profession in librarianship. The Association seeks to develop and strengthen the public library as an essential part of the American educational system. It therefore strives by individual effort of members, and where practicable by local organization, to stimulate public interest in establishing or improving libraries and thus to bring the best reading within reach of all.”

In the last report of the treasurer the membership of the Association was 664. Its annual income has rarely exceeded $1,500. The enthusiasm it fostered has done the work, rather than the dollars of its members. The Library Journal, its official organ, is the most important of the publications that owe their origin to the Association, though Poole's Index to Periodical Literature, made possible by the cooperation of the members of the Association, will seem most important to the student and general reader. The great need of libraries twenty-five years ago was the solution of technical and mechanical problemslibrary economy, involving questions of administration, classification, cataloguing, shelf arrangement, charging systems, library architecture, etc. In a library of a few thousand volumes these problems do not impress their importance; but the larger the library and the more it is used the greater their importance. With development and growth there must be differentiation, and the library that does not solve the technical problems satisfactorily is handicapped in its work. The greatest single contribution to library economy during this period is the development of the card catalogue.

Within the last few years the Association has also been cultivating cooperation in cataloguing. Every day hundreds of libraries are doing the same work on the same book that could and should be done once and for all. Although there are various systems of shelf arrangement now in vogue the cataloguing of the books on cards is essentially alike in all well-regulated libraries, and the time is not far distant when most books will come to our libraries catalogued and ready for the shelves. Interlibrary loans, the lending of books in one library to another, is a feature of library coöperation not generally known. At the cost

of express charges the student can command the resources of nearly all the libraries of the country at the library of his city. For the twentieth century the Association has set itself the task of bringing about international coöperation.

Stimulated by the A. L. A., nineteen States have organized State library associations, and half a dozen cities have organized local library clubs. The Association has created the idea that librarianship is a profession rather than a function, and that special training is necessary for its successful pursuit. As a result there are now four regularly organized library schools, beginning in 1886 with what is now the New York State Library School, at Albany. The requirements for admission to this school are college graduation or its equivalent. The course is two years. The standards for admission to the library schools connected with the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, the Drexel Institute, Philadelphia, and the University of Illinois, are not so high. Amherst College has conducted a summer library school for a decade, which is attended chiefly by persons now engaged in library work desirous of making themselves more efficient. There is also a library training class at Columbian University, Washington.

The highly organized work of the modern library is demanding buildings with special reference to the work that is being done in them. At least six library buildings in the United States have cost each a million dollars or more, that of the Library of Congress more than six millions. The library of a century ago was all in one room; to-day it tries to have a number of rooms, as many libraries have, such as these: stacks for storing books by the million, delivery, registration and information rooms, reading rooms, general and special, the latter including periodicals, newspapers, patents, public documents, manuscripts, incunabula, prints, music, maps, rooms for writing, smoking, conversation, or reading aloud, rooms for exhibiting for display special collections of books, rooms for children, for the blind, and for women, with specially trained attendants for every class of books and readers, offices of administration, rooms for the chief librarian, the statisticians, engineers, electricians, and

janitors, for the order, catalogue, shelf, and editorial departments, for the bindery and mending departments, a printing office, store rooms, shipping and packing rooms, boiler, engine, dynamo, ventilating and delivery machinery rooms, photographic rooms, lecture halls, kitchen, lunch and rest rooms for the staff, public comfort rooms, coat or check rooms, bicycle rooms, etc., etc.,—all in a central building from which radiates an influence that seeks to make itself felt, through branches and stations, in every nook and corner of a great city.

Four American cities now have libraries with home circulation of more than a million books a year. The statistics of such use can easily be kept, though these libraries do not neglect other departments where accurate statistics are impossible if the best service is to be rendered to the public. In round numbers the total expense of maintenance, the number of volumes in the library, and the home circulation of the millionnaire libraries for the years last reported is as follows: New York Free Circulating Library, $98,000, 157,777 volumes, circulation, 1,637,000; Free Library of Philadelphia, $162,000, 203,102 volumes, circulation, 1,778,000; Chicago Public Library, $237,000, 258,498 volumes, circulation, 1,750,000; Boston Public Library, $271,000, 746,383 volumes, circulation, 1,252,000. Large as these numbers of circulation are they are larger in one or two libraries of cities in England.

The number of volumes circulated by these libraries seems enormous; and yet there is every reason to believe that these figures will seem small indeed before the twentieth century is two decades old. Less than ten per cent. of the people of the age which entitles them to use the libraries of New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago, have taken out cards enabling them to draw books. More than ninety per cent. of the people who might use them do not. The immediate problem of the public library is to convert this great mass of non-users into users. one out of every five persons entitled to use the public library of Chicago should do so the annual circulation would now be five millions of volumes. If the per capita use of books in

If

Baltimore were as great as it is in two cities of Massachusetts to-day the circulation of The Enoch Pratt Free Library would be more than three millions a year. The circulation of our libraries in the twentieth century promises numbers almost beyond comprehension.

But the circulation of books is only one side of the work in which our libraries are engaged. With their reading rooms (often open on Sundays and holidays as well as during the week), their current magazines, their newspapers, and their reference books, they are doing educational work of the first importance, even though it makes little showing in annual reports. For thousands of lives libraries are centers of light and sunshine as well as centers of knowledge. The books that bring sunshine into life are as highly prized by the man who has learned the art of living as are those that bring knowledge, and in the economy of daily life the one class is as important as the other. As a disseminator of sunshine and of knowledge the library enters upon the twentieth century with every prospect that its mission to mankind is only in the years of its infancy.

VI.

NEW TESTAMENT GIVING VERSUS OLD TESTAMENT TITHING.

BY REV. S. REAM.

On the general subject of tithing many books have been writ ten, tracts and leaflets printed and sermons preached, and yet to most people it still remains an abstruse and difficult problem. Whether or not the tithing of one's income, as was done under the Jewish system, should be continued under the Christian economy, is the question at issue. In recent years numerous writers have come forward to support its continuance; but any one with a discriminating mind cannot help but note the perversions, the incongruous statements made, and the misapplications of Scripture in support of their contention.

Believing as we do that the Jewish system of tithing does not hold under the Christian dispensation, the following arguments, based upon Biblical and historical facts, and upon practical ethics, are offered for consideration.

Created a religious being, it is but natural that man should desire to worship and to hold communion with his Maker. A deep sense of gratitude on his part, and a heart full of faith, love and obedience to God, prompt him to render such service. It is also just as natural for him to desire to make some real returns to God for the blessings and mercies he has received. And in these instincts of religion we have the origin of sacrifices, oblations, offerings and tithes. Thus Abel in faith offered the best of his flock and his sacrifice was accepted of God. At first these offerings were not measured or enforced by law, but were altogether voluntary and free. No divine command or instruction was needed, nor is there any record of such command being given; for what is more natural and reasonable than that the soul of man, overflowing with a feeling of gratitude for blessings