The clarion. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1883-1888, 1884-06-04
rs LIFE WORTH LIv1EGr"
A SERMON BY DR.. TALMAGE.

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TExT-Lamentations iii.39: "Where
fore doth living man complain ?"
If we leave to evoIutionists, said DIR
Talmage, to guess where we came from
and to the theologians to prophesy wher'
We are going to, we have still left 70
consideration the fact that we are here
There may be doubts about where ths
river rises and about where it empties
but there can be no doubt about the
fact that we are sailing on it. So
wonder not that everybody is asking the
question, is life worth fying% Solo
mon, iR his unhappier moments, says il
is not. Vanity, vexation, no good, are
his estimate. He was polygamist, and
that sOured his disposition. One wife
will make man happy, more than one
will make him wretehed. But solomon
was converted from polygamy to mo-
nogamy, and the last line of his last book
leaves him on the mountain of spices.
But jeremiah, in my text, says life is
worth living. In book supposed to be
dirgeful and sepulchral, called "Lamen-
tations," he sets forth the fact that the
blessing of merely living is so grand and
exalted blessing that, though all mis-
fortunes and disasters were piled on a
man, he has no right to complain. The
author of our text breaks out in start
| ling intonation TO ask all the centuries
and ages of time,
"wHY SHOULD LIVING MAN conf
PLAIN?'
There is great diversity of opinion
now as well as in Olden times Here is
young man, light hair. blue eyes,
sound digestion, generous salary, popu
lar in society, affianced happily, on the
way to become partner in a CONNER
cial firm of which he is now an i'm
portant clerk. Ask him the question,
SIS life worth liYing?" and he will laugh
in your face at the question, saying,
Eyes, Yes; yesp' But here is a man who,
somewhere in the fOrties, has come to
the top of the hill and every step has
been a stumble and bruise He has
been cheated out of what money he
made. Those whom he trusted have
proved deserters. His nervous system
is out of tune and his appetite is poor,
and what he does eat is not assimilated.
Forty miles to the top of the hill of life
have been like ascending the Matterhorn,
and he has yet to travel forty miles
down again to the foot of the hill. De-
scent is always more dangerous than as
cent. Ask him whether life is worth |
living, and he drawls ont a shivering, |
lugubrious and appalling, "No, no; nop'
Indeed, sometimes you will find a man |
Oscillating between opinions on this sub
ject. As his circumstances change his |
theories change. If of a very mercurial
temperament his opinion about the
worth or worthlessness of life may de- |
pend upon the direction of the wind. If
the wind blow from the northwest he
will say Eyes" if the wind blow from
the northeast he will say "no." How,
then, are we to decide? Suppose we
gather the human race in great con-
ventinn in the Eastern or Western Hem
isphere and put the question to a vote,
that all who believe in the
say "aye," and all who be-
lieve in the negative say 'no." While
hundreds of thousands will vote in the
more millions would vote in
the negative, and, because of the fact
that more people are in annoyance and
trouble than in unaIloyed prosperity,
the noes would have it.
The answer give to-day is different
from either answers, and | think it will
itself to all who hear me as
the right answer. If you ask me whether
life is worth living, | answer with all
the emphasis of body, mind aud soul:
II all depends upon
THE KIND OF LIFE you LIVE.
First, life that sets out with the one
idea of money getting never pays, for the
reason that you will never get enough to
satisfy you. The poorest men are those
who have a million dollars and the next
poorest are those who have a half mil
lion. There is not a scissors-grinder on
the streets of New York or Brooklyn
that is so absorbingly anxious to make
money as those men who have for many
years piled it up in stocks or govern
ment securities, or tenement houses or
city blocks. You ought to see them
Jump when the fire-bell rings. You
ought to see their excitement when the
Marine Bank explodes. Yon ought to
scrutinize their feelings when reforma
ton in the tariff is proposed. Their
nerves tremble like harp-strings, but
without any music III IH0 NiDTdtlOH.
They read the morning report of Wall
street doings with cOncernment that
threatens paralysis or appoplexy. More
probably they have private telegraph
in their house or telephone, through
which they catch every breath of change
in the money market. They are eaten
up with the disease of accumulation. It
gets into their heart, into their liver,
into their spleen, into their brain, into
their bones. Chemists have analyzed
the human body and found it to be
made up of so much lime and so much
magnesia and so much chloride of pot
tassium. If these financial behemoths
were aualyzed by some moral chemist
they would be found to be made up of
copper and gold and silver and zinc and
lead and coal and iron. That style of
life
Is NOT WORTH LIVING.
There are so many earthquakes in it.
There are so many agonies in it. There
ar. so many shipWrecks in it. There are