In connection with all this we must mention another name—­the name of one very dear to Dr. Talmage, and of one to whom he was very dear.  They were one in heart and soul about this.  We refer to the Rev. Dr. Douglas, of the English Presbyterian Mission.  They stood side by side during all their work in Amoy.

Dr. Talmage was by a good many years the predecessor in the field.  They were both great men, men of very different temperament, and yet united.  Not on this point, but on many another, they failed to see eye to eye, but they were always united in heart and aim.  True and lasting union can only exist where free play is given to distinct individualities.

And so it has always been with this union, the first, I believe, between Presbyterian Churches in any mission field.  And when the history of the Amoy Mission comes to be written, these two men will have a leading place in it; for to them more than to any others do we owe almost all that is distinctive there in union and in methods of work.

And when our beloved father Talmage passed from earth to heaven, what thankfulness must have filled his heart.  In the night of his first years in China there were labor and toil, but there was no fruit for him.  The dawn came and the first converts of his own Mission were gathered in.  When he went to rest, there was a native church; there were native pastors; orderly church courts; a well equipped theological college, the common property of the two Missions; successful medical missionary work, woman’s work in all its branches, and a native church covering a more extensive region than he had in the early days dreamt of.  And there was another honored Mission in Amoy—­that of the London Missionary Society, whose operations have been followed by abundant and singular success.  To this Mission he was warmly attached; and he never, so far as we can remember, ceased to show the deepest interest in its work, and the heartiest rejoicing at its success.

And now he has gone, the last, we may say, of the men who began the work of the Presbyterian Mission of Christ in China; but ere he passed away, he knew that men of God were still there with the old enthusiasm and the old appetite for solid and substantial work.

We cannot part with him now without one fond and lingering look behind.  Burns, Sandeman, Doty, Douglas, and Talmage; what a galaxy these early pioneers in Amoy were.  Few churches have had such gifts from God, few fields more devoted, whole-hearted missionaries.  It was a privilege to know them, to work with them, to learn at their feet, unworthy though some of us may be as their successors.

May the Lord of the Harvest rouse His own Church by their memories to greater energy and self denial in the spread of His Kingdom.

Their memories will never die in China.  Those who have lately visited Amoy tell us that they who knew them among the Chinese Christians speak lovingly and fondly of those early heroes.  And they will tell their children what they were and what they did, and so generation after generation will hear the story, and find how true it is that workers die, but their work never dies.  “Their works do follow them.”