“There can be no harm if the reader should gain a false view of life. The very charm of such a view will act as a stimulus to a wider experience and to a higher culture.
“In our real life, as we come in daily contact with the world, we see and suffer enough. Therefore it cannot be harmful if fiction carries us into strange worlds of morality or into any mythical realm. I give you but the result of long and careful study, and I advise you to read the wildest and most exciting forms of fiction, and thereby get the healthful and exhilarating effect that comes from total mental absorption. All this will tend to the development of your nature so that you will, by contrast, better appreciate the substantial things of life.”
I saw that Mr. World and Miss Church-Member next visited the hall devoted to the “Literature of the Passions.” After they had entered, Miss Church-Member, at first, felt embarrassed, and her sense of modesty would not have allowed her to remain had it not been that her conscience was eased by these conditions:
1. She saw that among the moving thousands that were present in the massive hall many belonged to the higher classes of society.
2. She was also informed that not a few of the throng held good membership in various branches of the visible church.
3. She readily observed that Mr. World was so much delighted that she offered no protest, and that he seemed to take an interest in the endless program as carried out in one department or another.
In this poisonous hall Miss Church-Member stultified herself more than in any other place which she had ever before visited, and thereby added one more decisive step in her downward course. She tarried longest in one of the sub-departments where Satan’s expert doctors of literature delivered their special lectures on the writings of each author as far as they related directly or indirectly to the passions.
These avowed experts carried on their fiendish work under the cover of a pleasing dignity. After their crafty manner they quoted or read the fine sentences of an author, preferably those of a sensual cast, and then placed a premium on the passionate by describing the fine style of the author and showing how true to nature was the language he employed.
Thus I saw that the leaders of this department were using the choicest and the foulest productions of the pen, gathered from the authors of all lands, languages and ages, and Miss Church-Member, by degrees almost imperceptible, voluntarily sacrificed her finer moral taste on a popular and polluted altar.
To a pure heart there was an unclean cast and a withering effect prevalent throughout all the departments of this hall, and my heart burned as I continued observing how the agents of Satan plied their subtle influences so as to popularize this cosmopolitan resort. So effectually has Satan entrenched his views that some of the strong defenders of this hall of literature are connected with the church, and types of this same teaching have found their way into some of the Christian schools of the world.