"I would recommend you to embrace every possible season of retirement for reading the Holy Scriptures, especially those parts which are suited to your case, and accompany your reading with prayer. God's Word hid in the heart is not only a preservative against sin, but a restorative from its evil effects. It both wounds and heals; if it rebukes, it is with the faithfulness of a friend, or if it consoles, its consolations will melt us into contrition. "Read especially those parts of Scripture which are addressed to persons in your situation, as the second chapter of Jeremiah; or those which express the desires of a returning sinner, as the twenty-fifth, thirty-second, thirty-eighth, fifty-first, and hundred and thirtieth Psalms. You may not be able to adopt all this language as your own; but, nevertheless, it may be useful. To read the genuine expressions of a contrite heart, may produce at least a conviction of the disparity between the frame of mind possessed by the writer and yourself; and such a conviction may be accompanied with a sensation of shame and grief. "It is also of importance that you read the Scriptures _by yourself_. To read a portion of them in your families is right, and ought not to be neglected; but there is a great difference, as to personal advantage, between this and reading them alone. Your mind may then be more at liberty for reflection; you can read, and pause, and think, and apply the subject to your case. "It is of still greater importance to unite prayer with it. Reading the Word of God and prayer are duties which mutually assist each other: the one furnishes us with confessions, pleas, and arguments, while the other promotes solemnity and spirituality of mind, which goes farther towards our understanding of the Scriptures than a library of expositions. "It was in one of these seasons of retirement that David put up this petition, 'I have gone astray like a lost sheep; seek thy servant, for I do not forget thy commandments.' He seems to have had in his thoughts the condition of a poor wandering sheep, that had left the flock and the rich pastures where it was wont to be led, ranging rather like a native of the woods, than one who had been used to be led, and fed, and protected by an owner. Bewildered by its own wanderings, entangled in the thorns and briars of the wilderness, and exposed to beasts of prey, it feels its forlorn condition, and bleats after the shepherd and the flock! Is there nothing in this that may suit your case? Yes, thou art the man! Thou hast gone astray like a lost sheep, got entangled in thine own corruptions, and knowest not how to find the way back; yet it may be thou hast not utterly lost the remembrance of those happy days before thou wert led to deviate from the right path. Let thy prayer then be directed, like that of the psalmist, to the good Shepherd of the sheep: 'Seek thy servant.'