The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1899-08-24

wrote them, methodically and infa-
mously carrying out the huge lying
about the grain crop from year to year
and for a score of years. After awhile
there will be corner" in the wheat
market, and the men who had con-
tempt for petty theft will burglarize
the wheat bin of nation and commit
larceny upon the American corn Glib.
And dscme of the men will sit in churches
and in reformatory institutions trying
to strain out the small gnats of scoun-
drelism, while in their grain elevators
and in their storehouses they are fat
tening large camels which they expect
after awhile to swallow. Society has to
be entirely reconstructed on this SUBJ
ject. We are to find that sin is inex-
cusable in proportion as it is great. I
know in our time the tendency is to
charge religious frauds upon good men.
They say: "Oh. what host of frauds
you have in the church of God in this
day!" And when the elder of a church,
or deacon, or minister of the Gospel,
or superintendent of Sabbath school
turns out a defaulter, what display
heads there are in many of the newspa-
pers! Great primer type. Five-line
plea. another Saint Absconded,"
Clerical Scoundrelism," "Religion at
Discount" "Shame on the Churches"
while there are thousand scoundrels
| outside the church to one inside the
church, and the misbehavior of those
who never see the inside of church
is SO great that it is enough to tempt
man to become 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 he condemns
Satan, gives such grand description 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 CAM
! els!
This subject does not give the picture
of one or two persons, but is a gallery III
i which thousands of people may see
their likenesses. For instance, all those
people who, while they would not rob
their neighbors of a farthing, appropri-
ate the money and the treasure of the
public. A man has a house to sell, and
he tells his customer it is worth $20,-
600. Next day the assessor comes
around and the owner says it is worth
$4,000. 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 a man with an income of hun
dreds of dollars day made statements
which seemed to imply he was about to
be handed over to the overseers 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
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 grammar and who want all theil
language an elegant specimen of syn
tax, straining out all the inaccuracies
of speech with fine sieve of literary
criticism, while through their conversa
ton go slander and innuendo and pro
family and falsehood larger than {
whole caravan of camels, when the,
might better fracture every law of thu
language and shock their intellectual
taste, and better let every gerb seek il
vain for its nominative and every noul
for it's government, and let every prepo
sition lose its way in the sentence, ant
, adiectives and participles and pro
nouns get into grand riot worthy o
/ the Fourth ward of New York on elec
ltion day, than to commit moral inac
curacy. Better swallow a thonsan,
gnats than one camel.
Such persons are also described Il
!, the text who are very much alarme,
about the small faults of others ant
have no alarm about their own grea
transgressions. There are in every com
!, munity and in every church watchdog
, who feel called upon to keep their eye
: ON others and growl. They are full o
suspicions. They wonder if this ma
is not dishonest, if that man is not un
clean, if there is not something wron
about the other man. They are alway
the first to hear of anything wrong
!. Vultures are always the first to sine
: Icarrion. They are self-appointed ds
ltectiyes. lay this down as rule with
out any exception, that those peopl
. who have the most faults themselve
are most merciless i'll their watching
of others. From scalp of head to sol
of foot they are full of jealousies an
: hypercriticisms. They spend their lif
in hunting for muskrats and mu
: turtles instead of hunting for Rock
mountain eagles, always for somethin
mean instead of something grant
They look at their ne;ghbors' impel
fections through microscope and loo
at their own imperfections through
telescope upside down. Twenty fault
l 4. Il L