Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1897-06-14

swim the sea Or cleave the mountain
until the earth jars and roars and rings
and crackles and booms with strange
| mechanism, and ships with nostrilg Of
| hot steam and Jokes of fire draw the
continents together.
say nothing against healthful curl
osity. May it have other Leyden jars,
md other electric batteries, and other
| voltaic piles, and other magnifying
| glasses, with which to storm the barred
castles Of the natural world until it
shall surrender its last secret We thank
| God for the geological curiosity of Pro-
| fessor Hitchcock, and the mechanical
| curiosity of Liebig, and the geological
| curiosity of Cuvier, and the inventive
| curiosity of Edison, but we must admit
! that unhealthful and irregular inquisi-
tiveness has rushed thousands and tens
| of thousands into ruin.
Eve Just tasted the fruit She was
| curious to find out how it tasted, and
| that curiosity blasted her and blasted
all nations. So there are clergymen in
this day, inspired by unhealthful in
| quisitiveness, who have tried to look
| through the keyhole of Gods myster-
| ies-mysteries that were barred and
bolted from all human inspection-and
they have wrenGhed their whole moral
nature out Of joint by trying to pluck
fruit from branches beyond their reach,
or have come out on limbs of the tree
from which they have tumbled into
ruin without remedy. A thousand trees
of religious knowledge from which we
may eat and get advantage, but from
certain trees of mystery how many
have plucked their ruin! Election, free
agency, trinity, resurrection in the
discussion of these subjects hundreds
and thousands of people ruin the soul.
There are men who actually have been
kept out of the kingdom of heaven be-
cause they could not understand who
Melchisedec was not.
Forbidden Fruit.
Oh, how many have been destroyed
by an unhealthful inquisitiveness! 1t is
seen i'll all directions There are those
who stand with the eye stare and mouth
cape of curiosity. They are the first to
hear falsehood, build it another story
high and two wings to it. About other
peoples apparel, about other peoples
business, about other peoples financial
condition, about other peoples affairs,
they are overanxious. Every nice piece
of gossip stops at their door, and they
fatten and luxuriate in the endless
round of the great world Of little tattle.
They invite and sumptuously entertain
at their house Colonel Twaddle and Es-
quire Chitchat and Governor Smalltalk.
Whoever hath an innuendo, whoever
hath a scandal, whoever hath a valuable
IO4 l. b.
this goddess of splutter. Thousands of
Adams and Ewes do nothing but eat
fruit that does not belong to them. Men
quite we'll known as mathematicians
failing in this computation of moral
algebra: Good sense plus good breeding,
minus curiosity, equals mlnding your
own affairs
Then, how many young men through
curiosity go through the whole realm
of French novels, to see whether they
are really as bad as moralists have pro-
nounced them. They come near the
verge of the precipice just to look off.
They want to see how far it really is
down, but they lose their balance while
they look and fall into remediless ruin,
Or, catching themselves, Chamber up,
bleeding and CHASTITY, on the rock, glib
bering with curses or grOaning ineffec-
tual prayer. By all means encourage
healthful inquisitiveness, by all means
discourage i'll regulated curiosity.
This subject also impresses me with
the fact that fruits that are sweet to the
taste may afterward produce great ago
ny. Forbidden fruit for Eve was so
pleasant she invited her husband also to
take of it. but her Punishment from
paradise and 5000 years of sorrow, and
wretchedness, and war, and woe paid
for that luxury. Sin may be very sweet
at the start, and it may induce great
Indebtedness afterward. The cup of sin
is sparkling at the top, but there is
death at the bottom. Intoxication has
great exhilaration for awhile, and it
fillips the blood, and it makes a man
see five stars where others can see only
one STAR and it makes the poor man
rich, and turns cheeks which are white
red as roses; but what about the dreams
that come after, when he seems falling
from great heights, or is Frustrated by
other fancied disasters, and the perspi-
ration stands on the forehead-the
night dew of everlasting darkness-and
he is ground under the horrible hoof of
Nightmares shrieking with lips that
crackle with all consuming torture?
''Rejoice, o young man, in thy youth,
and let thy heart cheer thee in the days
of thy youth, but know thou that for
all these things God will bring thee in
to Judgment Sweet at the start, hor-
rible at the last. Go into that hall of
revelry, where ungodly mirth staggers
and blasphemes. Listen to the senseless
gable. See the last trace of intelligence
dashed out from faces made in Gods
own image. AHA, ahap" says the roist-
ering inebriate ''This is joy for you.