The Bossier banner., 1892-08-11
THINGS TO FORGET.
Rev. T. Dewitt Talmege Enumer-
atcs Some Of Them.
If God car Promise to Forget Some of
Our rlisdeeds, if We Repent, Sure
ly We May Do Some For
getting Also.

Inc following discourse was denVereu
by Rev. 7. Dewitt Talmage in the
Brooklyn tabernacle from the text:
Their sins and their iniquities will remem'
Der no more.-Hebrews viii, IL.
The national flower of the Egytians
is the heliotrope, of the Assyrians 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-
membered, and one of our misfortunes
is that there are so many things we can
not remember Mnem onics, or the art
of assisting memory, is an important
art. 1t was first suggested by Simon
ides of Cos five hundred years Is. Z.
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-banks,
entertained a group of some ten or fif-
teen clergymen, likewise detained on
their way home from 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 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 l asked him if
this story of the railroad depot was
true, he said: 81 do not remember now,
but it was just like me-" Let me see,"
said he to me, "have ever seen you be-
fore?" Yes" | 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
1 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
yet 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 hap
pier and more useful than we now are.
We have been told that forgetfulness 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 obliterate a part of His
own memory. If we repent of sin
and rightly seek the Divine for
no Of no mis-
havior is not only crossed off
the books, but God actually lets it pass
out 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 SC
great that if two men 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 abomina
ton, gets pardoned, God remembers NJ
more against one than against th'
other. The entire past of both the
moralist, with his imperfections, ant
the profiigate, with his debaucheries
is as much obliterated in the one cas-
as in the other. Forgotten, foreve
and forever. '"Their sins and their in
iquities will 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 tn
course of ones life he is sure to be mis-
represented, to be lied about, to be in
jured. There are those who keep thes
things fresh by frequent rehearsal |
things have appeared in print the
keep them in their scrap-book, for the
cut these precious paragraphs out c
newspapers or books and at leisur
times look them over, or they hav
them tied up in bundles or thrust /
pigeon-holes, and they frequently +,
gale themselves and their friends by a
inspection of these filings, these sa
casms, these falsehoods, these crueltie.
have known gentlemen who carrie
them in their pocket-books, SO thu
they could easily get at these irrit;
tions, and they put their right hand
Che inside of the coat pocket over the
neart and say: ''Look here! Let n
show you something"
Scientists catch wasps and horne
and poisonous insects and transfx the
in curiosity bureaus for study, and tn;
is well. But these of whom l spea
catch the wasps and the hornets ar
poisonous insects and play with the
and put them on themselves and c
their friends and see how far the no
ious things can jump and show no
deep they can sting. Have no sue
scrap book. Keep nothing in your pc
session that is disagreeable. Tear
the falsehoods and the ISLANDERS and Il
hypercriticisms. Initiate the Lord
my text and forget, actually forge
sublimely forget. There is no hap
ness for you in any other pl;
or procedure. You sec all aroul
you, in the churches and out
tie church dispositions acerb, malig
cynical, pessimistic. Do you know he
these men and women got that disl
sition? 1t was by the embalmment
things pantherine and viperous. Tn
have spent much of their time in callil
the roll of all the rats that have nj
bled at their reputation. Their soul