Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1888-06-22
TABERNACLE SERVICES.
4 Powerful Sermon by Rev. Ta!mage on
the Subject, "DoeS Religion
Prolong Life?'
Religion Is sanative, Curative, Hygienic--.1
May Not Give to the Human Race Ante
diluvian Longevity, but Will
Lengthen Our Lives.

long LIFE and preached from the text
found in Ps. 'xci., 16: With long life
will satisfy him. Following is the dis
course in full:
Through the mistake of it's friends re-
ligion has been chiefly associated with
sick beds and graveyards. The whole
subject to many people is odorous with
chlorine and carbolic acid. There are
people who cannot pronounce the word
religion without hearing in it the clip
ping chisel of the tombstone cutter. 1t
is high time that this thing We're changed
and that religion, instead of being rep
resented as hearse to carry out the
dead. should be represented as chariot
in which the living are to triumph.
Religion. so far from subtracting from
ones vitality, is glorious addition. 1t
is sanative, curative, hygienic. 1t is
good for the eyes. good for the ears,
good for the spleen, good for the diges-
ton, good for the nerves, good for the
muscles. When David, in another part
of the Psalms, prays that religion may
be dominant he does not speak OF 1t as
mild sickness, or an enaciation, or an
attack of moral and spiritual cramp; he
speaks of it as "the saving health of all
nations;" while God, in the text, prom
Uses 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. Methuselah lived nine hundred
and sixty nine years. AS late in the his
tory of the world as Vespasian, there
were at one time in his empire forty tive
people one hundred and thirty-tve
years old. SO far down as the Sixteenth
century, Peter Tartan died at one hun
dred and eighty-tive years of age. l do
not say that religion will ever take the
race back to antediluvian longevity. but
1 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 &C
cording to the Scripture the child is to
be hundred years old, may not the
men and women reach 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 Toussaint L'Ouverture.
And if the white race shall be brought
from underline 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
woman and the longevity of all?
My design is to show that practical re-
ligion is the friend of long life. 1
prove it. first, from the fact that it makes
the care of our health positive Chris
tian duty. Whether we shall keep early
or late hours, whether we shall take
food digestible or indigestible, whether
there shall be thorough or incomplete
masticatior, are questions very often de-
ferred to the realm of whimsicality; but
the Christian man lifts this whole prob
lem 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 de-
face its affairs or mar it's walls or crum-
BILE its pillars is God defying sacri-
lege."
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-t two curious bones
welded by forty-six curious muscles,
and all under the brains telegrephy;
$50 pounds of blood rushing through the
heart every hour, the heart in twenty
four hours bsating 100000 times, during
the twenty-four hours overcoming re-
sistances amounting to $4,000, 900
pounds of weight, during the same
time the lungs taking in ffty-seven
hogsheads of air, and all this mechan-
ism not more mighty than delicate and
easily disturbed and demolished.
The Christian man says to himself: IF
hurt my nerves, if I hurt my brain, if 1
suit God and call for dire retribution."
Why did God tellthe Levites not to offer
to Him in sacrifice animals imperfect
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 glutton7
GUS eating ruins his health is not offer
ing to God such a sacrifice. Why did
Paul write for his cloak at Troas? Why
should such a great man as Paul be anx-
ious about thing SO insignificant as an
overcoat? It 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
consider it an absurdity to kneel down
at night and pray and ask Gods protec-
ton 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 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 clothier,
you are not acting like 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
| fdgets, burning out the coating of your
stomach with wine logwooded and
strychnined, walking with thin shoes to
make your feet look delicate, pinched
at the waist until you are we'll nigh cut
in two, and neither part worth anything,
groaning about sick headache and pal
pitation of the heart, which you think
came from God, when they came from
your own folly.
What right has any man or woman tc
deface the temple of the Holy Ghost;