How and What to Read,

REV. JAMES W. COLE, B.D.

ENELON declared, "If the riches of the Indies or the crowns of all the kingdoms of Europe were laid at my feet in exchange for my love of reading, I would spurn them all." Would you? Think for a moment what it means. On the one hand it means to have more wealth and worldly grandeur and power than any one man has ever had. And for it you are asked to give up the "love of reading." Would you do it? Stay a moment,- what does that involve? An ignorant, belittled, besotted soul, for time and eternity! The mind, the soul, can no more live without knowledge than the body can without food.

There are three sources of knowledge, experience, conversation, reading. How exceedingly limited would be one's experience and conversation, without one's reading, or the reading of others. Books contain the experience, the conversation, the investigation, the thoughts, the deeds of the world's men and women. Books contain the knowledge of the ages concerning other worlds and beings, and our duties or relations to them. Books feed the mind, develop the soul. How few, and feeble, and absurd, and childish, are the thoughts and deeds of the peoples who have no books! How they wallow in ignorance and mere animalism! Of what benefit then would the world's wealth be to such a savage or an ignoramus who would not read, but preferred the world's gold to reading? Books are the world's ages of wisdom, stored for the benefit of coming peoples. What infinite misery and suffering we should be saved from if we but heeded their story!

Books are the world's phonographs of the dead, who speak to us in them of their lives, their loves, their thoughts, their times and deeds. Here you may call up the shade of Xenophon and hear from him the graphic story of The Retreat of the Ten Thousand, or Plutarch will come at your bidding, and tell anew the deeds of the ancient worthies. Cæsar will recite for you his campaigns, or Demosthenes or Cicero deliver in your hearing their great orations. Euclid will come from the dust of Egypt and repeat the problems with which he puzzled Ptolemy two thousand years ago, and Socrates and Plato speak to you on the mighty problem of the hereafter, and holy Paul and John will tell of the glories that await in heaven. Or you may hear the long silent voice of David sing again in your ears the holy songs of earth and of Zion, or Moses shall repeat over the commandments that God gave to him for you and me. Aye, out of this phonograph you may hear "words of life" from the lips of the Saviour himself. Here Galileo, Newton, Herschel, come to show us the amazing wonders of God's universe, that their eyes have looked upon, and here come the toilers and travelers of all ages and climes on earth and sea, poets, philosophers, sages of science, romancers, reformers, prophets, priests, kings, each ready to tell us, through the books, of what they knew or could hear, of things that then were, and of nations long dead, or of things that are yet to come.

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Verily he who is not fond of reading is poor indeed. There are letters yellow with years that the wealth of this world could not buy, simply letters written by fingers now turned to dust. In them, surging through them, I hear again the melody of a voice that made one life at least a diapason, and reading them they prompt to nobler living and the getting of a spirit meet for the time when life again shall throb with harmonies that shall be eternal. So you should read all books. Read them to be made stronger, better, wiser by them. Shun as deadly virus the reading that lowers or weakens your manhood. There are antidotes for many bodily poisons-but "who can minister to a mind diseased"? You would not willingly associate with one

taken with infectious disease-why take to your spirit a leprous companion in the shape of a false or vicious book? Read slowly all books that are worth reading. Many books are only froth; an ocean of them would furnish no nourishment. Don't get them; or if you have them don't waste time over them. Many books are sweets; most novels aim to be such. If you take them at all, take them very sparingly and only the choicest and purest. In large quantities they fearfully impair digestion. Our public libraries are making a multitude of young mental dyspeptics, who will feed on nothing else but these sweets, some of which are poison. Aim to read books that will make you think. Some books do not, because there is no thought in them; the maker could not give what he had not.

We give you a list that will help to thinking, and thinking is what you need in order to grow. Food must be digested and turned into bone, sinew, muscle, to be of benefit to us. And you must turn mental food into fiber if you wish to grow. You must take time to think. One cannot be always eating even good food unless he wishes the dyspepsia, or means to die early. So do not be always reading. One good strong book thoroughly digested is worth a dozen dainty tid-bits nibbled at constantly. When you read, do it with pencil in hand to mark the places suited for your digestion that you may come there again. Neither minds nor stomachs are all alike, but some relish one thing, some another. There is an abundance for your liking, and such as will nourish you. Don't read simply as a dissipa tion, i. e., "to kill time." You cannot "kill time," and such an effort will only kill you. Don't gormandize. The glutton as well as the fool shall come to want.

Read to grow, and grow to read; and, to do it, you must above all else read, mark, and inwardly digest the book of all books-the Bible. I know there are some who dissent from this last, persons who seem to take a sort of gruesome delight in thinking they were "born orphans," and that if the Father of the universe ever existed he is now dead, and his burial place has been discovered by them. Nevertheless he is intensely alive,

and in his phonograph, the Bible, you may hear him speaking words that never man spake, which if you heed and obey will make you "meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light."

Many of the great leaders in the world's history were selfeducated.

It is astonishing what a broad education may be secured through a systematic course of reading.

The following list of books forms a wide range of practical knowledge which may be mastered in a year, and lay the foundation of a comprehensive education.

A valuable course of reading, FIFTY-TWO VOLUMES, including every department of literature:

HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY-Outlines of Universal History, Dr. G. P. Fisher; Shorter History of the English People, Greene; Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World, Creasy; Leading Events of American History, Montgomery; The American Commonwealth, 2 vols., Bryce; Our Country, Strong; The New Era, Strong; Life of Washington, Irving; Life of Lincoln; Life of Garfield.

TRAVEL-Bird's Eye View of the World, Reclus; Due West, Ballou; Over the Ocean, Curtis Guild.

RELIGION-The Bible, especially John, Mark, Proverbs, Acts, Psalms, I. and II. Timothy, James; History of the Christian Church, G. P. Fisher; Manual of Christian Evidence, Rev. .. A. Row.

SCIENCE-Physical Geography, Russell Hinman; Physics, J. D. Steele; Political Economy, Ely; Walks and Talks in the Geological Field, Winchell; Recreation in Astronomy, Warren ; Chemistry, Appleton; Introduction to Botany, Steele; Hygienic Physiology, Steele.

ESSAYS, etc.-Sketch Book, Irving; Outline Study of Man, Hopkins; Self Reliance, Manners, Friendship, Love, Emerson; Self Help, Smiles; Ethics of the Dust, Ruskin; Hand-Book of Universal Literature, Botta; Makers of Modern English, Dawson.

POETRY AND DRAMA-Paradise Lost, Milton; Hamlet, Shakespeare; Julius Cæsar, Shakespeare; Lady of the Lake, Scott; Marmion, Scott; Tennyson, Whittier, Longfellow.

FICTION-David Copperfield, Dickens; Vanity Fair, Thackeray; Hypatia, Kingsley; Kenilworth, Scott; John Halifax, Miss Muloch; The Pilot, Cooper; Adam Bede, George Eliot; BenHur, Wallace, Pilgrim's Progress, Bunyan; Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne; Tom Brown at Rugby, Hughes; Uncle Tom's Cabin, Mrs. Stowe.

Importance of Grasping Current Events.

PROF. OSCAR J. CRAIG, A.M., PH.D., Purdue University, Lafayette, Ind.

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HIS is an age of activity and advancement. The one who succeeds will do so because of his ability to enter into competition with others and win success by his own energy and acuteness.

There is not a profession but has many followers. There is not a business that does not apparently have as many engaged in it already as can pursue it with profit. There is not an occupation that does not seem to lack room on account of the numbers that have chosen it. In order to insure success under these circumstances it is not enough that one is willing to work, to plan, and to economize. Something more is required than simply earnestness, thrift, and attention to business.

The man or woman who would succeed in this age must be able to take advantage of every circumstance. To take advantage of circumstances they must be understood. Things happen and afterwards we know their meaning. This will not suffice. We must be able to give the interpretation at once. If we do not some one else will, and will also reap the benefit.

Not only is it a requisite of success that we be able to interpret the meaning of facts as they occur, but we must know that which is likely to occur. The man who succeeds must not only be equal to the emergency, but must be able to create an emergency where none exists. Men are not so much the product of the times as the times are what men make them.

It is not possible for one to isolate himself from the present and give his whole attention to his business to the exclusion of surroundings. True, there are many who attempt to do this,