Connecticut western news., 1892-01-07
AT THE TABERNACLE.
DR. TALMAGE BREACHES ON THE
 YEAR JUST CLOSED.

1 BROOKLYN, Jan. 3.-This morning the Tabernacle congregation. meeting for the first Sunday service of the new year. found the pastor disposed to serious reflections on the flight of time. The opening hymn gave the l keynote in the familiar words: My days are gliding swiftly by.
 | And l. n pilgrims stranger.
 Would npt detain them as they fly | Those hours of toil and danger.
 Dr. Talmage read several passages relating to antetliluvian longevity i making characteristic comments as he read, and then preached from the ominous words, Jeremiah xviii. TO-, This year thou shalt die"
 Jeremiah. accustomed to saying bold things, addresses Hananiah in these words. They prove true. In sixty days Hananiah had departed | this life.
 | This is the first Sabbath of the year It is time for review and for anticipation. A man must be gen jus at stupidity who does not think now The old year died in giving birth to the new. as the life of Jane Seymour, the English queen. de parted when that of her son. Edward | VI, d;lwned The old year was a queen The new shall be king | The grave of the one and the cradle of the other are side by side We can hardly guess what the child will be It is only two days old. but | prophecy for it an eventful future Year of mlrth and madnessl Year of pageant and conflagration It will laugh; it will sing; it will groan; it will die
 Is it not time for earnestthoughtI The congratulations have been given | The Christmas trees have been taken down. or have well nigh cast their fruit The friends who came for the holidays are gone in the rail train While we are looking forward to an other twelve months of intense aotiv ities the text breaks upon us like a bursting thunderhead. This year i thou shalt die
 The text will probably prove true of some of us. The probability is augmented by the fact that all of Us who are over thirty five years of age have gone beyond the average of hu man life The note is more than due It is only by sufferance that it is not collected Weare like debtor who is taking the three days grace of the banks Our race started with nine hundred years for lifetime. We read of but one antetliluvian youth whose early death disappoint ed the hopes of his parents by his dying at seven hundred and seventy seven years of age. The world then may have been ahead of what it is now, for men had so long time in which to study and invent and plan If an artist or philosopher has forty years for work. he makes great achievements; but what must the artists and philosophers have done who had nine hundred years before them2
 In the nearly two thousand years before the flood. considering the longevity of the inhabitants there may have been nearly as many peo pie as there are now. The flood was not freshet that washed few people of plank. but disaster that may have swept. away a thousand millions If the Atlantit-ocean by a sudden lurch of the earth tonight, should drown this hemisphere, and the Pacific ocean. by sudden lurch of the earth. should drown the other hemisphere. leaving about as many ! beings as could be got in one or two ocean steamers. It would give you an idea of what the ancient flood was.
 HOW LIFE WAS SHORTENED.
 At that time God started the race with shorter allowance of life. The nine hundred years were hewn down until, in the time of Vespasian. cen BUS was taken, and only one hundred and twenty four persons were found one hundred years old and three or four persons one hundred and forty years old Now man who has come to one hundred years of age Is curi osity and we go miles to see him. The vast majority of the race passes of before twenty years. To every apple there are five blossoms that never get to be apples. In the coun try church the sexton rings the bell rapidly until almost through, and then tolls it. For awhile the bell of our life rings right merrily. but with some of you the bell has begun to toll. and the adaptedness of the text to you IS more and more probable. This year thou shalt die.
 The character of occupation adds to the probability. Those who are in the professions are undergoing a sapping of the brain and nerve | foundations. Literary men in this country are driven with whip and spur to their topmost speed. Not UDe brain worker out of a hundred observes any moderation There Is | something so stimulating in our eli mate that If John Brown. the essay ist of Edinburgh. had lived here he would have broken down at thirty l five instead of fifty five. and Charles Dickens would have dropped at forty There is something in all our occupa tions which predisposes to disease if we be stout. to disorders ranging from levers to apoplexy; ii we be frail. to diseases ranging from con sumption to paralysis.
 Printers rarely reach fifty years. | Watchmakers. Tn marking the tune for others. shorten their own. Chem ists breathe death m their labora tories and potters absorb paralysis. Painters fall under their OWL brush. Foundrylnen take death in with the filings Shoemakers pound away i their own lives on the last. Over driven merchants, measure off their