Democratic Northwest. [volume] (Napoleon, Ohio) 1869-1894, 1892-04-07

guage an elegant specimeu q synelx,
straining out all the inaccuraries Of
speech with a fine sieve Of literary eriti-
cism, while through their conversation go
slander and innuendo and profanity and
falsehood 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 its government, and every pFepO-
sition lose its way in the sentence, and ad-
jectives and participles and pronouns get
into a grand riot worthy of the Fourth
ward on election day, than to commit a
moral inaccuracy. Better swallow thou
sand gnats than one camel.
THE PETTY FAULT FINDERS.
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 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
rion. They are self appointed detectives.
| lay this down as a rule without any ex-
ception-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 jeal-
ousies and hypercriticisms.
They spend their life in hunting for
muskrats and mud turtles instead of hunt
ing for Rocky mountain eagles; always for
something mean instead of something
grand. They look at their neighbors' inn
perfections through microscope, and look
at their own imperfections through tele-
scope upside down. Twenty faults of their
own do not hurt them half so much as one
fault of somebody else. Their neighbors'
imperfections 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, 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 confes-
sional. Are not all tempted to make the
question, Where shall 1 live now? greater
than the question, Where shall live for
ever? 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 I meet my obliga-
tions to God? the question, How shall
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 I get it eX-
tirpated from my nature? the question,
What shall do with the twenty or forty
or seventy years of my sublunar existence?
greater that the question, What shall do
with the millions of cycles of my post-ter-
restrial existence? Time, how small it isl
Eternity, how vast it isl The former more
insignificant in comparison with the latter
than gnat is insignificant when COM
pared with Il camel. We lodged the text
We said, "That doesn't mean me, and that
doesn't mean me-" and with a ruinous 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
IuouSu " HllnHOW were larger IMAM Dene-
moth, as though swallow took wider cir
cult than an albatross, as though nettle
were taller than Lebanon cedar, as
though gnat were greater than camel,
as though 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
crashing thunders of awful catastrophe to
those who make the questions of time
greater than the questions of the future,
the oncoming, overshadowing future. o
Eternity EternityI Eternityl