The Republican journal., 1896-12-24
Prigs of Sunday=School Literature.

|
! The editor of the Literary Digest recent
ly came across a bundle of old letters, one
4 books provided for the delectation of chill
dren generation ago. Among the vol
umes were s'Fox's Book Of Martyrs, :"
Harvey's Medtations Among the
Tombs, and the pathetic story of little
girl who was SO very good that she "died
/ young" Agnes Repplier, one of the
of the day, seems to have had much the
same experience with ill advised Sunday
school literature, if one is to judge from
her paper in the Christmas Scribner's, en-
titled Little Pharisees in Fiction" We
quote portions of her article:
| ''We first introduced into the literature
OF the Sunday school the Extensively pious
little Christian who makes her father and
mother, her uncles and aunts, even her
venerable grandparents, the subjects of
her spiritual ministrations. We first
taught her to confront, Bible in hand, the
harmless adults who had given her birth,
and to annhilate their feeble arguments
with denunciatory texts. We first sur
rounded her with the prosecutions OF the
| worldly minded, that her virtues might
shine more gIaringly in the gloom, and
disquisitions on duty be never out of
place. Daisy, in Melbourne House, is
an example of a perniciously good child
who has the conversion of her family on
her hands, and is well aware of the digni-
W OF her position. Her trials and trl-
umphs, her tears and prayers, her suffer-
lhgs ana rewards, NIL TWO Portly vo Tunes,
ana nave doubtless inspired many a young
feauer TO set Immediately ABOUT the cor
fectlol OF her parent faults:
mere Is no reason why the literature
OF the sunday school, since 1t represents
an important element IN modern book
making should be uniformly ana consist
ently pad. There IS no reason why all the
children who figure in its pages should be
such impossible little pngs; or why all
parents should be either Incredibly foolish
and worldly minded, or so intiexibly seri-
Gus that they never open their bps with
out preaching. There is no reason why
people, because they are virtuous or re-
pentent, should converse IN stllted and
unnatural language A contnte burglar
III one oi these edltyinS stories, contesses,
poeucally, My sins are more numerous
than the hairs OF my head or the sands OF
the seashore which was probably true,
but not precisely the way IN which the
Bill Sykeses OF real lite are wont to ac
knowledge the fact In another tale, an
English one this time, little girl named
Helen rashly asks her father for some
tritling information. He gives it with the
usual grandiloquence, and then adds, by
way OF commentator: Many children
are so foolish as to be ashamed to let
those they converse with discover that
they do not comprehend everything that
is said to them, by which means they
often imbibe erroneous ideas, and per-
maps remain IN ignorance on many essen
tlal SUBJECTS, when by questioning their
trends they might easily have obtained
correct ana useful knowledge. 1t Helen
ever ventured on anotherquery after that,
she deserved her tate
Nothlhg, concludes Miss Reppller, is
more unwhoesome than detection. This
Is especially pernlclous when served out
TO chlldren IN their Literary food. To
quote her words;
Crippled lads, consumptlve mothers,
ahgenc NIUE girls with spinal complaint,
inloel iatnefs' lingering death beds, tam
lshed 1amllles, innocent convlcts, perse-
cuted schoolboys, and trlendless children
their own mournfully for many years. 1t
is time we admitted, even into religious
fiction, some of the conscious Joys of a
not altogether miserable world