The Pulaski citizen. [volume] (Pulaski, Tenn.) 1866-current, 1888-05-17
TABERNACLE SERVICES.
REV. DR.. TALMAGE DiScOURsES
ON "oescuRATIoN."

REV. DR.. TALMAGE DiScOURsES
ON "oescuRATIoN."
The Bible the Only Restraint Against
the Evil Passions Of the World-Athe-
Christianity.
BROOKLYN, May 13.-This morning the
Rev. T. De Witt Talmage preached at the
Tabernacle to an overfowing congrega-
ton. The hymn beginning.
Stand up. my soul; shake of thy fears.
And gird the Gospel armor on.
was sung with magnificent effect. DR..
Taipaage's subject was '.Obecuration,
and his text, 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 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 fame are
reduced to small acreage Of fire, and
that whitens and cools of 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. A buried sun. Let all
worlds wall at the stupendous obsequies.
OF course, this withdrawal Of the solar
light and heat throws our earth into
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, but soon the bonfires begin to
lower, and the furnaces begin to go out,
and the nations begin to die. Cotopaxi,
vesuvius. Etna, Stromboi. Californian
geysers cease to smoke, and the ice Of
hail storms remains unmelted in their
crater. AL 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 on the shuttle Winter from sea to
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
natural heavens would be to our physi-
cal earth, the destruction Of Christianity
would be to the moral world. The sun
turned into darkness. Infdelity 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 badinage. and harle.
quinade.
propose this morning to take Infidel
fly 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 communitie!
who would like to see the Christian re
ligion overthrown, and who say ths
world would be better without it.
want to show you what is the end O
this road, and what is the terminus o
this crusade, and what this world will b
when Atheism and Infdelity have tri
umphed over it, II they can. say, i
they can. reiterate it, if they can.
In the first place, it will be the com
pIete and unutterable degradation o
womanhood / will prove it by fact
and arguments which no honest man vii
dispute. In all communities and cite
and states and nations where the Chris
tian religion has been dominant, woman
condition has been ameliorated and i'm
proved, and she is deferred to and hon
ored in a thousand things, and ever
gentleman takes off his hat before her
II your associations have been good, yo
know that the name Of wife, mother
daughter, suggest gracious surrounding
You know there are no better school
and seminaries In Brooklyn or in an
city of ifseountry than the schools an
seminaries for our young ladies. Yo
know that while woman may suffer ir
justice in England and the United States
she has more of her rights in Christer
dom than she has anywhere else.
Now compare this with wolnan's cor
dition in lands where Christianity hs
made little or no advance-in China,
Barbary. in Borneo. in Tartary. In Egyp
In Hindostan. The Burmese sell the
wives and daughters as so many sheeI
The Hindoo Bible makes it disgracef,
and an outrage for a woman to listen
music, or to look out Of the window
the absence Of her husband. and gives &
lawful ground for divorce a woman
beginning to eat before her husband h'
finished his meal What mean tho
white bundles on the ponds and rivers
China in the morning2 Infanticide fc
lowing infanticide. Female childre
destroyed simply because they are femal
Woman harnessed to plow as an O.
Woman veiled and barricaded. and in Q
styles of cruel seclusion. Her birth
misfortune. Her life torture. 81
death horror. The missionary