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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1854 edition. ...prevails. We are convinced that, to the neglect of Bible-training, romance, with its feverish passions and sickly morality, owes its influence. Fiction never can become the daily food of minds whose youthful appetite has been well regaled with the solid and satisfying realities of Divine truth. In the Bible all is in romance all is fancy, except its pernicious effect upon the deluded reader; and that, alas! is a sad reality. Sin, which the Divine book represents in all its aspects and associations, as the great evil which we are to dread, because fraught with misery and death, is, by the novelist, often made to appear an amiable weakness, or presented in combination with certain excellencies, to redeem it from its sinfulness. Pride, ambition, passion, and lust are portrayed as if the reader would have nothing to fear from them if he yielded to their power. Nay, they are often invested with a charm. Not so the Bible. Its exhibitions of sin make us dread and turn away from it, even when it appears in its most charming and seductive forms, with loathing and disgust. Its very touch pollutes, its breath is contagious. It is a spiritual plague; it is a malignant death and destruction are in its ways. Its pleasures, whether of sense, ambition, gain, or passion, we see to be opposed alike to our interests and happiness. The Bible, above all other books, teaches youth, as well as age, that it is an evil and a bitter thing to sin against God. It tells them that if they will drink of sin's cup, however sweet it may appear, it will leave the taste of the wormwood and the gall. It presents vice in its true shape and character;--a hideous monster, a malignant demon. Parents! these are the views of sin with which your offspring should be...