What is an oath?  Anything solemn?  Anything appealing to the Almighty?  Anything stupendous in man’s history?  No!  It is “kissing the book!” In a land where the name of God so often becomes the foot-ball of what are called respectable circles, how can we expect that it can excite any veneration when, in the presence of county clerk, or alderman, or judge, or legislative assembly, it is used in solemn adjuration?  This habit lowers, bedwarfs, and destroys the entire moral nature.  You might as well expect to raise harvests and vineyards on the side of belching Stromboli as to have any great excellency grow upon your soul when it so often overflows with the scoriae of this awful propensity.  You will never swear yourself up.  You will swear yourself down.  The Mohammedans, when they find a slip of paper they cannot read, put it aside, for fear the name of God is on it.  That, you say, is one extreme.  We go to the other.

You are willing to acknowledge this a miserable habit, and would like to have some recipe for its cure.

Reflect much upon the uselessness of the habit.  Did a volley of oaths ever start a heavy load?  Did curses ever unravel a tangled skein?  Did they ever extirpate the meanness of a customer?  Did they ever collect a bad debt?  Did they ever cure a toothache?  Did they ever stop a twinge of the gout?  Did they ever save you a dollar, or put you a step forward in any great enterprise? or enable you to gain a position, or to accomplish anything that you ever wanted to do?  How much did you ever make by swearing?  What, in all the round of a lifetime of profanity, did you ever gain by the habit?

Reflect, also, upon the fact that it arouses God’s indignation.  The Bible reiterates, in paragraph after paragraph, and chapter after chapter, the fact that all swearers and blasphemers are accursed now, and are to be forever miserable.  There is no iniquity that has been so often visited with the immediate curse of God.

At New Brunswick, a young man was standing on the railroad track blaspheming.  The cars passed, and he was found on the track with his tongue cut out.  People could not understand how, with comparatively little bruising of the rest of his body, his tongue could have been cut out.  Not long ago, in Chicago, a man told a falsehood, and said that he hoped, if what he said was not true, God would strike him dead.  He instantly fell.  There was no longer any pulse.  There was no reason for his death, except that he asked God to strike him dead, and God did it.  In Scotland a club was formed, in which the members competed as to which could use the most horrid oaths.  The man who succeeded best in the infamy was made president of the club.  His tongue began to swell.  It protruded from his mouth.  He could not draw it in.  He died within three days.  Physicians were astounded.  There was nothing like it in all the books.  What was the matter with him? He cursed God, and died! Near Catskill, N.Y., during