The Londonderry sifter. (South Londonderry, Vt.) 1883-19??, 1888-05-31
TALMAGE'S SERMON,
The Weekly Discourses of the Great
Brooklyn Preacher.


hoioi o'iiloo 10 Hcio pitpISSltu W ttho
place about the time of the destruction OF
ancient Jerusalem. Josephus the historian,
says that the prophecy ws's literally fulfilled,
and that about that time there were strange
appearances in the heavens. The sun was
not destroyed, but for a little while hidden.
Christianity is the rising sun of our time
and men have tried with the uprolling va
pors OF stepticism and the smoke of their
blasphemy to turn the sun into darkness
suppose tt archangels of malice ana horror
should be let loose u little while and be al
lowed to extnguish and destroy the sun in
the natural heavens They would take the
oceans from other worlds and pour them on
this luminary of the planetary system, and
the waters go Kissing down amid the ravines
and the caverns, and there is explosion after
explosion until there are only a few peaks Of
Ire left III the sun, and these are cooling
down and going out until the vast continents
OF lame are reduced to small acreage of
fire, and that whtens and cools Off until
there are only a few Goals left, and these are
whitening and going out until there is not
spark left in all the mountains of ashes and
the valleys of ashes and the chasms of ashes.
An extinguished sun, A dead sun. A buried
sun Let oil worlds wall at the stupendous
obsequies.
Ut course this withdrawal Of the solar heat
| anu light throws our earth into universal
| chill, and the tropics become the temperate
and the temperate becomes the Arctic, and
i there are fro Ell rivers and frozen lakes and
frozen oceans. From Arctic and Antarctic
regions the inhabitants gather in toward the
center and finl the equator as the poles. The
slain forests are piled up into great bonfire,
and around them gather the shivering vii.
lagos and cities. The wealth of the coal mines
Is hastily poured into the furnaces and
stilred INTO rage of combustion, but soon the
bontires begin to lower and the furnaces be-
| gin to go out and the nations begin to die
('OtOn1yi Nasu yiI,u Etpa Strnp,bp1i Ca1i-
fornian geysers cease to smoke, and the ice
OF hail storms remains unmeited in their
| cra:ers. All the flowers have breathed their
last breath. Ships with sailors frozen
at the mast AMI helmsmen frozen at the
wheel, and passengers frozen in the cabin;
| all nations dying, first at the north and then
at the south. Child frosted and dead in the
| cradle. Octogenarian frosted and dead at
the hearth. Workmen with frozen hand en-
the hammer and frozen foot on the shuttle.
Winter from sea to sea. AL congealing win
ter. Perpetual winter. Globe of frigidity
Hemisphere shack!ei to hemisphere by
| chains of ice. Universal Nova Zembla
The earth an ice foe grinding against other
Ice Hoes. The archanges OF malice and hor-
| ror have done their work, and now they may
take their thrones of glacier and look down
upon the ruin they have wrought
| What the destruction of the sun in the
natural heavens would be to our physi-
1
would be to the moral world The sun
turned into darkness lniideity in our time
Is considered great joke. There are people
who rej joice to hear Christianity caricatured,
and to hear Christ assailed with quibble and
qulrk and Misrepresentation and badinage
and harlequinade.
| propose this morning to take infidelity
and atheism out OF the realm of jocularity
into one of tragedy and show you what they
propose, and what if they are successful,
they will accomplish There are those in ali
our communities who would like to see the
CHRISTIAN religion overthrown, and who say
the world would be better without it, want
to show you what is the end of this road
and what is the terminus Of this crusade,
and what this world will be when atheism
and inlidelty h,vo triumphed over it, if they
can. say il they can. l reiterate it, il
they can.
In the first place, it will be the complete
and unutterable d, gralation of womanhood.
will prove it by facts and arguments which
no honest man will dispute. In all COM
munlues and cities and states and nations
where the Christian religion has been domi-
nant, womans condition has been ameli-
Grated and improved. and she is deferred to
and honored in thousand things, and every
gentleman takes Off his hat before her. If
your associations have been good, you know
that the name of wife, mother, daughter,
suggest gracious surroundings. You know
there are no better schools and seminaries in
Brooklyn or in any city of this country than
the schools and semnaries for young ladies.
You know that while woman may suffer in.
Justice i'll England and the United States,
She has more OF her rights in Christendom
than she has anywhere else.
Now, compare this with woman's condi-
tion in lands where Christianity has made
little or no advance-in China, in Barbary,
in Borneo, in Tartary, in Egypt, in Hindo.
stan. The Burmese sell their wives and
daughters as so many Sheep The Hindoo
Bible makes it disgracetul and an outrage
for woman to listen to music or look out Of
the window in the absence of her husband,
and gives as a lawful ground for divorce a
woman's beginning to eat before her husband
has finished his meal. What mean those
white bundles on the ponds and rivers
in China in the morning. Infanticide fol-
lowing infanticide. Female children de-
stroyed simply because they are female.
Woman harnessed to plow as an OK. Wo-
man veiled and barrlcaded, and in all styles
of cruel seclusion. Her birth a misfortune.
Her life torture. Her death horror.
The missionary of the cross to-day in
heathen lands breaches generally to two
groups "a group of men who do a
they please and sit where they please
the other group-women hidden and care
fully secluded in side apartment, where the.
may hear the voice of the preacher bu
may not be seen. No refinement. No lib
erty. No hope for this life. No hope for tn
life to come. Hinged nose. Cramped foot
Dlsfigured face. Embruted soul. Now com
pare those two conditions. How far towart
this latter condition that 1 speak of woul(
woman go if Christian influences were with
drawn and Christianity were destroyed!
is only question Of dynamics. If an objec
be lifted to a certain point and not fastened
there, and the lifting power be withdrawn
how long before that object will fall down t.
the point from which it started! 1t will
fall down, and it will go still further thai
the point from hch it started. Christian
ity has lifted woman up from tho very depths
Of degradation almost to the skies. If tha
lifting power be withdrawn she falls clea
back to the derth from which she was resur
rected, not going any lower because there i
no lower depth And yet, notwithstandin,
the fact that the only salvation of woman
from degradation and woe is the Christian
religion, and the only influence that has eve
. lifted her in the social scale is Christianity
! have read that there are women who rejec
Christianity. l make no remark in regar,
to those persons. | make no remark in re
gard to them In the silence of your ow
soul make your observations.
If infidelity triumph and Christianity
overthrown, it means the demoralization @
, society. The one idea in the Bible that atht
isis and infidels most hate is the idea of rel
ribution Take away the idea of retribt
tion and punishment from society, and
will begin very soon to disintegrate; an
+ take away from the minds of men the fea
of hell, and there are great many of thel
i. who would very soon turn this world into
hell. The majority Of those who are indil
T. nant against the Bible because of the idea {
. punishment are men whose lives are bad {
whose hearts are impure, and who hate u
Bible because of the idea of future punsl
ment for the same reason that criminals hat
Z the penitentiary. Oh have heard this bray
s talk about people fearing nothing of I'll
, consequences of sin in the next world, and
y have made up my mind it is merely
10 towards whistliug to keep his courage up.
,e have seen men faunt their immoralities
i, the face of the community. and have hear
E. them defy the judgment day and scof at I'll
TO idea Of any future consequence of their sil
:; but when they came to die they shr;eke
- - until you could hear them for nearly ty
!, blocks, and in the summer night the neigl
r. bors got up to put the windows down beca1,
p they could not endure the horror.
D would. not want to see a rail train wit
Id five hundred Christian people on board :
down through a drawbridee into a water
grave. would not want to see five hundre
r Christian people go into such disaster. but
Il tell you plainly that | could more easily s,
! that than 1 could for any protractad tin