Democratic Northwest. [volume] (Napoleon, Ohio) 1869-1894, 1893-11-16

idemio of Books-How to Be Remem-
bered QuintIIIion Years From Now.
BROOKLYN, Nov. 12.-Rev. DR.. Talmage
today preached a sermon Of unusual 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
.sssts." The texts selected were Job XIV,
20, HE shall be no more remembered" I"
In everlasting remembrance"
"0blivion and Its Defeats" is my subject
today. There is an old monster that swal-
lows down everything. 1t crunches indi-
viduals, families, communities, states, ma
tons, continents, hemispheres. worlds Its
diet is made up of years, of centuries, Of
ages, 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 everything rolls. It
is conhagration in which everything is
consumed. II Is a dirge In which all Or
chestras play and period at which every
thing stops. II is the cemetery of the hu.
man race. 1t is the domain of forgetfulness.
Oblivionl At times it throws a shadow
over all Of us, and would not pronounce
it today II 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 families
Of the earth disappear. For awhile they
are together, inseparable and to each other
indispensable, and then they part, some
by marriage going toestablish other homes,
and some leave this life, and century is
long enough to plant a family, develop it,
prosper 1t and obliterate 1t. So the genera
tions vanish.
OLD oBLIvIoN's cHIsEL.
Walk up Broadway, New York; State
street, Boston; Chestnut street, Philadel
phia 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 engulfmentl All
the ordinary efforts at perpetuation are
dead failures. Walter Scott's "Old Nor
tality" may 90 round with his chisel to re-
cut the faded epitaphs on tombstones, but
Old Oblivion has a quicker chisel with
which he can cut out a thousand epitaphs
while "Old Mortality" is cutting in one
epitaph. Whole libraries Of biographies
devoured of bookworms or unread Of the
rising generations.
All the signs of the stores and warehouses
of great firms have changed, unless the
grandsons think that it is an advantage to
keep the old sign up, because the name of
the ancestor was more commendatory than
the name of the descendant. 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 q Jerusalem 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 80
feet deep, or 30 feet deep, or 100 feet deep.
What was the matterP Any special calam-
ityf No. The winds and waves and sands
and flying dust are all undertakers 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 Brooklyns and New Yorks and Lon
dons, and only after digging and boring
and blasting will the archeologist of far
distant centuries come down as far as the
highest spires and domes and turrets of our
present American and European cities.
ARMIES SWEPT AWAY.
Call the roll of the armies of Baldwin
l, or of Charles Martel, or of Marlborough,
or of Mithridates, or of Prince Freder-
ick, or of Cortes, 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 in
line, the 100000 infantry and the 100000
cavalry of the Assyrian army under Minus,
and call the roll. Not one answer. Stand
In line the 100000 men of Sesostris, the
1900, 900 men of Artaxerxes at Cunaxa, the
2,641, 900 men under Xerxes at Thermopyl@,
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 hospitals, you cannot call
the names Of 1000, nor the names of 500
nor the names of 100, nor the names of So
Oblivion Are the feet Of the dancers who
were at the ball of the Duchess of Richmond
at Brussels the night before Waterloo all
stilli All still. Are all the ears that heard
the guns Of Bunker Hill all deafi All deaf
Are the eyes that saw the coronation Of
George III all closed? All closed. Oblivionl
A hundred years from now there will not
be being ON this earth that knew we ever
lived.
EVEN THE PYRAMIDS ARE DYING.
Tn o1I fo, 4 ,lcr
studying up the ancestral line may spell
out our name, and from the nearly faded
ink, with great effort, find that some per-
son of our name was born somewhere
between 1910 and 1890, but they will know
no more about us than we know about the
color of child's eyes born last night in a
village in Patagonia Tell me something
about your great at-grandfather. What were
his featuresr What did he dor What
year was he born? What year did he dies
And your great-grandmotheri Will you
describe the style of the hat she wore, and
how did she and your great-grandfather
get on in each others companionship2 Was
it Marchsweather or JuneY
Oblivioni That mountain surge rolls
over everything. Even the pyramids are
uyinB. NOU udy passes pub bnere Is cnlS-
eled off chip of that granite. The sea is
triumphing over the land, and what is 60
ing 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 foundation of the earth and cut
ting its way out toward the surface. It
surprises me to hear people say they do not
think the world will finally be burned up,
when all scientists will tell you that it has
for ages been on fire. Why, there is only a
crust between US and the furnaces inside
raging to get out.
Oblivionl The world itself will roll into
It as easily as schoolboy's india rubber
ball rolls down hill, and when our world
goes it is SO interlocked by the law of gray
itation with other worlds that they will go,
too. and so far from having our memory
perpetuated by a monument of Aberdeen
granite in this world there is no world in
sight of our strongest telescope that will be
q sure pediment for any slab of commemo-