My practice had been, at least for ten years, to give myself to prayer, after dressing in the morning. I often spent a quarter of an hour, or half an hour, on my knees, before being conscious of having derived comfort, encouragement, humbling of soul, etc.; and often, after having suffered much from wandering of mind, I only then began really to pray.

Now I see that the most important thing was to give myself to the reading of the word of God, and to meditation on it, that thus my heart might be comforted, encouraged, warned, reproved, instructed; and that, whilst meditating on the word of God, my heart might be brought into communion with the Lord. I began, therefore, to read and meditate on the word of God, searching as it were into every verse, to get blessing out of it; not for the sake of the public ministry of the Word, not for the sake of preaching on what I had meditated upon, but for the sake of obtaining food for my own soul. The result I have found to be almost invariably this, that my soul has been led to confession, or to thanksgiving, or to intercession, or to supplication ; so that, though I did not, as it were, give myself to prayer, but to meditation, yet it turned almost immediately more or less into prayer.