leaving his books and going forth to commune with nature he is, as it
were, passing from death to life, is one who has not yet learned to
read. The good Professor saw that books have souls in them, so to speak,
and that to love a book really and truly is to hold communion with that
which is living and is a part of the great, beautiful scheme of God's
great, beautiful world. To love one part of what Our Father has given us
should never lead us to despise, or even undervalue, other parts. And we
must remember, too, must we not? how one thing helps us to understand
another; how great painters and great poets help us to understand the
beauty of nature as we might not have understood it without them, just
as they help us also to know men and women, and help us to know better
some of the fair things in our great and glorious religion; things which
God can and does teach without their help when He chooses, though He
graciously and lovingly often uses their help--the help He has given
them the power of giving--to teach others of His children. Our Father,
being _Our_ Father, not just _your_ Father and _my_ Father and _his_
Father and _her_ Father, but _Our_ Father, the Father of us all as one
big family of His, brothers and sisters in Him, wills that we all help
one another with the gifts He has given us; and the more we can realise
that all separate gifts are parts of one great harmonious whole, the
more fully we shall live and feel and enjoy.

There is, of course, a delight in exquisite typography, and hand-made
paper, and binding into which the soul of a true artist has gone. People
may be willing to give large sums for these things, independently of the
value of what is under them; or people may value books for their age, or
because they are rare, or because they are records of facts which it is
well to know and good to be able to verify.

But there is a better way of love than all of these. One may love the