The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1898-02-01

noble, and ChristianiZe while they
please. The devil does 10 own all the
honey. There Is a wealth VI good books
coming forth from our publishing
houses that leave no excuse for the
choice of that which is d~ebauching to
body, mind, and soul. Go to some in
telligent man or woman, and ask for
a list Of books hat will be STRENGTHEN
ing to pour mental and moral condition
Life is SO short and your time for i'm
provement so abbreviated that You
cannot afford to fill up with husks, and
cinders, and debris. In the interstices
or business that young man is reading
that which will prepare him to be a
merchant prince, n that young
woman Is filling her mine with an in
telligence that will yet either make
her the chief attraction of a good mans
home, or give her an independence of
character that will qualify her to build
her own home n maintain it in a
happiness that requires no augmenta-
ton from any Of our rougher sex. That
young man or woman can, by the
right literary and moral improvement
of the spare ten minutes here or there
every day, rise head and shoulders in
prosperity, and character, and inf1u-
ence, above the loungers who read
nothing or read hat which bedwarfs.
See all the forests of good American
literature dripping with honey. Why
pick up the honeycombs hat lave in
them the fiery bees which will sting
you with an eternal poison while you
taste it? One book may for o or
me decide everything for this world
and the next. 1t was a turning point
with me when in a book store in SYRIA
cuse, one day 1 picked up a book call
ed The Beauties of Ruskin." 1t was
Nv n 1~101r- ~ = I,& - ~
pure honey, and I was not satisfied
until / had purchased all his works,
at that time expensive beyond an easy
capacity to own them, and with what
delight / went through reading his
Seven Lamps ct Architecture" and
his Stones Of Venice" it is impossi-
BILE for me to describe except by saying
that it gave me a rapture for good
books, and an everlasting disgust for
decrepit or immoral books that will
last me while my life lasts. All around
the church and the world to-day there
are busy hives of intelligence occupied
by authors and autnoresses from whose
pens drip a d~istillation which is the
very nectar of heaven, and why will
you thrust your rod of inquisitiveness
into the beautiful ~cchar of perdi-
ton?
Stimulating liquids also come into
the category of temptation delicious
but deathful. You say: 81 cannot
bear the taste of Intoxicating liquor,
and how any man ear like it is to me
an a~mazement." Well, then, it is no
credit to you that you do not take it.
Do not brag about your total abstln-
ence, because it is not from any prin-
ciple that you reject alcoholism, but for
the reason that you reject certain
styles of food-you simply don't like
the taste of them. But multitudeS of
people have a natural fondness for all
kinds of intoxicants. They like it so
much hat it makes them mack their
lips to look at it. They are despeptic
n they like to aid digestion; or they
are annoyed by insomnia, and they
take it to produce sleep; or they are
troubled, and they take it to make
them. oblivious; Of they feel happy,
and they must celebrate their hilarity.
They begin with mint julep sucked
through two straws on the Long
Branch piazza and end in the ditch,
taking from a jug a liquid half kero-
sene and half whisky. They not only
like it, but it is an a~ll-consuming pas
sion of body, mind and soul, and after
awhile have it they will, though one
wine-glass Of it cost the temporal and
eternal destruction of themselves n
all their families and the whole human
race. They would say: Il am sorry
it is going to cost me and my family
and all the worlds population 50 very
much, but here it goes to my lips, and
now let it roll over my parched tongue
and down my heated throat, the sweet
est, the most inspiring, the most de-
iicious draught that ever thrilled a
human Frame" To cure the habit be-
fore it comes to its last stages, various
plans were tried in olden times. This
plan was recommended in the books:
When a nan wanted to reform he put
shot or bullets into the cup or glass Of
strong drink-one additional shot or
bullet each day, that displaced so much
liquor. Bullet after bullet added day
by day, of curse the liquor became
less and less until the bullets would en-
tirely fill up the glass n there was
no room for the liquid, n by that
time it was said the inebriate would
be cured. Whether any n eve was
cured in hat way I know not, but by
long experiment it is found that the
only way is to stop short off, and
whe a man does that he needs God to
help him. And there have been more
cases than you can count when God
has so helped the man that he left off
the drink forever; and I could count
a score of them, some of them pillars
in the house of God.
One would suppose that men would
take warning from some of the Omin-
Gus names given to the intoxicants,
and stand off from the devastating
influence. You have noticed, for in
stance, that some of the restaurants
are called 1.-The Shades" typical of
the fact that it puts a mans reputa-
tion in the shade, and his morals in
the shade, and mis- prosperity in the
shade, and his wife and children in the
shade, and his immortal destiny in the
shade. Now, I find on some of the Ii
quor signs in all our cities the words
III Crow nightly suggestive Of the
carcass and the filthy raven that
swoops upon it. "Old Crow!" Men and
women without numbers slain of rum,
but unburied, and this evil is pecking
at their glazed eyes, and pecking at
their bloated cheek, and pecking at
tbnir DESTROYED nj and woman