Read with Understanding!

To read is important; to read with understanding much more so.

Charles Bridges (1794-1869) cautions: “No man can read everything; nor would our real store be increased by the capacity to do so. The digestive powers would be overloaded for want of time to act, and uncontrolled confusion would reign within. It is far more easy to furnish our library than our understanding.”  Therefore, Bridges argues, the quality of what we read is more important than the quantity, and for reading to have it’s greatest value, it must have as its companions “reflection, conversation and composition.”

– Charles Bridges, The Christian Ministry (1830; Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1991), 46-47.