Dangerous Times | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 23, 1873

Dangerous Times.

In a recent number of the Sunday School Times, H. S. Osborn, LL. D., remarks: “We are living in peculiarly dangerous times from the reading which is now brought out. At no former time in the history of our country has light reading been so much in demand as at the present day. All classes of persons—learned and ignorant, professional men, business men, educated ladies, as well as the nurse and help, the cook and the chambermaid, demand light reading—tales, stories, novels, or something exciting. I have heard it asserted that more works of this character have been sold in the past two years, than had been sold during the preceding sixty years!” He then refers to Dr. Ray, of the Butler Insane Asylum, of Providence, R. I., as attributing the increase of insanity to “excessive indulgence in the reading of the novels, and works of similar character, which have of late years swarmed from the presses of New York, Philadelphia, and Boston,” and makes this quotation from the official report.