The Monitor-register., 1897-05-21
OUR ABUSED LINERS.
REV. DR.. TALMAGE ON THE HEALTH
OF THE BODY.

REV.. DR.. TAlMAGE ON THE HEALTH
OF THE BODY.
A Sermon That Mostly Concerns This
Life, Yet Spiritual and Physical Condi-
tions Are Largely Dependent Upon Each
other.
WASHINGTON, May 16. DR.. Tai
mage's sermon of today has more to do
with this life than the life to come and
will be a warning against all forms of
dissipation. Text, Proverbs vii, %,
It'll a dart strike through his liver"
Solomon's anatomical and physiolog-
ical discoveries were so very great that
he was nearly 5000 years ahead of the
scientists of his day. He, more than
1000 years before Christ, seemed to
know about the circulation of the blood,
which Harvey discovered 1,619 years
after Christ, for when Solomon in Ec-
clesiastes, describing the human body,
speaks of the pitcher at the fountain he
evidently means the three canals lead
ing from the heart that receive the
blood like pitchers. When he speaks in
Ecclesiastes of the silver cord of life, he
evidently means the spinal marrow,
about which in our day Drs. Mayo and
Carpenter and Dalton and Flint and
BroWn-Sequard have Experimental.
And Solomon recorded in the Bible,
thousands of years before scientists dis
covered it, that in his time the spinal
cord relaxed in old age, producing the
tremors of hand and head, "or the sill
yer cord be loosed."
In the text he reveals thefact that he
had studied that largest gland of the
human system, the liver, not by the
electric light of the modern dissecting
room, but by the dim light of a COM
paratively dark age, and yet had seen its
important functions in the God built
castle of the human body, its selecting
and secreting power, its curious cells,
its elongated branching tubes, a divine
workmanship in central and right and
left lobe and the hepatio artery through
which flow the crimson tides. Oh, this
vital organ is like the eye of God in
that it never sleeps!
Solomon knew of it and had noticed
either in vivisection or post mortem
what awful attacks sin and dissipation
make upon it, until the fiat of Almighty
God bids the body and soul separate,
and the one it commends to the grave
and the other it sends to Judgment. A
javelin of ~retribution, not glaDcing off
or making a slight wound, but piercing
it from side to side ''till a dart strike
through his liver"
-Galen and Hippocrates ascrlbe to the
liver the most of the worlds moral de-
preston, and the word melancholy
means black bile.
preach koyou the gospel of health.
In taking a diagnosis OF diseases OF the
soul you must also take a diagnosis of
diseases of the body. AS if to recognize
this, one whole book of the New Tesla
ment was written by q physician. Luke
was a medical doctor, and he discourses
much of the physical conditions, and
he tells of the good Samaritan's med
ication of the wounds by pouring in oil
and wine, and recognizes hunger as a
hindrance to hearing the gospel, SO that
the 8, 900 were fed. He also records the
sparse diet of the prodigal away from
home and the extinguished eyesight of
the beggar by the wayside, and let's us
know OF the hemorrhage of the wounds
of the dying Christ and the miraculous
post norton resuscitation. Any esti-
mate of the spiritual condition that does
not include also the physical condition
is incomplete.
Heart and Liver.
When the door keeper of congress fell
dead from excessive joy because Bur
coyne had surrendered at Saratoga, and
Philip V of Spain dropped dead at the
news of his country's defeat in battle,
and Cardinal Wolsey faded away as the
result of Henry Wits anathema, it was
demonstrated that the body and soul
are Siamese twins, and when you thrill
the n with joy or sorrow you thrill
the other. We may as well recognize the
tremendous fact that there are two
mighty fortresses in the human body, the
heart and the liver, the heart the for
tress of the graces, the liver the fortress
of the furies. You may have the head
filed with all intelleotualities, and the
ear with all musical appreciation, and
the ear with all musical appreciation,
and the mouth with all eloquence, and
the hand with all industries, and the
heart with all ~generesities, and yet ga
dart strike through the liver"
First, let Christian people avoid the
mistake that they are all wrong with
God because they suffer from depres-
sion of spirits. Many a consecrated man
has found his spiritual sky befogged
and his hope of heaven blotted out and
himself plunged chin deep in the slough
of despond and has said: my heart is
not right with God, and | think | must
have made a mistake and instead of be-
ing a child of light l am a child of
darkness. No one can feel as gloomy as
l feel and be a Christian" And he has
gone to his minister for consolation, and
he has collected Flavel's books and &C.
ellis books and Baxter's books and read
and read and read and prayed and pray
ed and prayed and wept and wept and
wept and groaned and groaned and
groaned. My brother, your trouble is
not with the heart; it is a gastric Gisor-
der or a rebellion of the liver. You
need a physician more than you do a
clergyman. 1t is not sin that blots out
your hope of heaven, but bile. It not
only yellows your eyeballs. and furs
your tongue, and makes your head ache,
but swoops upon your soul in OBJECTIONS
and forebodings. The devil is after you.
He has failed to despoil your character,
and he does the next best thing for him
he ruffies your peace of mind. When
he says that you are not a forgiven soul,
when he says you are not right with
God, when he says that you will never
get to heaven, he lies. If you are in
Christ O are just as sure of heaven as
though you were there already. But sa-
tan, finding that he cannot keep you
out of the promised land of Canaan,
has determined that the spies shall not
bring you any of the Eschol grapes be-
forehand, and that you shall have moth
ing but priokly pear and crabapple.
You are just as much a Christian now
under the cloud as you were when you
were accustomed to rise in the morning
at 8 O'Clock to Fray and sing "Hallelu-
iah, tits doneli'
My friend, Rev. DR.. Joseph F. Jones
of Philadelphia, a translated spirit now,
wrote a book entitled, MAN, Moral and
Physical, " in which he shows how diff
ferent the same things may appear to
different people. He says: AFTER the
great battle on the Mincio in 1859, be-
tween the French and the Sardinians
on the n side and the Austrians on
the other, so disastrous to the latter.
the defeated army retreated, followed
by the victors. A description of the
march of each army is given by two