Connecticut western news., 1897-09-16
WHAT IS YOUR LIFE?
REV. OR. TALMAGE DISCUSSES THIS I MoMENTOUS QUESTION:.

REV. OH. IAlMAGE OiSCOSSES tHlS MoMENTOUS QUESTION.
 ing and tho Kind That Opens Into Eter- nity-The Struggle For Wealth, Position l and Happiness.
 l WAsHMaToN, Sept. 12.-In this ser mon Rev. Dr. Talmage discusses sub- jeot vital to all, and never more timely than now, when the struggle for power, petition, wealth and happiness is so ab- sorbing. The text is James iv, IA, "What is your life?"
 ! 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 consid- eration 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 sur prised that every body asks tho ques- tion, "Is life worth living?"
 |
 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 polygamist and that soured his disposition. One wife makes man happy; more than one makes him Ewretched. 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 spioes." But Jeremiah says life tis worth living. In book supposed to be doleful and lugubrious and sepulchral and entitled Lamentations, he plain ly intimates that the blessing oi merely livi2g is 60 great and grand bless ing that though man have piled on him all misfortunes and disasters he has no right to complain. The ancient prophet cries ont in startling intonation to all lands and to all centuries, Wherefore doth a living man com plain?''
 A diversity of opinion in our time as well as in olden time. Here is young man of light hair and blue eyes and sound digestion and generous salary and happily affianced and on the way to become a partner in commercial Arm of which he is an important clerk. Ask him whether life is worth living. He will laugh in your face and say, |"Yes. yes, yesl" Here is a man who has come to the forties. He is at the tiptop of the hill of life. Every step has been . stumble and bruise. The people he trusted have turned out de- serters, and the money he has honestly made he has been cheated out of. His nerves are out of tune. He has poor ap- petite, and the food he does eat does not assimilate. Forty miles climbing up the hill of life have been to him like bhmbing the Matterhorn, and there are 40 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 augubrious and appalling negative, s'No, no, nol''
 ] How are we to decide this matter righteously and intelligentlyf You will And the same man vacillating, oscillat- dng in his opinion from dejeotion to ex- uberanoe, and if he be very mercurial In his temperament it will depend very much on which way the wind blows. If the wind blow from the northwest and you ask him, he will say, "Yes, and if 1t blow from the northeast and you ask him he will say, "No." How axe we, then, to get the question right eously answered.? Suppose we call all S~~ @r, i0r, on eastern or western hemisphere. and lot all those who are in the affirmative nay, "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 moro millions who would an- swer in the negative, and because of the greater number who have sorrow and misfortune and trouble the noes would have it. The answer shall give will be different from either, and yet it will commend itself to all who hear me this day as the right answer. If you ask me, "Is life worth living?" an- swer, "It all depends upon the kind of life you live"
 Money Getting.
 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 millionaires. There is not . scissors grinder on the streets of New York or Brooklyn who is so anx- 1ous to make money as these men who have piled up fortunes year after year fin storehouses, in government securi- ties, 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 bank explodes You ought to see their agitation when there is pro- posed . reformation in the tariff. Their nerves tremble like harp strings, but nc music in the vibration. They read the reports from Wall street in the morning with a ooncernment that threatens par alysis or apoplexy, or more probably they have telegraph or 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 thei, liver, into their bones.
 Chemists have sometimes analysed the human body, and they say it is SC much magnesia, so much lime, so much ohlorate of potassium. If some Chris tihn chemist would analyze one of these financial behemoths, he would find he is made up of copper and gold and sil. 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 perditioni in it. They build their castles, and they open their picture galleries, and they summon prima donnas, and they offer every induoement for happiness tc
 come and live there, but happiness vii
 not come. They send footmanned ant
 postnoned equipage to bring her. Sh'
 will not ride to their door. They sent
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