Bible Stories and Religious Classics

Bible Stories and Religious
Classics

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Title: Bible Stories and Religious Classics
Author: Philip P. Wells
Release Date: December 4, 2003 [EBook #10380]
Language: English
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BIBLE STORIES AND RELIGIOUS CLASSICS
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ANSON PHELPS STOKES, JR.
ILLUSTRATED BY BEATRICE STEVENS

1903

INTRODUCTION
There never was a time when the demand for books for young people
was so great as it is to-day or when so much was being done to meet
the demand. "Children's Counter," "Boys' Books," are signs which,
especially at the Christmas season, attract the eye in every large book
shop. Tales of adventure, manuals about various branches of nature
study, historical romances, lives of heroes--in fact, almost every kind of
book--is to be found in abundance, beautifully illustrated, attractively
bound, well printed, all designed and written especially for the youth of
our land. It is indeed an encouraging sign. It means that the child of
to-day is being introduced to the world's best in literature and science
and history and art in simple and gradual ways.
In the Middle Ages stories of the martyrs and legends of the Church,
along with some simple form of catechetical instruction, formed the
basis of a child's mental and religious training. Later, during and after
the Crusades, the stories of war and the mysteries of the East increased
the stock in trade for the homes of Europe; but still the horizon
remained a narrow one. Even the invention of printing did not bring to
the young as many direct advantages as would naturally be expected.
To-day, when Christian missionaries set up a printing press in some
distant island of the sea, the first books which they print in the
vernacular are almost invariably those parts of the Bible, such as the
Gospels and the stories of Genesis, which most appeal to the young,
and, what is of special importance, they have the young directly and
mainly in mind in their publishing work. This was not true a few
centuries ago. The presses were, perhaps naturally and inevitably,
almost exclusively occupied with books for the learned world. To be
sure, the Legenda Aurea, of which I shall speak later, although not
intended primarily for children, proved a great boon to them. So did the
Chap Books of England. But it was not until the middle of the
eighteenth century, when John Newbery set up his book shop at St.
Paul's Churchyard, London, that any special attention was given by
printers to the publication, in attractive form, of juvenile books.
Newbery's children's books made him famous in his day, but the world
seems to have forgotten him. Yet he deserves a monument along with
Æsop, and La Fontaine, and Kate Greenaway, and Andersen, and Scott

and Henty, and all the other greater and lesser lights who have done so
much to gladden the heart and enlarge the mind of childhood and
youth.
But from Newbery's day to this year of our Lord nineteen hundred and
three is a very long jump in what we may call the evolution of juvenile
literature, for the preparation of reading matter for young people seems
now almost to have reached its climax. There is one field, however, and
that the one which this volume tries to cover, which strangely enough
seems to have been almost neglected. Of "goody-goody" Sunday
School library books of an old-fashioned type, which are insipid and
lacking both in virility of thought and literary form, there are, alas,
already too many. What we need is something to take their place,
something which will furnish real literature, and yet which from subject
matter and manner of handling is specially adapted to what I still like to
call Sunday reading, a phrase which unfortunately seems to mean little
to most people to-day. Bearing this in mind, it is the purpose of this
book to gather together, in attractive form, such religious classics as are
specially fitted to interest and uplift young people.
There is a wide variety in so far as _subject matter_, source and form
are concerned, but a certain unity is given to the contents of the volume
by the religious note, which, whether brought prominently forward or
not, is found alike in all the selections.
The Bible has furnished directly or indirectly most of the subject matter
here