Comfort Found in Good Old BooksFitch, George Hamlin
General
Comfort Found in Good Old Books
Fitch, George Hamlin
Books and reading
PORTRAIT OF ST. AUGUSTINE
BY THE FAMOUS FLORENTINE PAINTER
SANDRO BOTTICELLI--THE ORIGINAL IS IN
THE OGNISSANTI, FLORENCE]
For this reason it seems to me that any one who wishes to cultivate St.
Augustine should begin by reading a chapter of the _Confessions_. If you
enjoy this, then it will be well to take up the complete _Confessions_,
one of the best editions of which will be found in Everyman's Library,
translated by Dr. E. B. Pusey, the leader of the great Tractarian
movement in England. Pusey frowns on the use of any book of extracts
from St. Augustine, but this English churchman, with his severe views,
cannot be taken as a guide in these days. Doubtless he thought _Pamela_
and _Coebs in Search of a Wife_ entertaining books of fiction; but
the reader of today pronounces them too dull and too sentimental to
read.
Many there are in these days who preserve something of the old
Covenanter spirit in regard to the Bible and other devotional books. One
of these is Dr. Wilfred T. Grenfell, superintendent of the Labrador
Medical Mission, an Oxford man, who cast aside a brilliant career in
England to throw in his life with the poor fishermen along the stormy
coast which he has made his home. Dr. Grenfell has come to have the same
influence over these uneducated men that General Gordon of Khartoum
gained over alien races like the Chinese and the Soudanese, or that
Stanley secured over savage African tribes. It is the intense
earnestness, the simple-minded sincerity of the man who lives as Christ
would live on earth which impresses these people of Labrador and gains
their love and confidence. Grenfell in a little essay, _What the Bible
Means to Me_, develops his feeling for the Scriptures, which is much the
same feeling that inspired Augustine, as well as John Bunyan. Grenfell
even goes to the length of saying that he prefers the Bible as a
suggester of thought to any other book, and he regrets that it is not
bound as secular books are bound, so that he might read it without
attracting undue attention on railroad trains or in public places while
waiting to be served with meals.
Gordon carried with him to the place where he met his death pieces of
what he firmly believed was wood of the real cross of Calvary, and on
the last day of his life, when he looked out over the Nile for the help
that never came, he read his Bible with simple confidence in the God of
Battles. Stanley believed that the Lord was with him in all his
desperate adventures in savage Africa, and this belief warded off fever
and discouragement and gave him the tremendous energy to overcome
obstacles that would have proved fatal to any one not keyed up to his
high tension by implicit faith in the Lord.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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