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CHAPTER IX.

THE RELIGIOUS CHARACTER AND INFLUENCE OF BOOKS

AND READING.

FROM the moral, we proceed to the religious relations of books and reading. The two are very nearly allied, and yet each requires to be discussed apart from the other.

Their affinity suggests similar criteria in judging of books, and similar rules in using them. As the law of duty is in its very nature supreme, so the sanctions of religion are, by their very sacredness, inviolable. As what we obey from conscience should be obeyed without reserve, so what we reverence as divine must be worshiped without a rival. Duty gives law in all relations and to every kind of action, and religion asserts attractions which outshine and exclude rivals of every sort, even in the forms of culture, art, or literature.

We have seen that whatever in books or reading weakens the conscience or corrupts the moral feelings, should be rejected as evil. By the same rule, it follows that whatever in either hinders or depresses the religious life should be scrupulously avoided. The religious nature, though it is sanctioned and controlled by the conscience, is more sensitive than the conscience itself. It feels a stain like a wound, not merely as doing violence to the most sensitive emotions, but as involving dishonor to the objects and persons hallowed for its worship and trust. If, then, we converse with any book, or practice any reading which consciously interfere with our religious faith or fervor, we should dismiss the one and desist from the other without hesitation or compromise.

This rule applies both to faith and feeling, the two elements of the religious life. Whatever in literature disturbs or weakens our faith, injures us in a vital point, inasmuch as it cuts off or dries up the fountain of life. Whatever disturbs or shocks the religious emotions, introduces discord into the harmony of the highest and best sensibilities. This rule is very general, and, so to speak, is entirely formal. It neither provides for nor regulates its own application. Whether or not the effect or the tendency of a particular book, or the reading of an author or a class of writings, is good, evil, or indifferent in these respects, must be decided by every man for himself. Books that are harmless or useful to one man, may be injurious to another. Reading which is useful to the religious life of one, may be worse than useless to that of another. Every reader who is capable of independent judgment must decide for himself. Those whose judgments are immature, or whose tastes are unformed, should ask advice of those whom they have learned to trust.

We cannot overlook or deny the fact that the religious faith of some men is perversely narrow, bigoted, and positive; while that of others is broad, lax, and uncertain. The religious feelings of one are gloomy and depressing; those of another are irreverent and presumptuous. But whatever the faith and feelings are, they constitute the religious life of the individual; and this life is, for him, sacred and supreme, whether it is strong or weak, whether it is well or ill controlled. The effect of books and reading upon each individual can be measured and estimated best by himself.

We must also assume and concede that the faith of every man should be founded upon reason, after weighing the arguments for and against its conclusions. The duty to read books of argument or evidence for or against our creed, it falls not within our plan to discuss or to en

force. This subject belongs obviously to the debatable and vexed department of polemics, and tends so directly to awaken special jealousies as properly to be excluded from consideration. It would be nothing less than discourteous, if indeed it were nothing more, to assume or imply that the faith and worship of any one of our readers were not the products of thought and reflection-were not commended to his conscience and justified by his reason.

All these things being assumed and conceded, we re-assert with greater emphasis, that whatever in books and reading, whatever in literary enjoyment or culture, hinders the religious activity or lowers the tone of religious faith and feeling, should be abandoned at the cost of any pain or sacrifice. We assert with equal confidence, that every man must judge for himself what in fact hinders or helps him in this regard. We insist also, that in many cases a book may seriously hinder the religious life by lowering the tone of faith and feeling, even if it does not lead to avowed unbelief, to hesitating skepticism, or bold irreverence. If we may not safely yield ourselves to the personal influence of an unbelieving or irreverent man, we should for the same or still stronger reasons, hesitate to expose ourselves to the sophistries or scoffings of a fascinating writer who is atheistic or profane. Indeed, the fascinations of a bad man are less ensnaring than those of a bad book which is written with brilliancy and power. A man who is atheistic and profane may, it is true, be dangerously attractive from the force and fascinations of his very presence and the charms of his conversation; but he must also be repellent to sensitive natures, from the defiant hardness which usually attends upon wilful unbelief, and the selfish heartlessness which commonly lurks behind irreverent feeling, however refined may be the culture or polished the manners. But in a book these defects and repellencies are not so obvious, and hence the poison to the soul may

be the more readily conveyed, for the very reason that it is not so obtrusive to the perceptions. The powerful or brilliant genius that knows how to heighten those ideal attractions which altogether surpass any impersonated charms, is equally skilful in suppressing that offensiveness which cleaves to evil when personated in a man. For these and manifold reasons, a bad book, though its energy may not be so intense and striking, may, by its subtle and insidious influences, be far more dangerous in a religious regard than a bad man, however plausible and attractive are his manners or conversation.

The inquiry will here be interposed: Do we not associate freely and often intimately, with living men whose religious faith, or no faith,-we reject, and with whose feelings we cannot sympathize? Should we not count it folly to do otherwise? Why, then, should not we do the same with those books which are openly anti-religious, or which are divergent from our own faith and feelings? We answer, We may do the one and also the other. The rule is not that we may never read nor even study books of the class described, but it is that whenever the reading or the study does us positive harm, or tends to a conscious evil, then such books should be abandoned and proscribed for our individual use. The Great Master of the faiths of Christendom, and in a sense even of its no-faiths, has laid down the rule, 'If thine eye causes thee to offend, pluck it out.' Is a book, a favorite author, or a course of reading, worth more to us than the eye or the hand? Or may we say or think that because we have become great readers we have outgrown the authority of Christ's teachings? Surely not those which concern our duty and allegiance to Himself. Shall we count Him too severe when He comes into our libraries to scrutinize our reading and to judge our literature? Not surely if we remember that this censor and judge, who is seemingly so severe upon some of our

105 books and reading, has done more than all the writers and all the culture of all the ages, to excite the imagination, to elevate the emotions, to give power and breadth, tone and pathos to what we call modern, but should call Christian literature; that he has given themes and inspiration to Dante and Milton, to Tasso and Shakspeare, to Wordsworth and Coleridge, to Schiller and Tennyson, to Scott and the Brownings, to Dickens and Hawthorne-has not only subdued modern thought and feeling by his authority, but in so doing, has elevated and transfigured modern thought and feeling to the enlargement and the aspirations of which modern literature is the splendid product.

But here it will be insisted, and with great apparent truth, that literature is in its very nature free, and the imagination in order to be creative must for the time be freed from those restraints which the actual and the practical both acknowledge. "Literature," it will be urged, "has always in its influence been catholic and liberalizing, for the simple reason that it has embodied in its products the results of every form of thought and opinion, and every shade of sentiment and emotion, without respect to the exactest orthodoxy of opinion, or the precise quality or intensity of the religious feelings. It has served as the one liberalizing agency in the world of controversy and intolerance by providing a common arena where the professors of all faiths have met on the footing of courteous toleration, have had access to each other's views, and learned rightly to appreciate and judge emotions with which they have not sympathized. Had it not been for this fusing and liberalizing influence, it is urged, theology would have been hopelessly bigoted and unreformed, every sect and party would have shut itself up within its own narrow pale, and those humane and charitable sentiments which are acknowledged as the genuine products of true religion would scarcely have found expression or influence. It is

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