Excerpt from The High Crime of Not Insuring: A Sermon, Preached at the Brooklyn Tabernacle, February 25th, 1877
These were the words of Joseph, the President of the first Life Insurance Company that the world ever saw. Pharaoh had a dream that distracted him. He thought he stood on the banks of the river Nile, and saw coming up out of the river, seven fat, sleek, glossy cows, and they began to browse in the thick grass. Nothing frightful about that. But after them, coming up out of the same river, he saw seven cows that were gaunt and starved, and the worst looking cows that had ever been seen in the land, and in the ferocity of hunger they devoured their seven fat predecessors. Pharaoh the king sent for Joseph to decipher these midnight hieroglyphics. Joseph made short work of it and intimated the seven fat cows that came out of the river are seven years with plenty to eat the seven emaciated cows that followed them, are seven years with nothing to eat; now, said, ]oseph, let us take one fifth of the corn crop of the seven prosperous years, and keep it as a provision for the seven years in which there shall be no corn crop. The king took the counsel and appointed Joseph, because of his integrity and.
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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.
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