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SubscribeMaster those books you have. Read them thoroughly. Bathe in them until they saturate you. Read and reread them, masticate and digest them. Let them go into your very self. Peruse a good book several times and make notes and analyses of it. A student will find that his mental constitution is more affected by one book thoroughly mastered than by twenty books he has merely skimmed. Little learning and much pride comes of hasty reading. Some men are disabled from thinking by putting their meditation away for the sake of much reading. In reading let your motto be “much, not many.”
- Charles Spurgeon, Encounter with Spurgeon by Helmut Thielecke, 197.
How necessary was it for Spurgeon to use “masticate” here? On reading and learning deeply and humbling oneself before a subject (particularly relating to theology), see Helmut Thielecke’s little book: A Little Exercise for Young Theologians.