Acts 19:18-19 And many that believed came, and confessed, and showed their deeds.… (Text and Proverbs 19:27): — The oldest library we know of in history bore on its front this inscription, "Food for the Mind." This is what books were designed to be; and it is only when they bear this character that they can be used with safety. Let us note: — I. SOME CLASSES OF BOOKS WHICH ARE SOURCES OF CORRUPTION. 1. Those that wage open warfare against religion. Many of this class are written with ability, are specious, misleading, and almost sure to corrupt religious principles, and fill the heart with bitterness. 2. The licentious and impure. While not written with the same avowed design, they are more hurtful to society. Some of this class are the vehicles of grossest impurity; others, like the sheet let down before Peter, are full of all manner of beasts, but the unclean prevail. Genius is perverted from its high office. Fielding, Smeller, Sterne, Moore, Byron are proud names in the literary annals of the world; but instead of "food for the mind" they but minister poison to the heart. 3. Works of imagination and fiction. In this we include novels and plays. Not all of them, for some of this class are pure and good. But the mass of them fail to beget hatred of sin and love of virtue. They inflame evil passions, vitiate true tastes, corrupt sound morals, and create false, pernicious ideals and types of life. II. HOW THESE SEVERAL CLASSES OF BOOKS WORK SUCH EVIL. 1. They waste much precious time. 2. They create a disrelish for serious reading. Good and pure and truthful books become insipid, dull, intolerable to the constant readers of such classes as we have condemned. 3. They inevitably undermine the principles of morality, individual and social, and thereby corrupt the fountain of virtue. 4. They war against the spiritual interest of the soul, and thereby destroy for eternity as well as for time.Conclusion: Our subject — 1. Furnishes a solemn rebuke to those who, for paltry gain, write, print and sell such works, which they know are adapted to waste the time, pervert the tastes, corrupt the morals and ruin the souls of men. 2. Solemnly urges upon parents and instructors of youth the duty of seeing that they are amply supplied with proper "food for the mind," and never indulge in such as tends to corrupt and destroy. (M. W. Dwight, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And many that believed came, and confessed, and shewed their deeds.WEB: Many also of those who had believed came, confessing, and declaring their deeds. |
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