miscellaneous reading, I shall comprehend the
following: Works on the prophecies, to be read in connection with
history; practical works on Christian character, experience and duty; on
the instruction of the young; illustrations of Scripture; on the natural
sciences; on health: to these you may add, occasionally, an interesting
book which may fall in your way, on subjects not included in this
enumeration. Keep in a course of reading a book on some one of the above
topics, and devote to it the leisure of one day in the week. The other
day, which I have recommended to be devoted to miscellaneous reading, I
would have you employ in reading newspapers and periodical publications.
If you find one day insufficient for this, you can keep by you a
newspaper, to fill up little broken intervals of time, which cannot well
be employed in regular study. Do not, however, read everything you find
in the newspapers, nor suffer yourself to acquire such a morbid appetite
for the exciting subjects discussed in them, as to tempt you to break in
upon your systematic course of reading. Newspapers and periodicals
contain much trash; and you may fritter away all your leisure upon them,
to the great injury of your mind and heart. Your chief object in reading
them should be, to preserve in your mind the history of your own times;
and to understand the subjects which interest the public mind; as well
as to observe the signs of the times, in relation to the progress of
Christ's kingdom.

I have sketched the above plan, hoping you may find it a useful guide in
the acquisition of knowledge. The work here laid out may seem so great,
at first sight, as to discourage you from making the attempt. But a
little calculation will remove every difficulty. If you read but twenty
pages in a day, at the close of the year you will have read a thousand
pages, under each of the above divisions; more than six thousand pages
in all. This would be equal to twenty volumes, of three hundred pages
each. Pursue this plan for ten years, and you will have read _two
hundred volumes_, containing _sixty thousand pages_. You can read twenty
pages in an hour, at least; and I think you will not say it is
impossible to spare this portion of time every day, for the purpose of
acquiring useful knowledge. Think what a vast amount may thus be
treasured up in the course of a few years! But you may not always be
able to obtain books, and keep them a sufficient length of time to
pursue