I.
The Evangelist here speaks of books—of the possibility of writing an immense number of them on one subject; and thus he calls to our mind the saying of the wise man, that “of making many books there is no end.” They were very numerous in the ancient world. The library of the Ptolemies at Alexandria was of such prodigious magnitude that it numbered half a million volumes. Large public and private collections were not uncommon in St. John’s time; and in Rome, at that period, the bookseller’s trade signally flourished. In the shop doors lists of new publications were exhibited; nor were the prices of some by any means immoderate, a considerable proportion of the MSS. being so small as to come under the modern denomination of pamphlets or tracts. Thus early existed multitudes of those productions which Milton eloquently describes as “not dead things,” but such as “contain a potency of life,” as “active as the soul whose progeny they are,” preserving, “as a vial, the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect which bred them,” as “vigorously productive” as the “fabulous dragon’s teeth,” and which, being “sown up and down,” may, like them, perchance, spring up into armed men. Throughout the civilized world, in the first account of Christianity, were there books containing “the life-blood of master spirits,” that “ethereal and fifth essence, the breath of reason.” And besides these, there existed, among the elect people of God, a literature incomparably superior to anything else—a literature furnished by historians, poets, and moralists, who far surpassed merely classic ones. For now, in the fulness of time, the Greek, as well as the Hebrew language, had become enriched by inspired contributions, and four peerless histories or biographies appeared—four lives of the divinely-incarnate and ever-living One—followed by another history, recording the acts of his Apostles, accompanied by epistles or letters which explained the meaning of the life of Jesus, and the acts of the first preachers of his incomparable and blessed Gospel. These books came into the world, stamped with unmistakable signs of a Divine origin perfectly unique. They were sons of God amongst the children of men—Divine wisdom visiting the earth in human form, thought after thought, like angel after angel, coming down from heaven, with a countenance like lightning, with raiment white as snow, yet speaking in tones of meek assurance to affrighted souls, telling them not to fear, because the crucified Redeemer of mankind had risen from the dead. Such books have, indeed, a life within them; a life truly, and without any hyperbole, immortal, to attempt to kill which would be as idle as it would be impious, for it would be to strike a blow at that which, above everything else on the face of the earth, is an image of God.
And numbers of books since then, without pretending to rival them, have caught more or less of their divine spirit. Human minds replenished with instructions derived from these unparalleled sources have communicated their thoughts to mankind—thoughts of such a character, so morally and religiously superior to anything known in lands unblessed by these gifts of inspiration, as to declare their lineage and descent to be of that divine race of which the ancestors were the first-born children of celestial light. A precious inheritance of Christian literature has thus descended to modern times, surrounding us with intellectual and spiritual advantages, which many are slow to acknowledge, because unable to estimate. Yet it is the heirloom of our churches and our families, laid up on the shelves of our libraries, and what is still better, I hope, that its effect upon us mingles with our daily life.
The discovery of printing, in the providence of God, although it cannot add to the immortality of Christian thought in itself, has contributed a new method, first of perpetuating in their original forms all expressions of truth, whether human or Divine, and next, of multiplying such expressions, in the same original form, so as to fill the world with them, and to give to immortal wisdom a sort of visible and palpable ubiquity. And extremely interesting it is to notice, that the Bible, or the Psalter, was certainly the first book of any considerable size which came forth from the press, whence “we may see in imagination this venerable and splendid volume leading up the crowded myriads of its followers, and imploring, as it were, a blessing on the new art, by dedicating its first fruits to the service of heaven.” A mighty revolution has, no doubt, been wrought by the invention of printing. It has not diminished the force of spoken words, it never can supersede the necessity of the living voice as the chief means of proclaiming the Gospel of Christ, it never can destroy the enchantment of human eloquence; but it narrows the sphere of instruction from the pulpit, it supersedes the continuance of the ancient practice when preachers at Paul’s Cross took up the questions of the day, and discussed them in their homilies; it hands over to the press, as a more convenient field for discussion, a number of instructive and important topics, whilst it provides for the diffusion of religious knowledge in all sorts of ways, and in all sorts of places, far beyond the reach of any preacher’s, or any missionary’s voice. At the same time it gathers up in the best form, and perpetuates to the latest age, and circulates to the end of the world, the richest utterances of the Christian ministry. The voice from the pulpit has lost somewhat of its range of themes; it cannot now announce ecclesiastical and political news, as it did once; but it has a special work still to do, through the human countenance, the human eye, the human lips, as it exhibits well-known truth and inculcates familiar lessons, appealing to the heart and calling forth our sensibilities and sympathies as nothing else can ever do. And after all the lamentations poured forth by some, and all the taunts flung out by others, the pulpit still remains an unrivalled power—unrivalled in the demand for its exercise, and unrivalled in the supply of its proper spiritual effects, even the conversion and edification of souls. But the press, although we do not count it a rival, but rather as a helper, in the one great field of Christian instruction, is doing, and will do a work, which all the preachers and speakers in Christendom can never overtake and accomplish. Its power in the dissemination of the Gospel is surprising beyond what we can imagine, until we come to deeply ponder the subject in our minds; and the obligation resting upon us to employ such power for this sacred purpose is most obvious, most solemn, most pressing.
II.
The books to which St. John particularly refers are books about Christ.
He is thinking chiefly of his own Gospel, and of the other three Gospels to which he intended this to be a supplement; these four evangelical records being, in modern phrase, four historical tracts—tracts such as had never been written before, such as have never been written since. It is an inexpressible blessing to have the four together, to have them bound within the same covers. They constitute a perfect unity, a harmonious whole; but the unity must not render us unmindful of the distinct and characteristic impress borne by each. On dwelling upon the whole, we must be careful to assign its proper individual character to every part. Four distinct witnesses supply their respective contributions of knowledge respecting our Divine Lord and Master. Each relates what he knows from his own point of view; each gives his own impression of the manifold life and mission of the world’s Saviour; each leaves in his own monograph the signature of his own habits of thought and of expression; each paints the Divine portrait in his own style. And most precious is it to the intelligent and devout Christian to have a clear and distinct idea of the main peculiarities of the four, looking at them carefully one by one. Harmonies of the Gospels have their use; but they are not used as they ought, they are much abused, if they are suffered to soften down the lines of distinction between Matthew and Mark, between Mark and Luke, between Luke and John. Any attempt made to put together four portraits of one person, painted from different points of view, placed on the canvas in different positions, brought out in different relations of light and shade, so as to destroy what is peculiar to each artist, would be a mischievous process, and would diminish the extent of our knowledge, instead of promoting the correctness of our conceptions. We value four pictures of a great hero painted by four different masters; we do not wish to blend the memories of them in our minds, so as to merge their varied ideals of one reality; we would not, on any account, sacrifice in any of them a single line of drawing, a single tint of colour. We should deprecate the endeavour to destroy a touch here, and a stroke there, under pretence of making the pictures exactly alike. We would infinitely rather have them left unaltered, in all the freshness of their original colouring, than have a single engraving, however carefully and exquisitely executed, which aimed at a harmonious rendering of the four. We prefer these divine productions as they separately stand, each taken by itself, each a beautiful tractate complete in itself, given from God, through the hands of the human writer, to a single volume, made up of the four, cut into fragments, and patched together under a very fallible, although a very skilful editorship. The Acts, the Epistles, the Apocalypse, form a second division of divine tracts explanatory of the Gospels—or illustrative of the impressions and effects produced by them upon the hearts and minds of Christ’s earliest followers—or inculcatory of the glorious doctrines of the evangelical revelation in their practical bearings on human characters and consciences—or poetically prophetic of things to come in the kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ—a Divine hand in them opening a window upon the scenes of futurity, some of which strike the heart with terror, others of which make it leap for joy.
This collection of tracts forming the New Testament, or New Covenant of man’s redemption, it is the duty of every one of us diligently and devoutly to examine; not simply taking it up by fragments, by little bits, by pieces torn out of their proper places, and without any respect to the connection in which they stand; nor studying it chiefly through the medium of other books, whether paraphrases or commentaries, or through the medium of sermons, lectures, or other modes of oral instruction. Let the Divine tracts be studied themselves. Let them not only be read from time to time, chapter by chapter alone, but sometimes let them be read throughout continuously, Gospel by Gospel, Epistle by Epistle, so that an impression, complete and distinct, of each Evangelist’s history and each Apostolic letter, may be left upon the memory. Above all, let them not be read cursorily, in haste, as one might read a novel, but slowly, patiently, thoughtfully, weighing word by word, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph; and with all this reading and pondering, let there be combined earnest prayer to the great Author of revelation, that he would open the reader’s eyes to see the riches of his own comprehensive word.
But beyond these books or tracts are others, thank God, in abundant numbers, which also relate to Christ. In our devout gratitude for the supreme gift of Scripture, let us not be unmindful of the subordinate gifts of human literature, imbued more or less with the spirit of Scripture. We would insist upon the marked difference between the Bible and all other books, between Divine writ and humanly written divinity; yet would we constantly remember that genius and talent employed in the service of the truth are endowments conferred by the Father of lights, and that to think we can exalt the Bible by running down other books, and to imagine that we honour the God of inspiration by depreciating the learning and the thoughtfulness which he has given to his children, is one of those wretchedly ignorant and fanatical mistakes by which well-meaning and pious people do almost as much mischief as the most irreligious enemies of Christianity. And beyond the limits of Divinity, properly so called, whether doctrinal or practical, there are immense regions of literature capable of being touched and beautified as with new sunshine through the influence of Gospel truth. Science may thus be improved and hallowed, so as to bear witness—as most assuredly nature ever silently does, whether we notice or not, to a Divine order underlying the constitution of all things, and to a Divine Sovereign, a living, glorious, infinite Person, who is the foundation and the administrator of all that order—so as to bear witness to a reign of law, or rather to the reign of Him who is the Author of nature, and who, through those laws which we are enabled to decipher, is reigning over all time and all worlds. History, also, may be improved and hallowed, so as to record events in the light of a Divine providence, and to exhibit character in the light of revealed truth, and so as to show, in human judgments of men and things, the justice, the impartiality, and the genial good-will which Christian morality alone can inspire. Poetry, also, may be improved and hallowed, so as not only to contribute to the service of song in the house of the Lord, but so as to perpetuate the memory of the good, to create ideals of truth, wisdom, and holiness; to bring out those hidden streams of harmony which flow through invisible channels in nature; and to repeat and explain those whisperings of the soul which are confirmatory of the highest truths. In short, Christianity may set its stamp on all literature, not by printing the Divine name here and there, not by patching upon the pages of a book texts of Scripture irrelevant to the subject in hand; but by the presence of a conscientious, honest, true, devout, and sweet spirit, which cannot fail to make itself felt wherever it exists.