p. 139 | Novel Reading by J. Lamont

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 4, 1875

Novel Reading.

By J. Lamont

THIS vice is growing rapidly, and has become so popular that it is scarcely condemned at the present time. The nominal churches are its fortress. Their ministers and members are the readers and writers of much of this great mass of fiction. I was forcibly reminded of these facts by finding a circular announcing “the very best novel of the season,” in a Testament recently purchased at one of the best book-stores in Kansas city. Just think of it! An announcement of novel-reading in God’s Holy Bible which plainly declares that not only the maker of lies, but also those who love them will be left outside the city of God. Rev. 22:15. The world is being drowned by the floods of this light literature, as it is politely called.

On looking over Whitemore’s book circular, giving the names of the monthly issues of over fifty large publishing houses, I find that nearly half the books coming from the press in the United States are novels. Stop and think a moment. All the works written in the interests of science, literature, art, law, medicine, divinity, the hosts of miscellaneous, and school books, together only equal the mass of falsehood now forced upon the world. But this is not all. The circulating libraries of the villages and cities are composed largely of these works, emanating from the “father of lies,” and ten volumes of the vile stuff are read to every one that professes to deal in facts.

What evil does it do? The same that spirituous liquor does. It makes men, yes, women and children, too, drunk—intellectually drunk. They lose all relish for solid reading, and can no more do without this mental stimulus than the drunkard without his cup. What hope have such of eternal life? They have scarcely time to think about it. With this, as with alcohol, total abstinence is the only remedy. J. LAMONT.