Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1888-06-20

DRooKLYN, June 10.-At the Tabernacle
ID this morning, after eXpounding soms
passages Of Scripture in regard to tht
diet of Daniel -and his abstemious habits
out the hymn beginning;
"Glory to God on high,
Let heaven and earth reply
He announced as the subject of his ser
mon "Does Religion Prolong Life ?' ant
preached from the text found in Psalm xci
v. 16: With long life will satisfy him. y
Following is the discourse in full:
Through the mistake of its friends 1elig
ion 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 can
not pronounce the word religion without
hearing in it the clipping chisel of the tomb
stone cutter. 1t is high time that this thing
were changed and that reli gion, instead o.
being represented as hearse to carry out
the dead, should be represented as a 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 digestion, 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 it as mild sickness, or an emaciation,
or an attack of moral and spiritual cramp;
he speaks of it as ''the saving health of ali
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. Methuselah
lived nine hundred and sixty nine years.
As late in the history of the world as Yes
pasiap, there were at one time in his empire
forty. five people one hundred and thirty-five
years old. So far down as the sixteenth
century Peter Tartan died at one hundred
and eighty-fve years Of age. do not say
that religion will ever take the race back to
antediluvian longevity, but I do say the
length of human life will be greatly i'm
proved.
1t is said in Isaiah: "The child shall die a
hundred years DID," Now, if according to
Scripture the child is to be 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 chance
and they develop a Frederick Douglass or
a Tousaint L'Ouverture. And if the white
race shall be brought from under the serf-
dom of sin, what shall be the body? what
shall be the soul? Religion has only just
touched our world. Give it full power for a
few centuries and who can tell what will be
the strength of man and the beauty of wo-
man, and the longevity of allS
My design is to show that practical relig-
ion 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 in
digestible, whether there shall be thorough
incomplete mastication, are questions very
often deferred to the realm of whimsicality
but the Christian man lifts this whole pro
blem 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 mai
it's walls or crumble its pillars is a God-d
| flying sacrilege."
He sees Gods caligraphy in every page
anatomical and physiological: He says
| "God has given me wonderful body fo
noble purposes"
That arm with thirty-two curious bone
welded by forty-six curious muscles, ant
all under the brains telegraphy; three hun
dred and fifty pounds of blood rushing
through the heart every hour, the heart il
twenty -four hours beating 100000 times
during the twenty -four hours overcoming
resistances amounting to 224, 900, 900 pound
of weight, during the same time the lung
taking in fifty-seven hogsheads of air, an
all this mechanism not more mighty tha
delicate and easily disturbed and demolish
ed.
| The Christian man says to himself: "lf
burt my nerves, if hurt my brain. if l hui
any of my physical faculties Insult Go
and call for dire retribution." Why di
God tell the Levites not to offer to Him l
sacrifice animals imperfect and diseased ?
He meant to tell us in all the ages that "
are to offer to God our very best physics
condition, and man who through irregu
lar or gluttonous eating ruins his health
not offering to God such sacrifice. Mh
did Paul write for his cloak at Troas? Wh
should such a great man as PAul Q
anxious ebout thing so insignificant as
overcoat? 1t was because he knew tina
with pneumonia and rheumatism he woul
not be worth half as much to God and tn
Church as with respiration easy and fot
free.
An intelligent Christian man would col
slider it an absurdity to kneel down at nigf
and pray and ask Gods protection while
the same time he kept the windows OF b
bedroom tight shut against fresh air. d
would just as soon think of going out. on tb
bridge between New York and Brooklyn
leaping off and then praying to God to kee
him from getting hurt. Just as long.
you defer this whole subject OF physics
} health to the realm of whimsicality or t
the pastry-eook or to the butcher or to tn
baker or to the apothecray or to the clothie
you are not acting like Christian. TAX
care of all your physical forces-nervou Vi
. muscular, bone, brain, cellular tissues-ft
all you must be brought to Judgment.