The Increasing Rage for Novel
Reading. Theodor Keiler. Fiction has often
been a wholesome relief to a good man's overworked and weary brain. Many of the recent popular novels
are wholesome in their tone and the historical type often instructive. Exclusive reading of novels is
to a person's mind just what highly spiced food and alcoholic
stimulants are to the body. The chief objection to the best
of them is that they excite a distaste in the mind for any serious reading. The increasing rage for novel
reading betokens both a famine in the intellect and a serious
peril to the mental and spiritual life. The honest truth is that
too large a number of today's fictitious works are subtle poison. The plots of some of the most
popular novels are based on immorality and the violation in some form
of the seventh commandment. They kindle evil passions. They
varnish and veneer vice. They deride marital purity. They uncover what ought to be
hidden. They paint in attractive hues
what never ought to be seen by any pure eye or named by any
modest tongue. Two of the perils which threaten
American youths are a licentious theatre and a poisonous literature. One who has examined many of
the novels printed during the last decade said to me, The main
purpose of many of these books is to knock away the underpinning
of the marriage relation of the Bible. If the parents give house
room to trashy or corrupt books, they cannot be surprised if their
children give heart room to the world, the flesh, and the devil. When interesting and profitable
books are so abundant and so cheap, This increasing rage for
novels is to me one of the sinister signs of the times. Now flee
from youthful lusts and pursue righteousness." 2 Timothy 2.22