The greatest work on the deity of Christ ever written, Smith believes, is Canon H. P. Liddon’s Bampton Lectures for 1866, The D ivinity of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. “ A book not to he overlooked is James Stalker’s still classic The Trial and Death o f Jesus Christ,” he says. “ And a work that must be read slowly, to which one could well assign one hour every day for a year, is the monumental three- volume Introduction to the New Testament by Theodore Zahn.” These volumes plus thousands more passed before the eyes of the young scholar. There were con stantly new books to explore, old ones to find and devour. He never tired of them but found new truth in every volume. He has reviewed for periodicals as many as 50 books a year, often saving bundles for a week end and then checking in at a hotel in order to read them in seculusion. His own reading habits are ad mirable. For his train travel (he can’t tolerate flying) he carries a “ hook box,” a wooden satchel cov ered with leather which can accom modate 15 volumes. He keeps his Ford coupe stocked with literature and is never without a supply in his suits. Smith reads selectively. “ I’m too old now to read material against my basic convictions,” he says. “ All that has been said against the virgin birth, for example, has been said. Why should I waste time going over it again?” The trend of publishing, Smith believes, is definitely swinging to the right, producing “ an enormous outpouring of books about the Bible from all sources.” Among his more valuable vol umes is a rare set of Spurgeon’s magazines called The Sword and the Trowel (Neh. 4:17). Another volume of rare vintage is his copy of The Christian Topography of England. He has on his shelves a very rare set of the Works of The Rev. John W esley, published in London in 1813 in 16 volumes; the equally scarce 12-volume set of The Poetical Works o f John and Charles W esley, London, 1869;. and a complete set of the Bampton
L e c t u r e s d a t i n g hack to 1780 (Smith has been told that there are only 29 complete sets of these lec tures in the world today). Included also in his collection is the rare volume (the first major work on prophecy published in America) The M ystery of Israel’s Salvation, by Increase Mather, London, 1669. Books have come to his hand in strange ways. In 1934, for example, Smith was asked to take the editor ship of Peloubet’s Select Notes on the International Sunday School Lessons which he has handled for the past 24 years. Less than 20 miles from his Coatesville, Pa. par ish he found a complete set of Peloubet’s Notes from 1877 to 1930 in the attic of a Mennonite preach er-farmer named George Weaver. It was a day of good will and bar gain prices, and the elderly man sold the set to Pastor Smith for 20c a volume. But the first volume, 1876, was missing. One blizzarding night the next winter, a stooped old man with a facial paralysis knocked on the door of Smith’s Coatesville manse and said, “ I found a few books on the shelf of my. grandfather’s home on the farm and I wondered if you would care to have them.” Smi th wa s astounded to see among them the 1876 volume of Peloubet’s Notes! In return for them he gave the old man some newer hooks and after a little while of fellowship bade him good-by, never to see him again. “W hy should that pitifully crip pled man have brought the only copy of the first year of Peloubet’s Notes circulated in America since the beginning of the century to the door of a Presbyterian manse in Coatesville?” asks Smith. “ I leave the story as it is, but I will never forget that hour.” Wilbur Moorehead Smith was bom in Chicago in 1894 to Produce Merchant Thomas Sylvester Smith, “ Apple King of the Mississippi Val ley,” and New England-born Sadie Sanborn Smith. As early as Wilbur can remember, his father rose ahead of the family for private prayer and meditation on the Scrip tures in the early hours of the day. He was for many years the Senior
Elder of Moody Memorial Church and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Moody Bible Insti tute for a quarter-century. It was Wilbur’s godly mother who developed his hunger for books. With her small but select library she fed him the thinking of great authors and taught him the basic doctrines of the Christian faith. His father often took him along on busi ness trips to the east coast and dropped him off at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. There Wilbur studied beside such famous persons as Bupert Hughes, the prolific writer, historian John Bach McMasters and other gifted men. His first writing was titled “ Her barium of the (Chicago) Field Mu seum,” done for the Lakeview High School magazine. Following high school he studied at the Moody Bible Institute from 1913-1914 and thereafter at Presbyterian Wooster College (Ohio). At Wooster he be came assistant editor of the Wooster Literary Messenger. His tireless re search earned him a distinguished career as editor of the Wooster Faculty Who’s Who. On August 27, 1917, he married Mary Irene Ostrosky whom he had met in Chicago. One son, now de ceased, was bom to them and was named for his paternal grandfather. Smith’s first pastoral experience was four years in the First Presby terian Church of Ocean City, Md. Following his ordination in 1922 he pastored for five years the Lafay ette Square Presbyterian Church in Baltimore, Md., for three the First Presbyterian Church of Covington, Va., and for seven the First Pres byterian Church at Coatesville, Pa. While in Maryland he often strengthened his k n o w l e d g e of books at the nearby Library of Congress in the nation’s capital. In Virginia he spent long hours in the library of the Washington and Lee University in Lexington and while living in Pennsylvania he made constant trips to the Princeton Uni versity library in New Jersey for study and research. In the spring of 1937 he was called to the Moody Bible Institute by the late Dr. W ill H. Houghton.
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