The Penn's Grove record., 1900-08-03
DIR. TALMAGE'S SERMON.
SUNDAYS DISCOURSE BY THE NOTED
DIVINE.


World-It Fills the Prisons and In
sane Asyluins-Rower Of the Press.
tCopyriaht 1901
WASHINGTON, d. Cdr. Talmage sends
che following report of q discourse, which
will be helpful to those who have an APP
petite 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
GUS arts brought their books together and
burned them before all men, and they
counted the price of them and found it
$1,000 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. / see the people coming
azure and tossing it into the flames. /
'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 yourselves, sell 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 to ashes. They
have done US q 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 a 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
n men that you are going to rid your
homes of the overlapping and underlying
course Of profiigate literature.
TIT printing press is the mightiest agen-
cy on earth for good and for evil. The
minister of the gospel standing in the
pulpit has a responsible position, but l
position of a n editor or a publisher. At
what distant point of time, at what far
out cycle of eternity, will cease the in.
f1uence Of Henry j. Raymond or Hor.
ace Greeley, or a James Gordon Bennett,
a Watson Webb, or an Erastus. Brooks,
or a Thomas Kinsella? Take the over
whelming statistics of the circulation Of
the 0aily and weekly newspapers and then
cipher, if you can, how far up and how far
down and how far out reach the infu-
What is to be the issue 81 ali this!
I believe the Lord intends the printing
press to be the chief means for the worlds
rescue and evangelization, and I think
that the great last battle of the world
will not be fought with swords and guns.
but with types and presses, q purified and
gospel literature triumphing over, tramp
ling down and crushirr out forever that
which is d~epraved. The only way to
unclean literature is by scatter
ing abroad that which is healthful. May
God speed the cylinders of an honest, in
press!
/ have to tell you that the greatest bless
ing that ever came to the nations is that
of an elevated literature, and the great
est scourge has been that of unclean liter
ature. This last has its victims in all
occupations and departments. It has
helped to fill insane asylums and pene-
tentiaries 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 a
lost eternity! The London plague was
nothing to it. That counted its victims by
thousands, but this modern pest has al
ready shoveled its millions into the car
nal house Of the morally dead. The long
est 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
/ put q question of overmastering impor.
lance to you and your families. What
books and newspapers shall we read!
You see l group them together. A news.
paper is only a book in a swifter and
more portable shape. and the same rules
which apply to book reading will apply
to newspaper 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 distinction be.
tween the tree of life and the tree OF
death? Shall we stoop down and drinp
out of the trough which the wickedness Of
men has filled with pollution and shame:
Shall we mire in impurity and chase fan
tastic will-o' -the-wisps across the swamps
when we might walk in the blooming
gardens 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. in chin-deep ficti.
tious literature, the question that young
people are asking is, "Shall we read nov.
els?" I reply there are novels that are
pure. good, Christian, elevating to the
heart and enobling to the life, but / have
still further to say that / believe that
seventy-ive out of 100 novels in this day
are baleful and destructive to the last
degree. A pure work of fiction 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 it owes ia
such writers of fiction as Hawthorne and
Mckenzie and Landon and Hunt and
Arthur and others whose names are famil
lar to all. The follies of high life were
never better exposed than by Miss Edge,
worth: the memories of the past were never
more faithfully embalmed than in the writ
ings of Walter Scott. Cooper's novels are
BEAUTIFULLY redolent with the breath Of
the seaweed and the air of the American
forest. Charles Kingsley has smitten the
morbidity of the world and led a great
many to appreciate the poetry of sound
health, strong muscles and fresh air
T~hackeray did q grand work in caricatur
blood. Dickens has built his own monu
ment in his books. which are a plea for tht
poor and the anathema of injustice, and
there are a score of novelistic pens to-day
doing mighty work for God and righteous
ness.
Now, / say, books like these, read Al
right times and read in right proportion
with other books, cannot help but be en-
nobling and purifying, but, alas, for TIN
loathsome and impure literature that hal
come in the shape of novels like a freshe1
OVERLOOKING all the banks Of decency an(
common sense! They are coming from
some of the most celebrated publishing
houses; they lie or your centre table K
curse your children and blast with thei
internal fires generations unborn. Yol
find those books in the desk of the schoo
miss, e the trunk of the young man, in tn,
steamboat cabin, on the table of the hote
reception room. You see a light in you
child's room late at night. You suddenl,
go in and say, What are you doing?''
Il am reading" What are you reading??'
"a book HWhere did you get it," "
borrowed it." Alas, there are always thos'
abroad who would like to loan your son O
daughter a bad book! Everywhere, every
where, all unclean literature! / charg,
upon it the destruction of 10000 immorta
souls, and | bid you wake up to the magni
tude of the evil.
I charge you, in the first place, t.
stand aloof from all books that give falls,
pictures of life. Life is neither a TRACED,
nor a farce. Men are not all either knave
or heroes. Women are neither angels no
furies. And yet, If you depended upol
much of the literature of the day, 20,
would get the idea that life, instead Of be
ing something earnest, something practi
cal, is g fitfu1 and fantastic and extrava
CANT thing. How poorly prepared ar
that young man and woman for the du
ties of TODAY who spent last night wadinI
through brilliant passages descriptive o