ay. Man's art goes back to Athens and Thebes.
Man's laws go back to Blackstone and Justinian. Man's reapers and
plows go back to the savage scratching the ground with his forked
stick, drawn by the wild bullock. The heroes of liberty march
forward in a solid column. Lincoln grasps the hand 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.

Though this is only a half-truth, the element of truth it contains
is large enough to make us pause. Put yourself through a good
old Presbyterian soul-searching self-examination, and if
reading-from-thought-laziness is one of your sins, confess it. No one
can shrive you of it--but yourself. Do penance for it by using your
own brains, for it is a transgression that dwarfs the growth of thought
and destroys mental freedom. At first the penance will be trying--but
at the last you will be glad in it.

Reading should entertain, give information, or stimulate thought