Purity in Literature
G. S. Barrett, D. D. Deuteronomy 5:18 Neither shall you commit adultery. Of late years, I am afraid, there has been a distinct retrogression in the conscience of the nation, so far as national purity is concerned. For example, some of the novels published today deal largely, if not entirely, with subjects of which no pure-minded man or woman ever speaks. Not long ago a certain novel was issued from the press that was as poisonous in its effects on the soul as sewer gas is on the body. It was one of those books, as Mr. Lowell once said, which if read make you feel that you need to be sprinkled with some disinfecting fluid in order to get rid of the infection. Some years ago a distinguished public man said that when he was a boy at one of our public schools he had put into his hand by an evil companion a bad book, and that for years after reading it lie could not get rid of the stain it had left on his mind. It is impossible to exaggerate the evil done by such an unclean publication. "Art for art's sake" is their watchword, and the result of this debased conception is works which are not literature and not art, which smell of the sewer, and are only fit to be burned. The man who writes a book that incites to impure thought is on the same moral level as the man who makes adultery easy. It tends by a swift and easy path to the violation of this Seventh Commandment. (G. S. Barrett, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Neither shalt thou commit adultery. WEB: "Neither shall you commit adultery.