Widnes Examiner. — 1913-04-12 (Widnes, Cheshire, England)

BOOKS AND READING.  Lecture by Rev. Dr. Mellor.  "Books and reading " sas the subjeot of a lecture delivered in Cairo-street Chapel parlour, before a large attendance, on Tuesday evening, by the Rev Dr Mellor. Having referred to the " nauseating poison" which was often offered to the reader in the guise of literature, the lecturer said one of the greatest and most deplorable curses of the present day was the Press—that free Press which had so often been announced as one of the glories of our civilization. What was really "going on" in the world very seldom got into the newspaper ; the Press was no plitee for ideas, unless those ideas were dead and done with. The Press was generally the haunt of unrealities, ti.e home of lost causes, and no newspaper deserved to be read till at least a year after its issue; it would, by that time, perhaps have some historical interest. If a man must read the daily paper, then let, him spend on it as little time as possible. The most valuable kind of newspaper, or journal was that which contained the least " news " and the fewest number of short paragraphs To judge by the number of pictures w inch appeared now in practically all our newspapers, even the reading of the paper must have become a somewhat forlorn business. Could we he sinking back- to the earlier stage if picture writing ?Perhaps for our newspapers, we ,;hould yet Come to substitute a system of p-rpetual cinematograph shows, displaying, in motion, all that was supposed to be going forward in this weary world. Instead of reading about a murder, or the trial of Mrs Pankhurst, or some scene in the House of Commons we should behold all t h se things in animatid representation, and the veil of many words wont removed. Personally, he saw enormous possibilities in the idea, and he felt that Perpetual Ptiblic Picture Palaces would be a fine substitute for a Pernicious Public Press. At any rate, pictures could not misrepreaent. The writing if novels, continued the doctor, had become a trade, wholesale and retail, like the selling of bacon and drugs. Reading was one of the commonest of accomplishments to-day ; it was assuredly one of the most evilly treated, evilly used and evilly served. The test of a genuine book was the extent to which it wakened the deepest powers of the soul to aetivity and appealed to the innermost nature of the thinking spirit. The purpose of a true book was not to lest, uct but to educate, and these were not the same To educate was, truly speaking, to draw out the native powers of mind and soul ; as they ;ut it coll quietly, to make a man think for himself, to increase and strengthen his reliance upon his own inner faculties and feelings. A man might read a veritable multitude of books and at the end of all his reading be as far away from genuine education as he was at the beginning. Another man might read one or two hooks and, from his reading, emerge well on the road towards true education. Some good advice was given as to which books all men ought to read, and the Doctor contended that one should not seek to read too much, but, if possible, possess the books which were read, so that they might be read again and again. They must not be enslaved to a book so that they got nothing from it except what was in it. A good book was a stimulus, nut a narcotic.