They are coming with the recommendation of some of our
religious newspapers. They lie on your center-table, to curse your
children and blast with their infernal fires generations unborn. You
find these books in the desk of the school-miss, in the trunk of the
young man, in the steamboat cabin, and on the table of the hotel
reception-room. You see a light in your child's room late at night. You
suddenly go in and say: "What are you doing?". "I am reading." "What are
you reading?" "A book." You look at the book. It is a bad book. "Where
did you get it?" "I borrowed it." Alas! there are always those abroad
who would like to loan your son or daughter a bad book. Everywhere,
everywhere an unclean literature. I charge upon it the destruction of
ten thousand immortal souls; and I bid you this morning to wake up to
the magnitude of the theme. I shall take all the world's
literature--good novels and bad; travels, true or false; histories,
faithful and incorrect; legends, beautiful and monstrous; all tracts,
all chronicles, all epilogues, all family, city, state, national
libraries--and pile them up in a pyramid of literature; and then I shall
bring to bear upon it some grand, glorious, infallible, unmistakable
Christian principles. God help me to speak with reference to the account
I must at last render! God help you to listen.
I charge you, in the first place, to stand aloof from all books that
give false pictures of human life. Life is neither a tragedy nor a
farce.
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