The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1894-08-03
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
An Answer to the Question ais
Life Worth Living"
a Life Of Sin. Of Indulgence, Of Wordll-
ness an Infinite FaiIure-A Life
OF Preparation for Eternity
Always Success.

Rev. i. Dewitt Talmage, who IS now
touring the cities of Australia, selected
the following sermon for presentation
20 his reading congregation this week.
IL rs based on the text:
Wherefore doth a living man complaint
Lamentations if, 30.
II we leave 10 the evolutionists to
guess where we came from and to the
theOlOgians to prOphesy where we are
going to, we still have left for cOnsid-
Grafton 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 it. So am not
surprised that everybody asks the
question; us life worth living2"
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 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 mount
aims of spices" But jeremiah says in
my text life is worth living.
In a book supposed to be doleful, and
lugubrious, and sepulchral, and en-
titled Lamentations" he plainly init
mates that the blessing of merely liv-
ing is so great and grand blessing
that though a man have piled on him
I l.
right to complain. The author of my
text cries ont in startling information,
to all lands and to all centuries:
Wherefore doth a living man COM
plain?7 A diversity of opinion in our
time as well as in Olden time. Here is
a young man OF light haic and blue
eyes, and generous salary, and sound
digestion, and happily affianeed, and
on the way to become 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: eyes,
yes, yesT Here is man who has come
to the forties. He is at the tip-top of
the hill of life. Every step has been a
stumble and bruise. The people he
trusted have turned out deserters, and
the money he has mostly made he has
been cheated out of. His nerves are
out of tune. He has poor appetite, and
oil the food he does eat does not as
simulate. Forty miles climbing up the
Hill of life have been to him like climb
ing the Matterhorn, and there are forty
miles yet to go down, and descent is
always more dangerous than ascent
Ask him whether life is worth living,
and he will drawl out in shivering and
lugubrious and appalling negative:
''No, no, mo-"
How are we to decide this righteously
and intelligently? You will find the
same man vacillating, oscillating in
his opinion from detection to exuber-
ance, and if he be very nercurial 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, Eyes"
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 VIC call
all nations together in a great conven-
ton on eastern or western hemis-
phere, 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
affirmative, there would be more mill
ions who would answer in the mega
tive, and because of the greater num-
Der who have sorrow and misfortune
and trouble the Noes would have it.
The answer l shall give will be differ
ent from either, and yet it will com
mend itself to all who hear me this
day as the right answer. If you ask
me as life worth living?" 1 answer it
all depends upon the kind of life you
live.
In the first place, / remark that a
life of mere money-getting is always a
failure, because you will never get as
much as you want. The poorest peo-
pie in this country are the richest, and
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 anxious to make money as
these men who have piled up fortunes
year after year in stOrehOuses, in gov
eminent securities, in tenement houses,
| in whole city blocks. You ought to
see them jump when they hear the
fire bell ring. You ought to see
/ them in their excitement when
some bank explodes. You ought to see
| their agitation when there is proposed
reformation in the tariff. Their
nerves tremble like harp-strings, but
no music in the vibration. They read
the reports from Wall street in the
morning, with a Government that
threatens paralysis or apoplexy, or
more probably they have a telegraph
or a telephone in their own house, SO
they catch every breath of change in
| the money market. The disease of
accumulation has eaten into them
eaten into their heart, into their lungs,
into their spleen, into their liver, into
| their bones.
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 Chris
tian chemist would analyze one of
these financial behemoths he would
find he is made mp Of copper and gold,
| and silver, and zinc, and lead, and coal
and iron. That is not life worth liv-
ing. There are too many earthquakes
in it; too many agonies in it; to many
perditions in it. They build their
castles, and they open their picture
galleries, and they summon prima