The Brookhaven leader. [volume] (Brookhaven, Miss.) 1883-1891, 1891-03-19
CORRUPT LITERATURE.
Rev. T. Dewitt Talmage Moralizes
on Prolific Subject.
The Pernicious Literature of the Day One
of the Greatest Plaques to be Met In
the Great Cities of the Land
Crusade Needed.

The following discourse was deliv-
cred by Rev. Il. Dewitt Talmage in
Brooklyn and New York City, in con-
tinuation of his series on ''The Ten
Plaques of the Great Cities" His text
was:
And the frogs came up and covered the
land of Egypt. And the magIcans did so
with their enchantments, and brought up
frogs upon the land of Egypt.-Exc dus Will,
81.
There is almost n universal aversion
TO frogs, and yet with the Egyptians
they were honored, they were sacred,
and they were objects of worship while
alive, and after death they were en-
balmed, and to-day their remains may
be found among the sepulchers of
Thebes. These creatures, so attractive
once to the Egyptians, at Divine behest
became obnoXious and loathsome, and
they went croaking and hopping and
leaping into the palace of the king, and
into the brcad-tray and the couches of
the people, and even the ovens, which
now are uplifted above the earth and
on the side of chimneys, but then were
small holes in the earth with sunken
pottery, were filled with frogs when the
housekeepers came to look at them. If
a man sat down to eat, frog allghted
on his plate. If he attempted to put on
a shoe, it was preoccupied by frog. If
he attempted to put his head upon a
pillow, it had been taken possession of
by a frog. Frogs high and low and
everywhere: loathsome frogs, Shiny
frogs, besicging frogs, innumerablc
frogs, great plague of frogs. What
made the matter worse, the magicians
said there was no miracle in this and
they could, by straightforward, pro-
duce the same thing, and they
seemed to succeed, for by sleight-
of-hand wonders may be wrought.
After Moses had thrown down his staff,
and by miracle it became a serpent,
and then he took hold of it, and by
miracle it again became staff, the SER
pent-charmers initiated the same thing,
and knowing that there were serpents
in Egypt which by peculiar pressure
on the neck would become as rigid as a
stick of wood, they seemed to change
throwing it down, the staff became the
serpent So likewise these magicians
tried to initiate the plague of frogs and
perhaps by smell Of food attracting a
great number of them to a certain
point, or by shaking them out from a
hidden place. the magicians sometimes
seemed to accomplish the same miracle.
While these magicians made the plague
worse, none of them tried to make it
better. Frogs came up and covered
the land of Egypt, and the magicians
did so with their enchant:nent, and
brought up frogs upon the land of
Egypt"
Now that plague of frogs has come
back upon the earth. 1t is abroad to-
day. 1t is shifting this nation. 1t
comes in the shape of corrupt litera-
ture. These frogs hop into the store,
the shop, the Office, the banking house,
the factory-into the home, into the cell
lar, into the garret, on the drawing
room table, on the shelf of the library
While the lad is reading the bad book
the teachers face is turned the other
way. One of these frogs hops upon
the page. While the young woman is
reading the forbidden novelette, after
retiring at night, reading by gaslight,
one of these frogs leaps upon the page.
Indeed, they have hopped upon the
news stands of the country, and the
mails at the post Office shake out in the
letter trough hundreds of them. The
plague has taken at different times
possession of this country. 1t is one of
the most loathsOme, one of the most
frightful, one of the most ghastly of
the ten plaques of our modern cities.
There is a vast number of books and
newspapers printed and published
which ought never to see the light.
They are filled with a pestilence that
makes the land swelter with moral
epidemic.
The greatest blessing that ever came
to this nation is that of an elevated lit
erature, and the greatest scourge has
been that of unclcan literature. This
last has its victims in all occupations
and departments. II has helped to fill
insane asylums and penitentiaries and
almshouses and dens of shame. The
bodies of this infection lie in the hos
pitals and in the graves, while their
souls are being tossed over into lost
eternity, an avalanche of horror and
despair. The London plague was moth
ing to it. That counted its victims by
thousands, but this modern pest has
already shoveled it's millions into the
charnal house of the morally dead. The
longest rail train that ever ran over the
Erie or Hudson tracks was not long
enough nor large enough to carry the
beastliness and the publication which
have been gathered up in the bad books
and newspapers of this land in the last
twenty years. The literature of a
nation decided the fate of a nation.
Good books, good morals. Bad books,
bad morals.
begin with the lowest of all the lit
erature, that which does not even pre-
tend to be respecta able-from cover to
cover a blotch of leprosy. There are
MANY whose entire business is to dis
pose of that kind of literature They
display it before the school-boy on his
way home. They get the catalogues of
schools and colleges, take the names
and post office addresses, and send their
advertisements and their circulars and
their pamphlets and their books to
everyone of them.
In the possession of these dealers in
bad literature were found nine hundred
thousand names and post Office ad-
dresses, to whom it was thought it
might be profitable to send these cor
rupt things In the year 1875 there were