The Brookhaven leader., 1888-06-21
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
The Question "Does Religion Pro-
long Life2" Met and Answered.
Practical Religion a Grand SedatIve, Con-
ducing to Peace of Mind and Happi-
hess In Life and Tending to
It's ProIongatiou.


Tabernacle was: Does Religion Prolong
1feW In answering the query, Mr.. Tall
mage took for his text;
With long life will satisfy him. m.--Pssins,
xci., 16.
Through The mistake Of its friends relig-
ION has beet Chiefly associated with sick
beds and graveyards. The whole subject.
to many people, is odorous with chlorine.
and carbolic acid. There are people who
can not pronounce the word religion
without hearing in it the Slipping chisel
of the tombstone cutter. 1t is high THE
that this thing were changed, and that
religion; Instead Of being represented as
a hearse to carry out the dead, shopld be
tepressnted as chariot in which the Iiy=
ing are to triumph.
Religion, so far from subtractins from
ones vanity, is glorious addition. 1t is
sanatife, ctrative, hygeuic. 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 muscles.
When David in another part 6t Psalms,
prays that religion may be dominant; he
docs not speak of it as a mild sickness,
or an emaciation, OF an attack of moral
and spiritual cramp; he spesks Of u as
''the saving health of all nations;" while
God. in the text, promises longevity to
the piots; sfrirs' "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
hind hundfed and thirty years. Metbuse
lah lived nine hundred and sixty mine
years. AS late in the history If the world
as Vespasian there were at one time n
his Empire forty five people one hundred
and thirty five years old. 80 far down as
the sixteenth century, Peter Tartan died
at one hundred and eighty-fve years of
age. do not say that religion will ever
take The fare bach to antediluvian long
evity, but do say the length "f human
life will be greatly improved.
1t is said in Isaiah "The child shall die
hundred years Ole" Now. if according
to Scripture the 81 lid is TO be a hundred
years old, may not the men and women
reach to three hurldfed, 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
a chance and they develop Frederick
Douglass or a Toussaint 1'Uverttfs
And if the white race shall be brought
from under the serfdom of sin, what shall
be the body: what shall be the souli
Religion has only just touched our world
Give it full power for a few centuries and
who can tell what will be the strength Of
man and the beauty of women, and the
longevity of alls
My design is to show that practical re:
lgion is the friend of long life. l proys
1t, first from the fact that it makes the
care of our health a positive Christian
duty. Whether we shall keep early oil
late hours, whether we shall take food
digestible or indigestible, whether there
shall be thorough or incomplete mastica
tiog, are questions very often deferred tC
the realm Of whimsicality; but the Chris
tian man lifts this whole problem oi
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 a1tars
or mar Its walls or crumble its pillars is
God -defying sacrilege."
He sees Gods caligraphy in every page
anatomical and physiological. He says
''God has given me a wonderful body fo1
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 rush
ing through the heart every hour, the
heart in twenty-four hours beating on e
hundred thousand times, during the TWEEN
ty-four hours overcoming resistances
amounting to two hundred and twenty
four million pounds of weight, during the
same time the lungs taking in fifty-seven
hogsheads of air, and all this mechanism
not more mighty than delicate and easily
disturbed and demolished.
The Christian man says to himself:
"If l hurt my nerves, if l burt my
brain, if hurt any of my physical facul-
ties, l insult God and call for dire retri-
button"
Why did God tell the Levites not to
offer to Him in sacrifice animals imper-
feet and diseased? He meant to tell us in
all the ages that we are to offer to God
our very best physical condition, and a
man who, through irregular or gluttonous
eating, ruins his health, is not off ering to
God such sacrifice. Why did Paul write
for his cloak at Troas? Why should such
a great man as Paul be anxious about q
thing so insignificant as an overcoat: 1t
was because he knew that with pneumonia
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 would con-
slider it an absurdity to kneel down at
night and pray and ask Gods protection
while at the same time he kept the win
dows of his bedroom tight shut against
fresh air. He would just as soon think of
going out ON the bridge between New
York and Brooklyn, leaping off 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
fidgets, burning out the coating of your
stomach with wine, log-wooded and
strychnined, walking with thin shoes tC
make your feet look delicate, pinched al
the waist until you are nigh cut in two
and neither part worth any thing, groan.
ing about sick headache and palpitatioI
of the heart which you think came from
God, when they came from your owl
folly.
What right has any man or woman tc
deface the temple of the Holy Ghost.
What is the ear? Why, it is the
whispering galley Of the human
soul. What is the eye? 1t is tn,
observatory God constructed, its tel
sscope sweeping the heavens. What il