Fort Worth gazette. [volume] (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1891-1898, 1892-03-28


I gnats of scoundrelism, while IN their grain
| elevators and in their storehouses they are
| fattening huge cameIs which they expect
\ after while to swallow. Society has to
/ be entirely reconstructed on this subject
/ We are to find that a sin is inexcuSabla in
proportion as it IS great.
1 know in our time the tendency is to
/ charge religious frauds upon good men.
They say. oh, what class of frauds you
have in the church Of God in this day."
\ and when the elder of church, or deacon,
or minister of the Gospel, or the superin-
| tendent of a Sabbath-sehool turns out de-
faulter, what display heads there are in
many Of the newspapers. Great primer
| type. Five line plea Another Saint Alb
| seconded" s'Clerical Scoundrelism, Re
/ Egion at a Discount" 'sShame on the
Churches while there are a thousand
scoundrels outside the churches to where
there is one inside the church, and the mis-
behavior Of those who never see the inside
4 OF church IS so greatit IS enough to tempt
man to become a Christian to get out of
their company. But in all circles. religious
| and irreligious, the tendency is to excuse
sin in proportion as it is mammoth Even
| John Milton IN his Paradise Lost, while ne
condemns Satin, gives such a grand de-
scription of him you have hard work to
suppress your admiration. Oh, this strain
ing 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 a gallery in
which thousands of people may see their
hkenesses. For instance, all those people
who, while they would not rob their
neighbor of a farthing, appropriate the
money and the treasure of the public. 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 of the tax from personal
income, among other reasons because so few
people would tell the truth, and many
man with an income of hundreds of dollars
day made statements which seemed to
imply he was about to be handed over to
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 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 punctuate 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, straining
outaau 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 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 parti-
ciples and prououns 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. They are
full of suspicious. They wonder if that
man is not dishonest if that man is not
uuclean, 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. lay thiswl
down as a 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
mean instead of something grand. They
look at their neighbors' imperfections
through microscope, and look at their
own imperfectiols through telescope up
side down. Twenty faults of their own
do not hurt them half so much as one fault
of somebody else. Their neighbors' 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, I 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 / live nowl greater than the |
question: Where shall 1 live forever? How |
shall get more dollars here? greater than |
the question: How shall lay up treasures
in heayenl the question: How shall pay |
my debts to man2 greater than the ques- |
ton: How shall l meet my obligations to r
God? the question: How shall i gain the |
world2 greater than the question: What if |
I 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 eXistance2 greater
than the question: What shall l do with |
the millions of cycles of my post-terrestrial |
existence2 Time, how small it is Eter-
nifty, how vast it is! The former more in
significant in comparison with the latter
than gnat is insignificant when compared |
with a camel! We lodged the text. We 4
said: THAT doesn't mean me, and that I
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 a great eternity AS 7
though a minnow were larger than behe-
moth as though a swallow took wider cir
cult than an ualbatross, as though a nettle
were taller than a Lebanon cedar, as Thoughts
a gnat were greater than camel, as though |
a 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 1
question of time greater than the question r
Of the future, the oncoming, overshadow-
ing future. o Eternityl Eternity Eter-
nityl -