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At Log College Press, we love books! We read them, study them, upload them and publish them. As Christians, we are “people of the Book.” With Charles Spurgeon, we exclaim, “Visit many good books, but live in the Bible!” and “Paul cries, ‘Bring the books’ — join in the cry.” With Cotton Mather, we exclaim, “To the Man of Leisure, as well as to the Minister, it is an Advice of Wisdom, Give thyself unto Reading. Good BOOKS of all sorts, may Employ your Leisure, and Enrich you with Treasures more valuable, than those, which the way and Work of your Callings would have purchased. Let the baneful Thoughts of Idleness be chased out of our Minds. But then also, Let Some Thoughts on that Subject, What Good may I do? come into them.” and “What and where my Relish for BOOKS, which I may be hungry for? LORD, Because I shall see THEE, or serve THEE, the more for the Reading of them.”
Yet, all things in moderation. There is a time and a season for this and for that (Eccl. 3). Even after reading, one should meditate and reflect and practice what is learned. Sleep is needed too. And fellowship with the saints. J.W. Alexander, an author of many books, who taught that the Bible should be read daily, reinforces this point in his journal, as noted in Thoughts on Preaching, pp. 437-438:
§ 22. Books and Solitude. — Much may be learned without books. To read always is not the way to be wise. The knowledge of those who are not bookworms has a certain air of health and robustness. I never deal with books all day without being the worse for it. Living teachers are better than dead. There is magic in the voice of living wisdom. Iron sharpeneth iron. Part of every day should be spent in society. Learning is discipline; but the heart must be disciplined as well as the head; and only by intercourse with our fellows can the affections be disciplined. Bookishness implies solitude; and solitude is apt to produce ill weeds: melancholy, selfishness, moroseness, suspicion, and fear. To go abroad is, therefore, a Christian duty. I never went from my books to spend an hour with a friend, however humble, without receiving benefit. I never left the solitary contemplation of a subject in order to compare notes on it with a friend, without finding my ideas clarified. Ennui is not common where men properly mingle the contemplative with the active life. The natural and proper time for going abroad is the evening. Such intercourse should be encouraged in one's own house as well as out of it. Solitary study breeds inhospitality: we do not like to be interrupted. Every one, however wearisome as a guest, should be made welcome, and entertained cordially. Women surpass men in the performance of these household duties; chiefly because they are all given to habits of solitary study. The life which Christ lived among men is a pattern of what intercourse should be for the good of society. I have a notion that the multiplication of books in our day, which threatens to overleap all bounds, will, in the first instance, produce great evils, and will afterwards lead men back to look on oral communication as a method of diffusing knowledge which the press has unduly superseded; and that this will some day break on the world with the freshness of a new discovery.
We continue to add books to Log College Press every day. There is much to glean from the past, and we encourage reading by making thousands of books available for free, and by republishing especially worthy volumes from time to time. But we also affirm what J.W. Alexander said, “I never went from my books to spend an hour with a friend, however humble, without receiving benefit.” Read godly books, and take time for the other things that matter too. Give God the glory in all!
