of thousands into ruin.

Eve just tasted the fruit. She was curious to find out how it tasted,
and that

CURIOSITY BLASTED HER

and blasted all nations. So there are clergy in this day inspired by
unhealthful inquisitiveness who have tried to look through the keyhole
of God's mysteries, mysteries that were barred and bolted from all
human inspection, and they have wrenched their whole moral nature out
of joint by trying to pluck fruit from branches beyond their reach, or
have come out on limbs of the tree from which they have tumbled into
ruin without remedy. A thousand trees of religious knowledge from
which we may eat and get advantage; but from certain

TREES OF MYSTERY

how many have plucked their ruin! Election, free agency, trinity,
resurrection--in the discussion of these subjects hundreds and
thousands of people ruin the soul. There are men who have actually
been kept out of the kingdom of heaven because they could not
understand who Melchisedec was not!

Oh, how many have been destroyed by an unhealthful inquisitiveness! It
is seen in all directions. There are those who stand with the
eye-stare and mouth-gape of curiosity. They are the first to hear a
falsehood, build it another story high and two wings to it. About
other people's apparel, about other people's business, about other
people's financial condition, about other people's affairs, they are
over anxious. Every nice piece of gossip stops at their door, and they
fatten and luxuriate in the endless round of the great world of
tittle-tattle. They invite and sumptuously entertain at their house
Colonel Twaddle and Esquire Chitchat and Governor Smalltalk. Whoever
hath an innuendo, whoever hath a scandal, whoever hath a valuable
secret, let him come and sacrifice it to

THIS GODDESS OF SPLUTTER.

Thousands of Adams and Eves do nothing but eat fruit that does not
belong to them. Men quite well known as mathematicians failing in this
computation of moral algebra: good sense plus good breeding, minus
curiosity, equals minding your own affairs!

Then, how many young men through curiosity go through the whole realm
of

FRENCH NOVELS,

to see whether they are really as bad as moralists have pronounced
them! They come near the verge of the precipice just to look off. They
want to see how far it really is down, but they lose their balance
while they look, and fall into remediless ruin; or, catching
themselves, clamber up, bleeding and ghastly