Chiefly did he devote himself to the completion of a Character Colloquial Dictionary in the Amoy language, intended to be of special service to the Chinese Christian Church.  It was intended to facilitate the study of the Chinese Character, especially those Characters used in the Chinese Bible.  It was also calculated to promote the study of the Romanized Colloquial Version of the Scriptures as well as other Romanized Colloquial literature.

In the midst of multiplied duties and many distractions he had wrought on it for upwards of a score of years.  He was eager to make it thoroughly reliable.  He spared no pains to that end.  He always felt very much out of patience with any one who would give to the public an inaccurate book; and it was the desire to make his dictionary as accurate as possible that kept him from having it published some years since.

He consulted Chinese literary men.  He pored over Chinese dictionaries.  He brought it home with him, requiring, as he thought, still further revision, and his last labors were the completion of it with the valued assistance of the Rev. Daniel Rapalje, of the Amoy Mission.  It is now going through the press and will soon be at the service of missionaries and native brethren who have eagerly awaited its appearance for many years.

His strength gradually failed and on August 19, 1892, in his seventy-third year, he quietly breathed his last at Bound Brook, New Jersey.

The mortal tent loosened down and folded was laid away in the family plot near Somerville, New Jersey.  Most of his living, working years he had spent far away from the ancestral home.  It was God’s will that his dust should find a place next to the kindred dust of father and mother, sister and brother, in the peaceful God’s acre but a few miles from the old homestead.

Dr. Talmage left a wife, two daughters and three sons, and a goodly circle of relatives and friends to mourn his departure.  Mrs. Talmage has since returned to the Talmage Manse at Amoy and taken up afresh her chosen work in educating the ill-privileged and ignorant women of China.  The two daughters, Miss Katharine and Miss Mary, are rendering most faithful and efficient service, too, among China’s mothers and daughters.  Rev. David M. Talmage fills a pastorate with the Reformed Church of Westwood, New Jersey.  Mr. John Talmage is a rice merchant at New Orleans, Louisiana.  Rev. George E. Talmage ministers to the Lord’s people at Mott Haven, New York.

When the sun of Dr. Talmage’s life set, it was to the Chinese brethren at Amoy, like the setting of a great hope.  The venerable teacher had left them two years before, but he had not spoken a final farewell.  They and he looked for one more meeting on earth.  He was known to the whole Chinese Church in and about Amoy for a circuit of a hundred miles.  He sat at its cradle.  He watched its growth until within two years of the day when it went forth two bands united in one Synod with twenty organized, self-supporting churches, nineteen native pastors, upwards of two thousand communicants and six thousand adherents.