Not As The Scribes

Princeton Seminary’s first pro-fessor and first librarian, Archibald Alexander, delivered an address to an entering class of students some time in the 1820’s entitled, “The Use and Abuse of Books.” Would that more today in the ecclesiastically “intellectual” world had taken to heart old AA’s sixteenth maxim on the use of books:

16. As the world is so full of books and as the number is increasing every day, it seems needful to be given in advice to young men engaged in literary pursuits not unnecessarily to increase the number of books. It is not a sufficient reason for a man to become an author that he can write well; unless he can really cast new light on some subject, it will be better for him to retain his compositions for his own use and that of his people. With many, however, there is an itch of writing and a desire to be known to the public, which induces them to commence [as] authors when they are no how qualified for the task. In most cases it is imprudent for young men to commit themselves by publishing their sentiments, for in a series of years their minds undergo a considerable change and the old man would willingly recall what the young man has said. [E.G.] Augustine. Baxter.

A man may be placed, however, in such circumstances as will justify his publishing his compositions although he may know that they possess no superior excellence. As, for example, when his people or his acquaintances are furnished with few books and would be more disposed to read his, from personal attachment to the author, than others as good or better. Or when truth is in danger of suffering by the introduction of erroneous opinions which are disseminated by means of popular books or pamphlets, it may become the duty of a man to repel these attempts by publishing a refutation. Or again, if a man has made himself master of some particular branch of knowledge on which there is not in print any convenient treatise, he may become very useful by imparting his acquisitions through the medium of the press. Or finally, if a man can write sermons or tracts adapted to the capacities of common people and is able to impress into them much of the savor of true piety, he ought to write, for such books are greatly needed. But what is more useless and what more absurd than to publish discourses which contain nothing new–nothing but what may be read in hundreds of books already in the hands of the public, and especially if all their excellence consists in their being coldly orthodox or in possessing the shadow of eloquence.*

I’m pretty sure that Archie would have immediately shit himself at the mere thought of “theo-blogging” and all the parlor games entailed thereby. God rest his soul!

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*Published in The Princeton Seminary Bulletin, Vol. XXVI, no. 3 (2005): 332-340.