The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1899-09-29
TO ENJOY LONG LIFE.
A Prescription Prepared by Rev.
DR.. Talmage.
Religion VIII Offset the Designations
and Destroyers of Life-The
Gospel n Chariot for
the Living.
Copyrighted. 1899, by Louis Klopsch.)


life and preacles the gospel of physical
health. The text is Psalms 81, 1G, with
long life will satisfy him"
Through the mistake of its friends re-
ligion has been chiefly associated with
sick beds and graveyards. The whole
subject TO many people is odorous with
chlorine and carbolic acid. There are
people who cannot pronounce the word
religion" without hearing in it the clip
ping chisel of the tombstone cutter. 1t
is high time that this thing were
changed and that religion, instead of
being represented as n hearse to carry
out the dead, should be represented as
a chariot in which the living are to tri-
umph.
Religion, so far from subtracting
from ones vitality, is a glorious addi-
ton. 1t is sanative, curative, hygienic
II is good for the eyes, good for the
ears, good for the spleen, good for the
digestion, good for the nerves, good for
the muscles. When David in another
part of the psalm prays that religion
may be dominant, he does not speak of
ii as mild sickness or an emaciation or
an attack of moral and spiritual cramp.
lie speaks of il as "the saving health of
all nations" while God in the text prom
Uses longevity to the pious, saying:
with long life will l satisfy him." The
fact is that men and women die too
soon. 1t is high time that religion
Joined the hand of medical science in at
tempting to improve human longevity.
Adam lived $50 years; Methuselah lived
900 years. As late in the history of the
world as Nespasian there were at one
time in his empire As people 1876 years
old. SO far down as the sixteenth CEN
tury Peter Tartan died at 1856 years of
age. l do not say that religion will ever
take the race back to antediluvian lon
gevity, but l do say the length of life
will be increased.
1t is said in Isaiah: "The child shall
die hundred years old" Now, if, ac-
cording to Scripture, the child is to be
a hundred years old, may not the men
and women reach to 300 and 400? The
fact is that we are mere dwarfs and
skeletons compared with some of the
generations that are to come. Take
1he African race. They have been I'M
der bondage for centuries. Give them
n chance, and they develop Frederick
Douglass or Toussaint L'Ouverture.
And, if the white race shall be brought
from under the serfdom of sin, what
shall be the body, what shall be the
soul? Religion has only just touched
our world. Give it full power for few
centuries, and who can tell what will be
the strength of man and the beauty of
women and the longevity of all?
My design is to show that practical re-
ligion is the friend of long life. Iprove
it first from the fact that it makes the
care of our health positive Christian
duty. Whether we shall keep early or
late hours, whether we shall take food
digestible or indigestible, whether there
shall be thorough or incomplete masti-
cation, are questions very often de-
ferred TO the realm of whimsicality. But
the Christian man lifts this whole prob
lem of health into the accountable and
the Divine. He says: God has given
me this body, and lie has called it the
temple of the Holy Ghost, and to de-
face its affairs or mar its walls or crum-
BILE its pillars is "a God defying sacri-
lege." lie sees Gods caligraphv in
every page, anatomical and phvssolog-
ical Hcsays: God has given me a won
derful body for noble purposcs''-tbat
arm with % curiou, boues-vicldcd bv
40 curious muscles and all under the
brains telegraphy. $50 pounds of blood
rushing through the heart every hour,
the heart in "A holrs beating 100. 600
times, during the "A hours the lungs
taking i'm 81 lugshea1, of air. ana all
this mechanism NOT more mighty than
delicate and easily disturbed and de-
molished. The Christian man saws 10
himself: "lrl hurt my nerves. if hurt
my brain, il hurt any of nv physical
faculties, insult God and call for dire
retribution." Why did God tell the Lee
vites not to offer to Him in sacrifice ami
mails imperfect and diseased? lie meant
TO tell us in all the ages that we are TO
offer 10 God our ver, beet nbveiool cor-