Barton County democrat. [volume] (Great Bend, Kan.) 1885-1915, 1901-10-04
DEFEAT OF OBLIVION
DR.. Talmage Cheers Despondent
Christian Workers.
In His Sermon He Shows How Any
one Cam BE Widely and Forever
RecoIIected-WhyW We Should
BE Remembered.
copyright. 1901. by Louis Kiopsch. N. VI


In this discourse DIR. Ta,mage shows
how anyone can be widely and for
ever recollected and cheers despond-
ent Christian workers; texts, Job "a:
20: "He shall be no more remembered,''
and Psalms 112: &: ''The righteous shall
be in5everlasting re me mbrance."
Of oblivion and its defeats 1 speak
to-day. There is an old monster that
swallows down everything. 1t crunches
individuals, families, communities,
states, nations, continents, hemi-
spheres, Worlds. Its diet is made up
of years, of centuries, of ages, of cy-
Giles, of mi NUNS, of cons. That mon
ster is called by Noah Webster "Obliv-
ion." 1t is a, steep down which every
thing rolls. II is"a confiagration dn
which everything is consumed. st is
a dirge which all orche tfas play and
period at which everything stops
1t is the cemetery of the human race
1t is the domain fforgetfulness. OBJ
Evioni At times it throws a sha dow
over all of us, Cand l would not pro-
nounce it to-day if 1 did not come
armed in the strength of tie eternal
God on your Behalf to attack Fl, toe
route it, to demolishoit.
Why, just look at the way the fam
lilies of the earth disappear. For
awhile they are together, inseparab BILE,
and then they part, some by marriage
going to establish other homes, and
some leave this life, and a century is
long enough to plant ia mily9 develoP
it, prosper it and oh4iterate it. So
the generations vanish. Walkup Penn
sylvania avenue, wa shington; Broad,
way, New York; estate street, Boston,
Chestnut street, Philadelphia the
Strand, London; Princetoff street ted
inburgh; Champs Erysee, Paris; Inter
den Linden, Berlin, and you will meet
in this year 1901 not one person owho
walked there in the year 1901. 3 What
engulfment! All the ordinary efforts
at perpetuatiOn are dead failures.
Walter Scott's ''O,d Mortality" may go
round with hs1hise FL o recut the faded
epitaphs on tombstones, but Old OBJ
livion has a5quicker chisel withowhich
he can cut out a housandS~epita phs
while old Mortality isocutting one cpl
taph. Whole libraries of biographie
devOured of bookworms or ungeadoo
the rising generations. All the, signs
of the stores and Warehouses of greayS
firms have chahged3 unless the grand
sons think that it is an advantage to
keep the old sign UP because the name
of the ancestor was more commenda-
tory than the name of the descen[oa t.
The city of Rome stands to-dayo but
dig down deepenough, and you comeluo
another Rome, N5uried, and 60 down
still farther, and youowill find a third
Rome. Jerusalem Stands Go-daee, but
Gig down deep enough, and you viii
find Jerusalem underneQth and go
on and deeper dowIi a third Jerusalem.
Alexandria, Egypt. on the top of an
Alexandria, and the second oa othe
top of the thirdu Many of the ancient
cities are buried so feetodeep or so
feet deep or 100 feet deep. What was
the matter? Asy special calamif0?
No. The winds and waves and sands and
flying dust are all underta71ers and
,gravediggers, and if the World stands
long enough the present Washington
and New York and London will have
ontop of them other Wa shingtens and
New 4orks and Londons, and only aft
er digging and boring and blasting o.
awlil the archaeologists of SarCdistant
centuries come down as far as Che
highest spires and domes ana turrets
of our present American and Euro
Z Call the roll of the armies of Bald
win 1. or 6of Charles MarteI or of
Marlborough or of Mithridates or of
Prince Frederick or ofo Cortes, and
not one answer will you hear Stand
them in line and call the roll of the
: 1,ooo,OOo men in the army of Thebes.
Not one answer. Stand them in line
the 1,7oo,o 900 infantry and 100000 cav
airy or the Assyrian army under
Minus, and call the roll. Not one an
swer. Stand in line the 1000. 1000 men
OF Sesostris, the 10000 900 mon of Arta-
xefXes at 9Cunaxa, the a2,641 900 men
under Nerxes at Thermopylae and
call the long roll. Not one answer.
AT the opening of our civil war the
men of the northern and southern ar
mles were told that if they fell in
battle their names would neyer be
forgotten by their country. Out of
the million men who fell in battle or
died in military hospitals you cannot
call the names of thousand nor the
names of 500 nor the names of 100
nor the names of so. Oblivion. . Are
the feet of the dancers wnoo at the
ball of the duchess of Richmond at
Brussels the night before Waterloo
GAL siiH. All SUN. are the ears that
heard the guns of Bunker Hill all
deaf? All deaf. Are the eyes that
saw the coronation of George III.
all closed? All closed. Oblivion! A
hundred years from now there will
not be being on this earth that
knew we ever lived
In some old family record ag de-
scendant' studying up the ancestral
Line may spell out our name and from
the faded ink with great effort find
that some person by our name was
born somewhere in the nineteenth
,&rnr ~. m