Connecticut western news., 1892-06-09
ART OF FORGETTING.
Dh. TAlMAGE SHOWS THAT FOR USEFULNESS HAS ITS USES.

Inc Value of a Rstentive Memory Every
 One Knows, but There Are Some Things
 That Arc Best Forgotten-A Scriptural
 Example for It's Exercise.
 BROOKLYN, June 5.-The enormous audience which thronged the Tabernacle this morning had fresh evidence of Dr. TAlmage's originality. The value of a rstsntive 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, 12, "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- AkOss VC 0kA AAhC VI oC iNIhClhOCIC0, and one of our misfortunes is that there are 90 many things we cannot remem- Der. Mnemonics. or the art of assisting memory, is an important art. It 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 processions have, through this art, had their memory re- enforced to an almost incredible extent. A good memory is an invaluable posses don. By all means cultivate it. I had an aged friend who, detained all night ct . miserable depot in waiting for a rail train fast in the snow banks, enter tained . group of some ten or fifteen clsfgymen, likewise detained on their way home from 8 meeting of pres bytsry, 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 ks memory, and when asked him if this story of the railroad depot was true, he said, II do not remember now, but it was just like me. Let me see," said he to me, "have I ever seen you beforeY "Yes," said, you were my guest last night and I was with you an hour ago." What an awful contrast in that man bstween the greatest memory I ever knew and no memory at all.
 CULTIVATE FoRGETFULNEss.
 But right along with this art of recol- lection, which cannot too highly eulo- gise, Is one quite as important and yet I never heard it applauded. I mean the art of forgetting. There is 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 weak meas and ought to be avoided by all pos dbls means. So far from weakness, my text ascribes 1t to God. It is the very top of omnipotence that God is able to obliterate part of his own memory. If ws repent of sin and rightly seek the divine forgiveness, tho record of the mis- behavior is not only crossed off the books, but God actually lets it pass out of memory.
 "Their sins and their iniquities will rOmember 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 a 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- Hons, and the prohigate, 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 I 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 of one's 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 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 in bun- dles or thrust in pigeonholes, and they frequently regale themselves and their friends by an inspection of these fings, these sarcasms, these falsehoods, these cruelties.
 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 herel Let me show you some, thing" Scientists catch wasps and hor- nets and poisonous insects and transfz them in curiosity bureaus for study, and that h 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 on their friends, and see how far the noxious insects can jump and show how deep they can sting. Have no such scrapbook. Keep nothing in your pos ssssion that is disagreeable. Tear ur the falsehoods, and the islanders, and the hypercriticisms.
 Initiate the Lord in my text and for get, actually forget, sublimely forget There Is no happiness for you in any other plan or procedure. You see al
 around you, in the church and out of tht church, dispositions acerb, malign, cyn
 ical, pessimistic. Do yo1 know how
 these men and women got that disposi
 tonf It was by the embalmment ol
 things pantherine and vigorous. They
 Asve spent much of their time in calling
 the rofl of all the rats that have nibblet
 .& <ha;r rroru+ot;on Their aou1 ia a "a o,