Smyrna times., 1902-03-05
REV. }. B. TURNER ADDRESSES WOMEN,
Dover Presbyterian Divine Before the Ladies
OF the Dover Century Club.

OOVeF presbyterian Divine Before the Ladies
OF the Dover Century Club.
Before an audience of over 300 wom-
en-, including the members of the Do
yer Century Club and the Wyoming
Round Table, the Rev. Joseph Brown
Turner on Wednesday handled the
modern novel writer's without rloyes.
Mr.. Turner had been especially nyit-
ed to talk upon this vitally interesting
subject to reading women, and was
greeted by this audience that filled the
clubhouse, many having had severe
trials to get to the clubhouse because
of the bad roads.
The supreme privilege and advan-
tage which modern society enjoys over
society of 800 years ago." said the
Presbyterian divine, els printed litera-
ture. Scores Of blessings that raise
the whole level of life and happiness
come to us with an improved ciyiliza-
ton, but over all ocular boons this is
sovereign.
1T goes without saying that the
multiplication of novels is by no means
an unmixed blessing. The evil they
do lives after them. An author in
whom intellect is allied to animalism
wields an influence such as no prince
can claim and no cOnquerOr ever pos
sessed. Such a man blights spiritual
empires and destroys that which no
civilization ever can produce. He
breaks down the defense of virtue: he
blasts immortal hopes. Every book
he sends forth is an apostle of evil, a
disseminatOr of vice, an emissary of
Satan. What Steele, in 'The Father. ,
said of licentious poems, is true of i'm
pure novels: 'Of all writings, these do
soonest corrupt the heart. No human
mind is SO elastic and unimpression-
able as to receive no harmful impress
from such books. They carry conta-
gion. They are not safe out of the
fire
'No man of intelligence and good
Judgment, however, will speak in scorn
of novels as class. Fiction is a great
branch of literature, which includes
different orders, classes, general and
species of books. There are wise nov
els, and some of them are only silly;
novels helpful and novels hurtful; the
wholesome and the poisonous; the
good and the bad. Fear of the evil
does not justify the rejection of the
good. 1t is folly to refuse angels
food because some people prefer liter
ary carrion. The best fiction can harm
no one. 1t educates, sweetens and
purifies. No man can read The Dove
in the Eagles Nest or 'Picciola, or
John Halifax, Gentlemen without
feeling while he reads that he is
breathing the purest moral atmosphere
and that his soul is at school to the
finest of moral teachings. The char
acter and scenes IN such books are all
unreal, but we are better men and
women because we know them.
Sometimes even genius pollutes
her vestal fires and becomes a pro
vuress to the lords of hell We are
in late school of novels, French, En-
glish and Polish. the presiding de-
mon of all cancerous c0rruptions in
the human heart, rising, not from Sty-
gian gloom and fame, but from what
Swedenborg describes to us as the ex
crementitious hell.
Vile Writers of Our Times.
"And how is this defended? Zola
and Hardy and Hall Caine go down
and take all that is vicious and vile in
society in it's crudest animalism.
This they introduce into the parlor
and study. They exploit sewers and
cess-pools, dabble in beastliness and
putrefaction, pour over the scury and
unreportable side of things and the
death lights that dance On rottenness,
catching putrid fevers for themselves
and spreading it among their readers.
emission workers, clergymen, stu
dents of penology, and those who
gather statistics wherewith to buttress
charities and reforms need to come
close and know things as they are.
But the great outside world that has
no ability, or wish to deal with the
denominations of iniquity in White
chapel or the vices of Paris, has no
more right to wade through this
slough of realism than it has to make
personal visits to pest houses and
smallpox patients because they exist