Connecticut western news., 1893-11-16
OBLIVION'S DEFEATS.
REV. DR. TALMAGE BREACHES A SER MON OF CONSOllNG INFLUENCE.

REV. DR. TALMAGE BREACHES A SER
 MON OF cONSollNG INFLUENCE. Today and Ono Hundred Years From Now.
 The Necessity of Death and Decay-Time
 Is Past, and It Ks an Everlasting Now.
 BROOKLYN, Nov. 12.-Rev. Dr. Tal- mage today preached sermon of 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 Its De feats''' The texts selected were Job xxiv, 20, ''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 individuals, families, communities, 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. It is a steep down which ev- erything rolls. It is confagration in which everything is consumed. It is a dirge in which all orchestras play and period at which everything stops. It is tbe cemetery of the human race. It is the domain of forgetfulness. Oblivion! At times it throws a shadow over all of us, and would not pronounce it today if I did not come armed in the strength 1c xl. d aho1 ~/, of tack it, to rout it, to demolish 1t.
 oBLIvIoN's WORK.
 Why, just look at the way the families of the earth disappear! For awhile they are together, inseparable and to each other indispensable, and then they part. Some by marriage, going to establish other homes, and some leave this life, and century is long enough to plant family, develop it, prosper it and obliter- 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: Unter den Linden, Berlin, and you will meet in this year 1893 not one person who walked there in the year 1793. What ingulfmenti All the ordinary efforts at perpetuation are dead failures. Walter Scott's "Old Mortality" may go round with his chisel to recut the faded epi- taphs on tombstones, but Old Oblivion has quicker chisel with which he can cut out a'thousand epitaphs while "Old Mortality is cutting in one epitaph. Whole libraries of biographies devoured oA 0f fla ,-sc c,, generations.
 All the signs of the stores and ware houses of great firms have changed, un- less the grandsons think that it is an ad- 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 Jerusa- lem underneath, and go on and deeper down 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 30 feet deep, or 50 feet deep, or 100 feet deep. What was the matter? Any special ca lamity2 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 Brooklyns and New Yorks and Londons, and only after digging and boring and blasting will the arch@olo- gist of fur 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- ough, 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, ,O0O men in the army of Thebes. Not one answer. Stand them in line, the 1 ,70O,- 900 infantry and the 100000 cavalry of the Assyrian army under Minus, and call the roll Not one answer. Stand in line the 1000, ,O0O men of Sesostris, the 1 ,2OO,- 900 men of Artaxerxes at Cunaxa, the 2,641, GOO men under Xerxes at Ther- mopyl@, and call the long roll. Not one !apswer. z.
 a 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- tals you cannot call the names of l, ,OOO, nor the raanes of 500, nor the names of 100, nor the names of450. Oblivion! Are the 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 the ears that heard the guns of Bunker Hill all deaf2 All deaf. Are the eyes that saw the coronation of George III all closed? All closed Obliv- ionl A hundred years from now there will not be being on this earth that knew we ever lived,
 WELCOME TO HIS MEAL.
 In some old family record descend ant studying up the ancestral line may spell out ouf name, and from the nearly faded ink, with great effort, find that some person of our name was born some ,whese between 1910 and 1890, but they will know nomore aborft us than we know about the color of a child's eyes born last night in village in Patagonia. Tell me something about your great-grandfather. What were his features2 What did he do? What year was he bornp What year did he die? And your great-grandmotheri Will you describe the style of the hat that she wore, and how did she and your great-grandfather get on in each others companionship? Was it March weather or June?
 Oblivioni That mountain surge rolls over everything. Even the pyramids are dying. Not day passes but there is ohiselsd of g chip of that granite. The sea is ,triumphings oyer the land, and what is going on at Coney Island is go- ing on all around the world, and the con t;oo,,%u o ,o <.,4,t ,,, Tfi,Yry iy,fo fha xyoxyac