"

EPHESIAN MAGIC BOOKS.

Many of them also which used curious arts brought their books together, and burned them before all men: and they counted the price of them, and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver.-ACTS

19: 19.

Paul had been stirring up Ephesus with some lively sermons about the sins of that place. Among the more important results was the fact that the citizens brought out their bad books, and in a public place made a bonfire of them. I see the people coming out with their arms full of Ephesian literature, and tossing it into the flames. I hear an economist standing by, and saying, "Stop this waste. Here are seven thousand five hundred dollars' worth of books-do you propose to burn them all up? If you don't want to read them yourselves, sell them, and let somebody else read them. "No," said the people, "if these books are not good for us, they are not good for anybody else, and we shall stand and watch until the last leaf has turned to ashes. They have done us a world of harm, and they shall never do others harm." Hear the flames crackle and roar!

Well, my friends, one of the wants of the cities of this country is a great bonfire of bad books and newspapers. We have enough fuel to make a blaze two hundred feet high. Many of the publishing-houses would do well to throw into the blaze the entire stock of goods. Bring forth the insufferable trash and put it into the fire, and let it be known, in the presence of God, and angels, and men that you are going to rid your homes of the overtopping and underlying curse of profligate literature.

A DAY OF RECKONING.

We must not forget that there is an eternity behind us, and there is an eternity before us, and anything that will unfit us for the coming eternity is a very bad investment; and alas! for that man or that woman who, resolved to adhere to

iniquitous literature, goes right on in that way. The Lord will stop you after a while. The day is coming.

A TERRIBLE FATE.

You shall be cut to pieces, if not by an aroused community, then at last by the hail of divine vengeance, and you shall be swept to the lowest pit of perdition as the murderers of souls. I 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 destroyed 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.

CHAPTER XIII.

Traps for Young Men.

IT may be almost impossible to take a castle by siegestraightforward siege-but suppose in the night there is a traitor within, and he goes down and draws the bolt and swings open the great door, and then the castle falls immediately. That is the trouble with the hearts of the young; they have foes without and foes within. There are a great many who try to make our young people believe that it is a sign of weakness to be pure. The man will toss his head and take dramatic attitudes and tell of his own indiscretions, and ask the young man if he would not like to do the same. And they call him verdant, and they say he is green and unsophisticated, and wonder how he can bear the Puritanical strait-jacket. They tell him he ought to break from his mother's apron-strings, and they say, "I will show you all about town. Come with me. You ought to see the world. It won't hurt you. Do as you please, it will be the making of you." After a while the young man says, “I don't want to be odd, nor can I afford to sacrifice these friends, and I'll go and see for myself." From the gates of hell there goes a shout of victory. Farewell to all innocence-farewell to all early restraints favorable to that innocence which, once gone, never comes back.

How many traps there are set for our young people! That is what makes parents so anxious. Here are temptations for every form of dissipation and every stage of it. The young man, when he first goes into dissipation, is very particular where he goes. It must be a fashionable hotel. He could not be tempted into these corner nuisances, with red-stained glass and a mug of beer painted on the sign-board. You ask the young man to go into that place and he would

say: "Do you mean to insult me?" No; it must be a marble-floored bar-room. There must be no lustful pictures behind the counter; there must be no drunkard hiccoughing while he takes his glass. It must be a place where elegant gentlemen come in and click their cut glass and drink to the announcement of flattering sentiment. But the young man cannot always find that kind of a place; yet he has a thirst and it must be gratified. The down-grade is steeper now, and he is almost at the bottom. Here they sit in an oyster cellar around a card-table, wheezing, bloated, and bloodshot, with cards so greasy you can hardly tell who has the best hand. But never mind; they are only playing for drink. Shuffle away! shuffle away! The landlord stands in his shirt-sleeves with hands on his hips, watching the game and waiting for another call to fill up the glasses.

It is the hot breath of eternal woe that flushes that young man's cheek. In the jets of gaslight I see the shooting out of the fiery tongue of the worm that never dies. The clock strikes twelve; it is the tolling of the bell of eternity at the burial of a soul. Two hours pass on, and they are all sound asleep in their chairs. Landlord says, "Come, now, wake up; it's time to shut up." They look up and say, "What?" "It's time to shut up.' out into the air. They are going home. Let the wife crouch in the corner, and the children hide under the bed. They are going home! What is the history of that young man? He began his dissipation at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, and completed his damnation in the worst grog-shop in Navy Street.

Push them

CITY SNARES.

I have made up my mind that our city life is destroying too many young men. There comes, in every September and October, a large influx of those between sixteen and twenty-four years of age, and New York and Brooklyn damn at least a thousand of them every year. They are shovelled off and down with no more compunction than that with

which a coal-heaver scoops the anthracite into a dark cellar. What with the wine-cup and the gambler's dice, and the scarlet enchantress, no young man without the grace of God is safe ten minutes.

There is much discussion about which is the worst city of the continent. Some say New York, some say New Orleans, some say Chicago, some say St. Louis. What I have to say is, you cannot make much comparison between the infinities, and in all our cities the temptation seems infinite. We keep a great many mills running day and night. No rice-mills or cotton-mills. Not mills of corn or wheat, but mills for grinding up men. Such are all the grog-shops, licensed and unlicensed. Such are all the gambling saloons. Such are all the houses of infamy. And we do the work according to law, and we turn out a new grist every hour, and grind up warm hearts and clear heads; and the earth about a cider-mill is not more saturated with the beverage than the ground about all these mind-destroying institutions is saturated with the blood of victims.

We say to Long Island neighborhoods and villages, "Send us more supply ;" and to Westchester and Ulster and all the other counties of New York, "Send us more men and women to put under the wheels." Give us full chance, and we could grind up in the municipal mill five hundred a day. We have enough machinery; we have enough men who can run them. Give us more homes to crush! Give us more parental hearts to pulverize! Put into the hopper the wardrobes and the family Bibles, and the livelihoods of wives and children. Give us more material for these mighty mills, which are wet with tears and sulphurous with woe, and trembling with the earthquakes of an incensed God, who will, unless our cities repent, cover us up as quick and as deep as in August, of the year 79, Vesuvius avalanched. Herculaneum.

But sin does not stop here. It comes to the door of the drawing-room. There are men of leprous hearts that go into the very best classes of society. They are so fascinatingthey have such a bewitching way of offering their arm. Yet