such a state, individuals become subjected more or less to the influences which are working around them.  Scarcely an enjoyment or a book can be met with which does not bear the impress of this intensity.  Now, the particular danger to which I allude is French novels, French romances, and French plays.  The overflowings of that cup of excitement have reached our shores.  I do not say that these works contain anything coarse or gross—­better if it were so:  evil which comes in a form of grossness is not nearly so dangerous as that which comes veiled in gracefulness and sentiment.  Subjects which are better not touched upon at all are discussed, examined, and exhibited in all the most seductive forms of imagery.  You would be shocked at seeing your son in a fit of intoxication; yet, I say it solemnly, better that your son should reel through the streets in a fit of drunkenness, than that the delicacy of your daughter’s mind should be injured, and her imagination inflamed with false fire.  Twenty-four hours will terminate the evil in the one case.  Twenty-four hours will not exhaust the effects of the other; you must seek the consequences at the end of many, many years.

I speak that which I do know; and if the earnest warning of one who has seen the dangers of which he speaks realized, can reach the heart of one Christian parent, he will put a ban on all such works, and not suffer his children’s hearts to be excited by a drunkenness which is worse than that of wine.  For the worst of it is, that the men of our time are not yet alive to this growing evil; they are elsewhere—­in their studies, counting-houses, professions—­not knowing the food, or rather poison, on which their wives’ and daughters’ intellectual life is sustained.  It is precisely those who are most unfitted to sustain the danger, whose feelings need restraint instead of spur, and whose imaginations are most inflammable, that are specially exposed to it.

On the other hand, spiritual life calms while it fills.  True it is that there are pentecostal moments when such life reaches the stage of ecstasy.  But these were given to the Church to prepare her for suffering, to give her martyrs a glimpse of blessedness, which might sustain them afterwards in the terrible struggles of death.  True it is that there are pentecostal hours when the soul is surrounded by a kind of glory, and we are tempted to make tabernacles upon the Mount, as if life were meant for rest; but out of that very cloud there comes a voice telling of the Cross, and bidding us descend into the common world again, to simple duties and humble life.  This very principle seems to be contained in the text.  The apostle’s remedy for this artificial feeling is—­“Speaking to one another in psalms and hymns, and spiritual songs.”

Strange remedy!  Occupation fit for children—­too simple far for men:  as astonishing as the remedy prescribed by the prophet to Naaman—­to wash in simple water, and