Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1892-06-06
ART OF FORGETTING.
DR.. TALMAGE SHOWS THAT FOR
GETFULNESS HAS ITS USES.

One Knows, but There Are Some Things
That Are Best Forgotten-A ScripturaI
Example for Its 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 DIR. 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, Il, 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 be 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 a meeting of pres
bytery, first, with piece of chalk,
drawing out on the black and sootv
walls of the depot the characters of
Walter SCOTS ''Marmion," 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 l asked him if
this story of the railroad depot was true,
he said, Il do not remember now, but it
was just like me. Let me see,' said he
to me, "have L ever seen you before?"
eyes" L 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 l ever
knew and no memory at all.
CULTIVATE FORGETFULNESS.
But right along with this art of recol-
lection, which l cannot too highly eulo.
gize, is one quite as important and yet ]
never heard it applauded. 1 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 tc
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 lets it pass out
of memory.
'tTheir 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 mel
appeal to him, and the one man, after
life all right. gets the sins of his heart
pardoned, and the other man, after
life of abominatiOn, gets pardoned, God
remembers no more against one than
against the other. The entire past of
both the moralist, with his imperfec-
tions, 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 no
more"
This sublime attribute of forgetful-
ness on the part of God you and | need
in our finite way to initiate. You will
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 a1e those who keep these things
fresh by frequent rehearsal. If things
have appeared in print they keep them
in their scrapbook, for they cut these
precious paragraphs out of newspapers
or books and at leisure times look them
over, or they have them tied up i'm bun
dies or thrust in pigeonholes, and they
frequently regale themselves and their
friends by an inspection of these filings,
these sarcasms, these falsehoods. these
cruelties.
l have know gentlemen who carried
them in their pocketbooks, so that they
could easily get at these irritations, and
they put their right hand in the inside of
the coat pocket over the heart and say:
''Look here! Let me show you some
thing" Scientists catch wasps and hor-
nets and poisonous insects and transfix
them in curiosity bureaus for study, and
that is well. But these of whom /
speak catch the wasps, and the hornets,
and the poisonous insects and play with
them and put them ON themselves and
m lnoi1. f,.in1alS and 60.