Highland recorder. (Monterey, Highland County, Va.) 1877-1972, 1901-10-04
THE DEFEAT OF OBLIVION
Rev. DR.. Talmage Says Every Soul Will
Be Remembered In Heaven.
All the Ordinary Efforts at Perpetuation Are
Dead Failures.
copyright, 19Ul.]

| Or. Ialmage shows how any one can be
widely and forever recollected and cheers
respondent Christian workers; texts, job
Xxiv, 20, HE shall be no more remem'
bered." and Psalms cxii, 6, "The righteous
shall be in everlasting remembrance"
OF oblivion and it's defeats 1 speak to-
| day. There is an old monster that swal-
lows down everything. 1t crunches indi-
| vlduals, families, communities, States, ma
| tons. continents, hemispheres, worlds. It's
| diet is made up of years, of centuries, of
ages, of cycles. of millenniums, of cons.
That monster is called by Noah Webster
and all the other dictionaries Oblivion"
1t is steep down which everything rolls.
it is a confagration in which everything
chestras play and period at which
everything stops. 1t is the cemetery Of
the human race. 1t is the domain of for
getfulness. Oblivion! At times it throws
a shadow over all of u.s. and 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
demolish it,
Why, just look at the way the families
Of the earth disappear. For awhile they
are together, inseparable and to each
some by marriage going to establish other
homes and some leave this life, and GEN.
fury is long enough to plant family, de.
velop it, prosper it and obliterate it. So
the generations vanish. Walk UP Penn.
sylvania avenue, Washington; Broadway,
New York; State street, Boston; Chest
nut street, Philadelphia; the Strand, Lon
don; Princess street, Edinburgh; Champs
Elysees, Paris; Inter den Linden, Berlin,
and you will meet in this year 1901 not
one person who walked there in the year
1901. What engulfment. All the Ordi-
nary efforts at perpetuation are dead fail
ures. Walter SCOTS Old Mortality may
go round with his chisel to recut the
faded epitaphs on tombstones, but Old
Oblivions has quicker chisel, with which
he can cut out thousand epitaphs while
Old Mortality is cutting in one epitaph.
Call the roll of the armies of Baldwin I.
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, andi
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 a
thousand, nor the names of 800, nor the
names of 100, nor the names of fifty. E
Oblivion! The world itself will roll
,,,ta Ill,
ball rolls down hill, and when our world
gravitation with other worlds that they
will go, too, and so far from having our
memory perpetuated by monument of
Aberdeen granite in this world there is
no world in sight of our strongest tele-
scope that will be 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 crocodile takes
down frog.
Yet oblivion does not remove or swal.
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 obstructed 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-
atoms 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
that comes from pomp of obseques or
granite shaft or building named after its
founder or page of recognition in some en-
cyc'opedia is an Immortality unworthy of
ones ambition, for it will cease and is no
at all.
Oblivion! A hundred years. But while
j 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, 81 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, "Yes," and call us
by name, and we feels a delightful sensa-
ton thrilling through their hand 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 un-.
til every nerve and muscle and capacity of |
body and mind and soul is permeated with |
delight.
Now, I have to tell you that this obi
won of which l have spoken has its de-,
feats, and there is no more reason why we |
should not be distinctly and wildly and, |
gloriously remembered five hundred mill, |
ion billion trillion quadrillion quintillion'
years from now than that we should be |
six weeks. | am going to tell |
you how the thing can be done and will |
be done. il
We may build this everlasting remem-
brance," as my text styles it, into the SUI
Dernal existence of those to whom we do
xindnesses in this world. You must re-.
member that this infrm and treacherous
faculty which we now call memory is in
he future state to be complete and per-,
ect. Everlasting remembrance" Moth
ne will slip the stout grin of that celes- |