The Globe-republican., 1893-11-17
HEAVENLY REWARDS.
Dr.. Talmage Discourses on Obiv-
ion and It's Defeats.
The Monster That Swallows Individuals
and Nations VIII BE Defeated-The
Complete and Perfect Men,
DRY of the Saved.

In late sermon at Brooklyn Rev. T
Dewitt Talmage chose for his subject,
"Oblivion and its Defeats" The texts
selected We're: Job. xiv. 90, He shall
be no more remembered, and Psalms,
cxii 6, 'sThe righteous shall he in ever
lasting remembrance" DIR. Talmage
said:
Oblivion, and its Defeats. is my sub
ject to-day There is an old monster
that swallows down everything. It
crunches individuals, families COM
muuities. states. nations, continents,
hemispheres, worlds. Its diet is made
up of years, OF centuries, of ages. OF
cycles, of milleniu1ns, of icons That
monster is called by Noah Webster and
all the other dictionaries, Oblivion 1t
is steep down which everything rolls.
1t is a confiagration in which every
thing is consumed. 1t is a dirge in which
all orchestras play, and period at
which everything stops. 1t is the Gem
etery of the human race. 1t is the do
main of forgetfulness. Oblivion! At
times it throws shadow over all of us.
and would not pronounce it to-day if
| did not come armed in the strength
Of the eternal God on your behalf to
attack it. to rout it, to demolish it.
Why, just look at the way the fam
lies of the earth disappear. For a
while they are together, inseparable.
and, to each other, Indispensable, and
then they part Some by marriage go
ing to esta blish other homes, and some
leave this life, and a century is long
enough to plant family, develop it,
prosper it, and obliterate it So the
generations vanish. Walk up Broad
way. New York: State street Boston:
Chestnut street. Philadelphia; The
Strand, London; Princess street, Edin-
burgh: Champs Elysees, Paris: Inter
den Linden, Berlin, and you will meet
in this year 1898 not one person who
walked there in the year 1898. What
,ngulfment. All the ordinary efforts
at perpetuation are dead failures.
Walter SCOTS ''Old Mortality may go
round with his chisel to recut the
faded epitaphs on tombstones, but old
Oblivion has quicker chisel with
which he can cut out a thousand cpl
taphs while "Old Mortality is cutting
in one epitaph. The city of Rome,
italy. stands to-day, but dig down
deep enough and you will come to an
other Rome buried. and go down still
further and you will find a third Rome.
Jerusalem stands to-day, but dig down
deep enough and YOU will find Jeru-
salem underneath. and go on and
deeper down a third Jerusalem. Alex
andria, Egypt. on the top of an Aiexan-
iria. and the second on top of the
third. Many OF the ancient cities are
buried thirty feet deep. or fifty feet
deep. or one hundred feet deep. What
was the matter? ANY special calam-
ity? No. The winds and waves and
sands and flying dust are all under
takers and grave-diggerS, and if the
world stands long enough. the present
BROOKLYN and New York and London
will have on top of them other Brook
lyns and New Yorks and Londons, and
only after digging and boring and
blasting will the archaologist of far
distant centuries come down as far as
the highest spires and domes and tur-
rets of our present American and Eu-
ropean cities. A hundred years from
now there will not be being on this
earth that knew we ever lived.
In some old family record descend
ant studying up the ancestral line may
spell out our name. and from the near
" faded ink, with great effort, find
that some person BY our name was born
somewhere between 1910 and 1890. but
they will know no more about us than
we know about the color of a child S
eyes porn last night in a village of Pata-
yonia. oblivion. That mountain surge
rolls over everything. Even the pyra-
mids are dying. Not a day passes but
there is chiseled off chip of that
granite. The sea is triumphing over
the land. and what is going on
at Coney island is going on all around
the world, and the continents are
crumbling into the waves And while
this is transpiring on the outside of the
world. the hot chisel of the internal
fire is digging under the foundations of
the earth and cutting its way out to-
ward the surface.
Yet oblivion does not remove or
swallow anything that had better not
be removed or swallowed. The old
monster is welcome to his meal The
world would long ago have been over
crowded if not for the merciful re-
moval of nations and generations
What if all the books had lived that
were ever written and printed and
published. The libraries would by
their immensely have DISTRACTED intel
ligence and made all research impos-
sible- The fatal epidemic of books was
a merciful epidemic. Many of the state
and national libraries OF to-day are
only morgues in which dead books are
waiting for some one to come and
recognize them. What if all the people
that had been born were still alive?
We would have been elbowed by our
ancestors of ten centuries ago. and
people who ought to have said their last
words 5000 years ago, would snarl at
us, saying: What are you doing
here?" There would have been no
room to turn around Some of the past
generations of mankind were not worth
remembering. The first useful thing
that many people did was to die; their
cradle q misfortune and their grave a
boon This world was hardly com