are not on our guard. We read, in the
book of Acts, of many who used curious arts burning their books; that
is, there are kinds of knowledge which are forbidden to the Christian.
Now this seems strange to the world in this day. The only forbidden
subjects which they can fancy, are such as are not _true_--fictions,
impostures, superstitions, and the like. Falsehood they think wrong;
false religions, for instance, _because_ false. But they are perplexed
when told that there may be branches of real knowledge, yet forbidden.
Yet it has ever been considered in the Church, as in Scripture, that
soothsaying, consulting the stars, magic, and similar arts, are
unlawful--unlawful, even though not false; and Scripture certainly
speaks as if at least some of them were more than merely a pretended
knowledge and a pretended power; whereas men now-a-days have got to
think that they are wrong, merely because _frauds_ and _impostures_;
and if they found them not so, they would be very slow to understand
how still they are unlawful. They have not mastered the idea that real
knowledge may be forbidden us.

3. Next it is obvious to speak of those melancholy persons who boast
themselves on what they call their knowledge of the world and of life.
There are men, alas not a few, who look upon acquaintance with evil as
if a part of their education. Instead of shunning vice and sin, they
try it, if for no other reason, simply for this--that they may have
knowledge of it. They mix with various classes of men, and they throw
themselves into the manners and opinions of all in turn. They are
ready-witted perhaps, prompt and versatile, and easily adapt themselves
so as to please and get acquainted with those they fall in with. They
have no scruples of conscience hindering them from complying with
whatever is proposed; they are of any form of religion, have lax or
correct morals, according to the occasion. They can revel with those
that revel, and they can speak serious things when their society is
serious. They travel up and down the country perhaps, or they are of
professions or pursuits which introduce them to men of various
languages, or which take them abroad, and they see persons of opposite
creeds and principles, and whatever they fall in with they take as so
many facts, merely as facts of human nature, not as things right or
wrong according to a certain fixed standard independent of themselves.
Now whatever of religion or truth rema