The Penn's Grove record., 1899-05-19
Or. TALMAGES SERMON.
SUNDAYS DISCOURSE Blythe NOTED
DIVINE.

subject; Turned to Dsrkness"-A Graphic
Word-Picture of n Goddess world
DeplorRble Condition into Which In
: fidelity Would Plunge the World.
Text; THE sun shall be turned into dark
iess,"-Acts H., 20.
Christianity is the rising sun of our time,
ana mon nave tried with the uprolIing va
2ors OF skepticism and the smoke of their
olasphemy to turn the sun into darkness.
suppose the archangels Of malice and hor-
ror should be let loose a little while and be
allowed TO extlnguish and destroy the sun
u the natural heavensl They would take
the oceans from other worlds and pour
hem on the luminary of the planetary sys-
TEN, and the waters 20 kissing down amid
Inc raVines and the cayerns, 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 I'M
I'll the vast continents Of flame are reduced
to q small acreage of fire, and that whitens
and eools of until there ore only a few
Goals left, and these are whitening and 60
ing 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 extin-
guished SUM A dead SUM A buried SUM
Let all worlds wall at the s~tupendous OBJ
sequies.
OF course this withdrawal OF the solar
light and heat throws our earth into a uni
versal chill, and the tropics become the
temperate, and the temperate becomes the
arctic and there are frozen rivers and frozen
lakes and frozen oceans. From arctic to an
tarcttc regions the inhabitants gather in
toward the center and find the equator as
the poles. The slain forests are piled up
into a great bonfire, and around them
gather the shiyering villages n cities.
h wealth of the coal mines Is hastily
mi rod into +tu f,rrnaa- 49, A.. 49,
rage of combustion, but soon the bonfres
begin to lower, and the furnaces begin to
GO out, and the nations begin to die. Coto-
paN, Nesuyius, Etna, Stromboli, California
geysers, cease to smoke, and the ice of
hatlstorms 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 passengers frozen In the cabin.
All nations dying, first at the north and
then at the south. Child frosted and dead
in the cradle. OetOgenarlan frosted and
dead at the hearth. Workmen with frozen
hand on the hammer and frozen foot onthe
shuttle. Winter from sea to sea. All con-
genling winter. Perpetual winter. Globe
OF ttigidity. Hemisphere shackled to hem
isphere by chains Of ice. Universal Nova
Zembla. The earth an ice foe grinding
against other ice foes. The arehangels OF
malice and herror have done tIeir work,
and now they may have their thrones Of
glacier ndlook 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 darknessl
lnfidelity in our time Is considered a
great joke, There are people who rejoice
to hear Christianity earicatured and to hear
Christ assailed with bubble and quirk and
Misrepresentation and badinage aud harle-
quinade. / propose to-day to take inhdel-
ity and atheism out OF the realm of jocu-
larity into one Of tragedy and show You
what inldels propose and what, il they are
successful, they will accomplish. There
are those IN all our communities who would
like to see the Christian religion over
thrown and who say the world would be
better without 1t. | 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 inldelity
have triumphed over it, if they can, Isay,
il they can. | reiterato 1t, ifthey can.
In the first place, it will be the complete
and unutterable degradation of woman
hood. l will prove it by facts and argu-
ments which no honest man will dispute
In all communities and cities and States
and nations where the Christian religion
has been dominant woman's condition has
been ameliorated and improved, and she Is
deferred to and honorod in n thousand
things, and every gentleman takes off his
hat before her. If your associations have
been good, you know that the nam of
wife, mother, daughter, suggest gracious
surroundings. You know there are no bet
ter schools and seminaries in this country
than the schools and seminaries for our
young ladies. You know that while wom-
an 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 condl-
tion in lands where Christianity has made
little or no sadvanee-in China, In Barclay,
in Borneo, in Tartary, in!Egypt, in Hindus-
tan. The Burmese sell their wives and
daughters as so many sheep. The Hindoo
Bible makes it disgraceful and an outrage
fore woman to listen to music or look out
of the window in the absence of her hus-
band and gives as a lawful ground for di-
vorce a 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? Infanticide
following infanticlde. Female children de-
stroyed simply because they are females.
Woman harnessed to the pillow as an OK.
Woman yelled and barrlcaded and in all
styles of cruel seclusion. Her birth a mis-
fortune. Her life a torture. Her death a
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 care
fully secluded In a side apartment, where
they may hear the voice of the preacher,
but may not DO seen. No refinement. No
liberty. No hope for this life. No hope for
the life to come. Hinged nose. Cramped
foot. D~ishgured face. Embruted soul.
Now, compare those two conditions.
How far toward this latter condition hat
/ speak of would woman go ii Christian in
fluences were withdrawn and Christianity
were destroyed? 1t is only a question OF
dynamics. If an object be lifted to q GER
tain point and not fastened there and the
lifting power be Withdrawn, how long be-
fore that object will fall down to the
point from which 1t started? 1t
will fall down, and IL will go
still farther than the point from which
it started. Christianity has lifted woman
up from the very depths OF degradation
almost to the skies. II 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 tho salvation Of woman from
degradation and woe Is the Christian re-
ligion-and the only influence that has
ever lifted her in the social scales is
Christianity-I hHYe read that there arc
women who reject Christianity. make
no remark i'll regardt to those persons. In
the silence OF your WI soul make your OBJ
servations.
If infdelity triumph and Christianity be