Untitled article by D. F. Newton

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, October 15, 1867

FromThe Advent Review & Sabbath Herald, Vol. XXX, No. 18

POPULAR WORKS OF FICTION.

By D. F. Newton

“How shall I speak thee, or thy power address, Thou god of our idolatry, the Press! Like Eden’s dread probationary Tree— Knowledge of good and evil is from thee?”

“And the serpent said to the woman, Ye shall not surely die.”

Satan is transformed into an angel of light: the sweet is mingled with the bitter, gall and wormwood with honey.

Here lies the danger, the snare is concealed! These fashionable periodicals are Satan’s traps to catch the unwary; multitudes are caught in these snares of the Devil. They go after them “as an ox goeth to the slaughter: or as a fool goeth to the correction of the stocks. Till a dart strike through his liver; as a bird hasteth to the snare and knoweth not it is for his life.” Prov. vii, 22, 23.

“Hearken unto me,” says Solomon, “now therefore, O ye children, and attend to the words of my mouth. Let not thine heart decline to her ways, go not astray in her paths. For she hath cast down many wounded; yea, many strong men have been slain by her. Her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death.”

Never did Satan devise a more artful, subtle, successful stratagem to decoy the unwary, and fill the regions of despair, than when he set on foot these fascinating, popular weeklies and monthlies; that are flooding the land, darkening the heavens like the flies, frogs, lice and locusts of Egypt, but far more dangerous. They “go up and come into thine house, and into the bed-chamber, and upon thy bed, and into the house of thy servants, and upon thy people, and into thine ovens, and into thy kneading-troughs.”

Thus:— “Crimes in every shape increase, Judgments stalk throughout the land; Signs are borne on every breeze, That destruction is at hand.”

“While men slept the enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way.” Matt. xiii, 25.

Let us look at this question a moment, and turn it over.

1. Who are the writers of these love-stories, fictitious tales, novels, romances, fatal tragedies, horrid scenes of rape, blood and murder, that grace the pages of these popular weeklies and monthlies? With few exceptions, are they not known to be persons lax in principle, and loose in life? “As is the tree, so is the fruit.” “Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?” “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.” “Can a man take fire in his bosom, and his clothes not be burned?”

Books and papers have souls; they think, speak and act for evil or for good. A bad book or paper is as dangerous as a bad woman, a bad boy or a bad girl. Reading a bad book is keeping bad company, and reading a good book is keeping good company. Every book, every paper, has a soul breathing a spirit good or bad. It is the soul of its author, and when spread over the pages of the book, that soul acts upon its reader as truly as when acting directly.

2. If any good there be in these works, there is no good which cannot be obtained elsewhere.

3. Their general tendency is to evil. They often present virtue and vice in false colors.

4. The reading of them is a wicked waste of time which should be employed in the acquisition of useful knowledge. Precious hours, more precious than rubies, which God has given for noble and holy purposes, are wasted in ministering to the morbid appetite of a depraved heart. Golden moments lost, are not lost alone, because they carry souls upon their wings.

5. Their cost is another objection. Thousands of God’s money are lavished on these literary serpents, these poisonous reptiles, unclean things like the frogs spoken of by John, the Revelator, that proceed out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet, for they are the spirits of Devils.” See Rev. xvi, 13.

6. These fictitious readings often lead to insanity and suicide. The imagination becomes wild and extravagant, like a ship in a storm without compass or helm. A distorted imagination unfits human beings to live and think and act, in this common-sense, matter-of-fact world of ours. Hence the many disappointments, the discontentments, the misery, the broken hearts, the insanity, and the suicides among novel-readers.

7. They weaken the judgment, the reasoning powers are unhinged, and all the perceptive faculties destroyed or greatly vitiated. More than this, all the generous affections of the heart, and all the noble sensibilities of human nature, become blunted and seared under their blighting and withering influence! The intellect is greatly injured by their creating a distaste for nobler and more solid reading. Men do not like to go from the splendid palaces of kings—from the soft and lascivious saloons and drawing rooms of dukes and counts, into the common walks of life—no, they would rather luxuriate amid the splendid castles and enchanted scenes of the novel-writer!

8. They beget a vain, volatile, trifling, frivolous mind. Dr. Arnold says: “Childishness in boys even of good ability, seems to be a growing fault, and I do not know what to ascribe it to, except to the great number of exciting books of amusement. Parents need to exercise the utmost watchfulness for their children, and to exhibit to them, in this particular, consistent example, lest they become enslaved to the pernicious habit of making these publications their mental food. The habit is to the mind what indulgence in intoxicating drink is to the body. In both cases there is a constant craving for excitement, and for an excitement which unfits the faculties and draws away the affections from duty, from Heaven and from God.”

9. Novel-reading and idolatry in dress, foolish talking and jesting go hand in hand; they aid and stimulate each other. Are not most habitual readers of fictitious works excessively fond of gay and expensive clothing—external decorations, ornaments of jewelry, of “gold, pearls, and costly array,” things strictly forbidden in the word of God? See 1 Tim. ii, 9, 1 Peter iii, 9.

10. They produce indolent and sluggish habits of thought. The habitual novel-reader unfits himself for intense mental application, as the history of literature abundantly shows. “The taste of such persons is like that of the epicure, who has long been fed upon highly-seasoned and stimulating food; he no longer relishes plain diet, such as nature and health demand.”

11. They are the stepping-stones to the theatre, the house of ill-fame, “the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death.” Prov. vii, 27.

12. They unfit the mind for devotion. Who ever knew a novel-reader, or one spending daily whole hours poring over the pages of “Harper,” “Godey,” “Peterson,” “Ballou,” “Leslie,” the “New York Ledger,” the comicals, and other mixed publications of a similar character, a diligent student of the Bible, a lover of prayer, a consistent follower of Jesus Christ? Was such a thing ever? “Can two walk together except they be agreed?”

13. They lay the ground-work for gambling and stealing. Young men that have their mind vitiated, and their moral sensibilities perverted by novels, will not endeavor to procure wealth in the ordinary way, by labor and patience; this is too slow a process to satisfy the fevered and excited mind. Fortune must be made at once.

14. They are one of the most potent engines the Devil has ever been able to plant upon our earth, to undermine the principles of virtue, and subvert the morality of the Bible. They drive the individual from the sanctuary, close the Bible, alienate the heart from God, and plunge the soul into temporal ruin and eternal death? The habit grows with our growth, and, if permitted to run on, will pollute the soul even in the world to come.

15. Finally, these popular works of fiction and foolish comicals poison the soul in all her faculties. “The whole head becomes sick, the whole heart faint,” the native depravity is fed and fostered, and, like the sickly plant of a hot-house, rapidly forced to maturity. The Bible, that “dread, wondrous book, the author, God himself, the subject, God and man,” that book which is a transcript of the Eternal Mind—that book which has “God for its author, truth without error for its subject, and Heaven for its object,”—that book has no charms for the novel-reader! No, it deals in truth and not in fiction! and he has no soul to enjoy the beauties of truth.

Novels are sharp rocks just beneath the smooth surface of the moral sea of life, around which float in shattered fragments the wrecks of lost and ruined millions! And yet others will still venture in that treacherous sea!

Satan was the first author of novels, and his followers have been quite successful in carrying out the principles of his school. It was he who first addressed the imagination and passions of Eve in the garden of Paradise; and was it not a deceptive and unfounded tale, that “brought death into our world, and all our woe?”

What can be done to stay this desolating scourge, issuing from the pit, so long as religious editors advertise and puff novels, romances, comicals, foolish, nonsensical, sickly, sentimental love-tales?

Ministers and ministers’ wives write novels, read novels; religious editors write novels, puff novels, read novels. “Woe to them that build by unrighteousness!” “Woe to thee that spoileth, and thou wast not spoiled.” “Woe to the rebellious children,” saith the Lord, “that take counsel, but not of me.” “Woe to them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter.” “Some men’s sins are open beforehand, going before to judgment; and some men they follow after. Likewise also the good works of some are manifest beforehand; and they that are otherwise cannot be hid.”—1 Tim. v, 24, 25.

Good books and papers preach; bad books and papers preach. One is a savor of life to life, the other of death to death! One preaches salvation, the other damnation! “As a mad man who casteth firebrands, arrows, and death, so is the man that deceiveth his neighbor, and saith, Am not I in sport?”—D. F. Newton, in Advent Herald.