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

Sunday-School Libraries.
(4.) Finally, we mark a sore evil in the fact that SundaySchool books are largely assimilated to the novel. We have
neither space nor inclination to enter here into the muchl-vexed
questions of the novel and its use. So far as its appropriateness to children is concerned, it is about decided by the character of the books furnished in the Sunday School, which they
are allowed to read without stint or direction. Many a parent
too strict in principle to approve of "novel-reading," looks on
with complacency while his child reads the library-book, whichl
is creating, or fostering, in that child's mind a love and habit of
novel-reading that shall, some day, astonish and bewilder that
conscientious parent. We are not condemning the novel. A
wholesale condemnation would deprive us of much that is
highly beneficial. We do say, however, that a Christian
parent might with greater propriety read for himself novels
of the most glaring French type, such as he would regard as
soiling even his fingers, than suffer his children to read many
of the books that are distributed in Sunday Schools. These
books are constantly coming from the press; some of them
issued by societies under a professedly religious supervisiona supervision which does not always ensure a commendable
book; others published by private houses which desire in the
main to print only that which is praiseworthy; and yet others
by houses whose chief care is to publish that which will sell.
All this activity results in quantities of books almost inInumerable, spawned forth unceasingly under this unresting
demand for something new, pleasing, and exciting. These are
bought from every side, after more or less of critical examination, and ranged on the library shelves. These are the books
which children now-a-days think are alone attractive. They
will have them, if possible, to the utter exclusion of a more
substantial and instructive literature.
We may draw on our own experience for examples, which
there is reason to believe are by no means unparalleled. We
have found it almost impossible to get scholars to take books
of a solid, instructive, and, to a mind at all thoughtful, interesting class. We remember having our respect for a pupil
very considerably increased by her putting aside a long list of
amusing and exciting stories, and selecting Flavel's "Christ
.'
1871.]
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