Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 July 1884 — Religion. [ARTICLE]

Religion.

Once in a while we still hear the old croak that religion has lost its hold on the general public; that the church and its pulpit are no longer a power in the world, and that religious reading has given place to the daily newspaper. To this venerable fiction there is no better answer than that given by the annual statistics of the number of books, in the several classes of literature, published in America and England. From the figures of the English book trade of last year, it appears that “as usual, theology heads the list with 945 works; educational and classical publications are second, with 682,” etc. Publishers issue books to sell, and they are not accustomed to put forth, year by year, that which nobody buys; so that the regular publication and sale of religious books is a perfectly fair test of the general demand. That little coterie of readers which no longer cares for religions books makes the ostrich’s mistake of measuring the capacities of other heads by the situation of its own. School Times.