Such are the general facts of the religious progress of a century in the United States. Reviewing them, we can easily discern the vast and commanding influence of religion—the Christian religion—upon the character and fortunes of our people. Among the forces working for the upbuilding of the Republic, religion stands preëminent, the most powerful, the most pervasive, the most irresistible of them all. A free church in a free state, all its edifices have been built by private contribution, all its magnificent benefactions sustained by voluntary offerings, induced in every instance by the principle of Christian love. A corporation, it holds its vast properties for the common good of all. A relief society, the scope of its sympathies is as wide as the wants of man. A university, it does more for the education of the masses than the public school system itself. An employer of labor, it utilizes the brains and energies of the most highly educated body of men to be found in the Republic’s broad domain. An organized beneficence, it outwatches Argus with his hundred eyes, outworks Briareus with his hundred arms. An asylum, it gathers within its protecting arms the halt, the maimed, the wounded of life’s great battle, comforting them in trouble, sustaining them in adversity, while ceaselessly pointing them to Him “who taketh away the sins of the world.” “Every corner-stone it lays,” as one has said, “it lays for humanity; every temple it opens, it opens for the world; every altar it establishes, it establishes for the salvation of men. Its spires are fingers pointing heavenward; its ministers are messengers of good tidings; its ambassadors, ambassadors of hope; its angels, angels of mercy.” Under all our institutions rest the Bible and the school-house,—Christianity and Education. Without them, the Republic is impossible; with them, we have Republican America for a thousand years.
GREAT GROWTH OF LIBRARIES
By JAMES P. BOYD, A.M., L.B.
Libraries are as old as civilization. Nothing marks civilized progress more distinctly than the collections of writings, whether on clay, stone, wood, papyrus, or parchment, which went to make up the libraries of ancient peoples. Such writings generally related to religion, laws, and conquests, and found their abode, in the form of archives, in capitals and temples. Recent explorations in Mesopotamia reveal collections, or libraries, of books inscribed on clay tablets, many of whose dates are beyond 650 B. C. These libraries seem to have found a home for the most part in royal palaces, and to have contained works abounding in instruction for the kings’ subjects. As unearthed and their contents deciphered, they throw much valuable light upon the remote history, as well as the arts, sciences, and literatures of Babylonia and Assyria.
In ancient Egypt collections of hieroglyphic writings were made in temples and in the tombs of kings from the earliest known dates. Some hieroglyphics still extant bear date prior to 2000 B. C., and one papyrus manuscript has been discovered whose supposed date is 1600 B. C. What were known as the sacred Books of Thoth—forty-two in number—constituted the Egyptian encyclopædia of religion and science, and became such a fruitful source of commentary and exposition, that by the time of the Grecian conquest they had grown in number of volumes to 36,325.
Of the libraries of the Greeks we have little positive knowledge, though it is abundantly asserted by late compilers that large collections of books (writings) once existed in the various Grecian cities. Pisistratus is said to have founded a library at Athens as early as 537 B. C. Strabo says that Aristotle collected the first known library in Greece, which he bequeathed to Theophrastus (B. C. 322), and which, by the vicissitude of war, finally found its way to Rome. At Cnidus there is said to have existed a special collection of works upon medicine. Xenophon speaks of the library of Euthydemus. Euclid and Plato are mentioned as book collectors. But by far the most renowned book collectors of the Greeks were the Ptolemies of Egypt, who gathered from Hellenic, Hebrew, and Egyptian sources that wonderful collection of volumes, or rolls, which became famous as the Alexandrine Library. This was composed of two libraries, one estimated at 42,800 volumes, or rolls, connected with the Academy, the other estimated at 490,000 volumes, or rolls, deposited in the Serapeum. It is said that these immense collections were regularly catalogued and kept under the supervision of competent librarians, till consumed by the Saracens at the time of their conquest of Egypt, A. D. 640.
The Romans at first paid little attention to literature. It is not until the last century of the republic that we hear of a library at Rome, and then it was not a native collection but a spoil of war. It was captured from Perseus of Macedonia and brought to Rome in B. C. 167. So Sulla captured the library of Apellicon, at Athens, in B. C. 86, and brought it to Rome. Lucullus brought to Rome a rich store of literature from his eastern conquests (B. C. 67). Wealthy men and scholars now began to form libraries at Rome, some of which became very large and valuable. It is here we first hear of the dedication of libraries to the public,—a step which made Rome for a time the resort of scholars from other nations, especially Greece. The most famous of the many imperial libraries of Rome was that founded by Ulpius Trajanus. It was called the Ulpian Library, and was at first founded in the forum of Trajan, but afterwards removed to the baths of Diocletian. In the fourth century there are said to have been as many as twenty-eight public libraries in Rome. Great, indeed, must have been their destruction under various vicissitudes, for when the Emperor Constantine moved the Roman capital to Constantinople, and founded his imperial library there, it numbered but a few thousand books. It was, however, greatly enlarged after his death—some say to 100,000 volumes. It was destroyed in A. D. 476, with the close of the Western Empire.
With the spread of Christianity there arose a new incentive to write and collect books. The church required both a literature and libraries as part of its organization. Pamphilus is said to have collected a library of 30,000 volumes, chiefly religious, at Cæsarea (A. D. 309), his object being to lend them out to readers. But as book-making and collecting became narrowed to the church, general literature was proscribed and libraries ceased to flourish, except as encouraged by the monastic orders. Such libraries were necessarily small and of a private character. Their books were manuscripts written or copied by the priests, up to the date of the invention of printing. The libraries of this class which grew in importance were those of the Swiss and Irish monasteries, not omitting those in England, as at Canterbury and York. The invasion of the Norsemen, in the ninth and tenth centuries, was generally fatal to the monastic libraries on both sides of the English channel.
In France, the library at Fulda seemed to retain its books and respect. It was greatly enlarged by Charlemagne, who also founded a more ostentatious one at Tours. With the revival of learning, and with the hope of opening a wider field to secular literature, Charles VI., of France, founded a royal library which numbered 1100 volumes by A. D. 1411. A similar library in England, that of the British crown, numbered 329 volumes at the time of Henry VIII. In contrast with these early royal efforts stood that of Corvinus, king of Hungary, whose library numbered 50,000 volumes, mostly manuscripts, in 1490. This imperial collection was burned by the Turks in 1540. About this time the nucleus of the modern Laurentian Library of Florence was formed.