fill in the blank

I found this quote, perhaps you can identify it and fill in the blank:

"One effect of ________ is, that it dissipates the mind, and renders it averse to serious thought, and solid and profitable reading. It also has a corrupting influence. It feeds and nourishes the depravity of our natures, and quenches the Spirit's heavenly influences. Shun ________ as you would shun poison! It leads to death!"

Got it? It's a General Authority talking about p*rnography, right? Wrong.

It's the Presbyterian Board's magazine, Home and Foreign Record, in 1849, talking about the evils of... wait for it... fiction, which they called "light reading."

The American Tract Society's American Messenger was even more forceful:

"If [novels] shine, it is only as the rotting log, or putrescent carcase, which is phosphorescent because decaying; if brilliant, it is only as the will-o'-the-wisp, which is caused by impure and fetid gases."

Tee-hee. How times change.

Source: David Paul Nord, Faith in Reading: Religious Publishing and the Birth of Mass Media in America (2004), 118.