The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1903-01-18
THE TREND OF OUR GREAT
MODERN LITERATURE
Literature--The Changes i'm Method of Reaching
Mans Interest. What Sensatonalism is Doing
to Make us Forget to Help Our FelIowmen.


Roman Cicero has left u.s. There is
nothing which wings its flight so swiftly
as calumny, nothing which is uttered
with more ease; nothing is listened to
with more readiness, nothing dispersed
more widely" Socrates, wisest of all
Greeks, said-'Listen not to a tale
bearer or slanderer, for he tells thee
nothing out of goodwill: but as he dis
Covereth of the secrets of others, so ne
will of thine in turn The moderns diff
fer but little from the ancients, it seems,
in many things. Poor fallen human ma
ture is very much the same in all ages.
Turn to st. Paul's visit to Athens. He
found the highly polished and gifted
Greeks very human and greatly addicted
to gossip. In Acts 1921 it is recorded by
Luke: For all the Athenians, and
strangers which were there, spent their
time in nothing else, but either to tell,
or to hear some new thing" Let me
here Gull two sayings from two gifted
men in the somewhat remote past
Quares said: "Scanda breeds hatred;
hatred breeds division; division makes
faction, and faction brings ruin" Dr.
Robert South, the vigorous and original
thinker, the wittiest of court divines, held
that "the tale bearer and the tale hearer
should be both hanged up, back to back
one by the tongue, the other by the ear"
There are some of my readers no doubt
who remember the familiar couplet of the
very famous Dean Swift:
Convey libel in a frown,
And wink a reputat ton down"
This is very significant. That most Wig
orous of all modern satirists knew how
it was in his day Hence the couplet.
Those who have ears know how it is in
our day. Scandalmongers and gossips
have prevailed in every age of the world.
1t was rather scandallous in Adam in
the way in which he tried to get rid of the
responsibility of having disobeyed God
in the first temptation, when he adrotly
said, "She gave me of the tree. and | did
eat And SO on from our first father
down to this day the dealer in scandal
has fiourished, and
"At every word reputation dies"
If the Greeks, the most gifted of all of
the natives of antiquity were incurable,
eternal gossps, the constant retailers and
dispensers of the meanest 'skimble-
skamble stuff TO use a phrase of rare
Ben Jonson," what were the other peo
pies? The Greeks were wholly given
to idolatry," as we have seen above from
ST. Paul's account. Neither their native
genius. their learning, nor the skill of
their great Observation-Disclosures, Plato
IN no oil oh 10 TO frai
them from constant gossip and fragrant
scandal. How ignorant, after all, are
the most enlightened peoples of the
globe. If the accomplished, richly en-
dowed Greeks lived in contradiction of
philosophy, and INDUCED in vice deeply
injurious to the welfare and happiness
of their souls, the other nations were
far worse off. They were ruder, more
abandoned, more destitute, more deprav-
ed. Read Paul's Letter to the Romans,
chapter first and behold.
1t was terrible that the streets, public
places and private houses of the most ia
nous cities, whittier Grecian and Roman
and Egyptian youths fiocked to receive
instruction in all manner of knowledge
from the lips Of the profoundest philoso-
pliers and sages that this world has yet
seen, should be filled with idols. 1t was
indeed awful that the only rites and cere-
monies of religious character were Of
fcrcd to dumb stone, instead of to AL
mighty God. But We We're not prepared
20 be told that the people who were the
disciples of Plato and Socrates and
Aristotle were the veriest busy bodies
and idle scandle retailers. And yet ac-
cordng to Unerring Truth, such were the
boosted and highly intellectual Athen-
ians, the leaders of thought and ancient
civilization.
Let us skip the intervening centuries,
and come to the close of the nineteenth
century and even the third year of the
twentieth is it in the year of grace 1903?
With the light of Divine truth shining
upon the pathway of cur country, we
yet see educated people following the
absurd and injurious habit of the Athen-
ians-spending much of their most valu-
able time lin either telling or hearing
some new thing" Perhaps | should say,
in reading some new thing" as the
newspapers have usurped the function of
the lecturer and reciter. The more high
ly spiced the new thing" is, the moro
appetizing and grateful it is, and the
more industriously and anxiously it is
sought after and devoured.
Now take it, that this love of the ex-
citing, the prurient, the impure, the new
and strange-this delight in reading of
it and telling of it, as it is spread out
daily in the great papers, is a very bad
symptom and indicates disease.
1t is an absolute cheat. 1t encourages
a man in Incidence by the semblance of
activity. He is so very busy: he has
his daily rounds to make hunting news.
He has no tine for more useful or pro-
fitable occupation. He flatters himself
he is really at work. His mind is highly
excited, whilst his hands lie idle.
1t seriously Injuries a mans benevolent
nature. He is so accustomed to read of
misery that he fails to feel or remember
that he ought to relieve it. He reads
so much of horrible crimes that they be-
come familiar and unimportant. He reads
so much of agoniZing scenes that he has
no ear for the cry of ordinary distress,
and his heart feels none of the pangs
that visit the hearts of the great suf-
fercrs. Such narrowing recitals merely
contribute to his mental excitement with
out stirring the depths of his soul His
mind is stimulated, but his moral nature