THE SHORT COURSE SERIES

Edited by Rev. John Adams, B.D.

A Mirror of the Soul

Short Studies in the Psalter

By Rev. John Vaughan, M.A.

Chapter 3 THE GRACE OF MEDITATION

IN his beautiful and sympathetic book on the Christian Hermits, Charles Kingsley thus speaks of the value of the habit of meditation : — " We must remember," he says, "that without solitude, without contemplation, without habitual collection and recollection of our own selves from time to time, no great purpose is carried out, and no great work can be done; and that it is the bustle and hurry of our modern life which causes shallow thought, unstable purpose, and wasted energy, in too many who would be better and wiser, stronger and happier, if they would devote more time to silence and meditation; if they would commune with their own heart in their chamber, and be still."1

1. ITS RECOGNITION IN ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY.

It is a practice which was recognised and carried out by the old pagan philosophers. The maxim, "Know thyself," was held in true reverence. Pythagoras urged his disciples to examine themselves every night before they retired to rest. Seneca tells us that he adopted the custom from one Sextius, who, " when the day was over, and he betook himself to his nightly rest, used to ask him self, what evil have you cured to-day? What vice have you resisted? In what particular have you improved? " " I, too, adopt this plan," said Seneca, "and I daily plead my cause with myself, when the light has been taken away, and my wife, who is now aware of my habit, has become silent; I carefully consider in my heart the entire day, and take a deliberate estimate of my deeds and words." So with Marcus Aurelius, the noblest of the pagan emperors, perhaps, as Lecky says,2 " as nearly a perfectly virtuous man as has ever appeared upon our world." In his Meditations, he remarks3 that men seek retreats for themselves, houses in the country, the sea shore, or mountains — how modern this all sounds — but that every wise man has "a little territory of his own," into which, when ever he chooses, he can retire. It is the little territory of his own heart. " Retire," he says, " into thyself." Like St. Augustine,4 in after days, he made a practice of "going up into the tribunal of his own conscience and setting himself before himself." He was ever, in the language of Tennyson,5 bearing about —

" A silent court of justice in his breast,

Himself the judge and jury, and himself

The prisoner at the bar."

There is need, in this age, of the admonition to silence and quiet recollection. It is an age of hurry and excitement. The simple life which satisfied our forefathers no longer satisfies us. The craving for amusement has infected all classes of society. Of some persons, indeed, it may be said —

"They see all sights from pole to pole,

They glance, and nod, and bustle by;

And never once possess their soul

Before they die."

Of almost all of us it must be confessed that —

"The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! "

There is abundant need, therefore, with the saintly William Penn,6 " to stop, and step a little aside out of the noisy crowd, and incumbering hurry of the world, and calmly to take a prospect of things "; to ask our selves with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in his Aids to Reflection,7 " If you are not a thinking man, to what purpose are you a man at all?"

2. ITS PLACE IN HEBREW LITERATURE.

This habit of silent meditation was characteristic of the Hebrew mind. We are told that the patriarch Isaac8 went out to meditate in the fields at eventide. To Jacob, on his way to Haran, when the sun went down, the place whereon he lay became a Bethel, none other than the House of God, and the gate of heaven. Moses, in the land of Midian, minding the sheep of Jethro his father-in-law, learnt in solitude the lesson of life.

"Love did he find where poor men lie;

His daily teachers were the woods and rills,

The silence that is in the starry sky,

The sleep that is among the lonely hills."

So with David on the downs at Bethlehem; and with the dauntless prophet in the silent wilderness.

We turn to the Psalter. How characteristic of this wonderful book is the grace of meditation! It is this that has made it the devotional handbook of the world. In psalm after psalm we listen, as it were, to the solemn soliloquy of the author with his own soul, or with God. The "practice of the Presence of God " has become habitual with him. " I have set God," he says, " always before me."9 He thinks and speaks in the very audience-chamber of God; " Ponder10 my words, O Lord; consider my meditation." Or again, " Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be always acceptable in thy sight."11 There is much prayer that is petition in the Psalter, but prayer that is meditation is no less common. " My soul truly waiteth still upon God,"12 is the Psalmist attitude of mind. St. Chrysostom used to say that " the spirit and soul of the whole Book of Psalms is contracted into Psalm 63"; and in Psalm 63 there is no petition. It is the psalm beginning —

"O God, thou art my God, earnestly do I seek thee,

My soul - thirsteth for thee, my flesh craveth for thee,

In a dry and weary land, where no water is."

As Dr. Perowne,13 who quotes the saying of St. Chrysostom, truly says, this is unquestion ably one of the most beautiful and touching psalms in the whole Psalter. There is gladness in it, there is praise, there is the most exalted sense of communion with God, there is the longing for His presence as the chiefest of all blessings; but " there is not one word of asking for temporal or even for spiritual good."

As special features in" the Hebrew picture we may note —

(a) Topics of Meditation.

Various are the Psalmist's topics of meditation. Sometimes, with the shepherd-poet on the downs, he gazes up into the depths of the starry sky, and considers the heavens,14 the work of God's fingers, the moon and the stars which He has ordained. Sometimes he regards the glories and beauties of nature, " O Lord, how manifold are thy works," he cries,15 " in wisdom hast thou made them all; the earth is full of thy riches." At other times he thinks of God's " wonders in old time"—

"I remember the days of old;

I meditate on all thy works;

I muse on the work of thy hands."16

The story of past ages provides him with abundant food for meditation. " Not pathetic only," as Matthew Arnold truly said, " but profound also, and of the most solid sub stance, was that reply made by the old Carthusian monk to the trifler who asked him how he managed to get through his life." He answered in the words of the Psalmist, " Cogitavi dies antiques et annos asternos in mente habui."17

(b) Midnight Meditation.

Very striking is the way in which the Hebrew Psalmist seems to regard the night as the special season of meditation. In the silence and solitude of the night he pours out his heart before God. He reviews his own life; he considers the days that are past. " Commune with your own heart," he says, " upon your bed, and be still."18 He listens to the still, small voice of conscience; " my reins also admonish me in the night season."19 In times of depression, his heart saddened with " sorrow's crown of sorrow in remembering happier things," he cries —

" I call to remembrance my song in the night:

I commune with my own heart;

And search out my spirits."20

He turns for comfort to the God of his salvation —

"I remember thee upon my bed,

I meditate on thee in the night-watches."21

Entirely in keeping with the Psalmist's habit is good Bishop Ken's evening prayer —

"When in the night I sleepless He,

My soul with heavenly thoughts supply."

Popular as are Ken's Morning and Evening Hymns, it is strange that his Midnight Hymn, which is a companion one to the others, and appears with them in his Manual of Prayers composed for the use of the scholars of Winchester College, should be comparatively unknown. And yet, from a literary, no less than from a devotional standpoint, it is perhaps more beautiful than even the others. The following verses may be quoted —

"All praise to Thee in light array'd,

Who light Thy dwelling-place hast made:

A boundless ocean of bright beams

From Thy all-glorious Godhead streams.

The sun in its meridian height

Is very darkness in Thy sight!

My soul, O lighten and inflame,

With thought and love of Thy great Name.

Shine on me, Lord, new life impart,

Fresh ardours kindle in my heart;

One ray of Thy all-quick'ning light

Dispels the sloth and clouds of night."

(c) Awakening the Dawn.

But if not at midnight, the devout Hebrew would rise betimes in the morning to offer his early sacrifice. " My voice shalt thou hear betimes, O Lord," cries the author of Psalm 5; " Early in the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee, and will look up." In Psalm 57 the writer employs the singularly beautiful and poetical figure of awakening the dawn —

"Awake up, my glory; awake, lyre and harp;

I will awake the dawn."

In connection with this striking metaphor it will not be inappropriate to call to mind that many of our seventeenth century divines literally carried out the Psalmist's practice. The little room under the stairs may still be seen at Farnham Castle, where good Bishop Morley was wont to rise, winter and summer, at five o'clock, in order to perform his morning devotions. Izaak Walton tells us in his Life of Dr. Donne that " his bed was not able to detain the great preacher beyond the hour of four in the morning." Thomas Ken, relates his biographer, " strictly accustomed himself to but one sleep, which often obliged him to rise at one or two o'clock of the morning." Similar rules, for purposes of meditation, were observed by Dr. Hammond, Dr. Bull, and Archbishop Williams. In Henry Vaughan's " Mount of Olives," the heavenly-minded poet frequently insists on early rising as an aid to devotion. We should use, he says, "all convenient means to be up before the sun-rising." It was in the morning, he reminds us, that the children of Israel gathered the manna." " Heaven's gate is open when this world's is shut." In this beautiful little manual of devotion, he gives his readers several prayers and meditations to be used " when thou dost awake." And in the same spirit, he asks, in his magnificent poem on the Second Advent, called "The Dawning," at what hour wilt Thou come, in the evening, at midnight—

"Or shall these early fragrant hours

Unlock Thy bowers? "

It must surely be at sun-rising.

"Indeed it is the only time

That with Thy glory doth best chime."

(d) Psalm cxix. — A Meditation.

In treating of the meditative aspect of the Psalter, it is impossible to pass over Psalm 119 in silence. It is, as Professor Moulton says, "a very tour de force of meditative ingenuity."22 It consists of twenty-two stanzas, according to the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet. Each stanza is composed of eight verses; each verse (consisting of two members only), beginning with the same letter of the alphabet. It is thus made up of no less than a hundred and seventy-six sayings, and is bound together by the common feature that each verse (except one, the 122nd) contains an allusion to the law.

The psalm is an elaborate expansion of the second part of Psalm 19. It represents, as the Dean of Ely23 says, the religious ideas of Deuteronomy developed in the communion of a devout soul with God. The " Law of the Lord," as contained in the Pentateuch,

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A Mirror of the Soul

while the basis of meditation is made to include all divine revelation as the guide of life. It is, as we have said, a meditation rather than a poem. There is no degree of nexus, as Mr. Gladstone said, to be found in it. It is lost labour to seek for any continuity or progress of thought in it. It is simply a meditation on the surpassing excellence of the law of God. That one thought dominates the entire composition. "There are but few pieces in the Psalmist's kaleido scope," as Dr. Maclaren24 strikingly says, " but they fall into many shapes of beauty." The tone and language of the psalm clearly stamp it as post-exilic; but who the author was we have no means of judging. Delitzsch thinks he must have been a young man because of verse 9, " Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? " Ewald, on the other hand, suggests that the words of verse 84, " How many are the days of thy servant," indicate one advanced in years; while Bishop Perowne and Dr. Kirkpatrick favour the idea that it was written by a man who had reached " the middle arch of life." It has further been conjectured that the author was in captivity, and beguiled the weariness of imprisonment by the composition of this panegyric of the law —

" Thy statutes have been my songs

In the house of my pilgrimage" (verse 54).

The psalm has appealed not unnaturally to many hearts. It has been called " the Psalm of the saints "; " the Alphabet of Divine love "; " the Christian's ABC of the love and power of the Word of God." St. Augustine's vision of the psalm rising like a Tree of Life in the realms of Paradise will be at once remembered. It was specially dear to Ruskin. " Of all the pieces of the Bible which my mother taught me," he writes, " that which cost me most to learn, and which was, to my child's mind, chiefly repulsive — the 119th Psalm — has now become of all the most precious to me, in its over flowing and glorious passion of love for the law of God."

Among the individual verses associated with some historical or biographical incident, it is interesting to notice that a passage on this psalm of meditation is the origin of the sevenfold division of the day into the canonical hours, viz., verse 164, " Seven times a day do I praise thee, because of thy righteous judgments "; while another verse (62), " At midnight will I rise to give thanks unto thee," is the origin of the midnight hour being kept with prayer and thanks giving.

3. ITS OBSERVANCE IN THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.

If the habit of devout meditation be a marked characteristic of the Hebrew mind, it has been no less conspicuous among Christian people. How many myriads of faithful disciples have imitated Christ in His love of solitude and silent meditation, as well as in His more active ministry of going about doing good. The hermits followed Him into the wilderness, and the Benedictines into the monastic cell. The long life of Thomas a Kempis was passed in the quiet routine of copying manuscripts, of writing his little books, of instructing the novices, and of meditating in the cloister. The splendid chantry of Richard Fox in Winchester Cathedral is often spoken of as " Fox's study," for there the great and holy prelate was wont to spend some hours daily in meditation.

So with many Protestant and Puritan saints. Of Bishop Andrewes it was said that he passed five hours every day in prayer and meditation. Did not George Fox, like the patriarch of old, go out into the fields to meditate? Did not John Bunyan in Bedford Gaol spend long hours in sweet communion with God? Nowhere do we get a more beautiful picture of this habit of meditation, common to the saints of God in every age, than in the life of Mary Rich, Countess of Warwick, in the days of the Commonwealth and the Restoration.25 In her beautiful home of Leize Priory in Essex, this Puritan saint was wont, amid many domestic distractions, to spend two hours every morning, as soon as she was up, winter and summer alike, in "the wilderness" or plantation which bordered the old monastic fish-ponds, in meditation. The " wilderness " was her oratory, and there she gained strength and consolation in the trials and difficulties of life. Many of her meditations she com mitted to writing, and in the British Museum there are no less than twelve little manu scripts of what she calls Occasional Meditations. "If," says Dr. Walker, her "soulfather " — for this Puritan saint needed a confessor no less than a Catholic devotee— "she exceeded herself in anything as much as she excelled others in most things, it was in meditation. This was her masterpiece." One sentence may be quoted. "The way not to be alone," she wrote, " is to be alone and you will find yourself never less alone than when you are so. For certainly the God that makes all others good company must needs be best Himself." This is entirely in the spirit of the Hebrew Psalmists.

It would be better with many persons, if, like the good Countess of Warwick, they would sometimes retire into the " wilderness " for silent thought. And if, unlike her, they have no special oratory — no sacred spot, no consecrated shrine, no venerable cathedral, no country churchyard beneath whose rugged elms or yew-tree's shade sleeps one whose memory is dear — where they can withdraw for solemn meditation, yet can they not with the good Pagan Emperor, retire into the little territory of their own hearts? And there, with the saintly Quaker poet of America26 learn to know themselves —

" Stand still, my soul, in the silent dark,

I would question thee,

Alone in the shadow drear and stark

With God and me! "

And with this realisation of the presence of God will come a sense of quietude and peace such as filled the soul of the Psalmist. " Be still, and know that I am God." There will be felt something of " the hush among the silent stars," of "the calm upon the moonlit sea." Might we not, almost all of us, pray with advantage the poet's prayer,27 as he sat beneath the trees in Kensington Gardens —

" Calm soul of all things! make it mine

     To feel, amid the city's jar,

That there abides a peace of thine,

     Man did not make, and cannot mar.

The will to neither strive nor cry,

     The power to feel with others give!

Calm, calm me more! nor let me die

     Before I have begun to live."