The Stark County Democrat. [volume] (Canton, Ohio) 1833-1912, 1881-12-01
PLAQUES.
Concluded from Page 3.

| and spiritual typhoid, and that unless
| il can be stopped it will be to them
| funeral of mind, funeral OF body, funer-
al of soul. Let ME say to all young peO-
! pie, do not buy, do not borrow, do not
touch bad books. One book may decide
the destiny. The assassin of Lord VIM.
Russell said he committed that crime as
the result of reading the romance then
popular, entitled "Jack Sheppard" Geo.
Law was made a millionaire by reading
a biography in childhood. Benz. Frank
lin became the good man and philnsO-
pher he was by reading in early life
Cotton Mather'S essays "TO Do Good"
John Angel James, as devOut man as
ever lived in England, stood in his pull
pit and said: twenty-five years ago a
lad loaned me bad book for quarter Of
an hour. | have never recovered from
it. The specters of that book have haun-
ted me to this day. / shall not, to my
| dying day. get over the reading of that
book for fifteen minutes" A clergyman
| travelling toward the West many years
ago, had in his trunk Doddridge's Rise
and Progress" In the hotel he saw
woman copying from book; he found
she had borrowed DOddridge's Rise and
Progress" from a neighbUr, and was
copying some portions of it, so he pre-
sented her his copy of the Rise and
Progress" ThiTty-One years after he
was passing that way and he inquired
for that woman. He was pointed to a
beautiful home. He went there; he ask
ed her if she remembered him. She
said, No" Then he says, do you not
remember thirty years ago man gave
you a copy Of DOddridge'S Riseand Prog
ress?" She said, Yes, | read it, and it
was the means of my conversion. |
passed it around, and all the neighbOT'S
read it, and there came a revival, and
we called a minister, and we built
church. The church of Wyoming is the
result of that one book which you gave
me-" The reading of Homer's Had
made Alexander warrior, and the read
ing of the life of Alexander made Caesar
and Charles XII. men of blood. Have
you bad books in your pocket, in your
trunk, in your desk at the place of bust
ness? Let me tell you of young man
who bought large package of intidel
books and tracts to distribute. He had
put them on his shoulder to take them
to his village. The package got very
heavy, and he put it down to rest; took
it up again, and his limbs trembled. He
became affrighted at his physical cOndi-
tiOn, and stopped, tore up the tracts and
books, and scattered them to the winds.
Do so with your bad books and newspa-
pers.
Another way to drive back the plague
of frogs is to Overrun them with Chris
tian printing-presS, which shall furnish
people of mature years with good books
We got so used to seeing books we do
| not realize what book is. | stand it on
end, look at it, measure it, calculate its
| height and depth, and length and
| breadth, examine its leaves. What push
| ing on from impressions in clay to bark
| Of trees; from bark of trees to papyrus;
| from papyrus to hide of wild beasts;
| from hide of wild beasts to the miracle
of paper factory, and here you have it
| paper pnTe and white, and clean as the
| infants soul, white for Divine inscrip-
| tiOn. Look at the printing, and com
! pare to this book the wooden plankS on
| which SOlOn's laws were written, and
| the tables of lead on which HesiOd's pO-
| ems were written, and the tables of
| stone on which the Siniatic commands
| were written, ith Hoes perfected
printing press. Look at the cover of
the book, and remember that it took the
world nearly six thousand years from
| the covers of oak to cloth bin1ing, and
until Mr.. Pickering, a London publisher
| fifty years ago, invented it. A book
| A book 1t took all the universities of
| the past, all the martyr fires, all the
| battles, all the victories, all the defeats,
all the civilizations. all the glOOms, all
| the brightnesses of the centuries to
make it. A book! 1t is the drawing
room where kings and queens and phi
lOsOphers and historians and poets and
mighty men ana women of the past
come out to greet us. A book! 1t is
the chorus Of the ages. 1t is the weapon
| hurled by Divine catapult out of heaven
| to destroy the wrong. 1t is the apOca-
| lyptic angel to proclaim redemption to
| ali people. A book If l wOrshipped
anything on earth | would worship it.
| If | burned incense before any idol, |
would build an altar before it. Thank
| God for good books, instructive books,
purifying books, books of men, books of
women, books of God. These are the
weapons with which we are to smite
down a corrupt literature. Write them
print them; publish them; distribute
| them. Upon the frogs SwOOp with these
eagles. We may depend much on the
mortality of bad books. They do not
live long. Even valuable books have a
struggle to live. Of the forty histories
of POlybius, only five remain; thirty
| books of SauluS dropped out of the
worlds catalogue. Only thirty-five out
of one hundred and forty books of Livy
remain; twenty books of Pliny perished
| Aeschylus wrote one hundred dramas
but only seven exist; and EuTipides one
hundred dramas, but only nineteen ex-
ist; Varre wrote the biography of seven
| hundred great Romans, and all thal
wealth of biography has perished. Great
mortality among valuable books, but
much more do the bad expire. They
die like the frogs of Egypt when the
Lord turned back the plague; and the
war of ChristianiZatiOn shall grow, OF
until nothing shall be left but good
books, and they shall take possession OF
the nation. May we all live to see thai
illustrious day. Send out against ev
cry bad pamphlet good pamphlet; anC
against every scurrilOus song clear
song; against every evil picture an in
nOcent picture; against every cOrTup
book a holy book. Then it will be az
when in ancient Toledo and TOletan
missals were kept by the saints in Sly
churches. The Romans sacrilegiOusly
ordered these missals destroyed and RO
man missals substituted. war brOk,
out, but the whole contest was finally
left to two champions, and the cham
piOn of the TOletan missal, L am glad t
say, with one stroke, brought down th
champion of the Roman missal. So ma,
good literature induce the champion
ship of God and the truth whelm cor
rupt literature in its championship fO
perditiOn. | feel tingling to the tip enC
of my fingers, and through all the nerve
of my body, and all the depths of m,