Oh, these luminous hours! These hours of deeper conviction are life's real hours! Summer is sunshine and beauty, not storm and snow. There are dark and wintry days in March, when spring seems a delusion. There are days in April so cold that summer seems a snare. But between the storms there are brief warm intervals when the sun falls soft on the south hillsides, and the roots begin to stir and the seeds to ache with harvests, and all the air is vocal. The fitful snows in April are but reminders of what the dying winter was; but these occasional sunny days are prophecies of what summer hath accomplished in its full ministry upon the fields and forests. And after long periods of sodden selfishness and clouded sin, suddenly the vision of better things breaks through the cloud and storm. Then the vision strikes clarity into reason, memory and imagination. In these hours the soul scoffs at sordid things. As the flower climbs upward to escape from the slough, as the foot turns away from the mire, as the nostril avoids the filth, as the ear hates discord, so in these hours the soul scoffs at selfishness and sin. Oh, how beautiful seem purity and gentleness, and sympathy and truth! And these hours are big with prophecy. They tell us what the soul shall be when time and God's resources have wrought their will upon man. They are to be cherished as the mariner cherishes the guiding star that stands upon the horizon; they are to be cherished as some traveler, lost in a close, dark forest, cherishes the moment when the sun breaks through a rift in the clouds and he takes his bearings out of the swamp and toward his home. Visions are God within the soul. They come to lead man away from sin and sorrow. They come to guide him to his heavenly home. THE USES OF BOOKS AND READING "Bring with the books."--_Paul._ "A good book is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life."--_Milton._ "God be thanked for books. They are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages. In the best books great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts and pour their souls into ours."--_Channing._ "All that mankind has done, thought or been is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books. They are the chosen possession of men."--_Carlyle._ "We need to be reminded every day how many are the books of inimitable glory, which, with all our eagerness after reading, we have never taken into our hands. It will astonish most of us to find how much of our very industry is given to the books which have no worth, how often we rake in the litter of the printing press, whilst a crown of gold and rubies is offered us in vain."--_F. Harrison._ XI THE USES OF BOOKS AND READING