[Illustration: Fish Doing a Dangerous Thing.]
You will notice that this mouse trap has four different places where mice can be caught, and is it not strange that when one mouse enters on this side, and is caught, and is lying there dead, that another live mouse should come along, and see the same trap and desire the same thing, and walk right in to the same danger, and the same sure death? You would think that when he saw the other mouse had been caught, and had lost his life, that he would turn away. But instead of that, he smells the cheese, walks right into the trap, and is caught, and in a few moments is as dead as his neighbor. So boys see others who have been ruined by smoking cigarettes, who have paved the way for their destruction by smoking cigars, by keeping bad company, by drinking beer, and by going on step by step. They see drunkards all about them who have squandered all their money and lost all their friends, and been forsaken by their own parents, their wives, and their children; who have become outcasts, and for whom no one longer has any respect. Men see these things daily, and yet they go on in the same way, beginning with beer and going, step by step, from social drinking, until they themselves become drunkards and outcasts, and go down to fill a drunkard's grave. The Bible says that no drunkard can inherit the kingdom of heaven.
I trust that none of you who listen to me to-day will be so foolish as to permit Satan to deceive you. Look about you and see the results of worthless story-papers, of card-playing, of theatre going, of social drinking, of round dancing, lying, swearing, cheating, and all forms of wickedness, and then remember that these same influences, if wrought into your life, will also produce the same result. Do not be like the foolish mouse, which sees its dead companion in the trap, and then walks up unthinkingly and pokes his head into the same inevitable death and destruction; but remember that Satan waits to destroy you, just the same as he has destroyed others.
In the book of Job (xviii: 10) it says, "The snare is laid for him in the ground and a trap for him in the way;" and in the 8th verse of the same book and chapter it says, "He is cast into a net by his own feet, and he walketh upon a snare." Satan has laid traps and snares all along your path through life, and you will need to be very, very cautious, lest you are ruined for time and destroyed for eternity. Remember the text for to-day, which says, "Among my people are found wicked men; they lay wait, as he that setteth snares; they set a trap, they catch men."