Connecticut western news., 1900-08-02
BURN THE BADBOOKS
pR. TALMAos CONDEMNS PROFLlGATE
 LITERATURE.

LITERATURE.
 Evil Publications the Greatest
 Prisons and Insane Asylum.-Povw-
 CT of the Pre.. For Ge~A.
 WASHINGTON, July 29.-Dr. Talmage, who has been spending a few days in St. Petersburg. sends the following re- port of a discourse, which will be help rul to those who Have an appetite for literature and would like some rules to guide them in the selection of books and newspapers; text, Acts xix, 10, Many of them also which used curl ous arts brought their books together md burned them before al men, and they counted the price of them and found 1t 50.00O pieces of silver"
 Paul had been stirring up Ephesus with some lively sermons about the sins of that place. Among the more Important results was the fact that the citizens brought out their bad books and In a public place made a bonfire of them. I see the people coming out with their arms full of Ephesian liter atare and tossing 1t into the flames. I hear an economist who is standing by saying: "Stop this waste! Here are S7,0O0 worth of books. Do you pro- pose to burn them all up? If you don't want to read them yourselves, sell them and let somebody else read them" No" said the people; If these books are not good for us, they are not good for anybody else, and we shall stand and watch until the last leaf has burned ito ashes. They have done us a world of harm. and they shall never do others harm" Hear the flames crackle and roar!
 Well. my friends, one of the wants of the cities is a great bonfire of bad books and newspapers. We have enough fuel to make blaze POO feet high. Many of the publishing houses would do well to throw into the blaze their entire stock of goods. Bring forth the insufferable trash and put 1t into the fire and let 1t be known in the preseRce of God and angels and men that you are going to rid your homes of the overlapping and underlying curse of pronigate literature.
 The printing press Is the mightiest agency on earth for good and for evil. The minister of the gospel standing in a pulpit has a responsible position, but l do not think 1t Is as responsible as the position of an editor or a publisher. At what distant point of time, at what far .out cycle of eternity, will cease the influence of a Henry J. Raymond or a Horace Greeley or a James Gordon BennAtt or . Watson Webb or an Eras- tus Brooks CT Thomas Kinsella? Take the overwhelming statistics of the cir culation of the daily and weekly news papers and then cipher. If you can, how far up and how far down and how far cut reach the influences of the Ameri- can printing press.
 Purified Literature.
 What is to be the issue of all this2 believe the Lord intends the printing press to be the chief means for the worlds rescue and eyangelization, and think that the great last battle of the world will not be fought with swords and guns,s but with types and presses, . purified and gospel literature tri- umphing over, trampling down and crushing out forever that which Is de- prayed. The only way to overcome uncIean literature is by scattering abroad that which is healthful. May God speed the cylinders of an honest, intelligent, aggressive Christian print ing press!
 I have to tell you that the greatest blessing that ever came to the nations Is that of m elevated literature, and the greatest seourge has been that of unclea plH terature. This last has It's victims i1 Ill occupations and depart ments. 1t has helped to fill insane asylums and penltentiaries and aims houses and dens of shame. The bodies of this infection lie in the hos pitals and In the graves, while their s0ulS6re being tossed over into a lost eternity, an avalanche of horror and despair! The London plague was nothing to it. That counted It's victims by thousands, but this modern pest has already shoveled It's millions into the charnel house of the morally dead. The longest rail train that ever ran over the tracks was not long enough or large enough to carry the beastliness and the putrefaction which have been gathered up in bad books and news papers in the last 20 years.
 Now, 1t is amid such circumstances that I put a question of overmastering Importance to you and your families. What books and newspapers shall we read? You see group them together. 4 io Tn. x,fP CT and more portable shape, and the same rules which will apply to book reading will apply to newspaper read ing. What shall we read? Shall our minds be the receptacle of everything that an author has a mind to write2 Shall there be no distinction between the tree sf life and the tree of death? Shall we stoop down and drink out of the trough which the wickedness of men has filled with pollution and ShameI Shall we mire In impurity across the swamps when we might walk in the blooming gardens of God2 On, no! For the sake of our present and everlasting welfare we must make an intelligent and Christian choice.
 Pare Fiction . Blessing.
 Standing, as we do. chin deep in fic- titious literature, the question that young people are asking Is, Shall we read novels?" I reply there are novels that are pure, good, Christian, elevat- ing to the heart and ennobling to the lie, but have still further to say that I believe that 75 out of 100 novels in this day are baleful and destructive to the last degree. A pure work of fic- tion Is history and poetry combined. 1t Is "a history of things around us, with the licenses and the assumed names of poetry. The world can never pay the debt which 1t owes to such writers. of fiction as Hawthorne and Mckenzie and Landon and Hunt and