The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1888-05-14
CHRISTIANITY AS A sun.
HORRORS WHICH WOULD FOLLOW
ITS OBSCURATION.

1alE-aEe 1aKGS I6XU from inc ACJS-
Infdelity and Atheism Transferred
from the Realm of Jocularity to that
of Tragedy-The Great Plot Sure to
Fail
BROOKLYN, May 13.-This morning the
Rev. T. Dewitt Talmage, ID, preached at
the Tabernacle to an overflowing congrega-
tion. The hymn beginning,
stand up my soul shake Off thy fears,
And grid the Gospel armor on
was sung with magnificent effect DR.. Tai
IMAGES subject was "Obscuration,n and his
text: "The sun shall be turned into dark
ness Acts H., 20. He said:
Solar eclipse is hero prophesied to take
place about the time of the destruction of
ancient Jerusalem Josephus, the histo-
rian, says that the phophecy was 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 skepticlsm and the smoke of their
blasphemy TO turn the sun into darkness.
Suppose the archangels of malice and hor
ror should be let loose a 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 sys-
TEN, and the waters go Kissing down amid
the ravlnes 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 whtens
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 obseques.
OF course, this withdrawal of the solar
light and heat throws our earth into uni
versal chill, and the tropics become temper
ate, 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 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 bogfres
begin to lower and the furnaces begin to
go out, and the nations begin to die Cote
paxi, Vesuvius, Etna, Strombol, Calilor-
nian geysers, cease to smoke, and the ice of
hail storms remains unmelted in their
crater. All tho flowers have breathed
their last breath. Ships with sailors
frozen at the mast, and helmsman frozen at
the wheel, and passengers frozen1 in The
cabins all nations dying, first at the north
and then at the south. Child frosted and
dead in the cradle. Octogena,ian frosted
and dead at the hearth. Workmen with
frozen hand on the hammer and frozen foot
on the shuttle Winter from sea to sea.
All-congealing winter. Perpetual winter.
Globe of frigidity. Hemisphere shaclled to
hemisphere by chains of ice. Universal
Nova Zembla The earth an ice-hoe grind
ing against other ice-hoes. The archanges
of malice and horror 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 physical
earth, the destruction of Christianity would
be 10 the moral world. The sun turned
into darkness. Infdelity in our time is con-
sidered great joke There are people who
rejoice to hear Christianity caricatured,
and to hear Christ assailed with Quibble
and quirk and Misrepresentation and badi-
mage 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 sue
cessful, they will accomplish. There are
those in all our communities who would
like to see the Christian religion over
thrown, 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 ard infidelity
have triumphed over it, if they can. / say,
if they can. reiterate it, if they can.
In the first place, it Will be the complete
and unutterable degradation Of woman
hood will prove it by facts and argu-
ments which no honest mau will dispute
In all communities and cities and states
and nations where the Christian religion
has been dominant, woman's condition has
been ameliorated and improved, and she is
deferred to and honored in n 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 ard seminaries
in Brooklyn or in any city of this
country than the schools and semi
naries for our young ladies. You
know that while woman may suffer injus-
Ilc6 III England ana JDe OulteQ states, Sne
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 Hin
dostan. The Burmese sell their wives and
daughters as 50 many sheep. The Hndoo
Bible makes it disgraceful and an outrage
for a woman TO listen TO music, or look out
of the window in the absence of her hus-
band, and gives as a lawful ground for
divorce a woman's beginning TO eat before
her husband has finished his meal. WhaJ
mean those white bundles on the ponds and
rivers in China in the morningE Intanti-
eide following infanticide. Female children
destroyed simply because they are fe-
male. Woman harnessed TO a plow
as an OK. Woman veile1 and bar
ricaded, and in all styles of
cruel seclusion. Her birth q misfortune
Her life a torture. Her death n horror
The missionary of ohe cross to-day in
heather lands breaches generally TO two
groups-a group of men who do as they
please and sit where they please; the other
group women, hidden and carefully Sc
cluded in a side apartment, where they may
hear the voice OF the preacher, but may not
be seen. No refinement. No liberty. No
hope for this life. No hope for the life 10
come. Hinged nose. Cramped foot. Dis
! figured face. Embruted soul. Now COM
| pare those two conditions. How far to-
ward this latter condition that ] speak OF
would woman go II Christian influences
/ THt-