not sufficiently
sustained.
" JOSEPH

PARKER.

" City Temple."
W i t h this we must now take leave of this remarkable
trial. Of one thing we have no doubt, that whatever errors
of judgment Dr. Talmage may have committed—and we
neither believe in his infallibility nor that of his accusers—
public confidence in the general integrity of his heart and
life will remain undisturbed. And we are perfectly sure we
express the wishes of tens of thousands of Christians of all
denominations and in all lands, when we pray that this trial,
sharp and painful as it has been to Dr. Talmage, may be
sanctified to prepare him for far greater, wider, and higher
usefulness, to the glory of God.

CHAPTER

XL

DR. TALMAGE'S VISIT TO EUROPE I N 1879—DEPATURE FROM
AMERICA, MAY 2 8 , 1 8 7 9 .

T H E intense excitement created in Brooklyn by the announcement that Dr. Talmage, Mrs. Talmage, and Miss
Jessie Talmage would visit England, found its outlet in the
following manner. Arrangements were made to freight
the palatial steamer, " Grand Republic," to convey over
three thousand people, members and other friends, so far as
Sandy Hook, to bid them good-bye. The vessel was gaily
decked with flags from stem to stern. Among the friends
on board the " G r a n d R e p u b l i c " were Revs. E. S. Porter,
J. W . Williamson, C. N . Sims, B. G. Benedict, J. S. Davison, B. B. Brake, O. S. St. John, A. Taylor, T. Evans, J .
A. Baldwin, G. C. Lucas, L. Parker, and L. Gilbert. In
attendance also, were Mayor Howell, Aldermen French and
Aitken, ex-Mayor Hunter, City Treasurer Mr. Little, Justice Bloom, Assessor Norton, Police Commissioner Jourdan,
the United States District Attorney, A. W . Tenney, Messrs.
Selmes, Low, Hendris, Britton, Skidmore, McNeil, Powell,
Beeke, Fairfield, Lane, Voorhees, Martin, Brockarday,
Quimby, Pierson, Yan Benchoston, Jones, Smith,Winslow,
Jardine, Masters, Miles, Temple, Quackenboss, Adams;
Professors West, Dutcher, Arbuckle, Crittenden, &c. Music
by Wernig's 23d Regiment Band, was played in stirring
airs from the Tabernacle " collection." Under the pilotage of Major Corwin, Dr. Talmage passed through crowds
of people to Jewell's dock, and punctually at 9 A. M. found

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LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

himself in the midst of over three thousand friends and
members of his church. A large number of the Presbyterian clergy, and of other denominations, were on board to
express their best wishes for Dr. Talmage and family. The
" Grand Republic " then sw^ung off into the stream, amid a
chorus of music and steam-whistles, followed by a volley of
cheers which rang over the water in the steamer's wake.
A rapid run was made to the Battery, Pier 40, N o r t h
River, where the magnificent " Gallia," of the Cunard line
lay swarming with passengers and their friends. Here another volley of cheers went up, as Dr. Talmage and his
family stepped upon the deck. They immediately took
their station on the quarter-deck of the a Gallia," and waved
their farewells. Cheer after cheer was given by the Tabernacle people, as their boat hauled out into the stream, the
band playing "Sweet By-and-By." About 11 A. M. the
Cunarder steamed rapidly seaward, followed sharply by the
" Grand Republic."
Soon both vessels were off Staten
Island, when the " Grand Republic " steered alongside the
" Gallia," and the band played another lively air. This
brought Dr. Talmage and family again on deck, who waved
their hankerchiefs, as the great vessel swept out to sea. Both
vessels having passed the Narrows, and out into the lower
bay, the passengers of the "Gallia" were thrilled by the prolonged cheers of " the Tabernacle excursionists," and were
themselves prompted to throng the port gunwale, and return, the cheers. From the " G r a n d R e p u b l i c " Mr. Arbuckle, of the Tabernacle, writh his silver trumpet, sent the
strains of the Doxology after the Doctor, the regimental
band furnished the accompaniment, and then the company
of three thousand lifted their voices, and gave the last
" F a r e w e l l ! " This was overwhelming to the Doctor; but
quickly putting his hands to his mouth, he shouted a last

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

147

" Good-bye, God bless you! " Several hundred yards separated these vessels, yet bis words fell upon all ears with a
startling distinctness. The " Grand Republic " then headed
for New York, and the magnificent " G a l l i a " made a
rapid and splendid voyage to England.
T H E " GALLIA "

OFF

QUEENSTOWN.

On May 15 we received a cable telegram announcing Dr.
Talmage's intended visit to England, and immediately made
arrangements to meet and welcome him off Queenstown. By
the courtesy of the famous Cunard Company's agents,Messrs.
D. & C. Mclver, the necessary documents were completed
for our transit by the steam-tender, which would be
sent out to receive the mails from the " Gallia" in midocean. After a stormy passage of several hours, the steamtender bravely accomplished her task, and we were duly
landed on board. The Doctor and his family had retired
to rest, having given up all hope of the steam-tender reaching the " Gallia." The surprise was great when we were
announced, and a cordial greeting followed. Arriving safely
in Liverpool, we accompanied the distinguished visitors to
London, where the journey was safely completed on Saturday, J u n e 7, at 2:30 P . M.
I N ENGLAND.

On Sunday, J u n e 8, Dr. Talmage twice attended the
services at Westminster Abbey to hear Canon Farrar (author
of the "Life of Christ") and the famous Dean Stanley.
In the evening he worshiped with the largest regular congregation in England at Mr. Spurgeon's Metropolitan Tabernacle, and had the gratification of shaking hands with the
pastor at the close of the service.
W e have pleasure in reprinting an article which appeared

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LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

in the " Liverpool Protestant Standard," under date J u n e
14, 1879:
LANDING OF T H E KEV. DE. TALMAGE.

" The great Talmage of America landed in Liverpool on
last Saturday, and after a brief stay journeyed on to London. This eminent divine and Christian warrior has of
late months been made the target for abuse and vituperation
from men whose chief characteristics are composed of envy,
jealousy, and wind. The accusations which these men
brought against Dr. Talmage were almost too silly and
absurd to command attention at all; but as the wisest of
men suggested that there are times when even fools should be
answered according to their folly lest they be wise in their
own conceit, we suppose t h a t it was considered necessary
that the accusers of Dr. Talmage should have a grand and
unrestricted opportunity of making their folly known to
all men. And in this not very enviable particular they
have been most eminently successful; and so it happens
t h a t Dr. Talmage instead of being crushed by his despicable persecutors has risen higher and higher in the
estimation of all good, true and noble men, while his
traducers are sinking lower and lower into the pit of unutterable yet well-merited contempt. For our part we
have never at any time considered that Dr. Talmage or
his character needed one word of defense from the pen
of any writer. The mighty work which he has accomplished through his heart-stirring sesmons proclaims him
to be a man sent of God. No one pulpit orator of modern
times, that we know of, has more vigorously, bravely,
and valiantly attacked sin and evil in every shape and
form than Dr. Talmage, of Brooklyn. Under his scathing
denunciations of vice and iniquity he has caused the devil

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

149

to roar with rage and his satellites to gnash their teeth
with pain. N o wonder was it that the spirits of demonism
both in and out of the flesh combined together in order to
try to accomplish the ruin of so great and such an uncompromising enemy of the kingdom of darkness. To blast
the reputation of Talmage meant Satanic triumphs at which
all hell would rejoice. Did not Dr. Talmage fearlessly
attack official corruption in high quarters? Did he not
stand up as the champion of the Bible in the public schools
when its enemies tried to shut it out from the educational
department? Did he not openly expose the vices of wealthy
profligates who reveled in lust and unholy pleasures in the
gilded palaces of debauchery of Brooklyn and New York
cities? Did he not proclaim with apostolic earnestness and
zeal a free and full salvation for every repentant sinner
who sought pardon and forgiveness through the all-sufficient merits of the blood of Christ? Has he not charmed
tens of thousands of young men and young women throughout the length and breadth of America, and also in the
fatherland, by his sermons, and won them over from the
follies of low, grovelling pursuits to the higher platform of
noble thoughts and actions? Having done then so many
things to ameliorate the condition of humanity and to make
the world wiser and better, brighter and happier, it becomes
a matter of no wonder that a special legion of unclean and
calumniating spirits were let loose against him—for surely
the Prince of the power of the air which now worketh in
the children of disobedience saw that his kingdom and his
craft for the destruction of souls was becoming seriously
endangered through the merciless onslaughts made upon it
by the brave and valiant Talmage. To destroy the reputation of such a man was an object worth struggling for on
the part of such a master mind in the realms and literature

150

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

of iniquity as that of Beelzebub. But the old serpent, with
all his subtility, has again been foiled; and so it has come
to pass that Talmage, like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego of old, having abided for awhile iin the sevenfoldheated furnace into which his enemies cast him, has come
out from thence without a single hair of his head singed,
nor is there the slightest scorch of the fire to be seen upon
him. Well and truly saith the Scripture to all those who
fight the Lord's battles: ' Greater is He that is for you than
he that is against y o u . ' "
WELCOME TO REV. DR. TALMAGE BY R E V . DR. DAVIDSON, O F
ISLINGTON, AND HIS E L D E R S AND DEACONS.

In announcing at the morning service in Colebrooke R o w
that Dr. Talmage was to occupy his pulpit in the evening,
Dr. Thain Davidson said: " D e W i t t Talmage is certainly
a remarkable man, endowed with gifts of an exceptional
order. Of his sermons Mr. Spurgeon has said: ' They lay
hold of my inmost soul; certainly the Lord is with this
mighty man of valor.' I am quite aware that cruel and
unkind things have been said of him; eminent men rarely
escape the tongue of slander; but, personally, I have entire
confidence in Dr. Talmage, and, with the majority of his
presbytery, believe him to be innocent of the charges laid
against him, and to be a guileless and greatly gifted servant of the Lord."
A t a full meeting of the elders and deacons, it was unanimously resolved that Dr. Davidson be requested to assure
Dr. Talmage t h a t they heartily united v/ith their pastor in
the expression of confidence and regard.
DR. TALMAGE AT T H E P R E S B Y T E R I A N

CHURCH,

ISLINGTON.

Dr. Talmage, having been announced to preach his first
sermon at Dr. Thain Davidson's church, Colebrooke Row,

LIFE OF KEV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

151

Islington, large numbers of people assembled in front of
the church at about 5:30 P . M., but the members of the
congregation and their friends, who had obtained tickets of
admission, entered at the side door. The church rapidly
filled, and at 6 o'clock was almost inconveniently crowded.
At. 6:15, notwithstanding the crowded state of the church,
the front doors, at which considerable clamor had for some
time been heard, were thrown open, and part of the large
crowd, which had by that time assembled, rushed in. Not
many minutes elapsed before the edifice was full to overflowing, but the crowd continued to press forward into the
aisles and the gallery. Immediately began a scene of confusion and uproar, which we think it is safe to assert has
never been seen in this church before; and amidst cries of
" No room," " No room," " Crush, crush," " W e cannot move
here," Dr. Davidson ascended the pulpit and appealed to
the people to remember that they were in the house of
prayer, and begged them to abstain from unseemly exclamations. The hubbub ceased for a few minutes, but presently
recommenced and with the same cries repeated. A gentleman in the gallery was heard to remind the people that
they were not in the pit of a theater, but in the house of
God.
Dr. Davidson then announced the well-known hymn,
commencing " J e s u s shall reign where'er the sun," and said:
" Before we sing these words I want to say a word or two
in the way of giving a cordial welcome to the distinguished
stranger beside me in this pulpit. I have not had the
privilege of being a hearer in my own church since the day
when my late dear and beloved friend, Dr. Guthrie, of
Edinburgh, preached that noble sermon of his which some
of you will remember, upon ' walking by faith and not by
sight.' I had chanced to remark last Sunday evening that

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LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

I had often longed to be a hearer instead of a preacher
here, but I had no idea then that I was so soon to have the
privilege and the joy of listening to one who, by his inexhaustible originality, his fearless plainness of speech, and
his unmatched pictorial power, has not only got around him
the largest congregation in America, but has secured in all
parts of the world, from week to week, through the press,
his hundreds of thousands of interested and profited hearers.
Well, speaking for myself, I welcome Dr. Talmage with my
whole heart, and feel honored that his first sermon in England should be preached in this pulpit, and not only so, but
I may mention to him a gratifying circumstance which occurred to-day. My elders and deacons, at an improvised
meeting, unanimously requested me to convey to Dr.
Talmage, in their name as well as m y own, a cordial and
loving welcome. Well, my friends; this is not the largest,
but it is one of the oldest of our Presbyterian churches in
London. W h e n Dr. Talmage kindly offered to give me
the benefit of his first sermon here, I thought it would be
selfish to have him here. I pressed upon him and his
friends the duty of his going to the Agricultural Hall; but
for reasons which I can quite understand, Dr. Talmage
desired to spend a quiet evening in London. I am afraid
that is a luxury he will hardly have here to-night. Let me
say, however, for the consolation of those who are disappointed, that Dr. Talmage has kindly promised me that
before he returns to America he will hold an afternoon
service at the Agricultural Hall. I may say, in conclusion,
that I have very often read his graphic sermons with a
feeling of wonder; for, unless it be Dr. Guthrie, I regard
my friend beside me as the greatest word-painter the age
has produced; and I pray God that, unharmed b y the lip of
flattery or the tongue of slander, this splendid gift may
long be consecrated to the service of his Master."

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

153

The text which Dr. Talmage selected on this occasion is
found in Rev. vii. 17: " And God shall wipe away all tears
from their eyes." The late Rev. J o h n Angell James, of
Birmingham, was accustomed to say that he never cared to
hear an " unbruised minister," for that it was only those
who had passed under the bruising Hand of God that could
speak so as to comfort and help troubled minds. W e think
w~e could see in the deep and exquisite tenderness, and the
far-extending sympathies which, like precious odors, perfumed the sermon on the " tearless world," the benefit and
blessing with which God is already sanctifying His servant's troubles to make him not only a Boanerges, " a son of
thunder," but a Barnabas also, " a son of consolation."
May it be so !
T H E TESTIMONY OF AN AMERICAN

JOURNAL.

The following remarks concerning Dr. Talmage recently
appeared in a first-class American journal:
" No other preacher addresses so many constantly. The
words of no other preacher were ever before carried by so
many types, or carried so far. Types give him three continents for a church, and the English-speaking world for a
congregation. The judgment of his generation will, of
course, be divided upon him, just as that of the next
will not. T h a t he is a topic in every newspaper, is much
more significant than the fact of what treatment it gives
him. Only men of genius are universally commented
on. The universality of the comment makes friends and
foes alike prove the fact of the genius. T h a t is what
is impressive. As for the quality of the comment, it
will, in nine cases out of ten, be much more a revelation of the character behind the pen which writes it than
a true yiewr or review of the man, This is necessarily so,

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LIFE OF REV. T. DE W I T T TALMAGE, D.D.

The press and the pulpit in the main are defective judges
of one another. The former rarely enters the inside of the
latter's work. There is acquaintanceship, hut not intimacy
between them. Journals find out the fact of a preacher's
power in time. Then they go looking for the causes. Long
before, however, the masses have felt the causes and have
realized, not merely discovered, the fact. The penalty of
being the leader of great masses has, from Whitfield and
'Wesley to Spurgeon and Talmage, been to serve as the
target for small wits. Their attacks confirms a man's right
to respect and reputation, and are a proof of his influence
and greatness. I t can be truly said that while secular
criticisms in the United States favorably regards our subject in proportion to its intelligence and uprightness, the
judgment of foreigners on him has long been an index to
the judgment of posterity here. No other American is
read so much and so constantly abroad. His extraordinary
imagination, earnestness, descriptive powers and humor,
his great art in grouping and arrangement, his wonderful
mastery of words to illumine and alleviate human conditions, and to interpret and inspire the harmonies of the better nature, are appreciated by all who can put themselves
in sympathy with his originality of methods and his high
consecration of purpose. His manner mates with his nature. It is each sermon in action. He presses the eyes,
hands, his entire body, into the service of the illustrative
truth. Gestures are the accompaniment of what he says.
As he stands out before the immense throng, without a
scrap of notes or manuscript before him, the effect produced cannot be understood by those who have never seen
it. The solemnity, the tears, the awful hush, as though
the audience could not breathe again, are oftentimes painful.

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155

" His voice is peculiar, not musical, but productive of
startling, strong effects, such as characterize no preacher
on either side of the Atlantic. His power to grapple an
audience and master it from text to peroration has no
equal. N o man was ever less self-conscious in his work.
He feels a mission of evangelization on him as by the imposition of the SujDreme. T h a t mission he responds to by
doing the duty that is nearest to him with all his might—
as confident that he is under the care and order of a Divine
Master as those who hear him are that they are under the
spell of the greatest prose-poet that ever made the Gospel
his song and the redemption of the race the passion of his
heart."
A n English correspondent, who recently heard Dr. Talmage in the Brooklyn Tabernacle, writes as follows:
" I worshiped in the Tabernacle on the Sabbath. I t was
only by sending my card to an acquaintance that we obtained seats. Hundreds went away who could not obtain
standing room. The throng packed into the great church
was estimated at about 6,000. The singing was congregational, and as good as any heard in the Moody Tabernacle
in Chicago. The Scripture reading, the praise, the sermon
were all delightful. Every utterance of the preacher is
evangelical, the pure old Gospel, comforting to saints, full
of warning to sinners. No effort was made to touch the sensibilities, and yet I saw tears on many strong faces. This is
the Gospel of our fathers. It is the Gospel of our Church.
It is the Gospel of our Blessed God. W h y should not
Satan seek the destruction of such a far-reaching instrumentality of the truth as it is in Jesus? "

C H A P T E R XII.
THE WELCOME

HOME.

Brooklyn's welcome to Dr. Talmage was tendered on the
evening of October third, 1879, at the Brooklyn Tabernacle.
I t was a great demonstration and showed the high estimation and love in which the celebrated preacher is held, not
only by his own flock, but by the people generally. The Tabernacle never contained a more magnificent audience. There
were between five and six thousand persons present, fully
one-half of whom were ladies. I t was an assemblage representing the wealth, the culture and the best people of Brooklyn. The professions were largely represented. In point
of enthusiasm, the occasion has had but few equals in this
city; the audience appeared to be fairly carried away b y
their feelings, and applauded the sentiments of the preacher,
and the various other speakers, to the echo.
Skillful hands had decorated the interior of the Tabernacle with flowers and bunting. A floral bulwark had been
erected about the platform, and from it depended curling
vines. Fronting the great organ pipes was a crayon portrait of Dr. Talmage, executed and presented by Mr. E. H.
Hart, of Philadelphia, and directly under it was the floral
legend " Welcome. " The same word appeared on numerous pillows of flowers about the platform.
Surmounting the frame work of the organ a star of gas
jets blazed forth, and about half way down the front of the
instrument, in letters of fire, shone the words " Glory to
God. " American and British flags, intertwined, helped also

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157

to set off the organ front. Facing the gallery, all around,
were Sunday-school banners and flowers in great profusion,
and the atmosphere of the room was redolent with the perfume of the choicest products of the conservatory.
Excellent arrangements had been made to receive the
people. Long before seven o'clock a great crowd assembled on Schermerhorn street, near the church, awaiting an
opportunity to enter. Only those who had tickets were
admitted up to half-past seven o'clock, and at that hour
nearly every seat in the house was occupied. A t a quarter
to eight o'clock the doors were opened to all, and within
five minutes every inch of standing room was filled, while
the street was thronged by those unable to get inside.
On the platform were United States District Attorney A.
W . Tenney, the Chairman of the evening. Mayor Howell sat
at his left and Rev. Dr. Farley on his right. Sitting on either
side of them were ex-Mayors Hunter and Schroeder, J u d g e
Neilson, of the City Court; Rev. Dr. Ingersoll, Rev. Dr. J.
O. Peck, of the St. John's M. E. Church; Rev. Dr. Lansing, Rev. H u g h Smith Carpenter, Bernard Peters, ex-District Attorney Winslow, Commodore Nicholson, Captain
Andrews, of the steamship E r i n ; John Williams and
others. Scattered through the house were noticed numerous well known citizens, including Hon. Henry C. Murphy,
Dr. Joseph C. Hutchinson, Rev. Dr. Spear, Superintendent
Police Campbell, ex-Superintendent Folk, Dr. H. A. Tucker, Frederick Baker, J. B. Hutchinson, Isaac Hall, N . L.
Munro, Major Culyer and many others.
Mr. Powell, the assistant organist, played a voluntary
and filled in the time till eight o'clock, when Mr. George
W . Morgan took his seat at the big organ and began to
play " Home, Sweet Home," Professor P e t e r AH, cornetist,
accompanying him,

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LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

A t that moment there was a movement in the back part
of the house, and Dr. Talmage was observed making his
way down the aisle leading to the platform. H e was escorted by Dr. Tucker on his right and Mr. O. H. Frankenbergh on his left.
The audience arose, and amid a storm of applause Dr. Talmage passed down the aisle, ascended the platform, shook
hands with each gentleman there and then took a seat on
the right of Mr. Tenney. The applause was renewed and
the enthusiasm increased. The ladies waved their handkerchiefs and clapped their gloved and jeweled hands, and
the gentlemen stamped and caned the floor, until it seemed
as if the building shook. Dr. Talmage looked on with evident pleasure.
THE

PROCEEDINGS.

Quiet having at length been restored, the Chairman
opened the proceedings. A t his request the audience united
in singing the song of welcome to the pastor, and they sang
it with a will, Mr. Morgan playing the accompaniment,
and Professor Ali leading with his cornet.
Rev. Dr. Farley offered up a fervent prayer and Mrs. Evelyn Lyon Hegeman sang in her usual artistic style, " T h y
People Shall be My People," from R u t h and Naomi. She
responded to an encore with " The Dearest Spot on E a r t h
to Me is Home, Sweet Home." The applause was great
and Mr. Talmage joined in it heartily.
The Chairman announced t h a t letters had been received
from a large number of gentlemen, who had been invited to
be present, regretting their inability to attend and congratulating Dr. Talmage upon his success and his safe return. Among those who sent letters were: Rev. Dr. Rockwell, Rev, George E, Read, Rev. C. C. Hall, Rev. J. M,

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159

Buckley, D.D., Rev. F . K Zabriski, S.O., Rev. O. S. St.
John, Rev. Joseph Demarest, D.D., J . J. Henry, Hon. S. B.
Chittenden, Rev. U. D. Gulick, Rev. W . A. Leonard, Rev.
F . Peck, and many others.
The Chairman introduced as the first speaker of the evening, Mr. Bernard Peters, editor of the " Brooklyn Times."
Mr. Peters was received with applause, and in the course of
his speech said that Dr. Talmage was the Caesar of the occasion, but he differed from the Roman in that bis enemies
had stabbed but could not kill him.
Rev. Dr. Lansing, Rev. J. O. Peck, ex-District Attorney
Winslow, and Rev. Dr. Ingersoll, each delivered brief, appropriate addresses assuring the Doctor of the high place
he held in the estimation of good people.
Miss Gracie Wattles, one of the scholars of the Sundayschool, then delivered the following welcome poem:
Oft before our Heavenly Father
Have Thy people bowed in prayer;
Prayed that He would guide and guard thee,
Keep thee safe, with tenderest care.
God has answered—we behold thee,
Perils threatened thee in vain.
Now our hearts and arms enfold thee;
Welcome to thy home again.
Welcome to thy holy calling,
To the path thou long hast trod,
Welcome, teacher, friend and pastor;
Welcome, messenger of God.
And when o'er death's swollen river
All thy flock have safely passed,
May we all, with joy forever,
Welcomed be in Heaven at last.
A. W . Tenney, United States District Attorney, then
spoke as follows;

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LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.
SPEECH OF A. W. T E N N E Y .

" Ladies and Gentlemen—The Committee of Arrangements have announced upon the programme that at this
stage of the proceedings an address of welcome would be
delivered by the Chairman. You can hardly expect any
extended remarks from me after the interesting addresses
which have already been made, the songs that have been
sung and the sweet poem of welcome which has just been
so exquisitely rendered by the little girl orator of the Sunday-school of this church. Indeed, no words of mine are
necessary to fittingly welcome Dr. Talmage and his honored wife ' h o m e again.'
" I t is this magnificent audience of five thousand and
more; it is the thronged streets around and about this
church; it is the Christian households and family altars of
this great city that welcome them back to Brooklyn and to
the holy services of this church. Yea, more, it is the
Christian men and women of this entire land who bid them
welcome to-night, and with their welcome they mingle
their thanksgivings to Almighty God, who held the wind
and the waves in His hands, who stayed calamity and
stopped disaster, and made it possible for them and theirs
to journey the land and the sea unharmed, and after many
days to return with renewed vigor and health to the scenes
of their labors and the kindly greeting of friends and the
loved ones at home.
" A n d the question naturally arises, why is it that this
royal welcome is tendered to Dr. Talmage to-night ? W h y
do we welcome him back to this church where he has
preached so long and with such signal success, and to this
platform, where, by divine appointment, he has a better
right to stand than you or I ?
" It is not because he is a citizen of Brooklyn merely.

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WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

161

I t is not because of his magnificent and unprecedented reception by all classes of people in England, in Ireland, in
Scotland and Wales. It is not because his recent visit to
European shores had added new lustre to the American
name. But it is because we with whom he lives, his neighbors and his friends, who have watched his coming in and
going out among us for these many years, know full well
what manner of man he is. It is because we, who have felt
the sunshine of his life upon our own, know what a faithful
and sincere minister of Christ he is, and we come here tonight in these mighty numbers to say to him, ' Welcome,'
and ' Well done.'
" W e know, better than strangers know, how he has
wrought for good in our midst. W e know better than
they what has been the work of his hand and brain for the
last ten years. W e know what battles he has fought and
what victories he has won. W e know, too, that other
sublime fact, t h a t Dr. Talmage is one of those ministers
who believes in something, and who is brave enough and
man enough to preach what he believes without first asking
permission of the presbyteries or consociations.
Yea,
more, and what is even better, we know that he vitalizes,
day by day, his precepts and belief into generous acts and
friendly deeds.
" The Brooklyn Tabernacle has long been famed as a sort
of ecclesiastical shooting gallery, where sin, with all its
armor on, has been pierced to its very center, no matter
whether it was the gilded sin of the palace or the wretched
sin of the hovel. In such a conflict as this, and with such
such an experienced archer as he, is it any wonder that
somebody has been hit ? And is it any wonder, too, that
the wounded and the routed should sting and snarl and
bite the dust.

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LIFE OF REV. T. IDE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

" Said one of the most gifted men of our times, * If you
would know how grand a blow you have struck for any
course, mark its rebound.' If you would know, my countrymen, what kind of blows Dr. Talmage has struck for
God and man, for truth and the right, for law and order,
for good government and good society, mark the rebound
of his critics and defamers.
" Dr. Talmage, however cordial may have been your welcome in foreign lands, for which we, your friends, are
justly proud, and to those who tendered you the same we
here and now give them grateful thanks. Nevertheless, let
me assure you that none of these welcomes were more generous and sincere than the one which it is our high privilege
to tender you to-night. And let me assure you, furthermore, that this greeting is not tendered you by your church
and congregation alone.
" I t is true they are here in goodly numbers, anxiously
waiting to greet you one by one. But this is Brooklyn's
welcome, and I pray you receive it as such. Here are
assembled the men and women of this great city, without
regard to creed, sect or church affiliations. Here are the
Presbyterians and the Congregationalists, the Baptists and
the Unitarians, the Mothodists and the Episcopalians, each
mingling their congratulations w^ith the other as they
unitedly welcome you back to the land of your birth and
the city of your choice.
" In the name, then, of your church and congregation, in
the name of all the people of all the city, I congratulate
you upon your auspicious journey and happy return, and I
now welcome you, with all the enthusiasm this hour inspires,
to our hearts and to our homes, to our friendship and to
our love; but above all, I welcome you to the sacred service
of our Lord and Master, whom you have so faithfully served

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163

in the years that are gone. And may this greeting, so generous, so hearty and so sincere, arch the future of your life
with courage, with hope and with cheer, as you go forth
battling for the welfare of the race.
" And now, ladies and gentlemen, recognizing how expectant you are, and not desiring to detain you any longer, I
have the extreme delight of introducing to you the guest
of the evening, the pastor of the Brooklyn Tabernacle,
the servant of God and the friend of mankind, the Rev.
Dr. Talmage. "
As Doctor Talmage came forward, the audience rose at
once, men and women clapping their hands and waving their
handkerchiefs and fans. He was visibly affected by the
demonstration. The applause continued for fully a minute,
and when quiet had been restored, the doctor spoke as
follows:
REMARKS OP MR. TALMAGE.

" My good friends, you have made this the happiest hour
of my life. To my dying day I shall not forget this scene.
The shout of farewell at Sandy Hook on May 28th, as our
ships parted, has its echo in this magnificent reception. I
feel altogether unworthy. I t is only by extreme effort that
I have come to the mastery of m y emotion. I do not so
much give you m y thanks as give you myself, to be your
servant for Jesus' sake.
" W h e n I see on this platform and around it the leading
men in the legal, the medical, the literary, the clerical professions, men mighty in church and State; our Mayor,
whom I thank God has been so far restored unto health as
to be present to-night; our ex-Mayors Hunter and Schroeder, each one of them having lifted one layer in the wall of
our municipal prosperity; our J u d g e Neilson, honored on

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LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

both sides for the manner in which he has worn the ermine;
this great array of Christian clergymen, as kind and genial
and talented and consecrated as any men who ever adorned
the American pulpit, and this great throng of men and
women, through whose prayers to Almighty God we safely
crossed the stormy sea—when I consider all this, I feel that
any attempt to make adequate expression of my gratitude
must be a failure.
" Oh, this occasion ought to make me an humbler and better man. If ever in some weak moment of my life I should
try to build on this platform a sectarian wall to shut out
those who do not happen to think as I do, the memory of
this great catholic scene would stop the erection of that wall
and the Calvinists would push it roughly on one side, and
the Armenians would push it roughly on the other side, and
the Episcopacy would rock it one way, and the non-Episcopacy would rock it the other way, while the Baptist brethren would pull away the floor which covers the baptistry
under this pulpit, and tumble the whole thing into the
water.
" T h e sentiment which has been growing in my heart for
many years has climacterated to-night in the feeling that
any man's theology is good enough for me, if he loves
God and does his level best; and if ever in any weak
moment of my life I should bethink myself the servant of
only this individual church, then the memory of this congregation, made up from all denominations, and from all
reforms, and from all charitable institutions which are in
our city—eyes to the blind and feet to the lame and mothers
to the orphans—the memory of this scene would send me
out rebuked to say, c Wherever I can be of any help, with
voice, or hand, or pen, I must be busy; b y the memory of
that scene in October, 1879, I must be the servant of the
city.'

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

165

" Well, my friends, how have you been this summer ? I
feel almost like saying, as that monarch of Irish orators,
Daniel O'Connell, said when he arose to address an audience
in Dublin, ' How are you boys, and how are the women
who own y o u ? '
" I t would not be in good taste for me to rehearse the
scenes of welcome through which I have passed. W h e n I
look into your faces to-night, I remember that the most of
you are the descendants of ancestors on the other side the
sea, and I bring you the greeting of your English, Scotch
and Irish cousins and brothers. Yea, I bring a flower from
the graves of your dead, oh ye descendants of the English
Reformers, and of the Scotch Covenanters, and of the
Irishmen who fought for Catholic emancipation. The land
of Robert Emmet and Edmund Burke and Tom Moore!
Beautiful Ireland! Beautiful Ireland! Adorned with silver
necklace of Killarney Lakes, her brow crowned with the
Giant's Causeway. May the blood, the martyr blood of two
hundred years move the heart of God for the quick deliverance of Ireland, and then the poetic prophecy shall be fulfilled in regard to her:
" ' Great glorious and free,
First flower of the earth and first gem of the sea.'
" I brought a great many messages. One of the first
citizens of Belfast said to me: ' My name is Patrick Campbell; when you see Patrick Campbell in Brooklyn give him
my love.' There he is. (Mr. Talmage pointed directly at
Superintendent of Police Patrick Campbell, who sat in the
audience, while the people laughed and applauded.) He
said he wanted you to write to him sometimes. Well,
then, there is Scotland, glorious Scotland. Other lands
squeeze out now and then a poet, or a painter, or an orator,
or a preacher; but Scotland, without any effort, turns out

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LIFE OF REV. T. DE W I T T TALMAGE, D.D.

H u g h Miller and Christopher North and James Simpson
and Sir William Hamilton and John Knox, without half
trying. W h y , if you turn over a stone among the highlands of Scotland, you almost expect to see a Roderick
D h u bound out from under it.
" And then you ought to feel how a Scotchman, a genuine Scotchman, shakes hands. He just takes your hand
and lays it across the palm of his hand, and then closes the
fingers from one way, and then closes the thumb from the
other way and puts on your hand the pressure of a great
heart until your knuckles fairly crack, and then he gives
you the up and down motion with the force of a steamboat walking beam. W h e n a Scotchman shakes hands
with you in Glasgow or Edinburgh, you know he wants to
see you and is glad to see you. There is England! the
great factory of the world! Smoke stacks, the organ pipes
through which roll forth the grand march of the world's
industries, while innumerable hammers beat time. And
you run up to Nottingham and see the witchery of the lace
they make there. And you run up to Henley and see the
wonderful pottery, the brightest pictures of the world inwrought into the plate and the vase and the mantels. And
you go to Sheffield and see the poetry of steel, Mr. Rodgers' great establishment, where he turns the trunks of four
hundred elephants, every year, into the handles of knives, so
that if you happen to lose your baggage on the way to
Sheffield, you are very much in sympathy with those elephants that lose their trunks. And then you go over to
Luton and see them making straw hats. And then you go
to Birmingham and see the exquisite toys they manufacture.
" And then you go to Brighton, that wonderful English
watering place, from which our coming queen of Ameri-

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

167

can watering places has borrowed its name. And then you
go to Torquay, where the princely and lordly men of
England go to bathe off their rheumatism. And then you
go to Rochdale to see the best friend of America in England—friend in war as well as friend in peace—gray-headed,
big-hearted, trumpet-tongued John Bright.
" B u t I don't care where you go in England, you get a
message for America, a message of kindness. In the
cities where I had the honor to speak, the presiding
officer always sent his love to America, and I am here tonight to deliver that message, and in this, my first -public
utterance, and with my head still dizzy from the tossing of
the sea, put your hand in their hand, and in the name of
God declare the bans of an eternal marriage between England and the United States.
" ' W h a t God hath joined together let no man put asunder.' There can be no division between England and
America until we can successfully divide Shakspeare's tragedies, and Milton's 'Paradise Lost,' and J o h n Wesley's
grave, and W r ickcliffe's Bible, and the archangel's robe of a
Christian resurrection. By all that is sacred in the cause
of God and suffering humanity these two nations must go
shoulder to shoulder, the two flags hang side by side, as
to-night in this Tabernacle, marching on, no flag higher
than those two flags, save the blood-stained banner of the
cross over all, and let that wave over all other ensigns.
Well, though I have gone through a great many of the
cities, the city that lies nearest my heart is a city, which if
I should write it on paper, I should have to begin with the
letter B.
" l e a n hardly tell you h o w l felt last Tuesday night
when the ' B o t h n i a ' came up through the Narrows, and on
one side of us we had the Sandy Hook Lighthouse and on

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LIFE OF REY. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

the other side we had the rows of lamps of the Brighton
and Manhattan Beach, and then my imagination looked
further, and I saw the bright homes of Brooklyn, where
there were so many friends waiting for us—friends with
whom we hope to live and hope to die. And then on the
right of us there lay beautiful Greenwood in the soft moonlight, the place where you and I expect to lie down for cool
and refreshing slumber when the hard work of all our occupations and professions is ended forever. And then when
the ' B o t h n i a ' dropped anchor at quarantine and we were
waitiug for the morning, two boats came, one bearing a
jolly committee from this church, to take me off and bring
me ashore; the other steamer bringing the Government
officers to take the European mails, and bringing to us the
dear reporters.
" W h a t a stupid world this would be without reporters.
Some of my friends are as afraid as death of reporters. I
don't know why they should be afraid of them. They hover
over us by day, and they watch our steps by night. There
is no enterprise in all the earth among the newspaper press
like the enterprise of the American press. On Monday
morning you open the papers in London, and though the
day before there were five hundred powerful sermons
preached, you will not see a sketch of any of them. A n d
then, the much criticised art of interviewing is purely American. The Scotch and Irish and English reporter never gets
much nearer a speaker than the reporters' desk, and has no
opportunity to ask questions, while the American reporter
comes up and surrounds him, covers him with affability,
and cuts him off where he is too long, and stretches him
out where he is too short, and sticks him with a pin if he is
too windy. Oh, blessed be the reporters! When, on Tuesday night, eight or ten of them came on the (Bothnia,'
I

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169

folded my hands and said, i Home at last.' Oh, how good
it is, my friends, to look into your faces. I heard it was
said on this side of the water that I was having so good a time
abroad I would not come back. AVliy, that would be as
absurd as to think that because a man went to an evening
party and had a good time with creams and almond nuts
and pickled oysters, that therefore, at the close of the entertainment, he should go up to the host and say: ' My dear
sir, I have enjoyed myself so much to-night I think I shall
spend the rest of my life with y o u ! '
" While there are many things on the other side
of the water I like better than on this side of the
water, there are more things on this side of the water H i k e
better than on the other side of the water; and I hope
I have come home in the highest style, in what might
be called the highest style—a democrat. By that I don't
mean I am always going to vote the Democratic ticket.
It will always depend upon which are the best men that
the parties put up who we will vote for.
" I received many messages from the other side of the
water I was to bring here. I have not time now to deliver
them. I will simply say I invited all the English people to
come to America and see us, and I told them all to come to
my house, but I warned them not to come all at once. Oh,
my friends, we want to swing wide open the gates of this
continent. W h e t h e r emigration tc this country is helpful
or damaging, all depends upon the kind of men and women
that come.
" The more good men and women you can get from England, Ireland and Scotland to come to this country, the
better, and I have just now to tell you in m y closing remarks that there are tens of thousands of the best of Englishmen who are ready to embark for America, and they are

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LIFE OF REV. T. DE W I T T TALMAGE, D.D.

coming. W e had a large number of them on the ' Bothnia.'
Let them come. Let us swing wider open the gates of our
continent. Let us remember that the coming American is
is to be an admixture of all foreign bloods.
" In about twenty-five or fifty years the model American
will step forth. He will have the strong brain of the German, the polished manners of the French, he artistic taste
of the Italian, the staunch heart of the English, the hightoned piety of the Scotch, the lightning wit of the Irish,
and when he steps forth, bone, muscle, nerve, brain intertwined with the fibers of all nationalities, heaven and earth
will b r e a k o u t in the cry, 'Behold the m a n ! behold the
American ! ' "
The Chairman then announced that the proceedings
would be brought to a close with the benediction by Rev.
H u g h Smith Carpenter. Dr. Carpenter pronounced the
benediction, and the vast audience began to disperse. Dr.
Talmage took up a position in the centre aisle, and shook
hands wTith hundreds of the people as they passed out. It
was nearly eleven o'clock before all had departed, and the
memorable reception was at an end.

C H A P T E R XIII.
PHRENOLOGICAL DESCRIPTION OF T H E R E V . DR. TALMAGE,
BY P R O F . L. N . F O W L E R .

PROFESSOR F O W L E R , the eminent phrenologist, has just
furnished us with the following delineation of Dr. Talmage's
character, which will, we doubt not, greatly interest the
readers of his life. Based upon most careful examination
and scientific induction, it supplies a key to the mental and
moral constitution of the great preacher, and throws much
light upon his ministry and life.
" The organization of Dr. Talmage is most marked, mentally and physically. Physiologically he is tall, spare and
angular, having a predominance of the muscular, osseous
and nervous systems. Though he has good lung-power and
fair circulation, yet his ability to generate vitality is not
equal to his inclination to work it oif.
" He is indebted to a powerful hereditary constitution for
his ability to endure so much labor; all his vital forces are
very active, hence he recruits quickly when exhausted and
recovers speedily when ill, especially if he can secure plenty
of fresh air. He has all the machinery for working, and is
never more in his element than when his hands are full of
work. W h e n he can have his own way and follow his own
plans, he labors with great ease and without friction.
" His brain is somewhat above the average in size, which
gives strength and comprehensiveness of mind, but is not
so large as to be cumbersome or unwieldy. Having an
abundance of both nerve and muscle, he is vigorous and

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LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

positive in all his mental and physical operations. His
head is peculiar in shape, being unusually high and very
largely developed in the crown and top portions. I t is
rather long and quite narrow.
" The executive forces of his mind are Combativeness,
Self-esteem and Firmness, all of which are very large. H e
is never more in his element than when difficulties are to be
overcome. Opposition is only so much fuel to the fire and
keeps him going. He has great power in debate, criticism
and sarcasm. H e has perfect self-reliance, independence,
consciousness of his own ability and willingness to take all
the responsibilities of his own life and actions on himself.
H e has perfect presence of mind in times of danger, and
can control himself better than most men. He is very determined in his mental operations, and it is next to impossible for him to give up any course of life he has resolved to
pursue. This power of will is so great as to influence his
entire life. He has a very warm, social nature; all the
loves amply developed, can enjoy married life highly, and
takes a deep interest in children. H e is almost extravagant in his affections, and will stand by his friends or principles to the last.
" F e w are prepared to make so many sacrifices for the sake
of friends or objects of attachment as he is. H e is remarkably domestic, and finds it difficult to change his homes,
habits or uniform ways of doing things.
" Continuity is unusually large, giving connectedness to
thought and disposing him to carry out his ideas to the
ultimate and to make the most of them. He is in danger
of being absent-minded. The motional part of his nature
comes from Hope, Spirituality and Veneration, which are
all large. He is extravagant in his expectations, delights
to dwell on the future, has no desire to look back, but is

LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGEj D.D.

173

always looking forward, planning ahead, and has an amount
of enterprise equal to the largest operations. He is liable
to project too large plans, and to be too sanguine and to
expect too much. H e never is so thoroughly disappointed
as to give up. If he should fail, he would only start again
with more zeal and vigor than he had at first. Spirituality
is large, which helps to expand his thoughts and feelings.
He has, as it were, a third eye, and that a spiritual one. He
possesses uncommon ability to represent his thoughts in a
peculiarly spiritual style, and to enlarge upon his thoughts
and feelings, and present his subject in all its bearings.
Frequently when it is time to stop speaking or writing he
has more to say than when he commenced.
" He has much to think of and entertain himself with
when all alone.
" H i s faith in a spiritual life and existence is very great;
and this, joined to his large Veneration, gives an elevated
tone to his mind, which carries him far above the ordinary
range of mental action.
" W i t h such a cast of mind, devoted to the subject of
religion, he would be as familiar with all spiritual subjects and with thoughts about the Deity, and a future
life, as another man would be with common affairs in active
business.
" Benevolence and Conscientiousness are both large. He
has a desire to dwell on the right and wrong of subjects,
and bears down hard on all forms of injustice; yet Benevolence gives a mellow and gentle tone to his mind, inclining
him to sympathize with all kinds of misery, want, and infirmity.
It is no effort for him to make personal sacrifices,
to relieve the needy, and his sympathies will be extended
to all classes who deserve them. Ideality and Sublimity
are both large, giving expansiveness to his mind, and en-

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LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

abling him to magnify and embellish, and even to use the
most extravagant language to present his thoughts and
feelings. Sublimity is specially large, which leads him to
contemplate manifestations of power, and disposes him to
dwell with delight on the Divine attributes. He would
en oyseeing an active volcano or an earthquake, or any
awful phenomena of nature. Constructiveness being large,
enables him to present his ideas in a varied form, and to
show skill and ingenuity in making new arrangements and
turning all his forces to the best account.
" Imitation helps him to adapt himself to any condition in
which he may be placed. Mirthf ulness is large, giving him
a keen perception of the witty. He can present his ideas
in the most concentrated, mirthful and ludicrous form, or
reason in such a way as to present the subject in the most
absurd light.
" A l l his perceptive faculties are large, and hence he
quickly observes all that is taking place around him. H e
recognizes forms, faces, proportions and the fitness and
adaptation of parts, and has a good mechanical and architectural eye.
" He loves color in flowers, scenery, dress, decoration, and
admires physical and artistic beauty.
" Order and Calculation are large. H e works by rule,
and must have everything done according to some plan;
hence he can do more work than many, because his plans
are all laid down before he commences operations. He remembers places accurately, and can describe them correctly; has a good general memory of events, historical
facts, stories and illustrations, but memory of these things
is greatly aided by his very large Comparison. He has
quite an accurate sense of punctuality, and knows how to
use every minute of time and how to make the most of it.

LIFE OF KEY. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

175

" Pie is disposed to keep time in music and step in walking.
" Language is rather large, but is scarcely equal to his
mental conceptions. W h e n fairly roused up to a subject,
he may show no want of language, but usually he has much
more thought and feeling than command of language. This
faculty, however, is greatly aided by his having but little
restraining power and a great amount of expansiveness of
mind, which gives liberty both of thought and expression.
" Casualty is fully and definitely developed, enabling him
to comprehend principles and lay foundations for argument;
but his great intellectual power is Comparison, giving discrimination and capacity to contrast one thing with another.
This faculty, joined to Ideality and Spirituality, enables
him to fully present a subject, and to render it clear and
distinct to his hearers.
" He delights to have everything fitted to its place, everything handy and convenient, and he has great availability
of intellect.
" He can use his knowledge to the best advantage. Intuition is very large; he has great penetration, correctly understands the workings of the mind, and loves to study
simple truth. He is continually looking forward to the
future, to know what is true connected with the Divine
mind.
" He has the peculiar power of expanding thought and
feeling, or concentrating and condensing, so that the same
idea can be enlarged into a long discourse or condensed into
a short one. Cautiousness is large, giving a due degree of
forethought, general prudence, and power to keep out of
real difficulty, but it is not large enough to give timidity
or irresolution. H e may seem to be severe under the influence of Combativeness and Destructiveness^ or to be too

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LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

dictatorial and determined under the influence of Self-esteem
and Firmness. Yet Destructiveness is not large; he is not
cruel or revengeful, does not harbor hard feelings, and
would scarcely punish an enemy if he had him in his hands.
" He is greatly opposed to shedding blood, going to war,
or causing unnecessary pain. Acquisitiveness and Secretiveness are small; hence he is wanting in worldly wisdom.
He needs money and property to carry out his large operations, and that need may be a powerful stimulant fur him
to acquire property; but he is not naturally a good financier
or manager of money. Secretiveness being rather small,
he is inclined to great openness and frankness, and therefore liable to expose himself to unnecessary criticism. He
is perfectly frank, candid, and open-hearted, and the opposite to a hypocrite or deceiver. More Acquisitiveness and
Secretiveness would help to give a kind of wisdom which
would be much to his advantage.
" He has not much of the qualities of Approbativeness and
Agreeableness, is no flatterer, and cannot cater or say and
do things simply to please. He cares very little about the
fashions. He is anxious to have power, and prefers to be
respected rather than to be treated with familiarity. More
Approbativeness wrould be of great service by way of
giving ease and grace of manner, and a desire to suit himself more to the ways and customs of society.
" As he is now organized, he prefers to stand out alone by
himself, and to be unlike anybody else. He has a most remarkable development of brain, and the indications of
character are unique and peculiar to himself."
THE END.