The west Tennessee star. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1888, 1888-06-22
TALMAGES SERMON.
The Question 'sDoes Religion Pro
long LifeP'' Met and Answered.
Practical Religion a Grand Sedative, Con.
ducing to Peace of Mind and Happi-
ness in Life and Tending to
Its PrOlOngatiOn.

Z. Dewitt Talmage at the Brooklyn
was: 'fDoes Religion ProlOng |
LITER" In answering the query, Mr.. Tai |
mage took for his text:
With long life will I satisfy him.-Psalms, |
xci., 16.
Through the mistake of its friends relig-
ion has been chiefly ssOciated 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 clipping chisel
of the tombstone cutter. 1t 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 which the liV-
ing are to triumph.
Religion, so far from subtracting from
ones vanity, is a glorious addition. 1t is
sanative, 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 David, in another part of Psalms,
prays that religion may be dominant, he
does not speak of it as a mild sickness,
or an emaciation, or an attack of moral
and spiritual cramp; he speaks of it as
''tbe saving health of all nations;" while
God, in the text, promises longevity to
the pious, saying: ''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
nine hundred and thirty years. Methuse-
lah lived nine hundred and siXty-nine
years. AS late in the history 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
IL,
at one hundred and eighty-fiYe years of
age. 1 do not say that religion will ever
take the race back to antediluvian long
evity, but do say the length of human
life will be greatly improved.
1t is said in Isaiah: ''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 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 centuries. Give them
a chance and they develop a Frederick
Douglass or a TOussaint LOyerture.
And if the white race shall be brought
from under the serfdom of sin, what shall
be the body? what shall be the soul?
Religion has only 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?
My design is to show that practical re-
Ii gion 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 indigestibIe whether there
shall be thorough or incomplete mastica-
tiOn, are questions very often deferred to
the realm of whimsicality; but the Chris
tan man lifts this whole problem Of
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 affairs
or mar It's walls or crumble its pillars is
a God defying saCrilege."
He sees Gods caligraphy in every page
anatomical and physiological. He says:
''GOd has given me wonderful body for
noble purposes"
That arm with thirty-two curious bones
welded by fOrty-si curious muscles, and
all under the brains biography; three
| hundred and fifty pounds of blood rush
/ ing through the heart every hour, the
/ heart in twenty-four hours beating on 9
/ 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 ffty-seven
/ hogsbeads of air, and all this mechanism
/ not more mighty than delicate and easily
disturbed and demolished.
The Christian man says to himself:
of 1 hurt my nerves, if 1 hurt my
brain, if hurt any of my physical facul
ties, insult God aud call for dire retri-
button"
VIII 7+5 Cd an e. Ito - 4.
offer to Him in sacrifice animals imper-
I 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 Q
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 &
| thing so insignificant as an Overcoat? L
was because he knew that with pneumOni5
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 a
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 o
going out on the bridge between New
4 OK anu DIOOA1gLf3 1Cdp4uS OIL anu tll0I
praying to God to keep him from gettini
hurt. Just as long as you defer this Who'll,
subject of physical health to the realm o
whimsicality or to the pastry cook, or Il
the butcher or to the baker, or to the
apothecary, or to the clothier, you are not
acting like Christian. Take care OF al
your physical fOrces-nervous, muscular
bone, brain, cellular tissue-for all yoI
must be brought to Judgment.
NJ
fdgets, burning out the coating of you
stomach with wine, lOg-wOOded anC
strychnined, walking with thin shoes t,
make your feet look delicate, pinched a
the waist until you are nigh cut in two
and neithsr part worth any thing, groan
ing about sick headache and palpitatiol
of the heart which you think came from
God, when they came from your Owl
folly.
What right has any man or woman &
deface the temple of the Holy Ghost
What is the ear? Why, it is tn
whispering galley of the human
soul. What is the eye? 1t is tn
observatory God constructed, its tel
escope sweeping the heavens. What
| the hand? An instrument so wonderful
that when the Earl Of Bridgewater be
queathed in his will forty thousand dollar
for treatises to be written on the wis
dom, power and goodness of God, 81
Charles Bell, the great English anatomis
aud surgeon, found his greatest illustra-
ton in the construction Of the huma-
hand, devoting his whole book to tina
subject. So wonderful are these bodie
that God names his own attributes ate
different parts or them. His omniscienc
1t is Gods eye. His omnipresenc
lit is Gods ear. His Omnipotence-it
Gods arm. The upholstery Of the mid
night heavens-it is the work of Cod
fingers. His hfe-giving power-it is tn
breath Of the Almighty. His dominion
''The government shall be upon hi
shoulder" A body so divinelv honore