The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1894-07-23
LIFE WELL WORTH LIVING.
Talmage DiSCOuTSeS on a Text From
Lamentations.

nance OF GOO Comm anQments NOT
Worth Living.
Brooklyn. July 22.-Rev. DIR. Talmage,
who is now touring in the Australian
cities, has chosen as the subject for to-
DAYS sermon through the press: Worth
Living" the text being taken from La
mentations 3: 80, Wherefore doth liv-
ing man complaint"
If we leave to the evolutionists to guess
where we came from and to the theolo-
gians to prophesy where we are going to,
we still have left for consideration 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, rs life worth living2"
Solomon in his unhappy moments says
1t is not. "Vanity," "vexation of
spirit" mo good, are his estimate. The
fact is that Solomon was at one time
a polygamist, and that soured his disposi-
ton. 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
the words mountains of spices" But
Jeremiah says in my text life is worth
living.
In a 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
man have piled on him all misfortunes and
disasters he has no right TO complain.
The author of my text cries out in start
ling intonation to all lands and TO all cen
turtles, Wherefore, doth a living man
complaint" A diversity of opinion in our
time as well 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 on the way to
become partner in the commercial firm
of which he is an important clerk.
Ask him whether his life is worth liv-
ing. He will laugh in your face and say:
''Yes, yes, yesn' Here is a man who has
come to the forties. He is at the tip-top
of the hill of life. Every step has been
stumble and bruise. The people he
trusted have turned out deserters, and
the money he 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 Mat
terhorn and there are forty miles yet to
go down, and descent is always more dan
gerous than ascent. Ask him whether
life is worth living, and he will drawl out
in shivering and lugubrious and appalling
negative; "No, no, mol"
How are we to decide this matter
righteously and intelligently2 You will
find the same man vacillating, oscillating
in his opinion from detection to exuber-
ance, and if he be very mercurial in his
il will dnnaDH MI
upon which way the wind blows. If the
wind blow from the northwest and you
ask him, he will say, Yes" and IL 1t
blow from the northeast and you ask him,
he will say, mo" How are we then to
get the question righteously answered.
Suppose we call all nations together in a
great convention on eastern or western
hemisphere and let all those who are in
the Affirmative say "Aye' and all those
who are in the negative say mo" While
there would be hundreds of thousands
who would answer in the affirmative,
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 com
mend itself to all who hear me this day
as the right answer If you ask me lis
life worth livingl" l answer, it all de-
ponds upon the kind of life you live
In the first place, l remark, that life
of mere money-getting is always failure,
because you will never get as much as
you want The poorest people in this
country are the richest, and next to them
those who are half as rich. There is not
a cissors-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 store
houses, in government securities, in tene-
ment houses, in whole city blocks. You
ought to see them jump when the hear
the fire bell ring. You ought to see them
in their excitement when some bank ex-
Nplodes. You ought to see their agitation
when there is proposed a 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 concernment that
threatens paralysis or apoplexy, or more
probably, they have telegraph or tele-
phone 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 analyZed 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 behe-
moths he would find he is made up of cop
per, and gold, and silver, 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 perditious in it. They build
their castles, and they open their picture
galleries, and they summon prima donnas.
and they offer every Involvement for hap
piness to come and live there, but happi-
ness will not come.
They send footmanned and postillioned
equipage TO bring her; she will not ride
to their door. They send princely escort
she will not take their arm. They make
their gateways triumphal arches: she
will not ride under them They set a
golden throne before a golden plate she
turns away from the banquet They call
TO her from upholstered balcony; she will
not listen. Mark you, this is the failure
of those who have had large accumula-
ton.
And then you must take into considera-
ton that the vast majority of those who
make the dominant idea of life money
getting fall far short of affluence. 1t is
estimated that only about two out hun
dred business men have anything worthy
the name OF success. A man who spends
his life with the one dominant idea of
financial accumulation spends life not
worth living.
So the idea of worldly approval. If that
be dominant in a mans life he is misnr-