Audubon County Republican. [volume] (Audubon, Audubon Co., Iowa) 1885-1894, 1892-06-09

BROOKLYN, N. Y, June D. lsy2.-The enor-
nous audience which thronged the Tabernacle
this morning had fresh evidence OF Dr. Tai
IMAGES originality. The value OF a retentive
memory every one knew by experience and
had heard extolled from their schooldays up
but they learned from DR.. Talmages sermon
that the art OF forgetting is worth cultivating
and that there is the highest possible example
for its exercise. His text was Heb. SIP;
Their sins and their iniquities will l 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 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
remembered, and one of our misfort-
unes Is that there are SO many things
we capnot 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
art, had their memory reinforced toan
almost incredible extent. 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, enter
tanned a group of some ten Or fifteen
clergymen. likewise detained on their
way home from a meeting of Presby-
terry, by, first, with a piece of chalk,
drawing out on the black and
sooty walls of the depot, the charac-
tiers of Walter Scotts "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 the story of the railroad
depot was true, he said: 81 do not re-
member now, but it was just like me. y"
LET me see," said he TO me, have
ever seen you before?' 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 I ever knew and
no memory at all.
But right along with this art of recol-
lection, which | cannot too highly
eulogize, is one quite as important and
yet ] 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
forgettulness is weakness and ought
to be avoided by all possible means.
So far from weakness. my text
ascribes it to God. 1t is the very top
of Omnipotence that God is able to OBJ
literate a part of his own memory. If
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
lally let's it pass out of memory. "Their
| sins and their iniquities will | 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
life all right, gets the sins of his
! heart pardoned, and the other man,
after life of abomination, gets par
doncd, God remembers no more against
one than against the other. The en-
| tire past of both the moralist, with his
imperfections, and the prohigate, with
his debaucherics, is as much obliter-
/ ated in the one case as IN the other.
Forgotten, forever and forever. Their
sins and their iniquities will remem-
Der no more"
Many years ago family, consisting
of the husband and wife and little
girl of two years, lived far out in a
cabin on Western prairie. The hus
band took few cattle to market BE.
| fore he started his little child asked
| him to buy for her a doll. and he prom
| ised lie 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 he 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 horse back,
a thunderstorm broke, and in
the most lonely part of the road and in
the heaviest part of the storm, he heard
a 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 prlce of the
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 hollow that
he remembered near the road where
the child might be, and for that hi
started, and sure enough, found a
little one tagged out and drencheJ
of the storm and almost dead. He
wrapped 1t up as well as he could and
mounted his horse and resumed his
Journey home. Coming in sight of hi;
cabin, he saw it all lighted up, and
supposed his wife had kindled al
these lights so as to guide her husband
through the darkness. But, no. The
house was full of excitement and the
neighbors were gathered and stood
around the wife of the house, who wa'
insensible as from some great calamity
On inquiry the returned husband fount
that the little child of that cabin wal
gone. She had wandered out to NEE
her father and get the presen
he had promised, and the chile
was lost. Then the father unrollec
from the blanket the child he hat
found in the fields, and, 10! it was hi
own child, and the lost one of thu
prairie home, and the cabin quaket
with the shout over the lost one found
How suggestive of the fact that one,
we were lost in the open fields, o
among the mountain crags, God
wandering children, and he found
] l,,,. -, ta, nj