Wheeling register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1878-1935, 1884-05-19

lteraturel i charge upon II the uestfue-
ton of ten thousand immortal souls, and
bid you this morning to wake up to the
magnitude Of the theme. ] shall take ell
the worlds literature, good novel and bad,
travels true or false, histories faithful and
legends beautiful and monstrous,
all tracts, all chronicles, all epilogues, all
family, city, State, national libraries and
pile them up in pyramid ofliterature, and
then / shaIlbring to bear upon it some grand,
glorious, infalible, unmistable Christian
principles. God help me to speak with
reference to the account must at last rem
der. God help you to listen.
False Pictures of Human Life.
| charge you in the first place to stand
alooff from all books that give false pictures
of human life Life is neither tragedy
nor farce. Men are not all either knaves
or heroes. Women are neither angels nor
furies. And vet if you depended upon much
of the literature of the day you would get
the idea that life, instead Of being some
thing earnest, something practical, is tltful
and fantastic aud extrayagant thing. How
poorly prepared are that young man and
woman for the duties of to-day who spent
last night wading through brilliant passages
descriptive of magnificent knavery and
wickedneSs. The man will be looking all
day long for his heroine in the tinshoP, by
the forge or in the factory, in the counting
room, and he will not find her and he will
be dissatisfied A man who gives himself
up to the indiscriminating reading OF novels
will be nerveless and nuisance.
He will be tit neither for the
store, nor the shop nor the held.
A woman who gives herself up to the the in
discriminate reading of novels will be un-
fitted for the duties of wife, mother, sister,
daughter. There she is, hair dlShevelled,
countenance vacant cheeks pale, hands
trembling bursting into tears at midnight
over the woes of some unfortunate. In the
day time. when she ought to be busy staining
nv the halEhour at nothing, biting her
finger nails to the quick. The carpet that
was plain before will be palmer still after
having through romance all night long
wandered in tesselated halls of castles, and
your industrious companion will be more
unattractive than ever now that you have
walked in the romance through parks with
plumed princesses or lounged in the arbor
with the polished deperado. Oh, these con-
firmed noyel-readers. They are unfit for
this life, which is tremendous discipline.
They know not how to 90 through the fur
naces of trial where they must pass, and
they are untitled for a world where evere-
thing we gain we achieve BY hard, long-oon-
tinuing and exhaustive work.
Corrupt Books.
Again. l charge you to stand off from
all those books which corrupt the magma
ton and inhame the passions. do not re-
fer now to that kind of book which the vii
lain has under his coat waiting for the school
to be out and then, lookin both ways to
&c Il at there is no policeman around the
block, ot erS the book to vour son on his way
home. do not speak OF that kind OF lit
erature. but that which evadeS the law and
comes out in polished style and with acute
plot sounds the tOcsin that rouses up all the
bascr passions fof the soul. Years ago
French lady came forth as an authoreSS un-
der the assumed name Of George Sand.
She smoked cigars. She wore gentleman'S
apparel She stepped off the bounds of de-
cencv. She wrote with style ardent, elo-
quent, mighty in its gloom, horrible i'll its
unchastity, glowing in its verbiage, vivid in
its portraiture, damning in its effects, trans
fuSing into the libraries and homes of the
world an evil which has not even begun 10
rclcnt, and she has her copyists in all lands.
To-day, under the nOStrils of your city there
is a fetid, reeking, unwashed literature,
enough to poison all the fountains of public
virtue and smite your sons and daughters as
with the wing of destroying angel and it
is time that the ministers of the Gospel
blew the trumpet and rallied the forces of
righteousness all armed to the teeth in this
great battle against depraved literature
Why are 50 per cent of the criminals in the
jails and penitentiaries Of the United States
to-day under q years of age; many of
them under Il, under l6, under l5 under
H. under l3? Walk along the corridors of
the TOmbs Prison in New York and look
for yourselves. Bad books, bad newspapers
bewitched them as soon as they got out of
the cradle. "Oh, SAYS some one, II am a
business man and l have no time to exam
inc what nv children read. have no time
to examine into my household If your
children were threatened with typhoid fever
would you have time to go for a doctor;
would YOU have time to watch the progress
Of the disease; would YOU have time for the
funeral? In the presence of nv God |
warn you of the fact that your children are
threatened with moral and spiritual typhoid,
and that unless the thing be stopped it will
he 10 them the funeral of body, funeral of
mind. funeral of soll-thrce funerals in one
day
Rimding Does Not Make the Book.
Again abstain from those books which
are apOiogetic of crime. 1t is a sad thing
that some of the best and most beautiful
book binderv and some of the rhetoric have
been brought to make sin attractive. Vice
is Il horrible thing anyhow. 1t is born in
shame and it dies bowling in the darkness.
In this world it is scourged with whip Of
scorpions, but afterwards the thunders of
Gods wrath pursue it across boundlesS
desert, beating il with ruin and woe When
YOU come to paint carnality, do not paint it
as looking from behind embroidered cur
tainS or through lattice Of royal Serngfo, but
as writhing in the agOnieS of a city hospital.
Cursed be the books that try to make
impurity decent, and crime a'trac-
tive, and hypocrisy noble Cursrj
be the books that swarm with hbertineS an
who make the brain of the
young people whirl with villainyl Ye
authors who write them, We publishers who
print them, We booksellers who distribute
them, shall be cut to pieces, if not by an
aroused community. then at last by di-
vine vengeance, which shall sweep to the
lowest pit of perdition all We murderers Of
souls. tell YOU, though YOU may escape
in this world YOU will be ground at last uu-
der the hoOf Of eternal calsmities, and you
will be chained to the rock and YOU will
have the vultureS of fdeSpair clawing at your
soul. and those whom you have DESTROYED
will come around to torment YOU and to
pour hotter Goals of fury upon your head
ard rejoice eterualIy in the outcry Of your
pain and the howl of your dsmnation. God
sbeU wound tho hairy Scalp of him