Sunday-School Libraries. By Rev. Sanford H. Cobb [pp. 369-382]

Sunday-ScAool Libraries.
are perpetually getting rich, are loaded with honors, are
saved out of all sorts of troubles, and made generally comfortable in all outward circumstances; while their moral opposites
are the victims of a correspondingly opposite fortune. The
theory of poetical justice is the controlling idea throughout.
It cannot be denied that there is a certain fitness of things in
such sequences, humanly speaking; or that such, perhaps,
would be the rule, were there no heaven or hlell. Neither
will it be denied that virtue tendeth to happiness, and God's
service results in joy. But this happiness is not the creature
or dependent of the world's smiles, and this joy is not coined
in the mint. We know that the realities of life give the lie
to such teachings, that outward prosperity does not invariably
follow upon religious character. And besides this, when we
call to mind the principle of a true religious life as God-service, without regard to worldly emolument, we can but remark the exceedingly pernicious tendency of that teaching
which so exalts the successes of the present life as to practically
make them the end of a religious calling. We might better put
into the hands of children books like the Moral Tales of Miss
Edg,eworth, which teach, and profess to teach, only a mere morality, than such as, while professing a higher aim, yet give no
higher lesson, and call it by the name of religion. Practically,
the conclusion from many ofthese books is, that one ought to be
good, because that is the way to be rich, and honored, and
happy. The Bible tells us that we ought to serve God because He bids us, and because Christ died for us, and because
to serve God and to enjoy Him constitute the end of man's
existence without any reference to worldly condition. It is
well enough to teach that "Honesty is the best policy," but
the teaching of this is not the peculiar province of Sunday
Schools. They should teach that a genuine religion is the only
true life. From this all minor lessons of moral truth will
issue as naturally as branches from the healthy tree.
(3.) Another and frequent fault to be found in these books
is seen in the unnatural character of the religious life which
many of them portray. Here we find that class of books
called oftentimes "goody books," and deservedly made the
objects of ridicule. The most of them are biographical, in
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