Phillipsburg herald. [volume] (Phillipsburg, Kan.) 1882-1905, 1888-04-20


Why is it that so often jurors render
unaccOuntable veEdicts, and judges give
unaccOuntabie charges, and useless rail
road schemes pass IN our state capitals,
and there are most unjust changes
made In tariffs-triff lifted from one
thing and put upon another.
What is an oath ? Anything solemn?
| Anything that calls upon the Almighty?
Anything that marks an event In mans
history? Oh, mol 1t is kissing the
! book. There is no habit, I tell you
plainly-and 1 talk to hundreds and
/ thousands Of men today who viii thank
me for my utterance-I tell you, my
brother talk to you not profession
ally, but Just as one brother talks to
another on some very important theme
Il tell you there is no habit that so
/ depletes mans nature as the habit of
/ profanity. You might as well try to
raise vineyards and orchards on the
sides of belching StrOmbOh as to raise
/ anything good on a heart from which
! there pOurs out the scOria of profanity
| You may swear yourself down; yOu can
not swear yourself up. When the Mo
/ hammedan finds a piece of paper ne can
not read, he puts it aside very cautiously
for fear the name of God may be on it.
! That is one extreme. We 90 to the
other Now what is the cure of this
habit? 1t is a mighty habit Men
have struggled for years to get over It.
/ There are men in this house of God
who would give half their fortune to
/ get rid of it. An aged man was In the
| de1irium of a fever. He had for many
/ years lived a most upright life and was
! honored In all the community; but
when he came into the delirium of this
fever he was full of imprecatiOn and
/ profanity, and they could not under
j stand it. After he came to his reason
! he explained it. He said: when I
was a young man was very prOfane.
conquered the habit, but I had to
struggle all through life. You haven't
! for forty years heard me say an i'm
proper word, but it has been an awful
struggle. The tiger is chained, but he
is alive yet" If you would get rid of
this habit, I want you, my friends, to
| dwell upon the uselessness oft. Did
voliey of Oaths ever start a heavy load
Did they ever extripate meanness from
a customer? Did they ever collect a
! bad debt? Did they ever cure a tooth
ache? Did they ever stop the twinge
of the rheumatism? Did they ever
/ help you forward one step in the right
/ direction? Come now tell me, We who
]
habit, how much have you made out of
| it, Five thousand dollars in all your
! life? No. One thousand? No. One
| hundred? No. One dollar? No. One
cent? No. If the habit be SO utterly
useless, away with it.
But you say: I have struggled to
overcome the habit a long while, and I
have not been successful" You strug-
! gled in your own strength, my brother.
If ever a man wants God, it is in such
a crisis of his history. God alone by
His grace can emancipate you from that
trouble. Call upon him day and night
that you may be delivered from this
crime. Remember also, in the cure of
this habit, that 1t arOuses Gods indig-
nation. The Bible reiterates from
/ chapter to chapter and verse after verse
the fact that it is accursed for this life,
and that it makes man miserable for
eternity. There is not a sin in all the
catalogue that is so often peremptOrily
and suddenly punished in this world as
the sin of profanity. There is not a
city on a village but can give an illus
tratiOn of man struck down at the
moment of imprecatiOn. A couple of
years ago, briefly referring to this in a
sermon, L gave some instances in which
v
moment of their profanity. That ser
mon brought to me from many parts of
this land and other lands statements of
similar cases Of instantaneous visitation
! from God upon blasphemers. My Opin-
ion is that such cases occur somewhere
every day, but for various reasons they
are not reported.
In Scotland a club assembled every
week for purposes Of wickedness, and
/ there was a competition as to which
could use the most hOrrid Oaths, and
the man who succeeded was to be pres
ident of the club. The competition
went on. A man uttered an oath which
! cOnfOunded all his comrades, and he
was made president of the club. His
| tongue began to swell, and it prOtruded
from the mouth, and he could not draw
it in, and he died, and the physicians
said: This is the strangest thing we
/ ever saw; We never saw any account in
the books like unto it; we can't under
stand it. b" 1 understand it. He cursed
/ God and died. At Catskill, n. Y,
/ group of men stood in a blacksmith's
shop during a violent thunder storm.
/ There came crash of thunder, and
some OF the men trembled. One man
said: why, I don't see what you are
afraid Of I am not afraid to 60 out In
font OF the shop and defy the Al
mighty. am not afraid of the light
ming" And he laid a wager on the
subject, and he went out and he shook
his fist at the heavens, crying: Strike
if you darel7 and instantly he fell
under bolt What destroyed him?
Any mystery about it? Oh, no. He
cursed God and died.
Oh my hrnthar God will not allow