what the pother of to-day is about; and we should foretell to-morrow not
by to-day but by every day that has been.

[Footnote 1: Bywater: 'Heracliti Ephesii Reliquiæ,' p. 38.]

Forgetfulness is so common a human failing. In our rapid transit through
life we are so inclined to forget the past stages of the journey. All
things pass by and are swallowed up in a moment of time. Experiences
crowd upon us; the events of our life occur, are recorded by our busy
brains, are digested, and are forgotten before the substance of which
they were made has resolved into its elements. We race through the
years, and our progress is headlong through the days.

Everything, as it is done with, is swept up into the basket of the past,
and the busy handmaids, unless we check them, toss the contents, good
and bad, on to the great rubbish heap of the world's waste. Loves,
hates, gains, losses, all things upon which we do not lay fierce and
strong hands, are gathered into nothingness, and, with a few exceptions,
are utterly forgotten.

And we, too, will soon have passed, and our little brains which have
forgotten so much will be forgotten. We shall be throttled out of the
world and pressed by the clumsy hands of Death into the mould of that
same rubbish-hill of oblivion, unless there be a stronger hand to save
us. We shall be cast aside, and left behind by the hurrying crowd,
unless there be those who will see to it that our soul, like that of
John Brown, goes marching along. There is only one human force stronger
than death, and that force is History, By it the dead are made to live
again: history is the salvation of the mortal man as religion is the
salvation of his immortal life.