almost always found some Chinese Christians there.  He was the great referee, to whom they carried home difficulties and family trials, assured that his sympathy and advice would never be denied them.  This endeared him to them in an extraordinary manner.  We never on such occasions found a trace of impatience with him.  What would have annoyed others did not seem to annoy him, and the consequence was that the whole church loved him.  There was an inexhaustible well of tenderness in the man’s nature, and it was sweetened by the grace of God in his heart.

We sometimes thought he erred by excess in this particular.  He was unwilling to think anything but good of them, and was thus apt to be influenced too much by designing and astute Chinamen.  Often we have heard it said, “Well, if you won’t listen to us, Dr. Talmage will.”  But, looking back to-day over it all, if it was a fault, it was one that leant to virtue’s side.  He was wonderfully unsuspicious:  and so far as his fellow men were concerned, Chinese or Westerns, the mental process which he almost invariably employed was to try to find out what good there was in a man.  And now one loves him all the more for such a Christlike spirit.

Dr. Talmage was thoroughly acquainted with the spoken language of Amoy.  Few men, if any, had a more extensive knowledge of its vocables.  He spoke idiomatically and beautifully as the Chinese themselves spoke, and not as he thought they should speak.  There was no slipshod work with him in this particular.  Here was the indispensable furnishing and he must get it.  And he did get it in no average measure.  This was the prime requisite, and through no other avenue could he get really and honestly to work.  There is no royal road to the acquisition of the Chinese language.  It is only by dint of hard, plodding, and persevering study one can acquire an adequate acquaintance with it.

And till the last he never gave up his study of it.  He was not satisfied, and no true missionary ever will be satisfied with such a smattering of knowledge as may enable him to proclaim a few Christian doctrines.  Such superficiality was not his aim or end.  And when he first acquired Chinese, it was more difficult to do so.  There were no aids in the way of dictionaries or vocabularies.

It may be his knowledge of the language was all the more accurate on this account.  He got it from the fountain-head, and not through foreign sources.  He was thus qualified to take a prominent place in all the varied work of a mission—­in translation, in revision, and in hymnology—­departments as important and as influential for attaining the end in view as any other possible department in the Mission.

As a preacher to the Chinese he was unrivaled.  The people hung on his lips and never seemed to lose a word.  He was in this respect a model to every one of us younger men.

The ideal of the church in China which he had set before him, the goal he desired to reach, was a native, self-governing, self-supporting, and self-propagating church.  This is now axiomatic.