Essex County herald. [volume] (Guildhall, Vt.) 1873-1964, 1892-04-08

unClean hanus; IL Is a worse thing 70 have
an unclean heart. How many people there
are in our time who are very anxious that
after their death they shall be buried wit IN
their feet toward the east, and not at all
anxious that during thair whole life they
should face in the right direction so that
they SHALL come up in the resurrection OF the
Just whichever way they are buried How
many there are chiefly anxious that a min
lister OF the Gospel shall come in the line of
apostolic succession. not caring so much
whether he comeJ from Apostle Paul or
Apostle Judas. They have a way OF meas
uring gnat until it is larger than a camel.
Again, my subject photographs all those
who are abhorrent of small sins while they
are reckless in regard to magnificent thefts.
You will find many a merchant who while
he is so careful that he would not take a yard
OF cloth or a spool OF cotton FROM the counter
without paying for it, and who IL bank
cashier should make a mistake aud sen / in
roll of bills five dollars too much would dis
patch messenger in hot haste to return th-
surplus, yet who will go into a STOCK COMPANY
in which after awhile he gets control OF the
stock and then waters the STOCK AMI males
500 900 appear like 500, 90. He stole Only
500 600 by the operation. Many of the men
OF fortune made their wealth in that way.
One OF those men engaged in such unright-
eous acts that evening. the evening Of the
very day when he watered the stock, will
find n wharf rat stealing an evening newspa-
per from the basement door way, and will 90
out and catch the urchin by the collar and
twist the collar so tightly the poor fellow
cannot say that it was thirst for knowledge
that led him to the dishonest act but grip
the collar tighter and tighter, saying: "I
have been looking for you long while You
stole my paper four or five tunes haven't
you? You miserable wretch' And then
the old stock gam bier. with a voics they can
hear three blocks, will cry out, Police DO
lice"
That same man. the evening OF the day on
which he watered the stock. will kneel with
his family in prayer and thank God for the
prosperity Of the day. then kiss his children
good night with an air which seems to say:
II hope you will all grow up to bs as good
as your father" Prisons for sins insectile
in size, but palaces Tor crimes dromedarian.
No mercy for sins animalcule in proportion,
but great leniency for mastodon iniquity.
IL is time that we learp in America that
sin is not excusabie in proportion as it de-
clares large dividends and has cutriiers in
aqulpage. Many man is riding TO perd,-
ton position ahead and larSey behind. To
steal u dollar is Guat; to steal many thou.
sands dollars is a camel. There is many a
cruit dealer who would not consent to steal
q basket Of peaches from nelghbor's stall,
but who would not scrupls to depress the
fruit n,arket and as long as can remember
we have heard every summer the peach crop
OF Maryland is failure, and by the time the
crop comes in the Misrepresentation makes a
differenc, Of millions Of dollars. A man
who would not steal one peach basket steals
fifty thousand peach baskets.
Any summer so down into the Mercantile
library, in the reading rooms, and see the
newspaper reports OF the crops from all parrs
of the country, and their phraSeology Is very
much the same, and the same men wrote
them, methodically and infamously carry
ing out the huge lying about the grain crop
from year to year and for a score OF years
After while there is corner in the
wheat market, and men who had contempt
Tor petty theft will burglariEe the wheat
tan OF a nation and commit larceny upon the
American corncrh. And men will sit in
churches and in reformatory institutions try
ing to strain out the small gnats of sc1undre-
lsm, while in their grain elevators and in
their storehouses they are fattening huge
camels which they expect after awhile to
swallow. Society has TO be entirely recon-
structed on this subject. We are to find
that a sin is inexcusabe in proportion as it
IS great.
| know in our time the teniency is TO
charge religious frauds upon gooi men.
They say, "Uh, what a class of frauds you
tave in the Church of Goi in this day" ami
when an elder Of a church or a deacon or n
minister Of the Gospel or a superintendent
lf Sabbath school turns out defaultsr
what display heads there are in many OF the
n-wspapers-great primer type; five line
plea Another Saint Absconded" "Cler-
ica Scouudresm," Religion at Dis
count" Shane on the Churches" while
there are thousand scoundrelS outside the
church TO where there is one inside the
church, and the misbehavior Of those who
never see the inside of church is 50 grelt it
i'd enough TO tempt man to become a Chris
tian to get out of their company.
But in all circles, religious an irrelgious,
The tendency is TO excuse sin in proportion
as it is mammoth. Even John Milton in his
paradise Lost" while he condemns Satan,
gives such grand description of him you
have hard work to suppress your admira
tioa. Oh, this straining out of small sins
like gnats, and this gupins down great in
iluities like cames.
This subject does not give the picture OF
OF one or two persons but Is gallery in
which thousands of people may see their
liEenesses. For instance, all these people
who, while they would not rob their neigh
tor of farthing, appropriate the money
and the treasure of the public. A man has a
house to sell, and he tells his customer il is
worth $50 900. Next day the assessor comes
around and the owner says it is worth SIS
900. The Government Of the United States
took off the tax from personal income,
among other reasons because so few p.ople
would tell the truth, and many a man with
an income of hundreds Of dollars day made
statements which seemed to imply he was
about TO bs handed over to the over seer 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, "There 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, straining out all
the inaccuracies of speech with fine sieve
OF literary criticism, while through their
conversation go SANDER and innuendo and
profanity and falsehool larger than whole
! caravan of camels, when they might better
fracture every law of the language and
shock their intellectual taste, and better let
verb seek in vain for its nominativc, and
every noun for its government, and every
proposition lose its way in the sentence, and
adjectves and participles and pronouns get
into a grand riot worthy of the Fourth ward
on election day, then to commit moral in-
accuracy. Better swallow thousand gnats
than one camel.
Such persons ara 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 wstchdogs who feel called
upon to keep their eyes on others and
growl. Ttey arc full of suspicious. They
wonder il that man Is not dishonest, IL that
man Is not unclean. il 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 rule without any excep.
tian-that those people who have the most