226. The Gospel of Health

The Gospel of Health

Pro_7:23 : ’93Till a dart strike through his liver.’94

There is a fashion in sermonics. A comparatively small part of the Bible is called on for texts. Most of the passages of Scripture, when announced at the opening of sermons, immediately divide themselves into old discussions that we have heard from boyhood, and the effect on us is soporific. The auditor guesses at the start just what the preacher will say. There are very important chapters and verses that have never been preached from. Much of my lifetime I am devoting to unlocking these gold chests and blasting open these quarries. We talk about the heart and sing about the heart, but if you refer to the physical organ that we call the heart, it has not half so much to do with spiritual health or disease, moral exaltation or spiritual depression, as the organ to the consideration of which Solomon calls us in the text when he describes sin progressing ’93till a dart strike through his liver.’94 The Gospel of Health is a theme we all need more to study and practise.

Solomon’92s anatomical and physiological discoveries were so very great that he was nearly three thousand years ahead of the scientists of his day. He, more than one thousand years before Christ, seemed to know about the circulation of the blood, which Harvey discovered sixteen hundred and nineteen years after Christ, for when Solomon, in Ecclesiastes, describing the human body, speaks of the pitcher at the fountain, he evidently means the three canals leading 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 Doctors Mayo and Carpenter and Dalton and Flint and Brown-Sequard have experimented. And Solomon recorded in the Bible thousands of years before scientists discovered it, that in his time the spinal cord relaxed in old age, producing the tremors of hand and head: ’93Or the silver cord be loosed.’94

In the text he reveals the fact 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 comparatively dark age, and yet had seen its important function 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 hepatic artery through which God conducts 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 postmortem what awful attacks sin and dissipation make upon it, until with the fiat of Almighty God it 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 glancing off or making a slight wound, but piercing it from side to side ’93till the dart strike through the liver.’94 Galen and Hippocrates ascribe to the liver the most of the world’92s moral depression, and the word melancholy means black bile.

I preach to you the Gospel of Health. In taking diagnosis of the diseases of the soul you must also take the diagnosis of the diseases of the body. As if to recognize this, one whole book of the New Testament was written by a physician. Luke was a doctor, and he discourses much of physical conditions, and he tells of the good Samaritan’92s medication of the wounds by pouring in oil and wine, and recognizes hunger as a hindrance to hearing the Gospel, so that the five thousand were fed; and records the sparse diet of the prodigal away from home, and the extinguished eyesight of the beggar by the wayside, and lets us know of the hemorrhage of the wounds of the dying Christ and the miraculous postmortem resuscitation. And any estimate of the spiritual condition that does not include also the physical condition is incomplete.

When the doorkeeper of Congress fell dead from excessive joy because Burgoyne had surrendered at Saratoga, and Philip the Fifth, of Spain, dropped dead at the news of his country’92s defeat in battle, and Cardinal Wolsey expired as a result of Henry the Eighth’92s anathema, it was demonstrated that the body and soul are Siamese twins, and when you thrill the one with joy or sorrow you thrill the other. We might as well recognize the tremendous fact that there are two mighty fortresses in the human body, the heart and the liver; the heart the fortress of the graces; the liver the fortress of the furies. You may have the head filled with all intellectualities, and the ear with all musical appreciation, and the mouth with all eloquence, and the hand with all industries, and the heart with all generosities, and yet ’93a dart strike through the liver.’94

First, let Christian people avoid the mistake that they are all wrong with God, because they suffer from depression 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: ’93My heart is not right with God, and I think I must have made a mistake; and instead of being a child of light, I am a child of darkness. No one can feel as gloomy as I feel and be a Christian.’94 And he has gone to his minister for consolation, and he has collected Flavel’92s books, and Cecil’92s books, and Baxter’92s books, and read and read and read, and prayed and prayed 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 disorder, or a rebellion of the liver. You need a physician more than you do a clergyman. It is not sin that blots out your hope of heaven, but bile. It not only yellows your eyeball, and furs your tongue, and makes your head ache, but swoops upon your soul in dejections and forebodings. The devil is after you. He has failed to despoil your character, and he does the next best thing for him; he ruffles 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. You are just as sure of heaven as though you were there already. But Satan finding that he cannot keep you out of the promised land of Canaan, has determined that the spies shall not bring you any of Eschol’92s grapes beforehand, and that you shall have nothing but prickly pear and crab-apple. You are just as good now under the cloud as you were when you were accustomed to rise in the morning at five o’92clock to pray and sing ’93Hallelujah, ’91tis done!’94

My friend, Rev. Dr. Joseph H. Jones, of Philadelphia, a translated spirit now, wrote a book entitled, ’93Man, Moral and Physical,’94 in which he shows how different the same things may appear to different people. He says: ’93After the great battle on the Mincio, in 1859, between the French and Sardinians on the one 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 correspondents of the London Times, one of whom traveled with the successful host, the other with the defeated. The difference in views and statements of the same place, scenes and events, is remarkable. The former are said to be marching through a beautiful and luxuriant country during the day, and at night encamping where they are supplied with an abundance of the best provisions, and all sorts of rural dainties. There is nothing of war about the proceeding except its stimulus and excitement. On the side of the poor Austrians it is just the reverse. In his letter of the same date, describing the same places and a march over the same road, the writer can scarcely find words to set forth the suffering, impatience and disgust existing around him. What was pleasant to the former was intolerable to the latter. What made all this difference? asks the author. ’91One condition only: the French are victorious; the Austrians have been defeated.’92’93

So, my dear brother, the road you are traveling is the same you have been traveling a long while, but the difference in your physical conditions makes it look different, and therefore the two reports you have given of yourself are as widely different as the reports in the London Times, from the two correspondents. Edward Payson, sometimes so far up on the Mount that it seemed as if the centripetal force of earth could no longer hold him, sometimes through a physical disorder was so far down that it seemed as if the nether world would clutch him. Glorious William Cowper was as good as good could be, and will be loved in the Christian Church as long as it sings his hymn, beginning: ’93There is a fountain filled with blood,’94 and his hymn beginning: ’93What various hindrances we meet,’94 and his hymn beginning: ’93God moves in a mysterious way.’94 Yet so was he overcome of melancholy, or black bile, that it was only through the mistake of the cab-driver who took him to a wrong place, instead of the river bank, that he did not commit suicide.

Spiritual condition so mightily affected by the physical state, what a great opportunity this gives to the Christian physician, for he can feel at the same time both the pulse of the body and the pulse of the soul, and he can administer to both at once; and if medicine is needed he can give that; and if spiritual counsel is needed he can give that’97an earthly and a divine prescription at the same time’97and call on not only the apothecary of earth, but the pharmacy of heaven. Ah, that is the kind of doctor I want at my bedside when I get sick, one that can not only count out the right number of drops, but who can also pray. That is the kind of doctor I have had in my house when sickness or death came. I do not want any of your profligate or atheistic doctors around my loved ones when the balances of life are trembling. A doctor who has gone through the medical college, and in dissecting-room has traversed the wonders of the human mechanism, and found no God in any of the labyrinths, is a fool, and cannot doctor me or mine. But, oh, the Christian doctors! What a comfort they have been in many of our households. And they ought to have a warm place in our prayers, as well as praise on our tongues.

Dear old Dr. Skillman! My father’92s doctor, my mother’92s doctor, in the village home. He carried all the confidences of all the families for ten miles around. We all felt better as soon as we saw him enter the house. His face pronounced a beatitude before he said a word. He welcomed all of us children into life, and he closed the old people’92s eyes when they entered the last slumber. I think I know what Christ said to him when the old doctor got through his work. I think he was greeted with the words: ’93Come in, doctor. I was sick and ye visited me!’94 I bless God that the number of Christian physicians is multiplying, and some of the students of the medical colleges are here today, and I hail you, and I ordain you to the tender, beautiful, heaven-descending work of a Christian physician, and when you take your diploma from the medical college, to look after the perishable body, be sure also to get a diploma from the skies to look after the imperishable soul. Let all Christian physicians unite with ministers of the Gospel in persuading good people that it is not because God is against them that they sometimes feel depressed, but because of their diseased body. I suppose David, the psalmist, was no more pious when he called on everything human and angelic, animate and inanimate, and from snow flake to hurricane, to praise God, than when he said: ’93Out of the depths of hell have I cried unto Thee, O Lord,’94 or that Jeremiah was any better when he wrote his prophecy than when he wrote his ’93Lamentations,’94 or that Job was any better when he said: ’93I know that my Redeemer liveth,’94 than when covered all over with the pustules of elephantiasis as he sat in the ashes scratching the scabs off with a broken piece of pottery; or that Alexander Cruden, the concordist, was any better man when he compiled the book that has helped innumerable students of the Bible, than when under the power of physical disorder he was handcuffed and strait-waistcoated in Bethnal Green Insane Asylum.

’93But,’94 says some Christian man, ’93no one ought to allow physical disorder to depress his soul. He ought to live so near to God as to be always in the sunshine.’94 Yes, that is good advice; but I warrant that the man who gives the advice has a sound liver. Thank God for healthful hepatic condition, for, just as certainly as you lose it, you will sometimes, like David, and like Jeremiah, and like Cowper, and like Alexander Cruden, and like ten thousand other invalids, be playing a dead march on the same organ with which now you play a toccata.

My object at this point is not only to emolliate the criticisms of the well against those in poor health, but to show Christian people who are atrabilious what is the matter with them. Do not charge against the heart the crimes of another portion of your organism. Do not conclude that because the path to heaven is not arbored with as fine a foliage, or the banks beautifully snowed under with exquisite chrysanthemums as once, that therefore you are on the wrong road. The road will bring you out at the same gate, whether you walk with the stride of an athlete or come up on crutches. Thousands of Christians, morbid about their experiences, and morbid about their business, and morbid about the present, and morbid about the future, need the sermon I am now preaching.

Another practical use of this subject is for the young. The theory is abroad that they must first sow their wild oats, and afterwards Michigan wheat. Let me break the delusion. Wild oats are generally sown in the liver, and they can never be pulled up. They so preoccupy that organ that there is no room for the implantation of a righteous crop. You see aged men about us, at eighty, erect, agile, splendid, grand old men. How much wild oats did they sow between eighteen years and thirty? None, absolutely none. God does not very often honor with old age those who have in early life sacrificed swine on the altar of the bodily temple. Remember, oh, young man, that while in after life, and after years of dissipation you may perhaps have your heart changed, religion does not change the liver. Trembling and staggering along these streets today are men, all bent and decayed and prematurely old, for the reason that they are paying for liens they put upon their physical estate before they were thirty. By early dissipation they put on their body a first mortgage and a second mortgage and a third mortgage to the devil, and these mortgages are now being foreclosed, and all that remains of their earthly estate the undertaker will soon put out of sight. Many years ago, in fulfilment of my text, a dart struck through their liver, and it is there yet. God forgives, but outraged physical law never, never, never! That was a Sinai, but no Calvary. Solomon in my text knew what he was talking about. He had in early life been a profligate, and he rises up on his throne of worldly splendor to shriek out a warning to all centuries.

Stephen A. Douglas gave the name of ’93squatter sovereignty’94 to those who went out West and took possession of lands and held them by right of preoccupation. Let a flock of sins settle on your heart before you get to twenty-five years of age, and they will in all probability keep possession of it by an infernal squatter sovereignty. ’93I promise to pay at the bank five hundred dollars six months from date,’94 says the promissory note. ’93I promise to pay my life thirty years from date at the bank of the grave,’94 says every infraction of the laws of your physical being. David, bad in early life, but good in later life, cries out with an agony of earnestness: ’93Remember not the sins of my youth.’94 What? Will a man’92s body never completely recover from early dissipation in this world? Never. How about the world to come? Perhaps God will fix it up in the resurrection body so that it will not have to go limping through all eternity; but get the liver thoroughly damaged and it will stay damaged. Physicians call it cancer of the liver, or hardening of the liver, or cirrhosis of the liver, or inflammation of the liver, or fatty degeneration of the liver, but Solomon puts all these pangs into one figure, and says: ’93Till a dart strike through his liver.’94

Hesoid seemed to have some hint of this when he represented Prometheus, for his crimes, fastened to a pillar and an eagle feeding on his liver, which was renewed again each night, so that the devouring went on until finally Hercules slew the eagle and rescued Prometheus. And a dissipated early life assures a ferocity pecking away and clawing away at the liver year in and year out, and Death is the only Hercules who can break the power of its beak or unclench its claw. So, also, Virgil and Homer wrote fables about vultures preying upon the liver; but there are those all about us with whom it is no fable, but a terrific reality.

That young man smoking cigarettes and smoking cigars has no idea that he is getting for himself smoked liver; that young man has no idea that he has by early dissipation so depleted his energies that he will go into battle only half armed. Napoleon lost Waterloo days before it was fought. Had he attacked the English army before it was reinforced, and taken it division by division, he might have won the day, but he waited until he had only one hundred thousand men against two hundred thousand. And here is a young man who, if he put all his forces against the regiment of youthful temptations, in the strength of God, might drive them back; but he is allowing them to be reinforced by the whole army of mid-life temptations, and when all these combined forces are massed against him, and no Grouchy comes to help him, and Blucher has come to help his foes, what but immortal defeat can await him?

Oh, my young brother, do not make the mistake that thousands are making, in opening the battle against sin too late; for this world, too late, and for the world to come, too late. What brings that express train from St. Louis into Jersey City three hours late? They lost fifteen minutes early on the route, and that affected them all the way; and they had to be switched off there, and detained here, and detained there; and the man who loses time and strength in the earlier part of the journey of life, will suffer for it all the way through’97the first twenty years of life damaging the following fifty years.

Some years ago a scientific lecturer went through the country exhibiting on great canvas different parts of the human body when healthy and the same parts when diseased. And what the world wants now is some eloquent scientist to go through the country, showing to our young people on blazing canvas the drunkard’92s liver, the idler’92s liver, the libertine’92s liver, the gambler’92s liver. Perhaps the spectacle might stop some young man before he comes to the catastrophe, and the dart strike through his liver.

My hearers, this is the first sermon you have heard on the Gospel of Health, and it may be the last you will ever hear on that subject, and I charge you, in the name of God and Christ and usefulness and eternal destiny, take better care of your health. When some of you die, if your friends put on your tombstone a truthful epitaph, it will read: ’93Here lies the victim of late suppers;’94 or it will be: ’93Behold what chicken salad at midnight will do for a man;’94 or it will be: ’93Ten cigars a day closed my earthly existence;’94 or it will be: ’93Sat down in a cold draught and this is the result;’94 or it will be: ’93Went out without an overcoat and took this last chill;’94 or it will be: ’93I died of thin shoes last winter;’94 or it will be: ’93Thought I could do at seventy what I did at twenty, and I am here;’94 or it will be: ’93Here is the consequence of sitting a half day with wet feet;’94 or it will be: ’93This is where I have stacked my harvest of wild oats;’94 or instead of words, the stonecutter will chisel for an epitaph on the tombstone, two figures, namely, a dart and a liver.

There is a kind of sickness that is beautiful when it comes from overwork for God, or one’92s country, or one’92s own family. I have seen wounds that were glorious. After the battle of Antietam, in the hospital, a soldier in reply to my question: ’93Where are you hurt?’94 uncovered his bosom and showed me a gash that looked like a badge of eternal nobility. I have seen an empty sleeve that was more beautiful than the most muscular forearm; I have seen a green shade over the eye, shot out in battle, that was more beautiful than any two eyes that had passed without injury; I have seen an old missionary worn out with the malaria of African jungles, who looked to me more radiant than a rubicund gymnast; I have seen a mother after six weeks watching over a family of children down with scarlet fever, with a glory around her pale and wan face that surpassed the angelic. It all depends on how you got your sickness and in what battle your wounds.

Frederick T. Frelinghuysen, the pride of New Jersey’97ay, of the nation’97and one of the pillars of the Christian church, and for nearly four years practically President of the United States, although in the office of Secretary of State, in his determination to make peace with all the governments on this American continent, wore himself out; and while his brain was as keen as it ever was, and his heart beat as regularly as it ever did, he was, according to the bulletin of his physicians at Washington and Newark, dying of hardening of the liver. Satan, who does not like good men, sent a dart through his liver. The last time my dear friend’97for he was my friend and my father’92s friend before me’97the last he was seen in Washington was in the President’92s carriage, leaning his head against the shoulder of the President on his way to the depot to take the train to go home to die. Martyr of the public service, he died for his country, though he died in time of peace. In his earlier life he was called the nephew of his uncle, Theodore Frelinghuysen, but he lived to render for God and his country a service which makes others proud to be his nephews, and which will keep his name on the scroll of history as the highest style of Christian statesman that this century has produced. If we must get sick and worn out, let it be in God’92s service and in the effort to make the world good, not in the service of sin. No, no! One of the most pathetic scenes that I ever witness, and I often see it, is that of men or women converted in the fifties, or sixties, or seventies, wanting to be useful, but they so served the world and Satan in the earlier part of their life that they have no physical energy left for the service of God. They sacrificed nerves, muscles, lungs, heart and liver on the wrong altar; they fought on the wrong side; and now, when their sword is all hacked up and their ammunition all gone, they enlist for Emanuel. When the high-mettled cavalry horse, which that man spurred into many a cavalry charge with champing bit and flaming eye and neck clothed with thunder, is worn out and spavined and ring-boned and spring-halt, he rides up to the great Captain of our Salvation and offers his services. When such persons might have been, through the good habits of a lifetime, crashing the battle-axe through helmeted iniquities, they are spending their days and nights in discussing the best way of breaking up their indigestion, and quieting their jangling nerves, and rousing their laggard appetite, and trying to extract the dart from their outraged liver. Better converted late than never! Oh, yes; for they will get to heaven. But they will go afoot when they might have wheeled up the steep hills of the sky in Elijah’92s chariot. There is an old hymn that we used to sing in the country meeting-house when I was a boy, and I remember how the old folks’92 voices trembled with emotion while they sang it. I have forgotten all but two lines, but those lines are the peroration of my sermon:

’91Twill save us from a thousand snares

To mind religion young.

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage