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An Old Book
When the wife and I had been married but a few years we moved from Portland, TX, to Richardson. I don’t remember what got us in the department store, I think it was a Dillards, but we found an oak bookcase (weighs a ton). We purchased three sections, each a bit over seven feet tall and a bit over three feet wide, one with a small desk built in, one with a couple of drawers at the bottom, and one with nothing but bookshelves. We have had it for, I suppose, 40 years now and it has moved from Richardson to Garland, to Jersey Village, to Boca Raton (FL), Cypress (TX), and now to its final home in Macon County, TN. All that is just to say I have been collecting books for a long time from different places.
Anyhow, Sue is hosting a ladies Christmas party tonight and she asked me to declutter the bookcase for the party. I spent at least half a day yesterday doing that and, in the process, came across an old book I have no idea where it came from or how it got into my bookcase. It was printed in 1875, in good condition but very fragile, and is titled “Preaching Without Notes.” Now I got curious because, in the same era, that is what R.L. Dabney (Stonewall Jackson’s Chief of Staff, his biographer and also a Confederate Army chaplain) insisted upon. I did not recognize the name of the author (Richard S. Storrs) so I Startpaged it. Found him — no surprise — on Wikipedia.
And I found this quote:
Nature does not conquer the world to God. It never has. It never will. In America, with its vast abounding wealth, its grand expanse of prairie, its reach of river, and its exuberant productiveness, there is danger that our riches will draw us away from God, and fasten us to earth; that they will make us not only rich, but mean; not only wealthy, but wicked. The grand corrective is the cross of Christ, seen in the sanctuary where the life and light of God are exhibited, and where the reverberation of the echoes from the great white throne are heard.
Those are not dead words for a time long past, nor merely echoes of prophets from millennia earlier, but truth we see fulfilled again and again.
Published in Religion & Philosophy
Funny thing about truth, it works that way. If an idea is true, it works every time it’s tried. If it’s not, it’s going to fail.
Sometimes, the internet is good for something…
How interesting that you had no idea that book was there, and just happened to be instructed to clean out the bookcase! This is a message for our day and time. I just read something very similar – but I can’t remember where. Now I have to find it because it is a big coincidence. Thank you for sharing it. Also, interesting that such simple wisdom is found in such an old book –
Don’t know how long you lived in Richardson/Garland area, but our 2nd son was born in Garland (1980) and we lived for 5 years (’85-’90) within eyesight of the Dillard’s logo at Richardson Square Mall.
Are you sure the bookcase is in its final home? At this moment I am facing a mahogany bookcase that my grandfather had for about 40 years when he died in 1965 in Florida. Subsequent to his death, our family moved it to California, then to New York, and just a few weeks ago, to Weatherford, Texas. [I know the bookcase isn’t the focus of your post, but consistent with your main point is that things, as well as quotes, can continue to influence beyond the time we might imagine.]
Been there. The search can drive me wild.
Your second son was born about the time we left.
Good point. No I don’t, but probably it won’t remain in the family – both our sons pretty much only read ebooks (more’s the pity) and don’t have space for a large family heirloom. Never say never, though. I do have a small chest my great-grandfather made back in the 19th century.
Woohoo! Gotta watch those Weatherfords.
I have 1200 books. They take a lot less space than our family Bible. They are on my Kindle.
I would love a picture of bookcase, complete with a desk.
You would be totally underwhelmed.
I recently found a book of sermons printed in 1815. Of course I bought it. One of the ones my wife randomly flipped to was the preacher railing against congregations for thinking that large and unintelligible words, and endless droning that they cannot understand, must somehow equal theological brilliance. Another one of those eternal truths.
The book is interesting for having a personal inscription pencilled in from 1862, when the book was evidently added to someone’s collection “Jms Martin Aims, MD”. There is a much later ink stamp too of a “Hubert S. Aims” of West Haven, Connecticut. One wonders how many hands it has passed through in these last 2 centuries.
The book is Seabury’s Discourses, Volume I.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Seabury_(bishop)
I think I referenced something while reading The Screwtape Letters – very good post.
Yes. Which may be why I just got the same thing from a sermon just last week!