The Penn's Grove record., 1889-03-09
PENIS GROVE N. j. SATURDAY. MARCH 9. 1885,

others. Here they are-twenty stou
nen arrestlng and a~rraigning one veal
wo1nah Magnificent business to b,
9 engaged inl They wanted the fun o
: seeing her faint away under a heavl
|, Juuicial sentence from Christ, and thel
aiter she had been taken outside tn
CITY q fastened at the foot or a pre-
ciplce, the Scribes and Pharisees want
/ Ell the satisfaction of each coming ant
cropping q big stone on her head, TO
that was the style of capital punish
ment That they asked for. Some peopl,
nave taken the responsibility of saying
that Christ never laughed. But !
think as he saw those men drop every
thing, chagrined, mortified, exposed,
, anu go u quicker than they came In,
HE MUST HAVE LAUGHED.
AT n rate, 1t makes me laugh to reat
OF It. All of these libertines. drama
IiZing Indignation against impurity
Blind bats ~lecturing on opticsl A fiOch
OF crows on their way up from a carcass
denouncing carrion! Yes, l think tina
one word written on the ground tina
day. by the finger of Christ was thu
awful word Hypocrisy. But / am sure
there was another word in that dust,
From her entire manner 1 am sure thai
arraigned woman was rep~entent. Shit
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
ground, He wrote that mighty. that i'm.
perial word Forgiveness.
When on Sinai God wrote the law,
lie 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 offence of this
woman He writes 1t in dust SO that IL
can be easily rubbed out; and when she
repents Of 1t, oh, He was a merciful
Christi l was reading of
LEGEND
that is told in the far east about Him,
He was walking through the streets Of
a city and He saw a crowd around a
dead dog. And one man said: "What
a loathsome object is that dogl' "Yes,n
said another, ''his ears are mauled and
bleeding" Eyes" said another, seven
his hide would not be of any use to
the tanner" eyes" said another,
'the odor of his carcass is dreadful. y
Then Christ, standing there, said
"But pearls cannot equal the whiteness
of his teeth" Then the people, moved
by the idea that any n could find any
thing pleasant concerning a dead dog,
said: "Why, this must be Jesus OF
Nazareth" Reproved and convicted,
they went away. Surely this legend of
Christ is good enough to be true. Kind
ness 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
monumental granite with the letters
| that the storms of a thousand years can.
not obliterate. Bishop darlington had
a look of only three leaves. The first
leaf was black, the second leaf red, the
| third leaf white. The black leaf sug-
gested sin; the red leaf atonement; the
white leaf publication. That is the
whole story. God will abundantly par
don.
SYMPATHY WITH THE PENITENT.
/ must not forget to say that as Christ,
STOPPING down, with His finger wrote
on the ground, it Is evident that His
syapathles are with this p~enitent
woman, and that He has no sympathy
with her hypocritical pursuers. Just
opposite to that is the worlds habit.
Why didn't these unclean Pharisees
bring one Of their own number to
Christ for excoriation and capital pun
ishmentp No, no; they overlook that in
d man which they damnate in woman.
And 10 the world has had for offending
women scourges and objurgation, and
for lust one offence she bee omes an1out-
cast, 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 leglsla-
lures and senates and parlaments, or on
thrones. Unlike the Christ of my text,
the world writes a mans misdemeanor
In dust, but chisels a woman's- offence
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
walking lazarettos of abomination, our
American princess of fortune wait, and
at the first beck sail out with them into
the blackness and darkness forever.
| And in what are called higher circles of
society there is now not only the imita-
ton Of foreign dress and foreign man
lners, but an imitation of foreign disso-
luteness. / like an Englishman, and
| l like an American, but the sfckest crea-
ture on earth is an American playing
the Englishman. Society needs to be
reconstructed on this subject. Treat
them alike, masculine crime and femin-
inc crime. If you cut the n in gran
lite, cut them both in granite. II you
write the one in dust, write them both
In dust. No. no, says the world: let
woman go down and let man 60 up.
What is that l hear FLASHING into the
East River at midnight? and then there
is a gurgle as of strangulation, and all
is still, Never mind. 1t is only a wo-
man too discouraged to live, Let the
mills of the cruel world grind right on.
But while l speak of Christ Of the
text, His STOPPING down writing in the
dust, do not think | underrate the liter
allure Of the dust. 1t is the
MOST TREMENDOUS OF ALL LITERA-
TURE.
1t is the greatest of all libraries. When
| Layard exhumed Nineveh he was only
opening the door of its mighty dust.
The excavations of Pompeii have only
been the unclasping of the lids of a vol.
ume of a nations dust, When Admiral
| Farragut and his friends, a few years
ago, visited that resurrected city, the
house of Balbo, who had been n Of Its
| chief citizens in its prosperous days,
was opened. and a table was spread in
| that house which eighteen hundred and
ten years had been buried by volcanic
eruption, and Farragut and his guests
walked over the exquisite mosaics and
under the beautiful fresco, and 1t almost
seemed like being entertained by those
| who eighteen centuries ago had turned
TO dust. Oh this mighty literature OF
| the dust! Where are the remains of
! S~ennacherib and Attila and Epaminon-
das and Tamerlaue and Trojan and
| Philip of Macedon and julius Cesar?
Dusti Where are the heroes who
fought on both sides at Charonea, at
Hastings, at Marathon, at Cressy, OF
| the 10000 men who fought at Agin
court, Of the 250.U01 men who faced
death at Jena. Of the 100000 whose