The Stark County Democrat. [volume] (Canton, Ohio) 1833-1912, 1888-05-17
A CHASM OF RUIN.
A Powerful Sermon Against Atheism
and Infdelity by Rev. DR..
Talmage.
What the Destruction of Christianity
Would Bring to the Moral
World.
70 Awful Plot to Dynamite the
= World and Dethrone the King
of Heaven.

BROOKLYN, N. Y, May 13.-This morn.
ing the Rev. T. Dewitt Talmage, D. D.,
preached at the Tabernacle to an over
flowing congregation. The hymn be-
ginning
"stand up my soul, shake of thy fears,
And gird the gospel armor on"
was sung with magnificent effect. DR..
fIalmage's subject was "Obscuration,"
t&nd his text, "The sun shall be turned
into darkness" Acts ii. v. 20. He
said: -
Solar eclipse is here prophesied to take
place about the time of the destruction
of ancient Jerusalem Josephus, the
historian, says that the prophecy was
literally fulfilled, and that about that
time there were strange appearances in
the heavens. The sun was not destroyed,
but for little while hidden.
Christianity is the rising sun OF our
3 time, and men have tried with the up
rolling vapors of skepticism, and the
smoke of their blasphemy, to turn the
sun into darkness. Suppose the archan-
gels OF malice and horror should be let
loose little while, and be allowed to
extinguish 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 60 Kissing down amid
the ravines and the caverns and there is
Explosion after explosion, until there are
only few peaks OF fire left in the sun,
and these are cooling down and going
out until the vast continents OF flame are
reduced to a small acreage Of fire, and
that whitens and cools off until there are
only few Goals left, and these are
g WHITENING and going out until there is
mot 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 all
worlds wall at the stupendous obsequies.
Of course, this Withdrawal OF the solar
light and heat throws our earth into a
universal chill, and the tropics become
the temperate, and the temperate be-
comes the Arctic, and there are frozen
rivers and frozen lakes and frozen
oceans From Arctic and Antarctic re-
gions the inhabitants gather i'll toward
the center and find the equator at the
poles. The slain forests are piled up into
a great bonfire, and around them gather
the shivering villages and cities. The
wealth of the coal mines is hastily poured
into the furnaces and stirred into rage of
combustion, but soon the bonfires begin
to lower and the furnaces begin to go
out, and the nations begin to die. Coto-
paxi, Vesuvius, Eina, Stromboli, Calitor-
MIA geysers cease to smoke and the ice
OF hail storms remains unmelted in their
crater. All the flowers have breathed
their last breath. Ships with sailors
frozen at the mast and helmsmen frozen
at the wheel, and passengers frozen in
the cabin; ali nations dying, first at the
North and then at the South. Child
frosted and dea in the cradle. Octogen-
arian frosted and dead at the hearth.
Workmen with frozen hand on the ham,
mer and frozen foot on the shuttle. Win
ter from sea to sea. All congealing win
ter. Perp tual winter. Globe of frigidity.
Hemisphere shackled to hemisphere by
chains of ice. Universal Nova Zembla
The earth and ice foe grinding against
other ice foes. The archangels of malice
and horror have done their work, and
now they may take their thrones o.
glacier and look down upon the ruin
they have wrought, -
What the destruction OF the sun in the
natural heavens would be to our physica
earth, the destruction of Christianity
would be to the moral world. The sur
turned into darkness. Infdelity in oul
time is considered a great joke. Their
are people who rejoice to hear Christ
assaiied with quibble and quirk and mis-
representation and badinage and har
lequinade.
/ propose this morning to take infdel
ity and atheism out of the realm o
iocularity into one OF tragedy, and shov
YOU what they propose and what, if the.
are successful, they will accomplish
& There are those in all our communitie
who would like to see the Christian
y religion overthrown, and who say tn
world would be better without it.
want to show you what is the end G
of this road, and what is the terminu
of the crusade and what this world vii
be when atheism and infidelity hav
triumphed over it, if they can. l say,
they can. reiterate it, if they can.
a In the first place, it will be the CON
plete and unutterable degradation c
womanhood. will prove it by fact
and arguments which no honest ma
will dispute. In all communities an
cities and states and nations where til
Christian religion has been dominan
woman's condition has been ameliorate
and improved in thousand things, an
every gentleman takes off his hat befol
her. II your associations have bee
good, you know that the name of wifi
mother, daughter, suggest gracious SUI
koundings You know there are no be
Ter schools and semnaries in Brookly
a Ar in any city of this country than th
y ehools and seminaries for our your
} adde's. You know that while woma
may suffer injustice in England and tt
United States, she has more of her righ
in Christendom than she has anywhel
Ia else.
Now, compare this with woman's CO.
dition in lands where Christianity h
made little or no advance--in China,
Barbary, in Borneo, in Tartary, in EgyI
\ In Hindostan. The Burmese sell the
wives and daughters as 80 many shee
The Hindoo bible makes it disgracef
and an outrage for a woman to h.ten
music, or look out oi the window in Il
absence of her husband, and gives as
lawful ground for divorce woman's
: ginning to eat before her husband b
finished his meal. What mean tho
white bundles on the ponds and rivers
China in the morningP Infanticide fl
1owin0 ;nfontinida Famala childrI