Martinsburg herald. [volume] (Martinsburg, W. Va.) 1881-1920, 1892-04-02

ton postlon anea1 and latkey 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
basket of peaches from neighbor's stall.
but who would not scrupls to depress the
fruit market; and as long as l can remember
we have beard every summer the peach crop
or Maryland is a failure, and by the time the
crop comes in the Misrepresentation makes
difference OF millions of dollars A man
who would not steal one peach basket steals
fifty thousand peach baskets
Any summer go Gown into the Mercantile
library, In the reading rooms, and see the
newspaper reports of the crops from all PARIS
Of the country, and their pbraseology is very
much the same, and the same men wrote
Inem, methodlcaliF and UNANIMOUSLY carry
ing out the huge lying about the grain crop
from year to year and for score of years.
After while there is a corner in the
wheat market, and men who had a contempt
for petty theft will burgiarize the wheat
bin OF nation an commit larceny upon the
American corncrib. And men viii 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
camels which they expect after awhile to
swallow. Society mas to be entirely recon.
structed on this subject. We are to find
that sin is inexcusabie in proportion as it
is great.
1 know in our time the tendency is to
charge religious frauds upon good men.
They say, "Jh, what a class of frauds YOU
have in the Church of God in this day. and
when an elder of a church or q deacon or a
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
pica-"Another Saint Absconded,p "Cler-
ical Scoundrelism,n Religion at a Dis
count" Shame on the Churches" while
there are thousand scoundreis outside the
church TO where there is one inside the
church, and the misbehavior of those who
never sea the inside of church is SO great it
is enough to tempt man to become Chris
tian 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 JOAN Milton in his
Paradise Lost" while he condemns Satan,
gives such grand description of him you
have hard work to suppress your adtnira-
ton. Oh, this straining out of small sins
like gnats, and this gulping down great in
Equities like camels.
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 a farthing, appropriate the money
house to sell, and he tells his customer it is
worth $40, COO Next day the assessor comes
around and the owner says it is worth $l5,-
900. The Government of the United States
took off the tax from personal income,
among other reasons because SO few people
would tell the truto, 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 overseer 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. telling the custom house officer
on the wharf, "rhere 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, strainlng out all
the inaccuracies of speech with fine sieve
of literary criticism, while through their
conversation go SANDER and lnnuendo and
profanity and falsehool larger than a whole
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 nominative, and
every noun for its government, and every
proposition lose its way In the sentence, and
adjectives and participles and pronouus get
into grand riot worthy of the Fourth ward
on election day, then to commit moral ill.,
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 aud 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. TEey are full of suspicious. 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 al
ways the first to hear of anything wrong.
Vultures are always the first to smell car
rionu They are self appointed detectives.
lay tais down as rule without any excep-
tian-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 jeaiousies and
hypercrIticismS.
They spend their lie 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' impertectlons
through microscope, and look at their own
imperfections through telescope upside
down. Twenty faults OF their own do not
hurt them half so much as one fault of some
body else. Their neighbours imperfections
are like gnats. and they strain them out;
their own imperfections are ike camels, and
they swallow them.
But lest any might think they escape the
scrutiny of the text, l 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 go into the confessional. Are not
all tempted to make the question. Where
shall live now? greater than the
question, Where shall | live forever
How shall ! get more dollars here? greater
than the question, How saal | lay
up treasures in heaven? the question, How
shall pay my debts to man? greater than
the question, How shall l meet my obliga-
tons to Goo? the question, How shall
gain the world? greater than the question,
What if lose my soul2 the question: Why
did God let sin come into the world? greater
than the question, How shall ] get it ex-
trpated from my nature? the question,
What shall do with thu 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 existence? Time how small it is!
Eternity, how vast it isl The former more
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 rulnouS 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 q behe.
moth, as though a swallow took wider cir
cult than an a'batross as though nettle
were taller than Lebanon cedar as
though giant were greater than camel,
as though a minute were longer than a
century, as though time were higher,
deeper, broader than eternity. So the
text which flashed with lightning of wit as
Christ uttered it, is followed by the crash
ing thunders of awful catastrophe to those
who make the questions of time greater than
the questions OF the future, the oucoming,
overshading future. o Eternity! Eternity
Eternity
TI,o yads nf