ANTE-MORTEM RELIGION by Dr. Talmage

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 27, 1881

ANTE-MORTEM RELIGION.

By Dr. Talmage

In his Sunday morning sermon, January 2, 1881, Dr. Talmage said:—

The papers are already made out, and to-morrow some of you will enter into business partnerships, and others of you will take higher position in the commercial establishment where you are now engaged, and others will enter upon new enterprises and there will be in these cities ten thousand business changes. You are expecting prosperity, and I am determined, so far as I have anything to do with it, that you shall not be disappointed, and therefore I propose, as God may help me this morning, to project upon your attention a new element of success. You will have in the business firm, frugality, patience, industry, perseverance, economy—a very strong business firm; but there needs to be one member added, mightier than them all, and not a silent partner either—the one introduced by my text: "Godliness is profitable unto all things, having the promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come."

I suppose you are all willing to admit that godliness is important in its eternal relations; but perhaps some of you say, "All I want is an opportunity to say a prayer before I die and all will be well." There are a great many people who suppose that if they can finally get safely out of this world into a better world, they will have exhausted the entire advantage of our holy religion. They talk as though religion were a mere nod of recognition which we are to give to the Lord Jesus on our way up to a heavenly mansion; as though it were an admission ticket of no use except to give in at the door of Heaven. And there are thousands of people who have great admiration for a religion of the shroud, and a religion of the coffin, and a religion of the hearse, and a religion of the cemetery, who have no appreciation of a religion for the bank, for the factory, for the warehouse, for the jeweler's shop, for the broker's office.

Now, while I would not throw any slur on a post-mortem religion, I want this morning, and in the first Sunday of the new year, to eulogize an ante-mortem religion. A religion that is of no use to you while you live, will be of no use to you when you die. "Godliness is profitable unto all things, having the promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come."

1. Godliness is good for a man's physical health. I do not mean to say it will restore a broken-down constitution, or drive rheumatism from the limbs, or neuralgia from the temples, or pleurisy from the side; but I do mean to say that it gives one such habits and puts one in such condition as is most favorable for physical health. That I believe, and that I avow.

2. 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 bedwarfing 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.

3. Again I remark, that godliness is profitable for one's disposition. Lord Ashley before he went into a great battle, was heard to offer this prayer: "O 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 tinge of our natural temperament.

If 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, will not effect the change. It takes a mightier arm and a mightier hand to bend evil habits than the hand that bent the bow of Ulysses, and it takes a stronger lasso than ever held the buffalo on the prairie. A man cannot go forth with any human weapons and contend successfully against these Titans armed with uptorn mountains. But the influence of the gospel of Christ must come into the heart until the disposition is entirely changed.