Background
T. De Witt Talmage was born near Bound brook, N. J. , the son of David and Catharine (Van Nest) Talmage, and a younger brother of John Van Nest Talmage. His father was a farmer and a tollgate keeper.
("The Wedding Ring" from Thomas De Witt Talmage. American ...)
"The Wedding Ring" from Thomas De Witt Talmage. American preacher, clergyman and divine (1832-1902).
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T. De Witt Talmage was born near Bound brook, N. J. , the son of David and Catharine (Van Nest) Talmage, and a younger brother of John Van Nest Talmage. His father was a farmer and a tollgate keeper.
Thomas De Witt attended a school in New Brunswick, and at nineteen entered the University of the City of New York, where he studied law. He did not graduate, for before he had completed his course he turned to the ministry, in which profession three brothers, a brother-in-law, and two uncles were already engaged. In 1862, however, the University awarded him the degree of A. M. He graduated from the New Brunswick Theological Seminary in 1856.
In 1856 he was ordained (July 26), a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church, installed in his first charge at Belleville, N. J. Called to Syracuse, N. Y. , in 1859, he served there until 1862, when he went to the Second Dutch Reformed Church of Philadelphia.
When he took charge of the church in Philadelphia it was quiet and old-fashioned, and had no great influence; but Talmage's magnetic and rather sensational style of preaching soon began to draw large audiences, and the church prospered.
His reputation increased so rapidly that he had several calls to other churches, and in 1869 accepted an invitation to the Central Presbyterian Church of Brooklyn, N. Y. , a church then torn by dissension. His success there, notwithstanding some caustic criticism in the metropolitan newspapers, was immediate and impressive, and he was soon drawing the largest audiences which assembled to hear any minister in America.
To take care of the throngs which came to hear him, a new church called the Tabernacle was hastily built. The burning of this edifice on Sunday morning, December 22, 1872, just before the hour for service, was one of the memorable fire disasters in Brooklyn's history. A new and greater Tabernacle was completed by January 1874, the congregation meanwhile occupying the Academy of Music.
At the height of his fame, Talmage's sermons were published weekly in about 3, 500 newspapers. He was one of the most successful lecturers of modern times, for many years delivering an average of fifty lectures annually.
In 1879 he was accused before the Brooklyn Presbytery of "falsehood and deceit, and using improper methods of preaching, which tend to bring religion into contempt. " He was acquitted, though the vote of the court on some of the counts was close.
He was keenly alive to the value of publicity and while on a tour of Palestine in 1889 arranged to baptize a man in the River Jordan.
His second Tabernacle was destroyed by fire in 1889; a third was erected, and this also was burned, in May 1894. Momentarily discouraged, he announced that he would give up his pastorate and devote his time to evangelism. He changed his mind, however, and accepted a call to the First Presbyterian Church of Washington, D. C.
He had long been more or less interested in religious journalism, having edited the Christian at Work (1874 - 76) and Frank Leslie's Sunday Magazine (1881 - 89), and in 1899 he resigned his Washington pastorate and devoted himself to conducting the Christian Herald, of which he had been editor since 1890.
Among his numerous published works were Crumbs Swept Up (1870); The Abominations of Modern Society (1872); Sermons (1872); Points (1873); Old Wells Dug Out (1874); Around the Tea-Table (1874); Every-Day Religion (1875); The Night Sides of City Life (1878); The Masque Torn Off (1880); Mormonism (1880); High License (1884); Rum, the Worst Enemy of the Working Classes (1886); The Marriage Ring (1886); Social Dynamite (1887); The Key-Note of the Temperance Reform (1890); Twenty-five Sermons on the Holy Land (1890); The Marriage Tie (1890); From Manger to Throne (1890). An autobiography, T. De Witt Talmage as I Knew Him, with concluding chapters by his widow, appeared in 1912, and in 1923 a compilation entitled Fifty Short Sermons by T. De Witt Talmage was published by his daughter, May Talmage.
(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
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("The Wedding Ring" from Thomas De Witt Talmage. American ...)
Quotations:
"If your path had been smooth, you would have depended upon your own surefootedness; but God roughened the path, so you have to take hold of His hand. If the weather had been mild, you would have loitered along the watercourses, but at the first howl of the storm you quickened your pace heavenward and wrapped around you the warm robe of Saviour’s righteousness. "
"I like the Bible folded between lids of cloth, or calfskin, or morocco, but I like it better when, in the shape of a man, it goes out into the world—a Bible illustrated. "
"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 also. 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. "
He had a fine, erect figure, strong, clear-cut features and a winning manner, and he used many startling gestures and illustrations to rivet attention. His critics called him a pulpit clown and a mountebank, but there were thousands who admired and reverenced him.
His first wife, Mary R. Avery, was from Brooklyn. They had two children together before she drowned in the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia on June 7, 1861.
In May 1863, Talmage married Susan Whittemore of Greenpoint, New York, a neighborhood of Brooklyn. They had five children together.
In January 1898, about three years after his wife died, Talmage married a third time, to 40-year-old Eleanor Collier of Allegheny City, Pennsylvania.