Meditation and usefulness promote joy (James Morgan)

[Reformed Covenanter]

[R]eligious joy is greatly promoted by deep meditation, joined with active usefulness. These are united, because either is incomplete without the other, and together they produce a happy consummation.

James Morgan, ‘The Fruit of the Spirit – Joy’, Christian Miscellany, 1, no. 11 (12 March 1842), p. 83.

 

[Solparvus]

I had recently read In Thomas Watson on the Lord's Prayer how the devil specially intends to hinder meditation. See below:

"[The devil] will let men profess, or pray and hear in a formal manner, which does him no hurt and them no good, but he opposes meditation, as being a means to compose the heart and make it serious. He can stand your small shot, if you do not put in this bullet. He cares not how much you hear or how little you meditate. Meditation is chewing the cud, it makes the word digest and turn to nourishment; it is the bellows of the affections. The devil is an enemy to this. When Christ is alone in the wilderness, giving himself to divine contemplations, the devil comes and tempts him, to hinder him. He will thrust in worldly business, something or other to keep men off from holy meditation."

Richard Baxter at the beginning of his directions on meditation:

"Once more I entreat thee, Reader, as thou makest conscience of a revealed duty, and darest not willfully resist the Spirit; as thou valuest the high delights of a saint, and the soul-ravishing exercise of heavenly contemplation; that thou diligently study, and speedily and faithfully practise, the following directions. If, by this means, thou dost not find an increase of all thy graces, and dost not grow beyond the stature of common Christians, and art not made more serviceable in thy place, and more precious in the eyes of all discerning persons; if thy soul enjoy not more communion with God, and thy life be not fuller of comfort, and hast it not readier by thee at a dying hour: then cast away these directions, and exclaim against me for ever as a deceiver."

 

[ZackF]

These are helpful. The longer I've been Reformed the more I enjoy learning about the rich tradition of meditation. Meditation doesn't need to be abandoned to Roman Catholicism and then New Age.