The Dalles daily chronicle. [volume] (The Dalles, Or.) 1890-1948, 1891-03-21
PLAGUE OF BAD BOOKS.
DR.. TALMAGE's THIRD SERMON, ON
THE EVILS OF CITIES.

tIC GNiCO UT Vi tl6S
He Makes Strong Point Against Those
Parents Who Take No Thought AS to
What Their Children Shall Read-An
Attentive Audience Present.
NEw YORK, March s-The plague of
Fernicious literature formed the subject of
DIR. Talnhge's sermon today, which was
the third of the series he is preaching on
the "Ten Plaques of the Cities y The
Brooklyn Academy of Music was filled in
the morning by dense crowd eager To
hear it, and 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 the number of
those every week disappointed of gaining
admission that the project of hiring the
Madison Square Garden has again been re-
vfved. 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, 6, 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 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 EN- balned, and today their
remains may be found among the sepul-
chres of Thebes. These creatures, so at
t<active once to the Egyptians at divine
behest became obnoxious and loathsome,
and they went croaking and hopping and
1eaping into the palace of the king, and
into the bread trays 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 a
frog alighted on his plate. If he attempted
70 put on a shoe it was preoccupied by a
frog. If he attempted to put his head upon
n pillow it had been taken possession of by
. frog.
Frogs high and low and everywhere;
lnathsome frogs, Shiny frogs, besieging
frogs, innumerable frogs, great plague of
frogs What made the matter worse the
nagicians 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 and by miracle it became
ocN pCDO, anu bucu ne COOk QOlQ OF IL ana Dy
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 stick of
wood, they seemed to change the serpent
into the staff, and then, throwing it down,
the staff became the serpent g
So likewise these magicians tried to imi-
tate the plague of frogs, and perhaps by
n nl,<,r. ,f
them to certain point, or by shaking
them out from a hidden place, the ma
gicians sometimes seemed to accomplish
the same miracle. ) While these rnagicians
made the plague worse, none of them tried
70 make it better. Frogs came up and
covered the land of Egypt, aud the ma
gicians did SO with their enchantment, and
drought up frogs upon the land of Egypt
THE MODERN PLAGUE OF FROGS. 4
Now that plague of frogs has come back
upon the earth 1t is abroad today 1t is
sIniting 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-iptc 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.
sne of these frogs leaps upon the page
Indeed they have hoped upon the news
stands of the country and the mails at the
postofhce shake out in the letter trough
hundreds of them. The plague has taken
AZ different times possession of this coun-
try. IL is one of the most loathsome, one
pf 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
onght never to see the light. They are
flled with a pestilence that makes the land
swelter with moral epidemic. The great
est 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
occupations and departments. 1t has
helped to fill insane asyiums and peni-
tentiaries and almshouses 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 des-
pair.
The London plague was nothing to it
That counted its victims by thousands, but
this modern pest has already shoveled its
millions into the charnel house of the NOR
ally 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 twenty
years. The literature of nation decides
the fate of a nation. Good books, good
morals. Bad books, bad morals.
THE LOWEST OF BAD LITERATURE.
begin with the lowest of all the itera-
t1re. that which does not even pretend to
be respectable ble-from cover to cover blotch
Of leprosy. There are many whose entire
business it Is to dispose of that kind of lit
erature. They display it before the school-
boy on his way home. They get the catar
logues of schools and colleges, take the