Gospel Meetings-Shannon Hills 03 — Worth Ellis

So we turn tonight in our Bibles to the third chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, Romans chapter 3, the third chapter of the book of the Romans, beginning at verse 9, and shall we pray? Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, we thank Thee for the word that Thou hast given to us, and we know that the word, Father, is that through which Thou dost work in revealing our true condition to us, and showing us our need of a Savior, and showing to us the all-sufficiency of the Lord Jesus Christ.

We remember the words of the Son of God, and we claim them afresh tonight, Father. You did not choose me, but I chose you, and appointed you that you should go and bring forth fruit, that your fruit should remain, that whatsoever ye ask the Father in my name, he may give it you.

God grant us this night for the glory and honor of the Lord Jesus, and for the blessing.

And salvation of sinners. Amen.

All People Are Under Sin

What then are we better than they? No and no wise, for we have before proved, both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin. As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one. There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.

They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable, there is none that doeth good, no, not one. Their fruit is an open self-worker, with their tongues they have used deceit. The poison of death is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.

Their feet are swift to shed blood, destruction and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace have they not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes. Now we know that what thingssoever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.

Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God, which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all him that believeth, for there is no difference for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.

May God add his blessing tonight to the reading of his word. It's a grand and a glorious privilege to have this afforded to us, to preach this glorious gospel message of the Son of God. And in connection with this work that the Lord has laid to our hands, the most difficult thing with which we are confronted is not so much getting sinners saved as it is getting them lost.

It is extremely difficult to get people to see that there are sinners and that they need to be saved. I remember a few years ago down at the Pittsburgh Christian Home for Children, where our brother Eugene Hollingsworth is working, we were having a couple of weeks of meetings, and there was a young girl, about twelve or thirteen, who was visiting her granny down there during the summer.

She came from Chapel Hill, and she listened Monday night, Tuesday night, Wednesday night, Thursday night and Friday night. So the following week we went out to visit her, and we went to see her grandmother, and she was still there.

So as we began our conversation, she listened very intently, and you could see that she had something on her mind which she would not interrupt. But as we got up to leave, she said to me, she said, "'Mr. Ellis, I've got something I'd like to tell you.'".

I said, "'What is that?'. She said, "'You know, I got saved last Friday night while you were talking.'. I said, "'Well, that's wonderful. And you were there every night during the week.'. Now I said, "'Would you mind telling me one thing?'.

Oh, she said, "'I'd be glad to.'. I said, "'Well, tell me this. A young girl like you whose heart could not possibly be hardened by sin at your age, why did it take you so long to get saved, enlisting five consecutive nights to the gospel?

Why didn't you trust the Lord Jesus the first night or the second night? Why did you wait till the fifth?'. Oh,' she said, "'My trouble was, I didn't know I was alone. I didn't know you were talking to me.

There was one night you preached about people who were drunkards, and I said, "'Well, now, somebody must have told him about my daddy, because he's a drunkard. And you preached one night about people that did this and did that, and so I knew the people you were talking about, but he doesn't mean me.

And you talked about sinners, and I said, "'Well, sinners are people who get drunk and kill people and go to prison. Sinners are people who hold a fang.'. But she said, "'You know, on Friday night, all of a sudden,' I said, "'Well, you know, Miss Ellis has been talking about me all the week, and I've just found it out.'.

And she said, "'The moment I learned it, well, I trusted Jesus as my Savior.'. But she said, "'My great problem was, I didn't know that I was a sinner.'. And I believe without a shadow of a doubt that in the preaching of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, that's the one great problem with which we are confronted, not so much getting people saved, but getting them lost.

A sick man needs a physician, a tired man needs rest, a hungry man wants food, a thirsty man wants water, and a lost man wants a Savior. And the eternal verge of the word of God and the gospel and all of its marvelous attraction to sin-burdened souls is absolute nonsense and foolishness to a man who is so self-sufficient within himself that he has no need of anyone to help him row his boat.

So no one will ever have any desire to be a Christian until they realize that they are sinners. Now, I believe that they know that they're a problem. As a matter of fact, I am personally convinced that the great problem that confronts the sinner is simply the problem of enjoying life.

Now he may think he's enjoying his life, but he realizes sometimes when he wakes up on Monday morning spitting cotton and can't get his head in a bushel basket, and I'm speaking from experience, he knows that somewhere along the line somebody's done told him a wooden nickel because that's not the way a sensible man has fun.

And then all night long I've peeped at whole carts for twenty-five cents or two bucks and that's a pretty fast pace, and I'll tell you, it's a rough life. Now I never realized until I was twenty-seven years old that I was a sinner, but I'll tell you one thing, I knew all the days of my inside life when I was an infidel that there was something missing in my life, but I could not lay my hand upon it.

I didn't know what it was. And the thing that kept me so absolutely confused and frustrated all the days of my unsafe life was this, that whenever I did pick, I always ran backwards instead of forwards.

Just sideways, maybe, but never ahead. Always back at some other way, but the way I should go. And when I realized I had a problem, I never realized that my problem was sin. And that's what you've got to learn if you're here tonight without the Lord Jesus Christ.

You've got to realize that your problem is sin. And the great thing with which you're confronted this night, and most likely, is to learn the very first step, as we sought to emphasize last night in the alphabet of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, that all have sinned, and when it says all, that's exactly what it means.

Now, it's all the more amazing that people fail to realize that they're sinners in the light of the volume of testimony that you have in God's inspired word. Did you notice in the ninth verse we read this?

What then? Are we better than they? No, in no wise, for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they're all on the sin. And that takes an all of them. Jews and Gentiles are all on the sin. Look at verse 10.

As it is written, there is none righteous, no, not one. There is none that understandeth, in verse 11. There is none that seeketh after God. They're all gone out of the way. Together they come unprofitable.

There is none that doeth good, no, not one. No, I grant you that no human author would have ever written this description of a human race that the Holy Spirit of God has penned in Romans chapter 3. You look at what the Bible says about you, sinner, and bless your heart, I want you to bow your knee to the authority of the scripture tonight.

Now look, in verse 13 it says, "...their throat is an open sepulchre.". Now you know what a sepulchre is. The Lord Jesus often accused the Pharisees of being whited sepulchres, painted up on the outside and all whitewashed and pretty, but inside was full of dead men's bones.

It was nothing but the modern version of a mausoleum of today, full of rotten, pucrifying bodies eaten up by the worms, stinking, rotten, no good. And the Bible says here that your throat, that my throat in my natural state as an unregenerated man, is like a sepulchre and somebody forgot to put the lid on it.

And bless your heart, if you don't believe that is right, you get around a bunch of these poor sinners and listen to them run their filthy mouths. If you don't beat them to the start, they'll cover you with garbage before you can bat your eye.

Now what I'm talking about, I've lived on both sides of the fence. Their throat is an open sepulchre. Now look at this, "...whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.". All you've got to do is listen.

"...their feet are swift to shed blood," and verse 16, "...destruction and misery are in their ways.". And how true that is today, destruction and misery. And regardless of what man has ever had committed to him by God, He soon turned him into the way of nothing but utter destruction and abject misery and sorrow.

Why? Because everything man puts his hands to will be as imprimatur as long as he has anything to do with it. He puts upon it a curse, and that curse came from his own depraved heart. And whatever man ever put his hands to, he's always made a mess of it.

And I'll tell you one thing I'm blessedly thankful of tonight, that to grant him the glory of salvation and the forgiveness of all of my sins, no poor, filthy sinner ever laid his hands upon the work that Jesus Christ perfected upon the cross to save this poor sinner from hell.

No man had anything to do with that. The blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanseth us from all sin. That's the text we'd like to use tonight. That's an excerpt from a verse in the First Epistle of John, chapter 1, and verse 7.

Why Sinners Must Recognize Their Need

The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin. Now you know, when I first began to try and get people to realize that they were sinners so that I may have the joy of showing them the Lord Jesus as the Savior of sinners.

And incidentally, if you're not a sinner, you can't be saved. You see, that's the reason you've got to learn your law, because the Bible says this is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

Jesus said, They that behold do not need a physician, but they that are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. And the only kind of people that Jesus Christ saves in 1962 are sinners.

Remember that. And unless you learn that you're a sinner, beloved friend, you'll never know what it is to have eternal life. Now in the beginning, when I approached this problem, I liked to do it in a sort of a process of elimination, or by a process of elimination, to try and determine just what it is that keeps people from seeing that they are sinners, in spite of the fact the Bible very distinctly says that they are.

Notice the volume of testimony in Romans chapter 3, and in Ecclesiastes 7 and verse 20, a way over in the Old Testament, There is not a just man upon the face of the earth that doeth good, and sinneth not.

Now you see? You see how very definite, very specific the Word of God is. Now I believe that people who read these verses and are well acquainted with them, and believe the Bible from cover to cover, still fail to understand that they are sinners.

And I said in the beginning, these people just must be sore as shook. They can't possibly believe the Bible and not realize that they're sinners when the Bible says very clearly and distinctly that all have sinned.

But as I talked to them more and more, I learned that there are many sincere and honest people who do believe with all of their heart and the absolute authority of the Word of God. Not in the same degree as one who has been born again, of course, but they have confidence in the Bible.

They believe the Bible, and yet they do not believe that they're sinners. And yet all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Now I could only arrive at one conclusion. If their failure to realize they are sinners isn't due to unbelief, then it must lie in one other fact alone.

They fail to realize just what constitutes one a sinner in the sight of God. That must be their whole problem. And if I can help you over that hurdle tonight, and if I can help to introduce you to the most needed person in the city of Greensboro, and that's you, the man that wears your shoes and your britches, if I can help to get you acquainted with yourself tonight, by the grace of God, it's entirely possible that you might leave here a saved man tonight, knowing that every one of your sins are forgiven.

But you've got to learn this, first of all, that you are a sinner. I remember once when I was speaking to a lady about this subject, and I said to her, well, let me ask you a question, lady. I said, are you a sinner?

And you would have thought if you had seen the lady that I'd insulted, her mother or grandmother or something. And she drew up with the hoardiest look of indignation upon her face, how dare you, sir? She said, I've never killed anybody in my life, and you call me a sinner.

Well, that's the trouble with people. They think you've got to be a murderer. You see, before you're a sinner. They think if you're not a bank robber, if you're not Jesse James, one of those other notorious characters, then you're not a sinner.

Sin Is More Than Crime

Now, I believe the Lord Jesus, in John's Gospel, chapter 8, has given us an example in connection with this business of thinking that people had to be murderers to be sinners. You have the story there of a poor woman who was taken in the very act of adultery.

And these Pharisees, these self-righteous men, brought the woman to the Lord, and they said, Master, we caught this woman in the very act of adultery. Now, Moses in the Old Testament said that she should be stoned, but what do you say?

They said this because they wanted to catch him. If he said, well, take her out and stone her, oh, then you're not as compassionate and tender and kind as you claim to be. But if he said, no, turn her loose, oh, then you approve of sin, so you're not as holy and righteous as you would ever think you are.

The Blessed Be God, the wisdom of the Son of God, was never deficient, for Jesus Christ was God in a body of human flesh, the very personification of wisdom. He stooped down and wrote upon the ground.

Now, theologians have delved into this, and I don't know where they found the words he wrote, and some have gone so far as to say what he must have written. But you know what I think he was doing? I doubt seriously if he was writing anything.

As far as I know, he might have been just sort of doodling in the sand, like he did in the past at times. I believe what the Blessed Son of God was trying to do was to give these poor men a chance to get away without being embarrassed.

I believe he wanted to give them a chance to rethink their situation. But they were not to be denied. And so they took him and shook him and said, now, wait a minute, what sayest thou? You remember the words of the Lord Jesus Christ?

He raised up from also the ground, and he looked at all these men right in the face, and here's what he said, let the first one of you that has never committed adultery cast the first stone at them. Is that what your Bible says?

Not what my Bible says. He said, let him that is among you that is without sin cast the first stone. Now, this teaches me one thing, if nothing else, that you as a sinner, self-righteous though you may be, should never be guilty of looking down the nose at your neighbor that's a drunkard, because there's absolutely no degree of depth in the pits of the dams, as far as I can tell, as far a drunkard any more so than a religious fallacy so steeped in their own self-righteousness that they have no need of a Savior.

So the Lord Jesus would impress upon us that it doesn't necessarily mean that you're a murderer just because you're a sinner. That he that is among you that is without sin cast the first stone. And that's what you need to know.

All have sinned and come short. Of the glory of God. You know, I had a fellow tell me one time, he said, well, now, I may admit that I'm a sinner, but I'll have you to know this, that I'm not a big sinner.

I said, well, what difference does it make whether you're a big sinner or a little sinner? There's only one Savior who's the sinner, whether you're a big sinner or a little sinner. There's only one Savior who can save either kind, and that's the Lord Jesus.

And it's the blood of Jesus Christ that cleanses from all sin. And if you're here tonight, I want to tell you this. You may be a good, clean, moral, upright citizen of the city of Greensboro, but my Bible says if you've committed one sin, the wages of that sin is dead.

And you say, now, wait a minute, Shorty, you don't know me. You don't know a thing about me. You ought to ask my neighbors about me. I'll admit that I'm not perfect, but I'll have you to know that I've committed sin, but it wasn't bad, a little bit of sin.

Now, that's slang for southern language, a little bit of it. You Yankers will understand if you've been misplaced or transplanted, but a little bit of it means teeny-iny, you know. You see, I've just committed one little sin, and so I said to this man, well, look, sir, how many lies would you have to tell to be a liar?

Oh, he said, I reckon one would do it. I said, that's exactly right. I said, how many people do you have to kill to be a murderer? I said, look, suppose I'm standing on the street corner someday in the city, and you come flying down the street and round the corner fast as you can go with a smoking revolver in your hand, and somebody's coming around behind you.

Stop that man. He just killed a man, and I would grab you and hold on to you. And you say, man, turn me loose. The police are after me. And I said, well, I'll not let you go. I'm a citizen, and I'll hold you until the law gets you.

I'd look at that man, and I'd say to you, sir, you're a murderer. And he'd look at me, and very indignantly, he'd say, how dare you call me a murderer, sir? He was only a little bitty man. Don't you see the absolute nonsense of such reasoning as that?

What difference does it make whether you're six foot six tall or six inches tall? If you take a life, you're guilty of murder. And if you're a sinner, you're a sinner. Where's the man or woman? I'm going to take 30 seconds out now.

Stand up. Tell me that you've never committed a sin. All right, the floor is yours. Then come to my business. For then bless your heart. For to say a sinner is a sinner. That's the blessed thing of life.

The blood of Jesus Christ, his son, cleanseth us from all sin. And some of us have learned the truth that we are sinners. And we put our trust in the Lord Jesus Christ alone, who shed his blood for us.

And we have eternal life tonight, friend. Now, listen. I believe that there are two things primarily. And I want to mention these now in my little message tonight that keep men and women from realizing they are sinners.

Number one is this. Most people get sin confused with crime. And here's what you've got to learn. This is only an enlargement upon my introduction, which is a reckless sort of way to preach. But nevertheless, here's what I have to say.

You should always be careful never to confuse sin with crime. Now, all crime is sin. But all sin is not crime. Now, I can go down here on the main street of Greensboro tomorrow and get up on one of the busiest corners and get me a soapbox.

And I can stand right up there with my arms folded across my chest. And I might commit 500 sins before sundown. And not a one of them the Lord could lay a hand on me for. Not a one. But any one of them would send my poor soul to hell if I were unsaved.

You see, all sin is not crime. Of course, all crime is sin. And what we've got to learn is this. That all the sin we commit, whether it's in the category of crime or not, is definitely directed against God.

And remember that. And that's the basic problem. You need to realize that you sinned against God. If you cheated your grocery man out of a $5 worth of grocery bill, you didn't sin against the grocery man.

The Bible says you sinned against God. If you've been unfaithful to your wife, the Bible says you sinned against God. Now, I'll prove it to you from the Word of God in the case of David in Psalm 51. As a result of his horrible sin against Bathsheba and Uriah, resulting in this poor woman's heartache and the murder of her husband and the death of an innocent baby.

When David in that great penitential psalm was completely broken up from the presence of God, he said,. You take the case of Joseph over in the book of Genesis, who fled the household of Potiphar and changed his coat for his chastity and was willing to sacrifice his garment in order to keep his character.

Fled out of the house. But you remember what he told Potiphar's wife when she propositioned him before he fled to keep his honor? Here is exactly what he said to her. How shall I do this great evil and sin against God?

They didn't even mention her husband. See? And if you sin, you're sinning against God. Now, listen. The basic difference between sin and crime is this. If you commit crime against a man, then society, by way of the court, exacts the penalty.

But if you sin against God, who's going to intercede for you? And sin is directed against God, whether it be in the category of crime or not. All sin, all shortcoming, all transgression is directed against the God of heaven.

And the Bible says that the wages of that sin is death. Death. So you remember this? You don't have to be a murderer to be a sinner. The fault of foolishness is sin, the Bible says. What service? No, the faith is sin, the plowing of the wicked is sin.

You know, one day I was driving along and I saw a man plowing. This verse came to my mind up through the countryside of Virginia. He was a poor man. Because, bless your heart, he was plowing one mule and his wife was plowing the other, right along behind him.

I knew he was a poor man. And I thought of this verse of Scripture that says, The plowing of the wicked is sin. I said, Lord, now how could it be possible that this man could be sinning just by plowing a furrow?

And all in the world a poor man is doing is hoping he's going to keep his children's stomach separated from their backbone. If God is gracious to him, he's going to raise a crop and give them something.

Lord, how could it be sin? And then I learned the second point I want to get across to you tonight in connection with the problem of sin. What God was trying to get across to us is death. What keeps so many people from learning their sin is this, that the problem of sin is not so much one of conduct as it is one of condition.

Sin as a Condition of the Heart

And the reason the plowing of a wicked man is sin is because everything that an unregenerated man does must come in the category of sin because he's natural unsaved. And all of his entire moral motor nerves, all the moral motor nerves of his entire being have been paralyzed by this indwelling sin.

In other words, you do what you do because you are what you are. Now, it's not what you do that takes you to hell, but it's what you are. Now, that's exactly what the Bible's teaching. What you do is a direct result of what you are.

And the problem of sin that keeps people from being saved and it keeps them from learning that they're lost is not so much a matter of what I do, but it's what I am. And that's the big problem you have to learn.

Now, let me give you one of my crude illustrations. Suppose I'm here in the city of Greensboro, and I have never in my life been in a more friendlier city, rather, than Greensboro, almost as good as Durham.

Never have I met such friendly people. Why, even in Greensboro, the policemen smile at you, and the taxi driver actually gave you the right-of-way. Now, that's a pretty friendly city, but you can find things like that.

And I am walking down Spring Garden Street one day, you know, just as happy as I can be, just simply carried away with the city of Greensboro, and a friendliness, and all of a sudden, there's a patch of old shrubbery at the house there on the side of the street.

A little old dog comes running out from behind the shrub, and he grabs ahold of my new pair of pants and my brand-new suit, and just rips the cuff half out of him. And there, the whole picture of the friendliness of the city of Greensboro has been completely demolished in a moment of time, and all the goodwill has been just done away with by one careless citizen.

So I look down at this little dog, and you know how I say to this dog, I say, dog, give up. Aren't you ashamed of yourself, running out behind that shrubbery, barking at me like that? And that dog would back off a step from me, and he'd say, now, mister, where are you from?

Now, I don't expect you to understand this language, because this is just one dog talking to another one. Now, he says to me, he said, look, where are you from? I said, well, I'm from the city of Durham, a friend of the city of industry and education.

Oh, you got a new dog down there? Yes, as a matter of fact, my little girl has a dog. His name is Button. Oh, well, what does Button do? Well, I said, he chases cars, yeah, and he just loves to play with my little girl.

And he just loves to play with a ball he's got. Yeah, but what else does he do? I said, well, he loves to eat. Oh, come on, mister, he says, you're hedging. What else does he do? I said, well, he barks.

Oh, he said, I thought you'd get around to that, because you see, mister, said he dogs in Greensboro bark just like the dogs in Durham. And you know the reason dogs in Greensboro bark, he said to me, and I learned a tremendous lesson that day.

And you know what it was? He said, you know, dogs in Greensboro bark because they're dogs. He said, you know, we've got a lot of dogs in the city of Greensboro, but not one of them ever became a dog of our faith.

You never became a sinner by sinning. You were a sinner to begin with. And you sin because you are a sinner. You do what you do because you are what you are until you're born again and washed in the blood of Jesus Christ and regenerated by God's Holy Spirit.

You'll keep living in your filth and you'll be judged in what you're doing until you're made something else other than what you are. And that's the basic truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And until you learn that, you'll never be saved.

Never. Now, listen, let me repeat this. The great problem with which you're confronted is not so much what you do, but it's what you are. That's the reason Jesus said to Nicodemus, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Iniquity, Sin, and Transgression

Now, to enlarge upon this second point a little, I want to bring to your attention three very prominent words in the Bible which are descriptive of the condition of every sinner of Adam's race. Word number one is iniquity.

The basic or root meaning of this word is crookedness or the inability to stand up straight or upright. Now, if you have your Bible open, I want you to notice a verse of scripture from Romans chapter 5.

Iniquity, the crookedness, or inability to walk upright before God. Now, in chapter 5 of the book of Romans, in verse 12, listen to this verse. Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passeth from all men, for that all have sin.

Now, that does not need much amplification, look. Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world. You may scoff at the apple store if you want to and make light of Adam and Eve, but here is the inspired word of God.

By one man, Adam, sinned into the world. And through Adam's sin, all of us were brought into the responsibility of his trespass. Physical death and spiritual death both passed upon Adam when he transgressed.

Immediately he was separated from God. Hundreds of years later, maybe, he died. But nevertheless, he suffered both physical and spiritual death. Now, spiritual death, which made its entrance into this world through the transgression of Adam, according to Romans 5 and 12, has left every one of us in a state of natural inherent crookedness without the ability to walk upright.

I don't care who he is, he may be so sweet as sugar while melting his mouth. He may put in the biggest collection when they pass around the place. He may make the biggest donation to all the societies.

He may be a philanthropist of renown, but basically and inherently, we're all selfish by nature and we're crooked. We don't have the ability to walk upright. Now, if you don't believe it, I'll tell you what to do.

If you've got a favorite sin, one that you'd give half of your life if you could get rid of it, one that keeps your throat, your nose to the grindstone, keeps your head full of coughwear, makes your nose red like mine, gives you cirrhosis of the liver, you've got another one's favorite sin you'd like to get rid of, if you think you can do it, why don't you swear off?

I bet. I will not do it again as long as I live, no, and you'll straighten up, and with all your might and man and your power, I'll never do that again. And you walk along a day or two, a week or two, just as straight as you can, and all of a sudden you feel yourself pulled off to the side, iniquity.

That's the inherent tinnitus of the human heart. Well, I had a friend one time who says, I'm sick and tired of these people telling me you can't quit drinking. Absolute nonsense. I know you can quit drinking, he said, because I quit a thousand times.

Well, that's true. I quit playing stud poker ten thousand times because I was broke and had to quit. But nevertheless, men swear off, you see, and you have to go right back. Now, why is it, friend, tell me why it is a human being, an intelligent human being who knows that something is very detrimental to his health, his well-being, and the well-being of his wife and his dear, innocent children, will deliberately turn right around and do something he swore he wouldn't.

That's what I'm trying to get across to you, see, it's what you are that makes you do these things. You see, I want you to get acquainted with yourself. Bless your heart. If you can get a picture of what you're like, you'll run from yourself, and maybe you'll find refuge in the Rock of Ages who knows.

You might be hiding in the Lord Jesus before the night's over and get rid of itself. Oh, friend, listen, number one is iniquity. I remember hearing a story once of two men who were standing on the street talking.

One of them was a Christian, and the other was a skeptic. Down the other side came a poor fellow. He must have been drinking some of this sneaky peach, you know, that's 20 percent wine, and he must have been completely loaded, and but for the kindness of the telephone poles and the garbage pails on one side and the building on the other, he never would have navigated that stretch of sidewalk.