Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 576
“While I was musing the fire burned.” Psalm 39:3.
OUR subject this evening will not stand in need of much preface. The Psalm may teach us that there are times when solitude is better than society and silence is wiser than speech. The company of sinners was a grief to David’s soul and because their converse was profane he chose, rather, to fly away from their midst—or if they must still continue in his presence, he determined that he would resolutely seal his lips. Touchingly he says, “I was dumb with silence (that is, utterly dumb), I held my peace, even from good.” This painful necessity soon proved to him a pleasing occasion. While he yielded himself up to the thoughts, the reveries and the pensive workings of his own heart, a sacred fire of devotion was kindled in his breast.
And, Brethren, whatever the circumstances of the Psalmist, you will all see that the exercise was profitable. And however peculiar the advantages of meditation at particular seasons, it may not be amiss for us to make it a common habit. Inverting a popular proverb, “What was one man’s medicine may be food for others,” there is much that is light and frothy in our ordinary communion. And our communications, one with another, soon grow frothy and insipid when we have no definite matter in hand. Whether, therefore, to free ourselves from the stress of business, or to escape from the temptations of idleness, let it be thought worthy of note that “musing” has sweet charms and calm reflection is capable of kindling a bright fire.
Our remarks will now run in two directions. First, we shall say something in praise of musing. And then, secondly, we shall supply you with some fuel to burn on the altar of your hearts.
I. First, then, LET US SAY SOMETHING IN PRAISE OF MUSING. We do not muse much in these days of ours. We are too busy. We are hurrying here and there, doing much and talking much, but thinking very little and spending but very little time, indeed, in the modesty of retirement—
“The calm retreat, the silent shade,” are things which we know very little about. We would be better men if we were more alone. And I suppose that we should do more good, after all, if with even less of active effort we spent more time in waiting upon God and gathering spiritual strength for labor in His service. Where lives there upon earth, in these days, a man who spends hour after hour of the day in meditation upon God? There may be such and if there is I wish that I had their acquaintance.
Where will you find giants such as those who lived in the Puritanical times, whose lips dropped pearls because they themselves had dived down deep in the fathomless ocean of mercy by the sweet aid of meditation? There may be such and I wish that it were our lot to sit under their ministry. But I fear that the most of us are so little in retirement—so seldom in communion with God in private and even when there, the communion is for so short a time—that we are but tiny dwarfs, and can never, while we live thus, attain to the stature of a perfect man in Christ Jesus.
The world has put a little letter before the word “musing,” and these are the days, not for musing, but for amusing. People will go anywhere for amusement. To muse is a strange thing to them and they think it dull and wearisome. Our good sires loved the quiet hour and loved it so well that they cherished those times which they could spend in musing as the most happy because they were the most peaceful seasons of their life. We drag such time off to execution in a moment and only ask men to tell us how we may kill it.
Now there is much virtue in musing, especially if we muse upon the best, the highest and the noblest of subjects. If we muse upon the things of which we hear and read in sacred Scripture, we shall do wisely. It is well to muse upon the things of God because we thus get the real nutriment out of them. A man who hears many sermons is not necessarily well-instructed in the faith. We may read so many religious books that we overload our brains and they may be unable to work under the weight of the great mass of paper and of printer’s ink. The man who reads but one book and that book his Bible, and then muses much upon it, will be a better scholar in Christ’s school than he who merely reads hundreds of books and muses not at all.
And he, too, who gets but one sermon in a day, though it is an ill habit to stay away from half our Sunday engagements and only go out once, yet, he who hears but one sermon in a day, if he meditates much upon it, will get far more out of it than he who hears two or three but meditates not! The Truth of God is something like the cluster of the vine—if you would have wine from it, you must bruise it—you must press and squeeze it many times. The bruisers’ feet must come down joyfully upon the bunches or else the juice will not flow. And they must leap and leap and leap again, and well tread the grapes, or else much of the precious liquid will be wasted.