I love old books.
I picked up this love from many of the men who have mentored me over the years. They picked it up from their mentors, right on back down the line.
Listen here to JC Ryle, writing in 1864, on why he loved old books.
For my own, part, I can only say that I read everything I can get hold of which professes to throw light on my Master’s business, and the work of Christ among men. But the more I read, the less I admire modern theology. The more I study the productions of the new schools of theological teachers, the more I marvel that men and women can be satisfied with such writing. There is a vagueness, a mistiness, a shallowness, an indistinctness, a superficiality, an aimlessness, a hollowness about the literature of the ‘broader and kinder systems,’ as they are called, which, to my mind, stamps their origin on their face. They are of the earth, earthy. I find more of definite soul-satisfying thought in one page of Gurnall than in five pages of such books as the leaders of the so-called ‘Broad Church School’ put forth. In matters of theology ‘the old is better.’
That critique is very contemporary.
Wouldn’t we have to admit that most of what is popular in Christian circles tends toward the superficial and hollow?
Life is short. Spend it on what matters most.
Time to read and improve your mind is fleeting. Spend it on what is most profitable.