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

Sunday-Schtool Libraries.
motives, these books, as a class, have a similar mental tendency to the thousand novels of the secular world. The
childish mind asks that which amuses, careless whether any
instruction is to be obtained; and as though this ignorant
asking were reason enough for the giving, as though an unintelligent judgment were a proper criterion to direct those
charged with the education of youth, our libraries are filled
with books that will "please the children," hundreds of which
are worse than useless. Dr. Holland, in the February number of Scribner's Mlonthldy, makes some criticisms upon
"Children's Books," very much to the point. He speaks of
some as having " so much of the modern novel mingled with
so much of fascinating cant, that the children cannot well fail
to be both interested and injured by their perusal. There is
little in the volumes to commend, and much to censure." He
describes others as "of a different and more wantonly bad
sort, which are simply dime novels and sensational newspaper
reports done over again, and seasoned with pious maxims for
the benefit of the children." Whether these criticismns are
just in the case of the books mentioned by the critic, we know
not; but we are certain that large numbers of our SundaySchool books would fall under their condemnation, as written
from an entirely wrong view of the nature of proper reading
for children, as imparting a positively hurtful mental stimulus,
as of doubtful moral tone, as full of sensational and unnatural
incidents, as presenting human nature in false colors, and distorting religion from the pure teaching of its Divine Founder.
Every bookstore has quantities of pernicious reading; every
news-:vendor carries plenty of it under his arm; the mails are
full of it; and only a careful watchfulness keeps it out of our
homes; and then, to crown all, our Sunday Schools, which are
instituted for the godly instruction of our boys and girls, and
the cultivation in them of a true Christian mind and character,
as though fearful lest these little ones should lose any advantage in this direction, begin in their earliest years to instil
into their minds the love of the unreal, the morbid, and the
exciting. There are rarely attractions enough in that line
without the special efforts of those whose office is the sacred
o_.:of. eigiop. s instruction. It is a hard thing that our chil
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