The Atlanta constitution. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1885-19??, 1888-06-12
PRACTICAL RELIGION.
The Care of Our Health a Chris
tian Duty.
Religion Friend of LOngevity-Sermon of
the Rev. t. Dewitt Talmage at
the Brooklyn Tabernacle.

Tabernacle this. morning, after eHpounding
some passages 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 sermon:
"Does religion prolong lfe?" and preached
from the text found in Psalm 81, " 16:
"With long life will l satisfy him." Follow
ing is the discourse in full.
Through the mistake of its friends religion
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 cannot pro-
nounce 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
rs q hearse to carry out the dead, should be
represented as chariot in which the living
are to triumph.
Religion, so far from subtracting from ones
vitality, is a glorious addison. 1t is sanative,
curative, hygienic. # 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 a mother part of
the Palsms, prays that religion may be domi-
nant he does not speak of it as a mild sickness,
Or an emaciation, or an attack of moral and
spiritual cramp; he speaks of it as "the saving
health of all nations y 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. Methusalah lived
nine hundred and sixty-nine years. AS late in
the history of the world as Vespasian, there
OF II, Il nj for
pie one hundred and thirty-five years old. So
far down as the sixteenth century, Peter Ear
tan died at one hundred and eighty-five years
Of age. l 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: 1.-THE child shall die
hundred years old?" Now, if according to
Scripture the child is to be hundred wears
old, may not the men and women reach to
three hundred and four hundred and five hun
dred? The fact is that mere dwarfs
and skeletons compared with some of the gem
erations that are to come. Take the African
race. They have been under bondage for CEN
turtles. Give them a chance and they develop
q Frederick Douglas or TouSsaint LOWER
ture. And if the white race shall be brought
from under the serfdom of sin, what shall be
the body? what shall be the soul? Religion
has only just touched 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 religion
Is the friend of long life. 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 digestble or indigestible,
whether there shall be thorough Or incomplete
mastication, are questions very often deferred
to the realm OF whimsicaity; but the Christian
man lifts this whole problem of health into
the accountable and the divine. He says:
Lodi hao frit, tt,ic bod, 1o
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 Gods caligraphy i'll every page-an-
Atomical and physiological. He says: "God
has given me a wonderful body for noble pur-
poses"
That arm with thirty-two curious bones
welded by forty-six curious muscles, and all
under the brains telegraphy; three hundred
and fifty pounds Of blood rushing through the
heart every hour, the heart in twenty-four
hours beating 100000 times, during the
twenty-four hours overcoming resistances
amounting to 224,000,000 pounds of weight,
during the same time the lungs taking in fifty
seven hogsheads of air. and all this mechanism
mot more mighty than delicate and easily dis
turbed and demolished.
The Christian man says to himself: "If I
hurt my nerves, if L hurt my brain, if l hurt
any of my physical faculties [ insult God and
Gall for dire retribution." Why did God tell
She Levites not to offer to Him in sacrifice an
FINALS imperfect and diseased? He meant 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 eat
ing ruins his health is not offering TO God such
sacrifice. Why did Paul write for his cloak
at Troas? Why should such great man as
Paul be anxious about thing SO insignificant
As an overcoat? 1t was because he knew that
with pneumonia and rheumatism he would not
be worth half as much to God and the church
Is with respiration easy and foot free.
A n int ma
or 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 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 get
ting hurt. just as long rs you defer this
whole subject OF physical health to the realm
Of whimsicalty 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 Chris
ttan. Take care of all your physical forces =
nervous, muscular, bone, brain, cellular It's
sue-for all you must be brought to judgment.
Smoking your nervous system into tidgets,
burning out the coating of your stomach with
wine logwooded and strychnined, walking
with thin shoes to make your feetlook delicate,
pinched at the waist until you are nigh cut in
two, and neither part worth anything, groan-
ing about sick headache ard palpitation of
the heart, which you think came from God,
when they came from your own folly.
w HAT right HAS any lllstfl OF woman 10 ueIaCo
the temple of the Holy Ghost! What is the
ear? Why, it is the whispering gallery of the
human soul. What is the eye? 1t is the OBJ
servatory God constructed its telescope sweep
ing the heavens. What is the hand? An in
strument so wonderful that when the earl of
Bridgewater bequeathed in his win $4,000 for
treatises to be written on the wisdom, power
and goodness of God, Sir Charles Bell, the
great English anatomist and surgeon, found
his greatest illustration in the construction of
the human hand, deyoting his whole book to
that subject.
So wonderful are these bodies that God names
His own attributes after different parts of
them. His ornnisc;ence-it is Gods eye. His
onnipresence-it is Gods ear. His omnipo-
terce-it is Gods arm. The upholstery of the
midnight heavens-it is the work of Gods
fingers. His life giving power-it is the breath
of the Almighty. His dominion-"the gov
eminent shall be upon his shoulder" A body
20 diynely honored and SO divinely construct
ed, let us be careful not to abuse it.
When it becomes Christian duty to take
care of our health, is not the whole tendency
toward longevity? If / toss my watch about
Fecklessly and drop it on the pavement and
wind IL mn any time of day or night happen