The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1892-04-08

become Christian to get out of theil
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. o, this straining out of small
sins like gnats, and this gulping down
great iniquities like camels.
This subject does not give the picture
of one or two persons, but is gallery
in which thousands of people may see
their likeness. For instance, all those
people who. while they would not rot
their neighbor of a farthing, appropriate
the money and the treasure of the pub
lie. A man has a house to sell, and he
tells his customer it is worth $4,000.
Next day the assessor comes around and
the owner says it is worth $4,000.
The government of the United States
took Off the tax from personal income,
among other reasons because so few
people would tell the truth, and many a
man with an income of hundreds of dol
lars day made statements which
seemed to imply that he was about to
be handed over to the overseer of the
poor. Careful to pay their way from
Liverpool to New York, yet smuggling
in their Saratoga trunk ten silk dresses
from Pavis and half dozen watches
from Geneva, Switzerland, telling the
custom house officer on the wharf:
There is nothing in that trunk but
wearing apparel" and putting a 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
grammar and who want all their Ian
guage an elegant specimen of syntaX,
straining out all the inaccuracies of
speech with a fine sieve of literary criti-
cism. while through their conversation
go SANDER, and inuendo, and profanity,
and falsehood larger than whole cara
van 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 nomi-
native, and every noun for its govern
ment, and every proposition lose its way
in the sentence, and adjectives, and par
| ticiplcs, and pronouns get into grand
riot worry of the Fourth ward on cleo
ton day than to commit a moral mac
curacy. Better swallow a thousand
gnats than one camel.
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 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, if there is not something wrong
about the other man. They are always
the first to hear of anything wrong.
Vultures are always the first
to smell carrion. They are self-ap-
pointed detectives. 1 lay this down
as rule without any exception,
that those people who have the
most faults themselves are most merci-
less in their watching of others. From
scalp of head to sole of foot they are
full of jealohsies and hypercriticisms.
They spend their life in hunting for
muskrats and mud turtles instead of
hunting Rocky Mountain eagles, al
ways for something mean instead of
something grand. They look at their
neighbors' imperfections through mi
crope and look ut their own imperfec-
lions through telescope upside down.
Twenty faults of their own do not hurt
them half so much as one fault of some
body else. Their neighbors' imper-
fections are like gnats, and they strain
them out; their own imperfections are
like camcls and they swallow them.
But lest any might thi&I they escape
the scrutiny of the text, l 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 confessional. Are not all
tempted to make the question: Where
shall live now?" greater than the
question: ''Where shall l live for
ever?" How shall l get more do
lars here?" greater than the ques-
ton: How shall lay up treasures in
Heaven? the question, How shall pay
my debts to man? greater than the
question, How shall l meet my obliga-
lions to God? the question, How shall
l gain the world? greater than the
question, What if l lose my soul? the
question, Why did God let sin come into
the world? greater than the question,
How shall get it eXtirpated from my
nature? the question, What shall
do with the twenty or forty or seventy
years of my sublunar existence?
greater than the question, What shall
/ do with the millions of cycles of post
terrestrial existence? Time, how small
it is. Eternity, how vast it is. The
former more insignificant in comparison
with the latter than gnat is insignifi-
cant when compared with camel. We
lodged the text. We said, THAT doesn't
mean me, and that doesn't mean me-"
and with a ruinous benevolence 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 a great eternity.
As though a minnow were larger than
behemoth, as though a swallow took
wider circuit than an albatroSS, as
though nettle were taller than Leb-
anon cedar, as though gnat were
greater than camel, as though minute
were longer than 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,
ovcrshadowing future. o, Eternity!
E+arpitvf