1895 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



531 



said he had a copy of the Sunddij- school Times 

 that he used himself that I might have if it 

 would be an accommodation. 1 had hardly had 

 a glimpse of my old home paper during the 

 whole time I was in Florida; and I tell you I 

 .lust felt happv as I sat down and went over the 

 pages so familiar to my eye. It was meeting an 

 old friend away off in thp desert wilds, and it 

 cured me of being homesick, straightway. 



Our Homes. 



And God saw that the wickedness of man was 

 great in the earth, and that every imagination of 

 the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 

 —Gen. 6:5. 



On the evening of Wednesday, June 5, it was 

 my good fortune to be present at the address 

 of Anthony Comstock, given at the State 

 Sunday-school Convention in Cleveland. Prob- 

 ably every reader of Gleanings knows some- 

 thing of the work of Anthony Comstock. For 

 a period of almost 2.5 years his name has been 

 almost a household word when the subject of 

 social purity and the morals of our children 

 have been under discussion. Previous to Mr. 

 Comstock's vigorous prosecution, vile and in- 

 decent books were passed about, and swapped 

 back and forth, even by schoolboys; but for the 

 past fifteen or twenty years I have hardly 

 known of such a thing, unless it was to make 

 mention of the apprehension and arrest of the 

 man or boy who started it: and they almost al- 

 ways of late years get brought to justice by the 

 time they have got well started. Now for the 

 discourse: 



The main part of the speaker's talk centered 

 about the imagination. He said that even a 

 child began, and that, too. at a very early age, 

 to people its thoughts with images. In fact, 

 he put it in something this way: There is in 

 the heart of every human being a sort of pic- 

 ture-gallery— a little room, we might call it. the 

 walls of which are adorned with pictures of 

 some kind. If the parents, the teachers, the 

 pastor, the Sunday-school teachers, and others, 

 do not see to it that the apartment within the 

 little heart of every child is hung with good, 

 wholesome, and pure pictures, the prince of 

 darkness will surely see to it that these little 

 walls are adorned with pictures of some kind, 

 and that very quickly; and these pictures, too, 

 will be of a very impure and low description; 

 and it is the character of these pictures that 

 fixes the thoughts, the actions, and the life, of 

 the coming human being. If the imagination 

 is allowed to dwell on fancies of a vile charac- 

 ter, the future life of the person soon becomes 

 vile. The subject of the discourse, I believe, 

 was, " Our Children and their Environments." 

 My good friend, if you have no children of 

 your own, you have brothers and sisters, or 

 relatives — children whom you wish to grow up 

 good and pure and useful. What are their en- 

 vironments ? What are the pictures they see ? 

 Are they permitted to select their own pictures 

 and their own reading, without any parent or 

 guardian to direct them ? I have often told 

 you of the sad stories that I have heard during 

 my visits at our county jail. A boy borrowed a 

 highwayman's book. T believe it was the his- 

 tory of Jesse James. I do not know whether 

 the book was put out with the intention of 

 having it prove a warning to our boys or not; I 

 only know that it fired this boy's imagination 

 with a desire to be a Jesse James himself. He 

 stole a horse, and I found him in jail; and he 

 confessed to me it was a very hard matter 

 indeed for him to get Jesse James out of his 



mind and choose the straight and narrow path 

 instead of the broad way that leads to destruc- 

 tion. Yes, after I had patiently and kindly 

 talked the whole matter over with him, from 

 beginning to end, and when he assented to 

 reason and common sense, yet there was a long- 

 ine for unlawful adventure that he could 

 hardly root out of his mind and his imagina- 

 tion. Some of my readers may think this very 

 strange: but I am inclined to think there are 

 others (perhaps a large portion) who will, in 

 their own hearts, recognize that that boy was 

 not, after all, so very much wor.se than some 

 older people. 



We all know more or less about the imagina- 

 tion, and how much it has to do with our acts 

 in life. I was almost startled to hear Mr. Com- 

 stock quote text after text from '-od's holy 

 word, indicating how much the imagination 

 has to do with these lives we are living, f.et 

 us look at one of the chosen texts. For in- 

 stance, away back more than 5000 years ago, 

 "every imagination of the thoughts of man's 

 heart was only evil, and evil continually." 

 Again, in that same book of iTenesis. two chap- 

 ters further on, we read: " For the imagination 

 of man's heart is evil from his youth." Let us 

 now go on to Deuteronomy. 31:31: " For I know 

 their imagination which they go about, even 

 now, before I have brought them into the land 

 which I sware." Again, I. Chronicles, 38:9: 

 " For the Lord searcheth all hearts, and under- 

 standeth all the Imaginations of the thoughts." 

 Again, in the next chapter, 18ih verse, Solomon 

 says in his prayer: "0 Lord God of Abraham, 

 Isaac, and of Israel, our fathers, keep this for 

 ever in the imagination of the thoughts of the 

 heart of thy people, and prepare their heart 

 unto thee." In the latter you will notice the 

 imagination maybe a power for good instead 

 of an element for evil. Again. Proverbs 6:18: 

 " A heart that deviseth wicked imaginations ; 

 feet that be swift in running to mischief." 

 Again, Jeremiah 3:17: "Neither shall they 

 walk anymore after the imagination of their 

 evil heart." Again. Jeremiah 7:34: "They 

 walked in the imagination of their evil heart, 

 and went backward and not forward." Again, 

 Jeremiah 18:13: "We will walk after our own 

 devices, and we will every one do the imagina- 

 tion of his evil heart." The prophet had been 

 pleading with them in regard to their wicked 

 ways, and he tells how they reply. Perhaps 

 they replied by actions rather than by words. 

 They say, "We will walk after our own de- 

 vices, and we will every one do the imagination 

 of his evil heart." Surely Anthony Comstock 

 has abundant reason, and reason coming from 

 Bible quotations, to support him in his posi- 

 tion, that the sin of mankind has its root in the 

 imagination. He said it was often stated that 

 intoxicating liquors are the crowning sin of the 

 present day; but while he was fully aware of 

 all the devastation and ruin that come from 

 intemperance, it was his honest opinion that 

 impurity in thought, and the sin of holding 

 fast to evil imaginations, is a greater sin than 

 all the intoxicants together that curse our land.* 

 His talk took a wonderful hold upon me, be- 

 cause, perhaps, I have been more than usually 

 imaginative all my life. When I was a child I 

 would sit still and laugh at my day dreams, or 

 build air-castles, as it might be termed. I have 

 been laughed at because I myself laughed at 

 my fancies — that is, I often laughed aloud at 

 some occurrence that was purely imaginary. 

 Now. that is not so sad a thing as it is to get in- 

 to a fashion of allowing your peace of mind to 

 be disturbed by simple fancy. It is not a week 



*Tbe imagination of an intemperate man is often 

 more dangerous than any outside influences. 



