New Ulm weekly review. [volume] (New Ulm, Minn.) 1878-1892, 1888-06-20
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
The Brooklyn Divine Shows Wherein
Practical Religion Is Product
i've Of Longevity.


Many People DO Not Live Ont One
Baif Their Days Because or
Their Designations and
TndulgencIes.
DR.. Ialmage announced as the subject OF
his sermon: sDoes Religion Prolong Life?''
and preached from the text found in Psalm
zci, 10:
With long life will satisfy him.
Following is the discourse in full:
Through the mistake of It's friends religion
has been chiefly associated with sick beds
and grave yards. 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 tomb-stone-cut-
Ter. IL is high time that this thing were
changed, and that religion instead of being
represented as a hearse to carry out the dead
should be represented as a chariot in w hich
the living are to triumph.
Religion, so far from subtractlng from ones
vitality. is a glorious addition. 1t is
sanatiye, curative, hygenic. 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 Da-
yid in another part of the Psalms, prays that
religion may be dominant he does not speak
OF it as mild sickness, Or an emaciation, or
an attack of moral and spiritual cramp; he
speaks OF it rs sstbe saving health of all ma
tions;" while God, in the text, promises
longevity to the Dious, saying: ssWith long
life will ! satisfy him.,
Inc TACT is that men and women die too
soon. Tits high time thatreligion Joined the
hand of medical science in attempting to
Improve human longevity. Adam lived $50
in the history of the world as yespas1an,
4. There We're at one time in his empire forty
tIlye people 135 years old. So far down as
the sixteenth century Peter. Tartan died at
dS5years of age. don't say thatreligion will
over lake the race back to antediluy1an
longevity, but do say the length of hnman
life will be greatly improved.
n: 1t is said in Isiah: "The child shall die
hundred years old" Now, if according to
scripture the child is to be a hundred years
old. may not the men and women reach to
Ghree hundred and four hundred and five
hundredy The factis that we are mere dWarfs
Z and skeletons compared with some of the
generations that are to come Take the At
/ riean race. They have been under bondage
\ -sor centuries Give them a chance and they
i deSef6n c Frederick Douglass or Toussaint
ANU IL Inc WHITE race snail De
Drought from under the serfdom of sin what
shall be the body? 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
nan and the beauty of woman and the long.
eyity of AL?
My design is to show that practical re-
A Iigion is the friend of long life. prove 1t,
first, from the fact that it makes the care of
our health a positive Christian duty.
yWhether we shall keep early or late hours,
whether we shall take food digestible or in
digestible, whether there shall be thorough
or incomplete mastication, are questions
very often deferred to the realm of whimsi-
calftv; but the Christian man lifts this
whole problem OF health into the accounta-
ble and the divine. He says: "God has
gwen me this body, and he has called 1T the
5emple 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
9ph&t arm with thirty-two curious bones.
4 welded by forty-six curious muscles, and all
Il under tie brains telegraphy; $50 pounds of
h blood rushing through the heart every hour,
I the heart in twenty-four hours beating 1O0.-
i 600 times, during the twenty-four hours
4 overcoming resistances amounting to 224,-
I 100000 pounds of weight, during the same
/ time the lungs taking in fifty-seven hogs
I heads of air, and all this mechanism not more
4 mighty than delicate and easily disturbed
] and demolished
The Christian man says TO himself: s'Tf 1
4 hurt my nerves, il | hurt my BRAIN, if hurt
4 any of my physical facilities I insult God and
call for dire retribution." Why did God
tell the Leyites not to offer to him in sacr-
fee animals imperfect and diseased? He
meant to tell us in all the ages that we are
TO offer to God our very best physical condi.
ton, AMI man who, through irregular or
gluttonous eating ruins his health is not
offering to Goa such a sacrifice. Why did
Paul write for his cloak at Troas? Why
should such great man as Paul be anxious
about thing so insignificant as an overcoat?
lit was because lie knew that with pneumonia
and rheumatism he would not be worth half
as much to God and the church as with res.
piratiOn easy and foot free.
An5intelligent Christian man would con-
slider it an absurdity to kneel down at night
and pray and ask Gods protection while at
aGhe same time he kept the windows of his
bedroom tight shut against fresh air. He
= SSemd just as soon think of going out on the
bridge between New York and BROOKLYN
ieaPing 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 Whimlcality or to the pastry
cook or to the butcher or to the baker or to
the apothecary or TO the cothier, you are
,4not acting like a Christian. Take care OF
all your physical forces-nervous, muscular,
bone, brain, cellular tissue-for all you must
tsbe brought to judgment.
Smoking your nervous system into fidgets,
burning out the coating of your stomach
with wine logwooded and strychnined,
walking with thin shoes to make your feet
Hook delicate, pinched at the waist until you
are nigh cut in two, and neither part worth
anything, groanlng about sick headache and
palpitaton of the heart, which YOU think
came from God when they came from your
own folly.
What right has any MN or woman to de.
face the temple of the Holy Ghost? What
is the ear? Why, it is the whispering gal
aery of the human soul. What is the eve?
at is the observatory God constructed, its
telescope sweeping the heavens. What is
ithe hand2 An instrument SO wonderful that
when the Earl Of Bridgewater bequeathed
ln his will $40, 900 for treatlses to be written
-on the wisdom. power, and goodness of God,
Sir Charles Bell, the great English anatom-
list and surgeon, found his greatest ilustra.
tion 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