The printing-press, in many essential respects, is the most significant
invention of all human history. It has touched and vitalized
civilizations, countries, nations, languages, and dialects. As an
invention it has contributed immeasurably to the currency and the
perpetuity of all literature. It also sounded the doom of the written
book. Hallam, the Historian of the Middle Ages, says: "Since the
invention of printing the absolute extinction of any considerable work
seems a danger too improbable for apprehension. The press pours forth
in a few days a thousand volumes, which, scattered like seeds in the
air over the Republic of Europe, could hardly be destroyed without the
extirpation of its inhabitants." And, concerning the exposure to which
the manuscript production of all previous history was subjected, he
says: "In the times of antiquity manuscripts were copied with cost,
labor, and delay; and if the diffusion of knowledge be measured by the
multiplication of books (no unfair standard) the most golden ages of
ancient learning could never bear the least comparison with the last
three centuries. The destruction of a few libraries by accidental
fire, the desolation of a few provinces by unsparing and illiterate
barbarians, might annihilate every vestige of an author, or leave a
few scattered copies, which, from the public indifference there was no
inducement to multiply, exposed to similar casualties in succeeding
times."[3] In a word, printing has the double advantage over writing of
a more rapid multiplication of copies and their increased accuracy. But
even with the increased accuracy of printing, few books of considerable
size are issued in which errors are not to be found. It is said to
be the fact that, after incredible care on the part of editors and
professional proofreaders, the offered reward of a guinea for each
detected error in the Oxford Revised Version of the Bible brought
several errors to light. (International Stand. Bib. Encyclopedia.)
The invention of printing, through its associated process of proof
corrections, has virtually exempted books from the mundane laws of
decay and has greatly aided as well in their preservation and their
widest circulation. This invention has made definite and immutable the
records of the world since then and it has contributed also to the
purification and renewal of the more ancient literary productions.
Printing as an invention has given to an edition of a particular work
a measure of importance hundreds or thousands of times greater in
every respect save one, viz., the labor of transcription, than that
which had previously attached to the production of a single book. The
invention has therefore involved and necessitated a proportionately
larger consideration in the making of a printed book, lest defects and
errors in the type-plates from which the book is printed should become
permanently fixed in a thousand or ten thousand impressions therefrom.
(Isaac Taylor.) And it was printing that made uniformity of text
possible. Guizot estimates the importance of this invention thus: "From
1436 to 1452, printing was invented:--printing, the theme of so much
declamation, and so many commonplaces, but the merit and the effect of
which no commonplace nor any declamation can ever exhaust."
The invention of printing has peculiar significance within the realm
of religious life and knowledge; for, in relation to the scripture
text, to the spread of religious intelligence and the progress of
Christianity, and to the growth and stabilization of the individual
character,--in a word, in relation to Redemption itself, who can
apprehend, much less measure, the significance of this invention?
Truly, the Bible which _en_folds the basis of our faith as the bud
does the blossom and the fruit, as well as _un_folds the way of life
as the guide-post directs the traveler on his journey, has come into
the world for man, and has come to stay. For the great discoveries and
inventions, in wide areas of human investigation, but brighten its
pages and multiply its capacity to fulfill the purposes of God on the
earth.