Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1888-05-23
''oBSCURATION.'' .
CHRISTIANITY IS THE Il ISING sun
OF QUE TIME.
MEN MAY ESCAPE THE LAW, BUT
THEY CANNOT ESCAPE GOD.
YOUNG MAN, STAND BACK FROM
THE CHASM OF RUIN.

THEY CANNOT ESCAPE GOD.
| YOUNG MAN, STAND BACK FROM
THE CHASM OF RUIN.
DIR. TALMAeE's s SERMON, SUNDAY, MAY 18TH.
IDRooKLYN, May 13.-This morning the
Id Rev. T. Dewitt Talmage, D. D.,
| preached at the Tabernacle to an over
flowing congregation. The hymn begin
ming,
"Stand up my soul, shake off thy fears.
And grid the Gospel armor on,'
was sung with magnificent effect. DR.. Tai
mage's subject was "Obscuration, and his
text: "The sun shall be turned into dark
ness Acts ii, v. 90. He said:
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 fulfill
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 archaugels of malice and hor-
ror 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 luninary of the planetary system,
and the waters 60 Kissing down amid the
ravines and the caverns, and there is explo-
sion 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 flame are reduced to 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 spark left in all the mountains
of sshes 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, sthis 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 are frozen rivers 9pd fro
zen lakes and frozen oceans. From Arctic
and Antarctic regions the inhabitants gath
| er in toward the csntre and find the Equa-
| tor as the poles. The slain forests are piled
up into great bonfire. and around them
gather the shivering villages and cities. The
wealth Of the coal mines is hastily poured
into the furnaces and stirred into rage of
combustion, but soon the bonires begin to
lower, and the furnaces begin to go out and
the nations begin to die. Cotopaxi, Vesu-
vius, 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 nations dying
first at the north and then at the south.
Child frosted and dead in the cradle. Oc-
togenarians frosted and dead at the hearth.
Wolkmen with frozen hand on the hammer
and frozen foot on the shuttle Winter
from sea to sea. Al.congealing winter.
Perpetual winter. Globe Of frigidity. Hem
isphere 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 physical
earth, the destruction of Christianity would
| be to the moral world. The sun turned in
| to darkness. Infidelity in our time is con-
sidered great joke. There are people who
rejoice to hear Christianity caricatured and
to hear Christ assailed with quibble and
quirk and misrepresentation and badinage
and harlequinade.
| propose this morning to take infidelity
and atheism out of the realm of joeularity
into one of tragedy, and show you what
they propose, and what, if they are success
full, they will accomplish. There are those
in all our communities who would like to
see the Christian religion overthrown, and
who say the world would be beater without
| it. Iwant 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 triumphed over
| it, if they can. say, ifthey can. reiter-
ate, if they can.
In the first place, it will be the complete
and unutterable degradation of womanhood.
| will prove it by facts and arguments which
no honest man will dispute. In all COM
munities and cities and States and nations
where the Christian religion has been domi-
nant, woman's condition has been amelio-
| rated and improved, and she is deferred to
and honored in a thousand things, and ev-
cry gentleman takes off his hat before her.
If your associations have been good, you
know that the name of wife, mother, daugh-
| ter, suggests gracious surroundings. You
know there are no better schools and semi
naries in Brooklyn or in any city of this
| country than the schools and seminaries foT
our young ladies. You know that while
woman may suffer injustice in England and
the United States, she has more of her
rights in Christendom then she has any
where else.
Now compare this with woman's condi-
tion in lands where Christianity has made
little or no advance; in China, in Barbary,
in Borneo, in Tartary, in Egypt in Hindos-
tan. The Burmese sell their wives and
daughters as so many sheep. The Hiudoo
Bible makes it disgraceful and an outrage
for woman to listen to music, or look out
OF the window in the absence of her hus-
band, and gives as lawful ground for
divorce 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? Infanti-
eide following infanticide. Female chill.
dren destroyed simply because they are fe-
male. Woman harnessed to plough as an
OK. Woman veiled and barricaded, and ia
all styles of cruel seclusion. Her birth
misfortune Her life torture. Her death
horror. The missionary of the cross to.
day in heather lands breaches generally to
| two groups-a group of men who do as they
please and sit where they please; the other
group women, hidden and carefully seclud-
ed in side apartment, where they may
:, hear the voice of the preacher, but may not
be seen. No refinement No liberty. No
hope for this life. No hope for the life to
come. Hinged nose. Cramped foot. Dis
figured face. Embruted soul. Now COM
pare those two conditions. How far toward
this latter condition that speak of would
! woman 60 if Christian influences were with
drawn and Christianity were destroyed? 1t
/ is only question of dynamics If an OBJ
ject be lifted to certain point and not fast
ened there, and the lifting power be with.
, drawn, how long before that object will fall
down to the point from which it started /?
1t will fall down, and it will go still further
!. than the point from which it was started.
Christianity has lifted woman up from the
very depths of degradation almost to the
skies. If that lifting power be withdrawn
she falls clear back to the depth from which
she was resurrected, not going any lower.
because there is no lower depth. And vet.
notwithstanding the fact that the only
I salvation of woman from degradation and
s kwoa is tha Christian relUion opd tba o,J,