Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1893-11-13
OBLIVION'S DEFEATS.
REV. DR.. TALMAGE BREACHES A SER
! MON OF CONSOLING INFLUENCE.

1
To-day and One Hundred Years from Now.
The Necessity of Death and Decay-Time
| is Past, and 1t Is an Everlasting Now
/ BROOKLYN, Nov. 12.-Rev. DR.. Tai
image today preached q sermon CT unusu-
al and marvellous consolation to the usual
throngs after they had sung:
| There is no sorrow that heaven cannot cure.
| The subject was Oblivion and It's De-
feats." The texts selected were Job xiv,
go, ''He shall be no more remembered,
and Psalms cxii, 6, ''The righteous shall
be in everlasting remembrance"
|'Oblivion and It's Defeats is my sub
ject today. There is an old monster that
swallows down everything. It crunches
dndividuals, families, communities,
states, nations, continents, helnispheres,
worlds. It's diet is made up of years, Of
centuries, of cycles, of millenniums, Of
cons. That monster is called by Noah
webster and all the other dictionarians
oblivion. 1t is q steep down which ev-
erything rolls. 1t is a confagration in
which everything is consumed. 1t is
:dirge in which all orchestras play and a
period at which everything stops. 1t is
the cemetery of the human race. 1t is
the domain of forgetfulness. Oblivion!
AT times it throws a shadow over all of
us, and would not pronounce it today
If l did not come armed in the strength
of the eternal God on your behalf TO at
tack it, to rout it, to demolish it.
OBLIvIoN's WORK.
Why, Just look at the way the families
of the earth disappear! For awhile they
are together, inseparable and to each
iother indispensable, and then they part.
Some by marriage, going to establish
other homes, and some leave this life,
and a century is long enough to plant
family, develop it, prosperit and obIiter-
ate it. So the generations vanish.
Walk up Broadway, New York; State
street, Boston; Chestnut street, Phila-
'delphia; The Strand, London; Princess
street, Edinburgh; Champs Elysees, Paris;
iUnter den Linden, Berlin, and you will
meet in this year 1893 not one person
lwho walked there in the year 1893. What
lingulfmenti All the ordinary efforts at
perpetuation are dead failures. Walter
SCOTS ''Old Mortality" may go round
with his chisel to recut the faded cpl
itaphs on tombstones, but Old Oblivion
has quicker chisel with which he can
cut out thousand epitaphs while ''Old
Mortality is cutting in one epitaph.
Whole libraries of biographies devoured
of booizworms or unread Of the rising
generations.
! All the signs Of the stores and ware
houses of great firms have changed, IN
less the grandsons think that it is an adj
vantage to keep the old sign up because
the name of the ancestor was more COM
mandatory than the name of the descend
ant The city of Rome stands today,
but dig down deep enough and you come
to another Rome, buried, and go down
still farther and you will find third
Rome.
(: Jerusalem stands today, but dig down
deep enough and you will find o Jerusa-
lem underneath, and so on and deeper
down q third Jerusalem. Alexandria
on the top of an Alexandria. and the
second on the top Of the third. Many Of
the ancient cities are buried 80 feet
deep, or so feet deep, or 100 feet deep.
What was the matter? Any special ca
lamity? No. The winds and waves and
sands and flying dust are all undertakers
and gravediggers, and if the world stands
long enough the present Brooklyn and
New York and London will have on top
of them other Brool<lyns and New Y rks
and Londons, and only after digging and
boring and blasting will the arch8olo-
gist of far distant centuries come down
as far as the highest spires and domes
and turrets of our present American and
European cities.
Call the roll Of the armies of Baldwin
I, or of Charles Martel, or of Marlbor-
lough, or of Mithridates, or of Prince
Frederick, or of Cortez, and not one
answer will you hear. Stand them in
line and call the roll Of the 1000, 900
men in the army of Thebes. Not one
answer Stand them III line, the 1 ,70O,-
goo infantry and the 900, coo cavalry of
the Assyrian army under Minus, and call
the roll. Not one answer. Stand in line
the 900, 900 men of Sesostris, the ,200,-
600 men OF ArtaXerXes at CunaXa, the
2,641 900 men under Xerxes at Their
imopylae, and call the long roll. Not one
answer.
/ At the opening of our civil war the
men Of the northern and southern armies
were told that if they fell in battle their
names would never be forgotten by their
country. Out of the million men who
fell in battle or died in military hospi-
tails you cannot call the names of 1000,
nor the names of 500, nor the names of
HOO, nor the names Of so. Oblivioni Are
tine feet of the dancers who were at the ball
Of the Duchess of Richmond at Brussels
the night before Waterloo all still? All
still. Are all + aars that heard the
guns of Bun II deaf? All deaf.
Are the o he coronation of
Geor~ closed. Obliv-
10" I'm now there
S earth that