The increasing rage for novel reading!
Fiction has often been a wholesome
relief to a good man's overworked and
weary brain. Many of the recent popular
novels are wholesome in their tone,
and the historical type often instructive.
Exclusive reading of novels
is to a person's mind--
just what highly spiced food and
alcoholic stimulants are to the body.
The chief objection to the best of them,
is that they excite a distaste in the mind
for any serious reading. The increasing
rage for novel reading betokens both
a famine in the intellect, and a serious
peril to the mental and spiritual life.
The honest truth is--
that too large a number of today's
fictitious works are subtle poison.
The plots of some of the most
popular novels are based on immorality,
and the violation in some form of
the seventh commandment.
They kindle evil passions;
they varnish and veneer vice;
they deride marital purity;
they uncover what ought to be hidden;
they paint in attractive hues--
what never ought to be seen by any
pure eye, or named by any modest tongue.
Two of the perils which threaten
American youths, are a licentious
theater and a poisonous literature.
One who has examined many
of the novels printed during
the last decade, said to me:
"The main purpose of many of these
books is to knock away the underpinning
of the marriage relation of the Bible."
If parents give house-room to trashy or
corrupt books, they cannot be surprised
if their children give heart-room to
"the world, the flesh, and the devil."
When interesting and profitable books
are so abundant and so cheap, this
increasing rage for novels is to me,
one of the sinister signs of the times!
and pursue righteousness!"
2 Timothy 2:22
[Editor's note: One can only wonder what Culyer would say about the immoral and insipid media which paralyze, pollute and poison the minds and hearts of the vast majority of professing Christians today!]
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
No comments:
Post a Comment