The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1893-11-24
OBLIVION's DEFEATS.
Rev. T. Dewitt Talmage Speaks
Words of Consolation.
The Righteous WIN Not he Forgotten
ObIivion Has No Terrors fox
Those who Love and
Serve the Lord.

The following sermon on "Oblivion
and It's Defeats" was delivered by Rev.
7. Dewitt Talmage In the Brooklyn
tabernacle, the text being:
The righteous shall be in everlasting remem-
brance.-Psaims. cxii.. @
Oblivion, and It's Defeats, is my sub
1ect to-day. There is an old monster
that swallows down everything. II
crunches individuals, families, COM
munities, states, nations, continents,
hemispheres, worlds. Its diet is made
up of years, of centuries, of ages, of
cycles of milleniums, of seons- That
monster is called by Noah Webster
and all the other dictionaries, oblivion.
1t is a steep down which everything
rolls. II is n conhagration I'm which
everything is consumed 1t is dirge
in which all orchestras play, and pc
riod at which everything stops. It 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 to-
day if did not come armed in the
strength of the eternal God on your
behalf to attack it, to rout it, to de-
molish il.
In some old family record descen-
dant studying up the ancestral line
may spell out our name,. and from the
nearly faded ink, with great effort,
find that some person by cur 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 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-grand-
mother. VIII you describe the style
of the hat she wore, and how did she
and yonr great at-grandfather get on
in each others companionship? Was
1t March weather or June? Oblivionl
That mountain surge rolls over
everything. Even the pyramids care
dying. Not day passes but
there is chiseled off a chip off 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 all
crumbling into the waves. And while
this is transpiring on the outside of
the world, the hot chisel of the inter
nal fire is digging under the founda-
tion of the. earth and cutting its way
toward 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 crust between us and the fur
naces inside raging to get out. Obliv-
lonl The: world itself will roll
into it as easily as a school
boys india 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 hav-
ing 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 a
sure pediment for any slab of commem-
Grafton of the fact that we ever lived
or died at all. Our birth is struck with
death. The axle-tree of the constella-
tions will break and let down the pop
nlationsf of other worlds. Stellar,
lunar, solar mortality. Oblivion!; 1t
can swallow and will swallow whole
galaxies of worlds as easily as croc-
Rdile takes down frog.
Yet oblivion does not remove or
swallow anything that had better not
be removed or swallowed. The old
monster is welcome to his meal. This
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 immensity have obstructed in
telligence and made all research inn
possible. 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 peo-
pie 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 three thousand years ago,
would snarl at us, saying: 'sWhat 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
useful thing that many people did was
10 die; their cradle a misfortune and
their grave boon. This world was
hardly comfortable place to live
in before the middle of the last
century. So many things have come
into the world that were not fit
to stay in, we ought to be glad they
were put out The waters of Lethe,
the fountain of forgetfulness, are
healthful draught. The history we
have of the world in ages past is al
ways one-sided and can not be de-
pended on. History is fiction illus
trated by few struggling facts. In all
the Pantheon, the weakest god is Clio,
the goddess of history, and instead of
being represented by. sculptors as
holding a scroll, might better be rep
resented as limping on crutches. Faith
f0l history is the saving of a few
things out of more things lost The
immortality that comes from pomp
of obsequies, or granite shaft, or
building named after its founder.
or page of recognition in
some encyclopedias is an immor-
tality unworthy of ones ambition. for
IL will cease, and is no Immortality at
all. A hundred years But while /
4Is.