Oh, reader, be honest with God. He is honest, and means what He says. Man may not see through your excuses. He may go away and pity you for your want of learning, and you may be sitting at home thinking how cleverly you have deceived him. But all the while, though you little think it, God is holding up your character, and He sees through you, and every bit of what He sees, is written down in His great book to be brought up against you at the last day. Some people give as an excuse for reading bad and immoral books, that they can understand them. They say they _can’t understand_ the Bible. No doubt that is true. God says the carnal man--that is the man who loves this world and things of the flesh--cannot understand spiritual things; and the Bible is a spiritual book. How can the unwashed heart understand the Bible? Well, you say if it is a sealed book, how am I to understand it? The word of God, I answer, may be and is darkened to the worldly man, but the way of salvation is written so plainly, that a little child of six years old can read it, if he will. And oh! if you come across any impure or sinful book, do be careful what you do with it. Don’t let it lie about. A little child may take it up and read it, and it may be, through your carelessness, its first step on the road to ruin. Don’t say, that’s not my look out! Reader, it is your look out; and God will lay it to your charge. If you stop under a hayrick to light your pipe, and you carelessly throw the lighted match away among the hay, so that the rick catches fire, isn’t that your fault? You didn’t mean, I daresay, to set fire to the rick; you didn’t leave home, and go to that particular place in order to set that rick on fire, but I think that any magistrate in the kingdom would make you suffer for your carelessness. And so it is with God. He looks at results as well as at intentions. And if you carelessly leave a bad book about, and it happens to do harm, the punishment of that harm, be it little or be it much, will rest upon your soul in the life to come. *TRUE MANLINESS.* "There are other battles to fight, my boy, Than the battle of which you speak; There are battles which none can win, my boy, But the lowly in heart and meek; There are battles in which earth’s mightiest fail, And the strong ones are the weak. There’s a battle, my boy, with the world’s rude laugh At the lessons our Saviour taught, And many a battle with self, before We can do the things we ought; A battle which, not for the praise of men, Is in secret and silence fought. If in the battle of life, my boy, Thou would’st stand on thy Captain’s side, With the white-robed hosts that follow the Lamb, The called, and chosen, and tried, Thou must take up thy cross, denying thyself, And follow the Crucified." _From_ "_The Child’s Book of Ballads._"