Daily Yellowstone journal. [volume] (Miles City, Mont.) 1882-1893, 1888-05-20
TABERNACLE SERVICES.
REV. DR.. TALMA6E ClsCOURSES
ON "oescURATloN."

the Evil Passions of the worId-Athe-
ism and mfidelity Arrayed Against
Christianity.
BROOKLYN, May l3.-This morning the
Rev. I. DE Witt Talmage preached at the
Tabernacle to an overflowing congrega-
ton. The hymn beginning,
Stand up my soul; shake of thy fears.
And grid the Gospel armor on.
was sung with magnificent effect DIR.
Talmage's subject was "Obscuration, I"
and his text, 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 liter
ally 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 uu-
rolling vapors of skepticism and the
smoke of their blasphemy to turn the
sun into darkness. Suppose the arch
angels of malice and horror should be
let loose little while and be allowed 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 go kissing down amid the
ravines and the caverns, and there is ex-
plosion 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 10 a 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 a spark left in all the mountains of
ashes and the valleys of ashes and the
chasms Of ashes. An extinguished sun.
dead sun. A buried sun. Let all
worlds wall at the stupendous obsequies.
OF course, this withdrawal Of the solar
light ard heat throws our earth into a
universal chill, and the tropics become
the temperate, and the temperate be-
comes the Arctic, and there are frozen
rivers and frozen lakes and frozen oceans
From Arctic and Antarctic regions the in
habitants gather in toward the center
and find the equator as the poles. The
slain forests are piled up into great bon
fire. and around them gather the shiver-
ing villages and cities. The wealth Of
the coal mines is hastily poured into the
furnaces and stirred into rage Of COM
bustion, hut soon the bonfires begin TO
lower, and the furnaces begin to 60 out,
and the nations begin to die. Cotopaxi,
Vesuvius, 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 'passen-
gers frozen in the cabin: all ma
tions 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 Oh the shuttle. Winter from sea 10
sea. All congealing winter. Perpetual
winter. Globe Of rigidity. 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 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
natur, heavens would be to our physi-
cal earth, the destruction Of Christianity
would be TO the moral world. The sun
turned into darkness. Infilelity in our
time is considered great joke. There
are people who rejoice to hear Christi
anity caricatured, and to hear Christ as
sailed with quibble, and quirk, and mis-
/ representation, and badinase, and hsrle-
quinade.
/ propose this morning 20 take In6del-
ity and Atheism out Of the realm Of joe
ularity 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 sec the Christian re-
ligion overthrown, and who say the
world would be better without il.
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 Inhdelity have tri.
umphed over il, IL they can. / say, II
they can. reiterate 1t, IL they can.
In the first place, it will be the com.
plete and unutterable degradation OF
womanhood. | will prove it by facts
and arguments which no honest man will
dispute. In all communities and cite,
and states and nations where the Chris.
tian religion has been dominant, woman's
condition has been ameliorated and i'm.
proved, and she is deferred 10 and hon.
ored in a thousand things, and every
gentleman takes OIL his hat before her.
IL 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 Summaries In Brooklyn or In auy
city Of this country than the schools aud
semmaries for our young ladies. You
know that while woman may suffer in
justice in England and the United States,
sho hNq moro Of her rights In Christen.
dom than she hns anywhere else.
] Now compare this with womans con.
dition In lands where Christianity has
made little or no adyancc-in China, in
Barng, In Bornco in Tartary. in Egypt,
in lllndoetan. Tho burmese sell their