Fort Worth gazette. [volume] (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1891-1898, 1892-03-28
Knowledge in Chunks and a Ii
brary in a Sentence.
THAT is WHAT A PROVERB is.
Extremely Particular About Very Small Things,
Utterly Reckless About Great Ones.
People are Very Particular to Wash Their
Hands, but Keep Their Hearts Foul
With the Spottings of the World
A Powerful Sermon


Special to the Gazette.
BRooKLYN, N Y, March 27.-The ten
dency to Journalism in religion and to hypo-
critical pretense in society received severe
castigation from the pulpit of the Brooklyn
] abernac'e this morning. DR.. Talmage
made a vigorous onslaught upon it, basing
his remarks on the text, Matthew xiii, n:
"Ye blind guides, who strain at gnat and
swallow 4 camel.'
A proverb is compact wisdom, knowledge
in chunks, a library in a sentence, the
electricity Of many clouds discharged IN
one bolt, river put through mill race.
When Christ quotes the proverb of the
text, he means 10 set forth the ludicrous
behavior of those who make a great blus-
ter about small SINS and have no apprecia-
ton of great ones.
In my text a small insect and large
puadruped are brought into Comparisons
gnat and a camel. You have in a museum
or on the desert seen the latter, a great,
awkward, sprawling creature, with back
two stories high and stomach having col
lection of reservoirs for desert travel, an
animal forbidden to the Jews as food and
in many literatures entitled 1.-THE ship of
the desert. - The gnat spoken of in the
text is in the grub form. it is born in pool
or pond, after a few weeks becomes
chrysalis, and then after 4 few days be-
comes the gnat as We recognize it. But the
insect spoken of in the text is in its very
smallest shape, and IL yet inhabits the
water-for my text is misprint and ought
to read ''strain out a guat
NV text shows you the prince of incon-
sistencies. a man after long observation
has formed the suspicion that in a cup of
water he is about TO drink, there is a grub
or the graudparent of gnat. he goes and
gets a ssive or strainer. He takes the
water and pours it through the sieve in the
broad light BE says, Il would rather do
anything almost than drink this water until
this larva be eXUirpated." This water is
brought under inquisition. The expert
ment is successful The water rusheS
through the sieve and leaves against the
side Of the sieve the grub or gnat. Then
the man carefully removes the insect and
drinks the water in placidity. But going
out one dav, and hungry, he devours
''ship of the desert, y the camel, which the
Jews were forbidden TO eat. The gastrono-
mer has no compunctions of conscience.
He suffers from no indigestion. He puts
the lower jaw under the camel's forefoot,
and his upper jaw over the hump of the
cancels back, and gives one swallow and
the dromedary disappears forever. He
strained out gnat, he swallowed camel.
While ChriSt's audience were yet smiling
ct the appOSiteneSS and wit of his illuStra-
tion-for smile they did in church, unless
they were too stupid to understand the
hyDsrbOle-Christ practically said TO them,
THAT is YOU" Punctilious about small
things; reckless about affairs of great mag
nitude No subject ever withered under a
surgeons knife more bitterly than did the
Pharisees under Christ's scalpel of truth
AS an aratomist viii take human body 10
pieces and put them under a microscope for
examination, so Christ finds his way to the
heart of the dead Pharisee and cuts it out
and puts IL under the glass of inspection for
all generations 20 examine. Those Phari-
sees thought that Christ would flatter them
, and compliment them, and how they must
sss9N md under the red-hot words as be