This Week in Texas Methodist History  March 16



Galveston Editor Reprints Oxford Sermon  March 16, 1844

Journalistic standards of the mid-19^th century included reprinting anything and everything of interest that came across the editor’s desk.  It was even common for newspapers to exchange complimentary issues with each other to facilitate the process.  The March 16, 1844 Civilian and Galveston Gazette contains the following interesting Methodist sermon from an English newspaper.

I am not one of your fashionable, fine-spoken, mealy mouthed preachers.  I tell you the plain truth. What are your pastimes? Cards and dice, and fiddling and dancing, guzzling and guttling!  Can you be saved by dice?   No!  Will the four knaves give you a passport to heaven?  No!  Can you fiddle yourself into a good berth among the sheep? No!  You will dance yourself to damnation among the goats.  You may guzzle wine here, but you’ll want a drop a water to cool your tongue hereafter?  Will the prophets say, “come here gamester and teach us the long odds.”?  “Tis odds if they do.    Will the martyrs rant and rave and shuffle with you?  No!  The martyrs are no shufflers.    You will be cut in a way you little expect,  Lucifer will come with his reapers and his sickles and his forks and you will be cut down and bound and carted, and housed in hell!  I will not oil my lips to please you!   I tell you the plaini truth.  Ammon and Mammon  and Moloch are making Bethoron hot for you!   Profane wretchers!  I have heard you wrangle and brawl, and tell one another in front of me, “I’ll see you d___________d first.” But I tell you. The day will come when you pray to Belzebub to escape the church. And what will be his answer?  “I’ll see you d_______d first.”