The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1888-04-13

The habit also comes from infrmity Of
/ temper. There are good many people who
/ when they are at peace, have Righteousness
Of speech, but when sngered they blaze with
imprecation. Perhaps all the rest Of the
j year they talk In right language but nov
they pour out the fury of a whole year In one
red hotparagraph of Ave minutes. / knew
/ of man who excused himself for the habit,
saying: 81 only swear once In great while.
! must do that Just TO clear myself ont
The habit comes also from the profuse use
/ Of bywords. Tho transition from byword
! which may be perfectly harmless to impre-
cation and profanity, Is not q very large
transition. 1t Is "my starsl" and "mercy ON
meip and good gracious" and 'by Gecrgeg'
and "by Jovei" and you 60 on with that a
little while, and then you swear. These
words, perfectly harmless In themselves, are
next door 70 imprecation and blasphemy. A
| profuse use OF bywords always ends in pro-
family. The habit Is creeping up into the
highest styles Of society. Women have no
| patience with fiak and unvarnished profanity
They viii order q man out of the parlor In
dulging in blasphemy, and yet you will
sometimes find them with fairy fan to the
lip, and under chandeliers which bring no
blush to their cheek, taking on their lips the
hottest of names In utter triviality.
Why, my friends, the English language IL
comprehensive and capable of expressing all
shades Of feeling and every degree of en-
ergy. Are you happyi Noah Webster win
give you ten thousand words with which to
express your exhilaration. Are you right
eously indignant There are whole armies
in the vocabulary, righteous vocabulary
whole armies Of denunciation, and
scorn, and sarcasm, and irony, and carl
cature, and wrath. You express your
self against some meanness or hypocrisy
In all the oaths that ever smoked up from
the pit, and win come right on after you
and give a thousandfold more emphasis of
denunciation to the same meanness and the
same hypocrisy in words across which no
slime has ever trailed, and into which the
fires of hell have never shot their forked
tongues-the pure, the innocent God hon.
ored Anglo-Saxon in which Milton sang and
John Bunyan dreamed and Shakespeare
dramntized
There is no excuse for profanity when we
have such a magnificent language-such a
flow of good words, potent words, mighty
words, words just to suit every crisis and
every case. Whatever be the cause of It,
profanity is on the increase, and II you do
not know it, it Is because your ears have
been hardened by the din of Impressions so
that you are not stirred and moved as you
ought to be by profanities in these cities
which are enough to bring hurricane Of
fire like that which consumed Sodom.
Do you know that this trivial use Of Gods
name results in perjuryG Do you know that
people who take the name of God on their
lips in recki 5aspess and thoughtlessness are
fostering the crime of perjuryf Make the
name Of God foot bail in the community,
and it has no power when in court room and
in legislative assembly it is employed in
solemn adju:&sicnI See the way sometimes
they administer the oath: "S'help you God
kiss the bookl' Smuggling, which is always
violation of the oath, becomes in some
circles grand joke. You say to man:
GLOW is it po,z:hia for you to sell these goods
SO very cheapl can understand it. !" "Ahr'
he replies, with twinkle Of the eye, "the
custom house tariIf of these goods isn't as
much as it might be-" An oath does not
mean as much as it would were the name Of
God used in reverence and in solemnity
Why is it that 50 often jurors render unac-
contable verdicts and judges give unac-
countable charges, and useless railroad
schemes pass In our state capitals, and there
tariff lifted from one thing and put upon
another.
What is an oath2 Anything solemn? Any
thing that calls upon the Almighty Any
thing that marks an event in mans history9
Oh, mol 1t is kissing the bookI There is no
habit, l tell you plainly-and l talk to hun
dreds and thousands of men today who viii
thank me for my utterance-I tell you, my
Drother-I talk to you not professionally but
ust as one brother talks to another on some
very important theme-I tell you there is no
habit that 30 depletes mans nature as the
habit of profanity. You might as well try
to raise vineyards and orchards on the sides
of belching Stromboi as to raise anything
good on heart from which there pours out
the scoria of profanity. You may swear
yourself down; you cannot swear yourself
up. When the Mohammedan finds piece Of
paper he cannot read, he puts it aside very
cautiously for fear the name Of God may be
on it That is one extreme We go the
other. Now what is tho cure of this
habit2 It 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 delirium of 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 understand it. After he came
to his right reason he explained it. He said:
"When was young man / was very pro-
fame. I conquered the habit, but had to
struggle all through life You haven't for
forty years heard me say an improper 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, want
you, my friends, to dwell upon the useless
ness of it. Did volley Of oaths ever start
heavy load2 Did they ever extirpate mean
ness from q customer Did they ever collect
bad debit Did they ever cure toothachei
Did they ever stop the twinge Of the rheu-
matism9 Did they ever help you forward
one step in the right directionl Come now,
tell me, We who have had the most expert
ence in this habit, how much have you made
out of it, Five thousand dollars in all your
fife3 No. One thousand2 No. One hun
dreda No. One dollar2 No. One cent?
No. If the habit be so utterly useless, away
with It.
But you say: 81 have struggled to over
come the habit long while, end have not
been successful" You struggled in your
own strength, my brother. II ever man
wants God, it is in such 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 it arouses Gods indignation. The
Bible reiterates from chapter to chapter, and
verse after verse, that it is accused for this
life and that it makes a man miserable for
eternity. There is not sin in ell the cata-
logue that Is so often peremptorily and
suddenly punished In this world as the sin of
profanity There is not city or a village
but can give an illustration Of man struck
down at the moment of inprecation. A
couple Of years ago, briefly referring to this
In sermon, gave some instances in which
God had struck swearers dead at the moment
Of their profanity. That sermon brought to
me from many parts of this land and other
lands statements Of similar cases of instan-1
taneous visitation from God upon bias
phemers. My opinion Is that such cases
occur somewhere every day, but for various
reasons they are not reported.
In Scotland club assembled every week
for purposes Of wickedness, and there was q
competition as to which could use the most
horTid oath, and the man who succeeded was
70 % preSloenb OF Vne ciuD. Inc compeOltlon
went on. A man uttered an oath which con-
founded all his comrades, and he was made
president Of the club. His tongue began to
swell, and it protruded from his mouth, and
he could not draw II In, and he died, and the
physician said; "This is the strangest thing
we ever saw; we never saw any account In
the books like unto IL; we can't understand
it.n / understand IL. He cursed God and
died
At Catslill, n Y, group Of men stood
a, = hlanlnrnni aInIn during fniarh khr1ra