THE VANITY OF LIGHT READING.
By Thirza M. Foster
While circulating some of our publications, I asked a young lady (who is a merchant) if she would not take a few tracts. She replied, “Oh, no, I thank you; I have so much business to attend to, I do not get time to read only Sundays, and then I read something light. This reply made an impression upon my mind. I thought, This is a world of business and pleasures; and the children of men seem to think when business can be no longer transacted, nor pleasures enjoyed, it will be soon enough to turn their attention to their eternal interests. They seem to think religion proper for the dying, but by no means adapted to man in his present state. Now, they calculate to enjoy themselves, and cannot be fettered by conscience and the antiquated rules of the Bible. Now, they must conform to the maxims and customs of the world. They read and write poems and songs in praise of the pleasures of sense, and fictions that represent the fortunate circumstances in human life, in such a manner as to excite false expectations. By means of these delusive representations, many are led to expect consummate bliss from the most unworthy pleasures—pleasures which debase man's rational nature, and which at last will bite like a serpent, and sting like an adder. Though not much acquainted with novels myself, I think the influence they exert prove them to possess the spirit of the world, rather than the Spirit of God, and feasting the mind upon them may with propriety be called feeding on wind, and following after the east wind. Would it not be better if people would collect the whole mass of these books, and do by them as those converts at Ephesus, of whom we read in the nineteenth of Acts, did by theirs? The light, sensational reading that is now flooding the country, I look upon as one of the delusive influences of the last days, and do not expect it will be destroyed till God shall cleanse the earth with fire, and burn up the works that are therein. I thank God for the Holy Bible, his blessed word from Heaven, “which is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path,” and for so much good reading that is in harmony with the Bible. I love God's precious truth, and want to obey it, and want to do what I can to induce others to read, love, and obey it too.