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The contents of a book, whatever these may be, are powerless to place its readers in direct contact and vital relations with its author.

No man is so visionary as to imagine that the mental operation of reading the _Iliad,_ or the _Phaedo,_ or the _Divine Comedy,_ suffices to put him in communication with the personality of Homer, or Plato, or Dante.

All effort is in vain to slake the thirst of a soul famishing for the _Fountain_ of living waters from a brook, or to stop the cravings of a soul for the living Saviour with a printed book.