The Book of books, the Word of God, should occupy the first place in our estimation; and the test question in regard to the value of all other books is, whether they draw us towards, or away from, the Bible. So far as they are written with a genuine love for goodness and truth, books in every department of science and literature have a tendency, more or less strong, to increase our reverence and love for the Source of all goodness and truth; and no book can be subversive of our faith in the Scriptures that has not its foundation laid in falsehood. Nature may tell us of a Creator, but the Bible alone reveals a Father. Nature describes him as far from us, removed beyond all sympathy, before whose power we tremble, and whose mercy we might strive to propitiate by sacrifices or entreaties; but from the Bible we learn that he is near at hand, watching every pulsation of the heart, listening to every aspiration that we breathe; that we walk with him so long as we obey his commandments, and that though we may turn from him, he never turns from us; that when we approach him in prayer, it should not be with fear, but with love; and loving him with the knowledge that he first loved us, we find that prayer, in its true form, is a Companionship, and that the Father rejoices over his child in proportion as the child rejoices in approaching the throne of mercy. Pure and holy influences come to us immediately through our Companionship with those among our fellow-beings who have received of the overflowings of the Divine Fountain of goodness and truth. But when we reverently approach that Fountain, we receive immediately, with a power and fulness that can descend upon us through no human being. What we receive through other mediums reaches only the lower and more external planes of our being; but prayer brings us, if we pray aright, before the throne of the Most High, and opens those inmost chambers of the soul that remain for ever closed and empty unless they are opened and filled by the immediate presence of the Lord. These constitute that Holy of Holies which is the inmost of every human soul. The world at large may enter its outer courts, chosen friends may minister before the altar of its sanctuary, but within all this there is a holier place, which none but the Lord can enter; for it is the seat of the vital principle of the soul, which can be touched and quickened by no hand but his.