The great West. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1889-18??, 1890-03-14
.TALMAGE INQUIRIES.

Lie BEST use DlOulQ be
Made Of This
Life.
| BRooKLYs, Spccial-The Rev. T. D. Witt
Talmage, D. D., preached in the Academy of
Music, Brooklyn, to an overlooking congre-
CATION. After expounding appropriate. pas
sages of scripture he announced his subject
to he: 'Would You Like to Live Your Life
Over Again." His text was Job ii, 4: "All
that man hath will he give for his life. !"
He said:
That is untrue. The Lord did not say it,
but Satan said it to the Lord, when the evil
one wanted Job more afflicted. The record
is. $50 went Satan forth from the presence
OF the Lord and smote Job with sore boils. -
and Satan has been the author of all eruptive
disease since then, and he hopes by poison
ing the blood to poison the soul. But the
result of the diabolical experiment which left
Job victor proved the falsity of the Satanic
remark-"All that man hath will he give
for his life" Many captain who
has stood on the bridge of the steam
er till his passengers got of and he
drowned; many an engineer who has kept his
hand on the throttle valve, or his foot on the
brake until the most of the train was saved,
while he went down to death through the open
draw bridge; many a fireman who plunged in
to house to get q sleeping child out, sacri-
fcing his life at the attempt, and thousands
of martyrs who su bmitted to fiery stake and
knife of massacre and headsman's ak and
guillotine rather than surrender principle,
proving that in many a case my text was not
true. when it says: "All that man hath
will he give for his life"
The fact is that no intelligent and right
fearing man is satisfied with his past life We
| have all made so many mistakes, stumbled
into SO many blunders, said 80 many things
! that ought not to have been said and done
SO many things that ought not to have been
done, that we can suggest at least 80 per
cent ofimprovemept. Now would it not be
! grand if the good Lord would say to you:
"You can go back and try it over again.
will by O word turn your hair to brown or
black or golden, and smooth all the wrinkles
out Of your temple and cheek, and take the
bend out of your shoulders, and extirpate
| the stiffness from the joint and the rheumatic
| ofage and just what you were when you re ach-
ed that point before" If the proposition
were made think many, thousands would
| accept it, That feeling caused the ancient
search for what was called the Fountain Of
Youth, the waters of which taken would
turn the hair of the octogenarian into the
curly locks of boy, and however old a per-
SON who drank at that fountain he would be
young again. The island was said to be-
longto the group of the Bahamas, but
| lay far out in the ocean. The
great Spanish explorer. Juan Ponce de
Leon, fellow voyager with Columbus, l have
no doubt felt that if he could discover that
Fountain of Youth he would do as much as
his friend had done in discovering America.
| So he put out in 1912 from Porto
Rico and cruised about among the
Bahamas in search of that foun-
! tain. There is no such fountain. But If
there we're and it's waters were bottled up
| and sent abroad at thousand dollars q bot
tie, the demand would be greater than the
! through life of uselessness, and prehaps sin,
| to old age would be shaking up the potent
LIQUID, and if he were directed to take only a
Aeaspoonful after each meal would be so anx-
7 ious to make sure work he would take table
spoonful, and if directed to take a tablespoon-
| ful would take glassful. But some OF you
would have to go back further than to TWEEN
ty-one years of age to make fair start, for
there are many who manage to get all
wrong before that period. Yea, in order to
! GET q fair start some would have to go buck
to the father and mother and get them cor
rected; yea to the grandfather and grand
mother and have their life corrected, for
| some of you are suffering from bad heredita-
~ influences which started a hundred years
ago Well if your grandfather lived his life
| over again and your father lived his life over
| again and you lived your life over again,
what cluttered up place this world would
be- place filed with miserable attempts
at repairs. l begin to think that it is bet
| ter for each generation to have only
| ooho nd fhou them TO of
and give another generation a chance.
| Besides that, if We were permitted to live
| life over again. it would be stale and stupid
experience The zest and spur and enthusi-
| asm of life come from the fact that we have
never been along this road before, and every
thing is new. and we are alert Tor what may
| appear at the next turn Of the road. Sup
pose you, a man in midi e or old age, we're,
| with your present feelings and large attain
| ments, put back into the thirtles, or the
| twenties. or into the teens. what nuisance
| you would be to others and what an unhappi-
ness to yourself Your contemporaries
| would not want you and you would not want
them. Things that in your previous journey
| of life stirred your healthful ambition. or
| gave YOU pleaeurable surprise, or led you in
to happy interrogation, would only call forth
| from you disguised "Oh pshaw!' You would
be blase OF thirty and q misanthrope at for
| ty and uncomfortable at fifty. The most In
| Sane duU rUuplu UuIHS LILO "OoiN w -
| second journey of life. 1t is amusing to hear
people say: II would like to live my lie over
again, if 1 could take my present experience
and knowledge of things back with me and
begin under those improved auspices" Why,
what an uninterest;ng boy you would be with
your present attachments in a child's mind.
No one would want such boy around the
| house:
A philosopher at twenty, a scientist at IF
| teen an archRologist at ten and domestic
! nuisance all the time. An oak crowded into
an acorn. A Rocky mountain eagle thrust
back into the egg shell from which it was
| Matched.
Beside that, would you want to risk the
temptations of life over again? From the
fact that you are here conclude that though
in many respects your life may have been un.
fortunate and uuconsecrated you have got
on so far tolerably we'll, ifnothing more than
been far from being as coDsecratel as
| would like to have had it, would not like to