Bad Books and Sunday-school Libraries.
By Daniel Wise
WHEN the sons of the prophets in the days of Elisha were about to eat the pottage which had been prepared for their homely meal one day, they were startled by voices crying, "O man of God! there is death in the pot." The presence of an unwholesome, perhaps poisonous, vine, mixed by mistake with other herbs, had been discovered by those who first tasted the unsavory mess. It required a miracle to neutralize the poison in that mess of pottage. Reasoning from the testimony of many competent witnesses, we are of the opinion that there are few Sunday-school libraries in the land which would not prompt an intelligent Christian investigator to exclaim, "O church of God! there is death in this Sunday-school library!" Publishers and dealers in juvenile books have learned by experience in their trade that librarians and purchasing committees very generally decline to purchase truthful and useful books. Many reject even books of fiction if written with serious aim. "We want interesting books," they say; "our scholars will not read any others." By "interesting," these mistaken Sunday-school people mean sensational books—books of which that thoughtful educator, Horace Mann, said, "Amusement is the object—mere amusement, as contradistinguished from instruction in the practical concerns of life; as contradistinguished from those intellectual and moral impulses which turn the mind, both while reading and after the book is closed, to observation and comparison and reflection upon the great realities of existence." Having amusement as their chief aim, these purveyors for the mental food of children and young people placed in our Sunday-schools principally for the culture of their spiritual nature, not only reject useful, valuable, and qualified fiction, attractive histories, and really delightful biographies, but they select books, many of which are positively injurious to the minds, morals, and hearts of our youth—books full of exciting impossibilities, of adventures which could not happen, of pictures of wild wickedness, and sometimes of unchristian sentiments and slang phrases bordering on profanity. The character of some volumes found in some libraries is shocking to cultivated and Christian tastes, reminding one of Shakespeare's exclamations: "Was ever book containing such vile matter so fairly bound? O that deceit should dwell in such a gorgeous palace!" and tempting one to paraphrase this exclamation, and write, "Was it ever dreamed that such base matter would be put into a Sunday-school library? O that such vile trash should dwell in a library originally consecrated to pure morality and to the honor of Christ!" Charles Lamb says that there are "books which are no books." That is, they possess no value, intellectual or moral. Such are the books we condemn. Milton observes that "a good book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life." And no book which does not embalm its writer's purpose to promote the moral and spiritual life in a child or youth, should be found in any Sunday-school library. Is it not time to call a halt, to send out a bugle-cry of alarm on this Sunday-school library question? Is it not high time to insist that purchasers of books for our children and youth shall no longer aim supremely to find books which merely please? Crabbe has well said, even of books for adults, that
"Books cannot always please, however good;
Minds are not ever craving for their food." In point of fact, there is no surer way to curse children than for teachers or parents to make their mere pleasure a rule of action. There is too much selfishness, too strong a tendency to self-pleasing in them to make it safe to give them what pleases, without regard to the moral quality of the gift. To say that they will only read what pleases them, is to yield the whole question of discipline in education, and indeed of education itself. Would it not please most children and many youths to burn up every good book, to close up the school-house, to leave their minds undeveloped, and to feast their bodily appetites on dainties instead of healthful food? It is the part of the educator to teach them that to be pleased is not the end and aim of life, but to be noble, good, and loyal to virtue and to God. To simply please a child is to ruin it, soul and body. No parent, no teacher, no Sunday-school has a right to make its mere pleasure a supreme end. More than this, he who does so commits a crime. He is false to his own obligations, to the child's interests, to the just expectation of the church, and to Christ who looks to the church not to injure but to lead the child to his side to be folded to his heart of love. O that our libraries were fully consecrated to this blessed aim! Rev. D. Wise, in Zion's Herald.