Reading the Bible - Tapa blanda

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1919 edition. Excerpt: ... READING THE BIBLE I READING THE BIBLE HEN I was five years old, my mother V V offered me a dollar if I would read the Bible through, from the first chapter of Genesis to the last chapter of Revelation. I confess that my price has risen since then; but in my boyhood I had more leisure and less cash than I have now. My total income was six cents a week; and as I was expected to deposit one cent in the contribution box every Sunday, I always regarded my income as five cents, unconsciously prophetic of the modern income-tax law. I am glad that my mother bribed me to read the Bible, and glad that she forced me to pay my way in church. At first I thought more of the dollar than of the Holy Writ; but as I became interested, I found keener joy in the race than in the prize. The best books for children are those that never were intended for children. The ordinary child's Christmas book has an intolerable air of condescension like the ingratiating smile of the professional speaker to boys, who deceives only those in bad health. Even children deserve intellectual respect and profit by it. No better books for children exist than Pilgrim's Progress, Gulliver's Travels, Robinson Crusoe, the anteburtonian Arabian Nights, and the Bible. Apart from the mental discipline and emotional enrichment obtained from these books, there exists to a higher degree the same reason for the inclusion of classics in university education--the pleasure arising when educated people have the same background, a common storehouse of memory, from which current coin may freely circulate. In the Cornell Sun, March, 1915, the venerable Andrew D. White, in response to a request that he should name the books that had given him most real profit and abiding pleasure, began his...