man there is nothing more wonderful than a book--a
message to us from the dead, from human souls whom we never saw, who
lived perhaps thousands of miles away, and yet in those little sheets of
paper speak to us, amuse us, terrify us, teach us, comfort us, open their
hearts to us as brothers!

We ought to reverence books, to look at them as awful and mighty things.
If they are good and true, whether they are about religion or politics,
trade or medicine, they are the message of Christ, the Maker of all
things, the Teacher of all truth, which He has put into the heart of some
men to speak. And at the last day, be sure of it, we shall have to
render an account--a strict account--of the books which we have read, and
of the way in which we have obeyed what we read, just as if we had had so
many prophets or angels sent to us.

_Village Sermons_. 1849.

The Unknown Future. March 9.

As for the things which God has prepared for those who love Him, the
Bible tells me that no man can conceive them, and therefore I believe
that I cannot conceive them. God has conceived them; God has prepared
them; God is our Father. That is enough.

_Sermons for the Times_. 1855.

Secular and Sacred. March 10.

I grudge the epithet of "_secular_" to any matter whatsoever. But more;
I deny it to anything which God has made, even to the tiniest of insects,
the most insignificant grain of dust. To those who believe in God, and
try to see all things in God, the most minute natural phenomenon cannot
be secular. It must be divine, I say deliberately, divine, and I can use
no less lofty word.

_Town Geology_. 1871.

Content or Happy? March 11.

My friends, whether you will be the happier for any knowledge of physical
science, or for any other knowledge whatsoever, I cannot tell. That lies
in the decision of a higher Power than I; and, indeed, to speak honestly,
I do not think that any branch of physical science is likely, at first at
least, to make you happy. Neither is the study of your fellow-men.
Neither is religion itself. We were not sent into the world to be happy,
but to be right--at least, poor creatures that we are--as right as we can
be, and we must be content with being right, and not happy. . . . And we
shall be made truly wise if we be made content; content, too, not only
with what we can understand, but content with what we do not
understand--the habit of mind which theologians call (and rightl