Quiet musing!

‘While I was musing the fire burned.’ Psalm 39:3

Suggested Further Reading: Psalm 119:97–104

The world has put a little letter before the word ‘musing,’ and these are the days, not for musing, but for a-musing. People will go anywhere for amusement; but to muse is a strange thing to them, and they think it dull and wearisome. Our fathers 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 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 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 Sabbath 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. Truth 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.

For meditation: The world sometimes describes Christians as killjoys. If meditation upon God’s Word is the believer’s joy and delight (Psalm 1:2; 104:34; 119:48,97) and if we fail to engage in it, perhaps the accusation is more accurate than we realise!

Sermon no. 576
9 May (Undated Sermon)