In the autumn of 1900, an anniversary of East Hampton, N.Y., was held, and the Doctor entered energetically and happily into the celebration, preaching in the little village church which had echoed to his voice in the early days of his ministry.  It was a far call backward over nearly five decades of his teeming life.  And he, whose magic style, whether of word or pen, had enchanted millions over the broad world—­how well he remembered the fears and misgivings that had accompanied those first efforts, with the warning of his late professors ringing in his ears:  “You must change your style, otherwise no pulpit will ever be open to you.”

Now he could look back over more than a quarter of a century during which his sermons had been published weekly; through syndicates they had been given to the world in 3,600 different papers, and reached, it was estimated, 30,000,000 people in the United States and other countries.  They were translated into most European and even into Asiatic languages.  His collected discourses were already printed in twenty volumes, while material remained for almost as many more.  His style, too, in spite of his “original eccentricities,” had attracted hundreds of thousands of readers to his books on miscellaneous subjects—­all written with a moral purpose.  Among a score of them I might mention:  From Manger to Throne; The Pathway of Life; Crumbs Swept Up; Every-day Religion; The Marriage Ring; Woman:  her Powers and Privileges.

Dr. Talmage edited several papers beginning with The Christian at Work; afterwards he took charge, successively, of the Advance, Frank Leslie’s Sunday Magazine, and finally The Christian Herald, of which he continued to be chief editor till the end of his life.  He spoke and wrote earnestly of the civilising and educational power of the press, and felt that in availing himself of it and thereby furnishing lessons of righteousness and good cheer to millions, he was multiplying beyond measure his short span of life and putting years into hours.  He said:  “My lecture tours seem but hand-shaking with the vast throngs whom I have been enabled to preach to through the press.”

His editorials were often wrought out in the highest style of literary art.  I am pleased to give the following estimate from an author who knew him well:  “As an editorial writer, Dr. Talmage was versatile and prolific, and his weekly contributions on an immense variety of topics would fill many volumes.  His writing was as entertaining and pungent as his preaching, and full of brilliant eccentricities—­’Talmagisms,’ as they were called.  He coined new words and invented new phrases.  If the topic was to his liking, the pen raced to keep time with the thought....  Still, with all this haste, nothing could exceed the scrupulous care he took with his finished manuscript.  He once wired from Cincinnati to his publisher in New York instructions to change a comma in his current sermon to a semicolon.  He had detected the error while reading proof on the train.”