I. The Ancestral Home II. Call to China and Voyage Hence III. The City of the "Elegant Gate" Description of Amoy and Amoy Island Ancestral Worship Infanticide Is China to be won, and how? Worship of the Emperor IV. Light and Shade The Chiang-chiu Valley Breaking and Burning of Idols The Chinese Boat Race and its Origin The Chinese Beggar System Two Noble Men Summoned Hence V. At the Foot of the Bamboos Opium Romanized Colloquial Chinese Sense of Sin Primitive Lamps Zealous Converts The Term Question What it Costs a Chinese to become a Christian Persecuted for Christ's Sake "He is only a Beggar" Printing under Difficulties Carrier Pigeons VI. The "Little Knife" Insurrection How the Chinese Fight VII. The Blossoming Desert Si-boo's Zeal An Appeal for a Missionary VIII. Church Union The Memorial of the Amoy Mission IX. Church Union (continued) X. The Anti-missionary Agitation XI. The Last Two Decades Forty continuous Years in Heathenism Chinese Grandiloquence XII. In Memoriam Dr. Talmage--The Man and The Missionary By Rev. W. S. Swanson, D.D. Venerable Teacher Talmage By Pastor Iap Han Chiong Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. By Rev. S. L. Baldwin, D.D. The Rev. J. V. N. Talmage, D.D. By Rev. Talbot W. Chambers, D.D., LL.D. Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. By Rev. John M. Ferris, D.D. APPENDIX I. THE ANCESTRAL HOME John Van Nest Talmage was born at Somerville, New Jersey, August 18, 1819 He was the fourth son in a family of seven brothers and five sisters. The roots of the Talmage genealogical tree may be traced back to the year 1630, when Enos and Thomas Talmage, the progenitors of the Talmage family in North America, landed at Charlestown, Massachusetts, and afterwards settled at East Hampton, Long Island. Dr. Lyman Beecher represents the first settlers of East Hampton as "men resolute, enterprising, acquainted with human nature, accustomed to do business, well qualified by education, circumspect, careful in dealing, friends of civil liberty, jealous of their rights, vigilant to discover, and firm to resist encroachments; eminently pious." In 1725 we find Daniel Talmage at Elizabethtown, New Jersey. Daniel's grandson, Thomas, during the years between 1775 and 1834 shifts his tent to Piscataway, New Jersey, thence to New Brunswick, thence to Somerville, where the stakes are driven firmly on a farm "beautiful for situation." Thomas Talmage was a builder by trade, and erected some of the most important courthouses and public edifices in Somerset and Middlesex Counties. He was active in the Revolutionary war, holding the rank of major. It was said of him, "His name will be held in everlasting remembrance in the churches." He was the father of seven sons and six daughters.