Connecticut western news., 1894-07-26
WHAT IS LIFE WORTH
REV. OR. TAlMA6E SAYS IT DEPENDS
 UPON CIRCUMSTANCES.

REV. ON. VAlMASE SAYS IT DEPENDS
 UPON CIRCUMSTANCES.
 Then It Ts Worth Living-A Strong. ! Rreesy and Optimistic Discourse by the ! GreAt Preacher.
 BROOKLYN, July 22.-Rev. Dr. Tal- mage, who is now touring ill the Aus tralian cities, has chosen as the subject for today's sermon through the press Worth Living, the text being taken from Lamentations iii. 80, Wherefore doth a living man complain?''
 If we leave to the evolutionists to guess where we came from and to the theologians to prophecy where we are going to, we still have left for consider ation the important fact that we are, here. There may be some doubt about where the river rises and some doubt about where the river empties, but there can be no doubt about the fact that we are sailing on 1t Sol am not surprised that everybody asks the question, "Is life worth living?'
 Solomon in his unhappy moments says it Is not Vanity" ''vexation of spirit, :" mo good" are his estimate The fact is that Solomon was at one time polygamist, and that soured his disposition. One wife makes a man happy; more than one makes him wretched But Solomon was converted from polygamy to monogamy, and the last words he ever wrote, as far as we can read them, were the words "moun- tains of spices" " But Jeremiah says in my text life is worth living.
 In book supposed to be doleful and lugubrious and sepulchral and entitled "Lamentations" he plainly intimates that the blessing of merely living is so great and grand blessing that though a man have piled on him all misfor tunes and disasters he has no right to complain. The author of my text cries out in startling intonation to all lands and to all centuries, Wherefore doth living man complaint" A diversity of opinion in our time as we'll as in olden time. Here is a young man of light hair and blue eyes and sound digestion and generous salary and happily affianced and in the way to become the partner in a commercial firm of which he is an important clerk. Ask him whether life is worth living. He will laugh in your face and say, "Yes, yes, yesp Here is u man who has come to the forties. He is at the tiptop of the hill of life. Ev- cry step has been a stumble and Q bruise. The people he trusted have kl>1 \ has honestly made he has been cheated out of. His nerves are out of tune. He has poor appetite, and all the food he does eat does not assimilate. Forty miles climbing up the hill of life have been to him like climbing the Matterhorn, and there are 40 miles yet to go down, and descent is always more dangerous than ascent Ask him whether lifo is worth living, and he will drawl out in shivering and lugubrious and appalling negative, No, no, noP'
 It Depends Upon the Kind of Life.
 How are we to decide this matter righteously and intelligently? You will find the same man vacillating, oscillat- ing in his opinion from dejection to ex- tolerance, and if he be very morcurial in his temperament it will depend very much upon which way the wind blows. If the wind blow from the northwest, and you ask him, he will say, "Yes, and if it blow from the northeast, and you ask him, he will say No" How are we, then, to get the question righteously answered? Suppose we call all nations together in a great con- vention on eastern or western hemi- sphere and let all those who are in the affirmative say Aye" and all those who are in the negative say No. While there would be hundreds of thousands who would answer in the af- firmative, there would be more millions who would answer in the negative, and because of the greater number who have sorrow and misfortune and trouble the : ..noes'' would have it The answer 1 shall give will be different from either, and yet it will commend itself to all who hear me this day as the right an swer. If you ask me, ''Is life worth liv- ing?" answer. it all depends upon the kind of life you live.
 In the first place, remark that life of mere money getting is always fail ure. because you will never get as much as you want. The poorest people in this country are the richest, and the next to them those who are half as rich. There is not scissors grinder on the streets of New York or Brooklyn who is so anx- ions to make money as these men who have piled up fortunes year after year in storehouses, in government securities, in tenement houses,- in whole city blocks.
 You ought to see them jump when they hear the firebell ring. You ought to see them in their excitement when some bank explodes. You ought to see their agitation when there is proposed a tremble like harp strings, but no music in the vibration. They read the reports from Wall street in the morning with a concernment that threatens paralysis or apoplexy, or. more probably, they have a telegraph or telephone in their house, so they catch every breath of change in the money market. The disease of ac- cumulation has eaten into them-eaten into their heart, into their lungs, into their spleen, into their liver, into their bones.
 Dominant Ideas.
 Chemists have sometimes analysed the human body, and they say it is so much magnesia, so much lime, so much chlorate of potassium. If some Christian chemist would analyze one of these financial behemoths, he would find he is made up of copper and gold and sill yer and zinc and lead and coal and iron That is not life worth living. There are too many earthquakes in it, too many agonies in it, too many per ditions in it. They build their castles, and they open their picture galleries, and they summon prima donnas, and they offer every indpcement for happi- ness to come and live there, but happi. ness will not come
 They send footmanned and postillion. edequipage to bring her; she will not ride to their door They send Drincelv escort.