News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1888-06-28
SUNDAYS SERMON.
ONE OF REV. DIR. TALMAGE'S
STERLING DISCOURSES.
Subject Does Religion PrO1ong

TEXT: - Nth long life a0iU sutisf
htm."-Psalms xci., 16.
Through the mistake of its friends religion
mas been chiefly aSsCcia ed with sick beds anC
graveyards. The whole subject to many
people is odorous with chlorine and carboli(
ac'd There are people who cannot pro
nOunce The word religion without hearing in
1t the clipping chisel of the tombstone cut
ter. 1t is high tine that this thing were
changed and that religion, instead of being
represented as hearse to carry out the dead
should be rerresl nted as a chariot in wkicl
the nvlng are to triumph.
Religion, so far from subtracting from
one vitality, is a glorious addition. 1t il
sanatIve, curative, hygienic. 1t is good fol
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 re
iiigion may be dominant he does not speak o.
lt as mid sickness. or an. emaciation, aor al
attack or moral and spiritual cramp: he
sspeaks OF it as 'the saving health of all ma
t1ons;" 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 i'm
prove human longevity. Adam lived nine
hundred and thirty years. Methuselah lived
nine hundred and sixty-nine years. As late
IL,
there were at one time in his empire forty
live people one hundred and thirty-five years
old. SO far down as the Sixteenth century,
Peter Tartan died at one hundred and eighty
i've years of age. l do not say that religion
will ever take the race back to ante diluvian
longevity, but l do say the length of human
life will be greatly improved
1t IS said in Isaiah: ''The child shall die a
hundred years old.n 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
dwarts and skeletons compared with some of
the generations that are to come. Take the
African race They have been under bond
age Tor centuries. Give them chance and
they develop Frederick Douglass or a Tous
saint L'Ouverture. And if the white race
snail si 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
or man and the beauty of woman and the
longevity of ALL
My design is to show that practical re-
lIglon is the friend of long life. | prove it,
first, from the fact that it makes the care of
our health a positive Christian duty.
W neither we shall keep early or late hours,
whether we shall take food digestlble or in
dclgestlble, 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 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 God caligraphv in every nage-
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 telegraphv: $50 pounds of
blood rushing through the heart every hour.
the heart in twenty -four hours beating 100,
Oto tunes during the twenty four hours
0Vercomng rcsIStances amounting TO 234,-
U 1000 pounds of weight, during the same
tim. the lungs taking in fiftv-seven hogs
l'".S 't alr and all this mechanism not
more mighty than delicate and easily dis
tuTbed and demolished.
Ihe Christian man says to himself: IF I
hufU my nerves, II ] hurt my brain If | hurt
any OF my physical faculties insult God and
call for dire retributionn Why did God tell
animals imperfect and diseased He T1aont
to tell us i'll all the ages that we are to offer
to God our very best physical condition. and
a 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 Troas? Why should such a great
man as Paul be anxious about thing SO in.
significant as an overcOat! 1t was because
he knew that wiz pneumonia and rheuma
tiSm he would not be worth half as much to
Col and the church as with respiration easy
and foot free.
An intelligent Christian man would con
sider it an abSurtlity to kneel down at night
and pray an ask Gods protection while at
tie 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
ieaping off and then praying to God to keep
him from getting hurt. just as long as you
defer tn wIo,e subject of physical health tc
the realm of whiTsica!ity or to the pastry
cook or to the butcher or to the b blker or tC
the apOthCcary or to the clothier you are not
acting like Il Christian. Take care of all
your physical forces 5-nervous, muscular,
/ on, br in cellular tiSsue-for all you must
be brought TO II l5ment.
Smoking your nervous system into fidgets,
burning out the coating of your stomach
with wine lOgw0O1el and Strychniaed, walk
ing with thin shoes to make your feet looa
delicate pinched at the waist until you are
we ] niCh cut in two. and neither part worth
groanlng about sich headache ane
of the heart, which you thinE
came from God, when they came from YOU
own folly.
What right has any man or woman to de
face the temple of the Holy Ghost. What il
the ear? Why, it is the whispering gallery
of the human soul. What is the eye! 1t i:
the observatory God constructed, its tele-
scope sweeping the heavens. What is the
hand! An instrument SO wonderful thai
when the Earl of Bridgewater beque .thed II
his will 900 for treatiseS to be written or
the wisdom, power and goodness of God
Sir Charles Bell, the great English anato
mist and surgeon, found his greatest illus
tration in the construction of the human
hand, devoting his whole book to that sub
iect So wonderful are these bodies that
sod names his own attributes after different
parts of them. His omniscience-it is Gods
eye. His omnipresence-it is Gods ear. His
is Gods arm. The uphol
'tery of the midnight heavens-it is the work
If Gods fingers. His life giving power-it
S the breaTh of the Almighty. His do
ninion-''the government shall be upon his
shoulder A body so divinely honored and
10 divinely constructed, let us be careful moi
10 abuse it.
When it becomes Christian duty to take
are of our health, is not the whole tendency
oward longevity? If l toss my watch about |
ecklessly and drop it on The pavement and |
Wind it up any time of day or night hap, |
zen to think of it, and often let it run down, |
While you are careful with your watch and |
eyer abuse it and wind it up just at the |
anne hour every night and put in place |
Vhere it will not suffer from the violent
hanges of atmosphere, which watch will last |
he human body is Gods watch. You see
he hands of the watch, you see the face Of
he watch, but the beating of the heart is |
he ticking of the watch. Oh, be careful |
nd do not let it run down!
Again, l remark that practical religion is
friend of longevity in the fact that it is
rotest against dissipations which injure and |
estrOy the health Bad men and women |
We very short life. Their sins kill them.
know hundreds of good old men, but do
Ot know half dozen bad old men. Why! |
hey do not get old. Lord Byron died at
lisso,onghi at thirty six years of age, him.
Elf his own Mazeppa, his unbridled passions
he horse that dashed with him into the
esert. Edgar A. Poe died at Baltimore at
lirty-eight years of age. The black raven
nat aIighte1 on the bust above his chamber
OOr was delrium tremenS-
Only this and nothing more.
Napoleon Bonaparte live only just beyond |
lidhfe, then died at st. Helena, and one Of |
IS doctors said that his disease was induced |
V excessive snufIing. the hero of Auster- |
IT, the man who by one step of his foot in |
he center of Europe shook the earth, killed |
" a snuff box. Oh, how many people we |
ave known who have not lived out half |
heir days because of their d sSipationS and |
Now practical religion is a |
rotest against all dissipation of any kind |
But you say, professors of religion |
ave fallen, professors of religion have got |
runk. professors of religion have msaDpro- |
riate trust funds, professors of religion i
ave absconded." Yes but they threw away |
heir religion before they did their morality. |
a man on a White Star line steamer bound |
)r Liverpool in mid tlaut'c IumDS over |
oarl and is drowned, is that anything |
ga nst the White Star lines capacity to take |
ne man across the oceans And if man |
lmps over the gunwale of his religion and |
oes down never to rise is that any reason |
lr Your believing that religion has no capa-
ty to take the man clear through3 In the
ne case if he had kept to the steamer his
ody would have been saved; in the other
asa il he had Kent to his rnlipion his morals |