“This ’ere old Bible,—why it’s jest like yer mother—ye rove and ramble and cut up round the world without her a spell, and mebbe think the old woman ain’t so fashionable as some; but when sickness and sorrow comes, why there ain’t nothin’ else to go back to. Is there, now?”
HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS.
Reading only for amusement.
“But don’t you think,” said Marianne, “that there is danger in too much fiction?”
“Yes,” said I. “But the chief danger of all that class of reading is its easiness, and the indolent, careless mental habit it induces. A great deal of the reading of young people on all days is really reading to no purpose, its object being merely present amusement. It is a listless yielding of the mind to be washed over by a stream which leaves no fertilizing properties, and carries away by constant wear the good soil of thought. I should try to establish a barrier against this kind of reading, not only on Sunday, but on Monday, on Tuesday, and on all days. Instead, therefore, of objecting to any particular class of books for Sunday reading, I should say in general that reading merely for pastime, without any moral aim, is the thing to be guarded against. That which inspires no thought, no purpose, which steals away all our strength and energy, and makes the Sabbath a day of dreams, is the reading I would object to.”
Sacred music.
“So of music. I do not see the propriety of confining one’s self to technical sacred music. Any grave, solemn, thoughtful, or pathetic music has a proper relation to our higher spiritual nature, whether it be printed in a church service-book or on secular sheets. On me, for example, Beethoven’s Sonatas have a far more deeply religious influence than much that has religious names and words. Music is to be judged of by its effects.”
A good picture.