The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1892-06-02

the American corn crib. And men will
sit in churches and reformatory lnstltu-
tiOns trying to strain out the small
gnats of scoundrelism, while IN their
grain elevators and in their stOrchouseS
they are fattening huge camels, which
they expect after awhile to swallow So
ciety has to be entirely rcco lstructed
on this subject. We are to find that
sin is inexcusable in proportion as 1t Is
great.
know in our time the tendency is to
charge religious frauds upon good men.
They say: ''Oh, what a Glass of frauds
you have in the church of God in this
day." and when an elder of a church,
or deacon, or minister of the Gospel,
or a superintendent of Sabbath-school
turns out defaulter, what display heads
there are in many of the newspapers.
Great primer type. ''Five-line plea.
"AnOther Saint AbSconded," Clerical
Scoundrclism, "'ReligiOn att Discount"
''Shame on the Churches" while there
are thousand scoundrels outside the
church where there is one inside the
church; and the miSbeheaviOr of those
who never see the inside of a church IS
so great it is enough to tempt man to
become Christian to get out Of their
company. But in all circles, religious
and irreligious, 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. Oh, this straining out of
small sins like gnats, and this gulping
down great iniquities like camels.
Described in the text are all those
who are particular never to break the
law of grammar, and who want all
their language an elegant specimen of
syntax, straining out all the inaccura-
cies of speech with a fine sieve of lit
erary criticism, while through their con-
versation go Islander, and innuendo, and
profanity and falschood, larger than a
whole caravan 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 nominative, and every noun
for it's government, and every preposi-
ton lose its way in the sentence, and
adjectives and participles and pronouns
| get into grand riot worthy of the
Fourth ward on election day, than to
commit moral inaccuracy. Better
swallow a thousand gnats than one
camel.
Such persons are also described in the
| 90 -,
the small faults of others, and have no
alarm about their own 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, ii there is not something wrong
about the other man. They are always
the first to hear anything wrong. Vul-
lures are always the first to smell
carrion. They are self-appointed de-
tectives. | lay this down as a 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 jealousics and hypercriticisms.
They spend their life in hunting for
musk rats 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 8
microscope, and look at their own i'm,
projections through a telescope upside
down. Twenty faults of their own dc
not hurt them half so much as one fault
of somebody else. Their neighbors i'm
projections are like gnats and they
strain them out; their own imperfec-
tions are like camels and they swallow
them.
But lest any might think they escape
the scrutiny of the text, have to tel
you that we all come under the Divine
satire, when we make the questions Of
time more prominent than the ques
tions of eternity. Come now, let us al
go into the confessional. Are not al
tempted to make the question. where
shall | live now? greater than the ques
ton, where shall live forever? How
shall get more dollars here? greater
) than the question, how shall lay III
} treasures in Heaven? the question, how
: shall I pay my debts to man? greater
: than the question, how shall ]
meet my obligations to God? the
question, how shall I gain the
world? greater than the question
what if ] lose my soul? the questi III
Why did God let sin come irlo the
. world? grcster than the question
| How shall ! get it extripated from my
nature? the question, what shall I d.
: with the twenty or forty or seventy
) years of my sublunar existence:
| greater than the question, What
} shall I do with the millions
) of cycles of my post-terrestrial ex-
: istence? Time, how small it is
) Eternity, how vast it is! The former
more insignificant in comparison with
than a gnat is insignificant when com.
pared with camel We lodged the
text. We said: ''That doesn't mean
me, and that doesn't mean me, and with
ruinous benevolence we are giving the
whole sermon away.
But let us all surrender to the charre