The Bottineau pioneer. (Bottineau, N.D.) 1885-1895, 1888-05-24
TALMAGE'S SERMON.

TALMAGE'S SERMON.
Tho soklyn Divine Discusses the
Dangers Of Infdelity and
Modern Atheism.
He Warns Doubtink Thonases to
shake or All Fears and Glr0
the Gospel Arm0r On.
DR.. Talmage's subject on the 18th, was
stObscuration," . and his text:
The sun shall be turned into darkness.-Acts ii.
He said: .r II
Solar eclipse is here prophestied 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 q little while hidden.
Christianity IS the rising sun Of our time,
and mel have tried with the uprolling vapors
OF skepticism and the smoke of their bias
phemy to turn the sun into darkness. Sup
pose the archangels of malice and horror
should let loose a little while and be allow.
ed be 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 a 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 whitens aud cools off until
there. are only a few Goals left, and these are
whitening and golng. out until there Is not 4
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 s%tupendous
obsequies. y. s...-. 49,.
OF course, this withdrawal of the solar
light and heat throws our earth into q uni
versal chill, and the tropics became the tenn
perate, and the temperate becomes the arc
tic, and there are frozen rivers and frozen
lakes and frozen oceans. From arctic and
antarctic regions the inhabitants gather in
=: toward the canter and find the equator as
the poles. The slain forests are piled up in.
to a great bonfire. and around them gather
the shivering villages and cities. The wealth
Va t1C COdl ulklCS - luSll1y pOuICu lulo WIN
furnaces and stirred into rage of combustion,
but soon the bonfres begin to lower, and the
furnaces begin to 80 out and the nations be-
gin TO die. CotopaXi, Vesuvius, Etna, Strom-
boil, Californian geysers, cease to smoke.
and the Ice of hail-storms remains unme!tod
ed their last breath. Ships with sailors
frozen at the mast and helmsmen frozen at
the wheel and passengers frozen i'll 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. Winter from sea to sea. ALL
congcaling winter. Perpetual winter.
Globe of frigidity. Hemisphere shackled to
hemisphere by chains Of ice. Universal
Nova Zembla. The earth and %ice-1oe grind
ing against other ice-ioes. The archangles
OF malice and horror have done their work.
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 destrue ton Of Christianity would
be to the moral world. The sun turned into
ed a great joke. There are people who re.
s..oice to hear Christianity caricatured, and
to hear Christ essa led with bubble and
quirk and misrepresentation and badinage
and L~ariequinade. . N q.
l pro- ose this morning to take infdelity
and atheism out of the realm :of popularity
into one of tragedy, aud show you what they
proposs and what, if tney are successful,
they will accomplish. There are those in
all our communities who would like. TO see
the Christian religion ove"thrown, and whe
say the world would be better without it. ]
want Ito show you what is the end of Til
road, and what Is the ermmus Of thi
crusade, and what this world will be wher
atheism and infdelity have triumphed ovel
1t, Ii they'can. l say, if they can. I reiJer
ate it. il they can.
In the first place, 1t will be tho complete
and mut:erable degraoation of womanLoed
I will prove it by facts and arguments which
ties and cities n states and nations where
The Christian religion has been dominant
womln's condition has been ameliorated anG
improved, and she is deferred to and honor
ed in a thousand things, and every gentle
man t.. kes off his hat before her. If your as
the name Of wife. mother, daughter, sugge.1
gracious surroundings. You know there arr
no better schools and Summaries in Brooklyl
or IN my city of this county than the school
and seminaries for Or young ladies. Yol
know that while woman may suffer injustic.
in England and the United States, she Ia
more Of her rights in ChrIstendom than sh,
has anywhere else. N>4# ss u
Now. compare this with woman's condi
tion In lands where Christianity has mad,
little or 10 advance-in China. In Barbary
in Borneo, in Tartary, in Egypt, in Hindo
stan. The Burmese sell their wives ant
daughters as so many sheep. The Hindo,
billie mikes it disgraceful and an outrag,
for a woman to listen to music or look out o
the window in the absence of her. husband
and gives as q lawful ground for divorce
wOman's beginning to eat before her husband
has finished his meal. What mean thos,
white bundles on the ponds and rivers il
ing infanticide. Female children destroye,
simply because they are female. Woma'
harnessed 10 q pillow as an OK. Woman veile,
and barr1caded, and in all STYLES OF crue
seclusion. Her birth a misfortune. He
life q torture. Her death a horror, Til
missionary of the cross To-day in heathel
lands breaches generally to two groups
group Of men who do as they please and 81
where they please; the other group Womel
hidden and carefully secluded in a sid
apartment, where they may hear the yoic
OF the p cacher, but may. not be seen. N
life. No hole for the life to come. Ringe'
nose. Cramped foot. Disfgured face. Em
bruted soul, Now compare those two condi
tions. How IT TO ward this latter condition
that ] speak of would woman go if Christian
influences were Withdrawn and Chr1stianit
were QestIOyed! ~ Is only 9 question Q
dynam' g. II an object be lifted to a certain
point and not fastened there, and the liftin.
power he Withdrawn, how long before tina
object will fall Gown SSthe point from whicl
it starteay Ii will TALL down, aud 1t will 9
still further than the point from which /
started. Christianity has lifted woman N
from the very depth of degradation almos
10, the skies. IF that lifting power be with
drawn she falls clear back TO the depth fion
which she Was re surrected, but not COIN
any lower because tI.ei G Is no low DEPTH
Nh vaf notwithstanding o. fhn fact TINT fh