The west Tennessee star. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1888, 1888-05-25
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
Infldelity and Atheism and Their
Relation to the World.
The Triumph of Their Ideas Would Mean
Refrigeration in Every Channel in
Which Humanity Has Progressed
A Moral ObscuratiOn.

Rev. T. Dewitt Talmage, in recent
sermon in the Brooklyn Tabernacle, took
for his theme Obscuration," making I
determined onslaught on the inhdels and
atheists of the present day. His text was:
The sun shall be turned into darkness-Acts,
st.. 20.
He said:
Solar eclipse is here prophesied to take |
place about the time of the destruction OF |
ancient Jerusalem. Josephus, the his |
torian, says that the prophesy was literal |
Iv 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 uproll-
ing vapors of skepticism and the smoke
of their bIasphemy to turn the sun into
darkness. Suppose the archangels OF
malice and horror should be let loose
little while, and be allowed to extinguish
and destroy the sun in the natural heay-
ems. They would take the oceans
from other worlds and pour them
on this luminary of the planetTy
system, and the waters go hiss
ing down amid the ravines and the cav
erns, and there is explosion after explo-
sion, until there are only a few peaks OF
fire left in the sun, and these are cooling
nents of fame are reduced to small
acreage of fire, and that whitens 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 or
ashes and the chasms of ashes. An ex-
tinguished sun. A dead sun. A buried
sun. Let all worlds wall at the stupen-
dous obsequies.
the solar
light and heat throws our earth into a 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 and Antarctic regions the 1nhab1t-
ants 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 bonfires begin to lower, and the
furnaces begin to go out and the nations
begin to die. Cotopaxi, Vesuvtus, Etna,
| Stromboli. Californian 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
all nations dying, first at the north ana
then at the south. Child frosted and dead
in the cradle Octogenarian frosted and
dead at the hearth. WOrkmen with fro zen
hand on the hammer and frozen foot on
the shuttle. Winter from sea to sea. All.
| congealing winter. Perpetual winter
Globe of frigidity. Hemisphere shacklec
to hemisphere by chains Of ice. Univer-
sal Nova Zembla. The earth an ice-hOt
grinding against other ice-hoes. The
archangels of malice and horror have
done their work, and now they may take
their thrones of glacier and look dowI
upon the ruin they have wrought.
What the destruction of the sun in thu
natural heavens would be to our phys1ca
earth the destruction of Christianity
would be to the moral wOrld-the SUI
turned into darkness. Inhdelity In oul
time is considered a great joke. Ther'
are people who rejoice to hear Christianit.
caricatured, and to hear Christ assaile'
with bubble and quirk and misrepre
sentation and badinage and harlequi
l made.
1 propose this morning to take infidelit,
, | and atheism out of the realm and Jocu
5 larity into one of tragedy, and show yol
: what they propose, and what. if they ar
successful, they will accomplish. Their
= are those in all our communities VIII
2 would like to see the Christian religion
= overthrown, and who say the world woul
t be better without it. / want to show yo
l what is the end of this road, and what !
: the terminus of this crusade, and wha
this world will be when atheism and In
: fidelity have triumphed over it, if the
can. I say, if they can. reiterate 1t,
s they can.
S In the first place, it will be the com
y pIete and unutterable degradation {
b womanhood. will prove it by facts an
K arguments which no honest man will dis
g pute. In all communities, and cities, an
T states and nations where the Chr1stia
Q religion has been dominant woman's cor
It dition has been ameliorated and in
Il I,roved, and she is deferred to and honor
ed in a thousand things, and every gentle
IS man takes off his hat before her. If yoJ
=, associations have been good, you kno
e that the name of wife, mother, daughte
is suggests gracious surroundings. Yc
know there are no better schools an
y seniDaries in Brooklyn or in any city
le this country than the schools ar
N seminaries for our young ladies. "
l. know that while woman may suffer il
d Justice in England and the United State
ne she has more of her rights in Christel
Of dom than she has anywhere else.
Now, compare this with woman's cond
ee ton in lands where Christianity has ma
w little or no advance-in China, in Barbar
| y
.; dostan. The Burmese sell their wives 81
e, daughters as so many sheep. The Hind
1d bible makes it disgTaceful and an outra
ad for a woman TO listen to music, or To-
out of the window in the absence Of b
X husband, and gives as a lawful ground
no divorce a woman's beginning TO eat beto
ey her husband has finished his meal VIII
lie mean those white bundles on the pon
IT, and rivers in China in the mOrningH
a fanticide following infanticide. Fema
an children destroyed simply because tn
I'M are female. Woman harnessed to a plt
as an OK. Woman vailed and barricadC
and in all styles of cruel seclusion- H
W birth a misfortune. Her life a tortul
IN Her death a horror. The missionary
re the cross to day in heather lands preach
as, generally to two groups group of ms
ne who do as they please and sit where th
IL please; the other group women, hidd
ne and carefully secluded in a side apa
ment, where they may hear the voice
1as the preacher, but may not be SCI
IN No refinement No liberty. No he
is for this lie. No hope
the life to come. Hinged no
ent CraInped foot Dishgured face, z
ck- bruted soul. Now compare those
attn conditions. How far toward this lat
condition that / speak Of would won
Ids | 20 If Christian influences were withdra
and Christianity were destroyed L
- only a question Of dynamics. II an
ject be lifted to q certain point and
- fastened there, and the lifting power
on. "i,1--l ~ : ., q - - .t5.. e... -; -
red viii 4ala u2"n - 1I w -. ~ - - Iii
= = still farther than the point from whic
.py started Christianity has lifted won
Ho up from the very depths Of degradat
almost TO the skies. If that lifting POI
" be withdrawn. She falls clear back to
les depth from which she was resurreci
the hol si'tus "a ,r.t ,,ot,vitbsta,d 4
lorR the fact that the only salvation Of won
IN = ---.... 4 l-l..-l. -