The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1900-08-10

riSy nobel Cursed be the books that
swarm with libertines and d~esperadoes
who make he brain of the young peo-
ole whirl with vfllainyi Ye authors
who write them, we publishers who
print them, we booksellers who dfstrib-
ute them, shall be cut to pieces, IL not
Ey an aroused community, then at
last by the hail of divine vengeance,
which shall sweep to the lowest pit OF
perdition all ye murderers OF /
tell You, though you MAJ escape in
world, you will be ground at last under
the hoof of eternal calamities, and
you will have the vultures Of despair
clawins at your soul, and o whom
you have destroyed will come around
to torment YOU, and to pour hotter
Goals of fury upon your head, and re-
1oice ~eternally in the outcry of your
pain. and the howl Of your damna1ion.
God shall wound the hairy scalp of
him that goeth IN in his ~trespaSses-'
The clock strikes midnight. A fair
form bends over a The eyes
flash fire. The breath IS QUICK and If
regular. Occasionally h color dashes
to the cheek and then dies out. The
hands tremble as though a guardian
spirit were trying TO shake the deadly
book out of the grasp Hot tears fall.
She laughs with a shril voice that
drops dead at its own sound. The
sweat on her brow Is the spray dashed
I'D from the river of death. The clock
strikes 4, and the rosy dawn soon af-
ter 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
ringlets for curling serpents n
thrust her white hand through the
bars of the prison and smite her head,
rubbing it back as though to push the
scalp from the skull shrieking; My
l-o;- Nx- hrainfD 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?
ABJURE IMPURE PICTURES.
Much of the impure pictorial litera-
ture is most tremendous for ruin.
| There is no one who can like good pic
lures better than I do. The quickest
and most condensed way of impressing
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 au-
thor accomplishes by so pages the ar
fist does by a flash. The best part of a
painting that costs $4,000 you may buy
for 10 cents. Fine paintings belong
to the aristocracy of art. EngravingS
belong to the democracy of art. You
do we'll to gather good pictures in your
homes.
But wha shal i say of the prosti-
tuition of art to purposes of iniQuity?
These death warrants of h sou are
at every street corner They smite
the vision of the young man with pol
luton. Many a young man buying a
copy has bought his eternal discom-
future. There may be enough poison
in one bad picture ito poison soul,
n that soul may poison ten, and ten
fifty, and fifty hundreds, and ter hun
dreds thousands, until nothing but the
measuring line of eternity can tell the
| height and depth and ghastliness and
horror of the great undoing. The
work of death that the wicked does
in a whole boo the bad engraver may
do on a half side of a pictorial. I'm
| der the guiSe of pure mirth the young
man buys one of these sheets. He
unrollS it before his comrades amid
of laughter, but long after the
| paper is gone THE result may, perhaps
be seen in the blasted im~aginations of
those who saw it. The queen of death
holds a banquet every night, and these
periodicals are the invitation to her
guests.
Young man, buy not this moral
Strychnine for your SOUL Pick not up
this nest of coiled adders for your
pocket! Patronize no newsstand that
KEEPS lleIH. f1dNe your TOOIn tDTlSIll
with good engravingS but for these
outrageous pictorials have not one wall
n bureau, not one pocket. A mar
is not better than the pictures he
loves to look at. If your yes are not
pure, you heart cannot be. AT a newS-
stand n can guess the character OF
man by h kind of pictorial he pur-
chases. When the devil fails to get a
mar to cad a bad bOok he sometimes
Il EuncQn6G i'm QQftinQ him to hook aT 2
bad picture. When satan goes a-fish'
ing he oeS not care whether DIT is g
long line or a short line, if he only
draws his victim in. Beware of laSciv.
ous EDITORIALS, young man, in the name
Of Almighty God, I charge you.
CHERISH GOOD BOOKS.
Cherish good books and newspapers
Beware of bad ones. The assassin o.
Lord Russell declared that he was lee
into crime by reading one vivid TO
nance The cOnSecrated John Angel
James, than whom England never pro
duced a better a declared in hi!
old age that he had never yet go
W. the evil effects of having for II
minutes once read a bad book. Blu
I need o go so far off. L coul tel
you of a oomrade who was graet heart
ed, noble n generous. He was study
ing for an honorable profession. blu
he had an infidel book in his trunk, an(
he said to me n day, D Witt, woult
you like ito read it?" / said, "yeS,
would" 1 took h book and "a /
only for a few minutes. T was really
startled with what j saw there, and
handed the book back to him and said
You had better destroy that book
No, he kept it He raed it. He re
read it. After awhile he rave up re
ligion as a myth. He gave up Cox
as a ~nonentity. He gave up the Bibl'
as a fable. He gave UP the church o
Christ as a useless institution. H
gave up good morals as being unnec
essarily stringent. I have heard if hin
but twice in many years. The time be
fore the last 1 heard of him he was {
confirmed inebriate. The last / heard
Of him he was coming out of al insan'
asylum-in body, mind and soul al
awful wreck. 1 believe that one inf
del book killed him for two worlds.
Go home today and look through
your library, o on the stand wher'
you keep your pi%ctorals and newSpa
perS and apply the Christian principle
I have laid down this hour. If Their
is anything in your home that canno