Essex County herald. [volume] (Guildhall, Vt.) 1873-1964, 1888-04-20


express Your exhilaration. Are YOU right
eousiy indignanti There are whole armies
III Ihe vocabulary, righteous vocabulary
-Whoie armies of denunciation and
scorn, and sarcasm, and irony, and Carl
eauie ana wrath. You express your
sen against some meanness or hypocrisy
IN all the oaths that ever smoked up from
tne pit, ana VIII come right on after you
and give thousandfold more emphasis of
remuneration to the same n1eanness and the
same hypocrisy in words across which no
silIne has ever trailed, and into which the
fires of hell have never shot their forled
tongues-the pure, the innocent, God hon
ored Anglo-Saxon in which Milton sang and
John Bunyan dreamed and Shakespeare
| dramatized.
There is no excuse for profanity when we
have such 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 If you do
| not know it, it is because your ears have
been hardened by the din of imprecations 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 periuryl Do you know that
| people who take the name of God on their
| lips in reckleSsness and thoughtlessness are
| fostering the crime of periury2 Make the
name of God football in the community,
and it has no power when in court room and
III LEGISLATIVE assembly IL IS employed IN
/ solemn adjurationl See the way sometimes
| they administer the oath: "Shelp you God
kiss the bookln Smuggling, which is always
a violation of the oath, becomes in some
circles grand joke. You say TO a man:
"How is it possible for you to sell these goods
so very cheapl I can't understand t." Ahl''
he replies, with a twinkle in the eyes, "the
custom house tariff 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 SO often jurors render unac-
countable verdicts and judges give unac-
countable charges and useless railroad
schemes pass in our State capitals, and there
are most unjust charges made in tariffs
tariff lifted from one thing and put upon
another!
What is an oath3 Anything solemn! Any
thing that calls upon the Almighty Any
thing that marks an event in a mans historya
Oh, no! 1t is kissing the book There is no
habit, tell you plainly-and l talk to hun
dreds and thousands of men to-day who will
| thank me for my utterance-I tell you, my
| brother-I talk to you not professionally but
| just as one brother talks to another on some
very important theme-I tell you there is no
| habit that so depletes mans nature as the
|
| to raise vineyards and orchards on the sides
Of belching Stromboli as TO. raise anything
| good on a heart from which there pours out
Che scoria of profanity. You may swear
| yourself down; you cannot swear yourself
| up. When the Mohammedan finds a 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 the cure of this
habit? 1t is 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 imprecat,on 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. l 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, I warn
you my friends, to dwell upon the useless
ness of it. Did volley of oaths ever starta
heavy load9 Did they ever extirpate mean
ness from customer9 Did they ever collect
bad debt9 Did they ever cure toothachel
Did they ever stop the twinge Of the rheu-
matism! Did they ever help you forward
one step in the right direction! 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
life? No. One thousand! No. One hun.
dred! No. One dollar' 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, and 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 trouble. Gail 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 accursed for this
life and that it makes a man miserable for
eternity. There is not sin in all the cata-
logue that is so often peremptorily and
suddenly punished in this world as the sin of
profanity. There is not city or village
but can give an illustration Of a man struck
| down at the moment OF imprecation. 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-
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
Cor purposes of wickedness, and there was u
competition as to which could use the most
horrid OATH and the man who succeeded was
to be President of the club The competition
went on. A man uttered an oath which con-
founded all the comrades. and he was made
| Presi dent of the club. Lis tongue began to
swell, and it protruded from his mouth, and
he could not draw, it 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 it, we can't understand
it." / understand it. He cursed God and
died.
At Catskill, N. Y. group of men stood
in blacksmiths shop during violent thun-
der storm. There came crash of thunder,
and some of the men trembed. One man
said: ''Why, don't see what you are afraid
of. l am not afraid to go out in front of
the shop and defy the Almighty. l am not
afraid of lightning" And he laid q wager
on the subject, and he went out, and ne
shook his fist at the heavens, crying: "Strike
if you dare" And instantly he fell under a
bolt. What destroyed him! Any mystery
about it! Oh, no. He cursed God and died.
Oh, my brother God will not allow this
sin to go UNPUBLISHED There are styles of
writing with manifold Sheets so that a man
writing on one leaf writes clear through ten,
fifteen or twenty sheets, and SO every pro
family we utter goes right down through the
leaves of the bool: of Gods remembrance. 1t
is no exceptional sin. Do you suppose you
could count the profanities of last weelz-the
profanities of office, store, shop, factory?
They cursed God, they cursed His word, they
cursed His only begotton Son.
One morning, on Fulton street, as | was
passing along, heard a man swear by the
name of Jesus My hair lifted. My blood
ran cold. My breath caught. My foot
halted Do you not suppose that God is ag
gravatedl Do you not suppose that God
knows about it2 Dionysius used to have a
cave in which his culprits were incarcerated