p. 124 | Don't Read Novels by Uriah Smith

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 3, 1871

Don't Read Novels.

By Uriah Smith

A SISTER writes to us with a heart full of sorrow. Some years since, when the present truth was first brought to them, her husband received it joyfully. He took the REVIEW, and read it eagerly. He feasted on its words of sobriety and truth. And so highly did he prize it, that he declared he would do extra work nights to earn money to pay for it, rather than do without it.

Then a change came. He began to read exciting stories and works of fiction. He began to open the door to a habit more insidious in its working; and as fatal in its effects upon the moral nature, as a love for strong drink. The result could be easily foreseen. Just in proportion as he yielded to the fatal charm of the serpent, just to that degree that he fell under the fascinating power of fiction, just to that degree he lost his taste for that reading which deals with the unvarnished and sober realities of life, and points the mind forward to the still sterner realities of a Judgment to come.

As a consequence, his interest in the REVIEW began to wane. He became less and less a reader of its contents, till he ceased its perusal altogether. If this were all, it would not be so serious a matter. But the work did not stop here. It is impossible for a person to entirely lose his interest in a journal devoted wholly to the defense and advocacy of a special truth, and yet maintain in his heart any fervency of love for the truth itself. And so in this case. The waning love of this individual for the REVIEW, was an index of his waning love for the truths which the REVIEW advocates. And hence, not long after he ceased to be a reader of the paper, he ceased also to be an observer of the Sabbath. Thus, the love of fiction has drawn this man away from the worship of God, and will, unless he shall recover himself from this snare of the devil, drown him in perdition at last.

Don't read novels. They poison the mind. They destroy a taste for all that is useful, wholesome, and true. They root out from the heart all love and regard for sacred things. Under their influence, the mind reels and staggers no less really than the body under the influence of rum. They who, taking advantage of persons bound in the chains of an uncontrollable habit, distil poison for the body, and seek to rivet still firmer their chains that they may fatten on their ruin, are deserving of unmeasured execration. But what shall be said of those who run the more damnable distillery of poison for the mind? The true history of the novelist may be written in four sentences: 1. A life spent in the preparation of deadly narcotics for the mind, which will work moral devastation and ruin wherever they are spread among the people. 2. A few shouts of short-lived and senseless adulation from those who are drunken with their potions. 3. Curses from their victims when the Judgment shall awaken them to true views of life, time and eternity, Heaven and hell. 4. An everlasting consumption in the lake of fire.

Don't read novels. You will not be able to account in the Judgment for time thus spent. The world is full of this trash, but we are not obliged to meddle with it. Flee from it as you would from a fatal pestilence. Don't take it into your house any more than you would expose your bosom to the fangs of a venomous serpent. We have too much at stake to deal with aught but that which will be for our good, both in this world and the world to come.

U. S.