Orange County observer. [volume] (Hillsborough, N.C.) 1880-1918, 1901-10-17
THERE ISNOOBLlVION
DR.. 1ALMA0E'S SUNDAY SERMON.
nan's Responsibility Cannot Be OBJ
liberated This Side of Eternlty--A
Strong Sermon.

[1an'S Responsibility NdlHOS DC W.
liberated This Side of Eternlty--A
Strong Sermon.
copyright, 1su1.]
WASHINGTON, D. Gin this discourse
DR.. Talmage shows how any one can be
widely and forever recollected and cheers
respondent Christian workers; texts, JOB
bered," and Psalms cxii, 6, "The righteous
shall be in everlasting remembrance"
Of oblivion and it's defeats l speak TO-
day. There is an old monster that swal-
lows down everything. It crunches lndl-
viduals, families, communities, States, ma
tions, continents, hemispheres, worlds. Its
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 a steep down which everything rolls.
is consumed. It is a dirge which all Or
chestras play and a 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
q shadow over all of us, and ] would not
pronounce it to-day if I did not come
armed in the strength of the eternal God
on your behalf to attack it., to rout it, to
demohsh 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 a cen
fury is long enough to plant a 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
don; Princess street, Edinburgh; Champs
Elysees, Paris; Inter den Linden, Berlin,
and you will meet in this year 1901 not
n person who walked there in the year
1901. What e%ngulfment. All the ordi-
nary efforts at p%erpetuation 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 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 I.
or of Charles Martel or of Marlborough
or of Mithridates or of Prince Frederick
or of Cortes, and not one answ will you
hear. Stand them in line and call the roll
OF the 1000, 900 men in the army Of Thebes.
Not one answer. Stand them in line, the
l,75O,0O infantry and the 200, 1000 cavalry
OF the Assyrian army under Minus, and
call the roll. Not one answer. Stand in
line the 100000 men of Sesostris, the
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 500, nor the
Oblivion! The world itself will roll
into 1T 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 60, 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 tele-
scope that will be a sure pedlment for any
we ever lived or died at all. Our earth is
struck with death. The a~xeltree 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 swa,.
low anything that had better not be re
moved or swallowed. The old monster is
welcome to his meal. This world would
for the merciful removal of nations and
generations. What if all the books hao
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 beer
born were still alive? We would have
been elbowed by our ancestors of ten cen
tories ago, and people who ought to have
sad their last word 1000 years ago would
snarl at us, saying, What are you doin:
TO turn around. Some of the past gener
atoms of mankind are not worth remem
!berlng. The first useful thing that man.
people did was to die; their cradle a mis-
fortune and their grave a boon.
In all the Pantheon the weakest god
dess is Clio, the goddess of history, ant
instead of being represented by sculptor
as holding a scroll might better be repre-
sented as limping on crutches. Faithful
bf more things lost. The immortalit,
that comes from pomp of obsequies O
granite shaft or building named after it
n or page of recognition in some en-
cyciopedia is an Immortality unworthy O
ones ambition, for it will cease and is n,
immortality at all.
Oblivion! A hundred years. But Will
l recognize this universal submergence O
things earthly, who wants to be forgotten
Not one of US. Absent for a few week
or months from home it cheers us to knov
That we are remembered there. 1t is
phrase we have all pronounced, 81 hop
you missed me-" Meeting some friend
from whom we have been parted man
years we inquire, "Did you ever see me be
tore" And they say, eyes," and call u
10y name, and we feels a delightful sensa
ton thrilling through their hand into ou
hand and running up from elbow t
shoulder and then parting, the one cu1
the other descending to the foot. mcvin
round and round in concentric circles ur
I'll every nerve and muscle and capacitv {
body and mind and soul is permeated wit
delight. W."
Now, [ have to tell you that this obi
Won OF which / nave spoken has it's 4,
1eats, and there is no more reason yhv "
should not be distinctly and vivid]v an
g~ioriously remembered five hundred mil
ION billion trillion .quadrillion ouintillio
years from now than that we should
remembered SIX weeks. I am going to te
you how the thing can be done and wi
be DONE. W.
We may build this Everlasting remer
orance, as my text styles it. into the s
kindnesses in this world. You mn"t :
member that this infrm and trea chero,
faculty which we now call non,SS-