Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1888-05-25
1ARERNACLE SERVICES,
Dr.. Talmage Discourses on Job
scuration."

Scuration.
,,;b,e the Only Restraint Against the
r,i! Passions of the World--Atheism and
,,tdclity Arrayed Against Christianity.
p,ooKLYN, May l3.-This morning the
ra TT r. De Witt Talmage, D. D., preached
l.e ,he tabernacle TO an overflowing con-
',ecation. The hymn beginning,
s,ou,: up, my soul shake off thy fears,
and GRID tile Gospel ar1nor on.
..os snnr with magnificent effect. DIR. Tai.
, ~a1 sermon was "Obscuration, and his
tsyt, "rhe sun shall he turned into dark
ness ness Acts ii, 20. He said:
Solar eclipse is here prophesied to take
,,,ore about the time Of the destruction of
ans,ent Jerusalem. Josephus, the his
,",;an. saws that the prophecy was literally
,rlflled. and that about that time there
,rare strange appearances in the Heavens.
,rhe sun was not destroyed, but for q little
While hidden.
Christianity is the rising sun of our
fine, and men have tried with the up
rning vapors of skepticism and the smoke
thcir blasphemy to turn the sun into
,arkness. suppose the archangels of
malice and horror 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
,Ee planetary system, and tho waters go
Kissing down amid the ravines and the
rayerrs, and there is explosion after ex-
IRE left in the sun, and these are cooling
down and going ont until the vast cont.
nepts of fame are reduced to q small acre.
ace 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 noun
inns of ashes and the valleys of ashes and
chasms of ashes. An extinguished sun.
A 1eadsu A buried sun. Let all worlds
vail at the stupendous obsequies.
OF course this withdrawal of the solar
heat and light throws our earth into uni
versal 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 to Antarctic regions the inhabitants
equator as the poles. The slain forests
are piled up into o 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 60 out and the nations begin to
de- Cotopaxi, Vesuvius, Etna, Stromboli,
Californian geysers cease to smoke. and the
ice of hail storms remains nnnelted in
their craters. 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: all nations dying, first ut the north
and then at the south. Child frosted and
dead in the cradle. Octogenarian frosted
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
shackled to hemisphere by chains of ice.
Universal Nova Zembla. The earth an
fce foe grinding against other ice foes.
The archangels of malice and horror
bave 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
patural Heavens would be- to our physical
earth, the destruction of Christianity would
be to the moral world. The sun turned into
darkness. Intidelity in our time is consid-
pred great joke. There are people who
feioice to hear Christianity caricatured.
end quirk and Misrepresentation and bad
mage and harlequinade.
l propose this morning to take infidelity
and atheism out of the realm of POPULARITY
into one of tragedy, and show you what
Ehey propose, ana what. if they are sue
Eessiul, they will accomplish. There are
hose in all our communities who would
like TO see the Christian religion over
brown, and who say. the world would be
better without it. I want TO show You what
the end Of this road, and what is the
(erlninus of this crusade, and what this
Rorld will be when atheism and infidelity
nave triumphed over it, if they can. say,
they can. I reiterate it. if they can.
In the first place, itwal be the complete
end unutterable degradation of woman
pood. will prove it by facts and argu-
lnents which no honest man will dispute.
mall communities and cities and States
md nations where the Christian religion
las been dominant, woman scondition has
een amelierated and improved, and she is
Ielesred to and honored 10 thousand
h'ngs, and every gentleman takes of his
pat 10 her. If your associations have been
FOOD, you know that the name of wife,
Mother, daughter, suggest gracious SUR
cummings. You know there are no better
eheo!s and seminaries in Brooklyn or in
ny city of this country than the schools
nd seminaries for young ladies. You
now that while woman may suffer injust-
&c IN England and the United States, she
as more of her rights in ;christendom
nan she has anywhere else.
Now, compare this with woman's cendi-
ION IN lands where Christianity has made
lu1e or no advance-in China, in Barbary,
borneo, in Tartary, in Egypt, in Hindo-
lan. The Burmese sell their wives and
D aiuGhtels as SO many sheep. The Hindoo
piole makes it diseraceful and an outrage
vi woman 10 listen TO music or look out
'Le window in the absence of her hus-
Rand and gives as lawful ground for
neFce woman's beginning to eat before
Ct husband has finished his meal. What
.ean those white bundles on the ponds
az rivers in China in the morning? In
an 15d following infanticide. Female
nalaren destroyed simply because they are
shale. Woman harnessed to pillow as
Log. Women yelled and barricaded, and
III styles of cruel seclusion. Her birth
misfortune. Her life torture. Her
eash a horror. The missionary of the
oss to-day in heather lands breaches
hn to two groups group of men
a .oa 40 IS they please and. sit where they
ease; the other glcup women hidden and
eluliy secluded in a side apartment,
uere they may hesr the voice Of the
e eaener but may not be seen. No refine