The Calhoun chronicle. [volume] (Grantsville, W. Va.) 1883-1984, 1901-11-26
THE DEFEAT OF OBLIVION
Rev. DR.. Talmage Says Every Soul Will
Be Remembered in Heaven.
All the Ordinary Efforts at Perpetuatlon Arc
Dead Failures.
ICopyrleht. leul.l

OF oblivion and its defeats | sneak To-
day. There is an old monster that swal-
lows down everything. 1t crunches indi-
slduais, iamhes, communities, States, ma
lions, continents, hemispheres. worlds. It's
diet Is made up of years. of centuries, OF
ages, OF cycles, OF milenniums. of cons.
That monster is callcS by Noah Webster
snd all the other dictionaries Oblivion"
u IS steep down which everything rolls.
lt IS contiagration In which everything
" consumed. 1t Is a dirge which all or
chestras play and a period at which
everything stops. 1t is the cemetery Of
the human race. II is the domain of for.
yetfulness. Oblivionl At IT, IL throws
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 IL, to
1emolish it..
Why, juet look at the way the families
OF the earth disappear. For awhile they
are together, inseparable and to each
ether indispensable, and then they part,
some by marriage going TO establish other
homes, and some leave this life, and a CEN
fury rs long enough to plant n family, de-
velop 1t, prosper it and obhterate 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 NAV
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 T.
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
l,750,0O0 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 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
thousand, nor the names of 800, nor the
names of 100, nor the names OF fifty.
Oblivion! The world itself will roll
into 10 as easily as a schoolboy's rubber
ball rolls down hill, and when our world
goes it is so interlocked 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 tele-
scope that will be a sure pediment for any
slab OF commemoratlon 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. Obivionl IT 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 overcrowdcd If not
3or 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 INSTRUCTED intelli-
gence and made all research impossible.
What if all the people that had bSen
born were stu alveE We would have
been clbowed by our ancestors of ten CEN
turles 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-
ations OF mankind arc not worth remem-
berlng. The first useful thing that many
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. and.
instead OF being represented by sculptors
as holding scroll might better be repre-
sented as llmping on crutches. Faithful
history Is 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-
tyclopcdia Is an Immortality unworthy of
ones ambition, FOR 1t Will cease and is no
immortality at all.
Oblivion! a hundred years. But while
] recognize this universal submerqence of
things earthly, who wants to be forgotten?
Not one of us. Absent for a few weeks
Cr months from home 1t cheers us to know
that we are remembered there. 1T Is a
phrase we have all pronounced. al hope
you missed me-" Meeting some friends
from whom we nave been parted many
years we inquire, Did you ever see me be-
toreE" 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 curt
rent OF delight ascending to the brow and
the other descending to the foot, moving
round and round IN concentric circles un-
oil 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 l have spoken has its dA
leats, and there 10 no more reason why we
should not bc distinctly and wildly and
glorlOusly remembered five hundred mill
ion billion trillIon quadrlliOn quintillion
years from now than that we should be
remembered six weeks. i 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 SUI
pernal existence of those 20 whom we do
kindnesses in this world. You must re-.
member that this infrm and treacherous
faculty which we now call memory is in
the future state 10 be complete and per-
feet. Everlasting remembrance" Moth
Sng will slip the stout grip OF that celes-
tial faculty.
Did you help widow pay her rent?
Did you ind Tor that man released from
prison place to get honest work? Did
you pick up child, fallen on the curb
stone, and by stick OF candy put i'm his
hand stop the hurt on his scratched knee
Did you assure business man. swamped
w the stringency of the money market.
that times would after awhile be better
Did you lead a Magdalen of the street
sttso a midnight mission, where the LORD
said to her. Neither do i condemn thee.
Go and sin no morel" Did you tell q man.
clear discouraged in bis Waywardness and
hopeleaq and plotting suicide, that for
him was nearby a LAYER, IN which ht
might wash and a corOnet OF eternal bless
edness no might wear?
What are epitaphs in graveyards, wha'
~ - HHrh famH