The Pulaski citizen. [volume] (Pulaski, Tenn.) 1866-current, 1888-06-14
TABERNACLE SERVICES.
REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE'S SUM-
DAY MORNING DISCOURSE.

REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE'S SUM-
DAY MORNING DISCOURSE.
Religion Is Sanative, Curative, Hygfenic.
1t May Not Give Antediluvian Longevity
to the Human Race, but Will Greatly
Lengthen Cur Lives.
BROOKLYN, June 10.-At the Taber-
nacle this morning, after expounding
some passages of Scripture in regard to
the diet of Daniel and his abstemious
habits, the Rev. T. 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 Life2''
and preached from the text found in Ps
xci, 16: ''With long life will satisfy
him." Following is the discourse in
full:
Through the mistakes of its friends re-
igion has been chiefly associated with
sick beds and graveyards. The whole
subject to many people is odorous with
chlorine and carb0lic acid. There are
people who cannot pronounce the word
religion without hearing in it the clipping
chisel of the tombstone cutter. It is high
time chat this thing were changed and
that religion, instead of being represented
as hearse to carry out the dead, should
be represented as chariot in which the
living are to triumph.
al, Go ooxs
ones vitality, is a glorious addition. 1t
is sanative, curative, hygienic. 1t is
good for the eyes, good for the ears, good
for the spleen, good for the digestion,
good for the nerves, good for the muscle.
When David, in another part of the
Psalms, prays that religion may be DOM
inant he does not speak Of it as mild
sickness, or an emaciation, or an attack
of moral and spiritual cramp; he speaks
of it as ''the saving health of all ma
tons" while God, in the text, promises
longevity to the pious, saying: "With
long life will I 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 his
tory of the world as Vespasian, there
were at one time in his empire forty five
people one hundred and thirty-five years
old. So far down as the Sixteenth Gen.
| tury, Peter Tartan died at one hundred
and eighty-five years of age. do not
| say that religion will ever take the race
back to antediluvian longevity, but l do
say the length of human life will be
| greatly improved.
1t is said in Isaiah: 1.-THE child shall
die hundred years DID," Now, if &C.
cording to Scripture tho child is to be q
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 CEN
turies. Give them chance and they de-
velop Frederick Douglass or aToussaint
L'Ouvefture. And if the white race shall
be brought from under the serfdgm of
sin, what shall be the body3 what shall
be the soul? Religion has only Just
touched our world. Give 1t 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 ala
Ny design is to show that practical re-
Egiop is the friend Of long life, i prove
it, first, from the fact that it makes the
care of our health a positive Christian
duty. Whether we shall keep early or
late hours, whether we shall take food
digestible or indigestible, whether there
shall be thorough or incomplete mastica-
ton, 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 di-
vine. He says: ''God has given me
this body, and he has called it the temple
of the Holy Ghost, and to deface its
altars or mar its walls Of crunble lts pill
lars is God defying sacriiege:."
He sees Gods caligraphy in every page
- anatomical and physiological, lie
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; 300
pounds of blood rushing thTQ!ugh the
heart every hour the heart in tWeRty-
four hours beating 100, 900 times, during
the twenty-four hours overcoming re-
sistances amounting to $4,000, 0OC
pounds of weight, during the same time
the lungs taking in fifty-seyen hogsheasd.:
of air, and all this mechanism NOT lnq9oft
mighty than delicate and easily disturbed
and demolished.
The Christian man says to himself: ''1l
huxt my nerves, if hurt my brain, il
hurt any of my physical faculties in
suit God and call for dire retributfon. :
Why did God tell the Levites not to offel
to him in sacrifice animals imperfect ant
diseased? He meant to tell us in all thu
ages that we are to offer to God our yer.
best ph rsical condition, and a man who
through irregular or Gluttonous eating
ruins his health, is not Offering ~ dot
such a sacrifice. Why did Paul write fol
his cloak at Troas? Why should such {
great man as Paul be anxious about {
thing SO insignificant as an overcoat? 1
was because he knew that with pneu
monia and rheumatism he would not b
worth half as much to God and tn,
church as with respiration easy and foo
free.
An intelligent Christian man wou1t
consider it an absurdity to kneel down a
night and pray and ask Gods protection
while at the same time he kept the win
dows of his bedroom tight shut agains
fresh air. He would just as soon thinl
of going out on the bridge between New
York and Brooklyn, leaping off and thel
praying to God to keep him from gettinl
hurt. Just as long as you defer thi
whole subject of physical health to tn
realm of whimsicality, or to the pastr,
cook, or to the butcher, or to the baker
or to the apothecary. or to the clothier
YOU are not acting like Christian. TAX
care of all your physical lfoTces-nefvous
muscular, bone, brain, cellular tissue
for all you must be brought to judgment
Smoking your nervous system into fid
gets, burning out the coating OF you
stomach with wine logwooded an