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I was the youngest of a large family of children. My parents were neither rich nor poor; four of the sons wanted collegiate education, and four obtained it, but not without great home-struggle. The day I left our country home to look after myself we rode across the country, and my father was driving. He began to tell how good the Lord had been to him, in sickness and in health, and when times of hardship came how Providence had always provided the means of livelihood for the large household; and he wound up by saying, "De Witt, I have always found it safe to trust the Lord." I have felt the mighty impetus of that lesson in the farm waggon. It has been fulfilled in my own life and in the lives of many consecrated men and women I have known.

In the minister's house where I prepared for college there worked a man by the name of Peter Croy. He could neither read nor write, but he was a man of God. Often theologians would stop in the house--grave theologians--and at family prayer Peter Croy would be called upon to lead; and all those wise men sat around, wonder-struck at his religious efficiency.

In the church at Somerville, New Jersey, where I was afterwards pastor, John Vredenburgh preached for a great many years. He felt that his ministry was a failure, and others felt so, although he was a faithful minister preaching the Gospel all the time. He died, and died amid some discouragements, and went home to God; for no one ever doubted that John Vredenburgh was a good Christian minister. A little while after his death there came a great awakening in Somerville, and one Sabbath two hundred souls stood up at the Christian altar espousing the cause of Christ, among them my own father and mother. And what was peculiar in regard to nearly all of those two hundred souls was that they dated their religious impressions from the ministry of John Vredenburgh.

I had no more confidence in my own powers when I was studying for the ministry than John Vredenburgh. I was often very discouraged. "DeWitt," said a man to me as we were walking the fields at the time I was in the theological school, "DeWitt, if you don't change your style of thought and expression, you will never get a call to any church in Christendom as long as you live." "Well," I replied, "if I cannot preach the Gospel in America, then I will go to heathen lands and preach it." I thought I might be useful on heathen ground, if I could ever learn the language of the Chinese, about which I had many forebodings. The foreign tongue became to me more and more an obstacle and a horror, until I resolved if I could get an invitation to preach in the English language, I would accept it. So one day, finding Rev. Dr. Van Vranken, one of our theological professors , sauntering in the campus of Rutgers College, I asked him, with much trepidation, if he would by letter introduce me to some officer of the Reformed Church at Belleville, N.J., the pulpit of which was then vacant. With an outburst of heartiness he replied: "Come right into my house, and I will give you the letter now." It was a most generous introduction of me to Dr. Samuel Ward, a venerable elder of the Belleville church. I sent the letter to the elder, and within a week received an invitation to occupy the vacant pulpit.

I had been skirmishing here and there as a preacher, now in the basement of churches at week-night religious meetings, and now in school-houses on Sunday afternoons, and here and there in pulpits with brave pastors who dared risk having an inexperienced theological student preach to their people.

But the first sermon with any considerable responsibility resting upon it was the sermon preached as a candidate for a pastoral call in the Reformed Church at Belleville, N.J. I was about to graduate from the New Brunswick Theological Seminary, and wanted a Gospel field in which to work. I had already written to my brother John, a missionary at Amoy, China, telling him that I expected to come out there.

I was met by Dr. Ward at Newark, New Jersey, and taken to his house. Sabbath morning came. With one of my two sermons, which made up my entire stock of pulpit resources, I tremblingly entered the pulpit of that brown stone village church, which stands in my memory as one of the most sacred places of all the earth, where I formed associations which I expect to resume in Heaven.

The sermon was fully written, and was on the weird battle between the Gideonites and Midianites, my text being in Judges vii. 20, 21: "The three companies blew the trumpets, and brake the pitchers, and held the lamps in their left hands, and the trumpets in their right hands to blow withal; and they cried, The sword of the Lord, and of Gideon. And they stood every man in his place round about the camp; and all the host ran, and cried, and fled." A brave text, but a very timid man to handle it. I did not feel at all that hour either like blowing Gideon's trumpet, or holding up the Gospel lamp; but if I had, like any of the Gideonites, held a pitcher, I think I would have dropped it and broken that lamp. I felt as the moment approached for delivering my sermon more like the Midianites, who, according to my text, "ran, and cried, and fled." I had placed the manuscript of my sermon on the pulpit sofa beside where I sat. Looking around to put my hand on the manuscript, lo! it was gone. But where had it gone? My excitement knew no bound. Within three minutes of the greatest ordeal of my life, and the sermon on which so much depended mysteriously vanished! How much disquietude and catastrophe were crowded into those three minutes it would be impossible to depict. Then I noticed for the first time that between the upper and lower parts of the sofa there was an opening about the width of three finger-breadths, and I immediately suspected that through that opening the manuscript of my sermon had disappeared. But how could I recover it, and in so short a time? I bent over and reached under as far as I could. But the sofa was low, and I could not touch the lost discourse. The congregation were singing the last verse of the hymn, and I was reduced to a desperate effort. I got down on my hands and knees, and then down flat, and crawled under the sofa and clutched the prize. Fortunately, the pulpit front was wide, and hid the sprawling attitude I was compelled to take. When I arose to preach a moment after, the fugitive manuscript before me on the Bible, it is easy to understand why I felt more like the Midianites than I did like Gideon.

This and other mishaps with manuscripts helped me after a while to strike for entire emancipation from such bondage, and for about a quarter of a century I have preached without notes--only a sketch of the sermon pinned in my Bible, and that sketch seldom referred to.

When I entered the ministry I looked very pale for years, for four or five years, many times I was asked if I had consumption; and, passing through the room, I would sometimes hear people sigh and say, "A-ah! not long for this world!" I resolved in those times that I never, in any conversation, would say anything depressing, and by the help of God I have kept the resolution.

The day for my final examination for a licence to preach the Gospel for ordination by the laying on of hands, and for installation as pastor for the Reformed Church of Belleville, N.J., had arrived. The examination as to my qualifications was to take place in the morning, and if the way proved clear, the ordination and installation were to be solemnised in the afternoon of the same day. The embarrassing thought was that members of the congregation were to be present in the morning, as well as the afternoon. If I made a mistake or failure under the severe scrutiny of the Ecclesiastical Court, I would ever after be at a great disadvantage in preaching to those good people.

It so happened, however, that the Classis, as the body of clergy were called, was made up mostly of genial, consecrated persons, and no honest young man would suffer anything at their hands. Although I was exceedingly nervous, and did not do myself justice, and no doubt appeared to know less than I really did know, all went well until a clergyman, to whom I shall give the fictitious name of "Dr. Hardman," took me in hand. This "Dr. Hardman" had a dislike for me. He had once wanted me to do something for him and take his advice in matters of a pastoral settlement, which I had, for good reasons, declined to take. I will not go further into the reasons of this man's antipathy, lest someone should know whom I mean. One thing was certain to all present, and that was his wish to defeat my installation as pastor of that church, or make it to me a disagreeable experience.

As soon as he opened upon me a fire of interrogations, what little spirit I had in me dropped. In the agitation I could not answer the simplest questions. But he assailed me with puzzlers. He wanted to know, among other things, if Christ's atonement availed for other worlds; to which I replied that I did not know, as I had never studied theology in any world but this. He hooked me with the horns of a dilemma. A Turkish bath, with the thermometer up to 113, is cool compared to the perspiration into which he threw me. At this point Rev. James W. Scott, D.D. arose. Dr. Scott was a Scotchman of about 65 years of age. He had been a classmate of the remarkable Scottish poet, Robert Pollock. The Doctor was pastor of a church at Newark, N.J. He was the impersonation of kindness, and generosity, and helpfulness. The Gospel shone from every feature. I never saw him under any circumstances without a smile on his face. He had been on the Mount of Transfiguration, and the glory had never left his countenance.

I calculate the value of the soul by its capacity for happiness. How much joy it can get in this world--out of friendships, out of books, out of clouds, out of the sea, out of flowers, out of ten thousand things! Yet all the joy it has here does not test its capacity.

As Dr. Scott rose that day he said, "Mr. President, I think this examination has gone on long enough, and I move it be stopped, and that the examination be pronounced satisfactory, and that this young man be licensed to preach the Gospel, and that this afternoon we proceed to his ordination and installation." The motion was put and carried, and I was released from a Protestant purgatory.

At the close of that meeting of Classis, Dr. Scott came up to me, took my right hand in both his hands, and said, "I congratulate you on the opportunity that opens here. Do your best, and God will see you through; and if some Saturday night you find yourself short of a sermon, send down to Newark, only three miles, and I will come up and preach for you." Can anyone imagine the difference of my appreciation of Dr. Hardman and Dr. Scott?

Only a few weeks passed on, and the crisis that Dr. Scott foresaw in my history occurred, and Saturday night saw me short of a sermon. So I sent a messenger to Dr. Scott. He said to the messenger, "I am very tired; have been holding a long series of special services in my church, but that young Talmage must be helped, and I will preach for him to-morrow night." He arrived in time, and preached a glowing and rousing sermon on the text, "Have ye received the Holy Ghost?" As I sat behind him in the pulpit and looked upon him I thought, "What a magnificent soul you are! Tired out with your own work, and yet come up here to help a young man to whom you are under no obligation!" Well, that was the last sermon he ever preached. The very next Saturday he dropped dead in his house. Outside of his own family no one was more broken-hearted at his obsequies than myself, to whom he had, until the meeting of Classis, been a total stranger.

I stood at his funeral in the crowd beside a poor woman with a faded shawl and worn-out hat, who was struggling up to get one look at the dear old face in the coffin. She was being crowded back. I said, "Follow me, and you shall see him." So I pushed the way up for her as well as myself, and when we got up to the silent form she burst out crying, and said, "That is the last friend I had in the world."

Dr. Hardman lived on. He lived to write a letter when I was called to Syracuse, N.Y., a letter telling a prominent officer of the Syracuse Church that I would never do at all for their pastor. He lived on until I was called to Philadelphia, and wrote a letter to a prominent officer in the Philadelphia Church telling them not to call me. Years ago he went to his rest. But the two men will always stand in my memory as opposites in character. The one taught me a lesson never to be forgotten about how to treat a young man, and the other a lesson about how not to treat a young man. Dr. Scott and Dr. Hardman, the antipodes!

So my first settlement as pastor was in the village of Belleville, N.J. My salary was eight hundred dollars and a parsonage. The amount seemed enormous to me. I said to myself: "What! all this for one year?" I was afraid of getting worldly under so much prosperity! I resolved to invite all the congregation to my house in groups of twenty-five each. We began, and as they were the best congregation in all the world, and we felt nothing was too good for them, we piled all the luxuries on the table. I never completed the undertaking. At the end of six months I was in financial despair. I found that we not only had not the surplus of luxuries, but we had a struggle to get the necessaries.

Although the first call I ever had was to Piermont, N.Y., my first real work began in the Reformed Church of Belleville, N.J. I preached at Piermont in the morning, and at the Congregational meeting held in the afternoon of the same day it was resolved to invite me to become pastor. But for the very high hill on which the parsonage was situated I should probably have accepted. I was delighted with the congregation, and with the grand scenery of that region.

I was ordained to the Gospel Ministry and installed as pastor July 29th, 1856, my brother Goyn preaching the sermon from the text, First Corinthians iii. 12, 13. Reverend Dr. Benjamin C. Taylor, the oldest minister present, offered the ordaining prayer, and about twenty hands were laid upon my head. All these facts are obtained from a memorandum made by a hand that long since forgot its cunning and kindness. The three years passed in Belleville were years of hard work. The hardest work in a clergyman's lifetime is during the first three years. No other occupation or profession puts such strain upon one's nerves and brain. Two sermons and a lecture per week are an appalling demand to make upon a young man. Most of the ministers never get over that first three years. They leave upon one's digestion or nervous system a mark that nothing but death can remove. It is not only the amount of mental product required of a young minister, but the draft upon his sympathies and the novelty of all that he undertakes; his first sermon; his first baptism; his first communion season; his first pastoral visitation; his first wedding; his first funeral.

My first baptism was of Lily Webster, a black-eyed baby, who grew up to be as beautiful a woman as she was a child.

I baptised her. Rev. Dr. John Dowling, of the Baptist Church, New York, preached for me and my church his great sermon on, "I saw a great multitude which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, clothed in white robes." In my verdancy I feared that the Doctor, who did not believe in the baptism of infants, might take it for a personal affront that I had chosen that evening for this my first baptism.

Sometimes at the baptism of children, while I have held up one hand in prayer, I have held up the other in amazement that the parents should have weighted the babe with such a dissonant and repulsive nomenclature. I have not so much wondered that some children should cry out at the Christening font, as that others with such smiling faces should take a title that will be the burden of their lifetime. It is no excuse because they are Scriptural names to call a child Jehoiakim, or Tiglath Pileser. I baptised one by the name of Bathsheba. Why, under all the circumambient heaven, any parent should want to give a child the name of that loose creature of Scripture times, I cannot imagine. I have often felt at the baptismal altar when names were announced somewhat like saying, as did the Rev. Dr. Richards, of Morristown, New Jersey, when a child was handed to him for baptism, and the names given, "Hadn't you better call it something else?"

On this occasion I had adopted the theory, which I long since abandoned, that an officiating clergyman at baptism should take the child in his arms. Now, there are many ministers who do not know how to hold a baby, and they frighten the child and increase the anxiety of the mother, and may create a riot all along the line if there be other infants waiting for the ceremony.

After reading the somewhat prolonged liturgy of the dear old Reformed Church, I came down from the pulpit and took the child in my arms. She was, however, far more composed than myself, and made no resistance; but the overpowering sensation attached to the first application of the holy chrism is a vivid and everlasting memory.

Then, the first pastoral visitation! With me it was at the house of a man suffering from dropsy in the leg. He unbandaged the limb and insisted upon my looking at the fearful malady. I never could with any composure look at pain, and the last profession in all the world suited to me would have been surgery. After praying with the man and offering him Scriptural condolence, I started for home.

My wife met me with anxious countenance, and said, "How did you get hurt, and what is the matter?" The sight of the lame leg had made my leg lame, and unconsciously I was limping on the way home.

But I had quite another experience with a parishioner. He was a queer man, and in bad odour in the community. Some time previously his wife had died, and although a man of plenty of means, in order to economise on funeral expenses, he had wheeled his wife to the grave on a wheelbarrow. This economy of his had not led the village to any higher appreciation of the man's character. Having been told of his inexpensive eccentricities, I was ready for him when one morning he called at the parsonage. As he entered he began by saying: "I came in to say that I don't like you." "Well," I said, "that is a strange coincidence, for I cannot bear the sight of you. I hear that you are the meanest man in town, and that your neighbours despise you. I hear that you wheeled your wife on a wheelbarrow to the graveyard." To say the least, our conversation that day was unique and spirited, and it led to his becoming a most ardent friend and admirer. I have had multitudes of friends, but I have found in my own experience that God so arranged it that the greatest opportunities of usefulness that have been opened before me were opened by enemies. And when, years ago, they conspired against me, their assault opened all Christendom to me as a field in which to preach the Gospel. So you may harness your antagonists to your best interests and compel them to draw you on to better work. He allowed me to officiate at his second marriage, did this mine enemy. All the town was awake that night. They had somehow heard that this economist at obsequies was to be remarried. Well, I was inside his house trying, under adverse circumstances, to make the twain one flesh. There were outside demonstrations most extraordinary, and all in consideration of what the bridegroom had been to that community. Horns, trumpets, accordions, fiddles, fire-crackers, tin pans, howls, screeches, huzzas, halloos, missiles striking the front door, and bedlam let loose! Matters grew worse as the night advanced, until the town authorities read the Riot Act, and caused the only cannon belonging to the village to be hauled out on the street and loaded, threatening death to the mob if they did not disperse. Glad am I to say that it was only a farce, and no tragedy. My mode of first meeting this queer man was a case in which it is best to fight fire with fire. I remember also the first funeral. It nearly killed me. A splendid young man skating on the Passaic River in front of my house had broken through the ice, and his body after many hours had been grappled from the water and taken home to his distracted parents. To be the chief consoler in such a calamity was something for which I felt completely incompetent. When in the old but beautiful church the silent form of the young man whom we all loved rested beneath the pulpit, it was a pull upon my emotions I shall never forget. On the way to the grave, in the same carriage with the eminent Reverend Dr. Fish, who helped in the services, I said, "This is awful. One more funeral like this will be the end of us." He replied, "You will learn after awhile to be calm under such circumstances. You cannot console others unless you preserve your own equipoise."

Those years at Belleville were to me memorable. No vacation, but three times a day I took a row on the river. Those old families in my congregation I can never forget--the Van Rensselaers, the Stevenses, the Wards. These families took us under their wing. At Mr. Van Rensselaer's we dined every Monday. It had been the habit of my predecessors in the pulpit. Grand old family! Their name not more a synonym for wealth than for piety. Mrs. Van Rensselaer was one of the saints clear up in the heaven of one's appreciation.

Wm. Stevens was an embodiment of generosity. He could not pray in public, or make a speech; but he could give money, and when he had plenty of it he gave in large sums, and when monetary disaster came, his grief was that he had nothing to give. I saw him go right through all the perturbations of business life. He was faithful to God. I saw him one day worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. I saw him the next day and he was not worth a farthing. Stevens! How plainly he comes before me as I think of the night in 1857 after the New York banks had gone down, and he had lost everything except his faith in God, and he was at the prayer meeting to lead the singing as usual! And, not noticing that from the fatigues of that awful financial panic he had fallen asleep, I arose and gave out the hymn, "My drowsy powers, why sleep ye so?" His wife wakened him, and he started the hymn at too high a pitch, and stopped, saying, "That is too high"; then started it at too low a pitch, and stopped, saying, "That is too low." It is the only mistake I ever heard him make. But the only wonder is that amid the circumstances of broken fortunes he could sing at all.

Dr. Samuel Ward! He was the angel of health for the neighbourhood. Before anyone else was up any morning, passing along his house you would see him in his office reading. He presided at the first nativity in my household. He it was that met me at the railroad station when I went to preach my first sermon as candidate, at Belleville. He medicated for many years nearly all the wounds for body and mind in that region. An elder in the Church, he could administer to the soul as well as to the perishable nature of his patients.

And the Duncans! Broad Scotch as they were in speech! I was so much with them that I got unconsciously some of the Scottish brogue in my own utterance. William, cautious and prudent; John, bold and venturesome--both so high in my affections! Among the first ones that I ask for in Heaven will be John and William Duncan.

Gasherie De Witt! He embodied a large part of the enterprise and enthusiasm of the place. He had his head full of railroads long before the first spike was driven for an iron pathway to the village. We were much together and ardently attached; went fishing together on long summer days, he catching the fish, and I watching the process. When we dedicated the first Brooklyn Tabernacle, he was present, and gave the money for building a baptistry in the pulpit, and gave besides 0 for his wife and each one of his children. When we parted from each other at Oxford, England, he to go to Geneva, Switzerland, to die, and I to come back to America, much of sweet acquaintanceship and complete confidence ended for this world, only to be taken up under celestial auspices.

But time and space would fail to tell of the noble men and women that stood around me in those early years of my ministry. They are all gone, and their personality makes up a large part of my anticipation of the world to come.

THE THIRD MILESTONE

My first sermons were to me the most tremendous endeavours of my life, because I felt the awful responsibility of standing in a pulpit, knowing that a great many people would be influenced by what I said concerning God, or the soul, or the great future.

When I first began to preach, I was very cautious lest I should be misrepresented, and guarded the subject on all sides. I got beyond that point. I found that I got on better when, without regard to consequences, I threw myself upon the hearts and consciences of my hearers.

In those early days of my pastoral experience I saw how men reason themselves into scepticism. I knew what it was to have a hundred nights poured into one hour.

I remember one infidel book in the possession of my student companion. He said, "DeWitt, would you like to read that book?" "Well," said I, "I would like to look at it." I read it a little while. I said to him, "I dare not read that book; you had better destroy it. I give you my advice, you had better destroy it. I dare not read that book. I have read enough of it." "Oh," he said, "haven't you a stronger mind than that? Can't you read a book you don't exactly believe, and not be affected by it?" I said, "You had better destroy it." He kept it. He read it until he gave up the Bible; his belief in the existence of a God, his good morals; until body, mind and soul were ruined--and he went into the insane asylum. I read too much of it. I read about fifteen or twenty pages of it. I wish I had never read it. It never did me any good; it did me harm. I have often struggled with what I read in that book. I rejected it, I denounced it, I cast it out with infinite scorn, I hated it; yet sometimes its caricature of good and its eulogium of evil have troubled me.

With supreme gratitude, therefore, I remember the wonderful impression made upon me, when I was a young man, of the presence of a consecrated human being in the pulpit.

It was a Sabbath evening in spring at "The Trinity Methodist Church," Jersey City. Rev. William P. Corbit, the pastor of that church, in compliment to my relatives, who attended upon his services, invited me to preach for him. I had only a few months before entered the Gospel ministry, and had come in from my village settlement to occupy a place in the pulpit of the great Methodist orator. In much trepidation on my part I entered the church with Mr. Corbit, and sat trembling in the corner of the "sacred desk," waiting for the moment to begin the service. A crowded audience had assembled to hear the pastor of that church preach, and the disappointment I was about to create added to my embarrassment.

The service opened, and the time came to offer the prayer before sermon. I turned to Mr. Corbit and said, "I wish you would lead in prayer." He replied, "No! sharpen your own knife!" The whole occasion was to me memorable for its agitations. But there began an acquaintanceship that became more and more endearing and ardent as the years went by. After he ceased, through the coming on of the infirmities of age, to occupy a pulpit of his own, he frequented my church on the Sabbaths, and our prayer-meetings during the week. He was the most powerful exhorter I ever heard. Whatever might be the intensity of interest in a revival service, he would in a ten minute address augment it. I never heard him deliver a sermon except on two occasions, and those during my boyhood; but they made lasting impressions upon me. I do not remember the texts or the ideas, but they demonstrated the tremendous reality of spiritual and eternal things, and showed possibilities in religious address that I had never known or imagined.

He was so unique in manners, in pulpit oratory, and in the entire type of his nature, that no one will ever be able to describe what he was. Those who saw and heard him the last ten or fifteen years of his decadence can have no idea of his former power as a preacher of the Gospel.

There he is, as I first saw him! Eye like a hawk's. Hair long and straight as a Chippewa Indian's. He was not straight as an arrow, for that suggests something too fragile and short, but more like a column--not only straight, but tall and majestic, and capable of holding any weight, and without fatigue or exertion. When he put his foot down, either literally of figuratively, it was down. Vacillation, or fear, or incertitude, or indecision, were strangers to whom he would never be introduced. When he entered a room you were, to use a New Testament phrase, "exceedingly filled with his company."

He was as affectionate as a woman to those whom he liked, and cold as Greenland to those whose principles were an affront. He was not only a mighty speaker, but a mighty listener. I do not know how any man could speak upon any important theme, standing in his presence, without being set on fire by his alert sympathy.

But he has vanished from mortal sight. What the resurrection will do for him I cannot say. If those who have only ordinary stature and unimpressive physique in this world are at the last to have bodies resplendent and of supernal potency, what will the unusual corporiety of William P. Corbit become? In his case the resurrection will have unusual material to start with. If a sculptor can mould a handsome form out of clay, what can he not put out of Parian marble? If the blast of the trumpet which wakes the dead rouses life-long invalidism and emaciation into athletic celestialism, what will be the transfiguration when the sound of final reanimation touches the ear of those sleeping giants among the trees and fountains of Greenwood?

Good-bye, great and good and splendid soul! Good-bye, till we meet again! I will look around for you as soon as I come, if through the pardoning grace of Christ I am so happy as to reach the place of your destination. Meet me at the gate of the city; or under the tree of life on the bank of the river; or just inside of the door of the House of Many Mansions; or in the hall of the Temple which has no need of stellar or lunar or solar illumination, "For the Lamb is the Light thereof."

After three years of grace and happiness at Belleville I accepted a call to a church in Syracuse. My pastorate there, in the very midst of its most uplifting crisis, was interrupted, as I believe, by Divine orders. The ordeal of deciding anything important in my life has always been a desperate period of anxiety. I never have really decided for myself. God has told me what to do. The first great crisis of this sort came to me in Syracuse. While living there I received a pastoral call from the Second Reformed Church of Philadelphia. Six weeks of agony followed.

I was about 30 years of age. The thick shock of hair with which I had been supplied, in those six weeks was thinned out to its present scarcity. My church in Syracuse was made up of as delightful people as ever came together; but I felt that the climate of Philadelphia would be better adapted to my health, and so I was very anxious to go. But a recent revival in my Syracuse Church, and a movement at that time on foot for extensive repairs of our building, made the question of my leaving for another pastorate very doubtful. Six weeks of sleeplessness followed. Every morning I combed out handfuls of hair as the result of the nervous agitation. Then I decided to stay, and never expected to leave those kind parishioners of Syracuse.

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