Milford chronicle., 1891-03-13
PLAGUE OF BAD BOOKS.
DR.. TALMAGE'S THIRD SERMON ON
THE EVILS or CITIES.

Parents VINO AAke NO Thought as 90
What Their Children Shall Read-Ar
Attentive Audience Present.
NEW YORK, March s.-The plague Of
! pernieious literature formed the subject OF
/ DR.. Talmage's sermon today, which was
/ the third Of the series he is preaching on
! the 'Ten Plaques of the Cities" The
I Brooklyn Academy Of Music was filed in
the morning by a dense crowd eager to
1 hear it, ami at night at the Christian Her
/ aid service in the New York Academy Of
Music the doors had to be closed long be-
/ fore the hour Of service, there being no
/ space available within the building for
more hearers. So large is this number OF
those every week disappointed Of gaining
admission that the project of hiring the
Madison Square Garden has again been re-
vived. One citizen has offered to pay all
the expenses if the Garden can be secured
and DR.. Talmage can be induced to preach
in it. The text Of the preachers discourse
was taken from Ex. viii, g. z: And
the frogs came up and covered the land Of
Egypt. And the magicians did so with
their enchantments, and brought up frogs
upon the land of Egypt"
THE ANCIENT PLAGUE OF FROGS.
There is almost a universal aversion to
frogs, and yet with the Egyptian they were
honored, they were sacred, and they were
objects Of worship while alive, and after
death they were embalmed, and today their
remains may be found among tho sepul-
chres of Thebes. These creatures, so at
tractive 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 eouches 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 man sat down to eat
frog alighted on his plate. If heattempted
to put on a shoe it 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;
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 sleight of hand
produce the same thing, and they seemed
to succeed, for by sleight of hand wonders
down his staff and by miracle it became "a
serpent, and then he took hold of it and by
miracle it again became a staff, the serpent
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, I
the staff became the SERPENT
So likewise these magicians tried to imi-
tate the plague of frogs, and perhaps by
smell Of food attracting great number of
them to a certain point, OF by shaking
them out from hidden place, the ma
gicians sometimes seemed to accomplish /
the same miracle. While these magiciaus
made the plague worse, none of them tried I
to make it better. Frogs came up and .
covered the land of Egypt, and the ma
gicians did so with their enchantment, and .
brought up frogs upon the land of Egypt"
THE MODERN PLAGUE OF FROGS.
Now that plague of frogs has come back
upon the earth. 1t is abroad today. 1t is
shifting 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-intc 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 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
postohice shake out in the letter trough
hundreds Of them. The plague has taken
at different times possession OF this eoun
try. It is one of the most loathsome, one
Of the most frighbful, one of the most
CHASTITY Of the ten plaques Of our modern
cities.
There is a vast number of books and
printed and published which
ought never to see the light. They are
filed with a pestilence that makes the land
,welter with a moral epidemic. The great
sst 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 all
and departments. 1t has
helped to fill insane asylums and peni-
,entiaries and Rlmshouses and dens of
shame The bodies of this infection lie in
,he hospitals and in the graves, while their
iOuls are being tossed over into a lost
eternity, an avalanche of horror and des-
)air.
The London plague was nothing to it
That counted its victims by thousands, but
his modern pest has already shoveled its
Millions into the charnel house Of the NOR
lily dead. The longest rail train that ever
an over the Erie OF Hudson tracks was
Tot long enough nor large enough to carry
he beastliness and the putrefaction which
ave been gathered up in bad books and
newspapers of this land in the last twenty
ears. The literature of a nation decides
he fate Of a nation. Good books, good
MORALS. Bad books, bad morals.
THE LOWEST OF BAD LITERATURE,
/ begin with the lowest Of all the litera 7
ure. that which does not even pretend to /,
e respectable-from cover to cover blotch
( leprosy There are many whose entire
usiness it is to dispose Of that kind of lit
rature. They display it before the school
oy on his way home. They get the cata-
Dgues of schools and colleges, take the ]
ames and postofiice addresses, and send
heir advertisements, and their circulars, y
nd their pamphlets, aud their books to
very one of them.
In the possession Of these dealers in bad
terature were found nine hundred thou ?
and names and postonice addresses, to a
-homit was thought it might be profit b
bic to send these corrupt things, IN the t
ear 1873 there were one hundred and sixty r
We establishments engaged in publishing &
heap, corrupt literature. From one pub "
shing house there went ont twenty differ
ut styles Of corrupt books Although o
YER thirty tons Of vile literature have 81
cen destroyed by the Society for the Sup y
ression of Vice, still there is enough Of it &
it in this country to bring down upon us y
ie thunderbolts of an incensed God. Ii
In the year 1868 the evil had become so
reat in this country that the congress Of y
le United States passed q law forbidding d
ie transmission of bad literature through n
le United States mails, but there were =
rge loops in that law through which !,
iminals might crawl out, and the law Il
as dead failure-that law Of 1868. But z
1873 another law was passed by the con :,
,ess Of the United States against the !,
ansmission Of corrupt literature through s
le mails-a grand law, potent law, #
hristian iaw-and under that law multi !,
ides Of these scoundrels have been ar II
sted. their property c0nfscated and they Il