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

Sunday-School Libraries.
is administered with indifference as to its character and
effects; then the library is worse than useless.
(4.) All that precedes has been written on the assumption
that the library is an essential thing in the Sunday School.
But we are by no means convinced of the truth of that
assumption. The library is generally regarded as a necessity. It is undoubtedly a great attraction. Yet, if the evils'
specified cannot be otherwise corrected, we are disposed to
recommend the Spartan remedy of abolishing the library
altogether.
To-day the necessity for this element in the school is not
the same that it was a score of years ago. The wants of youth
are ministered to in other ways. A sufficiency of good reading comes to them in other channels. Children's books are
now numbered by the thousands, and are easily accessible. A
school with efficient officers, with earnest and prayerful
teachers, can be made as attractive and useful without a
library as with one. It will be more useful without one
constituted as are half the libraries in the land. And it is
a question, in view of all connected matters, whether the
having a library does not make the school assume a responsibility which, under present circumstances, it has no call to
take upon itself. It is certain that the library is in the working of the school a frequent and great annoyance; that it often
serves to completely cancel all lessons for good learned in class
instruction; that it is a frequent source of positive evil to mind
and heart; and for these and other reasons is a constant cause
of perplexity. There are, indeed, strong arguments to support the institution, but are they of a nature to outweigh these
serious objections? This may be laid down as fundamental,
that the usefulness of a library, as helping in the religious
education of our youth, is the only valid plea for its existence,
even for an hour.
We are glad to notice that the Presbyterian Board of Publication has undertaken the work of selecting Sunday-School
libraries, and keeping assortments of juvenile religious books
purged of the worthless volumes which now poison the minds
of our youth. We bid them God-speed, and hope thus to find
some deliverance from the evils under which we labor.
382
[J.ULY,