The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1901-10-01

OaAy - CIucL DtlW6GA ES
and the furnaces inside raging to get
but. Oblivion! The world itself will roll
into 1t as easily as a schoolboy's india
ruDDer ball rolls down a hill, and when
our world goes it is so interlocked by the
law Oh gravitation with other worlds that
tney viii 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
telescope that will be a sure pediment
Tor any slab of commemoration Of the
faet that we ever lived or died at all.
Our earth is struck with death. The
axletree Of the consultations will break
IN let down the populations Of other
worlds. Stellar, lunar, solar, mortality.
Oblivion! 1t can swallow and will swal-
low whole galaxies of worlds as easily
as a crocodile takes down q frog.
Yet oblivion does not remove or swaI-
low everything that had better not be
removed or swallowed. The old monster
IS welcome to his meal. This world
would long ago IA been overcrowded
II not for the merciful removal OF ma
tons and generations. What il all the
books had lived that were ever written
and printed and published? The libraries
would by their immensely have obstruct-
ed intelligence and made all research i'm
possible. The fatal epidemic Of books
was a merciful epidemic. Many of the
state n national Libraries today are
only morgues, in which dead books are
waiting for some one to come and recog-
nize them. What if all the people that
had been born were still alive? We
would have been elbowed by our ances-
tors Of ten centuries ago, and people
who ought to have said their last word
1900 years ago would snarl at US, say
ing, What are you doing here?" 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 a misfortune and
their grave a boon. This world was
hardly a comfortable place to live in be-
fore the middle of the eighteenth CEN
fury. So many things nave 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 forget
~fulness, are q heaithful draft. The his
tory we have of the world in ages past
is always one sided and cannot be de-
pended on. History is fiction illustrated
by q few struggling facts.
In all the Pantheon the weakest god
dess is Clio, the goddess of history, and
instead Of being represented by sculptors
as holding Il scroll might better be repre-
scented as limpirC Ga crutChes. Faithful
history is the saving of q few things out
of more things lost. The Immortality
that N from on OF C5scQuies or
granite shaft or building named after its
founder or page OF recognition in some
encyclopedia is an Immortality unworthy
of ones ambition. Tor it VIII cease and is
80 --,,--,.5-- - Ill NIf:-;-n' lo
dred years. TIT while | recognize this
universal sub.>e1gcnce OF things earthly,
who wants 10 Uc forgotten? Not one of
us. Absent Ior 4 lew weeks or months
from home, it cheers us to know that we
are remembered there. It is u phrase we
have all pronounced, 7 hope you missed
me-" Meeting some friends from whom
We have been parted many years we in
quire, Did you ever see me before!"
And they say, YES" and coll US by
name, and we feel q delightful sensation
thrilling through their Inland into our
hand and running up from elbow to
shoulder and then parting, the one cur
rent of delight ascending to the brow and
the other descending to the foot, moving
round and round in concentric circles I'M
til every nerve and muscle and capacity
of body and mind and soul is permeated
with delight. Some time ago, visiting the
| place of my boyhood, 1 met one whom 1
had not seen since we played together at
ten years of age, and l had peculiar
| pleasure in p~uzzling him a little as to
who 1 was, and 1 can hardly describe the
sensation as, after awhile, he stumbled
| out: Let me see. Yes, you are Dewitt"
! We all like to be remembered.
Why We Should Be Remembered.
Now, 1 have told you that this oblivion
| of which 1 nave spoken has it defeats
and that there is no more reason why we
should not be distinctly and wildly and
! gloriously remembered five hundred mill
! lion billion trillion quadrillion quintillion
years from now than that we should be
remembered six weeks. l am going to
tell you how the thing can be done and
will be done.
We may build this Everlasting remem-
brance," as my text styles it, into the
, s~upernal existence Of those to whom we
do kihdnesses in this world. You must
remember that this inirm and PREACHER
Gus faculty which we now call memory
is in the future state to be complete and
perfect. Everlasting remembrance"
Nothing will slip the stout grip of that
celestial faculty. Did you help a widow
pay her rent? Did you find for that man
TeleaSeu 1rOm pIlSou Il pace " Sel uou-
est work? Did you pick up a child fallen
on the curbstone and by a stick of candy
! put in his hand stop the hurt o. his
scratched knee? Did o assure a bust
ness man swamped by the stringency Of
the money market that times would after
awhile be better? Did you lead a Mag
dalen of the street into a midnight mis-
sion, where the Lord said to her: "Nei-
Their do I condemn thee. Go and sin no
more?" Did you tell a man clear discour-
aged in his waywardness and hopeless
and plotting suicide that for him was
near by a laver in which he might wash
and a coronet of eternal blessedness he
might wear? What are epitaphs in
graveyards. what are euiogiums in pres
ence of those whose breath is in their
n~ostrils, what are unread biographies in
the ~alcoves Of Il city library. compared
with the imperishable records you have
made in the illumined memories of those
to whom you did such kindnesses? For