Thankful Sunday...
5 years ago
"Study and learn, and become acquainted with all good books, and with languages, tongues, and people."
This, of course, we all agree with. We are, after all, Bibliophiles in name, word, and deed. We understand the why of reading.Without books, God is silent, justice dormant, philosophy lame.
John Milton said, "Books are not . . . dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy . . . of that living intellect that bred them."
That is, this is Shakespeare edited by Brother Sill. When Shakespeare does not say it as I think he ought to, I just cross off what he said and write it in as I think he should have said it. I do not read Shakespeare to please Shakespeare; I read Shakespeare to please me, and if he does not say it to please me I change it so that it does.Now, a lot of book lovers would cry "BLASPHEMY!" to hear something like that. But is it?
This year, commit yourself to read good books . . . A few years ago, a disturbing poll indicated that 56 percent of college graduates ... never completely read a book all the way through following their schooling. At some point in our lives, we learned to read. But the question tonight is: Are we reading? Are we growing in wisdom?Excellent questions, I must say. Now, I'm definitely in better shape that that 56 percent and probably read a fair bit more than the average individual (as a law clerk, I spend my entire day reading and writing ... seriously, that's pretty much ALL I do ... but I love it ;). But E. Christensen wasn't done there. Later in that talk, he said:
Suppose you were to read an entire book each week for the next seventy years. You would read 3,640 books. That sounds like a lot; however, reportedly, there are today in the Library of Congress more than twenty-seven million books.* One futurist - Toffler - said that books are spewing from the presses of the world at the rate of a thousand titles per day. That means that in seventy years there will be at least an additional twenty-five million volumes.Wow.
[a]sk a few respected people who you know are readers to share with you the titles of the five books, besides the scriptures, they feel have had the most positive influence in their lives.And so it is that I ask all of you this question (because you are readers I respect):