The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1895-07-05
L. YATES OF HE'LL.
Dr.. Talmage Draws a Vivid Picture
of Worldly Vices.
The PernIcious Influence of Impure Litera-
ture-The DissOlute Dance and the
Evils OF Intemperance-Duty
of Christians.

DIR. Talmage said:
Entranced, until we could endure no
more of the splendor, we have often
gazed at the shining gates, the gates
of pearl, the gates of Heaven. But we
are for awhile to look in the opposite
direction, and see swinging open and
shut the gates of hell
l remember, when the Franco-Ger-
man war was going on, that l stood
one day in Paris looking at the gates
of Tuileries, and / was so absorbed in
the sculpturing at the top of the gates
the masonry and the bronchial
forgot myself, and after awhile, look
ing down, l saw that there were Off
GERS of the law scrutinizing me, sup
posing, no doubt, was German, and
looking at those gates for adverse pur-
poses. But, my friends, we shall not
stand looking at the outside of the
gates of hell. In this sermon l shall
tell you of both sides, and l shall tell
you what those gates are made of.
With the hammer of Gods truth | shall
pound on the brazen panels, and with
the lantern of Gods truth / shall fash
a light upon the shining hinges.
Gate the first: Impure literature. An
thony Comstock seized twenty tons of
bad books, plates and letter press, and
when our Prof Cochran, of the Poly
technic institute, poured the destruc-
tive acids on those plates, they smoked
in the righteous humiliation. And yet
a great deal of the bad literature of
the day is not gripped of the law. 1t
is strewn in your parlors; it is in your
libraries. Some of your children read
it at night after they have retired, the
gas burner swung as near as possible
to their pillow. Much of this literature
is under the title of scientific informa-
ton. A book agent with one of these
Internal books, CLOSED over with sci
entific nomenclature, went into hotel
and sold in one day hundred copies,
and sold them all to women! 1t is
appalling that men and women
who can get through their family
physician all the useful information
they may need, and without any con-
tamination, should wade chin deep
through such accursed literature under
the plea of getting useful knowledge.
and that printing presses, hoping to
be called decent, lend themselves
to this infamy. Fathers and mothers,
be not deceived by the title, medical
works" Nine-tenths of those books
come hot from the lost world, though
they may have on them names of the
publishing houses of New York, Chi
cago and Philadelphia. Then there is
all the novelette, literature of the day
flung over the land by the million. As
there are good novels that are long, so
l suppose there may be good novels
that are short, and so there may be
a good novelette,. but it is the eXcep-
ton. No one-mark this-no one
systematically reads the average
novelette, of this day and keeps
either integrity or virtue. The most
of these novelties are written bv
broken-dOwn literary men for small
compensation, on the principle that.
having failed in literature elevated and
pure, they hope to succeed in the
tainted and the nasty. Oh! this is a
wide gate of hell. Every panel is made
out of bad book or newspaper Every
hinge is the interjoined type of cor
rupt printing press. Every bolt or
lock of that gate is made out of the
plate of an unclean pictorial In other
words, there are a million men and
women in the United States to-day
reading themselves into hell! When,
in one of our cities, a prosperous fam
lily fell into ruins through the misdeeds
of one of its members, the amazed
mother said to the officer of the law:
why, never supposed there was any
thing wrong. l never thought there
could be anything wrong" Then she
sat weeping in silence for some time,
and said: ''Oh! have got it nowl l
know, I knowi l found in her
bureau after she went away a bad
book. That's what slew her" These
leprous booksellers have gathered up
the catalogues of all the male and fe-
male seminaries in the United States,
containing the names and |
of all the students, and cir |
culars of death are sent to every one,
without exception.
Can you imagine anything more
deathful? There is not a young per-
son, male or female, or an old person.
who has not had offered to him or her |
a bad book or a bad picture. Scour |
your house to find out whether there |
are any of these adders coiled on your |
psrlor center table, or coiled amid the |
toilet set on the dressing case. 1 ad-
jure you before the sun goes down to |
70
scrutiny. Remember that
one bad book or bad picture may do |
the work for eternity. 1 want to
arouse all your suspicious about novel
cites. want to put you on the watch |
againts everything that may seem like
correspondence through
the post office. l want you to under
stand that impure literature is one of
the broadest, highest, mightiest gates
IF the lost.
Gate the second: The dissolute dance.
You shall not divert me to the general
subject of dancing. Whatever you NAV
think of the parlor dance or the me-
-hodic motion of the body to sounds of
music in the family or the social circle,
am not now discussing that question.
want you to unite with me this hour
n recognizing the fact that there is a
iissolute dance. You know of what
peak. 1t is seen not only in the haunts
# death, but in elegant mansions. 1t
5 the first step to eternal ruin for a
-reat multitude of both sexes. You
NOW, my friends, what postures, and
attitudes, and figures are suggested
If the devil They who glide into the
lissolute dance glide over an inclined
'lane, and the dance is swifter and {
wifter, wilder and wilder, until with
r L L. 1 :.