Milford chronicle., 1904-12-23

Before that young mans eyes will
halo sin in as fascinating language as
Lord Byron ever did in his autobiOg
raphy of Don Juan. In that book
through a garden of fragrant roses |
will lead that young man up to the
very gates of hell / will make him
think he is approaching the gates Of
heaven. Then, just at the right mo-
ment, when that tempting book is
working its charms, we will give that
young man a shove and push him into
the flames of the bOttomless pit"
'Ahaw cried the demons exultingly.
"Aha! We will capture that young man
through the influence Of a bad book"
o man, am going beyond the truth
when l state that your eyes were first
opened to the sins of this world
through the influence of bad bookF
And am going beyond my right when
state that one of the reasons, and the
chief one, that you are not what you
ought to be in Christian character IS
because every little while you allow
yourself to revel in scenes of wicked
ness and riot conjured up by the imag-
ination of some licentious authorf
There you associate with characters of
that writer's creation so vile that yoN
would shrink from contact with them
If you were introduced to them in the
flesh, but you are fascinated by the
glamour with which they are clothed in
his pages.
What Is Your Boy Readingf
But the fiendish heart of a bad book
is not satisfied with Staying one mem
Der of a family. Like the fatal coils
Of the serpent of a LAGOON, it would
crush out tile life of a father and the
lives of his children also. o man.
your spiritual life may be poisoned by
bad booksl Have you ever stopped to
think that your children's spiritual
lives may be in the process of being
poisoned by the same deadly fangs?
What is your boy doing in the next
room? "He is reading" is your an
swer. What is he reading? only
book" What kind of a book is he
reading? Where did he get that bookf
1
let my boy select his own literature to
read. l believe he said he borrowed
that book from one of his compan-
ions" Do you not know what your
boy is reading? After your own awful
experience many years ago in reading
a bad book, from the evil effects Of
which l hope you may have recovered.
are you going to let your boy continue
to read that book? Would you, if you
could prevent it, allow your boy to go
with evil companions? Would you
knowingly allow him at his tender age
to wander down into the vile haunts
and look upon the immoral cesspOols Of
our great cities? You are doing some
thing as bad as that. o father, you
are allowing an unprincipled author to
show your boy sin in its most attrae'
tive form Can you not see there Is
something wrong in your boys bookf
Look at his CLASSY eye and flushed
cheek and labored breathing. There
are seeds of infamy being sOwn now in
that young mans heart which, if not
stamped out Mt once, may grow up into
a harvest of tareS, which Satan and
his demonac hirelings alone will gath
er. o God, help us to come to the
firm, Christian decision of never inten-
tionally reading a bad book nor of al
lowing a bad book to be placed in the
hands of our loved onesl
do not mean by this that the books
we admit to our hearts and homes
must be limited to distinctively reli-
gious books. We must read for instruc-
ton and for entertainment Because a
book is not distinctly a religious book
that is no reason why necessarily it
should be debarred from coming to our
reading chairs. Some books we should
select because they are books Of travel,
some because they are the biographies
of men and women who were the great
leaders and makers of the worlds his
tory. The higher the mountain peak
upon which you stand the wider the
range of your horizon. We should Sc
lect some books because they teach US
the geographical and geological or as
Economical or atmospheric or biological
construction of the animal, vegetable or
mineral kingdom, whether these studies
be inside of the world or above theworld
or upon the surface of the world I'm
the beginning God created the heavens
and the earth, the sea and all that in
them is" 1t is our duty to learn as
much as possible about Gods creations
if we can do so without curtailing the
work for which God created us. But
though we should select books of travel
and of fiction, if the right kind of tic-
ton, we should also select certain books
as lifetime companions because first
and last and lntrinsically they were
written to teach us the duties of the
spiritual life. We should read them
because they were written to teach us
how to love the Lord our God with I'll
our heart and soul and mind and