Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1884-05-29
we must make an intelligent and Chris

tious literature, the first question tha
many of the young people are asking m
is: "Shall we read novelist 1 reply
there are novels that are pure, good
Christian, elevsting to the heart an,
ennobling to the life. But 1 have still
further to say, believe that three
fourths of the novels in this day ar
baneful asd destructive to the last de
gree. A pure work Of fiction is histor!
and poetry combined. 1t is a history o
the things around US with the license
and the assumed names of poetry. Th,
world can never repay the debt whlct
it owes TO such fictitious writers as Haw
thorne, Mackenzie and Landor and Hun
and others whose names are familiar Il
all. The follies of high life were never
! better exposed than by Miss Edgeworth
| The memories of the past were nevel
more faithfully embalmed than in the
writings of Sir Walter Scott. Cooper:
novels are beautifully redolent with the
breath of the seaweed and the air of The
American forest. Charles Kingsley has
smitten the morbidness of the world anG
learned great many to appreciate the
poetry of sound health, strong muscles
and fresh air. ThaekeEay did grand
work in caricaturing the pretenders, the
gentility and high blood. Dickens has
built his own monument in his books
which are an everlasting plea for the
poor and the anathema of injustice
Now, l say, books like these. read at right
times and read in right proportion with
other books, cannot help but be ennob-
ling and purifying.
But alasl for the loathsOme and i'm
pure literature that has come upon the
country in the shape of novels like a
freshet overlooking all the banks of de-
cency aad common sense. They are
coming from some of the most celebrated
publishing houses in the country. They
are coming with the recommendation of
some of our religious newspapers. They
lie on your center table to curse your
children and blast with their internal
fires generations unborn. You find these
books in the desk of the school miss, in
the trunk of the young man, in the
steamboat cabin, and on the table of the
hotel reception room. You see light
in your child's room late at night. You
suddenly go in and say, What are you
doing?" II am reading "What are
reading?" "a book" You look at the
book, it is bad book. "Where did you
get it?" Il borrowed it" Alas! there
are always those abroad who would like
to loan your son or daughter bad book.
Everywhere, everywhere an unclean lit
eraEnrel l charge upon it the destruc-
tion of ten thousand immortal souls, and
l bid you this morning to wake up to
the magnitude of the theme. l shall take
all the world's literature, good novels
and bad, travels true or false, histories
faithful and incorrect, legends beautiful
and monstrous, all tracts. all chronicles,
all epilogues, all family, city, state, ma
tional libraries, and pile them up in
pyramid of literature, and then shall
bring to bear on it some grand, glorious,
infallible, unmistakable Christian prin-
ciples. God help me to speak with ref
erence to the account must at last rem
der. God help you to listen.
l charge you in the first place to stand
aloof from all books that give false pic
lures of human life. Life is neither IA
tragedy nor a farce. Men are not all
either knaves or heroes. Women are
neither angels nor furies. And yet if
you depended upon much of the litera-
ture of the day you would get the idea
that life, instead of being something
earnest, something practical, is ftful,
and fantastic. and extravagant thing.
How poorly prepared are that young
man and woman for the duties of to-day
who spent last night wadiRg through
brilliant passages descriptive of magnif-
icent knaverv and wickedness. The man
will be looking all day long for his he
roine in tinshop, by the forge or in the
factory, in the counting room, and he
will not find her and he will be disSatis>
fed. A man who gives himself up to
the indiscriminate reading of novels will
be nerveless, insane, and nuisance. He
will be fit neither for the store, nor the
shop, nor the field. A woman who gives
herself up to the indlscriminate reading
of novels will be untitled for the duties
of wife, mother, sister, daughter. There
she is, hair disheveled, countenance va
cant, 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, staring
by the half hour at nothing, biting her
finger nails to the quick. The carpet
that was plain before will be palmer
after having through romance all night
long wandered in tessellated halls of
castles, and your industrious companion
will be more unattractive than ever, now
that you have walked in the romance
through parks with pIumed princesses
or louuged in the arbor with the polished
desperate. Oh, these confirmed novel
readers! They are unfit for this life,
which is tremendous discipline. They
know not how to go through the furRa
ces " trial where they must pass, and
they are untitled for world where ev-
erything we gain we achieve by hard,
long continuing, exhaustive work.
Again, abstain from all those books
which, while they have some good things
about them, have also an admixture of
evil. You have read books that had
two elements in them, the good and the
bad. Which stuck to yeu? The bad E!
The heart of most people is like sieve
which lets the small particles of gold
fall through, but keeps tue great cinders.
Once in while there is mind like a
loadstone, which, plunged amid steel
and brass filings, gathers up the steel
and repes the brass. But it is generally
just the opposite. If you attempt to
plunge through hedge of burrs to get
one black berry, you get more burrs than
blackberries. You cannot afford to read
a bad book, however good you are. You
say: "The influence is insignificant" l
tell you that the scratch of pin has
sometimes prod the lockjaw. Alas.
If through curiosity, as many do. you
pry into an evil book, your curiosity is
as dangerous as that OF the man who
should take a torch into q gunpowder
mill, merely to see whether it would
blow up or not. In menagerie in New
York a man mt his hand through the