Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1891-03-09

not. He said, do you remember q
man gave you Doddridge's Rise and
Progress thirty years ago?" "Oh,
yes; I remember. That book saved
my soul. | loaned the book to all my
neighbors, and they read it and were
converted to God, and we had re-
vival of religion that swept through the
whole community. We built a church
and called q pastor. You see that
spire yonder, don't you? That church
was built as the result of that book you
gave me thirty years ago" Oh, the
power of a good book! But, alasl for
the influence of bad book
John Angel James, than whom Eng
land never had a holier minister, stood
in his pulpit at Birmingham and said:
twenty-five years ago a lad loaned to
me an infamous book. He would loan
it only fifteen minutes and then | had
to give it back; but that book has
haunted me like a specter ever since
I have in agony of soul, on my knees
before God, prayed that he would OBJ
literate from my soul the memory of it;
but shall carry the damage of it to
the day OF my death" The assassin of
Sir William Russell declared that he
got the Inspiration for his crime by
reading what was then new and pop
ular novel, Jack Sheppard" Homer's
''Iliad" made Alexander the warrior
Alexander said SO. The story of Alex
ander mae Julius Caesar and Charles
XII both nscn Of blood. Have you in
your pocket, CT in your trunk, or in
your desk at business a bad book,
bad picture, u bad pamphlet? In Gods
name l warn you to destroy it.
ANOTHER WAY.
Another way in which we shall fight
back {,ls cs:rupt literature and kill the
frogs of Egypt IS by rolling over them
the Christian printing press, which shall
give plenty of healthful reading to all
adults All these men and women are
reading men and women. What are
you reading? Abstain from all those
books which, while they had some good
things about them have also an ad-
mixture Of evil. You have read books
that had two elements in them-the
good and the bad. Which stuck to
you? The bad The heart of most
people is like a sieve which lets the
small particles of gold fall through but
keeps the great cinders. Once in a
while there is q mind like a loadstone,
which, plunged amid steel and brass
filings, gathers up the steel and repels
the brass. But it is generally just the
opposite. If you attempt to plunge
through a fence of burrs to get one
blackberry you will get more burrs
than blackberries. You cannot afford
to read bad book, however good you
are You say, THE influence is insig-
nificant" [ tell you that the scratch
of pin has sometimes produced the
lock jaw.
Alas. if through curiosity, as many
do, you pry into an evil book, your
curiosity is as dangerous as that of the
man who would take n torch into a
gunpowder mill mereIv to see whether it
would really blow up or not. In a me-
nagerie u man put his arm through the
bars of black leopard's cage. The
animals hide looked so sleek and
bright and beautiful. He just stroled
it once The monster seized him, and
he drew forth hand torn and man
gled and bleeding Oh touch not evil
even with the faintest stroke Though
it may be glossy and beautiful, touch
it not. lest you pull forth your soul
torn and bleeding under the clutch of
the black leopard. But" you say,
chow can | find out whether a book is
good or bad without reading = There
is always something suspicious about Il
bad book. | never knew an exception
something suspicious in the index or
style of illustration. This venomous
reptile almost always carries a warning
rattle.
The clock strikes midnight A fair
form bends over a romance. The eyes
flash fire The breath is quick and
irregular. Occasionally the color dashes
to the cheek, and then dies out. The
hands tremble rs though a guardian
spirit were trying to shake the deadly
book out of the grasp. Hot tears fall.
She laughs with a shrill voice that
drops dead at its own sound. The
sweat on her brow is the spray dashed
up from the river of death. The clock
strikes four, and the rosy dawn soon
after begins to look through the lattice
upon the pale form that looks like a
detained specter of the night. Soon in
a madhouse she will mistake her ring
lets for curling serpents, and thrust her
white hand through the bars of the
prison, and snite her head rubbing ii
back as though to push the scalp from
the skull, sarieking, My brain! my
brain" Oh, stand off from that. Why
viii you go sounding your way amid
the reefs and warning buOys, when
there is such a vast ocean in which you
may voyage, all sail set?
A BOOK!
We see so many books we do not I'M
derstand what book is. Stand it on
end Measure 1.-THE height of it,
the depth of it, the length of it, the
breadth of it You cannot do it. Elk
anime the paper and estimate the prog
ress made from the time of the impress
sions on the clay, and then on to the
bark of trees, and from the bark of
trees to papyrus, and from papyrus to
the hide of wild beasts, and from the
hide of wild beasts on down until the
miracles of our modern paper manu-
factories, and then see the paper, white
and pure as an infants soul waiting for
Gods inscription.
a book! Examine the type of it.
Examine the printing of it, and see the
progress from the time when Solon's
laws were written on oak planks, and
Hesiods poems were written on tables
of lead, and the Siniatic commands
were written on tables of stone, on
down to Hoes perfecting printing press.
= A book 1t took all the universities
of the past, all the martyr fires, all the
civilizations, all the battles, all the vic
tories, all the defeats, all the glooms,
all the brightnesses, all the centuries to
make it possible.
A book 1t is the chorus of the ages;
+ &c tho room in which LiYocr.