The Camden chronicle. (Camden, Tenn.) 1890-current, 1901-11-08
DR.TALnAGE'S sERnoN
The Eminent Divine's Sunday
Discourse.
Subject The Defeat Of obilvion-Thourt
the Earth and All Thereon May Pass
AWAY. Yet Every Soul VIII Be lie.
membered ia Heaven.

the Earth and All Thereon May Pass
AWAY, Yet Every Soul VIII Be He
membered IN Heaven.
Copyright, bull
WAsu1SGTov, D. C.-In this discourse
DR. Talmage shows how any one can be
widely and forever rccoliected and cheey8
Respondent Christian workers; texts. Job
NSiv. ~, lie shall be no more remem-
bercd. J" aud Psalms cSii, @, "The righteous
shall be m everlasting remembrance"
OF Oblivion and its defeats / speak to-
day. There is an old monster that swal-
lows down everything. II crunches indi-
viduols, families, communities, States ma
tlons continents, hemispheres worlds. It's
diet Is made mp OF years, of centuries, Of
ages, of cycles, Of millenniums, of cons.
That monster Ia called by Noah Webster
and all the other dictionaries oblivion"
IL is a steep down which everything rolls.
IL is a conAagration in which everything
is consumed. IL is a dirge which all or
chestras play and a period at which
everything stops. It is the cemetery Of
the human race 1t is the domain Of for
getfulness. Oblivion! At times IL 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
demolish it.
Why, just look at 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 cen
tury Is long enough to plant a family, de-
velop 1t, prosper it and obliterate it. So
the generations vanish. Walk up Penn
syvanla avenue, Washington; Broadway,
New York; State street, Boston; Chest
nut street, Philadelphia: the Strand, Lon
don; Princess street. Edinburgh; Champs
Elvsees, Paris; Inter den Linden. Berlin,
and you will meet in this year 1901 not
one person who walked there in the year
lSOl. What enguifment. All the ordi-
nary efforts at perpetuation are dead fail
ures. Walter SCOTS Old Mortality may
90 round with his chise to recut the
faded epitaphs on tombstones, but Old
Oblivious has a quicker chisel with which
he can cut out a thousand epitaphs while
Old Mortality is cutting in one epitaph.
Call the roll Of the armies of Baldwin ].
or OF Charles Martel or of Marlborough
or Of Mithridates or of Prince Frederick
or of Cortes, 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
100000 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
100000 men of Artaxerxes at Cunaxa,
the 2,64l 900 men under Xerxes at Their
mopylae 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 hos
pitfalls you cannot call the names of
thousand, nor the names of 500, nor the
names of 100, nor the names Of fifty.
Oblivion! The world itself will roll
into it as easily as a schoolboy's rubber
ball rolls down a 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 having our
memory perpetuated by a monument Of
Aberdeen granite in this world there is
no world in sight of our strongest tee-
scope that will be a sure pediment for any
slab OF cOmmemoration of the fact that
we ever lived or died at ALL Our earth is
struck with death. The axeltree of the
consultations will break and let down
the populations Of other worlds Stellar,
lunar, solar mortality. Oblivion! 1t can
swallow and will swallow whole galaxies
of worlds as easily as a crocodile takes
down a frog.
Yet oblivion does not remove or sysal-
low anything that had better not be re-
moved or swallowed. The old monster is
welcome to his meal. This world would
long ago have been overcrowded if not
for the merciful removal of nations and
generations. What If all the books had
lived that were ever written and printed
and published? The libraries would by
their immensely have INSTRUCTED intelli-
gence and made all research impossible.
What if all the people that had been
born were still alive? We would have
been elbowed by our ancestors of ten cen
turtles ago, and people who ought to have
said their last word 5000 years ago would
snarl at us, saying, "What are you doing
here" There would have been no room
to. turn around: Some of the past gener-
ations of mankind are not worth remem-
bering. The first useful thing that many
people did was to die; their cradle mis-
fortune and their grave boon.
In all the Pantheon the weakest god
dess 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 immortality
that comes from pomp of obsequies or
granite shaft or building named after its
founder or page of recognition in some en-
cyclopedia is an Immortality unworthy OF
ones ambition, for it will cease and is nc
! Immortality at all.
Oblivion A hundred years But while
l recognize this universal submergence OF
things earthly, who wants to be forgotten
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 a
phrase we have all pronounced, Il hope
you missed me-" Meeting some friends
from whom we have been parted many
years we inquire, Did you ever see me be,
fore" And they say, Eyes" and call ui
by name, and we feels a delightful sensa