of Washington. Washington received his weapons at the hands of Hampden and

Cromwell. The great Puritans lock hands with Luther and Savonarola.

 

The unbroken procession brings us at length to Him whose Sermon on the Mount was

the very charter of liberty. It puts us under a divine spell to perceive that we

are all coworkers with the great men, and yet single threads in the warp and

woof of civilization. And when books have related us to our own age, and related

all the epochs to God, whose providence is the gulf stream of history, these

teachers go on to stimulate us to new and greater achievements. Alone, man is an

unlighted candle. The mind needs some book to kindle its faculties. Before Byron

began to write he used to give half an hour to reading some favorite passage.

The thought of some great writer never failed to kindle Byron into a creative

glow, even as a match lights the kindlings upon the grate. In these burning,

luminous moods Byron's mind did its best work. The true book stimulates the mind

as no wine can ever quicken the blood. It is reading that brings us to our best,

and rouses each faculty to its most vigorous life.

 

We recognize this as pure cream, and if it seems at first to have its secondary

source in the friendly milkman, let us not forget that the theme is "The Uses of

Books and Reading." Dr. Hillis both sees and thinks.

 

It is fashionable just now to decry the value of reading. We read, we are told,

to avoid the necessity of thinking for ourselves. Books are for the mentally

lazy.