Dodge City times. [volume] (Dodge City, Kan.) 1876-1892, 1888-05-24
ATHEISM'S ATTACK.
Talmage Discourses on q World
Without Christianity.
Awful Effects OF Inddelity's Triumph
Feminine Degradation Sure to Follow
che Overthrow Of Religious Belief
Encouragement for Believers.


Feminine Degradation Sure to Follow
the Overthrow OF Religious Belief
couragement for Believers.
In his late sermon at Brooklyn upon the
subject "Obscuration" Rev. I. De Witt
Talmage took for his text: 1.-THE sun shall
be turned into darkness" Acts ii. 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 prophecy was literal
ly 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 vapors 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 allowed to extiuguish
and destroy the sun in the natural heavens.
They would take the oceans from other
worlds and pour them on this lumlnary Of
the planetary system, and the waters go
Kissing down amid the ravines and the
caverns, and there is explosion after ex-
plosiou, until there are only few peaks
OF fire left in the sun, and these are cooling
down and going out until the vast CONT
nents of fame are reduced to small acre
age OF fire, and that whitens and cools on
until there are only few Goals left, and
these are whitening and going out until
there is not spark left in all the mount
aims OF ashes and the valleys of ashes and
the chasms Of ashes.
An extlnguished sun. A dead sun. A
buried sun. Let all worlds wall at the
studendous obsequies. or course, this
Withdrawal of the solar light and heat
throws our earth into a universal chill, and
the tropics become the temperate, and the
temperate becomes the Arctic, and there
ere frozen rivers and frozen lakes and frozen
oceans. From Arctic and Antarctic regions
the Inhabitants gather in toward the CEN
ter and find the equator as the poles. The
slain forests are piled up into great bon
fire. and around them gather the shivering
villages ana cities. The wealth Of the
coal mines is hastily poured into the fur
naces and stirred into rage OF Ombustion,
but soon the bontires began to lower, and
the furnaces begin to go out, and the
nations begin to die. CotOpaxi, Vesuvius,
Etna, :Stromboli, Californian geysers cease
TO smoke, and the ice of hail storms re-
mains anmelted In their crater. All the
flowers nave breathed their last breath.
Ships with sailors frozen ut the mast aud
helmsmeu frozen at the wheel and passen-
gers frozen in the cabin; all nations dying,
first at the North and then at the South.
Child frosted and dead in the cradle.
Octogena~ian frosted and dead at the
hearth. Workmen with frozen hand on
the hammer and frozen foot on the shuttle.
Winter from sea to sea. Allcongeallng
winter. Perpetual winter. Globe Of frig-
idity. Hemisphere shackeled to hemis-
phere by chains of ice. Universal Nova Zem-
bla. The earth an ice-fioe grinding against
other ice-foes. The archangels of malice
and horror 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 physical
earth, the destruction Of Christianity would
30 to the moral world. The sun turned
Shto darkness. Infidelity in our time is
considered great joke. There are people
who rejoice to hear Christianity carica-
cured and to hear Christ assailed with Quib-
BILE and qutrk and Misrepresentation and
badlnage 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 they pro-
pose and what, il they are successful, they
will accomplish. There are those in all
our communities who would like to see the
Christian religion overthrow and who say
the world would be better without it. /
ypyo INT fn al rnn yvh nf no Of ia
road and what is the terminus of this cru
SADIE and what this world will be when
atheism and infidellty have triumphed over
ate it, if they can.
In the first place 1t will be the complete
and unutterable degradation OF woman.
hood. will prove it by facts and argu-
ments which no honest man will dispute
In all communities and cities and States
and Nations where the Christian religion
has been dominant woman's condition has
been ameliorated and improved and she is
deferred TO and honored in thousand
things and every gentleman takes of his
hat before her. If your associations have
been good you know that the name of wife,
mother, daughter, suggest gracious sur
roundings. You know there are no better
any city Of this country than the schools
and Summaries for our young ladies. You
know that while women may suffer in
justice in England and the United States
she has more of her rights in Christcndom
than she has anywhere else.
Now, compare this with woman's condi-
tiou in lauds where Christianity has made
little or no adyance--in China, in Barbary,
in Borneo. in Tartary, in Egypt, in Hin-
dostan. The Burmese sell their wives and
daughters as so many sheep The Hindoo
Bible makes it disgraceful and an outrage
for a woman to listen to music, or lock out
OF the window in the absence of her hus-
band, aud 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 morning! In
fanlicice following infanticide. Female
children destroyed simply because they
are female. Woman harnessed to a piow
as an OK. Woman vailed and FABRICATED
id in all styles of cruel seclusion. Her
birth misfortune. Her life a torture.
Her death a horror The missionary of the
cross today IN heather lands breaches
generally to two groups-a group CT men
who do as they please and sit where they
please; the other group women hid
den and carefully secluded in a side
apartment, where they may hear the
voice OF the preacher, but may not
be seen. No refinement. No liberty. NJ
hope for this life. No hope for the life to
come. Hinged nose. Cramped foot Distg-
ured fac. Embruted soul Now compare
those two conditions. How far toward
this latter condition that speak of would
woman go if Christian influences We're
withdrawn and Christianity were de-
siroye 1t il only question Of ynamics.
II AL object be lifted TO certain point and
be not fastened there, and the lifting power