"Brief is the time, I know, The warfare scarce begun; Yet all may win the triumphs thou hast won. Still flows the fount whose waters strengthened thee, The victors' names are yet too few to fill Heaven's mighty roll; the glorious armory That ministered to thee is open still."--BRYANT. To reveal this Christian armory, the defences of the soul against the assaults of evil, has been the highest inspiration of our poets. What depth and beauty and impersonation of Christian virtues do we find in "Snow-Bound," "Among the Hills," "Evangeline," "The Conqueror's Grave," "To a Waterfowl," "The Groves were God's First Temples," "The Living Temple," "The Sun Day Hymn," "The Chambered Nautilus," "Vision of Sir Launfal," "The Great Stone Face." The Bible is not generally admissible as a schoolbook, but the spirit of Christianity, clad in the forms of strength and grace, is immanent in the works of our poets. So universal, so human, so fit to the needs and destinies of men, are the truths of the great evangel, that the prophets and seers of our race drift evermore into the sheltering haven they supply. To drink in these potent truths through poetry and song, to see them enshrined in the imagery and fervor of the sacred masterpieces of our literature, is more than culture, more than morality; it is the portal and sanctuary of religious thought, and children may enter it. 10. The higher products of literature contain an energy that quickens spiritual life in morals, in art, and in religion. To many people, whose lives are submerged in commercial pursuits or in the great struggle to develop and utilize the material resources of the world, these spiritual forces seem vague and shadowy, if not mythical. But there are plenty of heroic souls in the realm of letters, such as Emerson, Scudder, Ruskin, Arnold, and Carlyle, who are not disposed to let men settle down in lazy satisfaction with material good, nor to be blinded even by the splendor of modern achievements in engineering, in medicine, and in the application of electricity. We must at least reach a point of view high enough to perceive the relations of these natural riches to the higher nature and destiny of man. Scudder says, "It is to literature that we must look for the substantial protection of the growing mind against an ignoble, material conception of life, and for the inspiring power which shall lift the nature into its rightful fellowship with whatsoever is noble, true, lovely, and of good report." Shelley, in like spirit, says: "The cultivation of poetry is never more to be desired than at periods when, from an excess of the selfish and calculating principle, the accumulation of the materials of external life exceed the quantity of the power of assimilating them to the internal laws of human nature. The body has then become too unwieldy for that which animates it."