Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 June 1888 — RELIGION PROLONGS LIFE [ARTICLE]

RELIGION PROLONGS LIFE

Practical Religion the Great Friend of Longevity. It F< rtta a Human Nature Aga nnt I'nffne Dl**ipaoon« and Lifts From the M il l itu Ornate st Ti oubl •*. Rev. Dr. Talmage expounded Scriphire at the Brooklyn Tabernacle last Sunday. Subject: “Does Religion Prolong Life?" Text: Psalm xci., 16, “With long lifewill I satisfy thee." He said: Through the mistake of its friends religion 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 can not pronounce the word religion without hearing in it the clipping chisel of the tombstone cutter. It is high time that this thing were changed and that religion, instead of being represented as a hearse to carry out the dead, should he represented as a chariot in which the living are to triumph. Religion, so far from subtracting from one's vitality, is a glorious addition. It is sanitive, curative, hygienic. It is Sod f r the eyes, good for the ears, good • the spleen, good for the digestion, good for the nerves, good for the muscles. When David, in another part of the Psalms, prays that religion may be dominant, He does not sjieak of it as a mild sickness, or an emaciation, or an attack of moral and spiritual cramp: he speaks of it as “the saving health of all nations;” while God, in the text, promises longevitv to the pious. The feet is that men and women die too soon. It is high time that religion joined the hand of medical science in attempting to improve human longevity. Adam lived nine hundred and thirty years. Methuselah lived nine hundred and sixty-nine years. As late in the history of the world as Vesjiasian, there wen* at one time in his empire forty-five people one hundred and thirty-five years old. So far down as the sixteenth century, Peter Zartan died at one hundred ami eighty-five years of age. I do not say that religion will ever take the race back to antediluvian longevitv, but I do say that the length of human life will be greatly improved.

It is said in Isaiah: “The child shall die a hundred years old." Now, if according to Scripture, the child is to be a hundred years old, may notthe men and women reach to three hundred and four hundred and five hundred? The fact is that we are mere dwarfs and skeletons compared with some of the generations that are to come. Take the African race. They have been under bondage for centuries. Give them a chance and they develop a Frederick Douglass of a 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 a few centuries and who can tell what will be the strength of man and the beat uy of woman and the longevity of all? My design is to show that practical religion is the friend of long life. I prove it, first, from the fact that it makes the care of <mr health a positive Christian duty. Whether we shall keep early or late" hours, whether we shall take food digestible, whether there shall be

thorough or incomplete mastication, ore questions very often deferred to the realms of whimsicality; but the Christian man lifts this whole problem of health into the accountable and the divine. He says: “God has given me this body, and’ He has called in the temple of the Holy Ghost, and to deface its altars or mffr its walls or crumble its pillars is a God-defying sacrilege.’’ He sees God’s calligraphy in every page—anatomical and physiological. He says: “God has given me a wonderful bodv for noble purposes.” That arm with thirty-two curious bones wielded bv forty-six curious muscles, and all under the brain’s telegraphy; 350 pounds of bloqjl rushing through the heart e very hour, the heart in twenty-four hours’ beating 100,000 times, during the twenty-four hours overcoming resistances amounting to 224,000,000 pounds of weight, during the same time the lungstaking in fifty-seven hogsheads of air, and all this mechanism not more mighty than delicate and easily’ disturbed and demolished. _ The Christian man says to himself: “If I hurt my nerves, if I hurt mv brain, if I hurtany of my physical faculties, I insult God and calf dor dire retributiou.” Why did God tell the Levites not to offer to Him in sacrifice animals imperfect and diseased? He meant to tell us in all the ages that we art to offer to God our ven- best physical condition, and a man wtio through irregular or gluttonous eating ruins his health is not offering to God such a sacrifice. Why did Paul write for his cloak at Troas” Why should such a great man as Paul be anxious about a thing so insignificant as an overcoat? It was because he knew tliat with pneumonia and rheumatism he would not be worth half as much to God and the Church as with respiration easy and foot free. An intelligent Christian man would consider it an absurdity to kneel down at night and pray and ask God’s protection while at the same time he kept the . windows of his bed-room tight shut against fresh air. He would just as soon think of going out on the bridge bet ween New York and Brooklyn, leaping off, and then praying to God to keep’ him from getting hurt. . Just as long as vou defer this whole subject of physical health to the realm of whimsicality, pr to the pastry cook, or to the butcher, Or to the baker, or to the apothecarv, or to the clothier, you ary-noi acting’ like a Christian. Take care of all your physical forces—nervous, muscular, bone, brain, cellular tissue—for all vou must be brought to judgment. ... ’. •-- Smoking your nervous syslehTThtb fidgets, burning out the coating of your stomach with wine logwooded ’ and strychnined, walking with thin shoes to make your feet look delicate, -pinched at the waist until you are high cut in two, and neither —part worth anything; groaning about sick headache and palpitation of the heart. which you think came from God, wbeu they came from your own folly. What light’has ani man or woman to Abe-Holv- Ghost?What is the ear? Why, it is the whispering gallery of the human soul. What is the eye? It is the observatory God constructed, its telescope sweeping the heavens. What is the hand? An instri ment so wonderful that when the Earl of Bridgewater bequeathed in his will $40,000 for treatises to be written on the wisdotp, power and goodness of God,

Sir Charles Bell, the great English anatomist and surgeon, found his greatest illustration in the construction of the human hand, devoting his whole book to that subject. So wonderful are these bodies that God names Disown attributes after different parts of them. His omniscience —it is God'p eye. His omnipresence—it is God's gar. ’ His omnipotence—it is God's arm. The upholstery of the midnight heavens-it is the work of God’s fingers. His life-giving power—it is the 1 breath of the Almignty. His dominion —“the government shall be upon his shoulder.” A body ao divinely honored anti so divinely constructed, Jet us be careful not to abuse it. , When it becomes a Christian duty to take care of our health, is not the whole tendency toward longevity? If I toss my watch about recklessly,’ and drop it oh the pavement, ami wind it up any time of the day or night I happen to think of it, and often let it run down, while yon are careful with your watch and never abuse it, and wind it up just at the same hour every night, and put it in a place w here it wifi not suffer from the violent changes of atmosphere, which watch will last the longer? Common sense answers. Now the human body is God's watch. You see the hands of the watch, you see the face of the watch, but the beating of the heart is the ticking of the watch. Oh! be careful and do not let it run down.

Again: I remarkjhat practical religion is a friend of longevity in the fact that it a protest against dissipations which injure and destroy the health. Bad men and women live a very short life. Their sins kill them. I know hundreds of good old men, but I do not know half a dozen bad old men. Why? They do not get old. Lord Byron died at Missoloughi at thirty-six years of age, himself his own Mazeppa, his unbridled passions the horse that dashed with him into the desert. Edgar A. Poe, died at Baltimore at thirty-eight years of age. The black raven that alighted on the bust above his chamber door was delirium tremens—- ‘ Only this and nothing more.” Napoleon Bonaparte lived only just beyond mid-life, then died at St. Helena, and one of his doctors said his disease was induced by excessive snuffing. The herb of Austerlitz, the man who by one step of his spot in the center of Europe shook the earth, killed by a snuff-box! Oh! how many people we have known who have not lived out half their days because of their dissipations and their indulgences! Now practical religion is a protest against all dissipation of any kind.

“But,’’ you sav, “professors of religion have fallen, professors of religion have got drunk, professors of religion have misappropriated trust funds, professors of religion have absconded.” Yes; but they threw away their religion before thev did their morality. If a man on a White Star Line steamer, bound for Liverpool, in mid-Atlantic jumps overboard and is drowned, is that anything against the White Star Line’s capacity to take the man across the ocean? And if a man jumps over the gunwale of his religion and goes down, never to rise, is that any reason for your believing that religion has no capacity to take the man dear through? In the one case if he had kept to the steamer his body would have been saved; in the other case if had kept to his religion his morals would have been saved. . . There are aged people who would have been dead twenty-five years ago but for the defenses and the equipoise of religion. You have no more natural resistance than hundreds of people who lie in the cemeteries to-day, slain by their own vices. The doctors made their case as pleasant as they could, and it was called congestion of the brain, or something else, but the spakes and the bine flies that seemed to crawl over the pillow in the sight of the delirious patient showed what was the matter with him. You, the aged Christian man, walked along by that unhappy one until you came to the golden pillar of a Christian life. You .went to the right; 'he went to the left. That is all the difference between vou. Oh! if this re-

ligion is a protest against all forms of dissipation, then it is an illustrious friend of longevity. • Agfiin: religion is a friend of longevity In the fact that it takes the worry out of our temporalities. It is not work that kills men; it is worry. When a man becomes a genuine Christian he makes over to God not only his affections, but his family, his business, his reputation, his bodv, his mind, his soul —every thing. Industrious he will be, but never worrying, because God is managing his affairs. How can he worry about business when in answer to his prayers God tells him when to buy and when to sell; and if he gain that is best, and if he lose that is best? “Oh!” you say, “here is a man who asked God for a blessing in a certain enterprise, and he lost $5,000 in it. Explain that.” 1 will. Yonder is a factory and one wheel is going north and the other wheel is going south, and one wheel plays laterally and the other plays vertically. Igo to the manufacturer and I say: “0! manufacturer, vonr machinery is a contradiction. Why do you not make all the wheels go one way?” “Well,” he says, “I made them go’ in opposite directions on purpose, and they produce the right results. You go downstairs and examine the carpets we are turning out in this establishment and you will see.” Igo down on the other floor and see the carpets, and am obliged to confess that, though the whee’s in that factory go in opposite directions, they turn out a beautiful result; and while I am standing there looking at the exquisite fabric an Old Scripture passage comes into my mind? “All things work together for good to them who lore there not tonic in that? Is there mot longevity in t fagt?

4-gaimpraxftical religionisafriendof longevity, in the fact that It removes all cproding cares about a future existence. Every man wants to know ‘ uliat is to become of him. If you get on hoard a rail train you want to know at what depot it is going to stop; if you get on board a ship y5iF ; wanV th know, into what harbor it is going to run, and if you should tell me you have - no interest’in what is to be your future destiny. 1 would in as polite a way as I know now tell vou thatl did not believe vou. Be- - 4ore-I had-thismatter-settled-with—refer-ence to my future existence, the ques- ♦ tf'tTl H IyytUTMgf' > ItIO ■» nf-r-k LlVii ***xxxvK’ti ntji x ivu tlltr itttv ru Ilivtl health. The anxieties men have T upon this subject put together would make a martyrdom. This is a state of awful unhealthiness. There are people who fret ' themselves to death for fear of dying. I Well, you de teat me in my three experiments. I have only one more to

make, and if you defeat me in that I am exhausted: A mighty One on a knoll back of Jerusalem one day, the skies filled with forked lightnings and the earth filled with volcanic disturbances, turned His pale and agonized face toward the heavens and said: “I take the sins and sorrows of the ages into mv own heart. I am the expiation. Witness earth and heaven and fiell, I am the expiation.” -. Ami the hammer struck him and spears punctured him and heaven thundered: “The wages of sin isdeath!" “The soul that sinneth, it shgll die!” “I will by no means clear the guilty!” Then there was silence for lialf an hour, and the lightnings were drawn back into the scabbard of the sky, and thd earth ceased to quiver, and ail the colors of the sky began to shift themselves into a rainbow woven out of the fallen tears of Jesus, and there was red as of the blood-shedding, and there was blue as of the bruising, and there was green as of the heavenly foliage, and there was orange as of the day-dawn. And along the Tine of the blue I saw the words: “I was braised for their iniquities.” And along the line of the red I saw the words: “The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin.” And all along the line of the green I saw the words: “The leaves of the tree of life for the healing of Nations.” And along the line of the orange I saw the words: “The dayspring from on high hath visited us.” “’ And then I saw'the storm was over, and the rainbow rose higher and higher, until it seemed retreating to another heaven, and planting one colnmn of its colors on one side the eternal hill, and planting the other column of its colors on the other side the eternal hill, it rose upward and upward, “and behold, there was a rainbow about the throne!” Accept that sacrifice, and quit worrying. Take the tonic, the inspiration, the longevity of this truth. Religion is fresh air and pure water, they are healthy. Religion is warmth, that is healthy. Ask all the doctors, and they will tell you that a quiet conscience and pleastint anticipations are hygienic. I offer you perfect peace now and hereafter. Glory be to God for this robust,Healthy religion. It will 1 have a tendency to make you live long in this world, and in the world to come you will have eternal life. “With long fife will I satisfy him.”