[128:1] No. 195.
LETTER X.
ENGLISH READING.
MY DEAR NEPHEW,
When at Oxford, you will not have much time for any reading, excepting that which has some reference to your examination. During the vacations, however, which occupy about half the year, you are more at liberty, and will do well, as I have already suggested to you, to give a good deal of your leisure to increasing your acquaintance with the classical writers of your own language.
Both at Oxford and home, endeavour, on most days, to catch some little portion of time,—a quarter of an hour may be sufficient,—for religious reading. Melmoth’s “Great Importance of a Religious Life,” and the abridgment of Law’s “Serious Call,” adopted by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, are two of the best books that occur to me, for the purpose of impressing you with the absolute necessity, of giving religion the first place in your thoughts and your heart. You may read either of them through in an hour. Of the former, 42,000 copies were sold in the eighteen years preceding 1784. I mention this as an evidence of its popularity.
Some thirty years ago I was requested by a friend, to recommend some practical book to put into the hands of a young person. I named Nelson’s “Practice of True Devotion,” and have since seen no reason to alter my opinion. Let that be one of the first books that you make use of. If you read one chapter each day (and do not read more), it will last you about three weeks. After an interval of a year or so, go through it again.
Take next for this purpose Jeremy Taylor’s “Holy Living and Dying,” first reading (if you can borrow the book) what is said of this work by his highly-gifted and most amiable editor, Bishop Heber. One passage from Heber’s remarks I must allow myself to quote: “But I will not select, where all may be read with advantage, and can hardly be read without admiration. To clothe virtue in its most picturesque and attractive colouring; to enforce with all the terrors of the divine law, its essential obligations; and to distinguish, in almost every instance most successfully, between what is prudent and what is necessary; what may fitly be done, and what cannot safely be left undone;—this is the triumph of a Christian moralist; and this Jeremy Taylor has, in a great degree, achieved in his Discourse on Holy Living.” You will recollect that this book was written nearly two hundred years ago, and must not be surprised if you find a few expressions, and one or two sentiments, rather obsolete. One of the five rules which Taylor gives in his Dedication, “for the application of the counsels which follow,” applies to all books of a similar character. “They that will, with profit, make use of the proper instruments of virtue, must so live as if they were always under the physician’s hand. For the counsels of religion are not to be applied to the distempers of the soul, as men used to take hellebore; but they must dwell together with the spirit of a man, and be twisted about his understanding for ever: they must be used like nourishment, that is, by a daily care and meditation—not like a single medicine, and upon the actual pressure of a present necessity.”
The genuine spirit of Jeremy Taylor, with more correctness of taste, is found in that delightful book, “The Christian Year.” Read it repeatedly. It is every where full of poetry, and of the purest devotional feeling. The more you are imbued with the spirit which pervades that beautiful volume, the more fit you will be to have your part in “the communion of saints,” among the spirits of just men made perfect.
Archbishop Seeker’s Lectures on the Catechism, contain a body of divinity, doctrinal and practical, singularly judicious and useful. They are full of good sense and accurate information. The style, perhaps, is rather involved, and not very engaging; but you see a mind in full possession of its subject, anxious to put you in full possession of it also, without omitting any thing of importance.