News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1893-11-16
OBLIVION'S DEFEATS.
REV. DR.. TALMAGE breaches A SER
MON OF CONSOLlNG INFLUENCE.

NUN UT SOlNOOLltN0 liNT EOCNGGs
Today 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. DIR. Tai
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 xiv,
go, He shall be no more remembered"
and Psalms cxii, 6, 1.-The righteous shall
be in everlasting remembrance"
''Oblivion and Its Defeats" is my sub
ject today. There is an old monster that
swallows down everything. 1t crunches
individuals, families, communities,
states, nations, continents, hemispheres,
worlds. Its diet is made up of years, of
centuries, of cycles, of millenniulns, of
cons. That monster is called by Noah
Webster and all the other dictionarians
oblivion. 1t is a steep down which ev-
erything rolls. 1t is a confagration in
which everything is consumed. 1t is a
dirge in which all orchestras play and q
period at which everything stops. 1t is
the cemetery of the human race. 1t is
the domain of forgetfulness. Oblivionl
AT times it throws shadow over all of
us, and I 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
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, prosperit 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;
Inter den Linden, Berlin, and you will
meet in this year 1898 not one person
who walked there in the year 1898. What
ingulfmenti All the ordinary efforts at
perpetuation are dead failures. Walter
SCOTS ''O1d Mortality" may go round
with his chisel to recut the faded cpl
taphs on tombstones, but Old Oblivion
has quicker chisel with which he can
cut out thousand epitaphs while sold
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 ware
houses of great firms have changed, I'M
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 q 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 80 feet
deep, or 90 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 Brooklyns and New Yorks
and Londons, and only after digging and
boring and blasting will the archaolo-
S ss;ss5 OF f 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
j, 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 1 1000, 900
men in the army of Thebes. Not one
answer. Stand them in line, the ,7O0,-
900 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 ,200,-
900 men of Artaxerxes at Cunaxa, the
2,641 900 men under Xerxes at Their
mopyla, and call the long roll Not one
answer.
At the opening of our civil war the
inen 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 1 900,
nor the names of 500, nor the names of
100, nor the names of so. Oblivionl Are
the feet of the dancers who we're 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 h4Il all deaf? All deaf
Are the eyes that saw the coronation of
George III all closed? All closed. Obliv-
ion! A hundred years from now there
will not be q being on this earth that
knew we ever lived.
WELCOME TO HIS MEAL.
In some old family record a descend
ant studying up the ancestral line may
spell out our name, and from the nearly
faded ink, with great effort, find that
some person of our name was born some
where 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-grandfather.
What were his features? What did he
do? What year was he born? What year
did he die? And your great-grandmother?
Will you describe the style of the hat
that she wore, and how did she and your
great-grandf&ther get on in each others
companionship? Was it March weather
or June?
Oblivionl That mountain surge rolls
over everything. Even the pyramids are
dying. Not day passes but there IS
chiseled off a chip of that granite. The
sea is triumphing over the land, and
what is going ON at Coney Island is 60
ing on all around the world, and the con-
tinents are crumbling into the waves.
And while this is transpiring on tho out
side of the world the hot chisel of the in
ternal fire is digging under the founda-
ton of the earth and cutting its way out
Seward the surface.
1t 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 a schOolboy's in
dia rubber ball rolls down hill, and
when our world goes it is so interlocked
by the law of gravitation with other
worlds that they will go, too, and SO far
from having our memory perpetuated by |
monument of Aberdeen granite in this |
world, there is no world in sight of our /
strongest telescope that will be q sure
K1nlinnrnt for. nnrr of on,,n "a l,.,o 1,,.e,