Sharp County record., 1891-04-02
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
A Crusade Needed.

The following discourse was deliv-
cred by Rev. T. 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 maglcians did so
with their entertainments, and brought up
frogs upon tho land of Egypt-Exodus will,
6.7.
There is almost 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 croalIing and hopping and
leaping into the palace of the king, and
into the bread-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 filed with frogs when the
housekeepers came to look at them. If
a man sat down to eat, frog alighted
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, besieging frogs, innumerable
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
the serpent into the staff, and then,
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 enchantment, 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 itera-
ture. These frogs hop into the store,
the shop, the office, the banking house,
the factory-into the home, into the eel
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 hoped 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 n vast number of books and
newspapers printed and published
which ought never to see the light.
They are filed 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
eraturc and the greatest scourge has
been that of unclean literature. This
last has its victims in all occupations
aud departments, 1t 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
aud newspapers OF this land in the last
twenty years, The literature of
nation decided the fate Of nation.
Good books, good morals, Bad books,
bad morals,
begin with the lowest OF all the III.
erature, that which does not even pre-.
tend TO be respectable from cover to