Sunday-School Libraries. By Rev. Sanford H. Cobb [pp. 369-382]

Sunday-School Librarie.
Among these questions, that indicated by the title to this
article is certainly not the least important.
This question of Libraries is indeed demanding an increas ing attention on the part of earnest Sunday-School workers,
and is one which should engage the concern of the Church, and
especially all those laden with the responsibilities of parent age or instruction. There is a deep conviction of many evils
attendant upon the present most general use and character of
the Sunday-School Library. No little perplexity is caused
by the attempt to remove these evils, and to answer satisfactorily the inquiry which asks, "H ow shall a Library be so
constituted that it shall be at once attractive and beneficial? "
To point out existing evils is not a very difficult task; nor is
it less easy to perceive the effects upon the minds of the young
people of to-day, of that kind of books which form the larger
part of our Sunday-School literature. We shall find it far more
difficult to devise a plan adequate to meet and counteract the
pernicious influences of which complaint is made; one that
shall retain all the useful qualities of the Library, and remove
all the causes of complaint, and, at the same time, be attractive to those for whom it is designed. While we are in a
position to speak with some decision as to baneful effects, and
are able to trace some of these to their causes, we have to feel
our way with much hesitation, and surrounded with many
difficulties, towards a fitting remedy.
I. As a general remark, it may be said that the SundaySchool Library, as now most frequently composed,. seems to
have been selected on the principle of one who would administer to the same person both a poison and its antidote, with
the idea that the two together would do no harm. Supposing
that a case should arise where such a physico-chlemical treatmnent would be proper: it by no means follows that a moral
equilibrium can be sustained in the same way. The experiment might prove harmless in the case of one whose moral
nature was untainted; but as it is, the one scale is already too
heavily weighted with sinful tendencies to admit the thought
that a certain amount of good literature will counterbalance
an equal amount of evil. The evil possesses far more attractions for the general mind than that which might counteract
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[JULY'