nd learn a lesson from the meadow
kine who chew the tender grasses, and turn them over, and chew them
again, till they have extracted sweetness and life therefrom. Chew
the words of this book over and over again (it is impossible to do
so with any other book), meditate upon the words (to meditate, to
reflect, are highest functions), mediate upon their meaning--upon
their direct and cognate meanings; let the thoughts they suggest
find full and free reaction in thy soul, and from some simple word
or phrase thou shalt draw the sweetness of divine love, and more and
more the consciousness that thou hast received into thine innermost
being very spirit and very life.

Read it on bended knee. Take up the words and breathe on them with
the warm breath of sincere desire to know their intent, and music
will come forth as from the fabled horn of old--music that shall
have in it all the hallelujahs and hosannas of the heavenly host.

If you will take this book to your heart, you will find it bread
such as kings' ovens never baked, water more crystal than that which
bursts from mountain springs, wine the like of which was never
pressed from purple grapes, meat which cattle on a thousand hills
never furnished, and fruit no man ever gathered in royal gardens--
the fruit of the Spirit. You will find it a lamp unto your feet and
a light unto your path, a hammer for breaking the flinty rocks by
the way, a fire that will burn out the stain of sin, and warm
benumbed fingers for quickened service in His Name.

Give it the first place in your life. You will want to hear from it
as the last thing when you go hence. The words of loved ones will be
sweet in your ear as you leave these mortal shores (if our Lord
Jesus Christ should not hasten his coming, you must go), but you
will want to hear its utterance above all the tones, even of those
you love, speaking the final word of hope and cheer to you.

Be very patient with it. It has great things to say to you--and you
will not always be fit to hear them. You will not always--at the
first--be able to understand them; but if you do not understand to
-day, to-morrow, or other morrows after that, it will speak to you
and you shall fully know. Perhaps it will wait till the unshed tears
are in your heart, and the moan the common ear has never heard--then
it will speak--and the words will fall into the sore place of the
soul, as though angel lips had touched it; it will wait, perhaps,
till the sto