Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1891-03-11
Rev. DR.. Talmage on Immoral Books.

Corrupt literature was the subject of the
sermon which the Rev. DR.. T. Dewitt Tai
mage delivered last Sunday evening at the
Academy of Music in N. Y. in the presence
of q congregation that filled the big theatre
to OVERLOOKING. The discourse was the
third one of the series which Dr.. Talmage
is delivering upon 1.-The Ten Plaques of
the Three Great Cities''-meaning New
York. Brooklyn and Jersey City.
The speaker took for his text the story
of the Eruption Of frogs which covered
Egypt, and, after striking description of
the horrors of such an infection, said that
the modern parallel of this curse was the
spread of immoral literature.
FILLED WITH PEsTILENCE.
SIT is," he said, Zone of the most lostd-
some, one Of the most frightful, one of the
most CHASTITY of the ten plaques Of our
modern cities. There is a vast number of
books and newspapers printed and publish
ed which ought Fever to see the light.
They are filled with pestilence that makes
| the land swelter with a moral epidemic.
1.-THE greatest blessing that ever came to
nation is that of an elevated literature,
and the greatest scourge has been that OF
unclean literature. This last has its VIC
Tins in ali occupations aud departments.
| The literature of a nation decides the fate
of a nation. Good books, good morals.
Bad books, bad morals.
81 HAVE NO TIME"
'Ohp says some one, i am business
man, aid have no time to examine what
| my children read. have no time to inspect
the books that come into my household
"If your children we're threatened with
| typhoid fever would you have time to go
| for the doctor? Would you have time to
watch the progress of the diseased Would
you have time for the funeral3 In the pre-
sence of my God warn you of the fact
that your children ARE threatened with
moral and spiritual typhoid, and that unless
the thing be stopped it will be to them
funeral of body, funeral of mind. funeral of
soul. Three funerals in one day.
'My word is to this vast multitude of
young people:-Do not touch, do not Dor.
row, do not buy corrupt book or a cor
rupt picture, A book will decide a mans
destiny for good or for evil. The book you
read yesterday may have decided you for
time and for eternity, or it may be book
that may come into your possession to-
morrow. Abstain from all those books
which, while they have some good things
about them, have also an admixture of evil.
| HEALTHFUL LITERATURE.
"Another way IN which we are to drive
back this plague of Egyptian frogs is by
filling the minds of our young people with
a healthful literature. I do not mean to
say that all the books and newspapers in
our families ought to be religious books
and newspapers, or that every song ought
to be sung to the tune of Old Hundred
81 have no sympathy with the attempt
to make tho young old. l would rather
JON 10 crusade to keep the young young.
Boyhood and girlhood must not be abbre-
waited. But there are good books, good
histories, good biographies, good works of
fiction, good books of all styles with which
we are to fill the minds of the young 80
that there will be no more room for the USE
less and the vicious than there is room for
chat in bushel measure which is already
filled with Michigan wheat.
| "a good book-who csnaexaggerate, its
power? Benjamin Franklin said that his
reading OF Cotton Mather's Essays To Do
Good in children gave him holy aspirations
for all the rest of his life. George Law
declared that biography he read in child
hood gave him all his subsequent pros peri.
| ties"