Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 60:240 (Oct 1903)
Article: The Study Of English Literature As An Instrument Of Christian Culture
Author: Henry M. Whitney

BSac 60:240 (Oct 1903) p. 698

The Study Of English Literature As An Instrument Of Christian Culture

Henry M. Whitney

FEW now doubt that one of the most important things in their lives is their choice of their reading. Not more directly or more powerfully is the body affected by its food than is the mind by the thought that it receives: thought is the very food of the mind, as thought and impulse are the very life of the soul. Hence the admonition of the Apostle: Whatsoever things are pure, lovely, honorable, of good report, think on these things. Hence, also, the reading of the best books has been the central cause by which many an unschooled and self-depreciating man of business, perhaps a clerk on a salary, has been better taught and more symmetrically rounded in his culture and in his manhood than many a graduate of schools. All observant and all reflecting men are agreed that reading is an extremely important means of culture.

But study is reading in the comparative or the superlative degree. In the essay “Of Studies,” reading and study evidently seem to Bacon to be synonymous terms, or study is only a more intense form of reading: “Studies” he says, “serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability… . Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.” If a man attempts to feed upon this last and most excellent kind of books, he had better be thorough, and get the

BSac 60:240 (Oct 1903) p. 699

good of them by the chewing and digesting of study. To attempt to chew and digest a book that is fit only to be tasted is folly, if not sin; to taste a book that is fit to be chewed and digested may lead one to try to get and assimilate more of such nourishing and invigorating food.

In these days, when the proportion of the most cursory reading is so great in comparison with real study; when the newspaper has taken the place of the book and is even read largely by captions; when the manager of the newspaper often finds it not worth while to get the editorial writing done by men of any intellectual power; when fiction has nearly crowded out history and biography and poetry, and still more nearly the essay, and still more nearly the books that are yet more abstract,—it is well to emphasize the fact that, as a general thing, whatever is worth reading is worth reading well, worth reading twice, worth reading intently; and that means good hard study.

Take, for instance, Mrs. Humphry Ward’s four stories that have been most discussed (“Robert Elsmere,” “David Grieve,” “Marcella,” and “He...