The Londonderry sifter. (South Londonderry, Vt.) 1883-19??, 1888-06-28
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
The Weekly Disoourses Of the Great
BROOKLYN Preacher.
Subjects: "DOes Religion Pro.
long Life.''
/; TEXT; "With long life will I satisfy
I'm, N-poa lt,S voi

Through the mistake of its friends religion
has been chiefly associated with sick beds and
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 tombstone cut
ter. 1t is high time that this thing were
changed and that religion instead OF being
represented as hearse to carry out the dead,
should he 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
spleen, good for the digestion, good for the
nerves. good for the muscles. When David,
in another part of the Psalms, prays that re-
Igion may be dominant he does not speak Of
1t as mid sickness or an emaciaton, or an
attack OF moral and spiritual cramp; he
speaks of it as ''the saving health of all ma
tions;" 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 inn
rrove 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 Vespasian,
five people one hundred and thirty-tive 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 ante diluvian
longevity, hut do say the length of human
life will be greatly improved
1t is said in Isaiah: "The child shall die a
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
hundreds 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 bond
age for centuries. Give them chance and
they develop Frederick Douglass or Tous-
saint L'Ouverture. And if the white race
shall be brought from under the serfdom of
sin, what shall he the body? What shall be
the soult 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. l prove it,
first. from the fact that it makes the care of
our health positive Christian duty,
Whether we shall keep early or late hours,
whether we shall take food digestlbe or in
digestible, whether there shall be thorough or
incomplete mastication, are questions very
often deferred to the realms of whimsicality:
but the Christian man lifts this whole
problem of health into the accountable and
the divine. He says: God has given me
this boly, and He has called it the temple of
the Holy Ghost, and to deface its affairs or
mar its walls or crumble its pillars is God
defying sacrilege"
He sees God s 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-six curious muscles, and all
under the brains telegraphy; $50 pounds Of
blood rushing through the heart every hour,
the heart in twenty four hours beating 100,
OOO times, during the twenty four hours
overcoming resistances amounting to 234,-
00O,000 pounds of weight, during the same
time the lungs taking in fifty-seven hogs
heads of air, and all this mechanism not
more mighty than delicate and easily dis.
turbed and demolished
The Christian man says to himself: "If
hurt my nerves, if hurt my brain, il hurt
any of my physical faculties insult God and
call for dire retrbution" Why did God tell
the 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
man who through irregular or gluttonous
eating ruins his health is not Offering to God
such sacrifice Why did Paul write for his
cloak at Troasl Why should such a great
man as Paul be anxious about thing so in.
significant as an overcoata 1t was because
he knew that with pneumonia and rheuma-
tism 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
cid "A o1,c,,p 90
and pray and ask Coils protection while at
the same time he kept the windows of his
bed room 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 wbimsicality Or to the pastry
cook or to the butcher or to the baker or to
the apothecary 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 fidgets,
burning out the coating of your stomach
with wine logwooded and strychnined, walk
ing with thin shoes to make your feet look
delicate, pinched at the waist until you are
well nigh cut in two, and neither part worth
anything, groaning about sch headache ana
palpitation of the heart, which you think
came from God, when they came from your
own folly
what right has any man or woman to de-
face the temple of the Holy Ghost? What is
the eari Why, it is the whispering gallery
OF the human soul. What is the eyel 1t is
the observatory God constructed its tele-
scope sweeping the heavens What is the
hand! An instrument SO wonderful that
when the Earl of Bridgewater beque thed in
his will $4,000 for treatises to be written on
the wisdom, power and goodness of God,
Sir Charles Bell, the great English anato-
mist and surgeon, found his greatest Illus
tratlon in the construction of the human
hand, devoting his whole book to that SUBJ
lect So wonderful are these bodies that
God names his own attributes after different
parts OF them. His omniscience-it is Gods
eye. His omnipresence-it is Gods ear. His
omnipotence-it is Gods arm The uphol-
stery of the midnight heavens-it is the work
of Gods fingers. His life giving power-it
is the breath of the Almighty His do
mnion-"the government shall be upon his
shoulder" A body SO divinely honored and
so divine'y constructed, let US be careful not
10 abuse it
When it becomes Christian duty to take
care of our health, is not the whole tendency
toward longevityi If toss my watch about
recklessly and drop it on The pavement and
WIND 1t up any time OF day or night L hap
pen to think of it, and often let it run down,
while you are careful with your watch and
never abuse it and wind it up just at the
same hour every night and put in a place
where it will not suffer from the violent
changes Of atmosphere, which watch will last
the longerl Common sense answers. Now
the human body is Gods watch. You see
the hands of the watch, you see the face of
The watch, but the beating of the heart is
the ticking of the watch Oh, be careful
and do not let it run downl
Again, remark that practical religion is
friend of longevity in the fact that it is a
protest against dissipations which iniure and
destroy the health. Bad men and women
live very short life. Their sins kill them.
! know hundreds of good old men, but dc
not know half dozen bad old men. Whyl
They do not get old. Lord Byron died at
Missolonghi at thirty-six years of age, him.
self his own Mazeppa, his unbridled passions
the horse that dashed with him into the
desert. Edgar A. Poe died at Baltimore at
thirty y-eight years of age. The black raven
that alighted on the bust above his cnamper
door was delirium tremens-
Only this and nothing more.
Napoleon Bonaparte lived only lust beyopd
midlife. then died at st. Helena and one d
his doctors said that his disease was induced
by excessive snuffing The hero of Auster
liz, the man who by one step of his foot i,