1 Timothy 4:13

Give attendance to reading.

Lecture on reading

I. First, the choice of books. In this there is a great need of caution; particularly in the spring season of life, while the mental and moral habits are yet in a process of formation. A person may be ruined by reading a single volume. It is a maxim, then, ever to be borne in mind, take heed what you read. To acquire useful information; to improve the mind in knowledge, and the heart in goodness; to become qualified to perform with honour and usefulness the duties of life, and prepared for a happy immortality beyond the grave--these are the great objects which ought ever to be kept in view in reading. And all books are to be accounted good or bad in their effects just as they tend to promote or hinder the attainment of these objects. Taking this as the criterion by which to regulate your choice of books, you will, I think, be led to give an important place to historical reading, especially to that which relates to our own country. History is the mirror of the world. In addition to a knowledge of our own history, some acquaintance with the government and laws of the society in which we live would seem an almost indispensable qualification of a good citizen. Nearly related to history, and not less important, is biography. This is a kind of reading most happily adapted to minds of every capacity and degree of improvement. Few authors can be read with more profit than those that illustrate the natural sciences, and show their application to the practical arts of life. Authors of this character teach us to read and understand the sublime volume of creation. Not less valuable are those writers that make us acquainted with our own minds and hearts; that analyse and lay open the secret springs of action; unfold the principles of political and moral science; illustrate the duties which we owe to our fellow-men, to society, and to God; and by teaching us the nature, dignity, and end of our existence, aim to elevate our views and hopes, and lead us to aspire after the true glory and happiness of rational and immortal beings. Especially must this be said of the Bible. One of the greatest and best of men, I refer to Sir William Jones, a judge of the supreme court of judicature, in Bengal, has said of the Bible, “I have carefully and regularly perused the Scriptures, and am of opinion that this volume, independent of its Divine origin, contains more sublimity, purer morality, more important history, and finer strains of eloquence, than can be collected from all other books, in whatever language they may have been written.” Were I now to give you one rule for all, for regulating your choice of books, it should be this--“Books are good or bad in their tendency as they make you relish the Word of God the more or the less after you have read them.” Having made these remarks to assist you in a proper choice of books, I will--

II. Suggest a few rules in regard to the best manner of reading them. “There are many who read a great deal, and yet derive very little advantage from what they read. They make an injudicious choice of books; they read without method and without object, and often without attention and reflection. As a man may be eating all day, and for want of digestion receive no nourishment; so these endless readers may cram themselves with intellectual food, and without real improvement of their minds, for want of digesting it by reflection.” It is of great importance, then, not only that we take heed what we read, but how we read.

1. In the first place, then, read with discrimination. The world is full of books; no small portion of which are either worthless or decidedly hurtful in their tendency.

2. Read with attention. Never take up a book merely for amusement, or for the sake of whiling away time. Time thus spent is worse than lost.

3. Read with reflection.

4. Read with confidence. It is often said man does not know his weakness. It is quite as true, he does not know his strength. Multitudes fail to accomplish what they might because they have not due confidence in their powers, and do not know what they are capable of accomplishing. Hence they yield their understandings to the dictation of others, and never think or act for themselves. The only use they make of reading is to remember and repeat the sentiments of their author. This is an error. When you sit down to the reading of a book believe that you are able to understand the subject on which it treats, and resolve that you will understand it. If it calls you to a severe effort, so much the better. Call no man master. Yield not your minds to the passive impressions which others may please to make upon them.

5. At the same time, read with humility and candour. We know so little, in comparison with what is to be known, that we have always much more reason to be humbled by our ignorance than puffed up by our knowledge. Real science is ever humble and docile; but pedantry is proud and self-conceited.

6. It is a happy method to improve by reading, when several persons unite in reading the same book, or on the same subject, and meet occasionally to interchange their thoughts and compare their opinions respecting the authors they have been studying.

7. Read for improvement, and not for show. Recollect that the great object of reading is not to be able to tell what others have thought and said; but to improve your minds in useful knowledge, establish your hearts in virtue, and prepare yourselves for a right performance of the duties of life, and for a joyful acceptance with God on the great day of account.

III. In conclusion, let me call your attention to the importance of making a diligent use of this means of intellectual and moral improvement.

1. In the first place, then, reading is a most interesting and pleasant method of occupying your leisure hours.

2. It is a consideration of no small weight that reading furnishes materials for interesting and useful conversation. Those who are ignorant of books must of course have their thoughts confined to very narrow limits. (Joel Hawes, D. D.)

Good literature--its pleasure and profit

And here we come to the first reason why we should give attention to reading. Because--

1. There is so much to be had for so little. This too is true, that truth is cheaper than error, as found in the types to-day. The father of lies knows the appetite for a certain kind of reading which is upon the age. But, ministering to the lower tastes, he makes us pay his printers. He is up to every device, but always with an open eye to profit.

2. Reading is made more and more readable, and especially reading of the best kind. Those who had a taste for philosophy in the days of Plato, for poetry in the days of Chaucer, for history in the days of Gibbon, for natural science in the days of Richelieu, for metaphysics in the time of Locke, for sacred learning in the ages when monasteries had all the books and students--at what trouble every learner of old time was put to obtain intelligence. But, by contrast, how accessible is every sort of knowledge now.

(1) One should read no more than he takes time to reflect upon. A paragraph or a page mentally masticated and digested is of more service than a whole volume swallowed whole. To get a single truth so at one’s service as to handle it as skilfully as David did his sling and stone is more effective than the apparel of Saul’s armour. Many a great ease at law, involving precious life and costly property, has been lost or won through the happy knowledge of a single fact.

(2) Read chiefly on the side of ascertained truths. Let us plant ourselves upon the rock, that some things have been settled. There are some facts of religion which can no more be made flux by the slow or the fierce fires of the crucible of criticism, than gold can be melted by the flicker of a fire-fly. It seems no less than an unpardonable concession to admit that everything in this world is uncertain and unstable, and that the least stability and certainty are found in the realm of religion and requirements of faith.

(3) Read for the sake of final character as well as, or even more than, for present culture or professional calling. Is family government becoming feeble? Is the French disease of domestic corruption sickening our most sacred fane, the family? Then it will do it still more unless there shall come on us a holy purpose to purify our homes by raising the quality of the reading there allowed above the merely professional, above the evanescently fashionable, above the utterly ephemeral, up to that high order in which what is read shall sweetly allure to brighter worlds, by making sin of every gilded and grosser sort abominable in this. (J. L. Withrow, D. D.)

Reading: a talk with young folk

I. And, first, remember what a great and good book is, and especially what the Holy Book is. I want you to read the best books. Never waste your time and money over a poor, worthless, bad book. A bad book is a poison; a good book, the product of a wise soul, is health and strength and joy to mind and heart.

II. Then, consider what a great and good book may do for you, especially what the Bible may do for you. A bad book may pollute your moral life with foul and hideous stains; a weak and worthless book will waste your time, and destroy the force of your mind, but a wise strong book will ennoble and enrich you for ever.

III. Then, consider how a great and good book may help you, especially how the Bible will help you. We need the sympathy and strength of greater men than ourselves. No mind should feed upon itself. It should commune with other minds, with the golden words of men whose hearts God hath touched.

IV. Then, do not let us forget how a great and good book may teach you, especially how the Bible can teach you. It can teach you secular wisdom. The best business precepts are to be found in the Bible. (G. W. McCree.)

Reading

The art of writing is an old as well as an invaluable art, though printing is a comparatively modern invention. Paul was a reader (Acts 17:28; Titus 1:12), and he exhorts Timothy, his son, to read. Right attendance to reading means--

I. Read the best books. The world abounds with books, most of which are rubbish, many of which are pestilent, few only are good. A good book should be--

1. Enlightening. It should brighten the firmament and widen the horizon of the soul.

2. Truthful. Whether in the form of fiction, history, or discussion, it should be true to the great realities of existence.

3. Suggestive. Every page of a good book should involve much more than it expresses, and charm the reader into fresh fields of inquiry.

4. Disciplinary. A good book is a book that aims at disciplining both the intellect and the heart. To aid the intellect to think with freedom, force, and precision, and the heart to flow with pure loves and high aspirations.

II. Read the best books in a right way.

1. Thoughtfully.

2. Earnestly.

3. Practically.

If men would “give attendance to such reading” a glorious change would come over the world, a new order of things would spring up in every department of social life. (D. Thomas.)

Experimental knowledge must be added to book knowledge

It is well known that the great doctors of the world, by much reading and speculation, attain unto a great height of knowledge, but seldom to sound wisdom; which hath given way to that common proverb, “The greatest clerks are not always the wisest men.” It is not studying of politics that will make a man a wise councillor of state till his knowledge is joined with experience, which teacheth where the rules of state hold and where they fail. It is not book knowledge that will make a good general, a skilful pilot--no, not so much as a cunning artizan--till that knowledge is perfected by practice and experience. And so, surely, though a man abound never so much in literal knowledge, it will be far from making him a good Christian, unless he bring precepts into practice, and, by feeling experience, apply that he knows to his own use and spiritual advantage. (J. Spencer.)

How to read with profit

As it is not the best way for any that intendeth to make himself a good statesman to ramble and run over in his travels many countries, seeing much and making use of little for the improving of his knowledge and experience in state policy, but rather stay so long in each place till he have noted those things which are best worthy his observation: so is it also in the travels and studies of the mind, by which, if we would be bettered in our judgments and affections, it is not our best course to run over many things slightly, taking only such a general view of them as somewhat increaseth our speculative knowledge, but to rest upon the points we read, that we may imprint them in our memories, and work them into our hearts and affections, for the increasing of saving knowledge; then shall we find that one good book, often read and thoroughly pondered, will more profit than by running over a hundred in a superficial manner. (J. Spencer.)

The taste for reading

If I were to pray for a taste which should stand by me in stead under every variety of circumstances, and be source of happiness and cheerfulness to me through life, and a shield against its ills, however things might go amiss, and the world frown upon me, it would be a taste for reading. I speak of it, of course, only as a worldly advantage, and not in the slightest degree derogating from the higher office and sure and stronger panoply of religious principles--but as a taste, an instrument, and a mode of pleasurable gratification. Give a man this taste, and the means of gratifying it, and you can hardly fail of making him a happy man, unless, indeed, you put into his hands a most perverse selection of books. You place him in contact with the best society in every period of history; with the wisest, the wittiest, with the tenderest, the bravest, and the purest characters who have adorned humanity. You make him a denizen of all nations--a contemporary of all ages. The world has been created for him. It is hardly possible but the character should take a higher and better tone from the constant habit of associating in thought with a class of thinkers, to say the least of it, above the average of humanity. It is morally impossible but that the manners should take a tinge of good breeding and civilization from having constantly before our eyes the way in which the best-bred and best-informed men have talked and conducted themselves in their intercourse with each other. There is a gentle, but perfectly irresistible coercion in a habit of reading, well directed, over the whole tenour of a man’s character and conduct, which is not the less effectual because it works insensibly, and because it is really the last thing he dreams of. It cannot be better summed up than in the words of the Latin poet, “Emollit mores, nec sinit esse feros.” It civilizes the conduct of men, and suffers them not to remain barbarous. (Sir J. Herschel.)