The Columbia herald. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 18??-1935, 1892-06-07
ART OF FORGETTING.
DR.. TALMAGE SHOWS THAT FOR
GETFULNESS HAS ITS USES.

Example for It's Exercise.
BROOKLYN, June 5.-The enormous
audience which thronged the Tabernacle
this morning had fresh evidence of DIR.
Talmage's originality. The value of a
retentive memory every one knew by
experience and had heard extolled from
their school days up. but they learned
from Dr. Talmage's sermon that the art
of forgetting is worth cultivating, and
that there is the highest possible ex-
ample for its exercise. His text was
Hebrews viii. II, Their sins and their
iniquities will remember no more"
The national flower of the Egyptians
is the heliotrope, of the Assyrians is the
water lily, of the Hindoos is the mari
gold, OF the Chinese is the chrysanthe-
mum. We have no national flower, but
there is hardly any flower more sugges-
tive to many of us than the fOrgetme-
not. We all like to he remembered,
and one of our misfOrtunes is that there
are SO many things we cannot remem-
Der. Mnemonics. or the art of assisting
memory, is an important art. 1t was
first suggested by Simonides of Cos five
hundred 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 re-
enforced to an almost incredible extent
A good memory is an invaluable posses
sion. By all means cultivate it. l had
an aged friend who, detained all night
at a miserable depot in waiting for
rail train fast in the snow banks, enter
tanned a group of some ten or fifteen
clergymen, likewise detained on their
way home from meeting of pres
bytery, first, with II piece of chalk,
drawing out on the black and sOoty
walls of the depot the characters of
Walter SCOTS ''Marlnion." and then re-
citing 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, ~ do not remember now, but it
was Just like me. Let me see," said he
to me, ''have l ever seen you beforeE
EYES," / said, lyon 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
CULTIVATE FORGETFULNESs.
But right along with this art of recol-
lection, which 1 cannot too highly eulo-
gize, is one quite as important and yet l
never heard it 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 happier and
more useful than we now are. We have
been told that forgetfulness is a weak
ness and ought to be avoided by all pos-
sible means. So far from weakness, my
text ascribes it to God. 1t is the very
top of omnipotence that God is able to
obliterate part of his own memory. If
we repent of sin and rightly seek the
divine forgiveness, the record of the mis-
behavior is not only crossed off the
books, but God actually let's it pass out
of memory.
Their sins and their iniquities will
remember no more" To remember no
more is to forget, and You cannot 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 q
life of abominatiOn, gets pardOned, God
reInembe no more against one than
against the other. The entire past of
both the moralist, with his inperfec-
lions, and the profigate, with his de-
baucheries, is as much obliterated in
the one case as in the other. Forgotten
forever and forever. Their sins and
their iniquities will l remember nc
more"
This sublime attribute of forgetful
ness on the part of God you and l need
in our finite way to initiate. You viii
do well to cast out of your recollection
all wrongs done you. During the course
of ones life he is sure to be misrepre
sented, to be lied about, to be injured
There are those who keep these things
fresh by frequent rehearsal. If things
have appeared in print they keep then
in their scrapbook, for they cut thes'
precious paragraphs out of newspaper
or books and at leisure times look then
over, or they have them tied up in bun
dies or thrust in pigeOnholes, and the!
frequently regale themselves and theI
friends by an inspection of these filings
these sarcasms, these falsehoods, thes
cruelties.
l have know gentlemen who carried
them i'll their pocketbooks, so that the.
could easily get at these irritations, ant
they put their right hand in the inside
the coat pocket over the heart and say
Look here! Let me show you some
thing" Scientists catch wasps and hoT
nets and poisonous insects and transit:
them in curiosity bureaus for study, an
that is well. But these of whom
speak catch the wasps, and the hornets
and the poisonous insects and play wit
them and put them on themselves an
on their friends, and see how far tn
noxious insects can jump and show hoy
deep they can sting. Have no sue
scrapbook. Keep nothing i'll your pos
session that is disagreeable. Tear u
the falsehoods, and the ISLANDERS, an
the CRITICISMS