The Red Cloud chief., 1892-04-08

W year LIZ IOT q SCOEc VI YEARS. hloCI
a while there is a corner" in the wheat
market, and men who had a contempt
for a petty theft will burglarize the
wheat bin of a nation and commit lar
ceny upon the American corn crib. And
men will sit in churches and in reform.
atory institutions trying to strain out
the small gnats of scoundrelism, while
in their grain elevators and in their
stOrehouses they are fattening huge
camels which they expect after a while
to swallow. Society has to be entirely
reconstructed on this subject. We are
to find that a sin is inexcusable in pro-
portion as it is great.
l know in our time the tendency is to
charge religious frauds upon good men.
They say: 20, what a class of frauds you
have in the church of God in this day."
and when an elder of a church, or a
deacon, or a minister of the gospel, or q
superintendent of a Sabbath school
turns out a defaulter, what display
heads there are in many of the news
papers. Great primer type. Five line
plea. "Another Saint Absconded,"
SlCTlCdl oCOuIiUICtLSlh. htliHlOh az
a Discount, - ''Shame on the Churches"
while there are a thousand scoundrels
outside the church to where there is one
inside the church, and the misbe-
havior of those who never see
the inside of a church is SO
great it is enough to tempt a man to
become a Christian to get out of their
company. But in all circles, religious
and i%rreligious, the tendency is to ex-
cuse 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 to suppress your adj
miration. o, this straining out of small
sins like gnats, and this gulping down
great iniquities like camels.
This subject does not give the picture
of n or two persons, but is a gallery
in which thousands of people may see
their likeness. For instance, all those
people who, while they would not rob
their neighbor Of a farthing, appropriate
the money and the treasure of the pub
lie. A man has a house to sell, and he
tells his customer it is worth so, 200.
Next day the assessor comes around aud
the owner says it is worth s15, 900.
Described in the text are all those who
are particular never to break the law of
grammar and who want all their Ian
guage an elegant specimen of syntax,
straining out all the inaccuracies of
speech with a fine sieve of literary criti-
cism, while through their conversation
go Islander, and inuendo, and profanity,
and falsehood larger than a whole cara
van Of camels.
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 wv great transgres-
sions. There are in every community
and in every church watch dogs who
feel called upon to keep their eyes on
others and growl. They are full Of
suspicious. They wonder if that man
is not dishonest, if that man is not I'M
clean, if there is not something wrong
about the other man. They are always
the first to hear of anything wrong.
Vultures are always the first
to smell carrion. They are self-ap-
pointed detectives. l lay this down
as a rule without any exception,
that those people who have the
most faults themselves are most merci-
less 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 Rocky Mountain eagles, al
ways for something mean instead of
something grand. They look at their
neighbors' i~mperfections through a mi
crope and look at their own imperfec-
tions through a telescope upside down.
Twenty faults of their own do not hurt
them half SO much as one fault of some
body else. Their neighbors' imper-
fections 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, l 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 1 live now?" greater than the
question: ''Where shall 1 live for
ever??" ''How shall 1 get more dol
lars here?" greater than the ques-
ton: 'How shall l lay up treasures in
Heaven? the question, How shall l pay
my debts to man? greater than the
question, How shall l meet my obliga-
tons to God? the question, How shall
l gain the world? greater than the
question, What if l lose my soul? the
question, Why did Goblet sin come into
the world? greater than the question,
How shall 1 get it extnpated from my
nature? the question, What shall l
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 post
terrestrial existence? Time, how small
it is. Eternity, how vast it is! The
former more insignificant in comparison
with the latter than a gnat is insignif-
cant 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 b~enevolence we arc
giving the whole sermon away
But let us all surrender to the charge.