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T H E K I N G ' S B U S I N E S S
August, 1935
beans, or potatoes, every day of the year. Today one can walk into the market of any city and find vegetables and fruits of every conceivable variety. So it is with the books that are being published today. Their very multiplicity makes the temptation to read them more powerful than ever. Furthermore, there are many great books being pub lished today, epochal volumes in biography, history, and science. In spite of the fact that thousands and thousands of volumes pouring from the presses today are of no per manent consequence at all, nevertheless it must be admit ted that there are some hundreds of volumes every year from the pens of scholars and our finest writers that almost seem to cry out, “We must be read.” B ooks tha t B eg to be R ead I am writing these words in actual anguish myself, at tempting to resist the very temptation of which I am speak ing. For instance, there stand on my desk facing me every day six great volumes that I feel I must read thoroughly if I am to consider myself abreast of the times. There is the English translation from the fourth German edition of Bernhard Bavink’s The Natural Sciences; an Introduc tion to the Scientific Philosophy of Today, which has been called by Professor Northrop, of Yale, “by far the most systematic treatise in the field of science and philosophy that has appeared.” Next to it is a publication by the Ox ford University Press, the opening pages of which make one realize what a vast ,difference there is.between the re ligion of man and the revelation of God—Sir E. A. Wallis Budge’s From Fetish to God in Ancient Egypt. Then there is the latest complete edition of the Poems of John Mase field, where some of the most beautiful things in our lan guage are to be found. There has been standing in this row now for almost a year the monumental work by Eric Achorn— European Civilization and Politics, with its fifty pages of bibliography. And then there is in this row the most talked of work of fiction of this year—Thomas Wolfe’s O f Time and the River. Finally, there is the re cently published tenth volume of the Cambridge Ancient- History, The Augustan Empire, 44 B.C.-A.D. 70, the most exhaustive work in the English language dealing with the civilization of the ancient world at the time of Christ. Here are five thousand pages in these six books alone that ought to be in my mind, if I am to be an educated man. And then there ought to be some other books right in this row that fascinate me, but which I do not know how I would ever have time to read—-the four magnificent vol umes on Marlborough: His Life and Times, by Winston Spencer Churchill; the greatest biography to be published in this country for half a century— R. E. Lee, by Douglas Southall Freeman, also in four volumes; and William Henry Chamberlain’s recently published History of the Russian Revolution, in two volumes. The reading of any one of these works would be an education in itself. I re cently acquired that monumental work in bibliography— Essay and General Literature Index, 1900-1933. I have hardly dared look at the titles listed in these two thousand pages, but I have been glancing through the 1934 Supple ment, and, really, it is almost exasperating to see (among scores in which one has no interest at all) titles of so many books of which I, myself, I must confess, have never even heard before, and which seem to so allure one to their study, as, for instance, Pioneers of Freedom, by McAlister [The references to books and authors named in this article serve as excellent illustrations of the points which Dr. Smith makes. Neither the author of the article nor the publishers of the K ing ’ s B usiness would wish to give the impression that full en dorsement of each writer and book is necessarily implied in the quotation.- —E ditor .]
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—Courtesy Pacific Mutual Life Ins. Co. In the Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif., there are 5,300 incunabula, or books printed in the first half century of printing (1450-1500). The page pictured here is from an early manuscript Psalter, in Latin, made in Spain about 1450. The book is open at the first psalm. The large initial "B" contains a minia ture of King David playing on a harp. An increasing number of scholars from English and American universities are coming to the Huntington Library to use its unique and rare material. Here the Gutenberg Bible, the first folio of Shakespeare, and, in the art gallery, Gainsborough's "Blue Boy" may be seen. Coleman; English Literature in the Twentieth Century, by John William Cunliffe; Idealistic Argument in Recent British and American Philosophy, by G. W. Cunningham; Major Mysteries of Science, by H. Gordon Garbedian; Seven Psychologies, by Edna Frances Heidbrieder; Mod ern Men in Search of a Soul, by Karl Gustav Jung; Some Makers of the Modern Spirit, edited by John Macmurray; Recovery Through Revolution, edited by Samuel Daniel Schmalhausen; Religious Faith of Great Men, by Archer Wallace; and, The English Way: Studies in English Sanc tity from St. Bede to Newman, edited by Maisie Ward. I do believe my mind would be richer for the reading of these books. I would go even further and say that I think I could preach with more helpfulness to many of my young people if I were fully acquainted with the intriguing subjects unfolded in these volumes. I know that I could have hours and hours of the greatest intellectual joy in reading them. They do attract, but if I determine that they all will be read, one thing must suffer—my reading of the Word of God. I do not mean these should be neglected, but I do mean that there is a great temptation to make the reading of these new books first in our study program, and to relegate the Word of God to third or fourth place. I nterpreters of a C han g ing W orld Moreover, living in a world undergoing enormous changes, the average man finds that his outlook has been greatly enlarged since the war. The amazing discoveries [Continued on page 291]
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