The Bossier banner., 1888-01-12

/ Saint Absconded," "Clerical Scoudrel-
| ism," "Religion at Discount, - "Shame on
the Churches" while there are thousand
scoundrels outside the church to
l where there is one inside the church, and
| the misbehavior of those who never see
the inside of church is SO great, it is
enough to tempt man to become Chris
tian to get out of their company. But in
all circles, religious and irreligious, the
tendency is to excuse sin in proportion as
| it is mammoth. Even John Milton, in his
paradise Lost" while he condemns
Satan, gives such a grand description of
him you have hard work suppress your ad.
mration. Oh, this straining out Of small
sins like gnats, and his gulping down
great iniquities like camels.
The subject does not give the picture
OF one or two persons, but is a
gallery in which thousands Of peo.
pie may see their likeness. For instance,
all those people who, while they
would not rob their neighbor of a
farthing appropriate the money and the
treasure of the public. A man has house
to sell, and he tells his customer it is
worth twenty thousand doll ars. Next
| day the assessor comes around, the owner
says it is worth fifteen thousand dollars.
| The Government of the United States
took off the tax from personal income,
| among other reasons, because so few peo-
| pie would tell the truth, and many q man
| with au income of hundreds of dollars a
| 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 from Paris and a half
dozen watches from Geneva, Switzer-
land, telling the custom-house officer on
the wharf, "There is nothing in that
trunk but wearing apparel" and putting
a tive dollar gold-piece in his hand to
punctuate the statement.
Described in the text are all those who
are particular mover to break the law Of
grammar, and who want all their language
an elegant specimen of syntax, straining
out all the inaccuracies Of speech with a
fine sieve Of literary criticism, while
through their conversation go slander
and innuendo, and profanity and false
hood larger than a whole caravan of cam.
els, when they might better fracture
| every law of the language and
shock intellectual taste, and bet
ter let every verb seek in vain
for its nominative, and every
noun for its government, and every pre-
position lose its way i'll the sentence, and
adjectives and participlns and pronouns
got into a grand riot worthy of the
Fourth Ward on election day, than to
commit moral naccuracy. Better swal.
low thousand gnats than one camel.
Such persons are also described in the
text who are very much alarmed about
the small faults Of others, and have no
alarm about their own transgressions.
There are in every community and in
every church watchdogs who feel called
upon to keep their eyes on others and
growl. They arc full of suspicion.
They wonder if that man is not dishonest,
if that man is not mclean, il there is not
something wrong about the other man.
They are always the first to hear of any
thing wrong. Vultures are always the
first to smell carron They are self.
appointed detectives. I lay this down as
a rule, without any exception, that those
people who have the most fault Is them
selves are the most merciless in their
watching of others. From scalp of head
to solo of foot they are full of jealousies
and hypercrtic;sm They spend their
life in hunting for muskrats and mud tur-
ties, instead of hunting for Rocky Mount
ain eagles; always for something
mean instead of something grand.
They look at their neighbors' imperfec.
tions through microscope, and look at
their own imperfections through teles-
cope upside down. Twenty faults of
their own do not hurt them so much as
one fault of somebody else. Their neigh
bors' imperfections are like gnats, and
they strain them out; their own imper-
fections are like came!s, and they swal.
| low them.
But lest some might think they escape
the scrutiny of the text, have to tell you
that we all come under the Divine satire
when we make the questions of time
more prominent than the questions of
eternity. Come, now, let US all go
into the confessional. Are not all
tempted to mako the question. Where
shall live now? greater than the ques-
tion. Where shall 1 live forever? How
shall get more dollars here? greater than
the question, How shall l lay up treasures
in Heaven? The question, How shall l
| pay my debts to man? greater than the
question, How shall l meet my obliga-
tions to God? The question, How shall
gain the world? greater than the ques-
| otoAAs " Ae&o IL L iooo my SOuis QueS-
tion, Why did God let sin come into the
world, greater than tho question, How
shall get extirpated from my nature?
The question. What shall I do with
the twenty, or forty or seventy
years of my sublunar existence?
greater than the question, What
shall do with the millions of cycles of
| my post-terrestriale existence! Time, how
| small it is! Eternity, how vast it is The
| former moro Insignificant in comparison
with the latter than a gnat is insignificant
when compared with a camel. We dod sed
| the text. We said: ''That doesn't mean
me, and that doe 'n't mean me-" and with
ruinous bensvolencs we are giving the
| whole sermon away.
| But let us all surrender to the charge.
What an ado about things here. What
| poor preparation for great
| eternity. AS though a minnow were
| larger than beh,moth, as
| though a swallow took wider circuit than
an albatross, as though nettle were
taller than a Lebanon cedar, as though
| gnat were greater than camel, as though
minute were longer than a century, as
! though time were higher deeDer broader