votion during morning
hours. The walls of his chamber were witnesses of his prayerfulness,--I
believe of his tears as well as of his cries. The pleasant sound of
psalms often issued from his room at an early hour. Then followed the
reading of the word for his own sanctification; and few have so fully
realized the blessing of the first Psalm. His leaf did not wither, for
his roots were in the waters. It was here, too, that he began to study
so closely the works of Jonathan Edwards,--reckoning them a mine to be
wrought, and if wrought, sure to repay the toil. Along with this
author, the _Letters of Samuel Rutherford_ were often in his hand.
Books of general knowledge he occasionally perused; but now it was
done with the steady purpose of finding in them some illustration of
spiritual truth. He rose from reading _Insect Architecture_, with the
observation, "God reigns in a community of ants and ichneumons, as
visibly as among living men or mighty seraphim!"

His desire to grow in acquaintance with Scripture was very intense;
and both Old and New Testament were his regular study. He loved to
range over the wide revelation of God. "He would be a sorry student of
this world," said he to a friend, "who should forever confine his gaze
to the fruitful fields and well-watered gardens of this cultivated
earth. He could have no true idea of what the world was, unless he had
stood upon the rocks of our mountains, and seen the bleak muirs and
mosses of our barren land; unless he had paced the quarter-deck when
the vessel was out of sight of land, and seen the waste of waters
without any shore upon the horizon. Just so, he would be a sorry
student of the Bible who would not know all that God has inspired; who
would not examine into the most barren chapters to collect the good
for which they were intended; who would not strive to understand all
the bloody battles which are chronicled, that he might find 'bread out
of the eater, and honey out of the lion.'"--(June 1836.)

His anxiety to have every possible help to holiness led him to notice
what are the disadvantages of those who are not daily stirred up by
the fellowship of more advanced believers. "I have found, by some
experience, that in the country here my watch does not go so well as
it used to do in town. By small and gradual changes I find it either
gains or loses, and I am surprised to find myself different in time
from all the world, and, what is worse, from the sun. The simp