News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1892-03-31

! van of camels, when they might better
fracture every law of the language and
| shock their intellectual taste, and better
let every verb seek in vain for its NOM
| NATIVE and every noun for its govern
ment, and every proposition lose its way
in the sentence and adjectives and par
| ticiples and pronouns get into a grand
riot worthy of the Fourth ward on cleo
ton day, than to commit a moral mac
curacy. Better swallow a thousand
gnats than one camel.
THE CENSORIoUS HYPOCRITE.
| 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-
sions. There are in every community
and in every church watchdogs who
| feel called upon to keep their eyes on
others and growl They are full of sus-
picions. They wonder if that man is not
dishonest, if that man is not unclean. if
there is not something wrong about the
other man. They are always the first to
| hear of anything wrong. Fultures are
always the first to smell carrion. They
are self appointed detectives. lay this
down as rule without any exception,
that those people who have the most
faults themselves are most merciless in
their watching of others. From scalp
of head to sole of foot they are full of
jealousies and hypercriticisms.
They spend their life in hunting for
muskrats and mud turtles instead of
hunting for Rocky mountain eagles, al
ways for something mean instead of
something grand. They look at their
neighbors' imperfections through a mi
| croscope and look at their own imper-
fections through telescope upside
! down. Twenty faults of their own do
not hurt them half so much as one
fault of somebody else. Their neigh
! bors' imperfections are like gnats and
they strain them out; their own imper-
fections are like camels and they swal
| low them.
But lest any might think they escape
the scrutiny of the text | have to tell
You that 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 go
into the confessional. Are not all
tempted to make the question, Where
shall | live now? greater than the ques-
ton, Where shall l live forever? How
shall get more dollars here? greater
than the question, How shall l lay up
treasures in heaven? the question, How
shall pay my debts to man? greater
than the question, How shall l meet
my obligations to God? the ques-
ton, 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 1t
extirpated from my nature? the ques-
ton, What shall | do with the twenty
or forty or seventy years of my sublunar
existence? greater than the question,
What shall l do with the millions of
cycles of my post-terrestrial existence?
Time, how small it Isl Eternity, how
vast it is! The former more insignificant
in comparison with the latter than a
gnat is insignificant when compared
with a camel. We lodged the text. We
said, "That doesn't mean me, and that
doesn't mean me-" and with a ruinous
benevolence 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 We're larger than
behemoth, as though a swallow took
wider circuit than an albatross, as
though nettle were taller than a Lee
banon cedar, as though a gnat were
greater than camel, as though min
ute were longer than a century, as
though time were higher, deeper, broad
er than eternity. So the text which
flashed with lightning of wit as Christ
uttered it, is followed by the crashing
thunders of awful catastrophe to those
who make the questions of time greater
than the questions of the future, the on
coming, overshadowing future. Oh,
Eternity! Eternftyl Eternity! --