Connecticut western news., 1893-05-25
EVIL LITERATURE.
A FIFTH GATE TO R-lL IN MODERN
 BABYLON.

BABY LON.
 Eloquent Sermon by Rev. Thomas Dixon, visit to the Newsstands-Cases of Youth full Depravity-The Cause of the Evil.
 NEW YORK, May 21.-Extraordinary interest continues to be manifested in New York in the delivery of series of sermons on ''The Gates of Hell In Mod ern Babylon" On some days more peo- pie are turned from the doors than gain admission to the hall. Rev. Thomas Dixon, Jr.. delivered this morning the fifth sermon of the series. The subject was Obscene Literature" The text chesen was from Matthew xiii, 25, While men slept his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat"
 Tho invention of letters was one of the events in the development of humanity. The power to record mans thoughts and transfer them to future generations without practical limitation meant the endowment of mans personality on the earth with practical immortality. ssThere is no past so long as books shall live" Books bind age to age, century to century. The power of book is pow CT that cannot be estimated because we cannot estimate the different forces it will touch In different generations, ages and centuries. The invention of printing marked the climax of power in the prog ress of immortalizing thought. It has been said that books are embalmed TL l-1~ 4I.<~ incarnation of immortal minds. The wars of the future will not be fought with ironclads upon the seas, with guns echoing from the hills, the charge of cav airy, of infantry, in action. The battles of tho future will be battles of thought. The weapons used will be the pen and the prideed page. The printing press, with its lever and it's wheels, will be the engine of war in the coming centuries. Here the battles of humanity will be fought, and here they will be settled.
 Booka, after all, are the powers that today are slowly fashioning the charac- tsEs for the two great armies in this de- cdave struggle. We'll has the poet said:
 Hark, the world % loud,
 And yet the movers of the world SO still.
 Emerson has most forcefully said, ''In evWy mans memory. with the hours wh1n life eliminated are usually asso- Ciated certain books which met his Hiows." Benjamin Franklin declares that his character was formed and his hfe ahaped by the reading of a little book of Cotton Mather's entitled Do inG Good" The murderer of Lord Rus sol confessed before his execution that he was started on his career of crime by the reading of trashy book. If every wrecked character could be uncovered and its secrets shown to the world, the beginnings of wrongdoing would be found in thousands of cases to have their source in these silent fashioners of mems characters through their thoughts. "A1l the known world," says Voltaire, 'tex- cepang only savages, are governed by boOks."
 Their evil power seems even more sub tic and resistless than their power for good. Books are made from books. The power of propagation in evil seems even more marvelously prolific than in good. Australia is cursed with the plague of rabbits. The evil was caused by fool
 
 cdes of rabbit from Europe and loosed it in Australia. This senseless act has caused the nation millions of pounds sterhng. Crops have been destroyed and whole sections brought to the verge of starvation by this pestilence. developed from so small 8 beginning. Such is the power of an evil idea to propagate itself when once born into the world of litera- ture, high or low. There seems to be 8 fatal fascination about evil thus incar- nated in letters. Aytoun said of this thought:
 I've heard that poison sprinkled flowers
 Are sweeter in perfume
 Than when. untouched by deadly dew,
 They opened in their bloom.
 I've heard that with the witches song.
 Though harsh and rude it be,
 There blends wild. mysterious strain
 Of weirdsst harmony,
 So that the listener. far away,
 Must needs approach the ring
 Where on the savage Lapland moors
 The demon chorus sing.
 And believe the devils voice
 Sinks deeper in the ear
 Than any whispers sent from heaven,
 However soft and clear.
 About the printed page filled with evil thought there is a spell, a fascination, which gives false color to the events described. Could the events themselves be seen in their bald reality and the au- thor or editor stripped of his power to fascinate through the spell of letters the result would be repulsiye and dis gusting to those brought in contact. Minstrel and sage-out of their books are clay, But in their books, as from their graves, they
 rise
 Angels that aide by side upon one's way Walk with and warn us.
 And the poet might have added with greater truth, "or else damn us."
 RIVALS THE AURORA BoREALIs.
 The evil book is the book that sells in today's world, and it seems to have been 90 through the ages of the past. Learn ing has gained most by books by which the printers have lost, the sage tells us. Books that make history have been sold for song and have failed of sny popular success, while books that live only to curse the thousands are gold mines for their publishers.
 The modern city is the center of the book world. It is the center of book production and book distribution. It is the center of letters and of the forces that shape the supply of the worlds lit ] erature. When Paul preached at Ephesus and men were convicted of sin, they brought out their evil books and burned them in the public places. If all the evil books of the modern city were brought out and made into bonfire, ii would illumine the sky with splendo1 that would rival the aurora boreais. From every city of the nation the heav ems would be ablaze for hours by such 8 condagration.
 The printing press iaa tue modern city as nsuer before an the history of the ,corld, IS today lifting the Hood gates Q hell upon the human imagination, o,ae sckile men sleep countless hosts are bei,at sscept to ruin here and hereafter. W. observe the developments of this terrible fact upon every hand.
 First-In the character of the news stand today. In all our public places in the hotels, the elevated roads, the sur face roads, the railroad cars, the char