Daily Yellowstone journal., 1888-06-17
TABERNACLE SERVICES.
REV. T. DE WITT TkLMAoE'S SUM-
DAY MORNING DISCOURSE.

Religion l. sanatiye, Curative. HygienIo.
II Mny Not Give Antediluyinn Longevity
TO the Human Rae. but win Greatly
Lengthcn Our Lives.
BRooKLYN, June 1O.-At the Taber-
nacle this morning, after expounding
some passages Of Scripture in regard 10
the dict Of Daniel and his abstemious
habits, the Rev. T. De Witt Talmage. ID.
D., gave out the hymn beginning:
Glory 10 God on high
Let heaven and earth reply
He announced as the subject Of his
sermon: Does Religion Prolong Lifeg''
and preached from the text found in Ps.
xci, l6: with long life will satisfy
him." Following is the discourse in
full:
Through the mistakes Of its friends re-
ligion has been chiefly associated with
sick beds and graveyards. The whole
subject to many people is odcrous with
chlorine and carbolic acid. There are
people who cannot pronounce the word
religion without hearing in 1t the clipping
chisel Of the tombstone cutter 1t is high
time that this thing were changed and
that religion, instead of being represented
as heurse 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 a glorious addition. 1t
is sanatiye, curative, hygicnic. II is
good for The cyes good for the ears, good
for the spleen. good for the digestion,
good for the nerves. cool for the muscle
When DAVID. in another part Of the
Psalms, prays that religion may he dom
inant he does not speak Of il SIS n mild
sickness or an emaciation. or an attack
Of moral and spiritual cramp: be speaks
Of II as 1.-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 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 az Vespasian, there
were at one time in his empire forty-five
people one hundred and thirty-tive years
old. So far down as the Sixteenth CEN
tury, Peter Tartan died at one hundred
and eighty-five years of age. do not
say that religion will ever take the race
back TO antediluvian longevity, but / 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 ac-
cording 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 hundredI 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 cen
turies. Give them chance and they de-
velop a Frederick Douglass or a Toussaint
L'0uverture. And If the white race shall
be brought from under the serfdom If
sin. what shall he 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 alll
Ny design is to show that practical re-
ligion Is the friend of long life. Iprove
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 indigestible. whether there
shall he thorough or incomplete mastica-
tion. are questions very often deferred
{, the realm of whimsicality: but the
Christian man lifts this whole problem OF
health INTO the accountable and the di-
vine. He says: God has given me
this body. end he has called il the temple
of the Holy Ghost. and 10 deface its
altars or mar its walls or crumble its pill
lars Is o God defying sacrilege' -
He sees Gods caligraphy in every page
- anatomical and physiological He
says: God has given me a 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, 900 times, during
the twcnty-fnur hours overcoming re-
sistunces amounting to $4,000, 600
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 demolished,
The Christian man SAYS to himself: ''If
hurt my nerves, II ] hurt my brain, II
/ hurt any Of my physical faculties in
suit God and call for dire Tetribution. :"
WHY did God tell the Levites not to offer
to him in sacrifice animals imperfect and
diseasulf lie meant TO tell us in all the
ages that We are 10 offer 10 God our very
best physical condition, and man who,
through irregular or gluttonous eating,
ruins his health, Is not offering 10 God
such sacrifice Why did Paul write for
his cloak at Trolsg Why should such a
great man as Paul be anxious about a
thing so insignificant as an oyercoat2 Il
was because he knew that with pncu.
monin and rheumatism Inc would not III
worth half as much 10 God and the
church as with respiration easy and foJt
free.
An intelligent Christian man would
consider il an ahsurdity 10 lneCl down at