p. 146 | Warning to Parents by Earnest Christian

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 9, 1866

Warning to Parents.

By Earnest Christian

DEAR Christian parents, in a spirit of love I would ask you, What do your children read? In these days when the land is flooded with fiction, are your children being mentally poisoned by “Leslie’s,” “Peterson’s,” “Arthur’s,” and like publications? If you, in a spirit of foolish fondness, have permitted them to read these and other fictions, you may well tremble for their future. Do not think they are harmless because not positively vicious. There is no need of dressing up the truth, in false colors in order to make it attractive. The truth in its simplicity is more attractive, to a pure mind, than all the trappings of fictitious writers. But writers of romance are not so harmless as to content themselves with merely adorning the truth; they inculcate falsehood and deception of every kind. And even in those rare cases when there is nothing positively vicious, the effect of romance upon the youthful mind, and indeed upon every mind, is evil and that only. I will not resort to the old arguments to prove this—you all know them, but will relate a few incidents that occurred in a family with which I was well acquainted, as an illustration of this truth.

The parents of this family were professing Christians, and their lives were more consistent than the majority of professors. Their family consisted of two daughters, whom they endeavored to train up for God. The oldest, when seven years of age, was the subject of religious impressions. She was very mature of her age, and her parents anticipated much happiness in training her up to serve the Lord. But, about this time, she became interested in reading the stories printed in “Neal’s Gazette,” then a favorite paper with many. There was nothing of an immoral tendency in anything she read. But she was naturally romantic, with large ideality; the habit of reading fictions was formed, and her religious impressions vanished. Her parents deplored the evil, but were blind to the cause, nor saw the inconsistency of giving their child to the Lord in prayer, and then by taking, and permitting her to read, the popular papers and magazines, destroying the good seed sown in her young heart. Before she was twelve years old, she was a confirmed novel reader, and the amount of light reading she devoured, would astonish any one. Her mind was naturally thrown into a morbid state, her brain was overtasked, and she became irritable, headstrong, and often disobedient. Her parents saw this and deeply deplored the habit, now so firmly fixed, that entreaties, threats, and commands, were equally ineffectual to break it.

In her sixteenth year, she made a romantic profession of religion, after the fashion of her favorite heroine, and soon after married a man of whom she knew nothing, but whom she invested with all the excellences of her favorite hero of romance. Alas, she found by bitter experience that life is not a romance. After suffering everything but death from the neglect and personal abuse of a villain, she left him and went home to her parents, as she expected to die. But God was merciful and spared her life, for had she died then, she surely would have been lost. And did she now break off from her novels, and try to comfort her parents in their declining years? No! she read now to forget, yes, and wrote to forget, and found a sort of pleasure in portraying her past sorrow in some imaginary personage. Poor foolish child; she knew nothing of life yet. When she was about twenty years old, her parents died, suddenly, and near together, and then she felt that sorrow indeed was hers. Her conscience became awakened, and she determined to serve the Lord. But oh, how weak and powerless is the heart, in the hands of a giant habit. She was reading an interesting story, which she wished to finish. She hesitated some time before reading it, but finally did, thinking it would be the last. When she had finished, conviction had left her. God had left her to her idols. I will not follow her life journey further; suffice it to say that she persisted in her sin until she was left utterly alone, with broken health, and a broken heart. And then, she fell in with some of the pilgrims, God convicted her again, and, praise his name, she sought and found a Saviour, able and willing to save from every sin.

She is saved. But, as she looks back in the past, she thinks of two wrecked lives. Of a father and mother, who went sorrowing to the grave; of wasted talents, and wasted time, all occasioned by this one bad habit. And when she sees a novel in the hands of a professor of religion, she trembles; when she sees the light literature of the day on the table of a Christian, she cannot be silent. But when she sees parents, who themselves will not read fictions, permitting their children to do so, her mind reverts to her own bitter past, and she would fain sound an alarm which would reach the heart and conscience of every parent.

Christian parents, you are responsible, in a great degree, for the souls of your children. How dare you, in view of this, permit them to form habits which they cannot retain, and live religion.—Earnest Christian.