e pendulum every whar swings as
fur back as it did furra'd, an' the very earth hangs in space by
this same law. An' it holds in the moral worl' as well as the t'other
one--only man is sech a liar an' so bigoted he can't see it. But here
comes into the worl' a man or woman filled so full of passion of
every sort,--passions they didn't make themselves either--regular
thunder clouds in the sky of life. Big with the rain, the snow, the
hail--the lightning of passion. A spark, a touch, a strong wind an'
they explode, they fall from grace, so to speak. But what have they
done that we ain't never heard of? All we've noticed is the
explosion, the fall, the blight. They have stirred the sky, whilst
the little white pale-livered untempted clouds floated on the
zephyrs--they've brought rain that made the earth glad, they've
cleared the air in the very fall of their lightnin'. The lightnin'
came--the fall--but give 'em credit fur the other. The little
namby-pamby, white livered, zephyr clouds that is so divine an'
useless, might float forever an' not even make a shadow to hide men
from the sun.

"So credit the fallen man or woman, big with life an' passion, with
the good they've done when you debit 'em with the evil. Many a 'oman
so ugly that she wasn't any temptation even for Sin to mate with her,
has done more harm with her slanderin' tongue an' hypocrisy than a
fallen 'oman has with her whole body.

"We're mortals an' we can't he'p it--animals, an' God made us so. But
we'll never fall to rise no mo' 'less we fail to reach up fur he'p.

"What then is our little sins of the flesh to the big goodness of the
faith that is in us?

"For forty years Uncle Dave has been a consistent member of the
church--some church--it don't matter which. For forty years he has
trod the narrer path, stumpin' his toe now an' then, but allers
gettin' up agin, for forty years he has he'ped others all he cu'd,
been charitable an' forgivin', as hones' as the temptation would
permit, an' only a natural lie now an' then as to the weather or the
size of a fish, trustin' in God to make it all right.

"An' now, in the twilight of life, when his sun is 'most set an' the
dews of kindness come with old age, right gladly will he wake up some
mornin' in a better lan', the scrub in him all bred out, the yaller
streak gone, the sins of the flesh left behind. An' that's about the
way with the most of us,--no better an' maybe wuss--Amen!"

Uncle Dave was weeping: