Novel Reading—Reasons Against It.
1. Those who write novels, especially the popular novels of our day, are known to be lax in principle, and loose in life. As is the tree, so the fruit. "Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?" "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh." 2. If any good there be in novels, there is no good which cannot be obtained elsewhere. 3. Their general tendency is to evil. They often present virtue and vice in false colors. 4. Novel reading is a wicked waste of time, which should be employed in the acquisition of useful knowledge. Precious hours, more precious than rubies, which God has given for noble and holy purposes, are wasted in ministering to the morbid appetite of a depraved heart. Will not he who has thus squandered time, "That stuff that life is made of,
And which when lost is never lost alone,
Because it carries souls upon its wings," "mourn at the last, when his flesh and his body are consumed, and say, How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof?" 5. Their cost is another objection. True, very many works of fiction and romance are put at a low price—but the cost of these, during a lifetime, amounts to a large sum. Miss W. paid $70 in one year for novels, including the fashion plate magazines, Godey, Graham, Harper, &c. And whose money was this, expended to gratify a vitiated taste? hers, or God's? "Ye are bought with a price." Is this laying up treasure in heaven, with God's money? or heaping in fuel to feed the flame of insufferable woe? Beware, novel reader, beware! 6. Novel reading begets a vain, volatile, trifling, frivolous mind. Are not most habitual readers of fictitious works, excessively fond of gay and expensive clothing—external decorations, ornaments of jewelry, of gold, pearls, and costly array, which God has strictly forbidden? The imagination becomes wild and extravagant, like a ship in a storm, without compass or helm. A distorted imagination unfits human beings to live and think and act, in this common-sense, matter-of-fact world of ours. Hence the many disappointments, the discontents, the misery, the broken hearts, the insanity, and the suicides among novel-readers. 7. The knowledge stored away in the mind of novel-readers, is nothing more than a huge, unsightly mass of errors! The memory having nothing to do, must wear out in its own indolence. 8. The judgment becomes weakened, the reasoning powers unhinged, and all the perceptive faculties destroyed or greatly vitiated. More than this, all the generous affections of the heart, and all the noble sensibilities of human nature, become blunted and seared under the blighting and withering influence of novel-reading! 9. It also injures the intellect, by creating a distaste for nobler and more solid reading. Men do not like to go from the splendid palaces of kings— from the soft and lascivious saloons and drawing rooms of dukes and counts, into the common walks of life—no, they would rather luxuriate amid the splendid castles and enchanted scenes of the novel writer! Who ever knew a novel reader, or one who spent, daily, whole hours in poring over the pages of Graham, Harper, Godey, and the like sugar-coated poisons, who was an ardent lover of God's book, a diligent student of the Bible! a devout Christian, a holy, self-denying follower of Jesus Christ? 10. Novel reading unfits the mind for devotion. 11. Novel reading produces indolent and sluggish habits of thought. The habitual novel reader unfits himself for intense mental application, as the history of literature abundantly shows. 12. Novel reading poisons the soul in all her faculties. "The whole head becomes sick, the whole heart faint," the native depravity is fed and fostered, and like the sickly plant of a hot house, rapidly forced to maturity. The Bible, that "dread wondrous book, the author, God himself, the subject, God and man," that book which is a transcript of the Eternal Mind—that book which has "God for its author, truth without error for its subject, and heaven for its object,"—that book has no charms for the novel reader! No, it deals in truth and not in fiction! and he has no soul to enjoy the beauties of truth. It is one of the most potent engines the devil has ever been able to plant upon our earth, to undermine the principles of virtue, and subvert the morality of the Bible. It drives the individual from the sanctuary, closes the Bible, alienates the heart from God, and plunges the soul into temporal ruin, and eternal death! The habit grows with our growth, and if permitted to run on, will pollute the soul even in the world to come! I would say in conclusion, especially to the young, turn from them, shun them, fear them, as you would the miasmas of the deadly upas. O that I had the pen of a ready writer; I would spread out in living and burning characters, on widely extended leaves, the physical, intellectual and enormous moral evils of novel reading! Novels are sharp rocks just beneath the smooth surface of the moral sea of life, around which float in shattered fragments, the wrecks of lost and ruined millions! And yet others will still venture in that treacherous sea!—Golden Rule.