Beautiful Thoughts

      Thomas De Witt Talmage was an American Presbyterian preacher, born at Bound Brook, New Jersey; his older brother was noted China missionary John Van Nest Talmage. He was educated at the University of the City of New York (now New York University) and at the Reformed Dutch Theological Seminary at New Brunswick, New Jersey, from which he was graduated in 1856.

      Immediately afterwards, he became pastor of a Reformed church at Belleville, New Jersey. In 1859 he removed to Syracuse, New York; in 1862 to Philadelphia, where he was pastor of the Second Reformed Dutch Church; and in 1869 to the Central Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn, where a large building known as the Tabernacle was erected for him in 1870.

      In 1872, this building was burned down. A larger one, holding 5000 persons, was built in 1873, but even this could not contain the crowds attracted by his eloquence and sensationalism. In 1889 this church also burned to the ground, only to be succeeded by another and larger one, which in its turn was burned in 1894. Shortly afterwards he removed to Washington, D.C., where from 1895 to 1899 he was the associate pastor, with Dr Byron Sunderland (d. 1901), of the First Presbyterian Church.

      He served as a chaplain for the Union Army during the American Civil War.

      During the last years of his life, Dr. Talmage ceased preaching and devoted himself to editing, writing, and lecturing. At different periods he was editor of the Christian at Work (1873-76), New York; the Advance (1877-79), Chicago; Frank Leslie's Sunday Magazine (1879-89), New York; and the Christian Herald (1890-1902), New York. For years his sermons were published regularly in more than 3,000 journals, reaching, it is said, 25,000,000 readers.

      His New Tabernacle Sermons presented here, were delivered in the Brooklyn Tabernacle, and first published in 1886.