The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1888-05-18
TABERNACLE SERVICES.
REV. Or. TALMAee pIscoURsEs ON
"oBscURATioN."

"oBscURATloN."
The Bible the Only Restraint Against
the Evil Passions of the worid-Athe-
ism and InadeIity Arrayed Against
Christianity. =.
BROOKLYN, May 1s-This morning the
Rev. I. De Witt Talmage, d. d., preached at
the Tabernacle to an overlooking congrega-
ton. The hymn beginning,
Stand up, my soul; shake of thy fears.
And grid the Gospel armor on,
was sung with magnificent effect Dr. Tai
IMAGES subject was "Obscuration," and his
text, 1.-The sun shall be turned into darkness"
Acts ii, 90. 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 skepticism 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 60 Kissing down amid the ravines
and the caverns, and there is explosion after
explosion until there are only q few peaks of
fire left in the sun, and these are cooling
down and going out until the vast continents
Of fame are reduced to a small acreage Of
fire, and that whiteps and cools of until
there are only a few Goals left, and these are
whitening and going out until there Is not q
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
or course this withdrawal Of the solar heat
and light throws our earth into q 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
lagos and cities. The wealth Of the coal mines
is hastily poured into the furnaces and
stirred into rage Of combustion, but soon tke
bonfires 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 helmsmen frozen at the
nl In ha an.
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. Workmen 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 an 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 DO 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 caricatured,
and to hear Christ assailed with bubble and
quirk and Misrepresentation and bandiage
and harlequinade
propose this morning to take infidelity
and atheism out of the realm Of POPULARITY
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 see the
Christian religion overthrown, and wbD say
the world would be better without 1t. 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 they
can. l say, If they can. ! reiterate 1t, If
they can.
In the first place, 1t will be the complete
and unutterahle degradation of womanhnod
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, womans condition has been ameli-
GRATED and improved, and she is deferred to
and honored in 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 and seminaries in
Brooklyn or In any city of this country than
the schools and seminaries for young ladies'
You know that white woman may suffer in
Justice in England and 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 disgraceful and an outrage
for woman to listen to music or look out Of
tho window In the absence Of her husband,
and gives as a lawful ground for divorce
woman's beginning to eat before her husband
has finished his meal. What mean those
white bundles on the ponds and rivers
in China in the morning9 Infanticide fol.
towing infantcide. Female children de-
stroyed simply because they are female.
Woman harnessed to pillow as an OK. Wo-
man yelled and barricaded, and in all styles
of cruel seclusion. Her birth a misfortune.
Her life a torture. Her death
horror The missionary Of the cross
today in heather 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
.irefully secluded In side apartment, where
they may hear the voice of the preacher but
| NAV not be seem No refinement. No lib
erty No hope for this life. No hope for the
| life to come. Hinged nose Cramped foot.
Disfigured face Embruted soul. Now COM
| are those two conditions. How far toward
this latter condition that ! speak of would
woman GO If Christian influences were with
drawn and Christianity were destroyed 1t
| u only a question of dynamics If an object
lie lifted to certain point and not fastened
| there, and tho lifting power be withdrawn,
how long before that object will fall down to
| the point from which 1t startedf 1t will
fall down, and it will go still further than
| the point from which it started Christian
| ity has lifted woman up from the very depths
| of degradation almost to the skies. IL that
lifting power be withdrawn she falls clear
back to the depth from which she was resur-
rected, not going any lower because there is
no lower depth. And yet, Notwithstanding
| the fact that the only salvation Of woman
from degradation and woe is the Christian
religion, and the only influence that has ever
| lifted her in the social scale is Christianity
have read that there are women who reject
Christianity. make no remark in regard
to those persons. make no remark In re-
gard to them In the silence of your own
soul make your observations
II infidelity triumph and Christianity be
overthrown, 1t means the Generalization Of
society The one idea in the Bible that athe-
| lists and infidels most hate, is the idea OF re-
tribution Take away the idea of retribu-
ton and punishment from society, and it
will begin very soon to disintegrate; and
take away from the minds of men the fear
of hell, and there are great many OF them
who would very soon turn this world into
| LII The in-itu ~ thoSo who ara indio-