The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1885-02-09
THE DOWNFALL OF RELIGION.
What the Destruction of Christianity
Would Do for the Moral World.
1t Would Mean Woman's Complete and Unut-
terable Degradation, and the Gen.
eral Generalization of Society.
Special to the Indianapolis Journal.

| Special Z tDe 1HulanapOliS JoufudI.
BROOKLYN, N. Y, Feb. 8.-Before the sermon
to-day DR.. Talmage expounded a chapter from
the prophecies. The opening hymn was:
From Green1ands icy mountains,
From midas coral strands,
Where Afric's sunny fountains
Roll down her golden sands"
DR.. Talmage's subject was 1.-The Downfall of
Religion and his text was taken from Acts ii,
20: 1.-THE sun shall be turned into darkness. F."
Following is the sermon in full:
Solar eclipse is here prophesied to take place
just before the destruction of Jerusalem. jose
plus, the worldly historian, says that this pro-
phecy was literally fulfilled, and that the skies
were full of strange appearances about this time.
Of course the sun was not obliterated, but clouds
rolled between it and the earth. Christianity is
the rising sun in our time, but there are many
who. by the u~prolling vapors of scepticism and
the smoke of their blasphemy, are attempting to
turn it into darkness.
Suppose the archangels of malice and horror
were Embossed and permitted to extinguish the
sun in the natural heavens. They throw on that
great lamp of our planetary system oceans from
other worlds and the waters roll Kissing down
into the ravines and chasms of that great lu-
minary, and explosion follows explosion until
only a few peaks of fire are left, and now they
are cooling off and going down, until the vast
continents of flames are reduced to a small acre
age of fire, and this has been reduced to a few
Goals, and they are whitening and soon go out
not a spark left in the mountains of ashes, and
the valleys of ashes, and the caverns of ashes.
An extinguished sun, a dead sun, a buried sun.
Let all worlds wall at the stupendous obsequies.
Under this withdrawal of solar light and heat
our earth of course takes universal chill and the
trophies become the temperate, and the temper
ate becomes the arctic, and there are frozen rlv-
ers. and frozen lakes, and frozen oceans. The
inhabitants gather in from arctic and antarctic
regions toward the center, to find the equator as
the poles. The slain forests are heaped into
huge bonfires, around which shlvering villages
and cities gather. The wealth of all the coal mines
is hastily poured into furnaces and stirred
into rage of combustion, but even the bonfres
are lowering, and the furnaces are colling off,
and the nations are dying. Vesuvius, and Co
topaz, and Stromboli, and the Californian
geysers cease their smoke, and the ice of the
hail storms remains unmelted in the craters.
All the flowers have breathed their last breath.
All the leaves of the forests have fallen. Ships
on the sea with sailors frozen at the masts, and
helmsman frozen at the wheel, and passengers
frozen in the cabin. All nations dying, first at
the north, then at the south. Children frosted
and dead in the cradle. Octogenarian frosted
and dead by the hearth. Workmen with frozen
arm holding the hammer, or with frozen foot on
the shuttle. Winter in all zones. Winter from
sea to sea. All -congealing winter. Perpetual
winter. Hemisphere shackled to hemisphere.
Globe of frigidity, Universal Nova Zembla.
The whole earth an ice-foe grinding against
other ~ice-foes. So the archangels Of malice and
stroyed our world, and they may take their
throne of glacier, and their crown Of ice, and
their scepter of icicle.
What the obliteration of the natural sun would
do for the natural world the destruction of
Christianity would do for the moral world-the
| sun turned into darkness. AT the present time
infdelity is a joke. There are people who will
give fifty cents or a dollar to hear Christianity
assailed by epigram, and bubble, and badinage,
and harlequinade. If correctly reported. one of
the loudest laughs in a Brooklyn theater last
Sabbath night was at the Lord Jesus Christ, the
Savior of the World, the one who came to carry
our sorrows. / read from the lecture the follow
ing in regard to Christ: when He was here
He was f~orgiving and half human. But now He
is God. Instead of saying, Father, forgive
them, for they know not what they do He
sends them to eternal fire. 1t is wonderful the
difference Office makes with some people.
[Laughter.'l
THE SIN OF BLAsPHEMY.
Now, there is one law that ought either to be
erased from the statute book or else executed,
and that is the law againt blasphemy. What is
blasphemy2 I went into the law library and /
find this authority: "Blasphemous words against
God, contumelious reproaches and ~profane r1di-
Guile of Christ or the Holy Scriptures, are Of
lenses, punishable at common law, whether ut
tered by words or in writing" If a poor, drunken
man stood on the street corner this morning and
took the name of God irreverently on his lips in
presence of passers-by, he would be grabbed and
hustled to the police station. But there is not a
city authority in the United States that has back
bone enough to stop the indecent and blasphe-
nous utterance of last Sunday night, though it
is being delivered in all the cities. Penalties
and prisons for those who defame the most in
significant man in the city, but defamation of
God has perfect immunity. 1t would have been
the finest drama ever enacted on the stage of
that Brooklyn theater if, in the midst Of such
utterances, my friend Patrick Campbell, chief
of police, who believes in God and Christ, had,
with a platoon of his officers, stepped upon the
stage and gently putting his hand upon the
shoulder of the lecturer and said: SIN the name
of the common law of this country, and in the
name of the families Of Brooklyn, this infamy
must stop. and stop here, and stop now."
':But," says some one, ''are you not in favor of
free speech9' Oh, yes; l am in favor of all styles
of freedom-free driving of horses, but not lib
erty TO run over people in the street; free fire in
your stove, but not incendiarism or the burning
of the property of others; free air, but not per-
mission to poison that which others breath; free