The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1892-06-11
The ART OF FORGETTING.
Rev. DR.. Ta!aage Says 1t is a God.
like Attribute.
We Should Forget Our Pardoned Trans
gressions and Allow Others to Do
Likewise-Enough Things in the
Present and Future That De- Il
serve to be Remembered. slsss4a


The value of retentive memory
everyone knows by experience, but
those who listened to DR.. Talmage's re-
cent sermon at the Brooklyn tabernacle
learned that the art of forgetting is
worth cultivating, and that there is the
highest possible example for its exercise.
His text was Heb. viii. ~: ''Their sins
and their iniquities will 1 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
suggestive to many of us than the "for-
get-me. nots." We alike TO be remem-
bered, and one of our naisfortunes is
that there are SO many things we can
not remember. Mnemonics, or the art
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 re-
call events, or put facts and names and
dates in proper procession have, through
the art, had their memory reinforced to
an almost incredible extent. A good
memory is an invaluable possession.
BY all means, cultivate it. 1 had an
aged friend, who, detained all night at
a miserable depot in waiting for a rail
train fast in the snow banks, enter
tanned group of some ten or fifteen
clergymen, likewise detained on their
way home from meeting of presby-
terry, by, first, with piece of chalk,
drawing out on the black and sooty
walls OF the depot, the characters of
Walter Scott's ''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 Iasked him if
this story of the railroad depot was
true, he said: 81 do not rememb
now, but it was just like me-" "Let
me see, ''said he to me, shave ever
seen you before?" eyes," 1 said, "you
were my guest last night and was
with you an hour ago" What an aw-
full contrast in that man between the
greatest memory every knew and no
memory at all.
But right along with this art of recol.
lection, which cannot too highly eulo-
gize, is one quite as important and yet
never heard it applauded. L mean
the art of forgetting. THERE'S splendid
faculty in tina 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 weak
ness and ought to be avoided by all pos.
sible 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 part of His own
memory. If we repent of sin and right
ly seek the divine forgiveness, the rec
ord of the misbehavior 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 for
get, and you cannot make anything
else out of it. Gods power of forget
ting 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 par
doned, and the other man, after a life
of abomination, gets pardoned, God re-
members no more against one than
against the other. The entire past of
both the moralist, with his imperfec-
tions, and the prohigate, with his de-
baucheries, is as much obliterated in
the one case as in the other. Forgotten
forever and forever. s'Their sins and
their iniquities will I remember no
more
This sublime attribute of forgetful-
ness on the part of God you and 1 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-
scented, 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 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 regale
themselves and their friends by an in
spection of these filings, these sarcasms,
these falsehoods, these cruelties. Ihave
known gentlemen who carried them in
their pocket-boolzs, so that they could
put their right hand in the inside of the
coat pocket over their heart and say:
"Look here! Let me show you some
thing" Scientists catch wasps and
hornets and poisonous insects and trans
fix 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
noxious things can jump and show how
deep they can sting. Have no such scrap
book Keep nothing in your possession
that is disagreeable. Tear up the false
hoods and the ISLANDERS and the hyper
criticisms. Initiate the Lord in my
text and forget, actually forget, sublime
" forget. There is no happiness for you
In any other plan or procedure. You see
all around you in the church and out of
the church dispositions acerb, malign,