Chapter 18. Prescribing Six Rules About Meditation
Chapter 18.
Prescribing Six Rules About Meditation Rule 1. When you go to meditate, be very serious in the work. Let there be a deep impression upon your soul. And so that you may be serious in mentation,99 do these two things:
1. Get yourself into a posture of holy reverence. Overawe your heart with thoughts of God, and the incomprehensibleness of His majesty. When you are at the work of meditation, remember that you are now to deal with God. If an angel from heaven was appointed to meet you at such an hour, wouldn't you address yourself to meet him with all seriousness and solemnity? Behold, one greater than an angel is here: the God of glory is present. He has an eye upon you; he sees the carriage of your heart when you are alone. Think to yourself, O Christian, when you go to meditate, you are dealing in private with the one whom angels adore, and before whom devils tremble. Think to yourself that you are now in the presence of the one before whom you must shortly stand, and all the world with you, to receive their doom. You must be removed from the closet to the tribunal, and you don't know how soon.
2. So that your heart may be serious in meditation, labour to possess your thoughts with the solemnity and greatness of the work that you are now going about doing. As David said concerning his building a house for God, "the work is great," 1Chr 29.1. So it may be said of meditation, that the work is great. And we need to gather and rally together all the powers of the soul to the work. If you were to set about a business in which your life was concerned, how serious you would be in thoughts of it! In the business of meditation, your soul is concerned — eternity depends upon it. If you neglect or slight it, you run a hazard of your salvation. If Archimedes was so serious in drawing his mathematical line, that he didn't pay attention to the sacking of the city, oh how serious a Christian should be when he is drawing a line for eternity! When you go to meditate, you are going about the greatest work in the world.
Rule 2. Read before you meditate. "This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth, but you shall meditate on it," Jos 1.8.
The law must be in Joshua's mouth; he was first to read, and then to meditate. "Give attendance to reading," 1Tim 4.13. Then it follows,
"meditate on these things," ver. 15. Reading furnishes with matter; it is the oil that feeds the lamp of meditation. Reading helps to rectify meditation. Austin says well that meditation without reading will be erroneous. By nature, the mind is defiled as well as the conscience,
Tit 1.15. And so the mind will be minting 100 thoughts, and how many untruths it mints! Therefore, first read in the book of the law, and then meditate on it. Be sure your meditations are grounded upon scripture. There is a strange Utopia in the imaginations of some men.
They take for true principles, those which are false; and if they mistake their principles, they will necessarily be wrong in their meditations. Someone who is of the Sadducees' opinion that there is no resurrection, mistakes a principle. Now, while he is meditating on this, he is carried to direct atheism in the end. Someone who is of the Antinomians' opinion that there is no law for a justified person, mistakes a principle. And while he is meditating on this, he falls into scandal in the end. Thus the mind having lain in wrong principles, and taking for a truth that which is not true, the meditation will necessarily be erroneous. And so a man goes to hell in the end, based upon a mistake.
Therefore, be sure you read before you meditate, so that you may say, it is written. Meditate on nothing except what you believe to be a truth; and believe nothing to be a truth, except what can show its letters of credence from the word. Observe this rule: let reading usher in meditation. Reading without meditation is unfruitful; meditation without reading is dangerous.
Rule 3. Do not multiply the subjects of meditation. That is, do not meditate on too many things at once, like the bird that hops from one bough to another, and stays nowhere. Rather, single out some head, one at a time, which you will meditate on. Too much variety distracts. One truth driven home by meditation will most kindly affect the heart. A man who is to shoot, sets up one target that
he aims to hit. When you shoot your mind above the world by meditation, set one thing before you to hit. If you are to meditate on the passion of Christ, then let that take up all your thoughts. If it is on death, confine your thoughts to that. One subject at a time is enough. Martha, while she was distracted about many things, neglected the one thing (Luk 10.42). So while our meditations are taken up about many things, we lose that one thing which should affect our hearts and do us more good. Drive only one wedge of meditation at a time, and be sure you drive it home to the heart.
Those who aim at a whole flock of birds hit none. When several medicines are applied together, the one hinders the virtue of the others; whereas a single medicine might do good.
Rule. 4. To meditation join self-examination. When you have been meditating on any spiritual subject, put a query to your soul, and even if it is short, let it be serious: 'O my soul! Is it this way with you or not?' When you have been meditating about the fear of God, that it is the "beginning of wisdom," Pro 1.7, put a query to it: 'O my soul! Is this fear planted in your heart? You have almost come to the end of your days. Have you come to the beginning of wisdom yet?'
When you have been meditating on Christ — his virtues, his privileges — put a query: 'O my soul! Do you love Him who is so lovely?' (Song 5.16) 'Are you grafted into Him?' (Rom 11.17) 'Are you a living branch of this living vine?' (Joh 15.5) When you have been meditating on the graces of the Spirit, put a query: 'O my soul! Are you adorned as the bride of Christ with this chain of pearl?' (Isa
61.10) 'Do you have your certificate for heaven ready?' (Phi 3.20) Will you still be seeking your graces, when you should already have them to show? A Christian in his retirements should parley often with his heart in this way.
For lack of this examination, meditation evaporates and comes to nothing. For lack of examination joined with meditation, many are strangers to their own hearts. Though they live as known to others, they die unknown to themselves. Meditation is like a perspective glass by which we contemplate heavenly objects; but selfexamination is like a looking-glass 101 by which we see into our own
souls, and can judge how it is with us. Meditation joined with examination, is like the sun on the dial, which shows how the day goes. It shows us how our hearts stand affected toward spiritual things.
Rule 5. Close your meditation with prayer. Pray over your meditations. Prayer sanctifies everything (1Tim 4.5). Without it, they are but unhallowed meditations. Prayer fastens meditation upon the soul. Prayer is tying a knot at the end of meditation, so that it doesn't slip. Pray that God will keep those holy meditations in your mind forever, that the savour of them may abide in your hearts. "O Lord
God of Abraham, Isaac, and of Israel our fathers, keep this forever in the imagination of the thoughts of the heart of your people," 1Chr
29.18. So let us pray that when we have been musing on heavenly things, and our hearts have grown hot within us, we may not cool into a sinful tepidness and lukewarmness; but rather that our affections may be like the lamp of the sanctuary, always burning.
Rule 6. The last rule is, let meditation be reduced to practice. Live out your meditation. "You shall meditate on this book, so that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it," Jos 1.8. Meditation and practice, like two sisters, must go hand in hand. Cassian 102 says that the contemplative life cannot be perfected without the practice. We read that the angels had wings, and hands under their wings, Eze 1.8. It may be a hieroglyphic emblem of this truth: Christians must not only fly on the wing of meditation, but they must be active in obedience. They must have "hands under their wings." The end of meditation is action. We must not only meditate on God's law, but walk in his law, Deu 28.9.103 Without this, we are like those gnostics of whom Epithanius 104 complains: they had much knowledge, but were licentious in their lives. Christians must be like the sun, which not only sends out heat, but makes its circuit round the world. It is not enough that the affections are heated by meditation, but we must make our circuit too — that is, move regularly in the sphere of obedience. After warming at the fire of meditation, we must be fitter for work. Meditation is the life of religion, and practice is the life of meditation. It is said to the
honour of Nazianzen,105 that he lived out his own sermons. So a good Christian must live out his own meditations.
For instance:
1. When you have been meditating on sin — which for its bitterness is compared to grapes of gall, and for its damnableness is compared to the poison of asps — and you begin to burn in a holy indignation against sin, now put your meditations into practice: give sin a bill of divorce. "If iniquity is in your hand, put it far away, and do not let wickedness dwell in your tabernacles," Job 11.14.
2. When you have been meditating on the graces of the Spirit, let the verdure 106 and lustre of these graces be seen in you. Live these graces. Meditate, "that you may observe and do." This was Paul's counsel to Timothy: "exercise yourself unto godliness," 1Tim 4.7.
Meditation and practice are like a pair of compasses; the one part of the compass fixes upon the centre, and the other part goes round the circumference. A Christian by meditation fixes upon God as the centre, and by practice he goes round the circumference of the commandments. A man who has let his thoughts run off upon riches, will not only have the idea of them, but he will endeavour to get those riches. Let your meditations be practical. When you have been meditating upon a promise, live upon that promise. When you have been meditating on a good conscience, never leave till you can say as Paul did, "In this I exercise myself, to have a good conscience," Act
24.16. Beloved, here lies the very essence of religion.
That this rule may be well observed, consider, 1. It is only the practical part of religion that will make a man blessed. Meditation is a beautiful flower, but Rachel said to her husband, "Give me children, or I die," Gen 30.1. So, if meditation is barren and doesn't bring forth the child of obedience, then it will die and come to nothing.
2. If when you have meditated on God's law, you don't obey His law, then you will come short of those who have come short of heaven. It is said of Herod, that "he did many things," Mar 6.20. He was in many things a practiser of John's ministry. Those who meditate in God's law, and do not observe to do it, are not even as
good as Herod. Indeed, they are no better than the devil; for he knows much, but he is still a devil.
3. Meditation without practice will increase a man's condemnation.
If a father writes a letter to his son, and the son reads over this letter, studies it, and yet will not observe to do as his father writes, that would be an aggravation of his fault, and it would only provoke his father that much more against him.
Thus we have meditated on the evil of sin, and the beauty of holiness.
Yet, if we don't avoid the one, or espouse the other, it will only incense the Divine Majesty that much more against us, and we will
"be beaten with many stripes." (Luk 12.47)