Shenandoah herald. [volume] (Woodstock, Va.) 1865-1974, 1892-04-01
per from the basement doorway, and win 90

| HceI
That same man, the evening of the day on
| which he watered the stock. will kneel with
his family in prayer and thank God for the
prosperity of the day, then kiss his children
| good night with al. air which seems to say:
II hope you will all grow up to be as good
| as your fatherp Prisons for sins insectile
in Size. but palaces for crimes dromedarian.
No mercy for sins animalcule in proportion,
but great leniency for mastodon iniquity.
1t is time that we learn in America that
sin is not excusabie in proportion as it de-
clares large dividends aud has outriders in
equipage. Many man is riding to perdi-
ton position ahead and lackey behind. To
steal dollar is gnat; to steal many thou
sands of dollars Is camel. There is many a
| fruit dealer who would not Consent TO steal
a basket of peaches from neighbors stall,
but who would not scruple to depress the
| fruit market; and as long as | can remember
we have heard every summer the peach crop
of Maryland is failure, and by the time the
crop comes in the Misrepresentation makes a
difference of millions of dollars. A man
wno would not steal one peach basket steals
fifty thousand peach baskets
Any summer 60 Gown into the Mercantile
( library, in the reading rooms, and SEQ the
newspaper reports of the crops from all paris
I the country, and their phraseology is very
Them methodically and UNANIMOUSLY carry
ing out the huge lying about the grain crop
from year to year and for a score of years.
After a while there is corner" in the
wheat market, and men who had contempt
for petty theft will burglarize the wheat
bin OF nation AMI commit larceny upon the
American corncrib And men will sit in
churches and in reformatory institutions try
ing to strain out the small gnats of scoundrel-
ism, while in their grain elevators and in
their storehouses they are fattening huge
,amels which they expect after awhile to
swallow. Society has TO be entirely recon-
structed on this subject. We are to find
that sin is inexcusable in proportion as it
is great.
/ know in our time the tendency is to
charge religious frauds upon good raen.
They say, "Oh, what a class of frauds you
have in the Church Of God in this day." and
when an elder Of q church or deacon or
minister of the Gospel or superintendent
of Sabbath school turns out defaulter
what display heads there are in many of the
newspapers-great primer type; five line
pica-''Another Saint Absconded," "Cler-
zeal Scoundrelisn," Religion at a Dis
count Shame on the Churches" while
there are a thousand scoundrels outside the
church to where there is one inside the
church, and the misbehavior Of those who
never see the inside of a church is so greatit
is enough to tempt man to become Chris
tan TO get out Of their company.
But in all circles religious and irreligious,
the tendency is to excuse sin in proportion
as it is mammoth. Even John Milton in his
paradise Lost" while he condemns Satan,
gives such a grand description OF him you
have hard work 70 suppress your admira-
ton. Oh, this straining out OF small sins
like gnats, and this gulpiny down great in
iduities like cames.
This subject does not give the picture OF
Of one or two persons but Is gallery in
which thousands OF people may see their
likenesses. For instance, all these people
who. while they would not rob their neigh
Dor Of q farthing, appropriate the money
and the treasure of the public. A man has
house to sell, and he tells his customer it is
worth $50 600. Next day the assessor comes
around and the owner says 1t IS worth SD
900. The Government Of the United States
took off the tax from personal income,
among other reasons because 50 few people
would tell the truth, and many man with
an income of hundreds of dollars day made
statements which seemed to imply he was
about TO be handed over to the oversser OF
the poor. -,
Careful to pay their passage from Liver
pool to New YORK, yet smuggling in their
Saratoga trunk ten silk dresses from Paris
and a half dozen watches from Geneva,
Switzerland, falling the custom house officer
on the wharf. There is nothing in that
trunk but wearing apparel and putting
five dollar gold piece in his hand to punctu-
ate the statement.
Described in the text are all those who are
particular never to break the law OF gram
mar and who want all their language an
elegant specimen of syntax, stralning out all
the inaccuracies of speech with fne SIEVE
of literary criticism, while through their
conversation 90 SANDER and innuendo ana
profanity and falsshoo1 larger than whoie
caravan OF camels wnen they might better
fracture every law of the language and
shock their intellectual taste, and better let
verb seek in vain for its nominatlve, ana
every noun for its government. and every
preposition lose its way in the sentence, and
adiectives and particiDles AMI pronouns get
into a grandriot worthy of the Fourth ward
on election day, then to commit moral in-
accuracy. Better swallow thousand gnats
than one camel.
Such persons are also described in the
text who are very much alarmed about
the small faults OF others and have no
alarm about their own great transgres-
siong. There are in every community and
in every church watchdOgs who feel called
upon to keep their eyes on Others ana
growl. they are full Of suspicious. Iney
wonder if that man is not dishonest, II that
man is not unclean, if there is not something
wrong about the other mau. They are al
ways the first to hear of anything wrong.
Vultures are always the first to smell car
rion They are self appointed detectives. L
lay this down as rule without any excep-
tian-that those people who have the most
faults themselves are most merclless IN tner
watching of others. From scalp OF head to
sole of foot they are full of jealousles and
hypercrticisms.
They spend their life in hunting for musk
rats and mud turtles instead of hunting for
Rocky Mountain eagles; always for some
thing mean instead of something grand.
They look at their neighbors' imperfections
through microscope, and look at their owh
imperfections through telescope upside
down. Twenty faults Of their own do mol
hurt them half so much ms one fault Of some
body else Their neighbours imperfections
are like gnats. and they strain them out:
their own imperfections are like camels, and
they swallow them.
But lest any might think they escape the
scrutiny Of the text, have to tell you we
all come under the divine satire when we
make the questions of time more prominent
than the questions Of eternity. Come now,
let us all 90 into the confessional. Are not
all tempted to make the question, Where
shall / live nowS greater than the
question, Where shall l live forever.
How shall get more dollars here? greater
than the question, How shall lay
up treasures in heaven. the question. How
shall pay my debts to man; greater than
the question, How shall / meet my obliga-
tons to God? the question, How shall l
gain the world? greater than the question,
What if lose my soul? the question, Why
did God let sin come into the world? greater
than the question, How shall get it e1-
tirpated from my nature' the question,
What shall / DO with the twenty or forty
or seventy years of my subunar existence?
greater that the question, What shall do
with the millions of cycles OF my post
terrestrial exIstsnces Time, how small It is!
Eternity, how vast it isl The former moro
Insignificant in comparison with the latter
than gnat is insignificant when compared
with camel. We dodge1 the text. We
said, THAT doesn't mean me- and that
doesn't mean me, and with a ruinous be-
nevolence we are giving the whole sermon
away.
But let US all surrender to the charge
What an ado about things here What
poor preparation for great eternity. As
though a minnow were larger than behe-
moth, as though q swallow took wider cir
cult than an dbatross, as though nettle
were taller than a Lebanon cedar, as
though giant were greater than camel,