MAY, 1946
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O F MAKING many books there is no end” (Eccl.' 12:12). By means of books, we march with the war-Worn s p e a r m e a of A l e x a n d e r the Great beyond!the rim of the k n o w n world, and watch this c o n q u e r o r as he rears new dynasties amid the wreck of dismant led kingdoms! Oh the coast of Britain, we hear the grating sound of the keels of the boats of the low-Dutch sea thieves w h o s e children’s children' were to inherit unknown continents. We thrill with the triumphs of Han nibal as he scales the Alps and rushes down their icy slopes into sunny Italy to threaten the Roman dominion. We walk with Peary amid the ice floes of the Arctic seas. We go beyond dim centuries and see the banners float above armed hosts and conquerors riding to victories that have changed the course of time. We accompany Columbus when he touches the shores of a new world, M a g e l l a n as he girdles the globe, Hugh Miller among the rocks, Galileo and Newton among star gardens, F a r a d a y among the universe of atoms and electrons. We journey on pathless oceans. We listen
to the prophecies of forgotten seers, to dead poets singing the brave deeds of mighty men and the love of beauti ful women, to the war horns of King Olaf wailing across the floods, to harps sounding high festivals in for gotten halls. We sit down with the kings of Nineveh and Tyre. We lei surely enter the intellectual heritage of centuries. We see all the kingdoms of the world with their glories and tragedies and we walk with the noblest spirits through most sublime and enchanting regions. rpHIS is a slight conception of the power of literature. By means of books, a hand pulls back the curtain from the actual events of our life, and helps us to travel by our imagination into the uttermost parts of time and space. We understand how wars which have devastated continents, without even creating a disturbance, may rage in a narrow room. We see how, with out moving from a cozy nook, a swing ing hammock or a warm fireside, we may crawl through jungles with an explorer, fight Indians with a Custer, or take a flight into the high realm's with Shakespeare’s marvelous mental
creations, or listen to Milton’s choral hymns of Paradise. VTO wonder Rufus Choate said: “A ’ book is the only immortality on earth.” No wonder Whipple wrote: “Books are lighthouses erected in the great sea of time.” No wonder Plato asserted: “Books are immortal sons d e i f y i n g their sires.” No wonder Kingsley stated: “Except a living man, there is nothing more wonderful than a book.” No wonder Bartholini said: “Without books God is silent, justice dormant, natural science at a stand still, philosophy lame, letters dumb, and all things involved in darkness.” No wonder Bulwer wrote: “A thousand ages were blank if books had not evoked their ghosts, and kept the pale unbodied shades to warn us from fleshless lips.” rpHE Bible is the Book so great that man’s finest words of praise for it are as man’s mean paint on God’s fair lily. One gem from that Book is worth more than all the jewels from earthly mines. It is the blessed Book which countless h o s t s have found to be “ the ladder to Heaven’s open skies, stairways leading to God.”
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