Southern standard. (McMinnville, Tenn.) 1879-current, 1888-07-07
About Living Forever.

line TACT is, men and women Gle
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 500 years. 1 do not
say that religion will take the race
back to anti-deluvian longevity, but
l do say that the length of human
longevity will be greatly improved.
1t is said in Issiah, 'The child shall
live hundred years Old Now if
the child is to live to be 100years 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
women, and the longevity of ALL"
DR.. Talmage and DR.. Hammond
seem united in the idea that it is time
men and woman lived longer
than at present. One proposes to
make lives longer through a certain
regulation of diet and the other
through religion. Possibly, COM
promise might be effected between
the two systems; or, perhaps religion
might cover both.
If my Latin is correct, religion is
derived from the two words re and
lex, signifying the laws of things, or,
to give it a freer translation, the laws
governing all things, to which
"things" all of us belong. Have we,
as yet, found out the whole of this
law? Ora part of it? Or very small
part of it? May not this decay and
death of the body at the age of 60 or
70, and, in many cases, sooner
generally about the time one has got
ready,to live be owing to very, very
many ignorant violations Of the laws
of life?
May we not be SHINING ignorantly
when we think we are doing just
right? May not even responsibility
harbor in its very core daily uncon-
scious deadly sins which are bleeding
away the vitality and placing on beds
Of anguish and torture thousands
who, so far as they know, have lived
correct and proper lives?
Fevers, dropsy, cancer, rheuma-
tism, heart disease, Bright's disease,
diphtheria, consumption, paralysis
are not alone the legacy Of the wicked.
They are dealt out with a fearful
impartiality among the just and the
unjust. The most moral and devout
man in the community is not exempt
today from a death as full of linger.
ing agony as that of the victim OF
delirium tremens. The churches are
proportionately as full of the sick and
ailing as the haunts Of vice. The
infidel lives as long as the church
: man.
"By their fruits We shall know
Them" said the Christ Of Judea. L
it inconsistent to desire at least tina
one of the fruits and proofs ofreligior
, should be an exemption from these
terrible possibilities which stare every
S one in the face? That another proc
should be a sound, strong, healthy
y body-for, without one, what is lifi
but curse? Are we going too ia
/ even in the desire that one SHOULD
know the laws not only for making
the body sound, but keeping itsounC
u and whole so long as we wish, ant
warding off all that decay and de
crepitude which no man or woman
b really looks forward to with pleasure
"The last great enemy which shall
be destroyed is Death" said st. Paul
:. What did he mean? Did he impl,
with the advance of light ant
knowledge and truth on this cart
that methods would be found an
Z followed to preserve the body fror
! decay? Surely we cannot have to
l. much of the truth. "The truth sha
: make we free" he says, at anothe
Il time. Free from what? Is not a
u this ailment, pain, sickness, deca
a and the fear of it one of the worst {
u bOndages?
,, Christ promised "greater revel;
" tions" than He had made. II
I, placed no limit to embodiment an
- development of truth, or, rather, (
. what exists in the universe and
. which our eyes may not yet /
=, opened. We know from geologic,
u evidence that this earth was once
i" a very crude condition compared [