Marshall County independent. (Plymouth, Marshall County, Ind.) 1897-1902, 1899-07-28


from the first page to the last corrus-
Gated with humor. as summer clouds
with heat lightning.
John Bunyan's writings are as full
of hunOr, as they are of saving truth,
and there is not an aged man here who
has ever read Pilgrims Progress. who
does not remember, that while reading
it, he smiled s. often as he wept.
Chrysostom, George Herbert, Robert
South, George Whitefield, Jeremy Tay-
lor, Rowland Hill, Ashael Nettleton.
Charles G.. Flnney, and all the men Of
the past who greatly advanced the
kingdom of God consecrated their wit
and their humor to the cause of Christ.
So it has been in all the ages, and
say to all our young theological stu
dents, sharpen your wits until they are
as keen as scimetars, and then take
them into this holy war. 1t is very
short bridge between a smile and
tear, a suspension bridge from eye to
lip, and it Is soon crossed over, and a
smile is sometimes just as sacred as a
tear There is as much religion, and |
think little more, in a spring morn
ing than in starless midnight. Relig-
ious work without any humor or wit
in it, is banquet with side of beef,
and that raw, and no condiments, and
no dessert succeeding. People will not
sit down to such a banquet. By all
means remove all frivolity, and all
bathos, and all lightness and vulgar
ity-strain them out through the sieve
of holy discrimination; but on the
other hand, beware of that monster
which overshadows the Christian
church today, conventionality, coming
up from the Great Sahara Desert of
Ecclesiasticism, having on its back a
hump of sanctimOnious gloom, and We
hemently refuse to swallow thai camel.
Oh, how particular a great many
people are about the inhniteSimalS,
while they are quite reckless about the
magnitudes. What did Christ say?
Did he not excoriate the people in his
time who were so careful to wash their
hands before a meal, but did not WASH
their hearts? 1t is bad thing to have
unclean hands; it is a worse thing to
have an unclean heart. How many
people there are in our time who are
very anxious that after their death
they shall be buried with their face to-
ward the east, and not at all anxious
that during their whole life they
should face in the right direction, so
that they shall come up in the resur
rectiOn of the just, whichever way
they are buried. How many there are
chiefly anxious that a minister of the
Gospel shall come in the line of apOs-
tOlic succession, not caring so much
whether he comes from Apostle Paul or
Apostle Judas. They have a way of
measuring a gnat until it is larger than
a camel.
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 out all the mae
curacieS of speech with a fine sieve
OF literary criticism, while through
their conversation go SANDER and in
larger than a whole caravan OF cam
els, 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 nomin
alive, and every noun for its govern
ment, and let every proposition lose
its way in the sentence, and adjectives
and participles and pronouns get into
a grand riot worthy OF the fourth ward
| of New York on election day, than to
commit a moral inaccuracy. 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
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
this man is not dishonest. if that man
is not unclean, if there is not some
thing 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. l lay this
down as a rule without any exception
that those people who have the most
faults themselves are the most merci-
less in their watching of others. From
scalp of head to sole of foot they are
full Of jealousies and hypercriticisms.
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 a
microscope, and look at their own i'm
PROJECTIONS through telescope upside
down. Twenty faults of their own do
not hurt them so much as one fault
of somebody else. Their neighbors'
imperfections are like gnats and they
strain them out; their own imperfec-
lions are like camels and they swallow
them.
But lest too many 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 cues
tions of time more prominent than
the questions of eternity. Come. now.
let us all go into the confessional. Are