The Stark County Democrat. [volume] (Canton, Ohio) 1833-1912, 1882-08-17
HYGIENE.
Viewed From a Religious Stand
point.
A Plea in Favor of Healthy, Robust Re-
IlglOn the Road to Happiness and
t. Bllssful Future Life.
IT. Dewitt Talmage.l
SUBJECT: "HEALTHY RELIGION"

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will satisfy him."
Through the mistake Of its friends re-
igiOn has been chiefly associated with
sick beds and grave yards. The whole
subject to many people is OdOFOus with
chlorine and earbOlic acid. There are
people who cannot pronounce the word
religion without hearing in it the clip
ping ehisel of the tombstone cutter. 1t
is high time that this thing were
changed, and that religion, instead of
being represented as hearse to carry
out the dead, should be represented as a
chariot in which the living are to tri-
umph. Religion, so far from subtract
ing from ones vitality, is glorious ad-
ditiOn. 1t is sanative, curative, hygie-
mic. 1t is good for the eyes, good for the
ears, good for the spleen, good for the
the muscles. When David in another
part of the Psalms, prays that religion
may be dominant, he does not speak of
it as mild sickness, or an emaeiation,
OF an attack of moral and spiritual
cramp; he speaks of it as "the saving
health of all natiOns;" while God, in the
text, promises longevity to the piOus,
saying: with long life will | satisfy
him"
The fact is, that men and women die
too soon. 1t is high time that religion
Joined the hand of medical science in
attempting to improve human longevity.
Adam lived nine hundred and thirty
years; Methuselah lived nine hundred
and sixty-nine years. As late in the
history of the world as Vespasian there
were at one time in his empire fOrty-ive
people, one hundred and thirty-ive
years old. So far down as the sixteenth
century Peter Tartan died at one hun
dred and eighty-five years of age. | do
not say that religion will ever take the
race back to antediluvian longevity, but
do say the length Of human life will
be greatly improved. 1t is said in Isaiah
lXv. 20: The child shall die hundred
years old" Now, if according to Scrip
tuTe, the child is to be a hundred years
old, may not the men and women reach
to three hundred and four hundred and
five hundred? The fact is, that we are
mere dwarfs and skeletons compared
with some of the generations that are to
come. Take the African race. They
have been under bondage for centuries.
Give them chance, and they develop a
Frederick Douglass, or a TOussaint IOu-
venture. And If the white race shall be
brought out from under the lserfdOm of
sin, what shall be the body? What shall
be the soul? Religion has only just
touched our world. Give it full power
for few centuries, and who can tell
what will be the strength of man and
the beauty of woman and the longevity
Of all? ..
My design is to show that practical
religion is the friend of longevity, and
prove it, first, from the fact that it
makes the care of our physical health a
positive Christian duty. Whether we
shall keep early or late hours, whether
we shall take food digestible or indiges-
tible, whether there shall be thorough
or incomplete masticatiOn, are ques-
tiOns very often deferred to the realms
of whimsicality; but the Christian man
lifts this whole problem of health into
the accountable and the divine. He
says: God has given me this body, and
He has called it the temple of the Holy
Ghost, and to deface it's affairs or mar its
walls, or crumble its pillars, is God
defying sacrilege." He sees Gods CALI
graphy in every page-anatomical and
physiological. He says: "God has given
me wonderful body for noble purposes" /"
That arm with thirty two curious bones,
welded by forty-siX curious muscles
and all under the brains telegraphy;
three hundred and fifty pounds of blood
rushing through the heart every hOur-
the heart in twentyfOur hours beating
one hundred thousand times, during the
twenty-fOur hours overcoming resist
ances amounting to 224 100000 pounds
of weight, during the same time the
lungs taking in fifty-seven hOgsheads of
air, and all this mechanism not more
mighty and delicate and easily disturbed
and demolished The Christian man
says to himself: eff hurt my nerves, if
l hurt my brain, if l hurt any of my
physical faculties, insult God and call
for dire retributiOn." Why did God tell
the Levites not to offer Him in sacrifice
animals imperfect and diseased? He
meant to tell us in all the ages that we
are to offer to God our very best physical
condition, and man who, through ire
gular or gluttOnOus eating, ruins his
health is not offering to God such a
sacrifice. Why did Paul write for his
clock at TroasP Why should such a
great man as Paul be anxious about a
thing so insignificant as an overcoat
It was because he knew that with pneu-
monte and rheumatism he would not be
worth half as much to God and the
Church as with respiration easy and foot
free.
An intelligent Christian man wouId
consider it an absurdity to kneel down
at night and pray and ask Gods protec-
tion, while at the same time he kept the
windows of his bedroom tight shut
against fresh air. He would Just as
soon think of going out on the bridge
between New York aud Brooklyn, leap
Ing OH, and then praying to God to keep
hA hOh BobGAuk uurb. Ju5I as long rs
you defer this whole subject of physical
hSslth to the realm of whimsicality, OF
trs the pastry cook, or to the butcher, OF
to the apOthecary, or to the clothier, you
are not acting like a Christian. Take
care of all your physical lfOrces-nery-
Gus, muscular, bone, brain, cellular tfs-
sue-fOr all you must be brought to
judgment. Smoking your nervous sys-
tenn into fidgets; burning out the coat
ing of your stomach with wine, log
wooded and strychnined; walking with
cate; pinched at the waist until YOU are
nigh cut in two, and neither part worth
anything, groaning about sick-headache
and palpitations of the heart, which you
think came from God when they came
from your own fOllyI What right has
any man or woman to deface the temple
of the Holy GhOstp What is the ear E?
Why, it is the whispering gallery of the
human soul. What is the eye? 1t