Novels

Novels

As to novels, I join with every other moral and religious writer in condemning, as the vilest trash, the greater part of these productions, which have carried a turbid stream of vice over the morals of mankind.

Novels . . .

corrupt the taste,
pollute the heart,
debase the mind,
demoralize the conduct.

Novels throw prostrate the understanding; sensualize the affections; enervate the will; and bring all the high faculties of the soul into subjection to a wild imagination.

Novels generate a morbid, sickly sentimentalism, instead of a just and lovely realism.

A wise man should despise novels, and a godly man should abhor them!

(James, “The Christian Father’s Present to His Children”)