Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 October 1892 — TALMAGE AT HIS HOME. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

TALMAGE AT HIS HOME.

THE GREAT PREACHER TALKS WITH A CORRESPONDENT. HU Bwlirac* a Religion* Hnmm-Ht Give* Hla Ideas of Money-Making and Preaching—The World Growing Better AH the Time. The Brooklyn Divine. Raw York correspondence: The pastor of the biggest ohurch in Che United States! A preacher whose sermons are read

every week in fifteen million families! An author whose books sell by the hundreds of thousands! A lecturer who is now offered $150,000 for a series of talks! An Intellectual worker, the gray matter of whose brain can produce from S6OO to SI,OOO a day the year round! This is the Rev. T. De Witt Talmage, who stands before the people of the United States in as many different lights as there are variations of the human mind. To many he is sincere, godly and genuine. To others he appears false, sacrilegious and a humbug. If the former he is a most wonderful apostle; if the latter, he is certainly a most successful humbug, and in either case he 13 by far the most Interesting character in the American pulpit to-day. I called upon him at his home in Brooklyn the other day, and had three hours of most interesting conversation with him. I went with him over his great tabernacle, and chatted with him upon many subjects.

Dr. Talmage’* Rome. Dr. Talmage lives in a big, four-story brown-stone house, on the corper of South Oxford and Calvert streets, Brooklyn. It is in a good neighborhood, and the house is perhaps the finest in the block. Passing up broad brown-stone steps, you enter a wide hall, the floor of whioh is porcelain-tiled in blue and yellow. A blaok walnut staircase leads from the right of this hall to the second story, and at the left, just opposite this, is the entrance to the parlor. This parlor is about twenty-flvo feet long, and there is another smaller parlor separated from it by folding doors, at the back. It contains as many curiosities as a museum. Beautiful pictures hang upon the walls, and an old master in oils, representing “Clirist Casting Out Devils,* hangs just at the left of the entrance. The floors are covered with Turkish and Persian rugs, which Dr. Talmage picked up at Damascus at the time he made the tour through the Holy

Land, and there are swords fronjCJalro, tables from Constantinople, rare busts from Italy, and aiticles of virtu ’’and curios from all parts of the wdrld. On one. wall there la a banner of Bilk which a Chinese missionary sent to Dr. Talmage, and on a stand below It Is a piece of elegant old lacquer from Japan. There are baskets from Alaska, pieces of stone from the Acropolis, sand from the base of the Pyramids, a chunk of stone frpm Baalbec, and pretty things from everywhere. The rest of the house corresponds to the parlor, and every article in it seems to have a history. His Works I*op. It is in this parlor that Dr. Talmage receives his visitors. He is besieged with callers,, and though he receives almost every one, he has to guard his privacy. His workshop is at the top of the house. It is a big room, furnished in the. plainest manner (*nd packed lull of books. There are books on the tables, in the cases and on the floor. Magazines «re scattered here and there, and the tables which take up different parts of the room are littered with manuscripts, newspaper clippings and papers. Not a half dozen men get into this den during the year. Dr. Talmage restricts its occupants to himself and his private secretary. The servants are not permitted to dean it, and at long intervals only is Mrs. Talmage allowed in with her dust brush. There are no fancy books in this llbiary, and the newest copies are torn and mutilated. In using a quotation Dr. Talmage tears out the paragraphs to which he refers and pastes them into his manuscripts to save the time of copying them. He does the greater part of his work by dictation. He dictates readily, and some of his best writings are taken down by an amanuensis at the rate of 150 words per minute. It was into the parlors that Dr. Talmage received me, and I noted that the step with which he entered was firm and springy. He will be 60 old in January next, but his hair is still brown, hip dark rosy face shows that his rlood is full of iron, and he says he can eat his three square meals a day and enjoy them. He Is a big man and a strong one. He is, I judge, about 5 feet 11, and he weighs about 170 pounds. His broad shoulders have a slight stoop, but they are well padded with muscular flesh, and his arms look as though they could Wield an ax as well as Gladstone’s. He was dreteed In plain business clothes, and U noted, as an hour or so later we Wfjfcid toward the Tabernacle, that the ifcfmtWwore was a Derby, and its

number, 1 judge, was about eight ana a half. Dr. Talmage converses as well as he preaches. His talk with me was full of bright sayings. It was perfectly unconventional and simple. It covered a great variety of subjects. Money Making: and tli© Palpit. “Dr. Talmage,” said I, “you’ve been called a money-making preacjhpr. Do you think the making of mpujgy .is incompatible with your pfofeg4l<s6'/” “If the making of money’’were the chief end of , the profession, I would say ‘yes," replied Dr. Talmage. “And if it were not entirely subordinate and apart from it, I would also say yes. when the making of money comes entirely from work that does not conflict with the duties of the pulpit, and that, in fact, aids in the work of the profession, I would say no. During my whole life I have made my preaching and my church the supreme end of my work. I have never made a dollar at the expense of my congregational labors, and I have never tried to make money for money’s sake. The opportunities and the work have been forced upon me. I have accepted them, be-

cause, in doing so, I believe that I am, at the same time, able to do good. I refuse hundreds of offers for literary work and lectures, because I have not the .time to give to them, and if, as is often so, my prices for such things aro called high, they are .forced upon no one. and they are fixed in general, not by me,, but by bureaus and agents through whom such business is done for me. If I would, I could, I b(Jli<Jv 9 , .have such engagements as 'wouM' 1 net me SI,OOO a day the year through, and I have now lying on my study table an offer of $150,000 for A series of lectures. I never Jeciure for less than SSOO or SI,OOQ a night, and the latter is my regular price for the larger cities. When I charged SI,OOO for going to Chicago to lecture, the fact was madh a subject of comment by some of the newspapers, who said that my action was a mercenary one. Why, 1 cannot see. I did not ask Chicago to call mo to lecture, and the receipts of the lecture, which was held in the Auditorium, were. I understand, $3,000 in excess of the amount paid me. I get numbers of requests from small places offering me SSOO a night to lecture. As it is, I can’t accept many of these engagements, though I try to make one or two trips a year." “How do you do such an amount of work, Doctor? Please tell me something of your weekly labors. ’’ “My weeks vary so that I can hardly do that,” was the reply. “I am engaged nearly every day to speak, lecture or

preach somewhere. I’m editor of the Christian Herald, and write three columns a week for it. I write an article a week for . the Observer, and every month I prepare an article for the Ladies’ Homo Journal, entitled ‘Under My Study Lamp.’ Then I have my Friday night talks, my regular 6ermon, my calls, and my mail, wnich comes from all parts of the world. u “How do you get your rest?" “I save time in every way possible. I use stenographers in my work, and dictate readily and rapidly. I find my chief rest in a change of work, and the conversation at a dinner party, for instance, gives me new life and vigor." The WorKI Growing Defter.. *■ “Dr. Talmage,” said I, “don’t you think the world grows worse as it grows older?” “No,” replied the preacher, “I do not. I think the world is growing better, instead of growing worse, and I am in all things rather an optimist than a pessimist I often hear the mechanical inventions, the reapers, the mowers, the electric wires, the-steam; engine, etc., spoken of as the great wonders of modern times. The greatest marvel ._Io me of modern times is the trpp Christian spirit which grows more-and-ihpwNrom day to day. Our greatest Wonders aro our good men and good women. In the ages of the past there was one great philanthropist in half a, dozen centuries, and for the next ten or twenty generations he was the' wonder of history. The people placed a. halo around’his head and they worshiped him and wondered at him.' Now we have a great philanthropist in every town, ‘ and a dozen in every city. It took five hundred years to produce a George Peabody, and Peter Cooper would have been an impossibility,in any other age than ours, iJThai man’s .Work is the wonder of modern times. His institution has mothered a thousand other institutions. i From his Example httVe sprung hundreds of (hospitals, and schools, ands the work of charity grows in an ever-increasing ratio as the times go on. “Look at the men and women of today," Dr. Talmage went on. “There has never been such a generation. Take our women. A few years ago soft flesh, a slender waist, a polite languor, a do-nothing-air were the elements of the so-called beautiful woman. Now our girls pride themselves on being strong. The roses of health bloom in their cheeks. They stand firm upon

their feet and swing theirsrms fronk-the shoulder. Therv have strong frames ana healthy, well-trained minds. They are the apostles of physical culture, and every town has its woman’s gymnasium. It is the same with our young men. We are developing a stronger race, and a better race. This is mentally and physically. The old saying that there is no royal road to learning is a thing of the past. Our children have i such a road, and it-is an asphalt pavementcompared with the rough corduroy of my childhood. .(Free, Thought and Christianity. “HOw about religion and freethought t Doctor?" said I. “The charcjhes seem to be growing more liberal every year. Infidelity is growing in a'l religions

the world over, and the tendency seem* to be the bjcaking down of all faith." “You are right in saying that the churches are becoming more liberal," replied Dr. Talmage. "We are getting closer and closer together every year, and reljgion is becoming more and more a religion of sympathy and kindness. We have thousands of real Christians now wno hardly know they are Christians. They cannot be called intellectual Christians, and the purely intellectual Christian the Christian of reason rather than faith—is of little account in the world anyhow. He is an Iceberg, and he U of good neither to himself nor to any one else. You speak of the growing Infidelity among the believers of other religions the world over. The tendency of man when he gives up the God of his fathers is for a time to believe in no God whatever, and it is only after a time that he comes around to study and believe in another religion, I believe that any religion is better than no religion, and I believe that the Christian religion is destined to conquer the worlc. People are surprised that the church does not advance more

rapidly. They forget that the world has just been discovered. Our hemisphere is but a few hundreds of years old, and Columbus only discovered its shell. Asia and Africa hare been practically unknown to us until now, and they are still to a great extent undiscovered. It is the same with the world in other respects as in its geographical ones. We are just beginning to know it and its possibilities. Modern inventions are coming in to holp us, and we are now ready for the first time to begin to work in earnest. “Dr. Talmage, you have been accused of being a sensational preacher. Do you believe in sensational preaching?" “If you call sensational preaching,* replied the divine, “the striving after striking effects, merely to astonish the people or to create a stir, it is wrong. But if sensational preaching is the sensation arising from the presentation of truth, it is right. Truth Is always surprising, and rightly preached, it ought not to fail to create a sensation. The opponents of such preaching are often men who are as heavy in their remarks as a load of bricks. They are too lazy or too dull to rise out of the commonplace, and they often vegetate or die of the dry rot. You ask as to pulpit oratory to-day. I believe that our preachers are improvihg in ppwer as the world goes on. Our seminaries turn out better men every year, and they will this year furnish the best cjg)p of young men in their history." The Brooklyn Tabernacle. Leaving the house we then walked around the block to the Brooklyn Tabernacle. It is 'the biggest church in the United Stated, and is one Of the finest churches in the world. Its tower of red brick and stone rises 160 feet from the ground, and its four comers have colums which remind ( you of the beauties of the Kutab Mlnar. lti entrances are of stone, richly carved, and It covers more than half an acre of ground. Standing 1 In the galleries, the scene below makes you think of the Coliseum at

Rome, and, the grepfc organ which stands Opposite you is one the largest ever made. It has four banks of keys, 100 stops and appHanoeb; and its pipes number 4,500. Dr. Talmage stands on a platform, wish no desk nor pulpit in front of him, and he addresses here an audience of 7,000 souls.

T. DE WITT TALMAGE From a late photograph.]

DR. TALMAGE’S HOME.

THE NEW TABERNACLE.

TALMAGE IN HIS DEN.

THE DRAWING-ROOM.

TATMAGE’S BEDROOM.