3. Then, while you read,--safe from the risk of interruption, (as I began by supposing,) and with every faculty intent on your task,--try, as much as possible, to go over the words as if they were new to you; and watch them, one by one, so that nothing may by any possibility escape your notice. Do not slumber over a single word. Nothing can be unimportant when it is the HOLY GHOST who speaketh. It is an excellent practice to mark the expressions which strike you; for it is a method of preserving the memory of what is sure else soon to pass away. 4. And next, be persuaded to read without extraneous helps of any kind; except, of course, such help as a map, or the margin of your Bible, supplies. Pray avoid Commentaries and notes. First, you cannot afford time for them: and secondly, if you could, they would be as likely to mislead you as not. But the real reason why you are so strenuously advised to avoid them, is, because they will do more to nullify your reading, than anything which could be imagined. Your object is to obtain an insight into Holy Scripture, by acquiring the habit of reading it with intelligence and care: _not_ to be saved trouble, and to be shown what _other persons_ have thought about it. 5. But then, though you are entreated not to have recourse to the notes of others, you are as strongly advised to make brief memoranda of your own: and the briefer the better. Construct _your own_ table of the Patriarchs,--_your own_ analysis of the Law,--_your own_ descent of the Kings,--_your own_ enumeration of the Miracles. A pedigree full of faults, made by yourself, will do you more good than the most accurate table drawn up by another: but if you are at all attentive and clever, _it will not be_ full of faults.--_You_ will perhaps make the parables 56 instead of 30: you will have gained 26 by your honest industry. Nay, keep a record of your difficulties, if you please; or of anything which strikes you, and which you would be sorry to forget. But, as a rule, it is well to write little, and to give your time and thought to the record before you. 6. Above all, is it indispensable that your reading of the Bible should be strictly consecutive; and on no account may any one pretend to begin such a study of that book as I am here recommending, except at _the first Chapter of Genesis_. It is a great mistake, (though one of the commonest of all,) for a man to imagine that he knows the beginning of the Bible pretty well. I say it advisedly, that it would be easy to write down twelve interesting questions on that first chapter, of which none of the younger men present would be able to answer three,--and yet, they should all be questions of such a sort that a labouring man's child with an open Bible would be able infallibly to answer them every one.