“I have sent you a Bible for a New Year’s gift, in the hope that with the New Year you will begin the custom of reading, morning and night, the Psalms and Lessons for the day. It is far from my wish that this should be imposed as a necessary and burthensome observance, or that you should feel dissatisfied and uneasy at omitting it, when late hours or other accidental circumstances render it inconvenient. Only let it be your ordinary custom. You will one day understand feelingly how beneficially the time has been employed.
| 158 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 48. |
“The way which I recommend is, I verily believe, the surest way of profiting by the Scriptures. In the course of this easy and regular perusal, the system of religion appears more and more clear and coherent, its truths are felt more intimately, and its precepts and doctrines reach the heart as slow showers penetrate the ground. In passages which have repeatedly been heard and read, some new force, some peculiar meaning, some home application which had before been overlooked, will frequently come out, and you will find, in thus recurring daily to the Bible, as you have done among the lakes and mountains which you love so well, in the Word of God, as in his works, beauties and effects, and influences as fresh as they are inexhaustible. I say this from experience. May God bless the book to the purpose for which it is intended! and take you with it, my dear dear child, the blessing of
