Connecticut western news., 1900-08-02

community, then at last by the han of divine vengeance, which shall sweep to the lowest pit of perdition all ye murderers of souls. 1 tell you, though you may escape in this world, you will be ground at last under the hoof of eternal calamities, and you will be chained to the rock, and you will have the vultures of despair clawing at your soul, and those whom you have de- stroyed will come around to torment you and to pour hotter coals of fury upon your head and rejoice eternally In the outcry of your pain and the howl of your damnation. God shall wound the hairy scalp of him that goeth on In his trespasses."
 The clock strikes midnight. A fair form bends over q romance. The eyes flash fire. The breath is quick and IT. regular. Occasionally the color dashes to the cheek and then dies out. The hands tremble as though a guardian spirit was trying to shake the deadly book out of the grasp. Hot tears fall. She laughs with a shrill voice that drops dead at It's own sound. The sweat on her brow Is the spray dash ed up from the river Of death. The clock strikes 4, 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 II. a madhouse she will mistake her ringlets for curling ser pents, and thrust her white hand through the bars of the prison, and smite her head, rubbing 1t back as though to push the scalp from the skull, shrieking, My brain! My brainw Oh, stand off from that! Why will you go sounding your way amid the reefs when there Is such a vast ocean in which you may voyage, all sail set?
 Purity Tn Art.
 Much of the impure pictorial liter ature Is most tremendous for ruin. There Is no one who can like good pie lures better than I do. The quickest and most condensed way of impress Ing the public mind Is by picture. What the painter does by his brush for a few favorites the engraver does by his knife for the million. What the author accomplishes by 90 pages the artist does by a flash. The best part of a painting that costs $10,0OO you may buy for 10 cents. Fine paintings be- long to the democracy of art. You do we'll to gather good pictures in your homes.
 But what shall say of the prostitu- tion Of art to purposes of iniquity? These death warrants of the soul are at every street corner. They smite the vision of the young man with pollution. Many a young man buying a copy has bought his eternal discontinue. There may be enough poison in one bad pic ture to poison one soul, and that soul may poison ten and ten fifty and the fifty hundreds and the hundreds thou sands until nothing but the measuring light of eternity can tell the height and depth and ghastliness and horror of the great undoing. The work of death that the wicked author does in a whole book the bad engraver may do on a half side of a pictorial. Under the guise of pure mirth the young man buys one of these sheets. He unrolls 1t before his comrades amid roars of laughter, but long after the paper is
  the blasted imaginations of those who saw 1t. The queen of death holds banquet every night. and these peri odicals are the invitation to her guests.
 Young man, buy not this moral stryehnfne for your soul! Pick not up this nest of colled adders for your pocket! Patronize no newsstand that keeps them! Have your room bright with good engravings, but for these outrageous pictorials have not one wall, not one bureau, not one pocket. A man is no better than the pictures he loves to look at. If your eyes are not pure, your heart cannot be. At newsstand one can guess the character of a man by the kind of pictorial he purchases. When the devil fails to get man to read bad book, he some times succeeds in getting him to look at a bad picture. When satan goes a-fishing, he does not care whether 1t Is long line or a short line If he only draws his victim in. Beware of las civious pictorials, young man, in the name of Almighty God, I charge you! Cleanse the Library.
 Cherish good books and newspapers; beware of bad ones. The assassin of Lord Russell declared that he was led into crime by reading one vivid TO- nance. The consecrated John Angell l James, than whom England never pro- duced a better man, declared In his old | age that he had never yet got over the evil effects of having for 15 minutes | once read bad book. But need not | go so far off. I could tell you of
 ,omrade who was great hearted, noble | and generous. He was studying for an honorable profession, but he had an | infidel book In his trunk, and he said
 to me one day. "De Witt, would you | like to read it?' I said, "Yes; I would" I took the book and read 1t only for a | few minutes. was really startled I with what I saw there, and 1 handed | the book back to him and said, You | had better destroy that book" No; he l kept 1t. He read 1t. He reread 1t. Aft | CT awhile he gave up religion as a | myth. He gave up God as a nonentity. He gave up the Bible as a fable. He | gave up the church of Christ as a use less institution. He gave up good \ morals as being unnecessarily strin- | gent. I have heard of him but twice
 In many years. The time before the
 last heard of him he was a confirmed
 inebriate. Phe last heard of him he was coming out of an insane asylum,
 in body, mind and soul an awful wreck. believe that one infidel book killed
 him for two worlds.
 Go home today and look through your library and then, having looked through your library, look on the stand
 where you keep your pictoriais and
 newspapers and apply the Christian
 principles | have laid down this hour. If there Is anything in your home that