The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1888-07-19
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
The Question "Does Religion Pro-
long Life?" Met and Answered.
Practical Religion a Grand Sedative, Con-
ducing to Peace of Mind and Happi-
ness in Life and Tending to
Its Prolongation.

The subject of a recent sermon by Rev.
4. Dewitt Talmage at the Brooklyn |
Tabernacle was: .tDoes Religion Prolong |
Life?" In answering the query, Mr.. Tai |
mage took for his text:
With long life will I satisfy him.-Psalms, |
xci., IS.
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, instead of being represented as
a hearse to carry out the dead, should be
ing are to triumph.
Religion, so far from subtracting from
ones vanity, is glorious addition. 1t is
Sanative, curative, hygenic. 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 Psalms,
prays that religion may be dominant, he
oOcS uOb peak vi III DIS O Iilliu SlChucSS,
or an emaciation, or an attack of moral
and spiritual cramp; he speak of it as
sthe saving health of all nations;" while
God, in the text, promises longevity to
the pious, saying: "With long life will l
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 hun, To- ;@xy A 40
nine hundred and thirty years. Methuse-
lah 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-fve years old. So far down as
the sixteenth century, Peter Tartan died
at one hundred and eighty-five years of
age. l do not say that religion will ever
take the race back to antediluvian long
evity, but do say the length of human
life will be greatly improved.
1t is said in Isaiah: ssThe child shall die
hundred years old" Now. if according
to Scripture the child is to be 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 bondage for centuries. Give them
chance and they develop a Frederick
Douglass or a Toussaint L'Overture.
And il the white race shall be brought
from under the serfdom of sin, what shall
be the bodys what shall be the soul?
Religion has only just touched our world.
Give it full power for a few centuries and
who can tell what will be the strength Of
man and the beauty of women, and the
longevity of all?
My design is to show that practical re-
ligion 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
digestible or indigestible, whether there
Shall be thorough or incomplete mastica-
ton, are questions very often deferred to
the realm of whimsicality; but the Chris
tan 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 sacrilege."
He sees Gods caligraphy in every page
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 biography; three
hundred and fifty pounds of blood rush.
ing through the heart every hour, the
heart In twenty-four hours beating on
hundred thousand times, during the TWEEN
y-four hours overcoming resistances
amounting to two hundred and twenty.
four million pounds of weight, during the
same time the lungs taking in fifty-sever
hogsheads of air, and all this mechanism
not more mighty than delicate and easily
disturbed and demolished.
Inc Christian man says to himself:
IF I hurt my nerves, if 1 burt m,
brain, If hurt any of my physical facul
ties, insult God and call for dire retri.
button"
Why did God tell the Levites not t,
offer to Him in sacrifice animals imper.
feet and diseased? He meant to tell us il
all the ages that we are to offer to Coo
our very best physical condition, and ;
man who, through irregular or gluttonou
eating, ruins his health, is not off ering Il
God such sacrifice. Why did Paul writ
for his cloak at Troas? Why should sucl
great man as Paul be anxious about
thing so insignificant as an oyercoat? I
was because he knew that with pneumonia
and rheumatism he would not be wortl
half as much to God and the Church a
with respiration easy and foot free.
What right has any man or woman t.
deface the temple of the Holy Ghost
What is the ear? Why, it is tn
whispering galley of the human
soul. What is the eye? 1t is tn
observatory God constructed, its tel
escope sweeping the heavens. What i
the hand3 An instrument SO wonderful
that when the Earl of Bridgewater be
queathed in his will forty thousand dollar
Tor treatises to be written on the wis
dom, power and goodness of Sod, ST
Charles Bell. the great English anatomis
and surgeon, found his greatest illustra-
ton in the construction of the huma
hand, devoting his whole book to tina
subject. So wonderful are these bodie
that God names his own attributes afte
different parts OF them. His omniscienc
lit is Gods eye. His omnipresenc
lit is Gods ear. His omnipotence-it