FORTY YEARS IN SOUTH CHINA

The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D.

by

Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
Missionary of the American Reformed (Dutch) Church, at Amoy, China

1894




INTRODUCTION.


BY REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

Too near was I to the subject of this biography to write an impartial
introduction. When John Van Nest Talmage went, my last brother went.
Stunned until I staggered through the corridors of the hotel in London,
England, when the news came that John was dead. If I should say all that I
felt I would declare that since Paul the great apostle to the Gentiles, a
more faithful or consecrated man has not lifted his voice in the dark
places of heathenism. I said it while he was alive, and might as well say
it now that he is dead. "He was the hero of our family." He did not go to
a far-off land to preach because people in America did not want to hear him
preach. At the time of his first going to China he had a call to succeed
Rev. Dr. Brodhead, of Brooklyn, the Chrysostom of the American pulpit, a