SUNDAY READING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XX, Issue 6829, 6 October 1883, Page 3 (Supplement)

SUNDAY READING.

, GNATS AND CAMELS. . • BY THE REV. T. BE WITT TALMAGE. "Yo blind guides, which strain at a gnat and swallow a camel."—Matthew -xxiii 24. ; A PROVERB is compact wisdom, knowledge in chunks, a library an a the electricity of many clouds discharged in one bolt, a river put through a millrace. When i Christ quote 3 the proverb of the text He means to set forth, the ludicrous behaviour of those who .make a great bluster about smallsins, and have no appreciation of great ones. In my text a small insect and a large quadruped are brought into comparison—a gnat and a camel. You have in museum or on the desert seen the latter—a great, awkward, sprawling creature, with back two storeys high, and stomach having a collection of reservoirs for desert travel, an animal forbidden to the Jews as food, and in many literatures entitled " the ship of the desert." The gnat spoken of in the text is in the grub form. It is born in pool or pond, after a few weeks becomes a chrysalid, and then after a few days becomes the gnat as we recognise it. But the insect spoken of in the text is in its very smallest shape and it yet inhabits the water—for my text is a misprint and ought to read "strain out a gnat." My text shows you the prince of inconsistency. A man ajEter long observation has formed the suspicion that in a cup of water he is about to drink thel-e is a grub, or the grandparent of a gnat. He goes and gets a sieve or strainer. He takes the water and pours it through the sieve in : the broad light. He says, "I would rather do anything almost than drink this water until the larva be extirpated." This water is brought under inquisition. The experiment is successful. The water rushes through the sieve and leaves against the side of the sieve the grub or gnat. Then the man carefully removes the insect and drinks the water in plaoidity. But going out one day he devours a "ship of the desert," the camel which the Jews were forbidden to eat. The gastronomer has no compunctions of conscience. He suffers from no indigestion. He puts the lower jaw under the camel's forefoot and his upper jaw over the hump of the camel's back, and gives one swallow and the dromedary disappears for ever. He strained out a. gnat, he swallowed a camel. While-Christ's audience were yet smilifig at

the appositeoesß and wit of His illustration —for smile they did in church, unless they were too stupid to understand the hyperbole —Christ practically said to them, " That is you," Punctilious about small things, reckless about affairs of great magnitude. No subject ever writhed under the surgeon's knife more bitterly than did the Pharisees under Christ's scapel of truth. As an an-, atomist will take a human body to pieces and put them under amicroscope for examination, so Christ finds His way to the heart of the dead Phariaee and cuts it out and puts it under the glass of inspection for all generations to examine. These Pharisees thought that Christ would flatter them and compliment them; and how they muet have writhed under the red hot words as He said, "Ye fools, ye whited sepulchres, ye blind guides, which strain out a guat and swallow a camel." There are in our day a great many gnats strained out and a great many camels swallowed, and it is the object of this

sermon to sketch a few persons who are extensively engaged in that business. First, I remark that all those ministers of the Gospel are photographed in the.text who are very scrupulous about the conventionalities of religion, but put no particular stress upon matters of vast importance. > Church services ought to be grave and solemn. There is no room for frivolity in religious convocation. But there are illustrations and there are hyperboles like that of Christ in the text, that will irradiate with smiles any intelligent auditory. There are men like those blind guides of the text who advocate only those things in religious service which draw the corners of the mouth down, and denounce all those things which have a tendency to draw the corners of the mouth up, and these .men will go to installations and'to presbyteries and to conferences and toj associations,, their pockets full of fine sieves to strain ont the'gnats, • while in their own churches at' home every Sunday, there are fifty people sound asleep. They make their churches a great dor-

jjvitory, and iheir somniferous sermons a cradle, and UfoMea-uuS^ while some wakeful boul in a paw whither fan keeps tho flies off unconscious persons approximate. Now, I say it is worse to sleep in church than to smile in church, for the latter implies at least attention, while the former implies both the indifference of the hearera and .the stupidity of the speaker. In old age, or from physical infirmity, or from long watching with the sick, tediouaI ness will sometimes overpower one, ■ and ! drowsiness, will sometimes overpower one, but when a minister of tho Gospel looks off upon an audience and. finds healthy and intelligent people struggling with drowsiness, it is time for him to give out the doxology or pronounce the benediction. The great fault of church services to-day is not too much vivacity, but too much somnolence. The one is an irritating gnat that may be easily strained out; the other iB a great, sprawling, and sleepy-eyed camel of the dry desert. In all our Sabbath-schools, in all our Bible classes, in all onr pulpits, we need to brighten up our religious message with such Christ-like vivacity as we find in the text. I take down from my library the biographies of ministers and writers of past ages, inspired and uninspired, who have done the most to bring souls to Jesus Christ, and I find<that..withou(;.a single»exception theycondecrate'd their wit and their humour to Chrißt". Elijah used it when he advised the Baalites, as they could not make their god respond, telling them to call louder, as heir god might be sound asleep or gones a-hnntiDg. Job used it when he said to hi self-conceited comforters, " Wisdom will die with you." Christ not only used it in the text, but when He ironically complimented the putrefied Pharisees, saying, "The whole need not a physician ;" and when by one word He described the cunning of Herod, saying, "Go ye and tell that fox." Matthew Henry's Commentaries from the first page to the last are coruscatcd with humour as summer clouds with heat lightning. John Bunyan's writings are as fnll of humour as they are of saving truth, and there is not an aged man here who has ever read Pilgrim's Progress who does not remember that while reading it he smiled as often as he wept. Chrysostom, George Herbert, Robert South, John Wesley, Georpre Whitcfield, Jeremy Taylor, Rowland Hill, Nettleton, George G. Finney, and all the men of the past who greatly advanced the kingdom of God consecrated their wit and their humour to the cause of Christ. So it has been in all the ages, and 1 say sharpen your wits as keen as scimetars, and then take them into the holy war. It is a very short bridge betweon a smile and a tear, a suspension bridge from eyo 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, I think, a little more, in a spring morning than in a starless midnight. Religious work without any humour or wit in it is a banquet with a side of beef, and that raw, and no condiments, and no dessert succeeding. People will not Bit down to Buch a banquet. By all means remove all frivolity and all bathos and all lightness and all vulgarity. Strain them out through the sieve of holy discrimination, but, on the other hand, beware of that monster which' overshadows the Christian Church to-day, conventionality, coming up from the Great Sahara Desert of ecclesiasticism, having on its back a hump of, sanctimonious gloom, and vehemently refuse to swallow that camel. Oh, how particular a great many people are about the infinitesimals while they are quite reckless about the magoitudes. 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. It is a 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 faces toward tho east, and not at all anxious that during their whole life they should face 1 in the right direction, so that they shall come up in the resurrection of the just whichever way they are buried. How many there are chicfiy anxious that a minister of the Gospel shall come in the line of ap'ostolio 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. Again: My subject photographs all those who are abhoirent of small sins, while they are reckless in regard to magnificent thefts. You will .find many a merchant who'while he is so careful that he would not take a yard of cloth or a spool of cotton from the counter without .paying for it, and who, if a bank

cashier should make a mistake and send in a' roll of bills £5 too muchj would- deapatoh a messenger'in hot baste to return the surplus, yet. who will go into a stock company in which after a whilo he gets control of the 3tock, and th?n waters the stock and makes £20,000 appear like £40,000. Be ooly stole £20,000 by the operation. Many of the men of fortune made their wealth in that way. One of those men engaged in such unrighteous act that evening, the evening of the very day when he watered- the stock, will find a wharf rat stealing a Brooklyn Eagle from the basement doorway, and will go out and catch the nrcbin by the collar and twist the collar so tightly the poor fellow cannot say it was tbirst for knowledge that led him to the dishonest act, but grip the collar tighter and tighter, saying, "I have been looking for you for a long while. You've stolen my paper four or five times, haven't you ?" and then the old stock gambler, with a voice they can hear three blocks, will cry out, " Police, police!" That same man, the evening of the day in which he watered the stock, will kneel with the family in prayer and thank God for ihe prosperity of the day, and then kiss his children good-night with an air which seems to say, "I hope you will grow np to be aa good as_ your father!" Prisons for sins insectile in size, but palaces for crimes dromedarian. No mercy for sins animalcule in proportion, but great leniency for mastadon iniquity. A poor boy slyly takes from the basket of a market woman a choke pear:— saviug someone else from the cholera—and you smother him in the foul atmosphere of a gaol, while his cousin, who has been skilful enough to steal £10,000 from the city you will make a candidate for the Legislature. There is a great de&l of uneasiness and nervousness now among some people in our j time who have gotten unrighteous fortnnes, —a great deal of nervousness about dynamite. I tell them that God will put under their unrighteous fortunes something more

explosive than dynamite, the earthquake of His omnipotent indignation. It is time that we learn that sin is not excusable in proportion as it declares large dividends and has many ont-riders in eqnipage. Many a man is riding to perdition postillion ahead and lackey behind. To steal one copy of a newspaper is a gnat. 'To steal many thousands of dollars is a camel. There is many a fruit-dealer who would not consent-to steal a basket of peaches from a neighbour's stall, but who would not scruple to depress the fruit market A man who would not steal one peach basket steals fifty thousand peach baskets; Go down into the Mercantile Library, in the reading-rooms, and see all the newspaper reports of the crops from all parts of the country, and their phraseology is very much the same, and the same men

wrote them, methodically and infamously carrying out the huge lying about the grain crop from year to year, and for a score of years. After a while there will be a " corner" in the wheat market, and the men who had a contempt for a petty theft will burglarise the wheat bin of a nation, and commit larceny upon the American corncrib. And in tbis hot weather some of the men will sit in churches and in reformatory institutions, trying to strain out the small ghats of scoundrelism, while in their grain elevators and in their storehouses they are fattening huge camels, which they expect after a while to swallow. Society has to be entirely reconstructed on this subject. We are co find that a sin is inexcusable 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 a class of frauds yon have in the Church of God in this dayand when an elder of a church, or a deacon, or a minister of the Gospel, or a superintendent of a Sabbath-school turns out. a. defaulter, what display heads there are in many of the newspapers. . Great primer type, five-line pica : "Another Saint Absconded 1" "Clerical Scoundrelißm I" " Religion at a Discount!" "Shame in the Churches!" While there are a thousand scoundrels outside the Churoh to where there is one inside the Church, and the misbehaviour o£ those who never see the inside of a church is so great, it is enough to tempt a 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' he'condemns Satan, gives'such a grand description of him you have bard work to suppress your admiration. I Oh, this straining out of small sins like gnats, and this gulping down great iniquities like camels. This subject does not give the picture pi one Or ti-nro - persons, but is a gallery in which thousands or people may see their likeness. For instance, ail those people who, while t'ney -would, not rob their neighbour 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 *£4000. Next day the assessor comes .round and says it is worth £3000. The Government of the United States took off the tax from personal income, among other reasons, because people would tell the truth, and many a maawith an income 1 of hundreds of dollars a 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 Fork, yet smuggling in their Saratoga trunk ten silk dresses and half a dozen watches from Geneva, Switzerland, and telliug the Custom House officer on the wharf, "There is nothing in that trunk but wearing apparel," and putting a five dollar gold piece in his hand to punctuate the statement.

Described in the text are all those who are particular never to break tho law of grammar, and who want all their language an elegant specimen of syntax, straining out all the inaccuracies of speech with a fine sieve of literary criticism, while through their conversation go slander and inuendo and profanity and falsehood larger than n whole caravan of camels, 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 nominative, and every noun for its government, and every preposition lose its way in the sentence, and adjectives and participles and pronouns got into a grand riot worthy of the Fourth Ward on an election day, than to commit a moral inaccnracy. Better swallow a thousand gnats than one camel.

Such persona are much alarmed about the smalt faults of others end 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 suspicions. They wonder if that man is not dishonest, if that man is not unclean, 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 a rule, without any exception, that those people who havo the most faults themselves are most merciless in their watching of others. From scalp of head to solo of foot they are full of jealousies and hypercriticisms. They spend their life in hunting for muskrats and mud turtleß instead of for Rocky Mountain eagles—always for something mean instead of something grand. They look at their neighbours' imperfections through a microscope, and look at their own imperfeotions through a telescope upside down. Twenty faults of their own do not hurt them so much as one fault of somebody else. Their neighbours'imperfections are like gnats, and they 3train them out; their own imperfections are like camels, and they Bwallow them. But lest some think they escape the scrutiny of the o£ the text, I have to tell you that we all come under the Divine satire when we make the questions of time more prominent than the questions of eternity. Come now, let ns all go into the confessional. Are not all tempted to make the question, where shall I live now ? greater than the question, where shall I iive iorever ? How shall I get more dollars here? greater than the question, how shall I lay up treasure in Heaven? The question, how shall I pay my debts to man? greater than the question, how shall I meet my obligations to God ? The question, how shall I gain the world? 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 I get it extirpated from my nature ? The question, what shall I do with the twenty, or forty, or ninety years of my snbtunar existence ? greater than,'the question, what shall I do with the millions of cycles of my post-terrestial existence? Time, how small it is I Eternity 1 how vast it is.' The former more insignificant in comparison with the latter than a gnat is insig-. nificant when compared with a camel. We dodged the text. Wo said, "That doesn't mean me, and that doesn't mean me," and with a ruiuous benevolence we are giving the whole sermon away. But let ua all snrrender to the charge. What' an - ado about things here. What poor preparation for a great eternity.- As though a minnow

were larger than a behemoth, as though a swallow took wider circuit than an albatross, as though a nettle were taller than a Lebanon cedar, as though a gnat were greater than* a camel, as though a minute were longer than a century, ana though time were higher, clesper, broader than eternity. So the texi which flashed with lightning,, if not as Christ uttered it, is followed by the crashing thunders of awful i catastrophe to those wlho make the questions of time greater than the' questions of the future, tbe'oncoming, overshadowing future. Oil, eternity, eternity, eternity.