The united opinion. [volume] (Bradford, Vt.) 1881-1970, 1902-03-14
FORGIVE AND FORGET
DR.. Talmage illustrates How Often
ders May Be Emancipated.
God Remembers Our Sins No More II
We sincerely Ask Forgiveness
Art of Recollection and
Forgetting.


TConvright 1902, by Louis Klopsch, N. "
Washington, March o.
From the letter to the Hebrews DR..
Talmage takes a text and illustrates
how all offenders may be emancipated;
text. Hebrews SIP: Their sins and
their iniuuities will l remember no
more"
The national flower of the Egyptians
is the heliotrope, of the Assyrians is
the water lily, of the Hindoos is the
marigold, of the Chinese is the chrys-
anthemum. We have no national
flower, but there is hardly any flower
more suggestive to many of us than
the forgetmenot. We all like to be
remembered, and one of our misfor-
tunes is that there are so many things
we cannot remember. Mnemonics, or
the art of assisting memory, is an i'm
portant art. 1t was first suggested by
Simondes of Coos 500 years before
Christ. Persons who had but little
power to recall events or put facts
and names and dates in proper process
sions have through this art had their
memory reinforced to an almost in
credible extent. A good memory is an
invaluable possession. By all means
cultivate it. I had an aged friend who,
detained all night at miserable depot
in waiting for a rail train fast in the
snowbanks, entertained a group of
some ten or fifteen clergymen likewise
detained on their way home from
meeting of presbytery, by first with
a piece of chalk drawing out on the
black and sooty walls of the depot the
characters of Walter SCOTS "Marmi-
on" and then reciting from memory
the whole of that poem of some 80
pages in fine print. My old friend,
through great age, lost his memory,
and when l asked him if this story of
the railroad depot was true he said:
81 do not just remember now, but it
was just like me. Let me see" said he
to me. "Have I ever seen you before?"
"Yes," said, "you were my guest last
night, and was with you an hour ago"
What an awful contrast in that man
between the greatest memory / ever
knew and no memory at all!
But right along with this art of rec
election, which l cannot too highly
eulogize, is one quite rs important and
yet never heard it applauded. Imean
the art of forgetting. There is splen-
did faculty in that direction that we
all need to cultivate. We might
through that process be ten times
happier and more useful than we now
are. We have been told that forget
fulness is weakness that ought to be
avoided by all possible means. So far
from weakness, my text ascribes it
to God. 1t is the very top of omnipo-
tence that God is able to obliterate a
part of His own memory. If we repent |
of sin and rightly seek the Divine for
giveness, the record of misbehavior is
not only crossed off the books, but God |
actually lets it pass out of memory. |
I'Their sins and their iniquities will l |
remember no more" To remember no
more is to forget, and you cannot make
anything else out of it. Gods power of
forgetting is so great that if two men
appeal to Him and the one man, after
a life all right, gets the sins of his
heart pardoned and the other man,
after a life of abomination, gets par
doned God remembers no more
against one than against the other.
The entire past of both the moralist,
and his imperfections, and the profit
gate, with his debaucheries, is as much
obliterated in the one case as in the
other. Forgotten forever and forever.
This sublime attribute of forgetful-
ness on the part of God you and | need,
in our finite way, to initiate. You will
do well to cast out of your recollection
all wrongs done you. During the
course of ones life he is sure to be
misrepresented, to be lied about, to be
injured. There are those who keep
these things fresh by frequent re
hearsal. If things have appeared in
print, they keep them in their scrap
book, for they cut these precious par
agraphs out of newspapers or books
and at leisure times look them over,
or they have them tied up in bundles
or thrust in pigeonholes, and they
frequently regale themselves and their
friends by an inspection of these
filings, these sarcasms, these false
hoods. these cruelties. ] have known
gentlemen who carried them in their
pocketbooks, so that they could easily
get at these irritations, and they put
their right hand in the inside of their
coat pocket over their heart and say:
"Look here! Let me show you some
thing Scientists catch wasps and
hornets and poisonous insects and
transfx them in curiosity bureaus for
study, and that is well, but these of
whom speak catch the wasps and the
hornets and the poisonous insects and
play with them and put them on them
selves and on their friends and see how
far the noxious things can jump, and
show how deep they can sting. Have
no such scrapbook. Keep nothing in
your possession that is disagreeable.
Tear up the falsehoods and the SLAM
ders and the hypercriticisms.
Initiate the Lord in my text and for
get. actually forget, sublimely forget.
There is no happiness for you in any
other plan or procedure. You see all
around you in the church and out of
She church dispositions acerb, malign,
cynical, pessimistic. Do you know
how these men and women got that
disposition? 1t was by the embalm-
n,ent of things pantherine and viper
Gus. They have spent much of their
time in calling the roll of all the rats
that,IhaYe nibbled at their reputation.
Their soul is a cage of vultures.
Everything in them is sour or embit-
tered. The milk of human kindness
has beeu curdled. They do not believe
In afybody or anything. If they see
two people Whispering &, they think it
Is about themselves. OF If they see two