Dear young believers, may I ask you patiently to listen to a few remarks on the subject of the reading of works of fiction. Many, perhaps most of you, are aware of the immense attraction a story book possesses. Some of you may have already indulged in reading what your friends tell you are novels, and you are continually asking, “Why should I not read them?” Will you allow me to ask you my young fellow Christians, “Why should you read them? Is it to while away your time? I am sorry for you if such be the case.”
Imagine Christ whiling away His time! Imagine God’s holy child Jesus wanting something to make time pass away more quickly, when He was on earth! And you, His follower, you a light which He has kindled in grace in this world of darkness, you created unto good works which God had foreordained, that you should walk in them, you find the time hang heavy on your hands! For shame I repeat, I am sorry for you. David did not find life long enough to praise God; “While I have my being I will praise my God,” and he had not half to praise God for that you have. “Walk in wisdom towards them that are without,” says the apostle, “redeeming the time.” What are you doing for those who are without, when you are reading story books? O, what a tale it tells of the selfishness of our hearts, when we can quietly spend some of our best hours over a novel, regardless of the needs of those around, or the claims of Christ above who has died for us.
Dear friends, let me tell you very plainly that novel reading, or, which comes to nearly the same thing, a habit of reading exciting stories, is to your mind exactly what overindulgence in sweets is to a child, and what strong drink is to an adult. You are shocked, perhaps, but it is literally true. The child and the man destroy their bodies, you destroy your mental powers; and the habit, like that of drink, gains so fearfully on those who give themselves up to it, that at last the poor slaves are fit for nothing—enervated, unreal, with all their Christian life withered up, and well-nigh dead.
People say the imagination must be cultivated. No doubt it must, but the rapid reading of exciting story books positively destroys the true imagination. God’s Word indeed often appeals to your imaginative faculty. Look, for instance, at the description of the New Jerusalem in Revelation 21. Take that chapter and throw your imagination into it, not your fancy; and in pondering over the text, you will be surprised what a glorious image will rise up before your mind. All the story books in the world will appear worse than rubbish when compared with the ideas that will fill your mind when you rise from studying such a chapter. I know the Holy Spirit alone can enable you to delight in God’s Word, whilst your poor human nature delights in wallowing in the mire. But if you are a Christian, you have only to allow the Holy Spirit to lead you: He loves to lead and teach us.
I hope I am writing to those whose Christianity would lead them instinctively to shrink from all that is impure; but I must confess to some doubts when I see trashy novels in young Christians’ hands. “Am I to use the members of Christ for such purposes?” is the thought that often suggests itself to me when I see the eyes of a young believer eagerly employed on what at best is not Scriptural purity, whatever the world may say of it.
But you will say, “Are all story books bad?” No, it would not be right to condemn all story books. But to be worth anything, fiction has a definite purpose. It is the clothing of some truth in the dress of reality, in order that it may make more impression on the reader. But the dress ought not to be the attraction; it is the truth that underlies it that should occupy the mind in reading the story. Try your reading by this standard, and you will probably see the vanity of the employment. Is it your habit to search for the truth conveyed by the tale you are reading? Does the story itself sink into the shade, and leave our mind impressed with some grand truth?
When Jotham told the story of the trees making a king, the lesson conveyed by having a thorn bush for king, must have sunk deep into the dullest wits. In the same way, to make truth clearer and to disentangle it from error, an exposition is sometimes thrown into the form of a conversation. But the most perfect examples of stories with a meaning are our Lord’s parables, where, in a few words at the beginning or end of the parable, the teaching so pointedly conveyed by the story is gathered into a focus. The moral is not mixed with the story, it does not interrupt its thread, but it is seen through it all along, and at the beginning or end is expressed in clear plain terms. People often fail in an attempt to write a story with a meaning, because the story does not tell its own meaning, but is interrupted by moral teaching and disquisitions, which the foolish reader leaves out. Perhaps some of you will ask if you are not ever to read a story unless it has a meaning, that is which conveys some teaching to the mind? I answer No, you certainly ought to confine your reading to truth. If you find truth dull, the fault is in yourself. Those who have sought most to find out truth, have told us that, after a life-long search, they felt they were only gathering pebbles on the shore of a great ocean.
Store your mind with facts. Cull them where you will; out of History, Biography, Travels, out of the accounts of what the Lord has done in former times in the early church, in Reformation times, in pre-reformation times, in the last century, and in our present century.
Beware of the evils of religious fiction. A large amount of error and loose views of doctrine and practice are propagated by religious story books, and there is one point in the religions fiction of the day which ought to be more seriously thought of than it is—I allude to the description of imaginary conversions. Conversion is the work of the Holy Spirit, and it seems to me a terrible thing to make up, or to read an account that is purely fictitious, professing to tell what He has done.
I am quite aware that many young people have so got into the habit of reading for amusement, that to be deprived of their story books would be, to their perverted ideas, the greatest possible hardship. And yet the reading of story books is almost always a kind of busy idleness. It is said that one of the sins of Sodom was the “abundance of idleness of her daughters,” “neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.”
I do not believe that any young man or woman, with a fair amount of health, is so circumstanced as to be obliged to read story books for lack of other employment. Some have younger brothers and sisters who need little acts of kindness done for them; some have overworked parents who would be glad enough of their help; all have sick, poor, or sorrowing friends who might be made happier by a little help and sympathy. It is not necessary that you should aim at doing great things, but do in communion with the Lord, the little daily duties that He lays in your path. You will not find time for reading story books if your heart is true in love to Him and to your neighbors You will dread a story book as something that breaks your communion with Him, and instead of seeking to wile away the time, you will not find the day long enough for all the acts of love that you would fain get into it.
Away then, dear young friends, with your story books. Be real, be true, be subject to Christ your Head in heaven, and serve your neighbor for his good and edification—and if at first the effort should involve some self-denial, you will certainly find that you reap an abundant reward in seeking both to please the Lord, and to minister less to your own old, corrupt self.