Obstacles in the way of knowledge formerly. Excellence of the ancients.

tained only four classics, with a few devotional works. So great was the privilege of owning a book, that one of their books on natural history contained a picture, representing the Deity as resting on the Sabbath, with a book in his hand, in the act of reading! It was probably no better in earlier times. Knowledge was scattered to the four winds, and truth was hidden in a well. Lycurgus and Pythagoras were obliged to travel into Egypt, Persia, and India, in order to understand the doctrine of the metempsychosis. Solon and Plato had to go to Egypt for what they knew. Herodotus and Strabo were obliged to travel to collect their history, and to construct their geography as they travelled. Few men pretended to own a library, and he was accounted truly favored who owned half a dozen volumes. And yet, with all this scarcity of books, there were in those days scholars who greatly surpassed us. We cannot write poetry like Homer, nor history like Thucydides. We have not the pen which Aristotle and Plato held, nor the eloquence with which Demosthenes thrilled. They surpassed us in painting and in sculpture. Their books were but few. But those were read, as Juvenal says, ten times" decies repetita placebunt." Their own resources were tasked to the utmost, and he who could not draw from his own fountain, in vain sought for neighbors, from whose wells he could borrow.

How very different with us! We read without

We read much.

Cautions.

measure, and almost without profit.

Bad books.

"Aliud enim est

scire, aliud sapere. Sapiens est, qui didicit non omnia, sed ea quæ ad veram felicitatem pertinent, et iis quæ didicit afficitur ac transfiguratus est."

If, at the close of any given year, you will examine the register of the librarian of any of the literary societies in college, you will find, almost without exception, that those who have taken out most books, have accomplished least in preparing the mind for future usefulness. It is a good maxim, in regard to your reading-Non multa, sed multum.

Beware of bad books. Some men have been permitted to live and employ their powers in writing what will continue to pollute and destroy for generations after they are gone. The world is flooded with such books. They are permitted to lie in our pathway as a part of our moral discipline. Under the moral government of God, while in this state of probation, we are to be surrounded with temptations of every kind. And never does the spirit of darkness rejoice more, than when a gifted mind can prostitute itself, not merely to revel in sin itself, but to adorn and conceal a path which is full of holes, through which you may drop into the chambers of death. Books could be named, were it not that there is a possibility that even the information conveyed in naming them might be perverted and used to obtain them, which, seemingly, could not be excelled by all the talents in hell, if the

Their certain ruin.

Guilt of selling such books.

object were to pollute and to ruin. These are to be found every where. I do entreat my young readers never to look at one-never to open one. They will leave a stain upon the soul which can never be removed. I have known these books secreted in the rooms of students, and lent from one to another. They are to be found too frequently. And if you have an enemy, whose soul you would visit with a heavy vengeance, and into whose heart you would place vipers which will live, and crawl, and torment him through life, and whose damnation you would seal up for the eternal world, you have only to place one of these destroyers in his hand. You have certainly paved the way to the abodes of death; and if he does not travel it with hasty strides, you have, at least, laid up food for many days of remorse.

What shall be said of those who print and sell such works to the young?-of those who go out on purpose to peddle them? They are the most awful scourges with which a righteous God ever visited our world. The angel of death can sheath his sword, and stay his hand in the work of death. But these wretches! they dig graves so deep that they reach into hell. They blight the hopes of parents, and pour more than seven vials of wo upon the family whose affections are bound up in the son who is thus destroyed.

In connection with these books, allow me to lift up a loud voice against those rovings of the imagination,

Abuse of imagination. A delicate subject.

Onanis scelus.

by which the mind is at once enfeebled, and the heart and feelings debased and polluted. It is almost inseparable from the habit of reverie: but, in this life, a heavier curse can hardly hang upon a young man than that of possessing a polluted imagination. The leprosy fills the whole soul. Time only increases it, and even the power of the gospel can seldom do more than restrain, without subduing, when the disease is once fixed.

While I thus briefly allude to these wanderings of the imagination, by which the mind is debilitated, the soul polluted by a stain which tears cannot wash out, nor the deepest repentance fully do away, I cannot satisfy my conscience without going a step further, and saying what others have, to my certain knowledge, wished to say, and ought to say, but which no one has yet had the courage to say, in tones loud and distinct. May I entreat the young man who reads these pages not to pass the following paragraph without reading and pondering it. I have chosen to risk the charge of pedantry rather than not say what I could not say in English.

Lux nulla, illâ Diæ ultimæ exceptâ, ut frequenter et assidue, consuetudinem*** effundendi manu [ONANIS SCELUS,] revelare possit. Adolescentulos quamplurimos novi, in singulatos dies, in hac re, seipsos turpantes, et hoc, per annos multos. Incitamentum ad hoc crimen, cum pene omnibus, permagnum est. Casum multorum quos, de causâ execrabile solâ, vidi occumbere prema

Crimen commune.

Ethnici.

Dei ira.

turæ morti, gemui,-aliquos in aulis academicis, et nonnullos citissime post digressum e collegio et ex aliquovis gradu exornatos. Plurimi hanc consuetudinem defendere conati sunt, quasi instinctu quodam et imperio impulsi, et sic voluerunt Deum ipsum esse hujus stupri auctorem. "Hoc prætexit nomine culpam.' Turpissima simulatio! Ethnici ipsi, luce nature ducti, cum verbis multis hanc culpam reprobaverunt.

V. C.

"Veneri servit-manus! Hoc nihil esse putas? scelus est, mihi crede; sed ingens, quantum vix animo concipis ipse tuo;-parce solicitare manu. Lavibus in pueris plus quam hæc-peccat."

Deus, quoad hoc crimen, mentem ejus lucidissime indicavit. Indignatio et ira Dei illis adsequentur. "Scimus vero judicium Dei esse secundum veritatem adversus eos qui talia agunt. Putas autem hoc, O qui facis ea, fore ut tu effugias judicium Dei?" Memento fructus hujus consuetudinis esse(1.) Memoriam esse maxime debilitatam ;

(2.) Mentem esse valde dejectam atque stulte imbecilem; +

* Gen. 38:9, 10. 1 Cor. 6:9. 2 Cor. 12:21. Gal. 5:19. Eph. 5: 3, 5.

† See a thrilling and harrowing chapter in Rush on Diseases of the Mind. Physicians testify, that probably this is a greater source of derangement than all other causes. The very intelligent and respectable Superintendents of the Insane Hospitals at Worcester and at Hartford will say, not only that this is the cause of bringing many of their patients there, but an almost insuperable obstacle in the way of their recovery.