Platitudes of Piety

THE American novel was popular before it dealt with religion but it was not respectable. Critics condemned fiction as untruthful and timewasting, therefore immoral, until nineteenth-century authors began to fill their novels with piety and preachment. When it was found that the genre could be edifying as well as entertaining, an increased public made best sellers of such works as William Ware's Zenobia (1837-38), Mrs. Elizabeth Phelps' The Sunny Side; or The Country Minister's Wife (1851), Joseph Holt Ingraham's The Prince of the House of David (1855), Augusta Evans' St. Elmo (1867), Mrs. Ward's The Gates Ajar (1868), E. P. Roe's Barriers Burned Away (1872), and Lew Wallace's Ben-Hur (1880). By the end of the century the religious novel was not only wellestablished but it was acting as a major medium in transmitting ideas originally set forth by more sober scientific and sociological texts. Views that came from sources as old and as disparate as deism and Darwin finally reached the widest American reading public near the close of the nineteenth century. In these years many Americans wondered fearfully whether established Christian beliefs were still viable. They saw the Old Testament and orthodox dogma attacked by scientific works and they observed New Testament ethics challenged by the prevailing practices of a worldly society. In an economy riddled by financial panics and labor strikes and in a cultural atmosphere that seemed to be destroying social stability and Christian principles, Americans tried panaceas that included the Populist platform of Bryan's

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