Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1891-03-27
THE PLAGUE OF LIES.
FIFTH SERMON IN THE SERIES
ON THE CITY'S PLAQUES.

course Which Will Apply Equally Wen
in Country and City -"Ho Shall Not
Surely DE-" Satan Told Eye, and He
Lied.
"The Plague of Lies was selected by
DIR. Talmage for the subject of the fifth
of his discourses on 1.-The Plaques of
These Tarec Cities" His text was
Genesis iii, 4, "Ye shall not surely die"
That was a point blank lie. Satan
told it to Eve to induce her to put her
semicircle of white, beautiful teeth into
forbidden apricot or plum or peach or
apple. He practically said to her, ooh.
Eve, just take bite of this and you will
be omnipotent and omniscient. You
shall be as gods" Just opposite was the
result 1t was the first lie that was ever
told in our world. 1t opened the gate
for all the falsehoods that have ever
alighted on this planet. 1t introduced q
plague that covers all nations, the plague
of lies. Far worse than the plaques of
Egypt, for they were on the banks of the
Nile, but this on the banks of the Hud-
son, on the banks of the East River, on
banks OF the Ohio, and the Mississippi,
and the Thames and the Rhine, and the
Tibcr and on both sides of all rivers.
The Egyptian plaques lasted only few
weeks. but for six thousand years has
ragged this plague of lies.
There are hundred ways of telling
lie. A mans entire life may be false
hood, while with his lips he may not
once directly falsify. There are those
who state what is positively untrue, but
afterward say ''may be" softly. These
departures from the truth are called
''white lies;" but there is really no such
thing as a white lie.
The whitcst lie that was ever told was
as black as perdition. No inventory of
public crimes will be sufficient that omits
this gigantic abomination. There are
men high in church and state actually
useful, sclf-denying and honest in many
things, who, upon certain subjects and
in certain spheres, arc not at all to be
depended upon for veracity. Indeed,
there arc many men and women who
have their notions Of truthfulness so
thoroughly perverted that they do not
| know when they are lying. With many
it is a cultivated sin; with some it seems
a natural intirmity. l have known peo-
pie who seemed to have been born liars.
The falsehoods of their lives extended
from cradle to grave. Presentations,
misrepresentation and dishonesty of
speech appeared in their first utterances,
and were as natural to them as any of
their infantile diseases, and were q sort
OF moral Group or spiritual scarlatina.
But many have been placed in circum-
stances whore this tendency has day by
day and hour by hour been called to larger
development. They have gone from at
tainment to attainment, and from class
to class until they have become regularly
graduated liars.
The air of the city is filled with false.
hoods. They hang pendent from the
chandeliers of our finest residences; they
crowd the shelves of some of our mer.
chant princes; they fill the sidewalk from
curb-stone % brown stone facing; they
cluster around the mechanics hammer
and blossom from the end of the mer
chants yard-stick, and sit in the doors
of churches. Some call them ''fiction.
Some style them s'fabrication." You
disguised, delusion, romance, evasion,
pretense, fable, deception, misrcpresenta
ton; but, as am ignorant of anything
to be gained by the hiding of God defy
ing outrage under a photographer:
blanket, shall call them what my father
taughtsne to call them-lics.
shall divide them into agricultural
mercantile, mechanical, ecclesiastica
and social lies.
First, then, l will speak of those that
are more particularly agricultural. There
is something in the perpetual presence ol
natural objects to make man pure
The trees never issue "false stock.
Wheat fields are always honest. Rye
and oats never move out in the night
not paying for the place they have occu.
pied. Corn shocks never make false as.
signments. Mountain brooks are always
"current." The gold on the grain is
never counterfeit. The sunrise never
tlaunts in false colors. The dew sports
only genuine diamonds. Taking farmers
as class, believe they are truthful
and fair in dealing and kind-hearted.
But the regions surrounding our cities
do not always send this sort of men to
our markets. Day by day there creak
through our streets and about the mar
ket houses farm wagons that have not an
honest spoke in their wheel or q truthful
rivet from tongue to tailboard.
During the last few years there have
been times when domestic economy has
foundered on the farmers firkin. Neither
high taxes, nor the high price of dry
goods, nor the exorbitancy of labor,
could excuse much that the city has wit
messed in the behavior of the yeomanry.
BY the quiet firesides in Westminster and
Orange counties l hope there may be
seasons of deep reflection and hearty re-
pentance. Rural districts are accus-
toned to rail at great cities as given up
to fraud and every form of unrighteous-
ness, but our cities do not absorb all the
denominations. Our citizens have learned
the Importance of not always trusting to
the size and style of apples on the top of
farmers barrel as an indication of
what may be found farther down. Many
of our people are accustomed to watch
and see how correctly bushel of beets
is measured, and there are not many
honest milk cans.
Deccptions do not all cluster round
city halls When our cities sit down and
weep over their sins, all the surrounding
countries ought to come i'll and weep
with them. There is often hostility on
the part of producers against traders, as
though the man who raises the corn was
necessarily more honorable than the
grain dealer who pours it into his man.
moth bin. There ought to be no such
"a D.