The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1901-10-01

course 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
remembered" and Psalms cxii, 6, 1.-THE
righteous shall be in everlasting remem-
brance."
OF oblivion and it's defeats 1 speak to-
day. There is an old monster that swaI-
lows down everything. 1t crunches in
dividuals, families, communities, states,
nations, continents, h~emispheres, worlds.
Its diet is made up Of years, of centuries,
OF age Of cycles, of m~illenniums, of
cons. hat monster is called by Noah
Webster and all the other dictionaries
oblivion" 1t is a steep down which
everything rolls. 1t is a confiagration in
which everything is consumed. 1t is a
dirge which all orchestras play and a
period at which everything stops. 1t is
the cemetery OF the human race. 1t is
the domain Of forgetfulness. Oblivioni
AT times it throws a shadow over all of
U.S., and / would not pronounce it today
If / did not come armed in the strength
Of the eternal God on your behalf to at
tack it, to route 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
century is long enough to plant a family,
develop it, prosper it and obliterate it.
So the generations vanish. Walk up
Pennsylvania avenue, Washington;
Broadway, New York; State street, Bos-
ton; Chestnut street, Philadelphia; the
.SA,.-l --l1-. D-o1,, r3,oo@ El,-
burgh; 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 en-
gulfmenti All the ordinary efforts at
p~erpetuation are dead failures. Walter
SCOTS Old Mortality may go round
with his chisel to recut the faded cpl
taphs on tombstones, but Old Oblivion
has a quicker chisel with which he can
cut out a thousand epitaphs while Old
Mortality is cutting one epitaph. Whole
libraries of biographies devoured Of
bookwOrms or unread Of the rising gen.
.erations. All the signs of the stores and
warehouses of great firms have changed,
unless the grandsOns think that it is an
advantage to keep the old sign up be-
cause the name of the ancestor was more
c~ommendatory than the name of the de-
scendant. The city of Rome stands to-
day, but dig down deep enough, and you
come to another Rome, buried, and go
down still farther, and, you will find a
third Rome. Jerusalem stands today,
but dig down deep enough, and you will
find q Jerusalem underneath and so on
and deeper down a third Jerusalem.
Alexandria, Egypt, on the top of an
Alexandria, and the second ON the top of
the third. Many of the ancient cities are
buried thirty feet deep or fifty feet deep
or 100 feet deep. What was the matter?
Any special calamity? No. The winds
and waves and sands and flying dust are
all undertakers and gravediggers, and if
the world stands long enough the present
Washington and New York and London
will have on top of them other Washing
tons and New Yorks and LondOns, and
only after digging and boring and blast
ing will the ~archPologists of far distant
centuries come down as far as the high
est spires and domes and turrets of our
present American and European cities.
The Roll of Armies
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 Arta-
xerxes at Cunaxa, the 2,641, 900 men IN
der Xerxes at Thermopyl9 and call the
long roll. Not one answer At the open
ing of our civil war the men Of the north
ern 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 hospitals you cannot
81 cali the names of a thousand nor the
names of 500 nor the names Of 100 nor
the names of fifty. Oblivion! Are the
feet Of the dancers who at the ball of
the Duchess of Richmond at Brussels
the night before Waterloo all still? All
still. 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. OBJ
livion! A hundred years from now there
will not be being on this earth that
knew we ever lived.
In some old family record a descendant
: 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 century, but they will know
no more about us than we know about
the color Of a child's eyes born last night
in a village in Patagonia. Tell me some.
thing about your great-grandfather
What were his features? What did he
do? What year was he born? Wha
year did he die? And your great-grand
mother? vii you describe the style OF
the hat she wore, and how did she ano
your great-grandfather get on in eact
others companionship? Was it Marcf
weather or June? Oblivion! That noun
tain surge rolls over everything. Even
the pyramids are dying. Not a daJ
passes but there is chiseled off a chip OF
: that granite. The sea is triumphing ovel
the land, and what is going on at GU
Atlantic coast is going on all around thu
Mnrld and tho continentS are cCum Dim