Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 January 1889 — DOES RELIGION PAY? [ARTICLE]

DOES RELIGION PAY?

GOOLINESSIB PROFITABLE UNTO < ALL THINGS. It Softens the Temper, Protects the Health, Induces Industry—Fßs a Man for Business, Soothes His Stay on Earth and Giv,es Him Promise of Eternal Life. Rev. Dr. Talmage preached at the Brooklyn Tabernacle last Sunday. Subject: “Does Religion Pay?.” Text, Timothy iy., 8. He said: A happy New-Year to one and all! There is a gloomy and passive way of waiting for the events of the opening year to come upon us, and there is a heroic way of going out to meet them", strong in God and fearing nothing. When the body of Catiline was found on the battle-field it was found far in advance of all his troops, and among the enemy; arid the best way is not for us to lie down and let the events of life trampl e over us, but to go forth in a Christian spirit determined to conquer. Now, in the first place, I remark that God iness is good for a man’s>physical health. Ido not mean to say that it will restore a broken-down constitution or drive rheumatism from the limbs, or neuralgia from the temples, or pleurisy froin the side; but I da mean to say that it givesone such habits and put one in such condition as is most favorable for physical health. That I believe, and that I avow. Everybody knows that buoyancy of spirit is good physical advantage. Gloom, unrest, are at war with every pulsation of the heart and with every respiration of the lungs. It lowers the vitality, it slackens the circulation, while exhilaration of spirit pours the vary balm of Heaven through all the currents of life. The sense of insecurity which sometimes hovers oyer an unregenerate man, or pounces upon himwith the blast of ten thousand trumpets of terror, is most depleting and most exhausting, while the feeling that all things are working together for my good now, and for my everlasting welfare, is conducive to physical health. You will observe that Godliness induces industry’, which is the foundation of good health. \There is no law of hygiene that will keep a lazy man well. Pleurisy will stab him, erysipelas will burn him, jaundice will discolor him, gout will crippie him, and the intelligent physician will not prescribe antiseptic or febrifuge, or anodyne, but saws and hammers and yardsticks and crowbars and pickaxes. There is no such things as good physical condition without positive work of some kind, although you should sleep on dowri of swan, or ride in carriage of softest upholstery, or have on your table all the luxuries that were poured from the wine vats of Ispahan and Shiraz.

Oh, how important in this day, when so much is said about anatomy and physiology and thereapeutics and some new style of medicine is ever and anon springing upon the world, that you should understand that the highest school of medicine is the school of Christ, which declares that Godliness is profitable unto all things, having the promise of the life that now is as well as of tnat which is to come.” So if you start out two men in the world with equal physical health, and then one of them shall get the religion of the Lord Jesus Christ in his heart, and the o’her shall not get it, the one who becomes a son of the Lord Almighty will live the longer. Again I remark that Godliness is good for the intellect. I know some have supposed that just as soon as a man enters into the Christian life his intellect goes into a bedwarting process.. So far from that, religion will give new brilliancy to the intellect, new strength to the imagination, new force to the will, and wider swing to all the intellectual faculties. Christianity is the great central fire at which Philosophy has lighted its brightest torch. The religion of the Lord Jesus Christ is the fountain out of which Learning has dipped its clearest draught The Helicon poured for|h no such inspiring waters as those which flow from under the throne of God clear as crystal. Religion has given new energy to Poesy, weeping in Dr. Young’s “Night Thoughts,” teaching in Cowper’s “Task,” flaming in Charles Wesley’s hymns, and rushing with archangelic splendor through Milton’s “Paradise Lost” The. religion of Jesus Christ has hung in studio and in gallery of art and in Vatican the best pictures.’ has made the best music of the. world.. It is possible that a religion which builds such indestructible monuments, and which lifts its ensign on the highest promontories of worldly power, can have any effect upon a man’s intellect but elevation ana enlargement? Now, I commend Godliness as the best mental discipline—better than belleslettres to purify the taste, better than mathematics to harness the mind to all intricacy and elaboration, better than logic to marshal the intellectual forces for onset and. victory. It. will go with Hugh Miller and show him the footprints of the Creator in the red sandstone. It will go with the botanist and show him celestial glories encamped under the curtain of a water-lily. It will go with the astonomer on the great heights where God shepherds the great flock of worlds, that wander on the hills of heaven, answering His voice as He calls them all by their names. Again I remark that Godliness is profitable for our„, disposition. ‘Lord Ashley before he went into a great battle, was heard to offer this prayer: “0 Lord, I shall be very busy to-day. If I forget Thee, forget me not.’ ’ With such a Christian disposition as that, a man is independent of all circumstances. Our piety will have a tihge of our natural temperament. Jf-a / man be cross and sour and fretful naturally, after he becomes a Christian he will always have to be armed against the rebellion of those evil inclinations; but religion has tamed the wildest nature; it has turned fretfulness into gratitude, despondency into good cheer, and those who were hard and ungovernable and uncompromising have been made pliable and conciliatory. Good resolution, reformatory effort, wjll not effect the change. It takes a mightier arm and a mightier hand to bend evil habits than the Land that bent the bow of Ulyrtes, and it takes a stronger lasso than ever held, the buffalo on the prairie. A man can not go forth with any humaq weapons and contend successfully against these Titans armed with uptorn mountains. But you have known men into whose spirit the influence of the Gospel

of Christ came, until their disposition was entirely changed. J Again I remark that religion is good for a man’s worldly business. I know the general theory is, the more business the less religion, the more religion the less business. Not so, thought Dr. Haqa, in this “Biography of a Christian Merchant,” when he saya “He grew in grace the last six years of his life more than at any time in his life; during those six years he had more business crowding riis life than at any other time.” In other words, the more worldly business a man has, the more opportunity to serve God. Does religion exhilarate or retard worldly business? is the practical question for you to discuss. Does it hang like a mortgage over the farm? Is it a bad debt on the ledger? Is it a lien against the estate. Does it crowd the door through which customers come for broadcloths and silks? Now religion will hinder your business if it be a bad business or if it be a good business wrongly conducted. If you tell lies- behind the counter, if you use false weights and measures, if you put j band in the sugar and beet-juice in your vinegar, and lard in your butter, and shll for one thing that which is another thing, then religion will interfere with that business; but a lawful business lawfully conducted, will find the religion of the Lord Jesus Christ its mightest auxiliary. Religion will give an equipoise of spirit, it will keep you from ebulitions of temper—-it will keep you from worriment about frequent loss, it will keep you industrious and prompt, it will keep you back from squandering and from dissipation, it will give you a kindness of spirit which will be easily distinguished from that mere store courtesy which shakes hands violently with you, asking about the health of your family when their is no anxiety to know whether your child is well or sick; but the anxiety is to know how many dozen camoric pocket-handkerchiefs you will take and pay cash down. It will prepare you for the practical duties of every day life. Ido not mean to say that religion will make us financially rich, but Ido say that it will give us, it will asure us of a comfortable sustenance at the start, a comfortable subsistence all the way through, and it will help us to direct the bank, to manage the traffic, to conduct airbar business matters, ami to make the most insignificant affair of our 1 life a matter of vast, importance glorified by Christian princples. How can you get along without this religion? Is your physical health so good you do not want this divine tonic? Is your mind so clear, so vast, so com prehensive, that you do not want this divine inspiration? Is your worldly business so thoroughly established that you have not upe for that religion which has been the help and deliverance of tens of thousands of men in crises of worldly trouble? And, if what I have said this njorning is true, then you see what a fatal blunder it is when a man adjourns to life’s expiration the uses of religion. A man who postpones religion to sixtv years of age gets religion fifty years too late. He may get into the kingdom of God by final repentance; but what can compensate him for a whole lifetime unallevjated and uncomforted? You want religion to-day in the training of that child. You will want religion to-morrow in dealing with that Western customer. You wanted religion yesterday to curb your temper. Is your arm strong enough to beat your way through the floods? Can you, without being encased in the mail of God’s eternal help, go forth amid the assault of all hell’s sharp-shooters? Can you vifalk alone across these crumbling graves and amid these gaping earthquakes? Can you, water-logged and mast shivered, outlive the gale? Ob, how many there have been who, postponing the religion of Jesus Christ,have plunged into mistakes they never could correct although they lived eighty years after, and like serpents crushed unde? cart-wheels, dragging their maimed bodies under the rocks to die.