Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: JOHN RUSKIN: "THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE " A PROCLAMATION OF THE LAWS OF LIFE " Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, And light unto my path." Psalm cxix. 105. " For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it ? " Luke xiv. 28. OUR LORD would have us sit down and count the cost before we commit ourselves to the building of character. Evil beclouds the issues, and practises endless sophistry and subterfuge to enlist an espousal of its cause. The long view of life is one of the tempter's most dreaded enemies. Christ stands in the open, con- cealing nothing, distorting nothing. He places a cross at the heart of His appeal for discipleship. We are called to build, from the deep foundations laid in silence within the soul, upward through thought and purpose and deed, gathering material from each experience, until at last, the spiritual structure stands in the light, beyond the power of assault from without or treachery from within its walls, " a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." Life is a process—not a finished creation. We have ample material entrusted to us for the making of character in the powers and faculties of our nature; and, in the deep mystery of God's Will, it is allowed to each to make almost any use he pleases of that endowment. One labours, through all the days, to fashion for himself and of himself a market-place, where each thoroughfare and centre bears the impress of buying and selling; another builds a sanctuary, which has " for weary feet the gift of peace; " others are inchoate and inconsistent as if to-day they meant one thing, to-morrow another. The soul that has no abiding loyalties, but alters to suit the altering tastes of each day, i... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.