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
"Finally, I noticed that in my father's old age was to be seen the beauty
of Christian activity. He had not retired from the field. He had been
busy so 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 pockets 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 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 has 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 trembled 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 Saviour'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, stuffed 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 how well they can walk on both sides of a dividing
line and be on neither, yet even in the excitements of election canvass,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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