Forty Years in South China: The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D.Fagg, John Gerardus
Religion
Forty Years in South China: The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D.
Fagg, John Gerardus
Missions -- China; Talmage, John Van Nest, 1819-1892
He consulted Chinese literary men. He pored over Chinese dictionaries. He
brought it home with him, requiring, as he thought, still further revision,
and his last labors were the completion of it with the valued assistance of
the Rev. Daniel Rapalje, of the Amoy Mission. It is now going through the
press and will soon be at the service of missionaries and native brethren
who have eagerly awaited its appearance for many years.
His strength gradually failed and on August 19, 1892, in his seventy-third
year, he quietly breathed his last at Bound Brook, New Jersey.
The mortal tent loosened down and folded was laid away in the family plot
near Somerville, New Jersey. Most of his living, working years he had
spent far away from the ancestral home. It was God's will that his dust
should find a place next to the kindred dust of father and mother, sister
and brother, in the peaceful God's acre but a few miles from the old
homestead.
Dr. Talmage left a wife, two daughters and three sons, and a goodly circle
of relatives and friends to mourn his departure. Mrs. Talmage has since
returned to the Talmage Manse at Amoy and taken up afresh her chosen work
in educating the ill-privileged and ignorant women of China. The two
daughters, Miss Katharine and Miss Mary, are rendering most faithful and
efficient service, too, among China's mothers and daughters. Rev. David M.
Talmage fills a pastorate with the Reformed Church of Westwood, New Jersey.
Mr. John Talmage is a rice merchant at New Orleans, Louisiana. Rev. George
E. Talmage ministers to the Lord's people at Mott Haven, New York.
When the sun of Dr. Talmage's life set, it was to the Chinese brethren at
Amoy, like the setting of a great hope. The venerable teacher had left
them two years before, but he had not spoken a final farewell. They and he
looked for one more meeting on earth. He was known to the whole Chinese
Church in and about Amoy for a circuit of a hundred miles. He sat at its
cradle. He watched its growth until within two years of the day when it
went forth two bands united in one Synod with twenty organized,
self-supporting churches, nineteen native pastors, upwards of two thousand
communicants and six thousand adherents.
In the many breaks that occur in the missionary constituency, his life was
the one chain of continuity. The Churches had come to feel that whoever
failed them, they had Teacher Talmage still. His departure was like the
falling down of a venerable cathedral, leaving the broken and bleeding ivy
among the dust and debris. The Chinese Christians had leaned hard upon
him. They loved and revered him as a father. Since he passed away his
name has seldom been mentioned in any public assembly of the Church by any
of the Chinese brethren without the broken and trembling utterance that has
called forth from a listening congregation the silent, sympathetic tear.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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