But apart from and above all others is the book, the Bible. Alone it has civilized whole nations. Be our theories of inspiration what they may, this book deals with the deepest things in man's heart and life. Ruskin and Carlyle tell us that they owe more to it in the way of refinement and culture than to all the other books, plus all the influence of colleges and universities. Therein the greatest geniuses of time tell us of the things they caught fresh from the skies, "the things that stormed upon them, and surged through their souls in mighty tides, entrancing them with matchless music"; things so precious for man's heart and conscience as to be endured and died for. It is the one book that can fully lead forth the richest and deepest and sweetest things in man's nature. Read all other books, philosophy, poetry, history, fiction; but if you would refine the judgment, fertilize the reason, wing the imagination, attain unto the finest womanhood or the sturdiest manhood, read this book, reverently and prayerfully, until its truths have dissolved like iron into the blood. Read, indeed, the hundred great books. If you have no time, make time and read. Read as toil the slaves in Golconda, casting away the rubbish and keeping the gems. Read to transmute facts into life, but read daily the book of conduct and character—the Bible. For the book Daniel Webster placed under his pillow when dying is the book all should carry in the hand while living.
The Science of Living With Men
"There is an art of right living."—Arthur Helps.
"The supreme art life above all other arts is the art of living together justly and charitably. There is no other thing that is so taxing, requiring so much education, so much wisdom, so much practice, as the how to live with our fellow-men. In importance this art exceeds all productive industries which we teach our children. All skill and knowledge aside from that is as nothing. The business of life is to know how to get along with our fellow-men."—H.W. Beecher.
"As all the stars are pervaded by one law, in one law live and move and have their being, so all minds that reason and all hearts that beat, act in one empire of one king; and of that vast kingdom, the law the most sweeping, the most eternal, is the law of loving kindness."—Swing.
"The nations have turned their places of art treasure into battle-fields. Fancy what Europe would be now if the delicate statues and temples of the Greeks—if the broad and massive walls of the Romans, if the noble and pathetic architecture of the Middle Ages, had not been ground to dust by mere human rage. You talk of the scythe of time and the tooth of time; I tell you time is scytheless and toothless; it is we who gnaw like the worm, we who smite like the scythe. All these lost treasures of human intellect have been wholly destroyed by human industry of destruction; the marble would have stood its 2,000 years as well in the polished statue as in the Parian cliff; but we men have ground it to powder and mixed it with our own ashes."—Ruskin.