LYING AND MAKING LIARS.

37

S. "That is, there are not specimens of fine writing, beautiful, majestic, heavenly, extant, without resorting to story-telling, liars, and writers of lies! This smells pretty strong of brimstone! These tales or religious novels, eulogized by you and sent forth to curse the world, may not all of them contain anything coarse, gross or vulgar; far better if they did. Evil that comes in the form of grossness or vulgarity, is not so dangerous as that which comes veiled in gracefulness and exquisite sentiment. Subjects which are better not touched upon at all, are discussed, examined, and exhibited in all the most seductive forms of imagery. Parents would be shocked to see a son in a fit of intoxication; and yet, I solemnly aver, it would be better to see a son reel through the streets, in a fit of drunkenness, than to see the delicacy of a lovely daughter's mind injured, and her imagination inflamed with false fire! Twenty-four hours will terminate the evil in the one case, but twenty-four years will not exhaust the effects of the other. You must seek the consequences at the end of very many years. 'Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth.' 'Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.'Prov. iv. 23.

"The first step in a downward course should be shunned as a deadly serpent! None become abandoned at once: we cannot have too clear an idea of the danger of the 'first steps' in any sinful career.

"Truths of the most important character, of life, science, art, geography, history, ethics, and religion, can be set forth in a style that will interest while it instructs, and will be even more fascinating to young minds than the sensational stories and sugar-coated nonsense now placed in their hands by you and others.

"Children should be encouraged to read works written for their seniors. Youths of ten or twelve years old would get far more help and intellectual health and vigor from reading histories, biographies, books of travel, art, and even of sciences, than almost any juvenile works. But the Bible first, midst, last, always.

"Yet after all, you tell me and the public brazen facedly that we are dependent on novel-scribblers-writers of liesfor the best and finest specimens of human composition! Shameful! This assertion of yours is a libel! What softer name give it? The truth is well known, that the style of writing of the very best of these novelists, is generally below mediocrity-weak, puerile, silly, uncouth, unchaste, and very often positively gross, vulgar. This you see in most of the stories or tales inserted in religious weeklies and monthlies. How otherwise, penned as they are under the influence of the satanics ?"

W. "Your assertions are broad and sweeping. Will you not, do you not admit of exceptions, Mr. Standfast?"

S. "Satan does, in very deed, sometimes help his faithful servants marvelously in composing, especially those given exclusively to his service."

"A novel was a book,

Three volum'd, and once read; and oft crammed!

Of poisonous error, blackening every page;

And oftener still, of trifling, second-hand,

Remarkable and old, diseased and putrid thought,
And miserable incident, at war

With nature, with itself and truth at war;

Yet charming still the greedy reader on,
Till done-he tried to recollect his thought,
And nothing found but dreaming emptiness."

BUT who is Naaman, and what was he? Turn to 2d Kings, chap. 5, and the secret is disclosed. Elisha said to Naaman, "Go and wash in Jordan seven times, and thy flesh shall come again to thee, and thou shalt be clean." But who told Naaman that Elisha could cure sick folks? A little captive girl! Hark! "And she said unto her mistress, Would God my lord were with the Prophet that is in Samaria, for he would recover him of his leprosy."2 Kings v. 3.

You see what little hearts of love can do, the Lord helping-not bigger than little Mary-by dropping kind words. Every little boy and girl born from above, full of faith and the Holy Spirit, as all little folks should be, will drop kind words they can't help it! And what more beautiful, praiseworthy?

"Little children, Jesus loves you,

He invites you to his arms;
To his breast he waits to fold you,
There to shield you from alarms."

WHO are these walking up hill briskly? Abraham and Isaac! Turn to Gen. 22, and you will see how it is-who it is.

They are on the way to Mount Moriah. Isaac is to be offered for a burnt sacrifice. God told Abraham to do this, and that was sufficient. Whatever God told him to do, whether pleasant or unpleasant, for life or for deathwhat now, stop? parley, hesitate, question proprieties? Not a breath of it; the very instant duty was plainstaring him full in the face-he was off in the twinkling of an eye. His invariable motto was : Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth." Fear consequences? Indeed what had Abraham to think, say or do about consequences? He knew full well God takes care of consequences. Duty is ours, consequences or results God's. "Go forward." Why was this blessed patriarch called the father of the faithful? 1. Because he was strong in faith, giving glory to God. His faith was not a dead faith, without works. It was faith and do, do and faith, but faith first-all the time-and works followed instantly, after faith! "Faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect. And the Scripture was fulfilled which saith, Abraham believed God,