(4.) Under the head of miscellaneous reading, I shall comprehend the following:  Works on the prophecies, to be read in connection with history; practical works on Christian character, experience and duty; on the instruction of the young; illustrations of Scripture; on the natural sciences; on health:  to these you may add, occasionally, an interesting book which may fall in your way, on subjects not included in this enumeration.  Keep in a course of reading a book on some one of the above topics, and devote to it the leisure of one day in the week.  The other day, which I have recommended to be devoted to miscellaneous reading, I would have you employ in reading newspapers and periodical publications.  If you find one day insufficient for this, you can keep by you a newspaper, to fill up little broken intervals of time, which cannot well be employed in regular study.  Do not, however, read everything you find in the newspapers, nor suffer yourself to acquire such a morbid appetite for the exciting subjects discussed in them, as to tempt you to break in upon your systematic course of reading.  Newspapers and periodicals contain much trash; and you may fritter away all your leisure upon them, to the great injury of your mind and heart.  Your chief object in reading them should be, to preserve in your mind the history of your own times; and to understand the subjects which interest the public mind; as well as to observe the signs of the times, in relation to the progress of Christ’s kingdom.

I have sketched the above plan, hoping you may find it a useful guide in the acquisition of knowledge.  The work here laid out may seem so great, at first sight, as to discourage you from making the attempt.  But a little calculation will remove every difficulty.  If you read but twenty pages in a day, at the close of the year you will have read a thousand pages, under each of the above divisions; more than six thousand pages in all.  This would be equal to twenty volumes, of three hundred pages each.  Pursue this plan for ten years, and you will have read two hundred volumes, containing sixty thousand pages.  You can read twenty pages in an hour, at least; and I think you will not say it is impossible to spare this portion of time every day, for the purpose of acquiring useful knowledge.  Think what a vast amount may thus be treasured up in the course of a few years!  But you may not always be able to obtain books, and keep them a sufficient length of time to pursue the above plan strictly.[K] In such case, you can vary it to suit your circumstances and convenience.  But always have a regular system.  You will find it very profitable to take notes in writing of such thoughts as occur to your own mind, in the course of your reading; and particularly of the several points to be noted in history, and of the practical lesson which you learn from biography.  And you ought always to give sufficient time to your reading to enable you to understand it thoroughly.