Essex County herald. [volume] (Guildhall, Vt.) 1873-1964, 1888-05-25
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
The Weekly Discourse of the Great
Brooklyn Preacher
Subjects "ObscuratiOn."

heSS.-AclS IL, ~
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 a 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 IL archangels of malice ana 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 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 small acreage of
llfe, and that whltens and cools off until
there are only 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 of ashes and the chasms of ashes.
An extinguished sun. A dead sun. buried
sun. Let all worlds wall at the stupendous
obsequies
OF course this withdrawal of the solar heat
Chill and the tropics become the temperate
and the temperate becomes the Arctic and
there are frozen rivers and frozen lakes and
frozcn 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 uD into great bonfire,
ana around them gather the shivering Wiz
lagos and cities. The wealth of the coal mines
is hastily poured into the furnaces and
stirred into rage of combustion, but soon the
bontres begin to lower and the furnaces be-
gin to 60 out and the nations begin to die
Cotopaxi, Vesuvius, Etna, Strombol Cali
fornian geysers cease to smoke, and the Ice
OF hail storms remains unmeted in their
craters. All the flowers have breathed their
last breath. Ships with sailors frozen
at the mast and helmslnen 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. Workmen with frozen hand on
the hammer and frozen foot on the shuttle.
Wlh'er from sea to sea. All congealing win
ter. Perpetual winter. Globe of frgidity.
Hemisphere shackiel to hem sphere by
chains of ice Universal Nova Zembla.
The earth an ice foe grinding against other
ice iloes. The archange.S OF malice and hor-
ror have done their work, and now they may
take their thrones of glacier and look down
upon uhO llu llel LllNO WlOuSuU.
What the destru ton 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 Infideity in our time
is considered a great joke. There are people
who re ioice to hear Christianity carcatured,
and to hear Christ assailed with quibble and
qulrk and Misrepresentation and badinage
and harlequnade.
L propose this morning to take infidelty
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 ali
our communities who would like to see the
Christian religion overthrow, and whosay
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 triumph ID over it, if they
can. say, if they can | reterate it, if
they can.
In the first place, it will he the complete
and unutterable degradation Of womanhood.
l will provo it by facts and arguments which
no honest man will dispute. In all com
munties and cities and states AMI nations
where the Christian religion has been domi-
nant, WOmanS condition mas been amell-
GRATED and improved. and she is deferred to
and honored in a 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 s9minaries in
Brooklyn or in any city of this country than
the schools and semnarieS for young ladies.
You know that while 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 thiS with wOO1anio COnHi.
tion in lands where Christianity has made
little or no advance-in China, in Barhary,
in Rorneo, i'll Iartary, in Egypt, in Hindo-
stan. The Burmese sell their wives and
daughters as 50 many sheep The Hndoo
Bible makes it disgracetul and an outrage
for 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 to eat before her husband
has finished his meal What mean those
white bundles on the ponds and rivers
in China in the mornings Infantcide fol-
lowing infanticide Female children de-
stroyed simply because they are female.
Woman harnessed to pillow as an OK. Wo-
man yelled and barrlcaded, and in ali STYLES
Her life torture, Her death a horror.
The missionary of the cross to-day in
heather lands breaches generally to two
biO~pS "a group OF men wuo do as
they please and sit where they please
the other group-women hidden and care
fully secluded i'll a 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. Cramped foot
DIsHgured face Embruted SOUL Now com.
pare those two conditions. How far toward
this latter condition that | speak of would
woman go if Christian influences were with
| sAE ,,aNf
| is only question of dynamcs. Ii an object
be lifted to "A certain point and not fastened
there, and the lifting power be withdrawn,
how long before that OBJ ect will fall down tC
The point from which it started! 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 derth 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. l make no remark in regard
to those persons. | make no remark in re-
gard to them. In the silence of your OWE
soul make your observations.
II nidelity triumph and Christianity be
overthrow, it means the decentralization o
society. The one idea in the Bible that athe
| lists and infidels most hate, is the idea of ret
rbution Take away the idea of retribu
Cton and punishment from society, and il
Will begin very soon to disintegrate; anC
take away from the min Is of men the feal
of hell, and there are great many of then
who would very soon turn this world into
hell. The ma ority Of those who are indig
T. l..
punishment are men whose lives are bad o
whose hearts are impure, and who hate tn,
Bible because of the idea of future punish
ment for the same reason that criminals hate
the pententiary. Oh, have heard this brav,
talk about people fearing nothing of the
| ~ of Gin 90 %