News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1889-02-28

study or God, we would not have time TO &c
much further than the first grass blade.
have no fear that natural religion will ever
contradict what we call revealed religion.
| have no sympathy with the followers of
Aristotle, who after the telescope was in
vented, would not look through it, lest il
contradict some of the theories of their great
master. l shall be glad to put against one
lid of the Bible the microscope. and against
the other lid of the Bible the telescope.
But when Christ stopped down and wrote
on the ground, what did He write! The
| Pharisees di | not stop to examine. The
towards, whipped of their own conscien ,eS,
| fled pell nell. Nothing will flaw a man ike
an aroused conscience. DIR. Stevens, in
his History of Methodism," says that
when Rev Benjamin Abbott of oiden
times was preaching, he exclaimed: For
aught know there may be a murderer in
this house" and a man rose in the assemblage
and started for the door and bawled aloud.
| confesSing to a murder he had committed
| fifteen years before And no wonder these
Pharisees, reminded of their sins, took
/ to their heels. But what did Christ write
on the ground! Tue Bible does not state.
| Yet, as Christ never wrote anything except
| that Ire, you cannot blame us for wanting
to know what He really did write But am
| certain He wrote nothing trivial, or nothing
unimportant. And will you allow me
He wrote on the ground! | Judge
| from the circumstances. He might
have written other things, but kneeling there
in the temple, surrounded by a pack of
! hypocrites, VINO were a self appointed con-
| stabuary, and having in His presence per-
secuted woman who evidently was very peni-
| tent for her sins, | AN sure He wrote
| two words both of them graphic and ire
mendous and reverberating. And the ono
word was hypocrisy and the other word
was forgiveness. From the way these
Pharisees and scribes vacated the premises
! and got out into the fresh air, as Christ,
| with Just one ironical sentence,
| unmasked them, | know they were first
| class hypocriteS. 1t was then as it is now.
| The more faults and Inconsistencies p ople
| have of their own, the more severe and CEN
serious are they about the faults of others.
| Here they are-twenty stout men arrest
| ing and arraigning one weak woman.
Magnificent business TO be engaged in. They
wanted the fun of seeing her faint away I'M
| der heavy jdd jcial sentence from Christ,
| and then afto' she had been taken outside
! the city and las ened at the foot of the prec-
| ipice, the Scr. baS and PharseeS Swanted the
| satisfaction of each coming and dropping a
big stone ON her head, for that was the style
of capital pun: shment hat they asked for.
Some people hav taken the responsibility
of saving that Christ never laughed. But
think as He SAW those men drop every
| thing, chagrined, mortified, exposed
must have laughed. At any rate, it makes
me laugh to read of if. All of these liher-
tines, dram2tiZing Indignation against i'm
| purity. Blind bats lecturing on optics. A
| flock of crows on their way up from a car
cass, denouncing carrion. Yes, | think that
one word written on the ground that
| day by the finger of Christ was tie awful
| word of hypocrisy But | am sure there was
another word in that dust. From her entire
manner | am sure that arraigned WON an
was repentant She made no apology, and
Christ in no wise belittlei her sim
But her supplicatory behavior and her tears
moved Him, and when He stopped down to
write On the ground, He wrote that mighty,
| that imperial word, forgiveness. When
on Sinai Col wrote the law, He wrote
it with finger of lightning on tables
of stone, each word cut as by a chisel
into the hard granite surface But when He
writes the ofTense of this woman He writes il
in the dust so that it can be easily rubbed
out, and when she repehts of it, oh. He was
a merciful Christ | was reading of
legend that is told in the far East about
Hin He was walking through the streets of
city and lie saw a crowd around q dead
dog. And one man said: WHAT q loath-
some Object IS that dog" Yes" said
another, his ears are mauled and bleeding
~ es, said another. even his hide would
not be of any use to the tanner" Yes
said another, 1.-THE oior of his carcass is dread
full" Then Christ, standing unere, salu
But pearls cannot equal the whiteness of
His teeth" Then the people, moved by the
idea that any one could lind anything
pleasant concerning a dead dog, SAID:
- Why, this must lie Jesus OF Naza-
reth" Reproved and convicted they went
away Surely this legend of Chr st is good
enough TO be true. Kindness in all His
words and ways and habits Forgive
ness. Word of eleven letters and some or
them thrones, and some of them palm
branches Better have Christ write close
TO our names that on word, though He
write it in dust, than to have our Eame cut
into monumental granite with the letters that
the storms of a thousand years cannot oblt-
eratH. Bishop babington had hook OF only
three leaves The first leaf was black, the
second leaf red, the third leaf white. The
back leaf suggested sin; the red leaf atone
ment; the white leaf purih alton. That IS
the whole story. God will abundantly
pardon.
must not forget to say that as Christ
stopping down. with His finger wrote on the
1lls ~ AS
with TINS pen!fent woman, ana thaC he has
no symTathy with her hypocritical pursuers-
just opposite to that is the worlds habit.
Why didn't these unclean Fharisees bring
one of their own number t. Christ for eX-
coriation and capital punt No, no;
they overlook that in a man which they
damnate in a woman. And so the world has
had for offending women scourges and
obiurgation, and for Just one ofense she
becomes an outcast. while for men whose
lives have been so5onc for twenty years,
the world swings opens its doors of brilliant
welcome and they NAV sit in legislatures and
senates and parliam nts or on thrones Unlike
the Christ of my text the world writes a
mans misdemeanrr in dust, hut, chisels
woman's ofense with great cap t'ls upon in
and princes, whose mes cannot even
be mentioned in respectable circles
abroad, because they are walk
ing laZarettos of abOminatlon, our
American pr ncesses OF fortune ait. and at
the first beck sail ont with them into the
blackness of darkness forever. And in what
are called higher circles of society there is now
not only their imitation of foreign dress and
foreign manners, hut an imitation of foreign
dissoluteness. / like an Engiishman and
ike an American, but the s;cGest creature on
earth is an American playing the English
man. Society n eds to be reconStru' ted on
this subject Treat them aike, masculine
crime and feminine crime If you cut the
one in granite. cut them both in granite.
II you write ths one in dust, write the
other in dust No no. says the world. let
woman go down and let man go M. What
is that hear plashing into the East River at
midnight, and then there is a gurgle as OF
strangulation, and all is still. Never mind.
It is only a woman too discouraged to live
Let the mills of the cruel world grind right
on.
But while / speak of Christ of the text,
His shopping down writing in the dust, do
not think ! underrate the literature Of the
dust. 1t is the most solemn and tremendous
of all literature. II is the greatest of all
librar es. Wi en- I.ayard exhumed Nineveh
he was only opening the door of its
mighty dust The excavations of
PompeIi have only been the prlasp-
ing of the lids of volume of nations dust
When Admiral Farragut and his friends a
few years ago. visited that resurrected city,
the house of Palbo, who had been one of ITS
oh eff citizens i'm its prosperous DAYS. was
opened and table was spread in that house
which eighteen hundred and ten wears has
been buried by volcanic eruption and Farra-
gut and his guests walked over the
exquisite mosaics and under the beau iful
fresco. and it almost seemed like be NC enter.
tanned by those who eighteen centuries ago
had turned to dust. h. this mighty
literature of the dust. Where are the
remains of Sennacherib ard Attila and
Epamimondas and Tamerane and Tro-
jan and Philip of Macedon and julius
Cesar? Dust, Where are the heroes
who fought on both sides at ChTronea. Mt
Hastings, at Marathon, at Cressy, of the no.
900 man who fought at Agincnurt, of the
81 .0e0 men who fac d de nth at Jena, OF the
10000 whose arm0r glitter in the sun Mt
Wragram of the /, o O., 70 men under Darius
at Arbella of the J, GIL 0 10 men under Xerxes
at 1hermopyEr! Eu9t!
Where are the guests who danced the foors
of the Alhambra. or tie Persian palaces OF
Ahasuerusl Dust Where are the musicians
who PLAYED AMI the orators who spoke, and
the sculptors who chisele1. and the archi-
tects who built in all the centuries ex-
cept our ownl Dust! The greatest
library of the word that which has
the widest shelves and the longest ais es
and the most multitudinous volumes
and the vastest wealth. is the underground
l.