The Bossier banner., 1893-12-14
OBLIVION'S DEFEATS.
Rev. T. Dewitt Talmage Speaks
Words Of Consolation.
The Righteous VIII Not be Forgotten
Oblivion Has No Terrors for
Those Who Love and
Serve the Lord.


The righteous shall be in everlasting remem-
brance.-Psaims, cxii., 6.
Oblivion, and It's Defeats, is my sub
ject to-day. There is ar old monster
that swallows down everything. 1t
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 @ons. That
monster is called by Noah Webster
and all the other dictionaries, oblivion.
1t is steep down which everything
rolls. It is confagration in which
everything is consumed 1t is dirge
in which all orchestras play, and pc
riod at which everything stops. 1t 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 l would not pronounce it to-
day if l did not come armed in the
strength of the eternal God on your
behalf to attack it, to rout it, to de-
molish it.
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 our name was
born somewhere between 1910 and
1890, but they will know no more about
US than we know about the color of q
child's eyes born last night in a village
in Patagonia. Tell me something
about your gveat-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 your great-grandfather get on
in each others companionship? Was
1t March weather or June? Oblivion!
That mountain surge rolls over
everything. Even the pyramids tare
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
nal fire is digging under the founda-
tion of the earth and cutting it's 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-
ion 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
ulations of other worlds. Stellar,
lunar, solar mortality. Oblivion! II
can swallow and will swallow whole
galaxies of worlds as easily as or oc.
adile takes down frog.
Yet oblivion does not re move O,
swallow anything that had better not
be removed or swallowed. The old
monster is welcome to his meal. Thi.
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 thai
were ever written and printed anc
published. The libraries would by
their immensity have obstructed in
telligence and made all research i'm
possible. The fatal epidemic of book
was merciful epidemic. Many of tn,
state and national libraries of to-da,
are only morgues in which dead book
are waiting for some one to co me ant
recognize them. What if all the ne O
pie that had been born were still alive
we would have been elbowed bv on
ancestors of ten centuries ago, AM
people who ought to have said thei
last words three thousand years age
would snarl at us, saying: what ar
you doing here?" There would hav
been no room to turn around Som
of the past generations of mankin
were not worth remembering. TIL
useful thing that many people did wa
to die; their cradle misfortune an
their grave a boon. This world wa
hardly a comfortable place to liy
in before the middle of the las
century. So many things have com
into the world that were not f
to stay in, we ought to be glad the
were put out. The waters of Lethe
the fountain of forgetfulness, are
healthful draught. The history w
have of the world in ages past is a
ways one-sided and can not be dc
pended on. History is fiction illus
trated by few stragling facts. In al
the Pantheon, the weakest god is Clio
the goddess of history. and instead O
being represented by sculptors a
holding scroll, might better be rer
resented as limping on crutches. Faith
full history is the saving of a fey
things out of more things lost. Th
Immortality that comes from pom
of obsequies, or granite shaft, O