448. The Sun Put Out

The Sun Put Out

Act_2:20 : ’93The sun shall be turned into darkness.’94

Christianity is the rising sun of our time, and men have tried with the uprolling vapors of scepticism, and the smoke of their blasphemy, to turn the sun into darkness. Suppose the archangels of malice and horror should be let loose a 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 hissing 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 flame are reduced to a small acreage of fire, and that whitens and cools off until there are only a few coals left, and these are whitening and going 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 extinguished sun! A dead sun! A buried sun! Let all worlds wail 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 becomes the Arctic, and there are frozen rivers, and frozen lakes, and frozen oceans. From Arctic and Antarctic 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 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 furnaces begin to go out, and the nations begin to die. Cotopaxi, Vesuvius, ‘c6tna, Stromboli, California geysers cease to smoke, and the ice of hail-storms 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. 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-floe, grinding against other ice-floes. 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 rejoice to hear Christianity caricatured, and to hear Christ assailed with quibble and quirk and misrepresentation and badinage and harlequinade. I now propose to take Infidelity and Atheism out of the realm of jocularity into that of tragedy, and show you what infidels propose and what, if they are successful, they will accomplish. There are those in all our communities who would like to see the Christian religion overthrown, 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 crusade, and what this world will be when Atheism and Infidelity have triumphed over it, if they can. I say, if they can. I reiterate’97if they can.

In the first place, it will be the complete and unutterable degradation of womanhood. I will prove it by facts and arguments which no honest man will dispute. In all communities and cities and states and nations where the Christian religion has been dominant, woman’92s condition has been ameliorated and improved, and she is deferred to and honored in a thousand things, and every gentleman takes off his hat before her. If your associations have been good, you know that the name of wife, mother, daughter, suggests gracious surroundings. You know there are no better schools and seminaries in this country than the schools and seminaries 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’92s condition in lands where Christianity has made little or no advance’97in China, in Barbary, in Borneo, in Tartary, in Egypt, in Hindostan. The Burmese sell their wives and daughters as they would sell so many sheep. The Hindoo Bible makes it disgraceful and an outrage for a woman to listen to music, or look out of the window in the absence of her husband, and gives as a lawful ground for divorce a woman’92s 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 infanticide. Female children destroyed simply because they are female. Woman harnessed to the plow as an ox. Woman veiled and barricaded, and in all degrees of cruel seclusion. Her birth a misfortune. Her life a torture. Her death a horror. The missionary of the Cross today in heathen lands preaches generally to two groups’97a group of men who do as they please and sit where they please; the other group, women hidden and carefully secluded in a side apartment, where they may hear the voice of the preacher, but may not be seen. No refinement. No liberty. No hope for this life. No hope for the life to come. Ringed nose. Cramped foot. Disfigured face. Embruted soul.

Now compare those two conditions. How far toward this latter condition that I speak of would woman go if Christian influences were withdrawn and Christianity were destroyed? It is only a question of dynamics. If an object be lifted to a certain point and not fastened there, and the lifting power be withdrawn, how long before that object will fall down to the point from which it started. It will fall down, and it will go still further than the point from which it started. Christianity has lifted woman up from the very depths of degradation almost to the skies. If 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 yet, notwithstanding the fact that the only salvation of woman from degradation and woe is the Christian religion, and the only influence that has ever lifted her in the social scales is Christianity’97I have read that there are women who reject Christianity. I make no remark in regard to those persons. In the silence of your own soul make your observations.

If infidelity triumph and Christianity be overthrown, it means the demoralization of society. The one idea in the Bible that atheists and infidels most hate, is the idea of retribution. Take away from society the idea of retribution and punishment, and it will begin very soon to disintegrate; and take away from the minds of men the fear of hell, and there are a great many of them who would very soon turn this world into a hell. The majority of those who are indignant against the Bible because of the idea of punishment, are men whose lives are bad, or whose hearts are impure, and who hate the Bible because of the idea of future punishment, for the same reason that criminals hate the penitentiary. I have heard this brave talk about people fearing nothing of the consequences of sin in the next world, and I have made up my mind it is merely a coward’92s whistling to keep his courage up. I have seen men flaunt their immoralities in the face of the community, and I have heard them defy the Judgment Day, and scoff at the idea of any future consequence of their sin; but when they came to die, they shrieked until you could hear them for nearly two blocks, and in the summer night the neighbors got up to put the windows down, because they could not endure the horror.

I would not want to see a rail-train with five hundred Christian people on board go down through a drawbridge into a watery grave. I would not want to see five hundred Christian people go into such disaster, but, I tell you plainly, that I could more willingly see that than I could for any protracted time stand and see an infidel die, though his pillow were of eider-down and under a canopy of vermilion. I have never been able to brace up my nerves for such a spectacle. There is something at such a time so indescribable in the countenance. I just looked in upon it for a minute or two, but the clutch of his fist was so diabolic, and the strength of his voice was so unnatural, I could not endure it. ’93There is no hell, there is no hell, there is no hell!’94 the man had said for sixty years; but that night, when I looked in the dying room of my infidel neighbor, there was something on his countenance which seemed to say, ’93There is, there is, there is, there is!’94 The mightiest restraints today against theft, against immorality, against libertinism, against crime of all sorts’97the mightiest restraints are fears of the retributions of eternity. Men know that they can escape the law, but down in the offenders’92 souls is the realization of the fact that they cannot escape God. He stands at the end of the road of profligacy, and he will not clear the guilty. Take all idea of retribution and punishment out of the hearts and minds of men, and it would not be long before our cities would become Sodoms. The only restraints against the evil passions of the world today are Bible restraints.

Suppose, now, these generals of Atheism and Infidelity got the victory, and suppose they marshaled a great army made up of the majority of the world. They are in companies, in regiments, in brigades’97the whole army. Forward, march! ye hosts of infidels and atheists, banners flying before, banners flying behind, banners inscribed with the words: ’93No God! No Christ! No punishment! No restraints! Down with the Bible! Do as you please!’94 The sun turned into darkness!

Forward, march! ye great army of infidels and atheists. And first of all you will attack the churches. Away with those houses of worship! They have been standing here so long, deluding the people with consolation in their bereavements and sorrows. All those churches ought to be extirpated; they have done so much to relieve the lost and bring home the wandering, and they have so long held up the idea of eternal rest after the paroxysm of this life is over. Turn St. Peter’92s and St. Paul’92s and the temples and tabernacles into club-houses. Away with those churches!

Forward, march! ye great army of infidels and atheists, and next of all they scatter the Sabbath schools filled with bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked little ones who are singing songs on Sunday afternoon, and getting instruction when they ought to be on the street corners playing marbles, or swearing on the commons. Away with them! orward, march! ye great army of infidels and atheists, and next of all they will attack Christian asylums’97the institutions of mercy supported by Christian philanthropies. Never mind the blind eyes and the deaf ears and the crippled limbs and the darkened intellects. Let paralyzed old age pick up its own food, and orphans fight their own way, and the half reformed go back to their evil habits. Forward, march! ye great army of infidels and atheists, and with your battle-axes hew down the Cross and split up the manger of Bethlehem.

On, ye great army of infidels and atheists, and now they come to the graveyards and the cemeteries of the earth. Pull down the sculpture above Greenwood’92s gate, for it means the Resurrection. Tear away at the entrance of Laurel Hill the figure of Old Mortality and the chisel. On, ye great army of infidels and atheists, into the graveyards and cemeteries; and where you see, ’93Asleep in Jesus,’94 cut it away, and where you find a marble story of heaven, blast it, and where you find over a little child’92s grave: ’93Suffer little children to come unto me,’94 substitute the words ’93delusion’94 and ’93sham,’94 and where you find an angel in marble, strike off the wing, and when you come to a family vault, chisel on the doors: ’93Dead once, dead forever.’94

But on, ye great army of infidels and atheists, on! They will attempt to scale heaven. There are heights to be taken. Pile hill on hill, and Pelion upon Ossa, and then they hoist the ladders against the walls of heaven. On and on until they blow up the foundations of jasper and the gates of pearl. They charge up the steep. Now they aim for the throne of him who liveth forever and ever. They would take down from their high place the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost. ’93Down with them!’94 they say. ’93Down with them from the throne!’94 they say. ’93Down forever! Down out of sight! He is not God. He has no right to sit there. Down with him! Down with Christ!’94

A world without a head, a universe without a king. Orphaned constellations. Fatherless galaxies. Anarchy supreme. A dethroned Jehovah. An assassinated God. Parricide, regicide, decide. That is what they mean. That is what they will have, if they can. I say, if they can. Civilization hurled back into semi-barbarism, and semi-barbarism driven back into Hottentot savagery. The wheel of progress turned the other way and turned toward the dark ages. The clock of the centuries put back two thousand years. Go back, you Sandwich Islands, from your schools, and from your colleges and from your reformed condition to what you were in 1820, when the missionaries first came. Call home the five hundred missionaries from India and overthrow their two thousand schools, where they are trying to educate the heathen, and scatter the one hundred and forty thousand little children that they have gathered out of barbarism into civilization. Obliterate all the work of Dr. Duff in India; of David Abeel, in China; of Dr. King, in Greece; of Judson, in Burmah; of David Brainerd, amid the American aborigines; and send home the eleven thousand missionaries of the Cross who are toiling in foreign lands, toiling for Christ’92s sake, toiling themselves into the grave. Tell these eleven thousand people of God that they are of no use. Send home the medical missionaries who are doctoring the bodies as well as the souls of the dying nations. Go home, London Missionary Society. Go home, American Board of Foreign Missions. Go home, ye Moravians, and let there be relapse into darkness and squalor and death of the nations whom ye have begun to lift.

Oh, there has never been such a nefarious plot on earth as that which Infidelity and Atheism have planned. We were shocked a few years ago because of the attempt to blow up the Parliament Houses in London; but if Infidelity and Atheism succeed in their attempt, they will dynamite a world. Let them have their full way, and this world will be a habitation of three rooms’97a habitation with just three rooms; the one a madhouse, another a lazaretto, the other a pandemonium. These infidel bands of music have only just begun their concert’97yea, they have only been stringing their instruments. I today put before you their whole programme from beginning unto close. In the theatre the tragedy comes first and the farce afterward; but in this infidel drama of death the farce comes first, and the tragedy afterward. And in the former, atheists and infidels laugh and mock, but in the latter God himself will laugh and mock. He says so: ’93I will laugh at their calamity and mock when their fear cometh.’94

From such a chasm of individual, national, worldwide ruin stand back. Oh, young man, stand back from that chasm! You see the practical drift of my sermon. I want you to know where that road leads. Stand back from that chasm of ruin. The time will surely come (you and I may not live to see it, but it will come, just as certainly as there is a God, it will come) when the infidels and the atheists who openly and out-and-out and above-board preach and practice Infidelity and Atheism, will be regarded as criminals against society, as they are now criminals against God. Society will push out the leper, and the wretch with soul gangrened and ichorous and vermin-covered and rotting apart, will be left to die in the ditch.

A thousand voices come up to me this hour, saying: ’93Do you really think Infidelity will succeed? Has Christianity received its death-blow? and will the Bible become obsolete?’94 Yes, when the smoke of the city chimney arrests and destroys the noonday sun. Josephus says that about the time of the destruction of Jerusalem the sun was turned into darkness; but only the clouds rolled between the sun and the earth. The sun went right on. It is the same sun, the same luminary as when at the beginning it shot out like an electric spark from God’92s finger, and today it is warming the nations, and today it is gilding the sea, and today it is filling the earth with its light. The same old sun, not at all worn out, though its light leaps nearly one hundred and ninety thousand miles a second. The same sun with beautiful white light made up of the violet and the indigo and the blue and the green and the red and the yellow and the orange’97the seven beautiful colors now just as when the solar spectrum first divided them.

At the beginning God said: ’93Let there be light,’94 and light was, and light is, and light shall be. So Christianity is rolling on, and it is going to warm all nations, and all nations are to bask in its light. Men may shut the window-blinds so they cannot see it, or they may smoke the pipe of speculation until they are shadowed under their own vaporing; but the Lord God is a sun! This white light of the Gospel made up of all the beautiful colors of earth and heaven’97violet plucked from amid the spring grass, and the indigo of the southern jungles, and the blue of the skies, and the green of the foliage, and the yellow of the autumnal woods, and the orange of the southern groves, and the red of the sunsets. All the beauties of earth and heaven brought out by this spiritual spectrum. Great Britain is going to take all Europe for God. The United States are going to take America for God. Both of them together will take Asia for God. All three of them will take Africa for God. ’93Who art thou, O great mountain? before Zerubabbel thou shalt become a plain.’94 ’93The mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.’94

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage