Fort Worth gazette. [volume] (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1891-1898, 1892-03-31

the overseer of the poor. Careful to pay
their passage from Liverpool 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 wear
| ing apparel and putting a 5-dollar gold
piece in his hand to punctaate the state
ment.
Described in the text are all those who
| are particular never to break the law of
grammar, and who want all their language
an elegant specimen of syntax, straini.Ig
out all the inaccuracies OF speech with a
fine sieve of literary criticism, while
through their conversation go SANDER and
innuendo and profanity and falsehood larger
than a whole caravan of camels, when they
might better fracture every law of the Ian
guage and shock their intellectual taste,
and better let every verb seek in vain for
its nominative, and every noun for its gov
eminent, and every proposition lose its way
in the sentence, and adjectives and parUi-
ciples and pronouns get into grand riot
worthy of the Fourth ward on election day,
! than to commit moral inaccuracy.' 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 and have no alarm
about their great transgressions. There are
IN every community and in every church
watch-dogs who feel called upon to keep
their eyes on others and growl. TheW are
full of suspicious. They wonder if that
man is not dishonest, if that man is not
uncleau, 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-appointed detectives. I lay this
down as rule without any exception that
those people who have the most faults
themselves are most merciless in their
watching of others. From scalp of head
to soul of foot they are full Of jealousies
and hypercriticlsms. They spend their
life in hunting for musk rats and mud
turtles instead of hunting for Rocky
Mountain eagles, always for something
mean instead of something grand, They
look at their neighbors' imperfections
through microscope, and look at their
own imperfections through a telescope up
side down. Twenty faults of their own
do not hurt them half so much as one fault
of somebody else. Their neighbours i'm
projections 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 promi-
nent than the questions of eternity. Come
now, let US all 90 into the confessional Are
not all tempted to make the question:
Where shall l live nowl greater than the
question: Where shall live forever7 How
shall get more dollars here2 greater than
the question: How shall lay up treasures
in heayen2 the question: How shall pay
my debts to MANI greater than the ques-
ton: How shall meet my obligations to
God2 the question: How shall l gain the
world2 greater than the question: What If
lose my soul2 the question: Why did God
let sin come into the world2 greater than
the question: How shall get it extirpated
from my naturel the question: What shall
lido with the twenty or forty or seventy
years of my su6lnnar existance2 greater
than the question: What shall I do with
the millions of cycles of my post-terrestrial
existencel Time, how small it is Eter-
nifty, how vast it isl The former more in
significant in comparison with the latter
than gnat is insignificant 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 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 minnow were larger than behe-
moth, as though swallow took wider cir
cult than an calbatross, as thsugh nettle
were taller than q Lebanon cedar, as though
a gnat were greater than camel, as though
minute were longer than r 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 i
awful catastrophe to those who make the !,
question OF time greater than the question |
of the future, the oncoming, overshadoyr-
ing future. o Eternityl EternltyI Eter- !
nityl