The First Book by Wendell Prime

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · May 7, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 18.

The First Book.

By Wendell Prime

COULD the inhabitant of another planet visit our earth and investigate the subject of bibliography, this imaginary student would find that the world had produced but one book which can be regarded as universally known. In the number of its translations, editions, and copies, the Bible exceeds every other book so immensely that there is no other with which it may be compared. It stands utterly alone among books of all languages and nations and ages.

To many the Bible is not only their supreme rule of faith and practice, but their greatest intellectual enjoyment, the foundation of all law, history, poetry, and philosophy as well as of all true religion. It is possible that even among lovers of the Bible there are some who have not considered it merely as a printed book entirely apart from its contents, its character, and its claims.

It was the first complete book printed with movable types. This first copy printed by Gutenberg, at Mentz, between 1450 and 1455, is considered the most splendid specimen of typography extant. Like the sculpture of Phidias, magnificent and matchless, it sprung into being, without a predecessor, in defiance of the theory of evolution. One of the finest copies in the world is on exhibition in the Lenox Library. Its successors number more than 200,000,000. No one need dispute about the figures, for more Bibles are now printed daily than at any previous period, and every day adds to the number by thousands.

It may be said that this vast circulation is in part the work of numerous societies. But every one of these volumes is paid for by somebody. This mode of paying does not lessen in the least the evidence of the book's power. No other book ever influenced men to bestow their treasures of time, influence, and money, to print, publish, and send it forth by millions. There are Shakespeare societies and Browning societies, but their sphere is as narrow as their work is insignificant. All endeavors of every kind to exalt or disseminate published writings serve to show that the Bible as a successful book has no peer. All other books follow at so vast a distance that it shines alone, a sun among the stars. The world has not yet produced six books which have been translated into twenty or thirty languages and whose editions can be counted by a few hundreds. But the Bible has been translated into 200 languages, and several years ago its known editions were at least 30,000. Infidel literature, ancient or modern, ignoring or antagonizing the Bible, seems weak, ephemeral, and contemptible compared with the overwhelming march of this book of books among the nations.

Compared with the most popular books that the world has produced, it stands as 60 or 100 to 1; that is, it has been printed sixty times as often as the "Imitation of Christ," and one hundred times as often as any other. In all probability its editions have averaged larger than those of any other book, and this adds very greatly to its relative supremacy.

Such is the book which infidel orators, society fools, and bar-room blockheads treat with contempt. They speak as if they thought it would soon be out of print. No book-talk is more amusing than this. Under its influence whole nations are beginning to learn how to read. Not half the population of France could read in 1827. The Bible is the only book for which languages are invented that it may be multiplied in regions where written and printed words were previously unknown.

This Biblical conquest seems more remarkable when we consider that it has been achieved in spite of what was once known throughout the world as Christianity. Much is written, especially by scientists, about the conflict between science and religion. Science ought not to complain. Its conflict is a mere lover's quarrel, compared with the conflict of the Bible with religion. This entire page, closely printed, would not suffice for a record of the bulls, canons, edicts, confiscations, imprisonments, tortures, stranglings, burnings and other ecclesiastical demonstrations to suppress and exterminate the Bible, its translators, editors, printers, publishers, disseminators and readers.—Wendell Prime, D. D., in New York Observer.