THE DANGEROUS BOOK by Robert Collyer

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Sep 17, 1896

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 22, No. 37.

THE DANGEROUS BOOK

By Robert Collyer

If, when I read a book about God, I find that it has put him farther from me; or about man, that it has put me farther from him; or about this universe, that it has shaken down upon it a new look of desolation, turning a green field into a wild moor; or about life, that it has made it seem a little less worth living on all accounts than it was; or about moral principles, that they are not quite so clear and strong as they were when this author began to talk,—then I know that, on any of these five cardinal things in the life of a man—his relation to God, to his fellows, to the world about him, to the world within him, and the great principles on which all things stable center—that, for me, is a bad book. It may chime in with some lurking appetite in my own nature, and so seem to be as sweet as honey to my taste; but it comes to bitter, bad results. It may be food for another; I can say nothing to that. He may be a pine, while I am a palm. I only know this, that in these great first things, if the book I read shall touch them at all, it shall touch them to my profit, or else I will not read it. Right and wrong shall grow more

clear, life in and about me more divine; I shall come nearer to my fellows and God nearer to me, or the thing is a poison.—Dr. Robert Collyer.