News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1892-03-31

the Grain Market-Perjury in Evadinl
Taxes-Smuggling and Bribery.
BROOKLYN, March 27.-The tendency
- Journalism in religion and to hypo
Iritical pretense in society received {
revere castigation from the pulpit of the
Brooklyn Tabernacle this morning. DR.
Talmage made vigorous onslaught
upon it, basing his remarks on the text
Matthew xiii, "a, 'Ye blind guides
who strain at gnat and swallow 9
camel"
A proverb is compact wisdom, knowl
edge in chunks, library in a sentence
the electricity of many clouds discharged
in one bolt, a river put througha mill
race. When Christ quotes the proverE
of the text, he means to set forth the lu
dicrous behavior of those who make q
great buster about small sins and have
no appreciation of great ones.
In my text small insect and large
quadruped are brought into comparison
"a gnat and camel. You have il
museum or on the desert seen the latter
great awkward, sprawling creature
with back two stories high and stomach
having collection of reservoirs for DIES
ert travel, an animal forbidden to the
Jews as food, and in many literature
entitled ''the ship of the desert" Tht
gnat spoken of in the text is in the grut
form. 1t is born in pool or pond, afte1
a few weeks becomes a chrysalis, ani
then after few days becomes the gna
as we recognize it. But the insec
e Il, n
est shape and it yet inhabits the water
for my text is a misprint and ought t.
read ''strain out a gnat."
My text shows you the prince of incon
sistencies. A man after long observa
ton has formed the suspicion that in {
cup of water he is about to drink there
is a grub or the grandparent of a gnat
He goes and gets sieve or strainer. He
takes the water and pours it through the
sieve in the broad light He says, q
would rather do anything almost than
drink this water until this larva be ex.
tirpated. This water is brought under
inquisition. The experiment is success
full. The water rushes through the sieve
and leaves against the side of the sieve
the grub or gnat. Then the man care
fully removes the insect and drinks the
water in placidity.
But going out one day, and hungry he
devours a ''ship of the desert" the camel,
which the Jews were forbidden to eat.
The astronomer has no compunctions
of conscience. He suffers from no indi-
gestion. He puts the lower jaw under
the camel's forefoot and his upper jaw
over the hump of the camel's back, and
gives one swallow and the dromedary
disappears forever He strained ont a
gnat, he swallowed camel.
THE SELF RIGHTEOUS PHARIsEEs.
While Christ's audience were yet smil-
ing at the appositeness and wit of his
illustration-for smile they did in
church, unless they were too stupid to
understand the hyperbole-Christ prac-
tically said to them, "That is you"
Functions about small things; reckless
about affairs of great magnitude. No
subject ever withered under surgeons
knife more bitterly than did the Phari-
sees under Christ's scalpel of truth.
As an anatomist will take human
body to pieces and put them under a
microscope for examination, so Christ
finds his way to the heart of the dead
Pharisee and cuts it out and puts it IN
der the glass of inspection for all gem
erations to examine. Those Pharisees
thought that Christ would hatter them
and compliment them, and how they
must have writhed under the red hot
words as he said, eye fools, We whited
sepulchers, We blind guides, which strain
ont a gnat and swallow camel"
There are in our day great many
gnats strained out and a great many
camels swallowed, and it is the object
of this sermon to sketch a few persons
who are extensively engaged in that
business.
First. remark that all those minis
tiers of the Gospel are photographed in
the text who are very scrupulous about
the conventionalities of religion, but
put no particular stress upon matters of
vast Importance. Church services ought
to be grave and solemn. There is no
room for frivolity in religious convoca-
ton. But there are illustrations, and
there are hyperboles like that of Christ
in the text that will irradiate with smiles
any intelligent auditory.
There are men like those blind guides
of the text who advocate only those
things in religious service which draw
the corners of the mouth down and de-
nounce all those things which have a
tendency to draw the corners of the
mouth up, and these men will go to in
stallations and to presbyteIies and to
conferences and to associations, their
pockets full of fine sieves to strain out
the gnats, while in their own churches
at home every Sunday there are fifty
people sound asleep. They make their
churches a great dormitory, and their
somniferous sermons are a cradle, and
the drawled out hymns lullaby, while
some wakeful soul in a pew with her
fan keeps the flies off unconscious per-
sons approximate.
Now, | say it is worse to sleep in
church than to smile in church, for the
latter implies at least attention, while
the former implies the indifference of
the hearers and the stupidity of the
speaker In old age or from physical
infrmity, or from long watching with
the sick, drowsiness will sometimes
overpower one, but when minister of
the Gospel looks off upon an audience
and finds healthy and intelligent people
struggling with drowsiness, it is time
for him to give out the doxology or pro-
.nounee the benediction. The great fault
Eof church services today is not too much
vivacity, but too much somnolence. The
gone is an irritating gnat that may be
leasily strained out; the other is a great,
sprawling and sleepy eyed camel of the
dry desert. In all our Sabbath schools,
in all our Bible classes, in all our pull
pits we need to brighten up our religious
message with such Christlike vivacity
as we find IN the text.
WIT AND PATHOs IN THE PULPIT.
take down from my library the biog-
Iaphies 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 Elijah used it
when he advised the Baalites, as they
could not make their god respond, tell
ing them to call louder, as their god
might be sound asleep or gone a-hunt-
ing. Job used it when he said to his
self conceited comforters, "Wisdom will
die with you" Christ not only used it
in the text, but when he ironically COM
plimented the putrefed Pharisees, say
ing, 1.-The whole need not physician
and when by one word he described the
cunning of Herod, saying, $50, ye, and
tell that fox"
Matthew Henrys Commentaries"
from the first page TO the last corus-
Gated with humor as summer clouds