I opened my oldest Bible just now, to look for the accurate words of David about the killed lamb;—a small, closely, and very neatly printed volume it is, printed in Edinburgh by Sir D. Hunter Blair and J. Bruce, Printers to the King’s Most Excellent Majesty in 1816. Yellow, now, with age, and flexible, but not unclean, with much use, except that the lower corners of the pages at 8th of 1st Kings, and 32nd Deuteronomy are worn somewhat thin and dark, the learning of these two chapters having cost me much pains. My mother’s list of the chapters with which, learned every syllable accurately, she established my soul in life, has just fallen out of it. And as probably the sagacious reader has already perceived that these letters are written in their irregular way, among other reasons, that they may contain, as the relation may become apposite, so much of autobiography as it seems to me desirable to write, I will take what indulgence the sagacious reader will give me, for printing the list thus accidentally occurrent:— Exodus, chapters 15th and 20th. 2 Samuel ,, 1st, from 17th verse to the end. 1 Kings ,, 8th. Psalms 23rd, 32nd, 90th, 91st, 103rd, 112th, 119th, 139th. Proverbs ,, 2nd, 3rd, 8th, 12th. Isaiah ,, 58th. Matthew ,, 5th, 6th, 7th. Acts ,, 26th. 1 Corinthians ,, 13th, 15th. James ,, 4th. Revelation ,, 5th, 6th. And truly, though I have picked up the elements of a little further knowledge,—in mathematics, meteorology, and the like, in after life,—and owe not a little to the teaching of many people, this maternal installation of my mind in that property of chapters, I count very confidently the most precious, and, on the whole, the one essential part of all my education. For the chapters became, indeed, strictly conclusive and protective to me in all modes of thought; and the body of divinity they contain, acceptable through all fear or doubt: nor, through any fear or doubt or fault have I ever lost my loyalty to them, nor betrayed the first command in the one I was made to repeat oftenest, “Let not Mercy and Truth forsake Thee.” And at my present age of fifty-five, in spite of some enlarged observations of what modern philosophers call the Reign of Law, I perceive more distinctly than ever the Reign of a Spirit of Mercy and Truth,—infinite in pardon and purification for its wandering and faultful children, who have yet Love in their hearts; and altogether adverse and implacable to its perverse and lying enemies, who have resolute hatred in their hearts, and resolute falsehood on their lips.