The free press. (Poplarville, Miss.) 1890-19??, 1900-08-09
REV. DR.. TALMAGE
DISCOURSE By VIE EMINENT DI
VINE LAST SUNDAY
Subject: Profiigate Literature-Evii Pub
locations the Greatest scourge of the
World-It Fills the Prisons and In.
sane Asylums-Power of the Press.


sane Asylums-Power of the Press.
Copyright 1901
WASHINGTON, d. CDR Talmage sends
the following report of discourse, which
will be helpful to those who have an APP
petite for literature end 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 1t
$4,000 pieces of silver
Paul had been stirring up Ephesus with
some lively sermons about the sins or that
place. Among the more important results
was the fact that the citizens brought out
their bad books and in public place made
bonfire of them. | see the people coming
out with their arms full of Ephesian liter,
AZURE and tossing it into the flames.
hear an economist who is standing by
saying stop this wastei 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" mo" 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 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 great bonfire of bad books
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 underlying
cnurSa of rroHiuata titera turp
The printing press is the mightiest agen-
cy on earth for good and for evil. The
minister of the gospel standing in the
pulpit has responsible position, but L
do not think it is as responsible as the
position of an editor or publisher. At
what distant point of time, at what lar
out cycle of eternity. will cease the in
fuence of Henry J. Raymond or Hor-
ace Greeley, or James Gordon Bennett,
or Watson Webb, or an Erastus. Brooks,
or 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 how tar
down and how far out reach the inhu-
ences of the American printing presses
What is to be the issue of all this?
I believe the Lord intends the printing
press to be the chief means for the worlds
rescue and evangelization, and / think
that the great last battle of the world
but with types and presses, purified and
gospel literature triumphng over, tramp
ling down and crushlr0 out forever that
which is depraved. The only way to
overcome unclean litera ture is by scatter
ing abroad that which is healthful May
God speed the cylinders Of an honest. in
telligent, aggressive Christian printing
press
l 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 it's victims in all
occupations and departments. 1t 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 question of overmastering impor-
lance to you and your families. What
You see | 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 mind to
write? Shall there be no distinction be-
tween the tree of life and the tree of
death? Shall we stoop down and dring
out of the trough which the wickedness of
men has filled with pollution and shame?
Shall we mire in impurity and chase fam
tastic will-o' -the-wispss 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 chn-deep fcti
tlous literature, the question that Young
people are asking is, "Shall we read nov
els" l reply there are novels that are
pure. good, Christian, elevating tC the
heart and enobling to the life. but have
still further to say that | believe that
seventy-fve 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 history OF
things around US, with the licenses and
can. never pay the debt which It owes to
such writer's of fiction as Hawthorne and
Mckenzie and Landon and Hunt and
Arthur aud 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.
Thackeray did a grand work in caricatur-
ing the pretenders to gentility and high
blood. Dickens has built his own monu-
ment in his books, which are plea for the
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 at
right times and read in right proportion
with other books. cannot help but be en-
nobling and purifying, but, alas, for the
loathsome and impure literature that has
come in the shape of novels like freshet
overlooking all the banks of decency and
common sense! They are coming from