Connecticut western news., 1899-07-20

sSouuurtiS OutSiue tHe CHuTCu lO Olle inside the church. and the misbehavior of those who never see the inside of a church Is so great that 1t Is enough to tempt a man to become a Christian to get out of their company. But in all circles, religious and lrreligious. the tendency Is to excuse sin In proportion as it Is mammoth. Even John Milton in his Paradise Lost" while he con demns Satan. gives such a grand de scription of him you have hard work to withhold your admiration. Oh. this straining out of small sins like gnats and this gulping down great iniquities like camels!
 Gallery of Pictures.
 This subject does not give the pic ture of one or two persons, but Is a gallery In which thousands of people may see their likenesses. For instance, all those people who. while they would not rob their neighbors of a farthing, appropriate the money and the treas ure of the public. A man has a house to sell, and he tefls his customer 1t is worth $20,OOO. Next day the assessor comes around, and the owner says it is worth $15,0OO. 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 man with an h. come of hundreds of dollars a day made statements which seemed to im- ply 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 Sar- atoga trunk ten silk dresses from Paris and a half dozen watches from Gene va, telling the custom house officer on the wharf, There is nothing in that trunk but wearing apparel" and put ting S5 gold piece in his hand to punctuate the statement.
 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 inaccura- cies of speech with fine sieve of lit erary criticism, while through their conversation go islander and innuendo and profanity and falsehood larger than a whole caravan of camels, when they might better fracture every law of the language and shock their intel lectual taste, and better let every verb seek in vain for its nominative, and ev- cry noun for its government, and let every proposition lose its way In the sentence, and adjectives and partici- ples 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. I lay this 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 sole of foot they are full of jealousies and hypercriticisms. They spend their life in hunting for muskrats 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 inn perfections through a telescope upside down. Twenty faults of their own do not hurt them so much as one fault of somebody else. Their neighbors' i'm. perfections are like gnats. and they strain them out; their own imperfec- tions are like camels, and they swal- low them.
 Treasures In Heaven.
 But lest too many might think they escape the scrutiny of the text I have
 
 divine satire when we make the ques. tons 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 I live now? greater than the question, Where shall l live for ever? How shall get more dollars here? greater than the question, How shall lay up treasures in heaven? the question, How shall pay my debts to man? greater than the question, How shall I meet my obligations to God; the question, How shall gain the world? greater than the question, What if I lose my soul? the question, Why did God let sin come into the world2 greater than the question, How shall I get it extirpated from my na- ture? the question. Whit shall do with the 20 or 40 or 70 years of my sublunar existence? greater than the question. What shall I do with the millions of cycles of my post ter. restrial existence? Time, how small it isl Eternity, how vast 1t Isl The for mer more insignificant in comparison with the latter than a gnat Is insig- nificant when compared with a camel. We lodged the text. We said, That does not mean me, and that does not mean me-" and with a ruiuous benev- olence 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 a minnow were larger than behemoth as though swallow took wider circuit than an albatross, as though a nettle were taller than a Lebanon cedar, as though a gnat were greater than camel, as though min. ute were longer than a 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 catastro- phe to those who make the questions of time greater than the questions of the fI1ture the oncOminQ Oyershadow-