The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1888-06-11

TALMAGB CONFIDENT THAT IT
PROLONGS LIFE.

Health of All Nations"-A Christian
Duty to Take Care of Health-God's
Promise to the Christian Business
Men of the World.
BROOKLYN, June 10.--At the Tabernacle
this morning, after expounding some pas
sages of scripture in regard to the diet of
Daniel and his abstemious habits, the Rev.
T. Dewitt Talmage, D. D., gave 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 Lifea" and
preached from the text found in Psalm xci,
16: "With long life will l satisfy him" "
Following is the discourse in full:
Through the mistake of its friends relig-
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
tombstone cutter. 1t is high time that this
thing were changed and that religion, in
stead of being represented as hearse to
| carry out the dead, should be represented
as chariot in which the living are to
| triumph
Religion, SO far from substracting from
ones vitality, is a 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 a mild sickness, or an emacia-
| ton, or an attack of moral and spiritual
| cramp; he speaks of it as "the saving
| health of all nations;" while God, in the
text, promises longevity to the pious, say
| ing: 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
| pasian, there were at one time in his empire
| forty-lve people one hundred and thirty
| five years old. SO far down as the sixteenth
century, Peter Tartan died at one hundred
and eghty-five years of age do not say
| that religion will ever take the race back to
| antediluvian longevity, but l do say the
| length of human life will be greatly i'm
| proevd.
1t is said In Isaiah: ''The child shall die
| hundred years old" Now, if according to
| Scripture the child is to be a hundred wears
| old, may not the men and women reach to
| three hundred and four hundred and five
| hundrede The fact Is that we are mere
| dwarfs and skeletons compared with some
| of the generations that are to come Take
| the African race. T1ey have been under
| bondage for centuries. Give them chance
| and they develop Frederick Douglas or
| Toussaint 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
| q few centuries and who can tell what will
be the strength of man and the beauty of
woman, and the longevity of alli
My design is to show that practical
| religion is the friend of long life. | prove
| it, rirst, 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 digesti-
BILE or indigestibe, whether there shall be
thorough or incomplete mastication, are
questions very often deferred to the realm
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 its walls or
crumble 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 a
noble purpose"
That arm with thirty-two curious bones,
welded by forty-six curious muscles, and
all under the brains telegraphy; three hun
dred and fifty pounds Of blood rushing
through the heart every hour, the heart
in twenty-four hours beating 100, 900 times,
| resistance ammounting to 224 ,000, 900 pounds
of weight, during the same time the lungs
| taking in fifty-seven hogsheads Of air, and
all this mechanism not more mighty than
delicate and easily disturbed and demol-
| ished.
The christian man says to himself: "If |
| hurt my nerves, if hurt my brain, if /
hurt any Of my physical faculties insult
| God and call for dire retribuhOn." Why
did God tell the Levites not to offer to him
in sacrifice animals imperfect and diseaseds
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 irregu-
lar or gluttonous eating ruins his health is
not Offering to God such a sacrifice Why
did Paul write for his cloak at Troasi Why
should such great man as Paul be anxious
about a thing SO insignificant as an over
coatl 1t 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 con-
slider it an absurdity to kneel down at
night and pray and ask Gods protection
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 Brook
lyn, 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 whmsicality or to the
pastry cook or to the butcher or TO the baker
OF to the apothecery or TO the clothier, you
are not acting like a 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 logwo)ded and strych-
mined, walking with thin shoes to make
your feet look delicate, pinched at the
waist until you are nigh cut in two, and
neither part worth anything, grooming
about sick hea1ache and 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
deeace the temple of the Holy GhOStl What
IL the eari Why, it is the whispering gull
lory Of the human soul. What is the eyei
IL Is the observatory God constructed, its
telesc )pe sweeping the heavens. What is
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