The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1899-06-22
AN ETERNAL GLOOM.
Dr.. Talmvge Pictures the Earth
Without the Gospel.
vividly Portrays the Gloom of nm In
ndel World-Triumph of Atheism
Would Mean Death of
Civilization.
Copyright, Louis Klopsch, 1884,
washington,

Copyright, Louis Klopsch, 1891
Washington.
In this sermon DIR. Talmage gives q
glimpse of what the world would be il
the Gospel were abolished and the hui
man race left without Divine guidance.
The text is Acts 2:20: "The sun shall
be turned into darkness"
Christianity is the rising sun OF our
time, and men have tried with the up
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 the luminary of the planetary
system, and the waters go 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 and cools on
until there are only a few Goals left.
and these are whitening and going out
until there is not speck left in all the
mountains of ashes and the valleys OF
ashes and the chasms of ashes. An ex-
tinguished sun! Adead sun! A buried
sun! Let all worlds wall at the stupen-
dous obsequies.
of 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 be-
comes the arctic, and there are frozen
rivers and frozen lakes and frozen
oceans. From arctic and antarctic re-
eions the inhabitants gather in toward
the center and find the equator 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
bonfires begin to lower, and the fur
naces begin to go out, and the nations
begin to die. Cotopaxi, Vesuvius, Etna,
Stromboli, California geysers, cease to
smoke, and the ice of hailstorms re-
mains 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 passengers frozen in the
cabin, all nations dying, first at the
north and then at the south. Child
frosted and dead in the cradle. Octo-
penarian 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 frigidity. Hemisphere shack
led 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 into darkness!
Infidelity in our time is considered a
great joke. There are people who re-
joice to hear Christianity caricatured
and to hear Christ assailed with quibble
and quirk and misrepresentation and
badinage and harlequinade. propose
| to-day to take infidelity and atheism
ont of the realm of jocularity into one
of tragedy and show you what infidels
propose and what If they are successful
they will accomplish. There are those
in our communities who would like tt
see the Christian religion overthrow
and who say the world would be better
without it. I want to show you wha'
is the end OF this road and what is thu
terminus of this crusade and what thi.
world will be when atheism and infidel
ity have triumphed over it, if they can
say, if they can. Ireiterate it, if the,
can.
| In the first place, it will be the com
plete and unutterable degradation o
womanhood. I will prove it by fact
and arguments which no honest maj
will dispute. In all communities an,
cities and states and nations where TIL
Christian religion has been dominan
woman's condition has been amelio
rated and improved, and she is deferre
to and honored in thousand things
and every gentleman takes off his. ha
before her. If your associations hav
been good, you know that the name o
wife, mother, daughter, suggests grs
cious surroundings. You know ther
are no better schools and seminarie
in this country than the schools an
; seminaries for our young ladies. Yo
know that while woman may suffer il
justice in England and the Unite
States she has more of her rights j
Christendom than she has anywhel
else.
Now, compare this with woman's col
dition in lands where Christianity hi
made little or no advance in Chin
in Barbary, ID Borneo, in Tartary.