The Burning Of Talmage's Tabernacle

The Brooklyn tabernacle, in which Rev. T. DeWitt Talmage attained his notoriety, has burned to the ground for the third time. The flrst time the calamity occurred it was a quite gleeful affair, for Talmage was just approaching the crest of the wave of his first popularity, and his mental habits and methods of advertising showed him at once that nothing is quite so gooa an advertising medium as a good snug disaster that can be talked aboul with intense feeling for a long time. It gave Mr. Talmage the very opportunity to lengthen his cords and strengthen his stakes, and he went about the work of rebuilding as chipperly as if nothing more serious had happened that the of a pint of milk. The church burned again, and then these little sections of the day of judgment bekan to appear not so funny. The advertisement was good enough, but it was somewhat costly. Yet Bro. Talmage was in the height of his power, and everything was rebuilt on a much larger scale. But money did not come in for the payments on the materials and work, and flnancial troubles have been the continuous aceompaniments of the spiritual work of the tabernacle. The enterprise owed everybody that had any financial dicker with it, ineluding the workmen who had put into the building the sweat of their brows. The big creditors among the New York millionaires were amply secured, but the work-men, after waiting for weary months and years, were flnally made willing by stern necessity to promise with the man who gets as high as $1,000 a night for talking his peculiar talk at about 23 cents on the dollar. And now this third building, reared by defrauding the laborer of his wages, one of the sins which cry to heaven for judgment, has gone up in smoke. Talmage said that God did it, and why should anybody take the pains to controvert him? The best suggestion that can be made to the tabernacle people on the spur of the moment is that i.hty now go to work and build a ihurch in God's own way. The honest bui'ding and honest paylng for "a Httle church around the corner," would be a far more profltable investment than a million-dollar plant for worldly show and the personal glory oL a man, because It would be a plant which the Almighty WD'ild have no special interest in ila5t:-3y;n by a special