Thomas De Witt, the youngest son, still ministers to the largest church in
Protestant Christendom. What a river of blessing has flowed from that
humble, cottage well-spring. The wilderness and the parched land have been
made glad by it. The desert has been made to rejoice and blossom as the
rose. The courses thereof have gone out into all the earth, and the tossing
of its waves have been heard to the end of the world.

In November, 1865, Dr. T. De Witt Talmage preached a sermon on "The Beauty
of Old Age"[*] from the words in Eccles. xii. 5, "The Almond Tree shall
flourish." It was commemorative of his father, David T. Talmage. He says:
"I have stood, for the last few days, as under the power of an enchantment.
Last Friday-a-week, at eighty-three years of age, my father exchanged earth
for heaven. The wheat was ripe, and it has been harvested. No painter's
pencil or poet's rhythm could describe that magnificent sun setting. It was
no hurricane blast let loose; but a gale from heaven, that drove into the
dust the blossoms of that almond tree.

[Footnote *: This sermon gives so graphic and tender a portrayal of the
father of one of America's most distinguished ministerial families, that
the author feels justified in making so lengthy an extract.]

"There are lessons for me to learn, and also for you, for many of you knew
him. The child of his old age, I come to-night to pay an humble tribute to
him, who, in the hour of my birth, took me into his watchful care, and
whose parental faithfulness, combined with that of my mother, was the means
of bringing my erring feet to the cross, and kindling in my soul
anticipations of immortal blessedness. If I failed to speak, methinks the
old family Bible, that I brought home with me, would rebuke my silence, and
the very walls of my youthful home would tell the story of my ingratitude.
I must speak, though it be with broken utterance, and in terms which seem