It takes so successfully the guise of genuine religious
emotion, religious experience, religious zeal, that good people on all
hands weep grateful tears as they read its morbid and unwholesome
utterances. Of these are many of the long and short stories setting forth
in melodramatic pictures exceptionally good or exceptionally bad children;
or exceptionally pathetic and romantic careers of sweet and refined
Magdalens; minute and prolonged dissections of the processes of spiritual
growth; equally minute and authoritative formulas for spiritual exercises
of all sorts,--"manuals of drill," so to speak, or "field tactics" for
souls. Of these sorts of books, the good and the bad are almost
indistinguishable from each other, except by the carefulest attention and
the finest insight; overwrought, unnatural atmosphere and meaningless,
shallow routine so nearly counterfeit the sound and shape of warm, true
enthusiasm and wise precepts.
Where may be the remedy for this widespread and widely spreading disease
among writers we do not know.
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