methods of working. Let a young scholar drink deep at these fountain-heads of power, or absorb their influence from the atmosphere around him, and he must do violence to his whole scholarly nature if he becomes a bigot or a cynic. You will discover, if you take pains to observe it, that often purely theological extremes and distortions of opinion are corrected or forestalled by a purely literary culture. Such are the affinities of all truth with all truth, that breadth of culture anywhere tends to produce breadth of culture everywhere. Who, as a rule, are the most liberal thinkers in theology ? In whom do you find the most evenly balanced faith? Are they not the men of profound and enlarged literary sympathies? On the other hand, if you find a preacher who holds and tries to preach an impracticable dogma which outrages the common sense of men, can you not affirm safely beforehand that he is a man of contracted reading? He knows little or nothing of the great creators of the world's thought in libraries. When, for example, I hear that a celebrated English preacher has been heard to say that the reason why God permits the wicked to live is that "He knows they are to be damned, and is willing to let them have a little pleasure first," I know without inquiry that that preacher is not a man of books. I venture to affirm that he has never read Spenser's "Faerie Queene.” It is doubtful whether he could with a clear conscience read Shakspeare. Such a ferocious notion in theology never could survive contact with the regal order of minds in literature, even the most remote from theologic thought. It is the property of a little mind, fed by little minds, and sympathetic with no other.

To these suggestions it should be added, that, to

LECT. IX.]

WASTEFUL READING.

143

these authors of the first rank, inferior literature should be largely sacrificed. The chief peril of a preacher in his reading is suggested by this remark: it is that he will devote a disproportionate amount of time to ephemeral books. We are apt to sacrifice the great powers of literature, not of design, but by neglect. The reading of the majority of educated men, I think, is wasteful. We read newspapers and magazines indiscriminately. What do we want to know of the murder in North Street last night, or the forgery in State Street last week? William Prescott the historian used to instruct his secretary, in reading to him the morning newspaper, never to read about an accident or a crime. He applied to his newspaper the same eclectic economy of time which he practised in exploring the Spanish archives.

Stern self-discipline should adjust the proportion of our reading. It is well to read such an author as Carlyle; but by what right do we neglect for his sake such writers as Bacon and Milton? It is well enough to know Byron as the representative of a certain phase of English poetry; but what principle of scholarly policy justifies our sacrifice to him of such an author as Dante? What axiom of economy leads a preacher to buy Hood's poems, when he is too poor to own a copy of Shakspeare? or to purchase the works of Thomas Moore, when he can not afford to own Wordsworth? Who can, without a twinge of scholarly conscience, spend an hour a day over the newspapers of the week, when he has never opened even a translation of Schiller? If I am rightly informed, merchants in active business do not feel able to spare half of that time for their morning paper. Is the accumulation of money

of so much more value than the accumulation of brains? In these suggestions, however, I have in mind the habits of a healthy scholar, not those which disease has demoralized.

I once took up from a student's table a book of three hundred duodecimo pages on the culture of poultry. I took occasion to ascertain from him afterwards that he had never read a page of Spenser's "Faerie Queene,' and he did not know who wrote the "Canterbury Tales." On another occasion I took from the shelf of a young pastor's library a book of nearly equal dimensions with the other, on the breeding and training of horses. Possibly a cramped salary may compel a pastor to own such a book, as his wife must own a cookery-book; yet in the case in question there was no such economic necessity, and I learned from that pastor that he had never been able to "wade through," as he expressed it, a history of the Reformation. What business has an educated man, not pressed by the necessities of poverty, to be plodding through the literature of the farmyard when three-quarters of Westminster Abbey are unknown to him?

An earnest scholar will sacrifice much that is useful in inferior literature, if his knowledge of it must be purchased at the cost of acquaintance with names which must outlive it a hundred years. Dr. Arnold says, "As a general rule, never read the works of any ordinary man except on scientific matters, or when they contain simple matters of fact. Even on matters of fact, silly and ignorant men, however honest, require to be read with constant suspicion; whereas great men are always instructive, even amidst much of error. In general, I hold it to be certain that the truth is to be

LECT. IX.]

BIBLIOMANIA.

145

found in the great men, and the error in the little ones." Pascal said that he had left off reading the Jesuits, because, if he had continued it, he must have "read a great many indifferent books."

Once more not merely worthless literature should be sacrificed, but, for the sake of the best, we must sacrifice much which would be very valuable to us if we had not the best: Pliny said that no book had ever been written which did not contain something profitable to a reader. Leibnitz and Gibbon, both of them voracious readers, expressed the same opinion. One of the most rapid and voluminous readers and writers of our own day once told me that he had never read a book which did not give him some new thought.

These judgments, with qualifications, are true; yet they do not justify that bibliomania which leads a man to seize upon the book which lies nearest to him, because it is a book, and because something or other can be got from it. We must sacrifice a great many good books. We must let go our hold upon much which would be a model to us if we had no better. We must force our way grimly through the heaps of them which bestrew our path in order to reach the smaller but weightier heap which lies beyond. Otherwise we shall be very large readers of comparatively small thought. Our culture will suffer from a plethora of little books. The after-clap of their reading will be more distressing than that of the little book in the Apocalypse.

LECTURE X.

SELECTION OF AUTHORS, CONTINUED. — PREDOMINANCE OF THE ENGLISH LITERATURE.

BEFORE proceeding to consider other principles bearing upon a pastor's study of books for homiletic culture, let a moment be given to a plausible objection to the principle already advanced, that we should exalt to the first rank the few controlling minds in the world's literatures. It is urged that that principle would practically doom a pastor to reading nothing but the ancient classics, or at best to waste himself on dead or foreign languages.

I have in the sequel much to say of the practicability of literary study to a pastor. But for the present, and in application to the point in hand, I answer, The objection is often a valid one. Therefore I have said that we should rank first in our estimate of literature the authors of first rank. Then we should read them, if we can. This is the practical summary of the principle before us. But, further, it is not impracticable for the majority of pastors in active service to know the leading authors in foreign literatures through translations. The prejudice against translations is not sensible. It was originated when literature was less voluminous than now. Ralph Waldo Emerson reads translations, and respects them. His reading would have been