If One's Conscience Be Dead As A

Books! The Chosen Depositories Of The Thoughts, The Opinions, And The Aspirations Of Mighty Intellects; Like Wondrous Mirrors That Have Caught And Fixed Bright Images Of Souls That Have Passed Away; Like Magic Lyres, Whose Masters Have Bequeathed Them To The World, And Which Yet, Of Themselves, Ring With Unforgotten Music, While The Hands That Touched Their Chords Have Crumbled Into Dust. Books! They Are The Embodiments And Manifestations Of Departed Minds--the Living Organs Through Which Those Who Are Dead Yet Speak To Us.

The Sluices Of The Grog-shop Are Fed From The Wine-glasses In The Parlor, And There Is A Lineal Descent From The Gentleman Who Hiccoughs At His Elegant Dinner-table To The Sot Who Makes A Bed Of The Gutter.

It Is A Most Fearful Fact To Think Of, That In Every Heart There Is Some Secret Spring That Would Be Weak At The Touch Of Temptation, And That Is Liable To Be Assailed. Fearful, And Yet Salutary To Think Of; For The Thought May Serve To Keep Our Moral Nature Braced. It Warns Us That We Can Never Stand At Ease, Or Lie Down In This Field Of Life, Without Sentinels Of Watchfulness And Campfires Of Prayer.

Christianity Has Made Martyrdom Sublime, And Sorrow Triumphant.

Labor, With Its Coarse Raiment And Its Bare Right Arm, Has Gone Forth In The Earth, Achieving The Truest Conquests And Rearing The Most Durable Monuments. It Has Opened The Domain Of Matter And The Empire Of The Mind. The Wild Beast Has Fled Before It, And The Wilderness Has Fallen Back.... Its Triumphal March Is The Progress Of Civilization.