The enterprise. [volume] (Wellington, Ohio) 188?-1899, 1893-11-15
OBLIVION AND ITS DEFEATS.
A Comforting Sermon by Rev. 7.
Dewitt Talmage, D. D.
Defeated Good We Do Others in
This World VIII Cause Us to
: be Held In Everlasting
Remembrance.

SN-ANe'
''He shall be no more remembered"
xiv 70 Tho righteous shall DO In cverlast
ing brance"-Psalms cxii, a
p Oblivion and its Defeats is my sub,
Joct to-day. There is an old monster
that swallows down everything II
crunches individuals, families, commu.
mites, states, nations, continents, hemi
spheres, worlds. Its diet is made ur
of years, Of centuries Of ages, Of cycles
OF millenniums, of @ons.y That mon.
ster Is called by Noah Webster and all
the other dictionarians, oblivion. 1t is
a steep down. which every thing rolls.
1t is confagration In which every.
thing Is consumed. It is dirge In
which all orchestras play, and period
'at which everything stops. 1t is the
cemetery Of the human race. 1t is the
domain Of forgetfulness. Oblivionl Al
times 1t throws shadow over all Of us,
and would not pronounce It to-day 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 fami
lies Of the earth disappear. For while
they are together, inseparable, and Ia
each other indispensable, and then
they part. Some by marriage going tc
establish other homes, and some leave
this life, and a century is long enough
to plant family, develop 1t, prospe,
It. and obliterate it So the genera
tions vanish. Walk up Broadway
New York; State street, Boston;
Chestnut street, Philadelphia; the
Strand, London, Princess street
Edinburg; Champs Elysees, Paris; I'm
ter den Linden, Berlin, and you will
meet in this year eighteen hundred
and ninety.three not one person who
walked there in the year seventeen
hundred and ninety-three. What en-
gulfmentl All the ordinary efforts al
perpetuation are dead failures Walter
Scott's "0ld Mortality" may go round
with his chisel to recruit the faded epi.
taphs on tombstones, but Old Oblivion
has quicker chisel, with which he
can cut out thousand epitaphs while
"old Mortality" is cutting in one epi
taph. Whole libraries of biographies
devoured of book worms, or unread Of
the rising generations. All the signs
of the stores and warehouses Of great
firms have changed, unless the grand.
sons think that IL is an advantage to
keep the old sign up, because the name
of the ancestor was more commenda
tory than the name of the descendant.
The city of Rome, Italy, stands to-day,
but dig down deep enough, and you
come to another 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 Jerusalem underS.ath, and
go on and deeper down, thru Jerusa.
lem. Alexandria, Egypt, on the top Of
an Alexandria, and the second on the
top of the third Many of the ancient
cities are buried thirty feet deep, OF
fifty feet deep, or one hundred feet
deep. What was the matter? Any
special calamity? No. The winds
and waves and sands and flying
dust are all undertakers and
gravediggers, and II the world stands
long enough, the present Brooklyn and
New York and London will have on
top OF them other Brooklyns, and New
Yorls, and Londons and only after dig,
ging, and boring, and blasting will the
arch@ologist OF far distant centuries
come down rs far as the highest spires,
and domes, and turrets of our present
American and European cities Call
the roll OF the armies Of Baldwin the
First, or of Charles Martcll, or of Marl.
borough, or of Mithridates, or of Prince
Frederick, or of Cortez, and not ono an.
swcr will you hear. Stand them in line
and call the roll Of the one million men
in the army of Thebes Not one an.
swer. Stand them in line, the one mil.
lion seven hundred thousand infantry,
and the two hun dred thousand cavalry
OF the Assyrian army uuder Minus, and
call the roll. Not Que answer Stand
in line the one million men OF Sesostris,
the one million two hundred thousand
men of Artaxerxes at Cunaxh, the two
million six hundred and forty-one thou.
sand men under Xerxes at Thermo-
pyl@, 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 II they
fell In battle, their names would mover
be forgotten by their country, Out OF
the million men who fell in battle OF
died In military hospitals, you cannot
call the names Of thousand, nor the
names OF Eve hundred, nor the names
OF one hundred, nor the names OF fifty.
oblivionl Arc the feet OF the dancers
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 Hill AL
deaf2 All deaf. Are the eyes that saw
the coronation OF George III. all closedi
All closed oblivionl A hundred years
from now, there will not be being Cd
this earth that knew we ever lived.
In some old family record descend.
ant studying up the ances tral line may
spell out our name, and from the near
ly faded ink, with great effort, find
that some person by our name wa,
born somewhere between 1910 and 1890,
but they will I'm ow no more about nj
than we know about the color Of
child's eyes born Last night In village
In Patagonia. Tell me something
about your great-grandfather. What
were his features? What did he doi
What year was he born7 Whot yea,
did he die, And your great-grsnd'
mother, Win you describe the style