Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1889-02-18

| no engaged in They wanted the fun of
seeing her faint away under heavy iu-
diciaI sentence from Christ, and then,
! after she had been taken outside the city
and fastened at the foot of precipiee
the Seribes and Pharisees wanted the sat
isfaction Of each coming and dropping
big stone on her head, for that was the
/ style of capital punishment that they
| asked for Some people have taken the
responsibility OF saying that Christ never
laughed. But I think as he saw those
/ men drop everything, chagFined, morti-.
| fed, exposed, and go out quicker than
! they came in, He must have laughed, At
| any rate, it makes me laugh to read of
! it. All of these libertines, dramatizing
INDIGNATION AGAINST IMPURITY.
/ Blind bats leturing on optics. A flock
| of crows on their way up from a carcass,
| denouncing carrion Yes, I think that
/ one word written on the ground that day
! by the finger Of Christ was the awful
| word hypocrisy But l am sure there
was another word in that dust. From
| her entire manner l am sure that ar
raigned woman was repentant. She
made no apology, and Christ in no wise
| belittled her sin. But her supplicatory
behavior and her tears moved Him, and
when He stopped down to write on the
perial word forgiveness. When on Sinai
God wrote the law, He wrote with finger
of Lightning on tables of stone each word
cut as by chisel into the hard granite
surface. But when He writes the offense
of this woman He writes it in dust so that
it can be easily rubbed out, and when she
repents OF it, oh, He was merciful
Christ! l was reading of a legend that is
told in the far east about Him. He was
walking through the streets of a city and
He saw crowd around dead
dog. And one man said: ''What
loathsome object is that dog!'' eyes,
said another, his ears are mauled anu
bleeding - % Yes, - said another,
''even his hide would not be of any use to
the tanner - Eyes, - said another,
e'the odor OF his carcass is dreadful. -
Then Christ, standing there, said
"But pearls cannot equal the whiteness
of his teeth Then the people, moved
by the idea that any one could find any
thing pleasant concerning a dead dog,
said "Why, this must be Jesus of
Nazareth - Reproved and convicted
they went away. Surely Ethls legend
of Christ is
GOOD ENOUGH TO BE TRUE.
Kindness in all His words and ways and
habits. forgiveness. Word of eleven
letters, and some of them thrones, and
some Of them palm branches. Better
have Christ write close to our names that
one word. though He write it in dust,
than to have our name cut into monu-
mental granite with the letters that the
storms of a thousand years cannot OBJ 4
literate. Bishop Darlington had book
of only three leaves. The first leaf was
black, the second leaf red, the third leaf
white. The black leaf suggested sin; the
red leaf atonement; the white leaf puri-
fication. That is the whole story. God
will abundantly pardon.
I must not forget TO say that as Christ,
stopping down, with his finger wrote on
the ground, it is evident that His sym
pathies are with this penitent woman and
that He has no sympathy with her hypo-
critical pursuers. just opposite to that
is the world $ habit. Why didn t these
unclean Pharisees bring one of their own
number to Christ for eXcoriation and
capital punishment? No, No; they
overlook that i'll a man which they dam
nate in a woman. And so the world has
had for offending women scourgeS auG
objurgation, and for just one offense she
becomes an outcast, while for men whose
lives have been sodomic for twenty
years, the world swings open its doors of
brilliant welcome, and they may sit in
legislatures and senates and parliaments
or on thrones. Unlike the Christ of my
text, the world writes a man S INSIDE
meanor in dust, but chisels a woman's
Offense with great capitals
UPON INEFFACEABLE MARBLE.
For foreign lords and princes, whose
names cannot even be mentioned in re-
spectacle circles abroad because they are
l. oh
American princesses of fortune wait and
Mt the first beck sail out with them into
the blaekness of darkness forever. And
in what are called higher circles of So
ciety there is now not only the imitation
of foreign dress and foreign manners, but |
an imitation Of foreign dissoluteness. [ |
like an Englishman and I like an Ameri-
can, but the sickest creature on earth is
an American playing the Englishman.
Society needs to be reconstructed on this
subject. Treat them alike, masculine |
crime and feminine crime. If you cut |
the one in granite, cut them both in |
granite. If you write the one in dust, |
write the other in dust. No, no, says |
the world let woman go down and let |
man go up. What is that hear FLASHING |
into the East river at midnight, and then |
there is gurgle as of strangulation, and |
iii Is SIllI. Never D1iHu. 1T Is Only Il |
woman too discouraged to live. Let the |
mills of the cruel world
GRIND RIGHT ON.
But while / speak of Christ of the text,
His STOPPING down writing in the dust, do
not think l underrate the literature OF
the dust. 1t is the most solemn and ire
mendous of all literature. 1t is the
greatest of all libraries. When Layard
exhumed Nineveh he was only opening
the door of its mighty dust, The exca-
vatious of Pompeii have only been the
unelasping of the lids of q volume of
nations dust. When Admiral Farragut
and his friends, few years ago, Wis
tied that resurFeeted city, the house of
Balbo, who had been one of its chief
citizens in its prosperous days, was opened
and table was spread in that house
which 1910 years mas been buried by
volcanic eruption, and Farragut
and his guests walked over the
exquisite mosaics and under the beauti-
full freseo, and it almost seemed like be-
ing entertained by those who eighteen
centuries ago had turned to dust On,
this mighty literature of the dust Where |