The free press. (Poplarville, Miss.) 1890-19??, 1902-03-20
DIR. TALMAGES SERMON
SUNDAYS DISCOURSE BY THE NOTED
DIVINE.
Subject: The Art of Forgetting-How to BE
Happy-CancelinG Your Debts-Allow
Others to Forget-Come Into Mercy
and Pardon.

| WASHINGTON. D. C.-From the letter
! to the Hebrews Dr.. Taluldge takes text
and illustrates how an offenders may be
| emancipated; text, Hebrews viii, u,
| Their sins and their lniquites Will 1 re-
| member 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 chrysanthemum. 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 mis-
| fortunes is that there are so many things
we cannot remember. Mnemonics. or the
art of assisting memory, is an important
| art 1t was first suggested by Simonides,
of Coos, 500 years before Christ Persons
who had but little power to recall events
or put facts and names and dates in proper
| professions have through this art had their
| memory REINFORCED to an almost lncredl-
bic extent. A good memory is an lnvalua-
BILE possession. BY all means cultivate It,.
/ had an aged friend who, detained all
night at miserable depot In waiting Tor a
rail- train fast in the snowbanks, enter
tanned group of some ten or fifteen cler-
gymen, likewise detained on their way
home from a meeting Of presbytery, by
| first with piece of chalk drawing out on
the black and sooty walls Of the depot the
characters of Walter SCOTS "Marmion"
and then reciting from memory the whole
| of that poem OF some eighty pages IN hne
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 remember now, but it
was just like me. Let me see" said he to
me- Have L ever seen you before
Eyes" | said you were my guest last
night, and | was with you an hour ago.
What an awful contrast in that man be-
tween the greatest memory l ever knew
and no memory at all!
But right along with this art of recol-
lection, which l cannot too highly eulogize,
is. one quite as important, and yet / never
heard it applauded. l mean the art of for
getting. There is a splendid faculty IN
! that direction that we all need to cult
vate. We might through that process be
ten times happier and more useful than
we now are. We have been told that for
getfulness is a weakness and ought to be
avoided by all possible means. So lar
from a weakness, my text ascribes 1t to
God. 1t is the very top of omnipotence
that God is able to obliterate part of His
own memory If we repent of sin and
rightly seek the divine forgiveness, the
record of the misbehavior is not only
crossed off the books, but God actually
lets it pass out of memory. Their sins
and their iniquities will | 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 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 the other. The entire past OF
both the moralist, with his imperfections,
and the profigate, with his debaucheries,
is as much oblterated in the one case as
in the other. Forgotten forever and for
ever. Their sins and their iniquities will
/ remember no more"
This sublime attribute of forgetfulness
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 he'd
about, to be injured. There are those who
keep these things fresh by frequent rehear-
sal. If things have appeared in print, they
keep them in their scrapbook, for they cut
these precious paragraphs out of news
papers 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 falsehoods, these cru
elites. | have known gentlemen who car
ried them in their pocketbooks, so that
they could easily get at these irritatlons,
and they put their right hand in the inside
of their coat pocket over their heart and
say: Look here! Let he show you some
thing" Scientists catch Wasps and hor-
nets and poisonous insects and transtiX
them in curiosity bureaus for study, and
that is well, but these of whom | speak
catch the wasps and the hornets and pois
onous insects and play with them and put
them on themselves 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 chat is disagreeabe
Tear up the falsehoods and the ISLANDERS
and the hypercriticisms.
Initiate the Lord in my text and forget,
actually forget, subhmely forget There
is no happiness for you in any other plan
or procedure. You see all around you in
the church and out of the church DISPOSE
tons acerb, malign, cynical, pessimistic
Do you know how these men and women
got that disposition? 1t was by the EN-
balmment of things pantherine and viper
Gus. They have spent much of their time
in calling the roll of all the rats that have
nibbled at their reputation. Their soul is
a cage of vultures Everything in them is
sour or imbittered The milk of human
kindness has been curdled. They do not
believe in anybody or anything. II they
see two people Whispering tHey tHllh ~ -
about themselves. If they see two people
laughing, they think it is about them
selves. Where there is one sweet pippin
in their orchard there are fifty crabapples
They have never been able to forget. They
do not want to forget. They never will
forget. Their wretchedness is supreme,
for no one can be happy ii he carries per
petually in mind the mean things that
have been done him. On the other hand
you can find here and there a man or
woman flor there are not many of them
whose disposition is genial and summary;
Why? Have they always been treated
well? Oh, no. Hard things have been said
against them. They have been charged
with oficiousness, and their generosities
have been set down to desire for display,
and they have many time been the sub,
ject of title tattle, and they have had
enough small assaults like gnats and
enough great attacks like hons to have
made them perpetually miserable; Ii they
would have consented to miserable.
But they have had enough divine philo-
sophy to cast off the annoyances, and they
have kept themselves in the sunlight of
Gods favor and have realized that these