Lewisburg chronicle. [volume] (Lewisburg, Pa.) 1850-1859, 1854-07-21

the foul drainage Of ancestral continent
all gushing with fountains Of debi.itatin
and corrupting vices.
Then reflect, that as the number Of al
cestors doubles at each ascending remov
two parents, four grandparents, cigh
great grand parents, and so onward-ther
are, even at only the tenth degree, NOR
than thousand conduits of whose unite
streams each child is the receptacle; an
how swollen with the feculencc Of a!
transmissible malignities, both Of bod
and mind, must be his blood and brain
Why, then, should We wonder that al
our animal propensities are represented IL
our ethics ? that Mammon, has been th
Lycurgus of much of our civil polity
and that denial of the great law of Hu
man Brotherhood so often finds refuge anc
resting place in our popular theology p?
1t has been somewhat generally con
jectured, that the early generations hat
some method of computing time very diff
ferent from ours, and hence that the pa
triarchs from Adam and Noah, with on,
or two exceptions), did not, according t.
the literal record, live to the age Of be
tween 900 and 1000 years-afterward'
gradually tapering down to between loC
and 200 years, at the time of the Egyr
tian vassalage. But it is a strong, if moi
a conclusive argument in favor of litera
version, that, if the race had not beer
created with ten times more vital force
than it now possesses, its known violation
Of all the laws of health and life would
long ere this, have extinguished it alto
gether So rapidly had it ran down, that,
at the time of David-about halfway from
Adam to the present day-he spoke of the
average Of human life as only thrce-score
years and ten. Now, ask the Bills Of
Mortality and the Life Insurance Compa-
mics what its average is, and they will tell
you that in Europe and the United States,
it is but thirty years 1; and, in great cities,
but twenty years.
Awful and uuspeakable violations Of
Gods laws, have done this dreadful work
1t is the violation of the laws of Health
and life, l emphatically repeat, which
has cut down the years of man to this
contemplate brevity, and harrows those
years with pain which surround the era.
die with diseases that spring like wolve;
upon the infant at its birth, and which, in.
stead Of the olden days when no child was
dead born, brings such multitudes into the
world, who, though they may not be dead
born as to breathing, are so as to intellect
and heart A joy that had wings and
laughter, once inhabited every j,int and
vital organ of mans frame. Pain has
this festive domain, and turns
human breath into sigh,.
No other part of the organic world with
which We are acquainted, has suffered this
dire change. Under intelligent culture,
the vegetable world is constantly outgrow-
ing itself, in size, beauty, and richness
All animal natures thrive, strengthen, and
surpass the progeEitors of their stock, when
subjected to the law of their beiug. Man
alone, of all the earth, pales and dwarf'
and sckens begets children, the parti-
colored tissue of whose existence is the
woof of one disease woven into the warp
of another; transmits insanity, and gout,
and consumption, and scrofula; pre-creates
blindness, and deafmuteness, and those
human tunyi, the brainless idiots; spawns
polished imbecility through our cities,
which they, by their wealth, send to college,
to be converted into pillars of Church and
State. And why? Solely because man
will, break heavens laws. Because, for
the sake of money, or for pride, disease
will marry disease, and blood wed kindred
blood Because, when God commanded
Adam to rorA,, (that is, to take some form
of exercise in the garden, (that is, in the
open air, men will not exercise and Will
live in dwellings which add artificial poi
sons to natural ones, and then breathe the
yirulent compound. Popes and hlerarehs
send to Jordan to obtain "holy water" for
the baptism of their children, that they
may give their spirits igurative cleans
ing, but will not keep them physically
clean with the pure water at their door
and the royal sinner imports lie" CUBIC
yards Of "holy earth from Jerusalem, IN
which that body of his may be buried,
wherein sin has riotcd and wantoned
through all his life as though he thought
the Omiuscient could be cajoled into for
aetfulness of the difference between "holy
vater" or "holy earth" and the pure in
heart and the obedient in life.
But, besides defying all the laws of God
in regard to pure air, cleanliness, diet, eA-
ereise. and the selection of healthful occu-
nations and healthful sites for residences
besides these sins Of omission, how mum
berless ate the sins Of commission which
ve commit-sins which are expelllng all