ms 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 accumulated 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 God'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
God.... No man goes deliberately into sin; he gets aboard the great
accommodation train of Temptation, assured 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
God 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 God 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 br