Vile Literature | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Jan 18, 1877

Vile Literature.

We are glad to see that Christian sentiment is being aroused on the subject of vile literature, and that the pulpit and the Christian press are speaking out on this subject in a most fearless manner.

Rev. De Witt Talmage, when asked by letter whether it was right to read the New York Ledger or the Weekly, expressed the sentiment of the more thoughtful men and women of the church, when he answered:

“The family altar is nothing; catechisms are nothing; religious instruction is nothing, so long as there is an unhealthy periodical in the house. From the two leprous lips of that one sheet there will be a poison breathed on the family Bible, on the piano, on the arm-chair, on the cradle, on the dining-table, and the whole house will be plague-smitten. The question amounts to this: ‘Shall my family be blest or blasted?’”

“I give an infallible rule. Seek some one who has been reading a paper for several years, and find out if her character is growing more symmetrical, is she a better daughter, a holier mother, a more consistent church-member? If, on the contrary, her ideas are groveling, her imagination debased, her ideals of life twisted and sprung, then better decree that such a paper shall not come into your house by postman or messenger, or as wrapping paper around a dry goods’ bundle. ‘Every tree is known by its fruits.’”

“If there be one gulf in hell deeper than another, it shall be the doom of those newspaper men whose pen is stabbing to death the purity of American society. The newspaper stands are blotched with accursed pictorials, and I pray God that if these polluters of public morals may not be arrested by the voice of conscience, or silenced by the indignation of our sorrow-struck communities, that then they may be hurled out of this life speedily, that the plague may be stayed. God redeem our country from the damning influence of a corrupt newspaper literature.”

A mother recently complained to a friend of ours of the waywardness of her daughter. The friend, who was the girl’s Sabbath-school teacher, asked, “What does she read?” The mother had not guarded that point, and never thought to inquire.

They went to the young girl’s room to find an abundant supply of sensational and vile literature, which had been furnished her gratuitously. The poison had been doing its deadly work for months, and the mother found out all too late that vile literature is as corrupting and seducing as vile company, and that the one leads to the other.

This poor, deluded girl is now an inmate of a brothel.

The feet of many thoughtless girls have been taken in this same snare.

We have found them in hospitals and almshouses and prisons; friendless outcasts; wrecked and ruined.

And girls are not the only sufferers. This is the shortest road a boy can take to perdition; every other evil follows in its train.

And this vice no longer hides itself in dark, secret places, but seeks some public resort for its vile traffic, where men and boys may be drawn together in crowds, and tempted by the display of immodest pictures to purchase.

We have seen boys blush with shame, and hide the newly bought pictorial under their jackets at the approach of respectable-looking people, and hurry away to enjoy in secret what they would not be seen reading in public.

Mothers will do well to inquire how many news depots there are where vile literature is exposed for sale on the streets their children travel when they go to the post-office or the school-house. Better expose them to small-pox or cholera than allow them to go near such places.—Golden Censer.