After
our chapters, (from two to three a day, according to their length, the
first thing after breakfast, and no interruption from servants
allowed,--none from visitors, who either joined in the reading or had to
stay upstairs,--and none from any visitings or excursions, except real
travelling), I had to learn a few verses by heart, or repeat, to make
sure I had not lost, something of what was already known; and, with the
chapters thus gradually possessed from the first word to the last, I had
to learn the whole body of the fine old Scottish paraphrases, which are
good, melodious, and forceful verse; and to which, together with the
Bible itself, I owe the first cultivation of my ear in sound.
It is strange that of all the pieces of the Bible which my mother thus
taught me, that which cost me most to learn, and which was, to my
child's mind, chiefly repulsive--the 119th Psalm--has now become of all
the most precious to me, in its overflowing and glorious passion of love
for the Law of God, in opposition to the abuse of it by modern preachers
of what they imagine to be His gospel.
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