News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1893-11-16
INSTRUCTED intelligence and made all re-

word !, OUO years ago WOulu SudIl d1 US,
saving, ''What are you doing hereF'
| There would have been no room to turn
around Some of the past generations OF
mankind were not worth remembering.
| The first useful thing that many people
| did was to die-their cradle 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 draft.
The history we have of the world in ages
past is always one sided and cannot be
| depended on. History is fiction illus
trated by few struggling facts. In all
| the Pantheon the weakest goddess is
| Clio, the goddess of history, and instead
of being represented by sculptors as
holding a scroll might better be repre-
sented as limping on crutches.
Faithful history is the saving of few
things out of more things lost. The i'm
mortality that comes from pomp Of OBJ
sequies or granite shaft or building named
after its founder or page of recognition
in some encyclopedia is an Immortality
unworthy of ones ambition, for it will
all cease and is no immortality at all.
Oblivioni A hundred years. But while
I recognize this universal submergence
| of things earthly, who wants to be for
| gotten? Not one of us.
Absent for a few weeks or months
from home, it cheers us to know that we
are remembered there. 1t is phrase we
have all pronounced, Il hope you missed
me-" Meeting some friends from whom
we have been parted many years, we in
quire, s'Did you ever see me before!'' and
they say Eyes" and call us by name, and
we feel delightful sensation thrilling
| through their hand into our hand, and
running up from elbow to shoulder, and
| then parting, the one current of delight
ascending to the brow and the other de-
scending to the foot, moving round and
round in concentric circles until every
nerve and muscle and capacity of body
and mind and soul is permeated with de-
light.
A few days ago, visiting the place of
my boyhood, met one whom had not
seen since we played together at 10 years
of age, and I had peculiar pleasure in
pulling him little as to who I was,
and can hardly describe the sensation
as after awhile he mumbled out: ''Let
me see. Yes, you are De Witt" We all
like to be remembered.
Now, have to tell you that this obliv-
ion of which l have spoken has its de-
feats, and that there is no more reason
why we should not be distinctly and Wv
idly and gloriously remembered five
hundred million billion trillion quadril-
lion quintillion years from now than
that we should be remembered six weeks.
am going to tell you how the thing can
be done and will be done.
SOMETHING THAT CANNOT BE EFFACED.
We may build this Everlasting re-
nembrance," as my text styles it, into
The supernal existence of those to whom
we do kindnesses in this world. You
must remember that this infirm and
treacherous faculty which we now call
memory is in the future state to be COM
plete and perfect. Everlasting remem-
brancer' Nothing will slip the stout
grip of that celestial faculty. Did you
help widow pay her rent? Did you find
for that man released from prison a place
to get honest work? Did you pick up
child fallen on the curbstone, and by
stick of candy put in his hand stop the
hurt on his scratched knee? Did you as
sure a business man, swamped by the
stringency of the money market, that
times after awhile would be better?
Did you lead Magdalen of the street
fnto midnight mission, where the Lord
said to her, Neither do condemn thee;
go and sin no more" Did you tell
man, clear discouraged in his hayward
ness and hopeless and plotting suicide,
that for him was near by laver in
which he might wash and a coronet of
eternal blessedness he might wear? What
are epitaphs i'll graveyards, what are
eulogiums in presence of those whose
breath is in their nostrils, what are I'M
read biographies in the alcoves of a city
library, compared with tho imperishable
records you have made il the illulnined
memories of those to whom you did such
kindnesses? Forget Them? They cannot
forget them.
Notwithstanding all their might and
splendor, there are some things the glori-
fed of heaven cannot do, and this is one
of them. They cannot forget an earthly
kindness done. They have no cutlass to
part that cable. They have no strength
to hurl into oblivion that benefaction.
Has Paul forgotten the inhabitants of
Malta, who extended the island hospital
ity when he and others with him had
felt, added to a shipwreck, the drenching
rain and the sharp cold? Has the victim
of the highwayman ON the road to Jeri-
cho forgotten the Good Samaritan with
a medicament of oil and wine and free
ride to the hosiery? Have the English
soldiers who went up to God from the
Crimean battlefelds forgotten Florence
Nightingale?
Through all eternity will tho north
ern and southern soldiers forget the
northern and southern women who ad-
ministered to the dying boys in blue and
gray after the awful fights in Tennessee
and Pennsylvania and Virginia and
Georgia, which turned every house and
barn and shed into a hospital and incar-
nadined the Susquehanna, and the James,
and the Chattahoochee, and the Savannah
with brave blood? The kindnesses you
do to others will stand as long in the ap-
probation of others as the gates of heav-
en- will stand, as the blouse of Many
Mansions" will stand, as long as the
throne of God will stand.
Another defeat of oblivion will be
found in the character of those whom we
rescue, uplift or save. Character is eter-
n NV rio ipAY
aid in Transforming bad man into
good man, dolorous man into happy
man, disheartened man into q cour-
ageous man-every stroke of that work
done will be immOrtaliZed. There MAJ
never be so much as one line in q news
paper regarding it, or no mortal tongue
may ever whisper it into human ear, but
wherever that soul shall go your work
upon it shall go, wherever that soul rises
your work on it will rise, and so long as
that soul will last your work on it will
last
Do you suppose there will ever come
such an idiotic use in the history of
that soul in L--sen that it shall forget
that you invited him to Christ; that you
by prayer or gospel word turned him
round from the wrong way to the right
way? No such insanity will ever smite
heavenly citizen. 1t is not half as well
known on earth that Christopher Wren
planned and built st. Paul's as it will be
known in all heaven that you were the
fundamentally of building a temple for
the sky.
We teach Sabbath class, or put a
Christian tract in the hand of passerby,
or testify for Christ in a prayer meeting,
or preach o sermon and go home dis
co1raped as thoupb NOTHING bad bao,, on