by Norman B. Rohrer
F ew living men have tasted, chewed and digested, more books than famed bibliographer Wilbur M. Smith, 63, professor of English Bible at the Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif. It was his good fortune to have been intro duced as a child to great Christian classics by his mother. And at an early age he had the ability to seize at a glance the meaning of whole paragraphs. From birth he has had the use of only one eye. His good eye is so strong, however, that he suffers no headaches or blurred vision. His love for books has caused him to search for rare volumes in the field of Christian literature in more than a dozen foreign coun tries and in dusky libraries and bookstores all over America. Today at a book-strewn desk in his seminary office, adjoining his personal library of 24,000 volumes, the sturdy, robust professor, blessed with unusually good health, pores over new and ancient records, pre pares for his weekly eight-hour classroom teaching schedule, his men’s Bible class at the Glendale Presbyterian Church and his Fri day night Bible study class at the Eagle Rock Community Covenant Church. He is on the Scofield Bible Revision Committee, lectures wide ly in colleges and seminaries, is an occasional contributor to Dallas Theological Seminary’s Bibliotheca Sacra, a more regular writer for Christianity Today magazine and the editor of Moody M onthly’s reg ular column called “ In The Study” which service alone requires a cor respondence of more than 500 let ters a year. Smith also writes 4500 words a month for The Sunday School Times’ special department called “ A Survey of Religious Life and Thought.” The total sales figure for his more than three dozen books and book
lets is well over the million mark. His textbook, Therefore Stand, is perhaps the best known and has gone through seven reprintings. Some of his larger brochures, such as “ Books to Put to Work,” a bibli ography for students published by The Inter-Varsity Press, was re printed in an edition of 50,000 copies. An estimated 250,000 copies of “Have You Considered Him?” ha v e b e e n i s s u e d by different groups. Smith’s rich literary opportuni ties in childhood and his back ground of 20 years in the pastorate have groomed him for his present role as teacher-author. He possesses the remarkable gift of being able to encourage the study of the Bible and to set his hearers and readers aflame with the desire for knowl edge in every realm through books. “W e live in a day of great oppor tunity and weak preaching,” he says solemnly. “ I want to impress on men the urgency for serious study. Ministers are too preoccu pied with church administration. They have million-dollar buildings to put up, contractors to satisfy, secretaries to keep busy with office work while their own souls shrivel.” The soul-strengthening b o o k s that earliest influenced Dr. Smith’s own life were volumes from his godly mother’s choice library. In high school he remembers vividly the profound impression that Alex ander Winchell’s book Sketches of Creation made on his mind. Win- chell, a stalwart Christian, was then professor of geology at the Univer sity of Michigan. Sir Walter Scott’s The Talisman so entranced young Smith that he determined to author in his adult hood an illustrated classic of the crusading period. He began a scrap book for his research but the project faded with other youthful activity. Milton’s Ode on the Morning of
Christ’s Nativity first came to his attention in high school and since then he has never let a Christmas go by without reading it. While a student in the Moody Bible Institute he listened, spell bound, to British scholar Sir W il liam Ramsay, visiting lecturer. Sir Ramsay’s books thereafter had a l a s t i n g influence on S m i t h ’ s thoughts, particularly the volumes St. Paul the Traveller and Roman Citizen, and The Bearing o f Recent D iscovery on the Trustworthiness of the New Testament. O n e s umm e r there fell into Smith’s hands a copy of James H. Breasted’s fascinating and authori tative volume, Ancient Times, a History of the Early World. There were nights when, so weary from pitching hay on one of his father’s farms in southern Illinois, Wilbur could not eat supper but would lie in bed and read this book by the hour. Charles Hodge’s Systematic The ology opened his eyes to a whole world of profound truth, though he considers it weak on its eschatology. “No book up to the time I was 30 years of age,” wrote Smith three years ago, “ influenced me more than did Dr. G. Campbell Morgan’s greatest work, The Crises of the Christ — a volume that should be in every minister’s library.” In his first pastorate Smith began serious study every morning o f the monumental commentary on the New Testament edited by H. A. W. Meyer and Alford’s four-volume New Testament for English Read ers. Later Smith’s preference was Alford’s famous The Greek Testa ment. John Peter Lange’s The L ife and Times of the Lord Jesus Christ, he considers the greatest life of Christ every written. On the Apostle Paul it’s The L ife and Epistles o f St. Paul, by Conybeare and Howson.
The King's Business/July 1958
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