Suitable Reading for Children
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of the reasons of our faith, because they have gratified a taste for
story reading. They have as much difficulty to control the appetite
for such superficial reading as the drunkard has to control his appetite
for intoxicating drink. These might today be connected with our
publishing houses and be efficient workers to keep books, prepare copy
for the press, or to read proof; but their talents have been perverted
until they are mental dyspeptics, and consequently are unfitted for a
responsible position anywhere. The imagination is diseased. They live
an unreal life. They are unfitted for the practical duties of life; and that
which is the most sad and discouraging is that they have lost all relish
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for solid reading. They have become infatuated and charmed with
just such food for the mind as the intensely exciting stories contained
in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. That book did good in its day to those who
needed an awakening in regard to their false ideas of slavery; but we
are standing upon the very borders of the eternal world, where such
stories are not needed in the preparation for eternal life.
The only safety for any of us is to be thoroughly converted and to
be conversant with the truth as it is revealed in the word of God, that
we may be able to give to every man that asks us, a reason of the hope
that is in us, with meekness and fear.
The special effort of ministers and of workers all through our ranks
for this time should be to turn away the attention of the youth from all
exciting stories to the sure word of prophecy. The attention of every
soul striving for eternal life should center upon the Bible.
It seems wonderfully strange to me, considering all I have written
in regard to the reading of exciting stories, to see a recommendation
from your pen to read Robinson Crusoe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and
Aesop’s Fables. My brother, you made a mistake in writing that article.
If these books are among those which you have for sale, I beg of you
never to offer them again to our youth. It is your duty to call their
attention to the Bible; do not become their tempter by offering to them
attractive storybooks, which will divert their minds from the study of
the Scriptures. We must ourselves be drinking of the water of life, else
we will be constantly hewing out for ourselves broken cisterns which
can hold no water.
There are a thousand ways and plans that Satan has of creeping in
to unsettle the minds of youth; and unless the soul is firmly and fully
stayed upon God, and conscientiously guarded upon the very point of