Fort Worth gazette. [volume] (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1891-1898, 1892-03-31

md N the text
/ take down from my library the biog-
raphies OF ministers and writers of past
ages. inspired and uninspired, who have
done the most TO bring souls to Jesus Christ
and find that without single exception
they consecrated their wit and their humor
To Christ El ijah used it when ne adj
vised the Baalites, as they could not make
their god respond, telling them to call
louder, as.their god might be sound asleep
OF gone a-hunting Job used it when he
said TO his self-conceited comforters:
ssIEisdom viii die with you" Christ not
only used it in the text, but when he ironi-
cally complimented the purified Pharisees,
saying, THE whole need not a physician"
and when by one word he described the
coming of Herod. saying, go, ye, and tell
that fox" Matthew Henry's Commenta-
ries from the first page 10 the last corus-
Gated with humor as summer clouds with
heat lightning. John Bunyan's writings are
as full of hnmor as they are of S saving
truth, and there is not an aged man here
who has ever read Pilgrims Progress who
does not remember thai while reading it he
smiled as often as he wept.
ChrySostom. George Herbert Robert
South, John Wesley, George Whiteield,
Jeremy Taylor, Rowland Hill, Nettlcton,
George G. Finney, and all the men Of the
past who greatly advanced the kingdom Of
God consecrated their wit and their humor
the ages, and I say to these young theologi-
cal students, who cluster in these services
Sabbath by Sabbath sharpen your wits as
keen as scimitars, and then take them into
this holy war. II is very short bridge be-
tween a smile and tear, a suspension
bridge from eye to hp,and il is soon crossed
over. and a smile IS sometimes just as
sacred as a tear. There is as much religion,
and 1 think q little more, in a spring morn
ing than in a stalless midnight. Religious
work without any humor or wit in it is
banquet with side OF beef, and that raw,
and no condiments and no dessert succeed
ing. People will not sit down at such
banquet BY all means remove all frivolity
and all pathos ana all lightness aud all vul-
garity-strain them out through the sieve
of holy discrimination; but. on the other
hand, beware of that monster which over
shadows the Christian church to-day, con-
Ventionality, coming up from the great
Sahara desert of ecclesiasticism, having on
its back hump of sanctimonious gloom
and vehemently refuse to swallow that
camel.
Oh. how particular a great many people
are about the intinitesimals while they are
quite reckless about the magnitudes.
What did Christ say? Did he not ex-
coriate the people IL his time who were
so careful to wash their hands before
meal but did not wash their heartSl is
a bad thing to have unclean hands; it is
worse thing to have an unclean heart.
How many people there are in our time who
are very anxious that after their death they
shall be buried with their feet toward the
East, and not at all anxious that during
their whole life they should face in the
right direction so that they shall come up
in the resurrection of the just whichever
way they are buried. How many there are
chiefly anxious that a minister of the Cos
pei shall come in the line of apostolic sue
cession, not caring so much whether he
comes from Apostle Paul or Apostle Judas.
They have way of measuring gnat until
it is larger than a camel
Again: My subject photographs all those
who are tbhorrent of small sins while they
are reckless in regard to magnificent thefts.
You will find many merchant who, while
he so careful that he would not take yard
of cloth or a spool of cotton from the
counter without paying for 1t, and who If
bank cashier should make a mistake and
send in a roll OF bills s. too much would
dispatch a messenger in hot haste to return
the surplus, yet who Will go into a stock
company in which after a while he gets
control of the stock, and then waters the
stock and make 100000 appear like 5000, 600.
He only stole 100000 by the operation.
Many of the men of fortune made their
wealth in that way. One of those men en-
gagged in such unrighteous acts, that even
ing, the evening of the very day when he
watered the stock, will find wharf-rat
stealing an evening newspaper from the
basement doorway, and will go out and
catch the urchin by the collar so tightly
the poor fellow cannot say that ii was
thirst for knowledge that led him to the
dishonest act, but grip the collar tighter
and tigher, saying
81 have been looking for you for long
while; you stole my paper four or five
times, haveniS youl you miserable wretch"
And then the old stock gambler, with a
voice they can hear three blocks, will cry
OUT 'sPolice, police!'' That same man,
the evening of the day in 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 an air which seems to say, II hope
you viii all grow up to be as good as your
fatherl' 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 eXcusable in proportion as it de-
clares large dividends and has outriders in
equipage. Many man is riding to perdi-
ton, position ahead and lackey behind.
To steal dollar is a gnat; TO steal many
thousands of dollars is camel. There is
many a fruit dealer who would not consent
TO steal a basket of peaches from his neigh
depress the fruit market; and as long as
can remember we have heard every summer
the peach crop of Maryland is a failure,
and by the time the crop comes in the mis-
makes difference of mil
lions of dollars. A man who would not
steal one fruit basket, steals $4,000 peach
baskets. Any summer go down into the
Mercantile library, in the reading rooms,
and see the newspaper reports of the crops
from all parts of the country and their
phraseology is very much the same, and
the same men wrote them, methodically and
UNANIMOUSLY carrying out the huge lying
about the grain crop from year to year and
for q score of years.
After a while there is corner" in the
wheat market, and men who had con-
tempt for petty theft will burglarize the
wheat bin of a nation and commit larceny
upon the American corn-crib. And men
will sit in churches and in reformatory in
situations trying TO strain out the small
gnats of scoundrelism, while in their grain
and in their storehouses they are
huge camels which they expect |
after while to swallow. Society has to
be entirely reconstructed on this subject
We are to find that sin is inexcusable in
as it is great.
I know in our time the tendency is to
charge religious frauds upon good men.
They say, ooh, what a class of frauds you
have in the church of God in this day." |