The News-Herald. [volume] (Hillsboro, Highland Co., Ohio) 1886-1973, 1893-12-28

clCtlon, ny ltS power OF IaSClnaJlOn'
has become universal teacher. In
fact, it is the most natural method of
knowledge. Educators every
where are beginning to recognize this,
and, as result, we have forthcoming
fiction, in every depart.
ing, designed for supplementary work
in our public schools.
Ministers recognize this tendency OF
the human mind, and often the most
effective sermon is the we'll told story,
setting forth the points to be illustrated.
And the great vocalists of the world
have fully established the power of
story in song.
Christ, the greatest teacher that ever
lived, never taught so well or SO forcibly
as when he taught by parable sort of
fiction; and we see the multitudes
gathered about him, eagerly drinking in
truths which, presented in the mere ab-
stract, would have been far beyond their
comprehension.
think it is Anthony Trollope who
says that in the education of the morals,
the feelings and sentiments, the novel
ist comes closer to the youth than the
father, mother or schoolmaster.
Nor can this assertion be doubted,
when we consider the ever increasing
flood of novels and realize the fact that
more than ninety per cent. of the books
loaned from public libraries are works of
fiction.
The fact that it does thus hold and
sway the human mind, should commend
it to our most earnest consideration.
A lack of such consideration leads to
prejudice against all tictions which is
as unreasonable as to discard steam
because boiler occasionally bursts, or to
refuse the warmth of fire because persons
are sometimes burned.
Try to ignore it as we may, fiction
stands to-day as one of the great factors
OF modern education. We cannot es.
cape it if we try, and it would be folly
to try, for while it has it's abuses, its
uses can be made to far outweigh them
1t stands pre-. eminent as medium
through which the masses may be
reached and great truths taught and in.
| fixed.
1t is interesting and significant to note
that many of the great reforms of
the world have been heralded by
works of fiction, setting forth the abuses
which should be remedied.
One, competent to judge, has said that
Dickens did more for the uplifting and
protection OF children and the oppressed
in England, than all the pulpits com
bined.
Suppose he had written scathing
protest against Yorkshire schools in.
stead of Nicholas Nickleby?" Suppose
he had written heart rending appeals
in behalf of the poor aud oppressed, in.
stead of embodied suffering presented
in the character of "Oliver Twist, u
"Smike" and "Poor Jo."
His protests, his appeals, though pen.
ned with his hearts blood, would have
fallen on deaf ears. AS it was, the bitter
dose of truth, like pill thickly sugar.
coated, was down before the bigots Of
England were aware of it, and to-day il
goes on it's curative mission, bringing tc
England bettered school system and 9
SUMMER childhood.
In our own land we have works o.
fiction, call them novels if you will, thai
shine as great luminaries in the starry
armament of our literature, guiding oul
feet in the way of truth and right.
From the earliest incipiency of oul
government there were rife two under
mining principles which threatened tt
shake its very foundations. The one o
these was infdelity, the other human
slavery.
The doctrines taught by Voltaire ant
Tom Paine became the fashion of th'
day, and to be an unbeliever was great
er than to be king,
Some of our greatest statesmen wer'
shaken by it, and the sons of the bes
openly boasted their infidelity. Theo
logians looked helplessly on, ant
mothers shuddered and walled as the.
beheld their sons plunged into vice
from which religion alone could say,
them.
Away down in the Southern States
young girl of nineteen years sorrowet
over the existing evil, and trembled Al
she realized the ruin it was working. Shs
felt that she had a message for th,
world, ,ibut how to reach it was the prob
lem. She.chose fiction as her medium
and when "Beulan" appeared the It'd,
of infdeliIy was checked, and many .
personal letter assured the young autho
that souls had been saved from ute
ruin by her wonderful story.