192 NOVEL READING. violation of its spirit, is painted as so amiable and so benevolent, so tender or so brave; and the temptation is represented as so irresistible, (for all these philosophers are fatalists,) the predominant and cherished sin is so filtered and defecated of its pollutions, and is so sheltered and surrounded, and relieved with shining qualities, that the innocent and impressible young reader is brought to lose all horror of the awful crime in question, in the complacency she feels for the engaging virtues of the criminal." The following remarks of the same writer are worthy of special attention, at a time when the country is deluged with foreign romances, and every steam-ship that arrives is freighted with new productions from the prolific pens of English novel writers, which, by another steam process, are multiplied and sent out, not like the "leaves of the tree which were for the healing of the nations," but like the fabled Bohon Upas, spreading moral death over the land. "Let not those to whom these pages are addressed deceive themselves by supposing this to be a fable; and let them inquire most seriously whether I speak the truth in asserting that the attacks of infidelity in Great Britain are at this moment principally directed against the female breast. Conscious of the influence of women in civil society, conscious of the effect which female infidelity produced in France, they attribute the ill success of their attempts in this country to their NOVEL READING. 193 having been hitherto chiefly addressed to the male sex. They are now sedulously laboring to destroy the religious principles of women, and in too many instances have fatally succeeded. For this purpose, novels and romances have been made the vehicles of vice and infidelity." 6. Novel reading is a great waste of time. Few will pretend that they read novels with any higher end in view than mere amusement; while, by the strong excitement they produce, they impose a heavier tax on both mind and body than any other species of mental effort. If any thing valuable is to be derived from them, it may be obtained with far less expense of time, and with safety to the morals, from other sources. No Christian, who feels the obligation of "redeeming the time because the days are evil," will fail to feel the force of this remark. We have no more right to squander our time, and waste our energies in frivolous pursuits, than we have to waste our money in extravagant expenditures. We are as much the stewards of God in respect to the one as the other. 7. Novel reading is a great hinderance to serious piety. Such is the mental intoxication produced by it, that we might as well attempt to reach the conscience of the inebriate, with the truths of God's word, as that of the novel reader; and the heart that can be feasted on such dainties cannot have sufficient relish for the "sincere milk of the word" to "grow thereby." The following testi 194 NOVEL READING. mony bears intrinsic evidence that the writer speaks from experimental knowledge: Mr. Hall says, "The fictions of a disordered fancy annihilate, as it were, the realities of the future world, as well as of the present. They place men, just so far as they produce their legitimate influence, in the midst of ideal scenes, as remote from the existence which is to be as from that which is. There are objects of idolatry in the land of shadows, which may as effectually exclude the soul from heaven as the riches of the miser or the pleasures of the sensualist. It is truly melancholy to think that any should be led by the actual concerns of time to neglect the interests of eternity; how much greater folly, then, to be diverted from so momentous an affair by mere phantoms of the imagination! That the productions of the novelist have precisely the tendency which I am attributing to them, cannot be denied. I make my appeal with confidence to those who have for a time indulged in such reading, but at length awakened from the spell of the enchantress. Say, did not you find your interest in religion diminish, exactly in proportion as your attachment to works of fiction increased? Were not the hours which you devoted to them your hours of greatest stupidity in regard to your souls? Was not the Bible then a tedious and neglected book to you? Did you not shun the praying circle and your closets, and. the society of devout Christians? Were not your thoughts unfixed and wandering in the sanctuary? NOVEL READING. 195 Could you relish, as delightfully as at other times, the sacred employments of the Sabbath? There will be, I am confident, but one answer to these questions. The experience of thousands will bear witness, that the conscience never slumbers so profoundly as over the pages of the novelist. The mind is then insensible alike to the hopes and the fears of eternity. The ear is so full of other sounds, that God is unheard, though he speak. He may even whet his sword of vengeance, but the fascinated victim sees not its terrible gleam." If such is the effect of novel reading, how can one, who has solemnly devoted himself to the service of God, spend the precious moments, given him here for discipline and preparation for a higher and nobler sphere, in thus conteracting the gracious designs of God towards his soul? How dangerous thus to parley with temptation! What an example to set before impenitent friends, which, if they follow it, will place an almost insurmountably obstacle in the way of their conversion! How ungrateful to him who "died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them and rose again!" 8. Before leaving this subject, a class of works denominated religious novels claim some attention. They may, perhaps, find more friends among religious people than common romances, because they profess to recommend religion. But, though 196 RELIGIOUS NOVELS. they may be free from every thing gross and directly tending to irreligion or licentiousness, yet it is believed that the same general objections lie against them as against all others. All that has been said of the influence on the imagination and sensibility, of morbid excitement, and of erroneous views of life, lies equally against religious novels; and, besides these, there is another objection, of sufficient weight to counterbalance all that may be said of their unexceptionable morals. It is, that they give false views of religion. Mrs. More, in a note appended to her description of popular novels, says, "It is to be lamented that some, even of those more virtuous novel writers, who intend to espouse the cause of religion, yet exhibit false views of it. I have lately seen a work of some merit in this way, which was meritoriously designed to expose the impieties of the new philosophy. But the writer betrayed his own imperfect knowledge of the Christianity he was defending, by making his hero, whom he proposed as a pattern, fight a duel!" On the same subject, Mr. Hall remarks, “I would not except from these remarks those productions which, by a strange misnomer, are called religious novels. They have, in some instances, no doubt, been written by men of piety, and from good motives. Such persons have, however, it is but too manifest, in this case, misjudged, and done serious injury to the cause which they meant to advance. The objection which is so strong against |