"THE GREATEST BOOK IN THE WORLD" AND OTHER PAPERS I "THE GREATEST BOOK IN THE WORLD" MOST emphatic statements will be challenged by someone, but that the Bible is the greatest book in the world will, I think, be admitted. To be sure, a person seeking an argument might say, "What Bible do you mean?" to which I, being anxious to avoid a discussion, would reply, "Any of them," for there are many; but I have in mind chiefly two, the two that the English-speaking world knows best: the Latin Bible, usually called the Vulgate, and the Authorized or King James Version, published in London in the year 1611. For many centuries just how many any scholar will tell you; I do not know -the writings of learned men upon stone, clay, papyrus, parchment, and finally upon paper, had resulted in the creation of a caste: men who could read, men who sitting silently before a written or painted manuscript could follow in their minds the thoughts of other men. This, I submit, is the greatest achievement of the human mind; it is a sort of "radio" into that space which we call time. No "aërial" was required; there was no sound; yet a man sitting silently behind the written page could, with a little skill, learn all the best that has been thought or done in the world. Needless to say, these manuscripts, the product of a staff of writers and illuminators who worked upon them, for years, it may be, upon a single book, were of very great value, and it was not unusual for them to carry upon the first page, by way of warning, a notice which might be thus translated: "He who steals this book or conceals it, it having been stolen; or deletes this inscription, is excommunicate." Not much, but enough. With the growth of learning there arose an everincreasing demand for books; but the method of producing them by means of a quill and brush made them so costly that they were the exclusive possession of princes, either of the Church or of the State. Museums and libraries of the Old and, to a lesser extent, of the New World, now possess many superb examples of these books, and when we peer at the priceless treasures of the past, carefully screened with glass, in museums, we exclaim: "How wonderful!" And yet, wonderful as they are, they are as nothing compared with the printed page. The story of the printed book, reduced to its simplest terms, may be briefly stated. Scholars are generally agreed that the art of printing, as we know it, had its birth in Germany. In the earliest examples of printing, not only illustrations but text were cut in relief on solid blocks of wood, but it was not until the invention of movable metal types, capable of innumerable combinations of letters forming words, that printing may be said to have come into existence. The honor of this great discovery has been, by general consent, awarded to Johannes Gutenberg. Of his life we know relatively little, but we know that about 1450 he was negotiating with one Fust, a goldsmith, for a loan to carry on his invention, and that a few years later there was a falling-out between the two men, as is not unusual between inventors, over the division of the resulting profits or losses; meantime the great Bible was completed. It is possible, before the work of printing so important a book was undertaken, that several smaller ventures were made, but no book has yet been discovered in which are employed the types used in this Bible, and we are sure that the Bible was the first important effort of the great inventor. As an example of printing it has never been surpassed. Of all the arts, printing at its birth more nearly reached perfection than any other. It has indeed been said that it is the only art in which no progress has been made: that the first example of printing is the best. And to Gutenberg is given the credit for the great discovery of this "art preservative of the arts." The time, 1450-1455, the place, Mainz or, as we would call it, Mayence. It is a great book, the Vulgate, a wonderful book: |