Greene County herald. (Leakesville, Miss.) 1898-current, 1901-10-11
TALMAGE SERMON.
SUNDAYS DISCOURSE BY tbs ABLE Dl.
VINE.

4
Subject: The Dereat of ObIivion-Thoug1
the Earth and All Thereon May Pas
Away, Yet Every Soul win Be Re
membered in Heaven.
Icopyright 1911
| WASHINGTON, d. Gin this discourse
DR.. Talmage shows how any one can be
widely and forever recollected and cheers
respondent Christian workers; texts, job
xiv, 20, HE shall be no more remem-
bered," and Psalms exii, 6, ''The righteous
shall be in everlasting remembrance"
OF oblivion and its defeats | speak to-
day. There is an old monster that swal.
lows down everything. 1t crunches indi-
viduals, 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 "Oblvion."
| 1t is a steep down which every thing rolls.
| 1t is a conhagration in which everything
is consumed. 1t is a dirge which all or
chestras play and period at which
| everything stops. 1t is the cemetery of
the human race. 1t is the domain of for
getfulness. Oblivionl At times it throws
a shadow over all of us, 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
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 family, de-
velop it, prosper it and obliterate it. So
the generations vanish. Walk up Penn
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 Scott's 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 ].
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 264l 600 men under Xerxes at Their
mopylae and call the long roll Not enc
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 milliQn 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 100, nor the names OF fifty.
Obivion The world itself will roll
into it as easily as a schoolboy's rubber
bail rolls down a hill, and when our world
goes it is so interocked 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 axettree of the
consultations viii 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 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
smart 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 a 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 g scroll might better be repre-
sented as limping on crutches. Faithful
history ls the saving of a 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-
/ SgNiOpSQlt ID al liHliDItdllly unworthy Oh
ones ambition, for it will cease and is no
Immortality at ALL
! Obliyioni A hundred years. But while
/ 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, ~ 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 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, have to tell you that this obi
| Won of which / 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
remembered six weeks. | am going to tell
| you how the thing can be done and will