NEVER before were there so many books as today, and perhaps never before was it so difficult for the reader to pick his way among them.
Long, long ago before the invention of printing, when all books must needs be written, the question hardly arose. True the Apostle Paul speaks of his books, “and especially the parchments,” but books as we have them now were necessarily unknown.
Later, as historians tell us, books were either very good and moral; some truly pious, which we read with pleasure and profit still, or alas! very bad, so bad that today they would be unreadable; but in either case books were for the few, and it is only in comparatively recent years that books and readers have increased to their present enormous numbers.
In writing to the readers of Edification I take it for granted that you understand the importance of giving the Holy Scriptures the first place in your reading and study. Without them there can be no robust Christian life, nor any knowledge of God, nor any understanding of His ways. I can sufficiently beseech you to know your Bible from cover to cover, not simply special portions, and to store your memory with the Gospels and Epistles. Oftentimes they will come to you and so fill your heart and mind with holy thoughts that other thoughts will find no place. Oh! read the Scriptures prayerfully and thoughtfully, looking up to “your Lord and Teacher” and depending on the Holy Spirit, whose office is to take of the things of Christ and show them unto you. Read also helpful books on the Scriptures, which preserve for us the wisdom and knowledge of those whom God has gifted, as teachers and expositors.
It is when we come to general reading that so much care is necessary. Some may not care for general reading and do not need it; but there are others, to whom books are as essential as their daily bread and who, if they had to choose, would sacrifice some portion of their daily bread rather than be without books. And a book can be a very good thing.
By reading books what journeys one may take, and behold the wonders of creation in far-off lands! What company one may keep, the company of men and women who have done great things, some who have hazarded their lives, and others in quiet places who have just let their light shine! What marvels of science (the science that is true, and not science falsely so-called) will unfold themselves to us! What wonders of the deep, of the paths of the seas, what wonders of the distant heavens, the moon and stars that He has ordained!
Just what each one may read must ever be a matter for individual conscience; but I would like to quote you some lines which seem to me a very helpful guide in this matter.
“The Habitation of God.”
“Here on earth a temple stands,
Temple never built with hands;
There the Lord doth fill the place
With the glory of His grace.
Cleansed by Christ’s atoning blood,
Thou art this fair house of God.
Thoughts, desires that enter there
Should they not be pure and fair?
Meet for holy courts and blest,
Courts of stillness and of rest,
Where the soul a priest in white
Singeth praises day and night;
Glory of the love divine
Filling all this heart of thine.”
(G. Tersteegen).
I think this is so beautiful. If we realize beloved young Christians, that each one of us is indeed a temple of the Lord, as indwelt by the Holy Ghost, and the soul within the white-robed priest to sing His praise, shall we not see to it that nothing that is not “pure and fair” shall cross the threshold of our temple, and that there shall be no dweller in the courts who would silence the little singer there? If we are true-hearted and self-judged we shall know well when we have allowed the entrance of anything that hushes the song.
You will remember, if you have read Ezekiel, how God showed him that in the temple which was raised for His glory, Israel had made idols of abominable things, beasts and creeping things (Ezek. 8). You would not that such as these should come into your temple but rather would earnestly desire that it might be “holy unto the Lord.”
One would not be uncharitable, but the warning is sorely needed, for many evil books, comparable to abominations and creeping things are put forth in their tens of thousands. There are books that insinuate doubts as to the authenticity and authority of the Bible; books that inculcate a line of conduct which is in every way contrary to God; there are spiritist books, destructive alike to spirit, soul and body, and books in which the tenets of many false and evil cults are hidden by misapplied passages of Scripture. They are indeed many and specious, Satan himself being transformed as an angel of light.
There is only one way of safety—to choose the good and refuse the evil; not tampering with bad books, because they assume the appearance of good, but in humble dependence on the Lord remembering the word in Psalms 17:4, “By the word of Thy lips I have kept me from the paths of the destroyer.”
L. R.