Excerpt from Hours of Christian Devotion

The thought of labouring in this field of literature, however, was foreign to my mind until awakened by outward incidents. First of all, in the year 1826, when bowed down both in mind and body by long and severe indisposition, I began to write medita tions on passages of Scripture chiefly with a view to my own consolation. The task was never finished. During my second visit to England, I received a fresh impulse by becoming ao quainted with a work of which the plan appeared to me emi nently suited for family worship. It contained select portions of sacred Scripture, chiefly of a practical tendency, and one for every day of the year. Short solutions of the difficulties were given for the purpose of promoting insight into the meaning of the Word. There was then appended a meditation upon the text, and finally a prayer embodying, as vows to God, the resolu tions inspired by the subject. I still think that a devotional work executed according to such a plan is a real want of the Church of our native land still requiring to be supplied and I was stirred up repeatedly to think of composing a work of the sort. It was, however, the state of my eyesight, which for a length of time threatened to fail me, that proved the occasion of my writing the book which I now present to the Christian world. During the winter mornings and evenings I was prevented from pursuing my usual employments by candle-light, and it was then that, in quiet rumination, the plan of these Hours of Christian Devotion was matured. At the time, the danger of being compelled to re sign for several years, if not for ever, my vocation as professor, was constantly present to my mind; and if a season of affliction is not in general the most unfavourable for the production of a religious work, I may be permitted to indulge good hopes of the success of the present one, as not only the original conception but also the subsequent execution of it occupied what were very grave hours of my life.

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