A Solemn Appeal - James White

counteract the most faithful religious instruction."
Novels are my prayers, said the dying harlot. The
evils of licentiousness can never be stayed, so long
as voluptuous reading keeps up the excitement of
the public imagination.
Want of employment. Constant, laudable
employment is every way important to mankind.
Neither body nor mind can be preserved in health
and purity without it. Of this fact, the history of
man affords abundant and conclusive evidence. He
only is secure who has some good and settled
object at which he aims, and who is diligent in
pursuing it. But he is comparatively secure. This is
evident in the consideration that, attracted
constantly ahead, and with all his powers properly
tasked in the prosecution of his design, he can have
no time to parley with passion, or to range the
imaginary fields of sensual pleasure. He is doing a
work at least, if not a great work, and cannot come
down. We would not be understood to say that
laudable employment, either of the body or mind,
taken alone, is so great a safeguard against sin; but
we mean the employment of both together.
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