Weekly expositor. (Brockway Centre, Mich.) 1882-1894, 1892-06-10
TABERNACLE PULPIT.
rALMAGE ON THE ART OF FOR
GETTING.
To Remember Is Well, but the Power to
Forget L. the Greatest GIFT TO the
Human Race-'Their sins and TheIr
Iniquities VIII Remember No More. 4"

DRooKLYN, N. ", June 5. 1so2-The enor-
nous audience which thronged tho Tabernacle
this morning had fresh evidence of DR.. Tai
IMAGES originality. The value OF a retcntive
memory every one knew by experience and
had heard extolled from their schooldsys up,
but they learned from Dr. Talmage's sermon
that the art OF forgetting is worth cultivating,
and that there Is the highest possible example
for its exercise. His text was Heb. S;l2;
~Their sins and their iniquities will 1 remem-
Der no more"
The national flower of the Egyptians
is the heliotrope, of the Assyrians is
the water lily, of the Hindoos is the
marigold, of the Chinese is the chrys-
anthemum. We haze 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
remembered and one of our misfort-
unes is that there are so many things
we cannot remember. Mnemomics, or
the art of assisting memory, is
an important art. 1t was first
suggested by Simonides of Cos five hun
dred years before Christ Persons who
had but little power to recall events,
or put facts and names and dates in
proper professions have, through this
art, had their memory reinforced to an
almost incredible extent. A good
memory is an invaluable possession.
BY all means, cultivate it. | had an
aged friend, who detained all night at
n miserable depot in waiting for rail
train fast in the snow banks, enter
tanned group of some ten or fifteen
clergymen. likewise detained on their
way home from a meeting of Presby-
terry. by, first, with piece of chalk,
| drawing out on the black and
sooty walls of the depot, the charac-
ters of Walter Scott's "Marmion," 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 the story of the railroad
depot was true, he said: 81 do not re-
member now, but it was just like me. ="
"Let me see," said he To me, "have
! ever seen you before?" EYES," l said,
'you were my guest last night and l
was with you an hour ago" What an
awful contrast in that man between
the greatest memory l ever knew and
no memory at all.
But right along with this art of recol-
lection, which l cannot too highly
eulogize, is one quite as important and
yet 1 never heard it applauded. l
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 happier and more useful than
we now are. We have been told that
forgettulness is weakness and ought
to be avoided by all possible means.
! So far from a weakness. my text
ascribes it to God. 1t is the very top
of Omnipotence that God is able to OBJ
! literate part of his own memory. II
we repent of sin and rightly seek the
divine forgiveness, the record of
/ the misbehavior is not only
crossed off the books, but God act
ually lets it pass out of memory. Their
sins and their iniquities will l remem-
Der no more" To remember no more
is to forget, and you cannot make any
thing 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,
I after life of abomination, gets par
doned, God remembers no more against
one than against the other. The en-
tire past of both the moralist, with his
imperfections, and the profigate, with
| !, ;a 1aha nriA 10
ated in the one case as In the other.
! Forgotten, forever and forever. "Their
sins and their iniquities will remen-
Der no more"
Many years ago family, consisting
of the husband and wife and little
girl of two years, lived far out in n
cabin on a Western prairie. The hus-
band took few cattle to market. Be-
fore he started his little child asked
him to buy for her doll, and he prom
| ised He could, after the sale of the
cattle, purchase household necessities,
and certainly would not forget the doll
he had promised. In the village to
which hs went he sold the cattle and
! obtained the groceries for his
household and the doll for his little
darling. He started home along
the dismal road at night-fall.
As he went along on horseback,
a thunderstorm broke, and in
the most lonely part of the road and in
the heaviest part of the storm, he heard
n child cry. Robbers had been known
to do some bad work along that road,
and it was known that this herdsman
had money with him, the price of tho
cattle sold The herdsman first thought
it was a strategem to have him halt
and be despoiled of his treasures, but
the child's cry became more keen and
rending, and so he dismounted and
felt around in the darkness and all in
vain, until he thought of a hollow that
he remembered near the road where
the child might be, and for that he
started, and, sure enough, found a
little one tagged out and drenchel
of the storm and almost dead. He
wrapped 1T up as we'll as he could and
mounted his horse and resumed his
journey home. Coming in sight of his
cabin, he saw it all lighted up, and
supposed his wife had kindled all
| tlo.o a., -, 4, e.. e.,,sIa ho~ ~ =. 4