| Week-Day Religion |
Chapter 22 |
Page 4 |
It is time for a revolution on this subject. We must gain courage to remain ignorant of the great mass of books in the annual Nile – overflow of the printing press. We must read the great masters in poetry, in science, in history, in religion, in fiction, and we must have a system by which our reading shall be rigidly controlled and directed, or we shall spend all our life and not be profited. Aimless rambling from book to book accomplishes little. We should select conscientiously, wisely, systematically.
Having stricken from the catalogue everything that bears any immoral taint and whatever is merely ephemeral and trivial, there remains a grand residuum of truly great works, some old, some new, from which we must again select according to our individual taste, occupation, leisure, attainments and opportunities. We should read as a staple works that require close attention, thought, study and research, indulging in lighter classes only for mental relaxation. The old classic poets should be not only read, but deeply studied. Of history one should have at least a correct general knowledge. One cannot afford to be ignorant of the sciences in these days of discovery.
All books that set before us grand ideals of character are in some sense great. The ancients were wont to place the statues of their distinguished ancestors about their homes that their children might, by contemplating them, be stimulated to emulate their noble qualities. Great lives embalmed in printed volumes have a wondrous power to kindle the hearts of the young, for “a good book holds, as in a vial, the purest efficacy and extraction of the living intellect that bred it.” There are great books enough to occupy us during all our short and busy years; and if we are wise, we will resolutely avoid all but the richest and the best. As one has written, “We need to be reminded every day how many are the books of inimitable glory which, with all our eagerness after reading, we have never taken in our hands. It will astonish most of us to find how much of our industry is given to the books which leave no mark – how often we rake in the litter of the printing press while a crown of gold and rubies is offered us in vain.”
“Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a progeny of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.”
“We need to be reminded every day …”
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