The Farmville herald. [volume] (Farmville, Va.) 1890-1934, 1899-07-28
AN ETERNAL GLOOM.
DR.. IalmBge Pictures the Earth
Without the Gospel
NividIy Portrays the Gloom Of an In
hdel WOrid-rriumph OF Atheism
Would Mean Death of
Civilization.
Copyright. Louis Klopsch. 1901
IWashinptOn. Nav Il

. man race lelt WITHOUT DlNlhc 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 yapors of skepticism and the
smoke of their blasphcmy TO turn the
sun into darkness. Suppose the arch
angels Of malice and horror should be
let loose a little while and be allowed 10
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 90 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 sum- 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 off
until there are only few Goals left.
and these are whitening and going out
until there is not a speck left in all the
mountains of ashes and the valleys Of
ashes and the chasms of ashes. An eX-
tinguishcd sun. A dead sun. \ buried
SUM- Let an 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-
Cions 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 shiveriug 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 10 lower. and the fur
naces begin TO go out. and the nations
begin 70 die. Cotopaxi, Nesuvfus, Etna,
Stromboli. California geysers. cease 10
smoke, and the ice of haistorms re-
mains unmelted i'm 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-
genarian frosted and dead al 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 10 hemisphere by chains Of
ice. Universal Nova Zembla. The earth .
an ice foe grinding against other ice f
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 70 the moral
world The sun turned into darlnessl
Infdelitv in our time is considered
great joke. There are people who re-
joice 10 hear Christianity caricatured
and to hear Christ assailcd with quibble
and quirk and misrepresentation and
badinage and harlequinade. propose
to-day 10 take infdelity and atheism
out Of the realm Of jocularity into one
of tragedy and show you what infdels
propose and what if they are successful /
they viii accomplish. There are those
in our communities who would like 10
see the Christian religion overthrown
and who say the world would be better
without II. 7 want 10 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 infdel-
ity have triumphed over it, if they can.
say. If they can. reiterate il, if they
can.
In the first place. IL viii be the com
plete and unutteroble degradation Of
I viii prove IT by facts
and arguments which no honest man
will dispute. In all communities and
7ities and states and nations where the
Christian religion has been dominant
woman's condition has been amelio-
rated and improved. and she is deferred
o and honored I'm n thousand things,
md every gentleman takes off his hat
)efore her. IF your associations have
been good. you know that tho name Of
wife. mother. daughter, suggests gra- I
,ious surroundings. You know there J
re no better schools and seminaries
n this country than the schools and
eminaries for our young ladies. You
Know that while woman may suffer in i
Justice in England and the United J
tates she has more of her rights in y
'hristendom than she has anywhere ]
Use. ]
Now. compare this with woman's con-
iti0n i'm lands where Christianity has {
lade little or no advance-in China,
b Barbary. i'm Borneo. in Tartary, in j
,gypt, i'm Hindustan. The Burmese sell a
heir wives and daughters as so many o
heep. The Hindoo Bible makes il dis I
raceful and an outrage for a woman to a
sten 10 music or look out Of the win G
ow in the absence of her husband and {
ives as lawful ground for divorce
yoman's beginning 10 eat before her f
usband has finished his meal. What S.
mean those white bundles on the ponds b
nd rivers in China in the morning? "
following infanticide. Fe- II
lale children destroyed simply because 4
hev are female. Woman harnessed to p
he plow as an OK Woman veiled and C.