Part 15 (2/2)
HEALTHFUL CURIOSITY
has gone down and found the tracks of the eternal G.o.d in the polypi and the starfish under the sea and the majesty of the great Jehovah encamped under the gorgeous curtains of the dahlia. It has studied the spots on the sun, and the larvae in a beech leaf, and the light under fire-fly's wing, and the terrible eye glance of a condor pitching from Chimborazo. It has studied the myriads of animalculae that make up the phosph.o.r.escence in a s.h.i.+p's wake, and the mighty maze of suns, and spheres, and constellations, and galaxies that blaze on in the march of G.o.d. Healthful curiosity has stood by the inventor until forces that were hidden for ages came to wheels, and levers, and shafts, and shuttles--forces that fly the air, or swim the sea, or cleave the mountain until the earth jars, and roars, and rings, and crackles, and booms, with strange mechanism, and s.h.i.+ps with nostrils of hot steam and yokes of fire draw the continents together.
I say nothing against healthful curiosity. May it have other Leyden jars, and other electric batteries, and other voltaic piles, and other magnifying gla.s.ses with which to storm the barred castles of the natural world until it shall surrender its last secret. We thank G.o.d for the geological curiosity of Professor Hitchc.o.c.k, and the mechanical curiosity of Liebig, and the zoological curiosity of Cuvier, and the inventive curiosity of Edison; but we must admit that unhealthful and irregular inquisitiveness has rushed thousands and tens 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 G.o.d'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 t.i.ttle-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 G.o.dDESS 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 p.r.o.nounced 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, on the rock, gibbering with curses or groaning ineffectual prayer. By all means encourage healthful inquisitiveness, by all means discourage ill regulated curiosity.
TREACHEROUS FRUIT.
The subject of the morning also impresses me with the fact that fruits that are sweet to the taste may afterward produce great agony.
Forbidden fruit for Eve was so pleasant she invited her husband also to take of it; but her banishment from Paradise, and six thousand years of sorrow, and wretchedness, and war, and woe paid for that luxury. Sin may be very sweet at the start, and it may induce great wretchedness afterward. The cup of sin is sparkling at the top, but there is death at the bottom. Intoxication has great exhilaration for a while, and it fillips the blood, and it makes a man see five stars where others can see only one star, and it makes the poor man rich, and turns cheeks which are white red as roses; but what about the dreams that come after, when he seems falling from great heights, or is prostrated by other fancied disasters, and the perspiration stands on the forehead, the night dew of everlasting darkness, and he is ground under the horrible hoof of nightmares shrieking with lips that crackle with all-consuming torture? ”Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth, and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth; but know thou, that for all these things G.o.d will bring thee into judgment!”
SWEET AT THE START,
horrible at the last. Go into that hall of revelry, where unG.o.dly mirth staggers and blasphemes. Listen to the senseless gabble, see the last trace of intelligence dashed out from faces made in G.o.d's own image.
”Aha! aha!” says the roystering inebriate; ”this is joy for you; fill high your cups, my boys. I drink to my wife's misery and my children's rags and my G.o.d's defiance.” And he knows not that a fiend stirs the goblet in his hand and that adders uncoil from the dregs and thrust their forked tongues hissing through the froth on the rim.
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