denied them. This endeared him
to them in an extraordinary manner. We never on such occasions found a
trace of impatience with him. What would have annoyed others did not seem
to annoy him, and the consequence was that the whole church loved him.
There was an inexhaustible well of tenderness in the man's nature, and it
was sweetened by the grace of God in his heart.

We sometimes thought he erred by excess in this particular. He was
unwilling to think anything but good of them, and was thus apt to be
influenced too much by designing and astute Chinamen. Often we have heard
it said, "Well, if you won't listen to us, Dr. Talmage will." But, looking
back to-day over it all, if it was a fault, it was one that leant to
virtue's side. He was wonderfully unsuspicious: and so far as his fellow
men were concerned, Chinese or Westerns, the mental process which he almost
invariably employed was to try to find out what good there was in a man.
And now one loves him all the more for such a Christlike spirit.

Dr. Talmage was thoroughly acquainted with the spoken language of Amoy.
Few men, if any, had a more extensive knowledge of its vocables. He spoke
idiomatically and beautifully as the Chinese themselves spoke, and not as
he thought they should speak. There was no slipshod work with him in this
particular. Here was the indispensable furnishing and he must get it. And
he did get it in no average measure. This was the prime requisite, and
through no other avenue could he get really and honestly to work. There is
no royal road to the acquisition of the Chinese language. It is only by
dint of hard, plodding, and persevering study one can acquire an adequate
acquaintance with it.

And till the last he never gave up his study of it. He was not satisfied,
and no true missionary ever will be satisfied with such a smattering of
knowledge as may enable him to proclaim a few Christian doctrines. Such
superficiality was not his aim or end. And when he first acquired Chinese,
it was more difficult to do so. There were no aids in the way of
dictionaries or vocabularies.

It may be his knowledge of the language was all the more accurate on this
account. He got it from the fountain-head, and not through foreign
sources. He was thus qualified to take a prominent place in all the
varied work of a mission--in translation, in revision, and in
hymnology--departments as important and as influential for attaining the
end in view as any other possib