The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1891-03-09
A PLAGUE0F BAD BOOKS,
TALMAGE LIKENs IT TO THE vIsI-
TATIoN OF THE FROGS.

ing to the Affliction of To-day-A De-
mand for its Suppression.
NEW YORK, March 6-The plague Of
pernicious literature formed the subject OF
DR.. Talmage's sermon to-day, which was
the third OF ths series he is preaching on
the "Ten Plaques of the Cities.n The
Brooklyn Academy Of Music was flled in
the morning by dense crowd eager to hear
II, and at night at the Cbristian Herald
service in the New York Academy of Musio
the doors had to be closed long before the
hour of service, there being no space avail
able within the building for more bearers.
So large is the number of those every week
disappointed Of gaining admission that the
project Of hiring the Madison Square gar
den has again been revived. One citizen
has offered to pay all the expenses IL the
garden can be secured and DR.. Talmage can
be induced TO preach IN 10. Inc text Of the
preachers discourse was taken from Exodus
viii. z: "Andsthe frogs came up and
covered the land Of Egypt. And the
magicians did so with their entertainments.
and brought up frogs upon the land Of
Egypt"
There Is almost a universal aversion to
frogs, and yet with the Egyptians they were
honored, they were sacred. and they were
objects of worship while alive aud after
death they were embalmed, 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 bread trays and the couches of the peo-
pie, and even the ovens, which now are up
lifted above the earth aud on the side of
chlmneys, but then were small holes in the
earth with sunken pottery, were filed with
frogs when the housekeepers came to look
at them. IL man sat down to eat, a frog
alighted on his plate. If he attempted to
put on shoe, 1t was preoccupied by a
frog. II he attempted to put his head upon
pillow, it had been taken possession Of by
a frog. Frogs high and low and everywhere:
ioathsome frogs, ,sllmy 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 sleight-of-hand produce the same
thing, and they seemed to succeed, for by
sleight- of-hand wonders may be wrought.
After Moses had thrown down his staff aud
by miracle IL became a serpent, and then q
took hold OF IL and by miracle 1t again be.
came staff, the serpent charmers initiated
the same thing, and knowing that there
were serpents in Egypt which by a pe~
culiar pressure on the neck would become
as rigid as q stick Of wood, they seemed to
change the serpent into the staff, and then.
throwing 10 down, the staff became the
serpent. So likewise these magicians tried
to initiate the plague Of frogs, and per-
haps by smell Of food attracting a great
number OF them TO 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 1t better. Frogs came up and
covered the land Of Egypt, and the
magicians did so with their enchantmest,
and brought up frogs upon the land OF
Egypt
Now that plague of frogs has come back
upon the earth. II Is abroad to-day. 1t is
smiting this nation. 1t comes in the shape
of corrupt literature. These frogs hop into
the store. the shop, the Office, the banking
house, the factory-into the home, into the
cellar, into the garret, on the drawing
room table. on the shelf Of the library.
While the lad is reading the bad book tho
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 on the
news stands Of the country, and the mails
at the postoffice shake out in the letter
trough hundreds of them. The plague
has. taken at different times, pos
session OF this country. 1t is one Of the
most loathsome, one OF the most frightful,
one OF tho most ghastiy of the ten plaques
of our modern cities. There is q vast num-
ber Of books and newspapers printed and
published which ought never 20 see the
light. They are filed with a pestilence
that makes the land swelter with O moral
epidemic The greatest blessing that ever
came to this nation Is that of an elevated
literature, and the greatest scourge has
been that Of unclean literature. This last
has Its victims in oil occupations and de-
partments 1t has helped to fill insane
asylums and penitentiaries and aims
houses and dens of shame. The bodies
of this infection lie in the hospitals
and in the graves, while their souls
are being tossed over into a lost
eternity, an avalanche Of horror and de-
spair. The London plague was nothing to
it. That counted its victims by thousands,
but this modern pest has already shovelsd
it's millions into the charnel-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 putrefaction
which have been gathered up in bad books
and newspapers Of this land in the last
0Houby l6hFb. Iu0 uteTAtuTe OF a udblOn
decides the fate of a nation. Good books.
good morals. Bad books, bad morals
i begin with the lowest OF all the litera-
ture, that which does not even pretend TO be
capitalization cover to cover a blotch
of leprosy. There are many whose entire
business II is TO dispose of that kind of
literature. They display it before the school
boy on his way home. They get the cata-
logues Of schools and colleges, take the
names and postoffice addresses, and send
their advertisements and their circulars and
their pamphlets and their books to every
one of them.
In the possession of these dealers in bad
literature were found nine hundred thou
sand names and postof1ce addresses, TO
whom 1t was thought it might be profitable
to send these corrupt things In the year
1873. there were,l65 establishments engaged
in publishing cheap, corrupt literature.
From one publishing house there went out
twenty different styles of corrupt books.
Although over thirty tons of vile htera-
ture have been destroyed by the society for
the suppression Of vice, still there is enough
of it left in this country to bring down
upon US the thunderbolts of an incensed
God.
In the year 1868, the evil had become so
great in this country that the congress of
the United States passed law forbidding
the Transmission OF bad literature through
the United States mails; but there were
large loops in that law through which Grim
Inals might crawl out, and tine law was q