into prose, and then imagine how beautiful
these must be in the original.--May you be enabled by reading them
frequently, to transfuse into your own breast that holy flame which
inspired the writer!--To delight in the Lord, and in his laws, like the
Psalmist--to rejoice in him always, and to think "one day in his courts
better than a thousand!"--But may you escape the heart-piercing sorrow
of such repentance as that of David--by avoiding sin, which humbled this
unhappy king to the dust--and which cost him such bitter anguish, as it
is impossible to read of without being moved.

42. Not all the pleasures of the most prosperous sinners, could
counterbalance the hundredth part of those sensations described in his
penitential psalms--and which must be the portion of every man, who has
fallen from a religious state into such crimes, when once he recovers a
sense of religion and virtue, and is brought to a real hatred of sin.
However, available such repentance may be to the safety and happiness of
the soul after death, it is a state of such exquisite suffering here,
that one cannot be enough surprised at the folly of those who indulge
sin, with the hope of living to make their peace with God by repentance.

43. Happy are they who preserve their innocence unsullied by any great
or wilful crimes, and who have only the common failings of humanity to
repent of, these are suffiently mortifying to a heart deeply smitten
with the love of virtue, and with the desire of perfection.

44. There are many very striking prophecies of the Messiah in these
divine songs, particularly in psalm xxii. Such may be found scattered up
and down almost throughout the Old Testament. To bear testimony to
_him_, is the great and ultimate end for which the spirit of prophecy
was bestowed on the sacred writers;--but, this will appear more plainly
to you when you enter on the study of prophecy, which you are now much
too young to undertake.

_Of the Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Solomon's Song, the Prophecies, and
Apocrypha._

45. The Proverbs and Ecclesiastes are rich stores of wisdom; from which
I wish you to adopt such maxims as may be of infinite use, both to your
temporal and eternal interest. But, detached sentences are a kind of
reading not proper to be continued long at a time; a few of them, well
chosen and digested, will do you much more service, than to read half a
dozen chapters together: in this respect, they are directly opposite to
the hist