BOOKS AND ASSOCIATES.

BY

GEO. W. WILLIARD, D. D.

HERE is no period

of time of which it could be more

truthfully said that "of making books there is no end," than of the present. The country is literally flooded with

books upon almost every imaginable topicbooks, good, bad and indifferent-so as to suit and in many cases pander to the tastes of the people. And yet, great as this enterprise is, it is perhaps not more so than in other departments of life, showing the wonderful energy and activity of the age in which we live.

There is, also, as any one must see, an unusual amount of intelligence, and a thirst for knowledge. Men run to and fro after knowledge, and are eager for what is new and old so that as soon any book is brought before the public, at all adapted to the times, there are thousands to purchase and read it, thus making a great demand for books. So great,

indeed, is the thirst for knowledge, that no individual or family ought to be without books. They have become an indispensable article in every well regulated family, where the means are at hand to purchase them; parents should regard it as much their duty to provide for the intellectual culture of their children, as they do to feed and clothe them; it is as great a wrong to impoverish the mind as it is to stint or dwarf the body.

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How many books ought to constitute the family library no one can tell, as this will depend largely on the size of the family, the desire there is for reading, and the means at hand for their purchase. This much, however, may be said, that no family ought to be without some books of a devotional, historical, biographical, social, literary and scientific character, aside from the journals of the day, so that intelligence may be as widely diffused as the air we breathe. Better, far better, do without the luxuries of life, better exercise rigid self-denial in regard to many things deemed necessary, than have no books. No one who has not had access to a well selected family library can tell the advantage and benefit it is to the children growing up to manhood or womanhood, and how it tends to add to the pleasures and endearments of home. Many a young man might, and in all probability would have been saved from the shame and degradation of a mis-spent life had he found at home the entertainment and pleasure he sought on the streets and in the company of wicked associates.

Imagine for a moment the condition in which we would be had we no books. What an intellectual death there would be; a famine worse than that which affected Egypt and Ireland, when they had no bread! Had our fathers written and handed down to us no books, what would be known of the past, the growth and dispersion of the race, the rise and fall of empires, the establishment of different religions, the cus

toms, manners, habits and intellectual achievements of nations? The past would be to us mostly a blank, as there is little reliance to be put in traditions when they have passed through the coloring of a century or two. Had no books come down to us through the ages that are past, it is not at all probable that we would have made the progress in the arts and sciences we have, or that we would enjoy the refining, elevating and Christianizing influence of this nineteenth century. The books stored away in our libraries, many of which are soiled and torn from the use or abuse made of them, and perhaps read but little, being superseded by others of a more recent date, are still valuable to us, for reference, if for nothing else, containing, as they do, the views, researches and general intelligence of the age in which they were written. No one of the present day, if he should undertake to write a general history of the world, as Sir Walter Raleigh did, could do so with any exactness, if he did not have before him the histories of the different nations written and handed down by those who preceded him. What would we know of the discoveries of the past, when and by whom made, had they not been carefully recorded and transmitted to us? No one could write an intelligent and exhaustive treatise on art, science, religion, or any of the general topics of the day, if he were to ignore or disre gard the researches of the past. It would be worse than folly for any one to attempt a lecture on philosophy, if he had never read Plato, Aristotle, Bacon, Descartes, Kant or Reed; or to give a treatise on any particular science if he had not made himself acquainted with the writings of those who preceded him; or to instruct us in the deep and difficult problems of theology, if he knew nothing of the history of Christian doctrine, and had never read anything on the subject. No age or individual can be severed from the past. The world rolls on like a mighty stream in the even tenor of its way, gather