do was, to give myself to the reading of the
word of God and to meditation on it, that thus my heart might be
comforted, encouraged, warned, reproved, instructed; and that thus,
by means of the word of God, whilst meditating on it, my heart might
be brought into experimental communion with the Lord. I began
therefore to meditate on the New Testament from the beginning early
in the morning. The first thing I did, after having asked in a few
words the Lord's blessing upon His precious word, was, to begin to
meditate on the word of God, searching, as it were, into every verse,
to get blessing out of it; not for the sake of the public ministry of
the Word; not for the sake of preaching on what I had meditated upon;
but for the sake of obtaining food for my own soul. The result I have
found to be almost invariably this, that after a very few minutes my
soul has been led to confession, or to thanksgiving, or to
intercession, or to supplication; so that, though I did not, as it
were, give myself to prayer, but to meditation, yet it turned almost
immediately more or less into prayer. When thus I have been for
awhile making confession, or intercession, or supplication, or have
given thanks, I go on to the next words or verse, turning all, as I
go on, into prayer for myself or others, as the Word may lead to it;
but still continually keeping before me, that food for my own soul is
the object of my meditation. The result of this is, that there is
always a good deal of confession, thanksgiving, supplication, or
intercession mingled with my meditation, and that my inner man almost
invariably is even sensibly nourished and strengthened, and that by
breakfast time, with rare exceptions, I am in a peaceful if not happy
state of heart. Thus also the Lord is pleased to communicate unto me
that, which either very soon after, or at a later time, I have found
to become food for other believers, though it was not for the sake of
the public ministry of the Word that I gave myself to meditation, but
for the profit of my own inner man. With this mode I have likewise
combined the being out in the open air for an hour, an hour and a
half, or two hours before breakfast, walking about in the fields, and
in the summer sitting for a little on the stiles, if I find it too
much to walk all the time.7 I find it very beneficial to my health to
walk thus for meditation before breakfast, and am now so in the habit
of using the time for that purpose, that w