“In his law he doth meditate day and night.” By day he gets little intervals of time to read it, so he steals from his nightly rest moments in which to meditate upon it. Reading reaps the wheat, meditation threshes it, grinds it, and makes it into bread. Reading is like the ox feeding: meditation is it digesting when chewing the cud. It is not only reading that does us good; but the soul inwardly feeding an it, and digesting it. A preacher once told me that he had read the Bible through twenty times on his knees and had never found the doctrine of election there. Very likely not. It is a most uncomfortable position in which to read. If he ‘had sat in an easy chair he would have been better able to understand it. To read on one’s knees is like a Popish penance Besides, he read in the wrong way. If instead of twenty times galloping through he had read once and pondered continually, probably he would have seen clearer than he evidently did. It is said of some horses that they “bolt their oats.” This good brother was “bolting” Holy Scripture, and so getting little nutriment out of it. The inward meditation is the thing that makes the soul rich towards God. This is the godly man’s occupation. Put the spice into the mortar by reading, beat it with the pestle of meditation, so shall the sweet perfume be exhaled.
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