Rensselaer Republican, Volume 23, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 March 1891 — DR. TALMAGE’S MOTHER. [ARTICLE]

DR. TALMAGE’S MOTHER.

Am Eloquent Tribute to Her Memory by tbe Famous Preacher. i I never write or speak to woman, says Dr. Talmage in tbe Ladies' Horne Journal, but my mind wanders off to one model—the aged one who, twentyfour years ago, we put away for the resurrection. | About eighty years ago. and jnst before their marriage day, my father and mother stood up in the oid meetinghouse at Somerville, N. J,, and took ! upon them the vows of the Christian. Through a long life of vicissitude my mother lived harmlessly and usefully and came to her end in peace. No child of want ever came to her door and was turned away empty. No one in sorrow came to her but was comforted. No one asked her the way to be saved but she pointed him to the cross. When the angel of life came to a neighbor’s dwelling she was there to rejoice at the starting of another immortal spirit. When the angel of death came to that dwelling she was there to robe the departed for the burial. We had often heard her, when leading family prayers in the absence of my father, say': “O Lord, I ask not for my children wealth or honor, but I do ask that they may all be the subjects of thy comforting grace!” Her eleven children brought into the kingdom of God she had hut one more wish, and that was that she might see her longabsent missionary son, and when the ship from China anchored in New York harbor and tho long-absent one passed over the threshold of the paternal home she said: “Now, Lord, lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for my eyes have seen thy salvation.” The prayer was soon answered! It was an autumnal day when we gathered fron? afar, and found only the house from which the soul had fled forever. She looked very natural, the jiaudrvery much as when they were employed in kindness for the children. else we forget, we never forget the*look of mother’s hands. As we stood by the casket we could not help but say: “Doesn’t she look beautiful?’’ It was a cloudless day when, with heavy hearts, we carried her out to the last resting place. The withered leaves crumbled under hoof and wheel as we passed, and the sun shone on the Raritan river until it looked like tire; but more calm, and beautiful, and radiant was the setting sun o f that aged pilgrim’s life. No more toil, no more tears, no more sickness, no more death. Dear mother! Beautiful mother! “Sweet Is the slumber beneath the sod. While the pure spirit rests with God.” With such a mother as an example, is it strange that I should always have cherished the most exalted estimate of woman and womankind?