Rensselaer Republican, Volume 24, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 June 1892 — DR. TALMAGE’S SERMON [ARTICLE]

DR. TALMAGE’S SERMON

Forget Me Not Should fee Adopted by Us. i - ■ - —. . ’ ' \ ; A» Our Great National Flower- Having Been Forgiven, We Should Forget Our Past Misdemeanors, “ ■ .- . '«■-> • ' 'V- 1 — | Rev. Dr. Talmage Preached at | Brooklyn last Sunday. Text Heb. ; viii, 12. He said: . The natural flower of the Egyptians is the heliotrope, of the Assyrians the water lilyr-of the Hindoos is the marigold, of the Chinese is the chrysanthemum. We have no national flowep; but there isjiardly any flower, more suggestive to many of than the “fOrget-me-not.” We -ail like to be remembered, and one of our misfortunes is that there are so many things we cannot remember. Mnemonics, or the art of assisting memory, is an important art. It was first suggested by Simonides of Cos, 500 years before Christ. Persons who had but little power to recall -events or put facts and names and dates in proper processions. 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.

But right along with this art of recollection, which I can not too highly eulogize, is one quite as important,and yet I'never heard it applauded. I mean the art of forgetting. There is a splendid faculty in that direction that we all need to cultivate. We might, through that process, be ten times happier aiid more useful than we now are. We have been told that forget fulness is a weakness and ought to be avoided by all possible means. So far from a weakness, my text ascribes to God. It is the very toy pf Omnipotence that God is able to obliterate a part of His own memory. If we repent of sin and 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 re-' member no more is to forget, and you cannot make anything else out of it. God’s 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 abominations, gets pardoned, God remembers too more against one than against the other. The entire past of both the moralist, with his imperfections, and the profligate, with his debaucheries, is as much dbliterated in the one case as in the other.. Forgotten, forever and ever. “Their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more." This sublime attribute of forgetfulness on the part of God you and I need, in our finite way, to imitate. You will do well to cast out of your recollection all wrongs done you. During the course of one’s life he is sure to be misrepresented, to be lied about, to be injured. There are those who keep these things fresh by frequent rehearsal. If things have appeared in print, they keep them in their scrap book, for they precious 'paragraphs out of mewspapers or books and at leisure times look them over, or they may have them tied up in bundles, or thrust in pigeon holes, and they frequently regale themselves and their friends by an inspection of these thihgs, these sarcasms, these falseho'ods, these cruelties. I have known gentlemen who carried them in their i pocket books, so that they could easily get at these irritations, and they put their right hand in the inside of! the coat pocket over their heart. and say: “Look here! Let me show you something.” Scientists catch wasps 1 and hornets and poisonous insects and transfix them in curiosity buSaus for study, and that is well. ut these of whom I speak catch the wasps and the hornets '/‘and poisonous insects and play with them and put them on themselves and on their friends to see how far the noxious things can jump and show how deep they can sting-. Have no such scrap book,. Keep nothing in your possession -that is disagreeable. Tear up the falsehoods and the slanders and the hypercriticisms. Imitate the Lord in my text ' and forget, actually forget, sublimely . ■ forget. There is no happiness for I you in any other plan or procedure ! i You see all around you in the church and out of the church, dispositions acerb, malign, cynical, pessimistic. Do you know how these men and women got that disposition? It was by the embalment of things pantherine and viperous. They have spent much of their time in calling the roll of all the rats that have nibbled at their characters. Their soul is a, cage of vultures. Everything in them is soured ot embittered. The milk of human kindness has been curdled. They do not believe anybody or anything. If they see two people whispering they think it is about themselves. If they see two people laughing they think it is about themselves, i Where there is one sweet pippin in ■ their orchard there are fifty crab- i apples. They have never been able 1 to forget. They do not want to forget. They never will forget. *l’l, ZX w e«zx4* zx zl JX zx Z. xzx ». . -- - _ r -

’Their wretchedness is supreme,for no one can be happy if he carries perpetually in his mind the mean things that have been him. On the other hand you can find here” and there a man op woinan,(for there fare not many of them) whose disposition is genial and summery. Why? Have they always been wdl treated? Oh, no. Hard things have been said against them. Thgy have been

' charged with officiousness, and their i generosities have been set down to a desire for display, and they have many a time been the subject of tit-tle-tattle, and they have had enough small assaults like gnats.and enough great attacks like lions,to have made them perpetually if they would have tfbhs'ented to be miserable.’ But they had enough Divine philosophy to east off theannoyances and they have kept themselves in the sunlight of God’s favor and have realized that these oppositions and hindrances are a part of a mighty disci-, pline, by which they are"to be prepared: for usefulness-^and heaven. The secret of it all is, they have, by the help of the eternal Gqj| r learned how to forget. Another practical thought: when our faults are repented of let them go out of mind. If God forgets them we have-a Eight to forget them. Having once repented of our infelicities and misdemeanors there is no need of our repenting of them again. Not only forget your pardoned transgressions, but allow others to forget them, The chief stock on hand of many people is to recount’in prayer meetings and pulpits what big scoundrels they once were. They not only will not forget their forgiven defects, but they seem to be determined that the ch urch and the world shall not forget them. If you want to declare that you have been the chief of sinners and 6xtol the grace -that could save such a wretch as you were, do so, but do not go into particulars. Do not tell how many times you got drunk, or to what bad places you went, or how many free rides you had in the prison van before you w ere converted.

Lump it, brothers. Give it to us in bulk. If you have any sears got in honorable warfare 1 show them: but if.youhavescarsgbtin ignoble warfare, do not display them. I know you will q uote the fiible reference'to the horrible pit. from which you were digged. Yes, be thankful for that rescue, but do not make display of the mud of that horrible pit, or splash it orerother people. Sometimes I have felt in Christian meetings discomfited and unfit for Christian service because I'■had done none of those things which seemed to be in the estimation of many necessary for Christian usefulness, for I never swore a word, or ever got drunk, or went to compromising places, or was guilty of assault and battery, or ever uttered a slanderous word, or ever did any one a hurt, although I knew my heart was sinful enough; and I said to myself: “There is no use of my trying to do any good, for I never went through those depraved experiences;” but afterward I saw consolation in the thought that no one gained ordination by the laying on of the hands of dissoluteness and infamy. And though an ordinary moral life, ending in a Christian life, may not be as dramatic a story to tell about, let us be grateful to God rather than worry about it. if we have never plunged into outward abominations.

■ The fact js that the world does no.t know God, or they would all flock to him. Through their own blindness. I or the fault of some rough preaching that has got abroad in the centuries, i many men and women have an idea i that God is a tyrant, an oppressor, ) an autocrat, a Nana Sahib, an omnidotent Herod Antipas. is a libel ; against the Almighty; it is a slander against the heavens; it is a definition of the infinities. I counted in my Bible 304 times tßF'woW^‘mercy, single or compounded with other words, Icounted z in my Bible 473. times the word “love,” single or compounded with'other words. Then I got tired counting. j Over a place- in Russia, where : wolves were pursuing a load of travi elers, and to save them a servant ’ sprang from the sled into the mouths i of the wild beasts,and was devoured, | and thereby the other lives were sav- \ ed, are inscribed the words. “Greater love hath no mSp than this, that a man lay down b li.is life flor his friend.” Many a surgeon in our own time has, in tracheotomy, with his own lips drawn from tfie windpipe of a diphtheritic patient that which cured the patient, slevy the surgeon, and all have honored the self-sacrifice. But all the other scenes of sacrifice pale before this moss illustrious .msftyr of all time and all eternity. After that agonizing spectacle in behalf of our fallen race nothing about the sin-forgetting, God is too stupen- ■ dous for my faith, and I accept the i promise, and will you nofi all accept ; it? “Their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more. ”