The Wilmington daily Republican. (Wilmington, Del.) 1890-1902, 1899-05-15
DARKNESS, ETERNAL
WHAT THE EARTH WOULD BE WITH
OUT THE GOSPEL.
Rev. Ds. TalmaSe Wildly Portrays
the Gloom of an InAdel world-Tri-
umph Of Atheism Would Mean
i Death Of Civilization

| Death Of Civilization.
| copyright. Louis Klopsch, 1892
WASHINGTON, May 14-In this sermon
Dr. Talmage gives glimpse Of what tn
world would LII the gospel were abolish
I'd and the human race left without divin'
guidance. The text is Acts II, 30, 9TH,
sun shall be turned into darkness"
| Christianity is the rising sun of oul
time, and men have tried with the uproll
ing vapors of skepticism and the smoke Of
their blssphemy to turn the sun into dark
ness. Suppose the archangcls 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 60
kissing down amid the ravlnes and the
caverns, and there Is explosion after ex-
plosion until there are only few peaks
Of fire left In the sun, and these are cool.
ing doTn 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 ohasms Of ashes. An ex-
tinguished sun! A dead sun! A buried
sun! Let all worlds wall OF the stupeh-
dous obsequies. 1924 5.eisF
OF course this withdrawal of the solar
light and heat throws our Garth into q
universal chill, and the tropics become the
temperate, and the temperate becomes tho
arctic, and there are frozen rivers and
frozen lakes and frozen oceans. From
arctic and antarctic regions the inhabit-
ants gather in toward the center and find
the equator as the poles. The slain forests
are piled up into d 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 bonflres begin to lower, and the fur
naces begin to go out, and the nations be.
gin to die. Cotopaxi, Vesuvius, Etna,
Stromboli, California geysers, cease to
smoke, and the Ice Of hailstorms 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 pas
sengers frozen in the cabin, all nations
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. Tho earth an ice foe grind
ing 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 tho natural heavens would be
to our physical earth, tho destruction Of
Christianity would be to the moral world.
The sun turned into darkness
Infdelity a Tragedy.
Infdelity in our time is considered o
great joke. There are people who rejoice
to hear Christianity caricatured and to
hear Christ assailed with bubble and
quirk and Misrepresentation and badinage
and harleqninade. 1 propose today to take
infldelity and atheism out of the realm Of
POPULARITY into one Of tragedy antk show
You what infldels propose and what if they
are successful they will accomplish. There
are those in all our communities who
would like to sec the Christian religion
overthrown 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 fnfidelity
have triumphed over it, If they can. !
say, If they can. I reiterate II, If they can.
In the first place, 1t will be the complete
and unutterable degradation Of woman
hood. Twin 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 womans condition
has been ameliorated and improved, and |
she is deferred to and honored in thou
sand things, and every gentleman takes
of his hat before her. If your associations
have been good, you know that tho name
If wife, mother, daughter, suggests gra-
,ious surroundings. You know there arc +
no better schools and seminaries in this
than the schools and seminaries
'or our young ladies. You know that
while woman may suffer injustice in Eng
and and the United States she has moro
If her rights in Christendom than she has
anywhere else.
Woman and Christianity.
Now, compare this with woman's con-
ltion in lands where Christianity has
made little or no advance-in China in
3arbary in Borneo, in Tartary, in Egypt,
n Hindustan. The Burmese sell their
wives and daughters as so many sheep
The Hindoo Bible makes 1t disgraceful
md an outrage for woman to listen to
music or look out of the window in the
bsence of her husband and gives az u
awful ground for divorce woman's be-
inning to eat before her husband has
nlsheG his meal What mean those white
undles Oh the ponds and rivers in China
n the morning? Infanticide following
nfanticido Female children destroyed
imply because they are female. Woman
arnessed to the pillow as an OK. Woman
eiled and barricaded and in all styles Of
ruel seclusion. Her birth q misfortune.
Ter life torture. Her death horror.
he missionary of tho cross today in
eathen lands breaches generally to two
roups-a group of men who do as they
lease and sit where they please; the other
roup, women hidden and carefully Sc
luded in side apartment, where they
lay hear the voice of the preacher, but
lay not be seen. No refinement. No lib
ty. No hoEe for this life. No hope for
le life to come. hinged nose. Cramped
,ot. Disfgured face. Embruted soul.
ow, compare those two conditions How
IT toward this latter condition that I
peak of would woman go If Christian in
uences were withdrawn and Christianity
ere destroyed 1t is only question of
ynamics. If an object be lifted to Ger
lin point and not fastened there and the
fling power be withdrawn, how long be-
ire that object will fall down to the point
ON which it started9 1t will fall down,
I'd it will go still farther than the point
ON which it started. Christianity has
fled woman up from the very depths of
,gratlation almost to the skies. If that
fling power he withdrawn, she falls clear
,ck to the depth from which she was res
not going any lower, because /
crc is no lower depth. And yet, not |
outstanding the fact that the only saliva ,
on Of woman from degradation and woe /
the Christian religion-and tho only in {
lence that has over lifted her in tho social ,
nlcs Is Christianity-I have read that {
gro are women who reject Christianity.
make no remark in regard to those per- ,
ms. In the silence of your own soul i,
axe your observations