The Manning times. [volume] (Manning, Clarendon County, S.C.) 1884-current, 1888-06-20
WHY NOT LIVE FOREVER
DR.. TALMaGE TELLS HOW RELIGION
PROLONGS LIFE.


He Knows Very Many Good Old Men, but
Few Bad Old Men--Sin, He Says, Has
Killed Them OF.
Rev. DR.. Talmage preached Sunday
morning to an audience that filled the
Tabernacle and overhowed to the side
walk. His subject was, ssDoes Religion
Prolong life?" We find his text in Psalm
81, verse 16: "With long life will
satisfy him.
Through the mistake of its friend, u
said the popular divine, ''religion has
been chiefly associated with sick bedsa
grave yards. The whole subject to many
people is odorous with chlorine and
carboic acid. It is high time that this
were changed and that religion, instead
of being represented as hearse to carry
out the dead, should be represented as q
chariot in which the living are to
triumph.
"Reigion, far from subtracting from
ones vitality, is glorious addition. It is
good for the eyes, good for the ears, good
for the spleen, good for the digestion and
good for the nerves. The fact is, 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 900 years;
Methuselah lived 969 years. I do not
say that religion will taxa the race back
to anti-diluyian longevity, but I do say
that the length of human life will be
greatly improved.
sit is said in Isaiah: sThe child shall
live hundred years old Now if the
child is to live to be 100 years old, may
not the men reach to 800 and 400 and 500.
The fact is we are mere dwarfs, skeletons,
compared to some of the generations to
come. Religion has 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 long life. Iprove
it first from the fact that it makes the
care of our health positive Christian
duty. The Christian man lifts the whole
problem of health into the accountable
and divine. he sees Gods caEgraph in
every page-anatomical and physolog-
ical. The Christian man says, if I hurt
my nerves, if I hurt my brain, if hurt
any of my physical faculties, insult
God and call for dire retribution. God
meant to tell us in all ages that We are to
offer to Him our best physical condition.
A man who, through gluttonous or
irregular eating, ruins his health, is not
offering to God such sacrifice.
can Intelligent Christian man would
consider it an absurdity to kneel at night
and pray and ask Gods protection 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 Brook
lyn and New York, leaping off and then
praying to God to keep him from getting
hurt. 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 lnto
fidoets. burning out the the coating OF
ycur stomach with wine logwooded and
strychnyned, walking with thin shoes to
make your feet look delicate, plnched at
the waist until you are nigh cut in too,
and neither part worth anything, groan.
ING about headache and palpitation OF
the heart, which you think came from
God, when they came from your own
folly.
t;What right has any man or woman
to deface the temple of the Holly Ghost?
What is the ear? Why, it is the whisper
ing gallery of the human soul. What Is
the eve? 1t is the observatory God con-
structed, it's telescope sweeping the
heavens. Again I remarked that prac-
tical friend Of longevity in the fact that
it is a priest against designations which
sniure and destroy the health. Bad
men and women live very short life.
Their sins kill them. I know hundreds
of good old men, but do not know half
q dozen bad old men? Why? They 90
not get old. Lord Byron died at 50
years of age, himself his own Mazeppa,
his embridled passion the horse that
dashed him into the desert. Edgar A.
Poe died at 80 years. The black raven
that alichted on the bust above the
chamber door was deirium tremens.
ONLY this and nothing more.
"But, you say, professors OF religion
L.-,o foi1en ,,rofessors of religion have
misappropriated trust funds. Yes, but
they threw away their religion before
they threw away their morality. There
are aged people who would have been
dead twenty-five years ago but Tor the
defenses ard the equipose Of religion.
You have no more natural resistance
than hundreds of people who lie IN the
cemeteries to-day, slain by their own
vices. The doctors made their cases as
kind and pleasant as they could and it
was called congestion of the brain or
something else, but the snakes and the
Blue flies that seemed to crawl over the
pillow in the sight of the delirious patient
showed what was the matter with him.
You, the aged Christian, walked along
by that unhappy man until you came to
the golden pillar of a Christian Life You
went to the right, he went to the LETT.
That is all the difference between you
ssAgain, religion is friend of longe-
yity, because it takes the worry ont OF
our temporalities. 1t is not work that
kills men, it is worry. When man be-
comes a genuine Christian, he makes
over to God not only his affections, but
his family, his business, his reputation,
his mind, his body, his soul, his every