There are few who would not readily acknowledge that mainly in worthy
books are preserved and hoarded the treasures of wisdom and knowledge
which the world has accumulated; and that chiefly by aid of books they
are handed down from one generation to another. I shall urge on you in
these lectures something different from this; namely, that not in books
only, which all acknowledge, nor yet in connected oral discourse, but
often also in words contemplated singly, there are boundless stores of
moral and historic truth, and no less of passion and imagination, laid
up--that from these, lessons of infinite worth may be derived, if only
our attention is roused to their existence. I shall urge on you how
well it will repay you to study the words which you are in the habit of
using or of meeting, be they such as relate to highest spiritual things,
or our common words of the shop and the market, and of all the familiar
intercourse of daily life. It will indeed repay you far better than you
can easily believe. I am sure, at least, that for many a young man his
first discovery of the fact that words are living powers, are the
vesture, yea, even the body, which thoughts weave for themselves, has
been like the dropping of scales from his eyes, like the acquiring of
another sense, or the introduction into a new world; he is never able
to cease wondering at the moral marvels that surround him on every side,
and ever reveal themselves more and more to his gaze.

We indeed hear it not seldom said that ignorance is the mother of
admiration. No falser word was ever spoken, and hardly a more
mischievous one; implying, as it does, that this healthiest exercise of
the mind rests, for the most part, on a deceit and a delusion, and that
with larger knowledge it would cease; while, in truth, for once that
ignorance leads us to admire that which with fuller insight we should