The Russellville Democrat., 1883-08-23
PRICE FIVE CENTS.

Small Sins vs. Large Dividends.
 Dr. Talmagc In Frank Lcslie's Sunday Maga-
 zine for September.
 It is timc that we learn in Ameri- ca that sin is not excusable in pro- j; ;S.sz..on as it declares large dividends and has many outriders in equipage. Many a man is riding to perdition, position ahead and lackey behind. To steal one..copy of newspaper is gnat, To steal many thousands of dollars :s camel. There Is many q fruit-dealer who ~ould not consent to steal basket of peaches from a neighbor's stall, but who would not scruple to depress the fruit market and as long % I can remember we we heard every summer the peach crop of Maryland is . failure, and by the time the crop comes in the mis. representation makes . difference of millions of dollars. A man who would not steal one peach basket steals fifty thousand peach basket. lio down into the Mercantile Libra ", III the reading rooms, and see all the newspaper reports of the crops from all parts of the country, and their phraseology Is very much the same, and the same men wrote them, methodically and infamously carry ing nut the huge lying about the grain crop from year to year, and for . score of years. Alter while there will be . ''corner" in the wheat mar ket, and men who had a contempt for petty theft will burglarize the wheat bin of the nation, and commit larceny upon the American corn crib.. And in this hot weather some of the men will sit in churches and in reformatory institations, trying to strain out the small gnats of scoun. drelism, while in their grain elevat- ors and in their storehouses they are fattening huge camels, which they expect after while to swallow. Society has to be entirely recon. structed on this subject. We are to find that . sin Is inexcusable in pro. portion as it is great. know in our time the tendency is to charge relig. glous frauds upon good men. They say, "Oh, what a class Q. frauds you have in the Church of God in this day" and when an elder of Church, or deacon, or a minister of the Cos pei, or superintendent ofa Sab bath-achool, turns out defaulter, what display heads there are in many of the newspapers--grcat primer type, five-line pica: "Another Saint Abscondedr' "Clcrical Scoundrel- ismr' "Religion at . Discountw "Shame in the Churches w while there are thousand scoundrels outside the Church to where there is one inside the Church, and the misbehavior of those who never see the inside of Q church is so great it is enough to tempt man to become Christian to get out of their company. But in all circles, religious and irreligious, the tendency is to excuse sin in pro portion as It is mammoth. Even John Milton in his Paradise Lost" while he condemns Satan, gives such g grand description ot him, you have hard work to suppress your admira- ton. Oh, this straining out of small sins like gnats, and this gulping down great iniquities like cainels. This subject does not give the pie. ture ot one or two persons, but is a gallery in which thousands Of people may see their likenesses. For in- stance, all those people who, while they would not rob their neighbor of farthing, appropriate the money and the treasure of the public. A man has a house to sell, and he tells his customer it is worth $20, 900. Next day the assessor comes around and says it is worth $15,O00. The Government of. the United States took of the tax from personal in
 come, among other reasons, because so few people would tell the truth, and many . man with an income of hundreds of dollars day made statements which seemed to imply he was about to be handed over to the overseer of the poor. Careful to pay their passage from Liverpool to New York, yet smuggling in their Saratoga trunk ten silk dresses and a half dozen watches from Geneva, Switzerland. telling the Custom
 House officer on the wharf, "There Is nothing in that trunk but wear ing apparel" and putting a $5 gold piece in his hand to punctuate the