I have known many parents and teachers argue that it is better to bring the young acquainted with our standard poets and prose authors of a worldly cast, while they are yet under careful superintendence, so as to neutralize what may be unprofitable by judicious remark, and to avert the dangers attendant on such fascinating introductions at a riper age, when the restraints of authority are removed. Against this, two reasons have prevailed with me to exclude from my book-shelves all the furniture of a worldly library, and to watch against its introduction from other quarters. One is; the consideration that we are not authorized to calculate on the continuance of any creature's mortal existence; nor can we ever know that the being whom we are training for eternity will not be called into it before such period of life as is here anticipated. In such a case, how sad to feel that we have needlessly forestalled an evil day, and even momentarily diverted the young spirit from a sacred path. The other consideration is this: that as the flesh and the devil will assuredly do their parts without help from me, and the children of this world, who are wiser in their generation than the children of light, will certainly do the same; I may take a lesson of policy from them, using my best endeavors to preoccupy the field with what is decidedly good, and humbly hoping that the seed so sown may, through the operation of the Holy Spirit, take root before the tares are introduced, leaving little room for them to grow.
Of all the errors into which the world has fallen, none is more fatally mischievous than the habit of overlooking the personality, the energy, the power, the watchfulness, the deep cunning of the devil. By a conventional system, no doubt of his own suggesting, he is never to be named but in the act of worshipping God, or that of spiritual instruction. Any other robber and murderer, who was known to be on the watch to attack our houses, would be the subject of free discourse: his habits, his haunts, his usual plans, his successful and his baffled assaults in former cases, would be talked over, and thus a salutary fear would be kept alive, influencing us to bolt and bar, and watch and ward with unfailing vigilance, to avert a surprise. But Satan seems to be a privileged person: we learn, in the nursery, to fancy him a hideous caricature of human nature, with horns, hoof, and a tail, inspiring disgust, and a childish fear that wears off as we advance into youth, leaving an impression rather ludicrous than alarming of the ugly phantom that, nevertheless, continues identified with him of whom we read in the Bible. We then perhaps take up Milton, engrafting his poetical conception upon the original nursery stock, and make a devil half monster, half archangel, invested with the ugliness of the first and the sublimity of the second, but still far removed from the scripture character of that roaring lion who "goeth about seeking whom he may devour." We do not realize his existence, his presence, his devices; and so we often do his work from sheer ignorance or inexcusable thoughtlessness about it.