T. De Witt Talmage Part 29
Oh, the contrast between that foot-washing amid pomp and brilliant ceremony and the imitated foot-washing of our Lord at Ober-Ammergau.
Before each one of the twelve Apostles Christ comes down so slowly that a sigh of emotion pa.s.ses through the great throng of spectators. Christ even washes the feet of Judas. Was there in all time or eternity past, or will there be in all time or eternity to come, such a scene of self-abnegation? The Lord of heaven and earth stooping to such a service which must have astounded the heavens more than its dramatisation overpowered us! What a stunning rebuke to the pride and arrogance and personal ambition of all ages!
The Hand of G.o.d on Human Foot in Ablution!
No wonder the quick-tempered Peter thought it incongruous, and forbade its taking place, crying out: "Thou shalt never wash my feet!" But the Lord broke him down until Peter vehemently asked that his head and his hands be washed as well as his feet.
During eight hours on that stage it seems as though we were watching a battle between the demons of the Pit and the seraphs of Light, and the demons triumph. Eight hours telling a sadness, with every moment worse than its predecessor. All the world against Him, and hardly any let up so that we feel like leaving our place and rushing for the stage and giving congratulations with both hands to Simon of Cyrene as he lightens the Cross from the shoulder of the sufferer, and to Nicodemus who voted an emphatic "No" at the condemnation, and to Joseph of Arimathea who asks the honour of being undertaker at the obsequies.
Scene after scene, act after act, until at the scourging every stroke fetches the blood; and the purple mantle is put upon Him in derision, and they slap His face and they push Him off the stool upon which He sits, laughing at His fall. On, until from behind the curtain you hear the thumping of the hammers on the spikes; on, until hanging between two bandits, He pledges Paradise within twenty-four hours to the one, and commits His own broken-hearted mother to John, asking him to take care of her in her old age; and His complaint of thirst brings a sponge moistened with sour wine on the end of a staff; and blasphemy has hurled at Him its last curse, and malice has uttered concerning Him its last lie, and contempt has spit upon Him its last foam, and the resources of perdition are exhausted, and from the shuddering form and white lips comes the exclamation, "It is finished!"
At that moment there resounded across the river Ammer and through the village of Ober-Ammergau a crash that was responded to by the echoes of the Bavarian mountains. The rocks tumbled back off the stage, and the heavens roared and the graves of the dead were wrecked, and it seemed as if the earth itself had foundered in its voyage through the sky. The great audience almost leaped to its feet at the sound of that tempest and earthquake.
Look! the ruffians are tossing dice for the ownership of the Master's coat. The darkness thickens. Night, blackening night. Hark! The wolves are howling for the corpse of the slain Lord. Then, with more pathos and tenderness than can be seen in Rubens' picture, "Descent from the Cross," in the cathedral at Antwerp, is the dead Christ lowered, and there rises the wailing of crushed motherhood, and with solemn tread the mutilated body is sepulchred. But soon the door of the mausoleum falls and forth comes the Christ and, standing on the shoulder of Mount Olivet, He is ready for ascension. Then the "Hallelujah Chorus" from the 700 voices before and behind the scenes closes the most wonderful tragedy ever enacted.
As we rose for departure we felt like saying with the blind preacher, whom William Wirt, the orator of Virginia, heard concluding his sermon to a backwoods congregation:
"Socrates died like a philosopher, but Jesus died like a G.o.d!"
I have been asked whether this play would ever be successfully introduced into America or England. I think there is some danger that it may be secularised and turned into a mercenary inst.i.tution. Instead of the long ride by carriages over rough mountain roads for days and days, as formerly was necessary in order to reach Ober-Ammergau, there are now two trains a day which land tourists for the Pa.s.sion Play, and among them may appear some American theatrical manager who, finding that John Zwink of Ober-Ammergau impersonates the spirit of grab and cheat and insincerity better than any one who treads the American stage, and only received for his wonderful histrionic ability what equals forty-five pounds sterling for ten years, may offer him five times as much compensation for one night. If avarice could clutch Judas with such a relentless grasp at the offer of thirty pieces of silver, what might be the proportionate temptation of a thousand pieces of gold!
The impression made upon Dr. Talmage by the Pa.s.sion Play was stirring and reverent. He described it as one of the most tremendous and fearful experiences of his life.
"I have seen it once, but I would not see it again," he said, "I would not dare risk my nerves to such an awful, harrowing ordeal. Accustomed as I am to think almost constantly on all that the Bible means, the Pa.s.sion Play was an unfolding, a new and thrilling interpretation, a revelation. I never before realised the capabilities of the Bible for dramatic representation."
We went from Ober-Ammergau to that modern Eden for the overwrought nerves of kings and commoners--Baden-baden, where we spent ten days. At the end of this time we returned to Paris to enjoy the Exposition at our leisure. Paris is always a place of brightness and pleasure. King Leopold of Belgium was among the distinguished guests of the French capital, whom we saw one day while driving in the Bois. We made visits to Versailles and the palace of Fontainebleau. The Doctor enjoyed these trips into the country, and always manged to make his arrangements so that he could go with us. From Paris we went to London for a farewell visit. Dr. Talmage had promised to preach in John Wesley's chapel in the City Road, known as "The Cathedral of Methodism."
On Sunday, September 30, 1900, the crowd was so great that had come to hear Dr. Talmage that a cordon of police was necessary to guard the big iron gates after the church was filled. The text of his sermon that day was significant. It may have been a conception of his own life work--its text. It was taken from a pa.s.sage in the eleventh chapter of Daniel:--
"The people that do know their G.o.d shall be strong and do exploits."
It is difficult to conceive of the enthusiasm that Dr. Talmage aroused everywhere the immense crowds that gathered to see and hear him. During our stay in London this time, after a preaching service in a church in Piccadilly, the wheels of our carriage were seized and we were like a small island in a black sea of restless men and women. The driver couldn't move. The Doctor took it with great delight and stood up in the carriage, making an address. From where he was standing he could not see the police charging the crowd to scatter them. When he did, he realised that he was aiding in obstructing the best regulated thoroughfare in London. Stopping his address, he said, "We must recognise the authority of the law," and sat down. It was said that Dr. Talmage was the only man who had ever stopped the traffic in Piccadilly.
From London Dr. Talmage and I went together for a short visit to the Isle of Wight, and later to Swansea where he preached; we left the girls with Lady Lyle, at Sir John Lyle's house in London.
It had become customary whenever the Doctor made an address to ask me to sit on the platform, and in this way I became equal to looking a big audience in the face, but one day the Doctor over-estimated my talents.
He came in with more than his usual whir, and said to me:
"Eleanor, I have been asked if you won't dedicate a new building at the Wood Green Wesleyan Church in North London. I said I thought you would, and accepted for you. Won't you please do this for me?"
There was no denying him, and I consented, provided he would help me with the address. He did, and on the appointed day when we drove out to the place I had the notes of my speech held tightly crumpled in my glove. There was the usual crowd that had turned out to hear Dr. Talmage who was to preach afterwards, and I was genuinely frightened. I remember as we climbed the steps to the speaker's platform, the Doctor whispered to me, "Courage, Eleanor, what other women have done you can do." I almost lost my equilibrium when I was presented with a silver trowel as a souvenir of the event. There was nothing about a silver trowel in my notes. However, the event pa.s.sed off without any calamity but it was my first and last appearance in public.
As the time approached for us to return to America the Doctor looked forward to the day of sailing. It had all been a wonderful experience even to him who had for so many years been in the glare of public life.
He had reached the highest mark of public favour as a man, and as a preacher was the most celebrated of his time. I wonder now, as I realise the strain of work he was under, that he gave me so little cause for anxiety considering his years. He was a marvel of health and strength.
There may have been days when his genius burned more dimly than others, and often I would ask him if the zest of his work was as great if he was a bit tired, hoping that he would yield a little to the trend of the years, but he was as strong and buoyant in his energies as if each day were a new beginning. His enjoyment of life was inspiring, his hold upon the beauty of it never relaxed.
From London we went to Belfast, on a very stormy day. Dr. Talmage was advised to wait a while, but he had no fear of anything. That crossing of the Irish Channel was the worst sea trip I ever had. We arrived in Belfast battered and ill from the stormy pa.s.sage, all but the Doctor, who went stoically ahead with his engagements with undiminished vigour.
Going up in the elevator of the hotel one day, we met Mrs. Langtry. Dr.
Talmage had crossed the ocean with her.
"Won't you come and see my play to-night?" she asked him.
"I am very sorry, Madame, but I am speaking myself to-night," said the Doctor courteously. He told me afterwards how fortunate he felt it to be that he was able to make a real excuse. Invitations to the theatre always embarra.s.sed him.
From Belfast we went to Cork for a few days, making a trip to the Killarney lakes before sailing from Queenstown on October 18, 1900, on the "Oceanic."
"Isn't it good to be going back to America, back to that beautiful city of Washington," said the Doctor, the moment we got on board.
Whatever he was doing, whichever way he was going, he was always in pursuit of the joy of living. Although the greatest year of my life was drawing to a close, it all seemed then like an achievement rather than a farewell, like the beginning of a perfect happiness, the end of which was in remote perspective.
THE LAST MILESTONE
1900-1902
There was no warning of the divine purpose; there was no pause of weakness or illness in his life to foreshadow his approaching end. Until the last sunset hours of his useful days he always seemed to me a man of iron. He had stood in the midst of crowds a towering figure; but away from them his life had been a studied annihilation, an existence of hidden sacrifice to his great work. He used to say to me: "Eleanor, I have lived among crowds, and yet I have been much of the time quite alone." But alone or in company his mind was ever active, his great heart ever intent on his apostolate of sunshine and help towards his fellow-men. And the good things he said were not alone the utterances of his public career; they came bubbling forth as from a spring during the course of his daily life, in his home and among his friends, even with little children. Books have been written styled, "Conversations of Eminent Men"; and I have often thought had his ordinary conversations been reported, or, better, could the colossal crowds who admired him have been, as we, his privileged listeners, they would have been no less charmed with his brilliant talk than with the public displays of eloquence with which they were so captivated.
Immediately after his return from Europe in the autumn of 1900, Dr.
Talmage took up his work with renewed vigour and enthusiasm. He stepped back into his study as if a new career of preaching awaited him. Never, indeed, had a Sunday pa.s.sed, since our union, on which he had not given his divine message from the pulpit; never had he missed a full, arduous, wearisome day's work in his Master's vineyard. But I think Dr. Talmage now wrote and preached more industriously and vigorously than I had ever seen him before. His work had become so important an element in the character of American life, and in the estimate of the American people--I might add, in that of many foreign peoples, too--that his consciousness of it seemed to double and treble his powers; he was carried along on a great wave of enthusiasm; and in the joy of it all, we, with the thousands who bowed before his influence, looked naturally for a great many years of a life of such wide-spread usefulness. Over him had come a new magic of autumnal youth and strength that touched the inspirations of his mind and increased the optimism of his heart. No one could have suspected that the golden bowl was so soon to be broken; that the pitcher, still so full of the refreshing draughts of wisdom, was about to be crushed at the fountain. But so it was to be.
Invigorated by his delightful foreign trip, Dr. Talmage now resumed his labours with happy heart and effervescing zeal. He used to say: "I don't care how old a man gets to be, he never ought to be over eighteen years of age." And he seemed now to be a living realisation of his words. He had given up his regular pastorate at the First Presbyterian Church in Washington, that he might devote himself to broader responsibilities, which seemed to have fallen upon him because of his world-wide reputation. I cannot forbear quoting here--as it reveals so much the character of the man--a portion of his farewell letter, the mode he took of giving his parting salutation:
"The world is full of farewells, and one of the hardest words to utter is goodby. What glorious Sabbaths we have had together! What holy communions! What thronged a.s.semblages! Forever and forever we will remember them.... And now in parting I thank you for your kindness to me and mine. I have been permitted, Sabbath by Sabbath, to confront, with the tremendous truths of the Gospel, as genial and lovely, and cultivated and n.o.ble people as I ever knew, and it is a sadness to part with them.... May the richest blessing of G.o.d abide with you! May your sons and daughters be the sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty! And may we all meet in the heavenly realms to recount the divine mercies which have accompanied us all the way, and to celebrate, world without end, the grace that enabled us to conquer! And now I give you a tender, a hearty, a loving, a Christian goodby.
"T. DEWITT TALMAGE."
Apart from his active literary and editorial work, he was now to devote himself to sermons and lectures which should have for audience the whole country. As a consequence, on re-entering his study after his long absence, he found acc.u.mulated on his desk an immense number of invitations to preach, applications from all parts of the land. He smiled, and expressed more than once his conviction that G.o.d's Providence had marked out his way for him, and here was direct proof of His divine call and His fatherly love.
At a monster meeting in New York this year Dr. Talmage revived national interest in his presence and his Gospel. Ten thousand people crowded to the Academy of Music to hear his words of encouragement and hope. It was the twentieth anniversary of the Bowery Mission, of which Dr. Talmage was one of the founders. "This century," he said in part, "is to witness a great revival of religion. Cities are to be redeemed. Official authority can do much, but nothing can take the place of the Gospel of G.o.d.... No man goes deliberately into sin; he gets aboard the great accommodation train of Temptation, a.s.sured that it will stop at the depot of Prudence, or anywhere else he desires, to let him off. The conductor cries: 'All aboard' and off he goes. The train goes faster and faster, and presently he wants to get off. 'Stop'! he calls to the conductor; but that official cries back: 'This is the fast express and does not stop until it reaches the Grand Central Station of Smashupton.'" The sinner can be raised up, he insists. "The Bible says G.o.d will forgive 490 times. At your first cry He will bend down from his throne to the depths of your degradation. Put your face to the sunrise."
Faith in G.o.d was his armour; his shield was hope; his amulet was charity. He harnessed the events of the world to his chariot of inspiration, and sped on his way as in earlier years. He had become a foremost preacher of the Gospel because he preached under the spell of evangelical impulse, under the control of that remarkable faith which comes with the transformation of all converted men or women. The stillness of the vast crowds that stood about the church doors when he addressed them briefly in the open air after services was a tribute to the spell he cast over them by the miracle of that converting grace. He was quite unconscious of the attention he attracted outside the pulpit, on the street, in the trains. His celebrity was not the consequence of his endeavours to obtain it, nor was it won, as some declared, by studied dramatic effects; it was the result of his moments of inspiration, combined with continual and almost superhuman mental labour--labour that was a fountain of perennial delight to him, but none the less labour.
If "Genius is infinite patience," as a French writer said, Dr. Talmage possessed it in an eminent degree. Every sermon he ever wrote was an output of his full energies, his whole heart and mind; and while dictating his sermons in his study, he preached them before an imaginary audience, so earnest was his desire to reach the hearts of his hearers and produce upon them a lasting influence. His sermons were born not of the crowd, but for the crowd, in deep religious fervour and conviction.
His lectures, incisive and far-reaching as they were in their conceptions and in their moral and social effects, were not so impressive as his sermons, with their undertone of divine inspiration.
In accord with an invitation sent to us in Paris, from the Governor of Pennsylvania, we went to Harrisburg as the guests at the Executive Mansion, where a dinner and reception were given Dr. Talmage in honour of his return from abroad. During this dinner, the Rev. Dr. John Wesley Hill, then pastor of the church in Harrisburg in which Dr. Talmage preached, told us of a rare autograph letter of Lincoln, which he owned.
It was his wish that Dr. Talmage should have it in his house, where he thought more people would see it. The next day, Dr. Hill sent this letter to us:--
"GENTLEMEN,--In response to your address, allow me to attest the accuracy of its historical statements; indorse the sentiments it expresses; and thank you, in the nation's name, for the sure promise it gives.
"n.o.bly sustained as the government has been by all the churches, I would utter nothing which might, in the least, appear invidious against any. Yet, without this, it may fairly be said that the Methodist Episcopal Church, not less devoted than the best, is, by its greater numbers, the most important of all. It, is no fault in others that the Methodist Church sends more soldiers to the field, more nurses to the hospitals, and more prayers to Heaven than any.
G.o.d bless the Methodist Church--bless all the churches--and blessed be G.o.d, Who, in this our great trial, giveth us the churches.
"A. LINCOLN.
"May 18th, 1864."