The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1888-06-15
TABERNACLE SERVICES.
REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE,S sum
DAY MORNING DISCOURSE.

AntediIuvian Longevity, but VIII Greatly
Lengthen Our Lives.
BROOKLYN, June 10-At the Tabernacle
this morning, after expounding some pas
sages of Scripture In regard to the diet Of
Daniel and his abstemious habits, the Rev.
I. De Witt Talmage, d. D., gave out the
hymn beginning:
Glory to God on high,
Let heaven and earth reply.
He announced as the subject of his sermon:
"Does Religion Prolong LITER and preached
from the text found in Ps. xci, Is: "With
long life will | satisfy him" Following Is
the discourse in full:
Through the mistake Of its friends religion
has been chiefly associated with sick beds
and grayeyards. The whole subject to many
people is odorous with chlorine and carbolic
acid. There are people who cannot pro-
nounce the word religion without hearing in
it the clipping chisel of the tombstone cutter.
1t is high time that this thing were changed
and that religion, instead Of being repre-
sented as q hearse to carry out the dead,
should be represented as q chariot in which
the living are to triumph.
Religion, so far from subtracting from
ones vitality, is a glorious addition It is
sanatiye, curative, hygienic. It Is good for
the eyes, good for the ears, good for the
spleen, good for the digestion, good for the
nerves, good for the muscles. When David,
in another part Of the Psalms, prays that re-
ligion may be dominant he does not speak of
it as a mild sickness, or an emaciation, or an
attack of moral and spiritual cramp; he
speaks Of it as ''the saving health of all ma
tions;;" 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 i'm
prove 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
five people one hundred and thirty-fve years
old. So far down as the Sixteenth century,
Peter Tartan died at one hundred and
eighty-fiv years Of age. do not say that
religion will ever take the race back to ante
diluvian longevity, but I do say the length
Of human life viii be greatly improved.
1t is said in Isaiah: 1.-THE child shall die q
hundred years old" Now, II according to
Scripture the child is to be 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 bond
age for centuries. Give them a chance and
they develop Frederick Douglass or Tous-
saint L'Ouverture And If the white race
shall be brought from under the serfdom of
sin, what shall be the body3 What shall be
the soula 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 ALT
My design is to show that practical re-
hgion is the friend Of long life. I prove it,
first, from the fact that it mahes tho care OF
our health q positive Christian duty.
Whether we shall keep early or late hours,
whether we shall take food digestible or indi-
gestible, whether there shall be thorough or
incomplete mastication, are questions very
often deferred to the realm 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 its affairs or
mar its walls or crumble its pillars is q God
defying sacrilege"
He sees Gods caligraphy 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; $50 pounds of
blood rushing through the heart every hour,
the heart In twenty-four hours beating 100,-
600 times, during the twenty -four hours
overcoming resistances amounting to 224,-
0O0, 900 pounds of weight, during the same
time the lungs taking in fifty-seven hogs
heads of air, and all this mechanism not
more mighty than delicate and easily dis
turbed and demolished.
The Christian man says to himself: "If I
hurt my nerves, if hurt my brain, II hurt
any of my physical faculties insult God and
call for dire retribution." Why did God tell
the Levites not to offer to him in sacrifice
animals imperfect and diseasedi 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 irregular or gluttonous
eating ruins his health Is not Offering to God
such a sacrifice Why did Paul write for his
cloak at Troasa Why should such q great
man as Paul be anxious about thing so In
significant as an overcoati 1t was because
he knew that with pneumonia and rheuma-
tism he would not be worth half as much to
God and the church as with respiration easy
and foot free.
An intelligent Christian man would con-
slider it an absurdity to kneel down at night
and pray and ask Gods protection while at
Al. L.. A. 4
bed room tight shut against fresh air. He
would just as soon think of going out on the
bridge between New York and Brooklyn,
leaping of and then praying to God to keep
him from getting hurt Just as long as you
defer this whole subject Of physical health to
the realm Of whimsicality or to the pastry
cook or to the butcher or to the baker or to
the apothecary or to the clothier, you are not
acting like a Christian. Take care Of all
your physical forces-nervous, muscular,
bone, brain, cellular tissue-for all you must
be brought to Judgment.
Smoking your nervous system into fdgets,
burning out the coating Of your stomach
with wine logwooded and strychnined,. walk
ing with thin shoes to make your feet look
delicate, pinched at the waist until you are
well nigh cut In two, and neither part worth
anything, grooming about sick headache and
palpitation of the heart, which you think
came from God, when they came from your
own folly.
What right has any man or woman to de-
face the temple of the Holy Ghosti What Is
the cart Why, it is the whispering gallery
of the human soul What is the eyei It is
the observatory God constructed, its tele-
scope sweeping the heavens What is the
handi An instrument 30 wonderful that
when the Earl Of Bridgewater bequeathed In
his will &C, 900 for treatises to be written on
the wisdom, power and goodness Of God,
Sir Charles Bell, the great English anat-
omist and surgeon, found his great
est illustration in the construction OF the
human hand. devoting his whole book to that
subject. So wonderful are these bodies that
God names his own attributes after different
parts Of them. His omniscience- is &c l's
eye. His omnipresence-i is Gods ear. His
omnipotence-it is Gods arm. The uphol.
stery Of the midnight heavens-it is the work
Of Gods fingers. His life giving power-it
Is the breath Of the Almighty His dominion
-'the government shall be upon his Shout
der" A body 30 divinely honored and 50
divinely constructed, let us be careful not ia
abuse &c.
When IL becomes Christian duty to take
care of our health, is not the whole tendency
toward longevity If toss my watch about
recklessly and drop IL on the pavement and
wind 1t up any time Of day or night hap
pen to think Of IL, and often let it run down,
while you are careful with your watch and
never abuse 1t and wind Il up Just at the
same hour every night and put It in place
where 1t win not suffer from the violent
changes Of atmosphere, which watch will last
the longeri Common sense answers. Now
the human body Is Gods watch. You see
the hands Of the watch, you see the face Of
the watch; but the beating Of the heart Is
the ticking Of the watch. Oh, be careful
and do not let 10 run DOWN.