Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 September 1897 — LIFE WORTH LIVING. [ARTICLE]

LIFE WORTH LIVING.

IT IS A LIFE FOR GOD AND A 5 LIFE FOR OTHERS. ' - A SeT, Dr. Talmage Shows How a Money Getting and a orldly Life• Is a Lamentable Failure —The Life that Opens Into Eternity. Oar Weekly Sermon. 1 In this sermon Rev. Dr. Talmage discusses a subject vital to all, and never more timely than now, when the struggle for power, position\wealth/ and happiness Is so absorbing. The f?xt is James iv., 14, “What is your life?” If we leave to the evolutionists to guess where we came from and to the theologians to prophesy where we are going to, we ■till have left for consideration 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 1 am not surprised that everybody asks the question. “Is life worth living.' ’ Solomon in his unhappy moments says it is not. “Vanity," "vexation of spirit," “no good." are his estimate. The fact is that Solomon was at one titpe a polygamist, and that soured his disposition. One wife makes a man happy. More than one makes him wretched. 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 “mountains of spices.” But Jeremiah ■ays his life is worth living. In a book •opposed to be doleful and lugubrious and sepulchral and entitled “Lamentations” he plainly intimates that the blessing of merely living is so great and grand a blessing that thought a man have piled on him all misfortunes and disasters he has no right to complain. The ancient prophet cries out in startling intonation to all lands and to all centuries, “Wherefore doth a living man complain?”

Conflicting; Evidence. A diversity of opinion in our time as well as in olden time. Here is a 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 a commercial firm of which he is an important clerk. Ask him whether life is Worth living. He will laugh in your face and say, “Yes, yes, yes!” Here is a man who has come to the forties. He is at the tiptop of the hill of life. Every step has been a stumble and a bruise. The people he trusted have turned out deserters, and the money he has honestly made he has been cheated out of. His nerves are out of tune. He has poor appetite, and the food he does eat does not assimilate. Forty miles climbing up the hill of life have been to him like climbing the Matterhorn, and there are forty 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 lugubrious and appalling negative, “No, no, no!” How are we to decide this matter righteously and intelligently? You will find the same man vacillating, oscillating in his opinion from dejection to exuberance, 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 it blow’ from the northeast and you ask him he will say “No.” How are we then to get the question righteously answered? Suppose we call all nations together in a great convention on eastern or western hemiaphere and let all those who are in the -affirmative say "Aye”-imd-ail thosewvho are in the negative say “No.” While there would be hundreds of thousands who would answer in the affirmative, there would be more millions who would answer in the negative, and because of the greater number who have sorrow and misfortune and trouble the “Noes” would have it. The answer I shall give will be different from either, and yet it will commend itself to all w ho hear me this day as the right answer. If you ask me, “Is life worth living?” I answer, “It all depends upon the kind of life you live.” In the first place, I remark that a, life ©f mere money getting is always a failure because you will never get as much as you want. The poorest people in this country are the millionaires. There is not a scissors grinder on the streets of NewYork or Brooklyn who is so anxious to make money as these men who have piled up fortunes year after year in storehouses, in Government securities, 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 a bank explodes. You eught to see their agitation when there is proposed a reformation in the tariff. Their nerves tremble like harp strings, but no music in the vibration. They read the reports from Wall street in the morning with a concernment that threatens •is or apoplexy, or, more probably, they have a telegraph or a telephone in their •wn house, so they catch every breath •f change in the money market. The disease of accumulation has eaten into them --eaten into their heart, into their lungs, into their spleen, into their liver, into their bones. Chemists have sometimes analyzed the human body, and they say it is so much magnesia, so much lime, so much chlorate «f potassium. If some Christian chemist would analyze one of these financial behemoths, h£ would find he is made up of copper and gold and silver and zinc and lead and coal and iron. That is not a life worth living. There are too many earthquakes hi it, too many agonies in it, too many perditions in it. They build their castles, ■nd they open their picture galleries, and they summon prima donnas, and they offer every inducement for happiness to eome and live there, but. happiness will not come. They send foot maned and postilioned equipage to bring her. She will aot ride to their door. They send princely escort. She will not take his arm. They make their gateways triumphal arches. She will not ride under them. They •et a golden throne before a golden plate. She turns away from the banquet. They call to her from upholstered balcony. She will not listen. Mark you, this b the failure of those "who have had large accumulation. Worldly Failure. t And then you must take into consideration that the vast majority of those who , Stake the dormant idea of life money getting fall far short of affluence. It is esti- | mated that only about two out of a hunjfced business men have anything worthy tbe name of success. A man who spends 'lto life with the one dominant idea of

financial accumulation .spends a life not worth living. So the idea of worldly approval. If that be dominant in a mail’s life, he is miserable. Every four years the two most unfortunate men in this country are the two men nominated for the Presidency. The reservoirs of abuse and diatribe and malediction gradually fill up, gallon above gallon, hogshead above hogshead, and about midsummer these two reservoirs will be briffiming full, and a hose will be attached to each one, and it will play away on these nominees, and they will have to stand it and take the abuse, and the falsehood, and the caricature, and the anathema, and the caterwauling, and the filth, and they will be rolled in it and rolled over and over in it until they are choked and submerged amJ strangulated, and at every sign of returning consciousness they will be barked at by all the hounds of political parties from ocean to ocean. And yet there are a hundred men to-day struggling for that privilege, and there are thousands of men who are helping them in the struggle. Now, that is not a life worth living. You can get slandered and abused cheaper than that. Take it on a smaller scale. Do not be so ambitious to have a whole reservoir rolled over on you.

But what you see in the matter of high political preferment you see in every community in the struggle for what is called social position. Tens of thousands of people trying to get into that realm, and they are under terrific tension. What is social position? It is a difficult thing to define, but we all know what it.is? Good morals and intelligence are nov'heeessary, but wealth, or a show of wealth, is absolutely indispensable. There are men to-day as notorious for their libertinism as the night is famous for its darkness who move in what is called high social position. There are hundreds of out and out rakes in American society whose names are mentioned among the distinguished guests at the groat levees. They have annexed all the known vices and are looking for other worlds of diabolism to conquer. Good morals are not necessary in many of the exalted circles of society. Neither is intelligence necessary. You find in that realm men who would not know an adverb from an adjective if they met it a hundred times in a day, and who could not write a letter of acceptance or regret without the aid of a secretary. They buy their libraries by the square yard, only anxious to have the binding Russian. Their ignorance is positively sublime, making English grammar almost disreputable, and yet the finest parlors open before them. Good morals and intelligence are not necessary, but wealth or a show of wealth is positively indispensable, It does not make any difference how you got your wealth, if you only got it. The best way for you to get into social position is for you to buy a large amount on credit, then put your property in your wife's name, have a few preferred creditors and then make an assignment. Then disappear from the community until the breeze is over and come back and start in the same business. Do you not see how beautifully that will put out all the people who are in competition with you and trying to make an honest living? How quickly it will get you into high social position! What is the use of toiling forty or fifty’ years when you can by twoor three bright strokes make a great fortune? Ah, my friends, when you really lose your money how quickly they will let you drop, and the higher you get the harder you will drop. Torture at a Premium. There are thousands to-day in that realm who are anxious to keep in it. There are thousands in that realm who are ner.vous for fear they will fall out of it, and there are .changes going on every .year , and every month and every hour which invoke heartbreaks that are never reported. High social life is-eonstantly-in-a flutter about the delicate question as to whom they shall let in and whom they shall push out, and the battle is going on —pier mirror against pier mirror, chandelier against chandelier, wine cellar against wine cellar, wardrobe against wardrobe, equipage against equipage. Uncertainty and insecurity dominant in that realm, wretchedness enthroned, torture at a premium and a life not worth living. A life of sin, a life of pride, a life of indulgence, a life of worldliness, a life devoted to the world, the flesh and the devil, is a failure; a dead failure, an infinite failure. I care not how many presents you send to that Cradle or how many garlands you send to that grave, you need to put right under the name on the tombstone this inscription: “Better for that man if he had never been born.”

But I shall show- you a life that is worth living. A young man says: “I am here. I am not responsible for my ancestry. Others decided that. lam not responsible for my temperament. God gave me that. But here I am, in the evening of the nineteenth century, at 20 years of age. I am here, and I must take an account of stock. Here I have a body which is a divinely constructed engine. I must put it to the very best uses, and I must allow nothing to damage this rarest of machinery. Two feet, and they mean locomotion; two eyes, and they mean capacity to pick out my own way; two ears, and they are telephones of communication with all the outside world, and they mean capacity to catch sweetest music and the voices of friendship, the very best music; a tongue, with almost infinity of articulation. Yes, hands with which to-welcome or resist or lift Or smite the wave or bless—hands to help myself and help others. > Here is a world which after 0,300 years of battling with tempest and accident is still grander than any architect, human or angelic, could have drafted. I have two lamps to light me, a golden lamp and a silver lamp—a golden lamp set oh the sapphire mantel of the day, a silver lamp set on the jet mantel of the night. Yea, I have that at 20 years of age which defies all inventory of valuables—a soul, with capacity to choose or reject, to rejoice or to suffer, to love or to hate. Plato says it is immortal. Seneca says it is immortal.' Confucius says it is immortal. An old book among the family relics—a book with leathern cover almost worn out and pages almost obliterated by oft perusal—joins the other books in saying I am immortal. I have eighty years for a lifetime, sixty years yet to live. I may not live an hour, but, then, I must lay out my plans intelligently and for a long life. Sixty years added to the twenty I have already lived—that will bring me to 80. I must remember that these eighty years are only a brief preface to the five hundred thousand millions of quintillions of years which will be my chief residence and existence. Now, I understand my opportunities and my responsibilities. If there is any being in the universe all wise and all beneficent who can help a man in such a juncture, I want him. The old book found among the family relics tells me there is a God. and that for the sake of

his son, One Jesus, he will give help to a man. To him I appeal. God help me! Here I have sixty years yet to do for myself andtetdo for others. I must develop this body by all industries, by all gymnastics, by all sunshine, by all fresh air, by al) good habits, and this soul I must have swept and garnished and illumined and glorified by all that I can do for it and all that I can get God to do for it. It shall be a Luxembourg of fine pictures, It shall be an orchestra of grand harmonies. It shall be a palace for God and righteousness to reign in. I wonder how many kind words I can utter in the next sixty years? I will try. I wonder how many good deeds I can do in the next sixty years? I will try. God help me! The Kight Direction. That young man enters life. He is buffeted, he is tried, he is perplexed. A grave opens on this side, and a grave opens on that side, tie falls, but he rises again. He gets into a hard battle, but he gets the victory. The main course of his life is in the right direction. He blesses everybody he comes in contact with. God forgives his mistakes and makes everlasting record of his holy endeavors, and at the close of it God says to him: “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of thy Lord.” My brother, my sister, I do not care whether that man dies at 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 or 80 years of age. You can chisel right under his name on the_ tombstone these words: “His life was worth living.” Amid the hills of New Hampshire in olden times there sits a mother. There are six children in the household —four boys and two girls. Small farm. Very rough, hard work to coax a living out of it. Mighty tug to make the two ends of the year meet. The boys go to school in winter and work the farm in summer. Mother is the chief presiding spirit. With her hands she knits all the stockings for the little feet, and she is the mantua maker for the boys, and she is the milliner for the girls. There is only one musical instrument in the house—the spinning wheel. Th? food is very plain, but it is always well provided. The winters are very cold, but are kept but by the blankets she quilted. On Sunday, when she appears in the village church, her children around her, the minister looks down and is reminded of the Bible description of a good housewife, “Her children arise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her.” Some years go by, and the two oldest boys want a collegiate education, and the household economies are severed, and the calculations are closer, and until those two boys get their education there is a hard battle for bread. One of these boys enters the university, stands in a pulpit widely influential and preaches righteousness, judgment and temperance, and thousands during his ministry are blessed. The othei lad who got the collegiate education goes into the law and thence into legislative halls, and after awhile he commands listening senates as he makes a plea for the downtrodden and the outcast. One of the younger boys becomes a merchant, starting at the foot of the ladder, but climbing on up until his success and his philanthropies are recognized all brer the land.* The other son stays at home because he prefers farming life, and then he thinks he will be able to take care of father and mother when they get old. Of the two daughters, when the war broke out one went through the hospitals of Pittsburg Landing and Fortress Monroe, cheering up the dying and the homesick and taking thelast message to kindred far away, so that every time Christ thought of her he said as of old, “The same is my sister and mother.” The other daughter Ijas a bright home of her own, and in the afternoon, the forenoon having been devoted to her household, she goes forth to hunt up the sick and to encourage the'discouraged, leaving-smiles and benediction all along the way. But one day there start five telegrams from the village for these five absent ones, saying: “Come. Mother is dangerously ill.” Bufrbefore they can be ready to start they receive another telegram, saying: “Come. Mother is dad.” The old neighbors gather in the old farmhouse to do the last offices of respect, but as that farming son, and the clergyman, and the senator, and the merchant, and the two daughters stand by the casket of the dead mother taking the last look or lifting their little children to see once ipore the face of dear old grandma I want to ask that group around the casket one question, “Do you really think her life was worth living?” A life for God, a life for others, a life of unselfishness, a useful life, a Christian life, is always worth living.