That man who first coined the phrase, "Nothing succeeds
like success," had a great head. Talmage is emphatically a
success,--viewed from a worldly point of view. He attracts
the largest audiences of any American preacher; his
sermons are more extensively printed, more eagerly read
than those of any other divine. He is regarded by the
public as the greatest of modern preachers, and he
evidently thinks this verdict a righteous one. Why this is so,
I am at a loss to determine. I have read his sermons and
writings with unusual care, hoping thereby to discover in
what particular he towers like Saul above his brethren,--
wherein he is greater than the thousands of obscure pulpit-
pounders who do battle with the devil for a few dollars and
a destructive donation party per year; but so far I have
signally failed. I have yet to see in print a single sermon by
the so-called "great Talmage" remarkable for wit, wisdom
or eloquence; or a single scrap from his pen that might not
have been written by a sophomore or a young reporter.
I have before me, while I write, one of his latest oratorical
efforts, entitled "Bricks Without Straw." It was delivered to
one of the largest audiences that ever crowded into the
great tabernacle, is considerably above the Talmagian
average, was evidently regarded as one of his "ablest
efforts," for the great daily in which I find it prefaces it with
a "three-story head," a short biographical sketch and a
portrait of the speaker making an evident effort to look
wise. Yet such a sermon delivered before a Texas
congregation by a fledgling D.D. seeking a "call" would
provoke supercilious smiles on the part of those
people who considered it their painful duty to remain
awake. At the close of the services the good deacons
would probably feel called upon to take the young man out
behind the church and give him a little fatherly advice, the
burthen of which would be to become an auctioneer or
seek a situation as "spouter" for a snake side-show.
Had "Bricks Without Straw" been written as a "Sunday
special" by a horse-editor of any daily paper in Texas, the
managing editor would have chucked it into the waste-
basket and advised the young man that journalism was not
his forte. It is a rambling fragmentary piece of mental
hodge-podge, in which scraps of school book Egyptology,
garbled Bible stories, false political economy and fragments
of misapplied history tumble over each other like specters
in a delirium. It is just such a discourse as one might
expect from the lips of a female lieutenant in the Salvation
Army who possessed a vivid imagination, a smattering of
learning and a voluble tongue, but little judgment. The only
original information I can find in the discourse is to the
effect that when Joseph was a bare-legged little Hebrew,
making mud-pies in the land of his forefathers, his daddy
called him "Joe"; that the Bible refers to Egypt and
Egyptians just "two hundred and eighty-nine times," and
that "Egypt is our great-grandmother."
He goes out of his way to denounce as "lunatics" those
who would place the American railways and telegraphs
under governmental control. He is quite sure that the
logical effect of such a proceeding would be the revival in
free America of the old Egyptian tyranny. The analogy
between a tyrant enslaving his subjects by means of a
monopoly of the food supply, and a free people managing a
great property for their own advantage, could only be traced
by a Talmagian head.
During the few months that Mr. Talmage was pottering
about in the land of the erstwhile Pharaohs, examining
mummified cats and drawing a fat salary for unrendered
services, he evidently forgot that in his own, his native land,
the people "rule the roost"; that the government is but their
creature and has to dance to music of their making. If the
distinguished gentleman had spent his vacation in the
hayloft in close communion with a copy of the constitution
of the United States and a primary work on political
economy, instead of gadding from the pyramids to the
Acropolis hunting for small pegs upon which to hang large
theories, perhaps he would be able to occasionally say
something sensible.
Of course, in sloshing around over so wide a field, Mr.
Talmage gave his hearers his truly valuable opinion of
Mohammedanism. He admitted that it is a religion of
cleanliness, sobriety and devotion; but the fact that its
founder had four wives caused him to sweat in agony.
Polygamy, according to Mr. Talmage, "blights everything it
touches." Those who practice it are, he is quite sure, the
enemies of womankind. Is it not a trifle strange that from
so foul a root should spring such a celestial plant as the
Christian religion? that from the loins of a polygamous
people should come an immaculate Christ? How can we
mention Abraham, Isaac and Jacob without a curse, or
think of a God whose teachings they followed, without
horror--unless indeed we take issue with the public and
vote Mr. Talmage an ass of the longest-eared variety.
Mr. Talmage is quite sure that God was on the side of the
allies at the Battle of Waterloo; that he was on the side of
the Russians during the French invasion. Mr. Talmage
does not take it upon himself to explain, however, how the
Deity chanced to be on the other side at Marengo and
Austerlitz! No wonder that war is a risky business, if
the God of battle changes his allegiance so erratically and
without apparent provocation! Mr. Talmage should advise
the government to cease expending money for ironclads
and coast fortifications. In case of a foreign complication it
were "all day with us" if the Autocrat of the Universe were
swinging a battle-ax against us; while if we chanced to have
him with us, we could send Baby McKee out with the
jawbone of a hen, and put the armies of the world to
shame!
Mr. Talmage should retire to some secluded spot and make
a careful analysis of his sermons before firing them out to
the press. They may sound all right in the big tabernacle,
where a great volume of noise is the chief desideratum; but
they make very poor reading. Like a flapjack, they may
tickle the palate when served hot and with plenty of "sop";
but when allowed to grow cold are stale, flat and
unprofitable.
Mr. Talmage is troubled with a diarrhoea of words and
should take something for it. Perhaps the best possible
prescription would be a long rest,--of a couple of centuries
or so. How in God's name the American people ever
became afflicted with the idea that he is a great man, is a
riddle which might make Oedipus cudgel his wits in vain.
He is not even a skillful pretender, shining like the moon, by
borrowed light,--for he does not shine at all. His sentences
are neither picturesque, dramatic nor wise. His so-called
"sermons" are but fragmentary and usually ignorant
allusions to things in general. He seldom or never
encroaches upon the realms of science and philosophy,
although he frequently attempts it, and evidently imagines
that he is succeeding admirably, when he is but sloshing
around, like a drunken comet that is chiefly tail, in inane
limboes.
I can find no other explanation of Mr. Talmage's
distinction than that, like Elliott F. Shepard, he can be
more kinds of a fool in a given time than any other man in
his profession. That were indeed distinction enough for one
man, well calculated to cause the world to stand agaze!
Notoriety and fame have, in this age, become synonymous
if not exactly the same. The world gauges greatness by
the volume of sound which the aspirant for immortal honors
succeeds in setting afloat, little caring whether it be such
celestial harp-music as caused Thebe's walls to rise, or the
discordant bray of the ram's horn which made Jericho's to
fall, and Mr. Talmage is emphatically a noise-producer.
From the lecherous, but learned and logical Beecher to the
gabbling inanity now doing the drum-major act, is a long
stride.
* * *
NUDE ART AT CHICAGO.
Now the very Old Nick is to pay at the World's Fair, and
an exasperating stringency in the money market. The great
"uncultured West" is flocking to Chicago to see the show,
and is seeing more than it bargained for. Its modest cheek
has been set aflame by the exuberant display of the nude
in art. And the West is kicking, kicking with both feet,
kicking like a bay steer who has a kick coming and knows
how to recalcitrate. The culchawed East and blase
Yewrup look on with mild astonishment and wondah what
ails the bawbarians, doncher know.
We learn from our Chicago correspondent that the great
buildings are liberally adorned with "figures of nude men of
heroic size, not a detail of which has escaped the loving
care of the fin de siecle sculptors. Elsewhere the
examples of the nude represent both sexes." Yet the East
wonders that the West is shocked,--cannot understand why
"wives drag their husbands away and young ladies leave
the building with faces ablaze with indignation!" Our
correspondent volunteers the information that "a much
severer test of the patience of the Western people will
come when the art palace is opened"; also that "the
treatment the Western people are getting is drastic and
cruel, but it will work wonders in cultivating and refining
them."
We beg leave to dissent from the conclusion. We hardly
think that any of our readers will accuse us of prudery. We
are willing to concede special privileges to art. Its province
is to portray the beautiful, and the most beautiful thing on
all God's earth is a perfect female form. The painter or
sculptor who loves his art may be permitted to reproduce in
modest pose a naked female figure; but he should not be
allowed to force it upon the attention of a mixed multitude.
Let him place it where it will only be seen by those who
seek it. A man may take his mother, wife,--even his
sweetheart to look upon such work of art, and they may be
better, purer, nobler for having worshiped at the shrine of
beauty; but to compel them to stand before it with a mixed
multitude to most of whom it suggests but grossest
sensuality, is a brutal crime against modesty. So much for
the female nude.
What man would take a woman near and dear to him to
look upon a nude male statue or painting,--"not a detail of
which has escaped the loving care" of the artist? Certainly
few Western or Southern men would do so! Worship of the
beautiful may pardon the nude female figure, but the nude
male figure never. Hercules nude is but an animal, and
Apollo a nightmare. To place nude male figures
indiscriminately about the great Fair buildings, where they
must be seen by modest maids, whether they will or no,
and that while insolent strangers enjoy their confusion, is
the very apotheosis of brutality.
The idea that such an outrage upon divine modesty will
"cultivate and refine" people sounds like one of
Satan's satires. We honor the "uncultured West" for
making a heroic kick, and trust that it will keep on
recalcitrating until every unclean statue forced upon its
attention in the name of art is forever disfigured. The
protest of the West proves that its mind is still pure,--that it
has not yet reached that plane of "culture" where modesty
perishes in the frosts of formalism.
The liberty accorded art has degenerated into license. The
beautiful is no longer sought, but the bizarre. It is not the
massy shoulders of Hercules, the rounded arm of Juno, the
beautiful bust of Hebe, the godlike pose of Apollo or the
shapely limb of Aphrodite that painter and sculptor seek to
reproduce; it is an "effect" similar to that of Boccaccio or a
fragrant French novel. It is not against the true in art that
the West is rebelling, but against the vulgar.
* * *
"THERE'S ONE COMES AFTER."