Audubon Republican. [volume] (Audubon, Iowa) 1894-1925, 1900-08-02
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
GIVES SOME HINTS ON WHAT
TO READ.
| Says That the Greatest Blessing of n
Nation Is an Elevated Lterature-Its
Greatest Curse an Impure Literature
Some Timely Suggestions.


will be helpful to those who have an
appetite for literature and would like
some rules to guide them in the selec-
ton of books and newspapers: text,
Acts xix, 10, Many of them also
which used curious arts brought their
books together and burned them be-
fore all men, and they counted the
price of them and found it $4,000 piec-
es 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 public place made a
bonfire of them. / see the people
coming out with their arms full OF
Ephesian literature and tossing it
into the flames. l hear an economist
who is standing by saying: Stop this
waste. Here are $500 worth OF books.
Do you propose to burn them all up?
If you don't want to read them your
selves, sell them and let somebody
else read them" NO" said the peo-
pie; "if these books are not good fer
us, they are not good for anybody
else, and we shall stand and watch
until the last leaf has burned to ashes.
They have done us 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 200 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
it into the fire and let it be known
in the presence of God and angels and
men that you are going to rid your
homes of the overlapping and under
lying curse of profligate 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 do not think it is as responsible
as the position of an editor or pub
Usher. At what distant point of time
at what far out cycle of eternity, will
cease the influence of Henry ]. Ray
mond, or a Horace Greeley, or a
James Gordon Bennett, or Watson
Webb, or an Erastus Brooks, or a
Thomas Kinsella? Take the over
whelming statistics of the circulation
Of the daily and weekly newspapers
and then cipher if you can, how far
up and far down and how far
out reach the influences of the Ameri-
can printing press.
What is to be the issue of all this?
I believe the Lord intends the print
ing press to be the chief means for the
worlds rescue and evangelization,
and | think that the great last battle
of the world will not be fought with
swords and guns, but with types and
presses, a purified and gospel litera-
ture triumphing over, trampling down
and crushing out forever that which
is depraved. The only way to over
come unclean literature is by scatter
ing abroad that which is healthful.
May God speed the cylinders of an
honest. intelligent, aggressive, Christ
ian printing press.
Good Books a Blessing.
l have to tell you that the greatest
blessing that ever came to the ma
tons is that of an elevated literature,
and the greatest scourge that has
been of unclean~ literature. This last
has it's victims in all occupations and
departments. 1t has helped to fill in
sane asylums and penitentiaries and
almshouses and dens of shame. The
bodies of this infection lie in the
hospitals and in the graves, while
their souls are being tossed over into
lost eternity, an avalanche of horror
and despair! The London plague was
nothing to it. That counted it's vic
Tins 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 newspapers in the last twenty
years.
Now, it is amid such circumstances
that l put question Of overmastering
Importance to you and your families.
What books and newspapers shall we
read? You see l group them together
A newspaper is only a book in
Oh
and the same rules which will apply
to book reading will apply to news
paper reading. What shall we read?
Shall our minds be the receptacle of
everything that an author has a mind
to write? Shall there be no distinc-
ton between the tree of life and the
tree of death. Shall we stoop down and
drink out of the trough which the
wickedness of men has filled with pol
luton and shame? Shall we mire in
impurity and chase fantastic will-o'-
the-wisps across the swamps when
we might walk in the blooming gar
dens Of God? Oh, no! For the sake
of our present and everlasting welfare
we must make an intelligent and
Christian choice.
Standing, as we do, chin deep in
fictitious literature, the question that
young people are asking is, "Shall we
read novelist" l reply. There are nov
els that are pure, good, Christian, ele-
waiting TO the heart and ennobling TO
the life. But have still further to
say that l believe that seventy-fve
out of the 100 novels in this day are
baleful and destructive to the last de-
gree. A pure work Of fiction is history
and poetry combined. 1t is history
of things around us with the licenses
and the assumed names OF poetry. The
world can never pay the debt which