Milford chronicle., 1888-06-15

1t Nay Not Give to tho Human Rae,
Antediiuvian Longevity, but WIN GreatI,
Lengthen Our Lives.
BROOKLYN, June 1O.--At the Tabernacl,
| this morning, after expoundng some pas
sages of Scripture in regard to tho diet ol
Daniel and his abstemious habits the Rev
7. De Witt Talmage, D. D., gave out tn,
hymn beginning:
Glory to God on high,
Let heaven and earth reply.
He announced as the subject Of his sermon:
"Does Religion Prolong Iifeg7 and preached
from the text found in Ps xci, l6; sWith
long life will / satisfy him. Following is
the discourse in fun:
Through the mistake Of its friends religion
has been chiefly associated with sick beds
and graveyards. Tho whole subject to many
| people is odorous with chlorine and carbolic
acid. There are people who cannot pro.
lounce the word religion without hearing in
t the clipping chisel Of the tombstone cutter.
It is high time that this thing were changed
and that religion, instead Of being repre-
iented as hearse to carry out the dead,
ihould be represented as a chariot in which
he living are to triumph.
Religion, so far from subtracting from
bne's vitality, is a glorious addition. It is
ianative, curative, hygienic. It is good for
'he eyes, good for the ears, good for the
ipleen, good for the digestion, good for the
nerves, good for the muscles. When David,
In another part of the Psalms, prays that re
ligion may be dominant he does not speak Of
it as a mild sickness, or an emaclation, or aA
attack Of moral and spiritual cramp; he
speaks Of it as "the saving health of all ma
~ rrrirf f1f.a 81,
longevity to the pious, saying; "With long
life will l satisfy him."
The fact is that men and women die too
soon. It 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
in the history Of the world as Vespasian,
there were at one time in his empire forty
five people one hundred and thirty-iivo years
old. So far down as the Sixteenth century,
Peter Tartan died at ono hundred and
eighty-tive years Of age. l do not say that
religion viii ever take the race back to ante
diluvian longevity, but 1 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
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 a Tous-
saint LOuverturc. And il tho white race
shall be brought from undor thu serRdom of
sin, what shall be the bodyl What Sh-syT
the soull Religion has Qnl,t, =; :, Inn s1ot
world Gfxa itr ~ ]. FRANK Bacon. odui-
' = Smith and Simeon Pennewip '-.'al be
county. The meetie~r-- - Just touched our
ing Johr,-H Z lliil power for a few centuries,
I, 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 re-
ligion is the friend Of long life I prove 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 digestIbo or indi-
| gestible, 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: Good has given me
this body, and he has called it the temple Of
the Holy Ghost and to deface its altars or
mar its walls or crumble its pillars is God
defying sacrilege."
He sees Gods caligraphy in every page
anatomical and physiological. He says
God has given me wonderful body fol
noble purposes"
That arm with thirty-two curious bone;
welded by forty-six curious muscles, and al
under the brains telegraphy; $50 pounds Of
blood rushing through the heart every hour
the heart in twenty-fOur hours beating 100,
600 times, during the twenty-four hour:
overcoming reslstances amounting to 224,
100000 pounds of weight, during the SAINT
time the lungs taking in fifty-seven hogs
heads of air. and all this mechanism no
more mighty than delicate and easily dis
turbed and demolished.
The Christian man says to himself: ''If
hurt my nerves. if hurt my brain, if hur
any of my physical faculties insult God an,
call for dire retribution." Why did God tel
the Levites not to offer to him in sacrihc
animals imperfect and diseased! He mean
to tell us in all the ages that we are to Offe
to God our very best physical condition, ant
man who through irregular or gluttonou
eating ruins his health is not Offering to Co
such a sacrifice. Why did Paul write for hi
cloak at Troasl Why should such grea
man as Paul be anxious about a thing so in
significant as an overcoat3 1t was becaus
he knew that with pneumonia and rheuma
tism he would not be worth half as much t
God and the church as with respiration cas-
and foot free.
An intelligent Christian man would cor
slider it an absurdity to kneel down at nigh
and pray and ask Gods protection while O
the same time he kept the windows of Ii
bed room tight shut against fresh air. II
would just as soon think Of gong out on I'll
bridge between New York and Brooklyn
leaping off and then praying to God to kee
him from getting hurt. just as long as yo
defer this whole subject of physical health
. the realm of whmsicality or to the pastr
4 cook or to the butcSer or to the baker or
: the apothecary or to the clothisr, you are Il,
acting like a Christian Take care Of a
b, your physical forces-nervous, muscula
bone, brain. cellular tissue-for all you mu
be brought to Judgment.
: Smoking your nervous system into hdget
burning out the coating of your stomaS
with wine logwooded and strychnined, wal
ing with thin shoes to make your feet loS
delicate, pinched at the waist until yeu e
well nigh cut in two, and neither part wort
ANYTHING groaning about sick headache al
paipitation of the heart, which you thir
came from God, when they came from yo'
own folly.
What right has any man or woman to
face the temple of the Holy Ghosti What
the carr Why, it is the whispering gale
of the human soul. What is the eye! 1t
the observatory God constructed, its tel
J, scope sweeping the heavens. What is t
handl An instrument so wonderful th
when the Earl of Bridgewater bequeathed
his will $4,000 for treatises 10 be written
the wisdom, power and goodness Of &C
Sir Charles Bell, the great English am
omist and surgeon, found his gre'
est illustration in the construction of
human hand, devoting his whole book to th
subject. So wonderful are these bodies th
Cod uames his own attributes after differei
> parts Of them. His omniscience-it is Coo
eye. His omnipresence-it is Gods ear. d
omnipotence-it is Gods arm. The uph'
stery Of the midnight hoavens-it is the wo