The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1892-06-17
1'ALMAGE'S SERMON.
A. Discourse Upon the Important
Art Of Forgetting.
While a Good Memory Is an Admirable
Qualification. There Are Many Things
in Life which 'Twere Well
20 Forget.


Rev. IT. Dewitt Talmage delivered the
following discourse in the Brooklyn
tabernacle, taking for his text:
Their sins and their iniquities viii remem-
Der no more.-Hehrews viii, L..
The national flower of the Egytians
> the heliotrope, of the Assyriaus is
the water lily, of the Hindoos is the
chrysanthemum. We have no national
flower, but there is hardly any flower
more suggestive to many of us than the
'fOrget-me-not." We all like TO be re-
memb ered, and one of our misfortunes
Is that there are so many things we can
not remember. Mnemonics, or the art
of assisting memory, is an important
art 1t was first suggested by Simon
ides of Cos five hundred years Ii. c.
Persons who had but little power to re-
call events, or put facts and names
and dates in proper professions have.
through this art, had their memory re-
enforced to an almost Incredible ex-
tent a good memory is an invaluable
possession. BY all means, cultivate it.
] had an aged friend, who, detained all
night at a miserable depot in waiting
for rail train fast in the snow-banl1s,
entertained a group of some ten or fif-
teen clergymen, likewise detained ON
their way home from a meeting of
Presbytery, by, first, with a piece
of chalk, drawing out-on the black and
sOOty walls of the depot, the Characters
of Walter SCOTS "AIarmion,r and then
reciting from memory the whole of that
poem of some eighty pages in fine print.
My old friend through great age lost
his memory, and when / asked him if
this story of the railroad depot was
true, he said: II do not remember now.
but il was just like me-" Let me see, y
said he to me, shave ever seen you be-
fore?'' "Yes,"I said, you were my
guest last night and was with you an
hour ago." What an awful contrast in
that man between the greatest memory
j ever knew and no memory.
But right along with this art of rec
objection, which / can not too highly
eulogize, is one quite as important, and
vet never heard il applauded. mean
the art of forgetting. There is a
splendid faculty in that direction that
we all need to cultivate. We might
through that process be ten times hap
pier and more useful than we now are
We have been told that forgetfulness is
q weakness and ought to be avoided by
all possible means. So far from a
weakness, my text ascribes it to God
IL is tho very top of Omnipotence that
God is able to obliterate a part of His
own memory. If we repent of sin
and rightly seek the Divine for
giveness, the record of the, misbe-
havior is not only crossed off
the books, but God actually lets it pass
ont of memory. Their sins and their
iniquities will / remember no more. "
So remember no more is to forget, and
you can not make anything else out of
it. Gods power OF forgetting is so
great that if two men appeal to Him,
and the one man, after a life all right,
gets the sins of his heart pardoned, and
the other man, after a life of abOmina-
ton, gets pardoned, God remembers no
more against one than against the
other. The entire past of both the
moralist, with his imperfections, and
the prOfigate, with his debaucheries,
is as much obliterated in the one case
as in the other. Forgotten, forever
and forever. Their sins and their in
iquities will remember no more"
This sublime attribute of forgetfuI-
ness on the part of God you and need,
in our finite way, to initiate. You will
de- well TO cast out of your recollection
all wrongs done you. During the
course of ones life he is sure to be mis-
represented, to be lied about, to be in
iured. There arc those who keep these
things fresh by frequent rehearsal. If
things have appeared in print they
keep them in their scrap-book, for they
cut these precious paragraphs out of
newspapers or books and at leisure
times look them over, or they have
them tied up in bundles or thrust in
pigeon-holes, and they frequently re-
gale themselves and their friends by an
inspection of these filings, these sar-
oasms, these falsehoods, these cruelties
have known gentlemen who carried
them in their pocket-bools, so that
they could easily get at these irrita-
tions, and they put their right hand in
the inside of the coat pocket over their
heart and say: Look herel Let me
show you something.
Scientists catch wasps and hornets
and poisonous insects and transfix them
in curiosity bureaus for study, and that
Is well. But these of whom I speak
catch the wasps and the hornets and
poisonous insects and play with them
and put them on themselves and on
their friends and see how far the nox-
ious things can jump and show how
deep they can sting. Have no such
scrap book. Keep nothing in your pos
session that Is disagreeable. Tear up
the falsehoOds and the ISLANDERS and the
bypercriticisms. Initiate the Lord in
my text and forget, actually forget,
sublimely forget There is no happi-
ness for You in any other plan
or procedure. You see all around
YOU in the churches and out of
the church dispositions acerb, malign,
cynical, pessimistic. Do you know how
these men and women got that dispo-
Eition? IL was by the embalmment of
things pantherine and viperous- They
have spent much of their time in calling
the roll of all the rats that have nib
bled at their reputation. Their soul is
a cage of vultures. Everything in them
is sour or imbittered. The milk of hui
man kindness has been curdled. They
do not believe in anybody or anything
If they see two people whispering they
think il is about themselves. If they
see two people laughing they think it
is about themselves. Where there is
one sweet pippin in their orchard
there are fifty crab apples They have
never been able to forget They do not
want to forget. They never will for
get. Their wretchedness is supreme,
for no one can be happy If he carries
perpetually in mind the mean things
u ~.