Martinsburg herald. [volume] (Martinsburg, W. Va.) 1881-1920, 1890-03-15
THE TALMAGE SERMON.
WOULD YOU LIKE TO LIVE YOUR
LIFE OVER AGAIN7
Preached I'm the Academy OF Music,
Brooklyn, New York.:
rsxr. aAu hat a man hath ,piu he gfve

TEXT. "Au that a man hath riu he give
for his iife."-Job. H., 4.
That is untrue The Lord did not say IL,
but Satan said it 10 the Lord, when the evil
one wanted Job still 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
poisoning 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 a
captain who has stood on the bridge of
the steamer till his passengers got off
and LIE drowned; many an engineer who
mas kept his hand on the throttle valve
or his foot on the brake until the most of the
train was saved while be went down to death
through the open drawbridge: many a fire.
man who plunged into blazing house to get
sleeping child out, sacrificing his life in the
attempt, and thousands of martyrs who sub
mitted 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:
IAN that man hath will be give for his
life"
But Satan's falsehood was built on truth.
Life is very precious, and if we would not
give up all there are many things we would
surrender rather than surrender it, We SEQ
how precious life is from the fact that we do
everything to prolongit. Hence all sanitary
regulations, all study of hygiene, all fear of
draughts, all waterproofs, all doctors, all
medicines, all struggle in crisis of accident
An admiral of the British navy was court
r1crtialed for turning his ship around in time
of danger and SO damaging the ship. 1t was
! proved against him. But when his time came
10 be heard he said: Gentlemen, did turn
Chi xalr hat Ia
! eyed, but do you want to know why |
| a1rned it? There was a man over
board, and l wanted to save him, and
| did save him, and consider the life of one
,ailor worth all the vessels of the British
navy" No wonder he was vindicated. Life
IS indeed very precious. Yea, there are
tncse who deem life so precious they would
IKE to repeat it, they would like to try it
again. They would like to go back from
seventy to sixty, from sixty TO fifty, from
fifty to forty, from forty to thirty, from
thirty to twenty. purpose for very prac-
heal and useful purposes, as will appear be-
lore get through, to discuss the question
I'VE have all asked OF otbers and others have
again and again asked of us-would you like
10 live your life over again?
The fact is that no intelligent and right
tearing man is satisfied with his past life We
| have all made SO many mistakes, stumbled
| INTO so many blunders, said SO may things
that ought not to have been said and done SO
many things that ought not to have been
Zone, that we can suggest at least ninety-five
| Ger cent. OF Improvement. Now would it
not be grand if the good Lord would say to
| Fou. You can go back and try it over
/ again. | will by a word turn your hair to
| brown or black or golden. and smooth all
| the wrinkles out of your temple and
.heek, and take the bend out of your
| lhoulders, and extirpate the stiffness from
| he joint and the rheumatic twinge from the
1 cot, and You shall be twenty-one years of
| age and just what you were when YOU
reached that point before" If the PROPOSE
lion were made I think many thousands
would accept it. That feeling caused the
ancient search for what was called the Foun-
] lain of Youth, the waters of which taken
! would turn the hair Of the octogenarinn into
/ the curly locks of boy, and however old
| person who drank at that fountain he would
| be young again The island was SAID to
belong TO the group of the Bahamas, but
1 lay far out in the ocean. The great Span
sh explorer, Juan Ponce de Leon, fellow
voyager with Columbus, | have no doubt
! felt that it he could discover that Fountain
| Of Youth he would do as much as his friend
bad done in discovering America. So he put
out in 1912 from Porto Rico and cruised
2bout among the Bahamas in search of that
/ fountain. | am glad he did not find it.
{
we're and its waters were bottled up and sent
abroad at thousand dollars bottle, the de-
mand would be greater than the supply, and
many man who has come through a
| life of uselesSness and perhaps sin. to
Did age would be shaking up the Do
tent liquid, and if he were directed to
take only a teaspoonful after each meal
would be so anxious TO make sure work he
would take tablespoonful, and If directed to
take tablespoonful would take glassful
But some Of you would have to go back
further than to twenty-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 a fair start some would
nave so go back to the father and mother ana
| get them corrected; yea, to the grandfather
and grandmother and have their
6fe corrected, for some of you are
suffering from bad hereditary nhu-
snces 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, a place filled with
miserable attempts at repairs. | begin to
think that it is better for each generation to
have only one chance and then for them
to pass Off and give another generation
chance.
Beside that, if we were permitted to live
life over again, il would be stale and stupid
experience. The zest and spur and enthu-
siasm of life coEie from the fact that we have
never been along this road before and every
thing is new, and we are alert for what may
appear at the next turn of the road. Sup
| pose YOU, man in mid-life or old age WERE
with your present feelings and large attain
/ ments put back into the thirties or the
twenties or into the teens, what a nuisance
you would be to others and what an unhap-
- Y
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 pleasurable surprise, or led you into
happy interrogation, would only call forth
| from you a disguised ooh, pshaww You
would be blase at thirty and a misanthrope
at forty and uncomfortable at fifty. The most
| mane and stupid thing Imaginable would be
a second journey of life. 1t is amusing to
hear people say: | would like to live my life
over again, if | could take my present ex-
perience and knowledge of things back with
| me and begin under those improved auspices :"
/ Why. what an embarrassing boy you would
| be with your present attainments IN a child's
mind No one would want such boy around
the house: A philosopher at twenty, a scien-
| fist at fifteen, an archeologist at ten and a
| 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
Besides that, if you took life over again,
you would have to take its deep sadnesses
over again. Would you want to try again
the griefs and the heart breaks and the be-
reavements through which you have gomez
| What q mercy that we shall never be called
| to suffer them again We may have others
bad enough, but those old ones never again.
! Would you want TO go through the process
of losing your father again or your mother
again or your companion in life again or
your child again? If you were permitted
10 stop at the sixtieth milestone or the
| iiftieth milestone or the fortieth mile
stone and retrace your steps to the
twentieth, your experience would be
! something like mine one day last November
in Italy. walked through great city with a
| friend and two guides, and there were in all
| the city only four persons and they were those
| Of our own group. Wewent up and down
the streets, we entered the houses, the
museums, the temples, the theatres. We ex
am1ned the wonderful pictures on the wall
and the most exquisite mosaic on the floor
In the streets were the deep worn ruts o
wagons but not a wagon in the city Oh
the front steps of mansions the word eve,
come" in Latin, but no human icing (,
| greet us. The only bodies of any o
| the citizens that we saw were petrifie,
and in the museums at the gates o
the thirty-fve thousand people VIII.
once lived in those homes and worshiped il
those temples and clapped in those theatres
not one left For eighteen hundred year
that city Of Pompeii had been buried befor
uo1er1 exploration scooped out of it the lev;
| o. Vesuvius. Well, he who should be per
mitted to return on the pathway of hi
earthly life and live it over again would fint
as lonely and sad pilgrimage 1t would b.
an exploration of the dead past. The ok
school house, the old church, the old home
| the old play ground either gone or occuniet