March 18

Of making many books there is no end. — Eccl 12:12

One who can write what people will read has a wide opportunity of doing good. There is need for consecrated pens. One can write helpfully only after living victoriously. We are apt not to realize the cost at which we receive the good we get from helpful books.

We read the smooth, graceful sentences with delight. They impart to us instruction, inspiration, comfort, and courage. We give little thought to the writer, or we think of him as one who wields a facile pen. It rarely occurs to us to think of him as one who has endured pain or suffered loss, or passed through sorrow, in order that he might give us the words in which we find so much help.

But the truth is that no strengthening thought comes to us from another without cost to the other, some time, some way. Men and women must live deeply before they can write hopefully. We cannot teach lessons we have not learned, and we cannot learn such lessons save in the school of experience.