Peninsula enterprise. [volume] (Accomac, Va.) 1881-1965, 1893-11-18
DBLIYION'S DEFEATS.
REV. DR.. TALMAGE breaches A SER
= MON OF coNsoLlNa INFLUENCE.

ssREv. DR.. TALMAeE breaches A SER
b MON or coNsoLINa INFLUENCE.
To-day md One Hundred Yenrs From Now.
s5 The Necessity OF D cath and Decay-Time
be Il Past, and 1t Is an Everlasting Now.
81 BROOKLYN, Nov. 12.-Rev. DR.. Tai
mage today preached sermon Of unusu-
al and marvellous consolation to the usual
fhrongs after they had sung:
81 There is no sorrow that heaven cannot cure.
8 The subject was Oblivion and Its De-
feats." The texts selected were Job xiv,
20, "He shall be no more remembered"
and Psalms cxii, 6, "The righteous shall
;be in everlasting remembrance"
Z "Obivion and Its Defeats is my sub
ject today. There is an old monster that
Swallows down everything Itcrunches
individuals, families, communities,
states, nations, continents, hemispheres,
worlds. Its diet is made up Of years, Of
centuries, of cycles, Of millenniums, Of
cons. That monster is called by Noah
Webster and oil the other dictionarians
oblivion. It Is q steep down which eY-
elything rolls. 1t is a confagration in
which everything is consumed. It is o
dirge in which all orchestras play and a
period at which everything stops. It 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 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 nt 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 1893 not one person
who walked there in the year 1893. What
ingulfment! All the ordinary efforts at
perpetuation are dead failures. Walter
SCOTS "Old 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 o thousand epitaphs while "Old
Mortality" is cutting in one epitaph.
Whole libraries Of biographies devoured
of bookworms OF 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 1t 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. ..s ...-..ss5...-
Jerusalem stands today, but dig down
deep enough and you will find a 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 so 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 tho 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 archpolo-
gist of for distant centuries come down
as far as the highest spires and domes
and turrets Of our present American and
European cities.
Cali the roll of the armies of Baldwin
I, OF 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 100000
men in the army Of Thebes. Not one
answer. Stand them in line, the 1,7O0,-
600 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 1,2O0,-
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
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-
tails you cannot call the names Of 1000,
nor the names of 500, nor the names of
100, nor the names of 80. Oblivionl Are
the feet of the dancers who were ut 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 ELL all deaf? All deaf.
Are the eyes that saw the coronation Of
George III all closed7 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 aboutus 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 features? What did he
dor What year was he born3 What year
did he die? And your great-grandmother?