The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1901-10-16
DIR, TALMAGES SERMON
SUNDAYS DISCOURSE BY THE NOTED
DIVINE.

subject: The Defeat OF Oblivion-Though
the Earth and All Thereon May fas'
AWAY, Yet Every Soul Will Be 10
membered in Heaven.
copyright. 1su1.l
WASHINGTON, D. C.-In this discourse
DR.. Talmage shows how any one, can De
widely and forever recollectcd and cheers
| despondent Christian workers; texts, JOB
xiv. 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 l speak to-
day There is an old monster that swai-
lows down everything. 1t crunches lndl-
viduals, families, communities, States, ma
tions continents, hemispheres, worlds. Its
diet is made up of years, of centuries, OF
That monster is called by Noah Webster,
and all the other dictionaries "Oblivion:
It is a steep down which everything rolls.
1t is a conhagration in which everything
is consumed. It is dirgc which all or
chestras play and a period at whlch!
everything stops: 1t is the cemetery. OF
the human race. 1t is the domain OF Tor
getfulness. Oblivion! At times it throws
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
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 cen
tury is long enough to plant family, de-
velop it, prosper it and obiiterate 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; Unter 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 Derpstuation are dead fail
ures. Walter Scott's Old Mortality may
20 round with his chisel to recut the
faded epitaphs on tombstones, but Old
Oblivions has a quicker chisel. with which
he can cut out thousand epitaphs while
Old Mortality is cutting in one enitaph.
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 cal! the roll
of the l,O00, 900 men in the army of Thebes.
Not one answer Stand them in line, the
l,75O,OOO infantry and the 100000 cavalry
of the Assvrian 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
pitals you cannot call the names OF a
thousand, nor the names Of 500. nor the
names of 100, nor the names of fifty.
Oblivion! The world itself will roll
into it 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 20, too, and so far from having our
memory perpetuated by monument OF
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 .galayies
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 immensity have obstructed intelli-
gence and made all research impossible:
The fatal epidemic of books was merciful
epidemic. Many of the State and National
libraries to-day are only morgues, in
which dead books are waiting for some
one to come and recognize them.
| born were still alive? We would have
| been elbowed by our ancestors of ten CEN
turies 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
of more things lost. The Immortality
that comes from pomp of obsequies or
granite shaft OF building named after its
founder or page of recognition in some en-.
cyclopeda is an Immortality unworthy Of
ones ambition, for it will cease and is no
Immortality at all.
Oblivion! A hundred years. But while
I recognize this universal submergence of
things earthly, who wants to be forgotten
Not one of us. Absent for few weeks
or months from home it cheers US to know
that we are remembered there. It is a
phrase we have all pronounced, g! hope
YOU missed me-" Meeting some friends
from whom we have been parted many
years we inquire, "Dd you ever see me be-
| fore" And they say, YES" and call US
by name, and we feels delightful sensa-
tion thrilling through their hand into our
hand and running up from elbow to
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 I 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 quintilion
years from now than that we should be
remembered six weeks. | 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 to whom we do
kindnesses in this world. You must re-