The Bible and Missions

6. The Leaves of the Tree

155 h The Leaves of the Tree Six The mere ethical teachings of the bible would alone stamp it as the greatest literary treasure of humanity. Goethe “The Bible is a book-making Book. It is literature which provokes literature,” says McAfee in The Greatest English Classic. The statement is so overwhelmingly true that it is difficult to illustrate it within the sharp limits of the present chapter. No race, for example, has ever read the Bible without an irresistible desire to write about it. A flood of sermons, treatises, histories, biographies, geographies, books of travel, theologies, philosophies, criticisms, defenses, dictionaries, encyclopedias, novels, poems, has flowed from under its portals like the river in ezekiel’s vision which from a rivulet became a torrent, waters to swim in, a river that could not be passed over. Nor is there any sign of an abatement in interest. Apparently the perennial interest of the Scripture demands that each generation wrestle afresh with its problems and afresh record its poignant reactions to the stimulus of the Book. This book-germinating influence of the Bible is marked when we compare the output of books on the part of nations longest under the Christian discipline with those longest under that of other great world religions. In no one A Book-making Book Output of books greatest in Christendom 156 / The Bible and Missions of the Oriental nations is the output of books comparable to that in Christian nations. During the last half century or more in which the ferment of the gospel has been actively at work in nations like India, China, and Japan, the effect upon the writing of books, as well as upon political and social institutions , has been clearly seen. In Oriental nations, like Tibet and Turkestan, and in Morocco, as yet virtually closed to the Bible, conditions remain such as they were in the entire Orient when the era of modern missions began. Furthermore, the accessibility of the Bible and its wide diffusion among the people of Christian nations seem to be in direct relation to the amount and quality of the literary output. Take for example matter of public libraries as it is so strikingly brought out in President Tenney’s Contrasts in Social Progress. He says: There is no point of difference between Christian and non-Christian literature more notable than that relating to the popularization of books. The Turkish empire would have today ten millions of books in local libraries, scattered here and there in different cities and towns, if Islam favored popular education by literature as much as Christianity did in great Britain in 1880. Take Persia, where the people are nearly all Mohammedans; that kingdom would have today eight hundred libraries with six and a quarter millions of books in them, if their religion favored popular reading as much as Christianity in the United States. Two hundred millions of books would be upon the shelves of native libraries in India open to the reading of all castes, if Brahmanism were the match of Christianity in America for diffusing education by books. Here is Buddhism; there ought to be more than thirty-five hundred libraries here and there in Japan, with almost thirty millions of volumes in them, and there ought to be more than ten millions of books in the native libraries of Ceylon, Siam, and Burma today, if their faith were as good a popular educator by books as Christianity is today in the United States. China, the most literary of the non-Christian nations, has no books to speak of, aside from one library of one hundred and sixty-eight thousand volumes, and small libraries in the eighteen provinces, and little gatherings of books in the Buddhist monasteries; but if Confucianism were as good a patron Christianity develops a book-reading public The Leaves of the Tree / 157 of books as Christianity in America, there would be in the Celestial Kingdom today more than twenty-nine thousand libraries, each averaging eighty-five hundred volumes. Christianity is a reading religion. When Saul, in the old story, saw any strong man, or any valiant man, he took him unto himself. Strong and valiant books are in demand throughout Christendom. The mighty men of valor are the men of ideas. Not only is it true that the Bible breeds books about itself, and develops a book-reading people; the Book also enters into and permeates...