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Noah Porter.

BORN in Farmington, Conn., 1811.

RELIGIOUS BOOKS.

[Books and Reading. 1870.]

ELIGIOUS books may be divided into four classes: good books, i. e., books which are very good-goodish books-books which are good

for nothing-books which are worse than nothing.

Good books are such as are positive and conspicuous for one or all of three merits merits of thought, feeling, and diction. Every good book can show a raison d'être. There is some occasion for its being produced and read. Good books invariably bear marks of having originated in a gifted mind—in a mind set apart by nature or called of God to speak to one's fellow-men by reason of the gift of genius or of earnestness. They show the signs of this calling and these gifts, and awaken a response in the ear and the hearts of the truly earnest or the truly cultured of those who hear them, and thus prove there was an occasion for their being written. Goodish books are books of second-hand goodness-books that are consciously or unconsciously imitated from good books-books that repeat old thoughts, by stupid and servile copying, or with such original variations as despoil them of their freshness and life-books which seek to express simple and familiar emotions without just or real feeling-books which strain out affected conceits, or extravagant imagery, with some empty ambition of originality-books whose authors are willing to gain the admiration of the uncultured and the half-cultured by any extravagance of thought or diction. Above all, they are books which utter the words of religious feeling when the writer does not really possess it, or possessing it describes the objects of his excited emotion in borrowed or stereotyped phraseology. Such books are deformed by more or less of cant in the strict and proper acceptation of that term, as characterizing an unsuccessful attempt to sing what another sings heartily and sings well. Goodish books may have more or less positive merit, with all their strained and factitious untruth-they may be eminently useful to readers who do not observe their defects or are not offended by them, who do not require anything better, or who may have a taste so perverted as to prefer them to good books, even though good books would be far better for them. There is unhappily, in the religious world, a very large class of books of whom the remark of a shrewd observer will hold, "Men who are simply and earnestly good, I like exceedingly, but goodish men or those who put on airs of goodness, not at all."

Religious books which are good for nothing are such as are stupid in thought, feeble in emotion, false in imagery, vulgar in illustration, or uncouth and illiterate in diction, and which are so deficient in all these particulars as to be incapable of doing good to any one which might not be done far more efficiently by books that are better or those less open to objection. Books of this description are very numerous. They are produced by the ton. They thrust themselves in your face in every bookseller's shop. They are obtruded upon your notice by weak but well-meaning people at every corner. That they serve some useful purpose to very many people does not disprove that they are good for nothing, provided we can show that a good or a goodish book would have answered the same purpose better or equally well.

Religious books that are worse than nothing are such as are positively offensive from defects so gross as to be obvious to people of very moderate cultivation. All books belong to this class which are false in sentiment, fraudulent by over-statement or by suppression, wooden or scholastic in phraseology and conception, dishonest in the caricature or misrepresentation of opponents whether infidel or fellow-Christian, unsound in reasoning, hysterical in emotion, doggerel in verse, or sensational and extravagant in prose. These all dishonor true religion either by conspicuous errors, a bad spirit, bad taste, bad manners, or bad English. Whatever partial or occasional good they may seem to effect among people who are not aware of their falsehood, or are not offended by their extravagance, would be done more effectually by other books, while the positive evil they occasion to the bigoted, the undevout, and the scoffer, is fearful to think of.

CHRIS

THE NEW AND THE OLD COMMANDMENT.

[Fifteen Years in the Chapel of Yale College. 1888.]

HRISTIANITY, both as a law and force, has the capacity and promise of a progressive renewal in the future. It has the capacity for constant development and progress. It can never be outgrown, because its principles are capable of being applied to every exigency of human speculation and action. It can never be dispensed with, because man can never be independent of God, the living God; and in the fierce trials which are yet before him, he may find greater need than ever of God as revealed in Christ. That such trials are to come, we do not doubt. We cannot predict what new strains are to be brought upon our individual or social life. There are signs that the bonds of faith and reverence, of order and decency, of kindliness and affection, which have so long held

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men together, are to be weakened, perhaps withered, by the dry-rot of confident and conceited speculation, or consumed by the fire of human passion. It is not impossible that society may be convulsed by the heaving earthquake from beneath, or the whirling tornado from the air. We cannot tell to what new forms of questioning the received truths of faith may be subjected, or how far speculation and history and criticism may lead to new interpretations of nature and Christ and human duty. But this much we do know,-that every change through which Christianity has been conducted in the past has served to bring out in bolder relief and brighter radiance the great verities that from the first have been esteemed as the essentials of Christian truth and duty. Old formulas of doctrine have indeed been more or less modified, or have received new interpretations. History and criticism have thrown a glare of new light upon the Scriptures, which has been sometimes so bright as to expose strange and unexpected shadows. Science has penetrated. the constitution of nature, and unrolled the mysterious pages of its history, and started many as yet unanswered questions in respect to the mutual relations of matter and spirit, of nature and of God. But man remains the same in his nature, his needs, and his duties, in his weakness and strength, in his hopes and his fears, and therefore the old religion stands.

The old commandment has been continually renewing its life by new developments and new interpretations, by new illustrations and new applications, and yet it is the same old commandment still. The newest science, the newest criticism, the newest forms of practical ethics, the newest political wisdom, in one way or other reaffirm the law originally written on the human heart, the law reaffirmed by Moses, the grace and truth that came by Jesus Christ. We believe that in the future, whether our progress is to be in sunshine or in storm, whether it is to be by discussion in the closet and the forum, or by strife on the battle-field of civil or social war, whether the new lessons are to be gently distilled as the dew, or revealed by lightning and tempest, men are continually to renew their convictions in the great truths which God upholds by his power, and Christ was revealed to enforce,-the personal responsibility and freedom of man, the sacredness of human duty, the nearness of man to God, the certainty and awfulness, the reasonableness and equity, of future retribution, the excellence of the life that Christ has exemplified, and the assured triumphs of the kingdom of light.

But we also believe, that as men shall be more and more assured of these common truths, and be more concerned with their application to the lives of their fellow-men; as they are more entranced with a deepening and glowing love for the living and the loving Christ; as they become more generous, tolerant, and loving, they will enlarge their

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