The Caucasian. (Clinton, N.C.) 188?-1913, 1891-03-12

ance of my God warn You Of the fact |
that your children are threatened with |
moral and spiritual typhoid, and that
unless the thing be stopped it viii be to
them funeral of body, fuaersll OF mind, ]
funeral of soul Three funerals i'm one
day.
Ny word is TO this vast multitude of
young people: Do not touch, do not
borrow, do not buy a corrupt book or
a corrupt picture. \ book viii decide
a mans destiny for good Or for evil
The book you read yesterday may have
decided YOU for time and for eternity,
or it may be u book that may come into
your possession tomorrow.
THE POWER or A GOOD BOOK.
4 good book-who can exaggerate
its power2 Benjamin Franklin said
that his reading of Cotton Mather's
Essays to Do Good in childhood
gave him holy aspirations for al the
rest of his life George Law declared
that biography he read in childhood
gave him all his subsequent prospect
ties. y clergyman, many years ago,
passing to the far west, stopped at a
hotel. He saw woman copying some
thing from Doddridge's Rise and
Progress" 1t seemed that she had
borrowed the book, and there were
some things she wanted especially to
remember
The clergyman had in his sachei a
copy of Doddrige's Rise and Prog
ress," and so he made her IL present Of
it, Thirty years passed on. The
clergyman came that way. and he asked
where the woman was whom he had
seen long ago They said, She lives
yonder ia that beautiful house" lie
went there and said to her, DO you
remember mel" She said, NO, l Go
not" He said, do you remember a
man gave you DoddridGe's Rise and
Progress thirty years ago|' '.Oh,
yes; | 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 q church
and called a 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, alas! for
the influence of q bad book;
John Angel James, than whom Eng
land never had holier minister, stood
IN his pulpit at Birmingham and said
Twenty five years ago a lad loaned TO
| lie an infamous book He would loan
it only fifteen minutes and then [ had
to give it back; but that book has
haunted me like q specter ever since.
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 tic
the day of my death" The assassin OF
Sir William Russell declared that he
got the inspiration for his crime 10y
reading what was then u new and pop
ular novel, Jack Sheppard" Homer's
''Iliad' made Alexander the warrior
Alexander said SO. The story of Alex
ander'made Julius Caesar and Charles
XII both men Of blood. Have you ir
your pocket, or in your trunk, or il
your desk at business bad book, 6
bad picture, O. bad pamphlet? In Gods
name warn you to destroy it.
ANOTHER WAY.
Another way in which we shall fight
back this corrupt literature and kill the
frogs Of Egypt is by rolling over them
the Christian printing press, which shall
give plenty of healthful reading to I'll
adults. All these men and women ire
reading men and women. What SO
you reading? Abstain from all those
books which, while they had some good
things about them have also an adj
mixture Of evil. You have read books
that had two elements in them-the
good and the bad Which stuck tt
you! The bad The heart of most
people Is like Il sieve, which lets the
small particles of gold fall through but
keeps the great cinders. Once in {
while there is q mind like foadstone
which, plunged amid steel and bras
filings, gathers up the steel and repel
the brass. But it is generally just the
opposite. If you attempt to plunge
through q fence of burrs to get ONT
blackberry you will get more burr
4 than blackocrries. You cannot affort
to read a bad book, however good yo1
are. You say, 1.-The influence is insig
I nificant." l tell you that the scratch
of pin has sometimes produced tn,
lock jaw.
Alas if through curiosity, as man,
/, do, you pry into an evil book, you
: curiosity is as dangerous as that of th
; man who would take Il torch into
. | gunpowder mill merely to see whether
would really blow up or not. In a me
nagerie a man put his arm through tn
+ bars Of a black leopard's cage TIL
animals hide looked so sleek anc
bright and beautiful. He just stroket
. it once. The monster seized him, ant
he drew forth hand torn and man
., gled and bleeding Oh, touch not evi
d even with the faintest stroke! Thougl
{. it may be glossy and beautiful, toucl
It it not, lest you pull forth your sou
d torn and bleeding under the clutch Q
e the black leopard. But" you say
It chow can find out whether a book
e good or bad without readingi t?'' Their
l. is always something suspicious about
IL bad book. never knew an exception
a something suspicious in the index G
y style of illustration. This venomou
D. reptile almost always carries a warnin