The Manning times. [volume] (Manning, Clarendon County, S.C.) 1884-current, 1899-05-24
DARKNESS ETERNAL
What the Earth Would Be Without
the Gospel.
ATHEISM VS.. CHRISTIANITY

ATHEISM VS.. CHRISTIANITY
Rev. Dr.. Talmage VividIy Por-
trays The Gloom of an lnfidel
World. Triumph of Atheism
Would Mean Death to
Civilization.
In this sermon Dr. Talmage gives 4
glimpse of what the world would be II
the gospel were abolished and the hu-
man race left without divine guidance.
The text is Acts ii, 20, The sun shal!
be turned into darkness.
Christianity is the rising sun Of our
time, and men have tried with the up,
rolling vapors Of skepticism aid 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 sys-
TEN, and the waters go kissing down
amid the ravines and the caverns, ana
there is explosion after explosion: until
there are only few peaks OF tire lett
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! 4 dead sun. A
buried sun! Let all worlds vail at the
stupendous 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
gions 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
bonfres begin to lower, and the fur
naces begin to 90 out, and the nations
begin to die. Cotopaxi, Vesuvius, Et-
na, Stromboli, California geysers, cease
TO smoke, and the ice Of hailstorms re-
main 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 na-
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 frigidity.
Hemisphere shackled to hemisphere by
chains Of ice. Universal Nova Zembla.
The earth an ice foe grinding against
other ice foes. The archangels Of ma
lice 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 destruc-
ton of the sun in the natural heavens
would be to our physical earth, the de-
struction of Christianity would be to
the moral world. The sun turned into
darkness!
Infdelity in our time is considered a
great joke. There are people who re-
joice to hear Christianity caricatured
and to hear Christ assailed with quib-
bic and quirk and misrepresentation
and badinage and harlequinade. I pro-
pose today to take infdelity and athe.
ism out of the realm Of jocularity into
one Of tragedy and show you whsS inf
dels propose and what if they are sue
cessful they will accomplish. There
are those in all our communities who
would like to see the Christian religion
o7erthrown and who say the world
would be better without it I want to
show you what is the end Of this road
and what is the terminus Of this cru
sade and what this world will be when
atheism and infdelity have triumphed
over it, if they can. l say, if they can.
I Ireiterate it, if they can.
In the first place, it will be the COM
plete and unutterable degradation Of
Womanhood. l will prove it by facts
and arguments which no honest man
will dispute. In ali communities and
cities and states and nations where the
Christian religion has been dominant
wonan's condition has been ameliorated
and improved, and she is deferred to
and honored in q thousand things, and
every gentleman takes off his hat be-
fore her. If your associations have
been good, you know that the name Of
wife, mother, daughter, suggests gra-
cious surroundings. You know there
are no better schools and seminaries in
this county than the schools and SEM
inaries for 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
than she has anywhere else.
Now, compare this>~with woman's
condition ia lands where Christianity
has made little or no advance-in China
IN Barbary, in Borneo, in Tartary, in
Egypt, in Hindustan. The Burmese
sell their wives and daughters as so
many sheep. The Hindoo Bible makes
it disgraceful and an outrage for wo-
man to listen to music or look out Of
the window in the absence Of her hus
hand and cires as q lawful crnnnG for