The Effects of Evil Literature

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 8, 1910

The Effects of Evil Literature

THE enemy of all righteousness has no more effective agency in the accomplishment of his purposes than the cheap, sensational literature with which the world is flooded, as found in many popular magazines, novels, and cheap storybooks. No one can devote time to the perusal of such literature without feeling, in a greater or less degree, the effects of its demoralizing influence. It gives to the young unreal notions of life. It surrounds crime and criminals with a halo of glory. By suggestion and implication, and sometimes openly, it teaches crime and immorality. The Boston Pilot expresses these sensible comments with reference to this question:—

Every one knows the effect of the excitement and suggestion aroused when children, especially boys, devoured with avidity the lurid tales of Indian adventure, and were led to fly from their homes. To-day suggestion comes to the young from the reading of novels whose argument is criminality and gilded indecency. The result of such reading is an epidemic, more or less extensive, of like flagrant transgressions against the moral law. . . . Moreover, these cheap novels, low in thought and slangy in diction, are found in the newspapers which are read day by day. It is hardly to be wondered at that the taste for decent reading grows less as this literature increases in circulation. An evil mind can not appreciate the pure, the correct, and the wholesome. . . . Men and women who are otherwise intelligent fail to see this point. They see children ruined; they see young men abandoning their faith; they see young women entering into unions full of unhappiness. They never seem to see that the cause of it all lies in the literature they read, and the companionship they keep. The record of crimes emanating from such sources speaks for itself, and will be listened to by all whose perspective reaches beyond selfishness and unholy pride.

How much better to store the mind with the true and the beautiful. Within reach of every one are books of religious instruction, history, travel, and science, books of real value, which will materially aid in the formation of solid character. No believer who desires a growing, living experience in God can afford to permit his mind to be diverted by reading the light, trashy literature so current at the present time.