Chapter 15. Concerning the Usefulness of Meditation
Chapter 15.
Concerning the Usefulness of Meditation Having answered these questions, I will next show the benefit and usefulness of meditation.
I don't know any duty that brings in greater income and revenue than this. It is reported about Thales,87 that he left the affairs of state to become a contemplating philosopher. O! If we knew the advantage which is gained by this duty, we would often retire from the noise and hurry of the world, so that we might give ourselves to meditation.
The benefit of meditation appears in seven particulars.
1. Meditation is an excellent means to profit by the word.
Reading may bring a truth into the head, but meditation brings it into the heart. It is better to meditate on one sermon than hear five. I observe many put up their protests in our congregations, complaining that they cannot profit; may not this be the chief reason: they don't chew the cud — they don't meditate on what they have heard. If an angel were to come from heaven and preach to men — no, if Jesus Christ himself were their preacher — they would never profit without meditation. It is the settling of the milk that makes it turn to cream; and it is the settling of a truth in the mind, that makes it turn to spiritual aliment.88 The bee sucks the flower, and then works it in the hive, and makes honey from it. Hearing a truth preached is the sucking of a flower; it must be worked in the hive of the heart by meditation, before it will turn to honey. There is a disease in children called rickets — when they have large heads, but their lower parts are small and do not thrive. I wish many of the professors in London didn't have spiritual rickets. For they have great heads and much knowledge, yet they don't thrive in godliness.
Their heart is faint, and their feet feeble; they don't work vigorously in the ways of God. And the cause of this disease is lack of meditation. Illumination without meditation makes us no better than devils. Satan is an angel of light, and yet he is black enough.
2. Meditation makes the heart serious, and then it is ever best. Meditation ballasts the heart. When the ship is ballasted, it isn't so quickly overturned by the wind. And when the heart is ballasted with meditation, it is not so quickly overturned with vanity.
Some Christians have light hearts: "his prophets are light," Zep 3.4. A light Christian will be blown into any opinion or vice. You may blow a feather any which way; well, there are many feathery Christians.
The devil no sooner comes with a temptation, than they are ready to catch fire. Now, meditation makes the heart serious. And God says of a serious Christian, as David said of Goliath's sword, "There is none like that, give it to me," (1Sam 21.9). Meditation consolidates a Christian. Solid gold is best; and the solid Christian is the only metal that will be acceptable with God. The more serious the heart grows, the more spiritual it becomes; and the more spiritual, the more it resembles the Father of spirits. When a man is serious, he is fittest for employment. The serious Christian is fittest for service, and it is meditation that brings the heart into this blessed frame.
3. Meditation is the bellows of the affections. Meditation hatches good affections, just as the hen hatches her young ones, by sitting on them. We light our affection at this fire of meditation:
"While I was musing, the fire burned," Psa 39.3. David was meditating on mortality, and see how his heart was affected by it, ver. 4: "Lord, make me to know my end and the measure of my days, what it is, that I may know how frail I am." The reason our affections are so chilled and cold in spiritual things, is because we don't warm ourselves more at the fire of meditation. Illumination makes us shining lamps, but meditation makes us burning lamps. What is it to know Christ only by speculation, and not by affection? It is the proper work of meditation to excite and inflame holy passions. What sparklings of love are in such a soul! When David had meditated on God's law, he could not fail to love it: "Oh how love I your law! It is my meditation all day long," Psa 119.97. When the spouse by meditation had viewed those singular beauties in her beloved, white and ruddy, she grew love-sick, Song 5.8. Galeatius Caraocialus, that famous marquis of Vico who had been much engaged in the
contemplation of Christ, breaks out into a holy pathos: Let their money perish with them, who esteem all the gold in the world worth one hour's communion with Jesus Christ!
4. Meditation fits us for holy duties. The musician first puts his instrument in tune, and then he plays a lesson. Meditation tunes the heart, and then it is fit for any holy service. As the sails are to the ship, so meditation is to our duty. It carries on the soul more swiftly.
(1) Meditation fits us for hearing. When the ground is softened by meditation, then it is fit for the plough and the seed. When the heart is softened by meditation, then is a fit time for the seed of the word to be sown in it.
(2) Meditation fits us for prayer. Prayer is the spiritual pulse of the soul, by which it beats strongly after God. There is no living without prayer. A man cannot live unless he breathes; no more can the soul live unless it breathes out its desires to God. Prayer ushers in mercy, and prayer sanctifies mercy, 1Tim 4.5. It makes mercy be mercy. Prayer has power over God, Hos 12.4.89 Prayer comes with letters of mandamus 90 to heaven, Isa 45.11. Prayer is the spiritual leech that sucks the poison of sin out of the soul. What a blessed duty, or shall I say privilege is prayer! Now, meditation is a help to prayer. Gerson calls it the nurse of prayer.
Meditation is like oil to the lamp; the lamp of prayer will soon go out unless meditation cherishes and supports it. Meditation and prayer are like two turtles; if you separate one, the other dies. A cunning angler observes the time and season when the fish bite best, and that is when he throws in his angle. When the heart is warmed by meditation, that is the best season to throw in the angle of prayer, and fish for mercy. After Isaac had been in the field meditating, he was fit for prayer when he came home. When the gun is full of powder, it is fittest to discharge. So when the mind is full of good thoughts, a Christian is fittest to discharge by prayer.
That is when he sends up whole volleys of sighs and groans to heaven.
Meditation has a double benefit in it: it pours in, and it pours out.
First it pours good thoughts into the mind, and then it pours those thoughts out again in prayer. Meditation first furnishes us with matter to pray, and then it furnishes us with a heart to pray,. "I was musing," says David, and the very next words are a prayer: "Lord make me know my end," (Psa 39.3-4). And, "I muse on the works of your hands, I stretch out my hands to you," Psa 143.5-6. The musing of his head made way for stretching out his hands in prayer.
When Christ was upon the mount, then he prayed. So too, when the soul is on the mount of meditation, it is then in tune for prayer.
Prayer is the child of meditation. Meditation leads the van,91 and prayer brings up the rear.
(3) Meditation fits us for humiliation. When David contemplated the works of creation — their splendour, harmony, motion, and influence — he lets the plumes of pride fall, and begins to have selfabasing thoughts: "When I consider the heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have ordained, What is man that you are mindful of him?" Psa 8.3-4.
5. Meditation is a strong antidote against sin. Most sin is committed for lack of meditation. Men sin through thoughtlessness and passion. Would they be so brutishly sensual as they are, if they seriously meditated on what sin is? Would they take this viper in their hand if they but considered the sting before? Sin puts a worm into the conscience, a sting into death, a fire into hell. If men meditated on this, that after all their dainty dishes, death will bring in the reckoning, and they must pay the reckoning in hell, then they would say as David did in another sense: "Let me not eat of their delicacies," Psa 141.4. The devil's apple has a bitter core in it. If men thought about this, surely it would put them into a cold sweat, and it would be like the angel's drawn sword to frighten them. Meditation is a golden shield to beat back sin. When Joseph's mistress tempted him to wickedness, meditation preserved him: "Why would I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?" (Gen 39.9) Meditation makes the heart like wet tinder: it will not take the devil's fire.
6. Meditation is a cure for covetousness. The covetous man is called an idolater, Col 3.5. Though he will not bow down to an idol, yet he worships graven images in another coin. Now, meditation is an excellent means to lessen our esteem of the world. Great things seem little to the one who stands high. If he could live among the stars, the earth would seem like nothing. For a Christian who stands high on the pinnacle of meditation, how all worldly things disappear and seem like nothing to him! He doesn't see in them what men of the world see. He has gotten into his tower, and heaven is his prospect. What is said of God, I may allude to with reverence: "He dwells on high; He humbles himself to behold the things done on the earth," Psa 113.5-6. The Christian who dwells on high by meditation, considers it humbling and abasing himself to look down upon the earth and behold things done in this lower region. Paul, whose meditations were sublime and seraphic, looked at things which were not seen, 2Cor 4.18. How he trampled upon the world! How he scorned it! "I am crucified to the world," Gal 6.14. It is as if he had said, It is too far below me to pay it any mind. He who is catching at a crown, will not fish for bait,92 as Cleopatra once said to Mark
Antony. A Christian who is elevated by holy meditation, will not set his heart where his feet should be — upon the earth.
7. Holy meditation banishes vain and sinful thoughts. It purifies the fancy: "How long will vain thoughts lodge within you?"
Jer 4.14. The mind is the shop or workhouse where sin is first framed. Sin begins at the thoughts. The thoughts are the first plotters and contrivers of evil. The mind and imagination is a stage where sin is first acted on. The malicious man mulls over sin in his thoughts; he contemplates revenge. The impure person mulls over concupiscence in his thoughts; he contemplates lust. The Lord humbles us for our contemplative wickedness: "If you have thought evil, lay your hand upon your mouth," Pro 30.32. How much sin men commit in the chamber of their imagination! Now, meditating on God's law would be a good means to banish these sinful thoughts. If David had carried the book of the law about with him, and meditated on it, he would
not have looked on Bathsheba with a lascivious eye, 2Sam 11.2. Holy meditation would have quenched that wild-fire of lust.
The word of God is pure, Psa 119.140. It is not only subjective, but effective. It is not only pure in itself, but it makes those pure who meditate on it. Christ whipped the buyers and sellers out of the temple, Joh 2.15. Holy meditation would whip out idle and vagrant thoughts, and not allow them to lodge in the mind. What is the reason the angels in heaven don't have a vain thought? They have sight of God; their eye is never off Him. If the eye of the soul were fixed on God by meditation, how [quickly] vain and impure thoughts would vanish! When that woman was in the tower, Jdg 9.53, and Abimelech came near the tower to enter it, she threw a millstone out of the tower upon him, and killed him. So too, when we have entered into the high tower of meditation, and sinful thoughts would come near to enter, we may throw a millstone upon them from this tower, and destroy them.
And thus you have seen the benefit of meditation.