Milford chronicle., 1888-05-18
TABERNACLE SERVICES.
REV. DR.. TALMA6E DlScoURsEs ON
"oBScURATION."


the Evil Passions of the world--Athe-
ism aud InRdelity Arrayed Against
Christianity.
BROOKLYN May 13-This morning the
Rev. r De Witt Talmage, D. D., preached at
the Tabernacle to an oterhowing congrega-
tion. The hymn beginning,
Stand up, my soul; shake off thy fears.
And gird the Gospel arinor on,
was sung with magnificent eiTeca. DR.. Tai
mage's subject was "ObscuratiOn," and his
text, "The sun shall be turned into darkness {"
Acts ii, 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 time
and men have tried with the uprolling va
pors of skepticsm and the smoke Of their
blasphemy to turn the sun into darkness
Suppose the archangels Of malice and horror
should be let loose a little while and be al
lowed 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 go 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
whitening and going out until there is not a
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 heat
and light throws our earth into universal
chill, and the tropics become the temperate
and the temperate becomes the Arctic, and
there are frozen rivers and frozen lakes and
frozen oceans. From Arctic and Antarctic
regions the inhabitants gather in toward the
center and find the equator as the poles The
slain forests are piled up into great bonfire,
and around them gather the shivering vii
lages and cities. The wealth of the coal mines
is hastily poured into the furnaces and
stirred into rage of combustion, but soon the
bonfres begin to lower and the furnaces be-
gin to go out and the nations begin to die.
Cotopaxi, Vesuvius, Etna, StrombOli, Cali
fornian geysers cease to smoke, and the ice
of hail storms remains unmelted in their
craters. All the flowers have breathed their
last breath Ships with sailors frozen
at the mast and helInsmen 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. WOrllmen with frozen hand on
the hammer and frozen foot ON the shuttle.
Winter from sea to sea. All congealing win
ter. Perpetual winter. Globe of frigidity.
Hemisphere shackled to hemisphere by
chains of ice Universal Nova Zembla.
The earth nn ice foe grinding against other
ice foes The archangels 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-
cal earth, the destruction of Christianity
would be to the moral world. The sun
turned into darkness. Infidelity in our time
is considered great joke, There are people
who rejoice to hear Christianity caricatued,
and to hear Christ assailed with quibhle and
quirk and Misrepresentation and bandiage
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 all
our communities who would like to sec the
Christian religion overthrown, and wb1 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 infidelity have triumped over it, if tLey
can. say, if they can. I reiterate it, if
they can.
In the first place, it will be the complete
and unutterable degradation of womanhood.
will prove it by facts and arguments which
no honest man will dispute. In all com
munities and cities and states and nations
where the Christian religion has been domi-
nant woman's condition has been ameli-
grated and improved, and she is deferred to
and hOnored in n thousand things, and every
gentleman takes of his hat before her. II
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
You know that while woman may suffer in
Justice in England aud the United States,
She has more Of her rights in Christendom
than she has anywhere else.
Now, compare this with woman's condi-
ton 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 disgrnceful and an outrage
for a 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 oeat before her husband
has finished his meal. What mean those
white bundles on the ponds and rivers
in China in the morningl Infanticide fol-
lowing infanticide Female children de
stroyed simply because they are female.
Woman harnessed to a pillow as an OK. Wo-
man veiled and barricaded, and in all styles
Of cruel seelusion. Her birth misfortune.
Her life a torture. Her death a
horror. The missionary Of the cross
today In heathen lands breaches gener-
ally to two groups-a group Of men
who do as they please and sit where they
please; the other group women hidden and
carefully secluded in side apartment, where
they may hear the voice Of the preacher but
may not be seen. No refinement No lib
erty. No hope for this life. No hope for the
life to come Hinged nose. Cranped foot.
Disfgured face Embruted soul. Now COM
pare those two conditions How far toward
this latter condition that I speak Of would