The first way of self-entertainment is the ordinance of reading and searching the Holy Scriptures, the pure, perfect, and infallible word and will of Christ concerning us. There Christ has prepared His rich feast of fat things full of marrow, and His royal banquet of heavenly truths. There He sets forth the great varieties of sure directions, precious promises, high examples, rare experiences, and the help of all His holy ordinances, to feed and satiate the hungry and thirsty spirit.The second way of self-entertainment is divine meditation, by either pondering of spiritual things, for improving knowledge and exciting practice, or by a weighing all other things whatever, for reducing them to a spiritual end and use.
The third way of self-entertainment is private praying, such as is both founded on and bounded by Christ's will in His word; such as is both prepared and assisted, made wise and warm, by serious meditation.
Meditation stands between the two ordinances of reading and praying as the grand improver of the former and the high quickener of the latter, to furnish the mind with choice materials for prayer, and to fill the heart with holy fervency in it.
Natural philosophers observe that to uphold and accommodate bodily life, there are diverse sorts of faculties communicated, and these among the rese
1. An attractive faculty, to assume and draw in the food.
2. A retentive faculty, to keep it, being taken in.
3. An assimilating faculty, to concoct the nourishment.
4. An augmenting faculty, for drawing to perfection.
1. Meditation is as the attractive faculty, to help to assume and take in spiritual food. This it does by helping to act judgment, wisdom, and faith, to ponder, discern, and credit the things which reading and hearing supply and furnish.
2. It is like the retaining faculty, by assisting and corroborating the memory, helping to lock up the jewels of divine truths sure in that treasury. Meditation makes a rational memory of things, which is the surest. There is in man a sensitive memory, in which he participates with sensitive natures such as beasts; they have a kind of memory. There is also an intellectual or rational memory, wherein man partakes of the like nature with angels; they have their faculty of memory. Meditation superadds to the sensitive memory the help also of a rational memory, whereby spiritual things are secured as under double lock: what we rationally remember is best remembered.
3. It is like the assimilating or digesting power, by helping to concoct spiritual food and turn it into spiritual nourishment. This it helps to effect by being instrumental to work things more powerfully on the will, in a free choice, firm purpose, and ready obedience of the excellent truths of Christ; and likewise by working on and into the affections of love, joy, and the rest, to cleave unto and be inflamed toward the things of Christ. A spiritual digestion is not by head work, but heart work, when the will deliberately and resolvedly chooses, and the affections earnestly embrace heavenly things. Meditation highly conduces to this spiritual digestion by its pondering, proposing, and edging efficaciously such reasons and incentives as work the heart into compliance and obedience.
It is like lastly, the augmenting and growing faculty, to help the good heart to grow better and shoot up higher heavenward. The true Christian must grow all this lifetime. Natural things grow by new assumed nourishment, acted upon by the inward growing power. The real godly man has an inward growing power, implanted by the new life given to him- but this, as by other means, so by frequent meditation is much assisted and carried on. Meditation waters and cherishes the plants of heavenly graces. It helps them to root deeper, shoot higher, and grow stronger. Such Christians as meditate most will grow most, be growing to the end.
What in all Christianity is there that meditation is not a furtherance to?
That saying is excellent, worthy of duest weighing: "The meditating mind is the beginner of all goodness." On a sinner's part, it is the rise of his initial returning to God, of his first converting. In the saints and persons converted, it is their way to progressive converting and renewed repentance, Ezekiel 18:28. "I considered my ways, and turned my feet unto Your testimonies," Psalm 119:59. The more consideration, the more conversion. The great inlet of man's first apostasy (besides infidelity and pride) was his incogitance. Our first parents lost all for want of due thinking-- not want of acting imagination, or any thinking, that could not be-- but for want of that consideration which should have been. They did not consider all things to be considered.
The overflowings of impiety, aggravated by impenitence, and men's rushings into sin so eagerly and boldly have been greatly from want of consideration. "No man repented him of his wickedness, saying, What have I done? Everyone turned to his course, as the horse rushes into the battle," Jeremiah 8:6. Their not-returnings were from neglect of self-reflectings. In any nation, when God intends to work great returnings, He stirs up that people to self-bethinkings: "If they shall bethink themselves," 1 Kings 8:47. He reminds them of considering to bring them to returning. So a particular person, when he first comes in to God, he comes first to himself, and that is by consideration and self-bethinking, as the prodigal, Luke 15:17.
In natures rational, the first mover is the mind, by consideration; in grace, the first moves is the mind, by holy meditation. The Christian that would set all the wheels of the soul going and improve-- that would do great things and have great attainments, great things effected on the heart and in the life, much light and wisdom, much warmth and fervor, high resolution and courage, large proficiency in godliness--must be much in meditation.
The greatest scholars in the world have not been only great readers, but great students in musing and pondering. The most eminent saints in all ages have been this way excellent: as Job, David, Solomon, and others in the Scriptures; as Cyprian, Ambrose, Augustine, and other saints in succeeding ages...
The present age is full of books: there are books too many, and yet too few. Knowledge and wisdom will never in this world be perfect, yet we must ever tend to perfection and press hard to the mark.
Nathaniel Ranew
Excerpted from the Introduction to Solitude Improved by Divine Meditations
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