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When Winter Comes to Main Street, a non-fiction book by Grant Martin Overton |
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Chapter 18. Books We Live By |
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_ CHAPTER XVIII. BOOKS WE LIVE BY =i= The Parallel New Testament is by Dr. James Moffatt, whose New Translation of the New Testament has excited such wide admiration and praise. The Parallel New Testament presents the Authorised Version and Professor Moffatt's translation in parallel columns, together with a brief introduction to the New Testament. I suppose there is no sense in my expending adjectives in praise of Dr. Moffatt's translation of the New Testament. I could do so very easily. But what I think would be more effective would be to ask you to take a copy of the Authorised Version and read in it some such passage as Luke, 24th chapter, 13th verse, to the close of the chapter and then--and not before!--read the same account from Dr. Moffatt's New Translation, as follows: "That very day two of them were on their way to a village called Emmaus about seven miles from Jerusalem. They were conversing about all these events, and during their conversation and discussion Jesus himself approached and walked beside them, though they were prevented from recognising him. He said to them, 'What is all this you are debating on your walk?' They stopped, looking downcast, and one of them, called Cleopas, answered him, 'Are you a lone stranger in Jerusalem, not to know what has been happening there?' 'What is that?' he said to them. They replied, 'All about Jesus of Nazaret! To God and all the people he was a prophet strong in action and utterance, but the high priests and our rulers delivered him up to be sentenced to death and crucified him. Our own hope was that he would be the redeemer of Israel; but he is dead and that is three days ago! Though some women of our number gave us a surprise; they were at the tomb early in the morning and could not find his body, but they came to tell us they had actually seen a vision of angels who declared he was alive. Some of our company did go to the tomb and found things exactly as the women had said, but they did not see him.' He said to them, 'Oh, foolish men, with hearts so slow to believe, after all the prophets have declared! Had not the Christ to suffer thus and so enter his glory?' Then he began with Moses and all the prophets and interpreted to them the passages referring to himself throughout the scriptures. Now they approached the village to which they were going. He pretended to be going further on, but they pressed him, saying 'Stay with us, for it is getting towards evening and the day has now declined.' So he went in to stay with them. And as he lay at the table with them he took the loaf, blessed it, broke it and handed it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognised him, but he vanished from their sight. And they said to one another, 'Did not our hearts glow within us when he was talking to us on the road, opening up the scriptures for us?' So they got up and returned that very hour to Jerusalem, where they found the eleven and their friends all gathered, who told them that the Lord had really risen and that he had appeared to Simon. Then they related their own experience on the road and how they had recognised him when he broke the loaf. Just as they were speaking He stood among them [and said to them, 'Peace to you!']. They were scared and terrified, imagining it was a ghost they saw; but he said to them, 'Why are you upset? Why do doubts invade your mind? Look at my hands and feet. It is I! Feel me and see; a ghost has not flesh and bones as you see I have.' [With these words he showed them his hands and feet.] Even yet they could not believe it for sheer joy; they were lost in wonder. So he said to them, 'Have you any food here?' And when they handed him a piece of broiled fish, he took and ate it in their presence. Then he said to them, 'When I was still with you, this is what I told you, that whatever is written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled.' Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures. 'Thus,' he said, 'it is written that the Christ has to suffer and rise from the dead on the third day and that repentance and the remission of sins must be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. To this you must bear testimony. And I will send down on you what my Father has promised; wait in the city till you are endued with power from on high.' He led them out as far as Bethany; then, lifting his hands, he blessed them. And as he blessed them, he parted from them [and was carried up to heaven]. They [worshipped him and] returned with great joy to Jerusalem, where they spent all their time within the temple, blessing God." I am particularly glad to say that Dr. Moffatt is at work now on a New Translation of the Old Testament. No man living is fitter for this tremendously important and tremendously difficult task than James Moffatt. Born in Glasgow in 1870, Dr. Moffatt has been Professor of Church History there since 1915. Of his many published studies in Bible literature, I now speak only of The Approach to the New Testament, which he modestly describes as "a brief statement of the general situation created by historical criticism," aiming to "bring out the positive value of the New Testament literature for the world of today as a source of guidance in social reconstruction, so that readers might be enabled to recover or retain a sense of its lasting significance for personal faith and social ideals." =ii= With Alfred Dwight Sheffield's Joining in Public Discussion was begun publication of a unique collection of books suitable alike for general reading and for use in trade union colleges. This is the Workers' Bookshelf Series. These books, in many instances, are being written by the chief authorities on their subjects--men who have dealt exhaustively with their specialties in two and three-volume treatises, and who now bring their great knowledge to a sharp focus and a simple, condensed statement in small but wholly authoritative new books. The work of preparing these little masterpieces has been undertaken by an editorial board chosen with the aid of the Workers' Education Bureau of America. The board consists of Charles A. Beard, Miss Fannia Cohn, H. W. L. Dana, John P. Frey, Arthur Gleason, Everitt Dean Martin, Spencer Miller, Jr., George W. Perkins and Robert Wolf. Trade union colleges now exist all over the United States, training armies of workers. The lack of suitable texts for use in these colleges has been a serious obstacle to the training they desire to give. This obstacle the Workers' Bookshelf overcomes. The books that compose it will each be distinguished for (a) scholarship, (b) a scientific attitude toward facts, and (c) simplicity of style. Each volume is beginning as a class outline and will receive the benefit of every suggestion, and criticism through its gradual growth into the written book. Each book will be brief. Its references will help the reader to more detailed sources of information. By binding the books in paper as well as in cloth, the volumes will be brought within the reach of all. The Workers' Bookshelf will contain no volumes on vocational guidance, nor any books which give "short cuts" to moneymaking success. The series will not be limited to any set number of volumes nor to any programme of subjects. Art, literature and the natural sciences, as well as the social sciences, will be dealt with. New titles will be added as the demand for treatment of a topic becomes apparent. The first use of these books will be as texts to educate workers; the intermediate use of the books will be as the nucleus of workingmen's libraries, collective and personal, and the last use of the Workers' Bookshelf will be to instruct and delight all readers of serious books everywhere. In our modern industrial society, knowledge--things to know--increases much more rapidly than our understanding. The worker finds it increasingly difficult to comprehend the world he has done most to create. The education of the worker consists in showing him in a simple fashion the interrelations of that world and all its aspects as they are turned toward him. On the education of the worker depends the future of industrialism, and, indeed, of all human society. The author of Joining in Public Discussion is professor of rhetoric in Wellesley College and instructor in the Boston Trade Union College. His book "is a study of effective speechmaking, for members of labour unions, conferences, forums and other discussion groups." The first section is upon "Qualifying Oneself to Contribute" to any discussion and the second section is upon "Making the Discussion Group Co-operate." A brief introduction explains "What Discussion Aims to Do." The following titles of the Workers' Bookshelf are in preparation: Trade Union Policy, by Dr. Leo Wolman, lecturer at the New School for Social Research and instructor in the Workers' University of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union. Women and the Labor Movement, by Alice Henry, editor of Life and Labour, director of the Training School for Women Workers in Industry. Labor and Health, by Dr. Emery Hayhurst of Ohio State University, author of "Industrial Health Hazards and Occupational Diseases." Social Forces in Literature, by Dr. H. W. L. Dana, formerly teacher of comparative literature at Columbia, now instructor at Boston Trade Union College. The Creative Spirit in Industry, by Robert B. Wolf, vice-president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, member of the Federated American Engineering Society. Cooperative Movement, by Dr. James B. Warbasse, president of the Cooperative League of America and instructor at the Workers' University. =iii= Side by side in Esme Wingfield-Stratford's Facing Reality are chapters with these titles: "Thinking in a Passion" and "Mental Inertia." Those chapter titles seem to me to signify the chief dangers confronting the world today--perhaps confronting the world in any day--and the main reasons why we do not face reality as we should. I regard Facing Reality as an important book and I am not alone in so regarding it. What do we mean by reality? The answer is explicit in a sentence in Mr. Wingfield-Stratford's introduction, where he says: "But if we are to get right with reality or, in the time-honoured evangelical phrase, with God, it must be by a ruthless determination to get the truth in religion, even if we have to break down Church walls to attain it." Then the author proceeds to assess the social and ethical conditions which threaten the world with spiritual bankruptcy. As he says: "Whether Germany can be fleeced of a yearly contribution, of doubtful advantage to the receiver, for forty years or sixty, what particular economic laws decree that Poles should be governed by Germans or vice-versa, whose honour or profit demands the possession of the town of Fiume or the district of Tetschen or the Island of Yap, why all the horses and men of the Entente are necessary to compel the Port of Dantzig to become a free city, what particular delicacy of national honour requires that the impartial distribution of colonies should be interpreted as meaning the appropriation of the whole of them by the victors--all these things are held by universal consent to be more urgent and interesting than the desperate necessity that confronts us all." And yet, for some, reality is not immanent in the affairs of this world but only in those of the next. Among the men who, with Sir Oliver Lodge, have gone most deeply and earnestly into the whole subject we call "spiritualism," Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is now the most widely known as he has always been the most persuasive. The overflowing crowds which came out to hear him lecture on psychic evidences during his recent tour of America testify to the unquenchable hope of mankind in a life beyond ours. Sir Arthur has written three books on this subject closest to his heart. The New Revelation and The Vital Message are both short books presenting the general case for spiritualists; The Wanderings of a Spiritualist, the result of a lecture tour in India and Australia, commingles incidents of travel with discussions of psychic phenomena. I believe Sir Arthur has in preparation a more extensive work, probably to be published under the title Spiritualism and Rationalism. In recent years there has been something like a consensus honouring Havelock Ellis as the ablest living authority on the subject of sex; or perhaps I should say that Mr. Ellis and his wife are the most competent writers on this difficult and delicate subject, so beset by fraudulent theories and so much written upon by charlatans. Let me recommend to you Havelock Ellis's slender book, Little Essays of Love and Virtue, for a sane, attractive and, at the same time, authoritative handling of sex problems. =iv= Little Essays of Love and Virtue, however, is, after all, only upon a special subject, even though of extreme importance. There are others among the books we live by which I must speak of here. It is tiresome to point out that we are all self-made men or women, consciously or unconsciously, in the sense that if we gain control of our habits, to a very large extent we acquire control of our lives. If, in Some Things That Matter Lord Riddell did no more than point out this old truth, his book would not be worth mentioning. What makes it so well worth mentioning, so much more deserving of discussion than any I can enter upon here, is the fact that Lord Riddell tells how to observe, how to read, and how to think--or perhaps I should say how to develop the habit of thought. I think, so able are his instructions, so pointed and so susceptible of carrying out by any reader, that his book would carry due weight even if it were anonymous. But for those who want assurance that the author of Some Things That Matter is himself somebody who matters, let me point out that he is one of the largest newspaper proprietors in the world, a man whose grasp on affairs has twice placed him at the head of news service for two continents--once at the Peace Conference in Paris and afterward at the Disarmament Conference in Washington. Some Things That Matter is the best book of its kind since Arnold Bennett's How to Live on Twenty-four Hours a Day, a little book of trenchant advice to which it is a pleasure again to call attention. Of all Mr. Bennett's pocket philosophies--Self and Self-Management, Friendship and Happiness, The Human Machine, Mental Efficiency and Married Life--How to Live on Twenty-four Hours a Day is easily of the greatest service to the greatest number of people. =v= I read Dr. George L. Perin's Self-Healing Simplified in manuscript and enthusiastically recommended its acceptance for publication. Dr. Perin was the founder of the Franklin Square House for Girls in Boston, a home-hotel from which 70,000 girls, most of whom Dr. Perin knew personally, have gone forth all over these United States. His death at the end of 1921 was felt by thousands of people as a personal loss. He left, in the manuscript of this book, the best and simplest volume I know of on what is generally called autosuggestion. And I have examined a great many books of the sort. Discarding all extreme claims, Dr. Perin says in the first place that the mind can heal; that it may not be able to heal alone; that obviously no form of healing can be successful without a favourable mental state; that the favourable mental state can usually be acquired by the sincere and conscious effort of the sufferer. This effort should take the form of certain affirmations. It is at this point that the ordinary book on autosuggestion breaks down--so far as any practical usefulness is concerned. Either it degenerates into a purely technical treatise or it becomes lost in a mysticism which is to the average reader incomprehensible. What has long been needed has been a book like Self-Healing Simplified, readable by the ordinary person who has his own troubles to contend with and who knows not how to contend with them; who is willing to believe that he can do his part by cheerful resolutions and faith toward getting well, but who has no idea what to do. Dr. Perin tells him what to do, what to say, what to think and how to order his daily life. Actually Dr. Perin does much more than this; his own confidence and personal success inspire confidence and give the impulsion toward one's own personal success. However, excellent as the book might be, it would be worthless if it were not clearly and simply expressed. It is. I remember no book of the kind so direct and so lucid. =vi= It is a pleasure to feel that his new book, Poets and Puritans, introduces T. R. Glover to a wider audience. The author of The Pilgrim, Essays on Religion, The Nature and Purpose of a Christian Society, Jesus in the Experience of Man and The Jesus of History is a scholar and somewhat of a recluse whom one finds after much groping about dim halls at Cambridge. A highly individual personality! It is this personality, though, that makes the fascination of Poets and Pilgrims--a volume of studies in which the subjects are Spenser, Milton, Evelyn, Bunyan, Boswell, Crabbe, Wordsworth and Carlyle. Mr. Glover notes at the foot of the table of contents: "An acute young critic, who saw some of the proofs, has asked me, with a hint of irony, whether Evelyn and Boswell were Puritans or Poets. Any reader who has a conscience about the matter must omit these essays." There you have the flavour of the man! It is expressed further in the short preface of Poets and Puritans:-- "Wandering among books and enjoying them, I find in a certain sense that, the more I enjoy them, the harder becomes the task of criticism, the less sure one's faith in critical canons, and the fewer the canons themselves. Of one thing, though, I grow more and more sure--that the real business of the critic is to find out what is right with a great work of art--book, song, statue, or picture--not what is wrong. Plenty of things may be wrong, but it is what is right that really counts. If the critic's work is to be worth while, it is the great element in the thing that he has to seek and to find--to learn what it is that makes it live and gives it its appeal, so that, as Montaigne said about Plutarch, men 'cannot do without' it; why it is that in a world, where everything that can be 'scrapped' is 'scrapped,' is thrown aside and forgotten, this thing, this book or picture, refuses to be ignored, but captures and charms men generations after its maker has passed away. "With such a quest a man must not be in a hurry, and he does best to linger in company with the great men whose work he wishes to understand, and to postpone criticism to intimacy. This book comes in the end to be a record of personal acquaintances and of enjoyment. But one is never done with knowing the greatest men or the greatest works of art--they carry you on and on, and at the last you feel you are only beginning. That is my experience. I would not say that I know these men, of whom I have written, thoroughly--a man of sense would hardly say that, but I can say that I have enjoyed my work, and that, whatever other people may find it, to me it has been a delight and an illumination." Another welcome book is E. V. Lucas's Giving and Receiving, a new volume of essays. Since the appearance of Roving East and Roving West, Mr. Lucas has been looking back at America from London with its fogs and (yes!) its sunshine. The audience for his new book will include not only those readers he has had for such volumes in the past but all those personal friends that he made in a visit that took him from California to the Battery. _ |
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