Archive: Some Helps to Meditation

by J. W Mahood
Reprinted from his book “The Lost Art of Meditation” ©Fleming H. Revell, 1911. Used by permission.

The art of meditation must be learned. There is no possibility of stumbling upon it by chance. There is no royal course of ease to its gateway. Its blessed paths are trodden only by those who have toiled along many a tiresome road. But God, in His goodness, has provided so many helps for him who seeks this way that all who want to know its joy may do so.

There is one Companion and only one for the pathway of meditation, and that is the Holy Spirit. His company is indispensable. He knows the way and is ever willing to guide us. “Some place their religion in books,” says Thomas a Kempis, “some in images, some in the pomp and splendour of external worship, but some with illuminated understandings heareth what the Holy Spirit speaketh in their hearts.”

His mission is to reveal Christ and so open the eyes of our understanding that the crucified and risen Savior shall be all in all to us. He makes us sensible, too, of the nearness and reality of the spiritual world. The more we have of the Spirit’s companionship the more responsive we are to spiritual things. The eye sees more clearly the deep things of God, and the ear is more sensitive to the voice of God.

It is said that at the siege of Lucknow [India] the first person to know of the near approach of the British troops marching to the rescue of the city was a little girl whose senses had become so keen through long illness that she heard the highland pipers while they were yet miles away. And he whose spiritual senses have been made keen by companionship with the Holy Spirit in hours of meditation and prayer will have such keenness of spiritual sight and hearing that he will sense victory from a distance, and will always recognize the earliest signs of Gospel triumph.

The Holy Spirit makes use of the Bible in the hour of meditation. “Behold, I will pour out My Spirit unto you, I will make known My words unto you.” “But when the Comforter is come,” said Jesus, “which is the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.”

George Matheson, in his inimitable and devout way, says: “There are words lying in thy memory which are not yet revealed to thee—holy words, sacred words, words learned at a mother’s knee, but whose beauty is by thee as yet unfelt, unseen. When the Spirit comes the old words will come to thee as something new. Thou shalt marvel at what thou hast passed by unnoticed on the way. Thou shalt wonder at the richness of the Lord’s Prayer, at the power of the Sermon on the Mount, at the tenderness of the story of a prodigal son. Thou shalt be surprised at the melody of old psalms, thrilled by the novelty of familiar incidents, stirred by the freshness of well-known passages. To him who is a new creature, old things are all made new; the mind that was empty to the eye of sense, to the spirit reveals gold.”

The Holy Spirit makes use of good books to enrich the hour of meditation. There are a number of spiritual classics which should be in the home of every growing Christian. Prominent among these is “The Imitation of Christ” by Thomas a Kempis. In spite of its deep note of pessimism and its dark pictures of this world, yet, outside the Bible, perhaps no other book has been such a permanent inspiration to real spiritual worship and heart devotion. …

Every Christian home should have, if possible, a supply of [good] devotional books … and a part of the quiet hour should be given to their perusal. It is to the shame of many Christian homes that one finds in the home library so much of the sentimental and trashy fiction of the day, and so little of the great classical spiritual literature.

The Holy Spirit uses the biographies of godly men and women to make helpful the hour of meditation. In Auguste Comte’s calendar he proposes that each day we should meditate on the life of some benefactor of humanity to whom that day’s thoughts should be devoted. Here and there on the mountain peaks of Christian history have stood men and women of mighty faith in God, and to whom God has revealed Himself in wonderful power and blessing. To study these lives and meditate on their devotion and heroism will almost surely steady wavering feet and lift up hands that hang down.

Take, for instance, the life of John the Scot, who wrote, “There are as many unveilings of God as there are saintly souls.” Living in the days of the Norse invaders, and when European civilization was at low ebb, this Irish scholar was “one of the torch bearers in the long line of teachers of mystical religion.” His Christian polemics might be studied with great spiritual profit in our own day. Some things will be found that have upon them the mustiness of the darkened age in which he lived. But in many things he was far in advance of his time. His voice was lifted against the encroaching materialism and the corruption of the church. He was condemned by church councils, and his writings confiscated, but he was one of God’s own heroes. …

And the history of the Christian Church will be found to contain the record of many a noble life, the study of which will greatly enrich the hours of meditation, and leave its permanent spiritual impress on the life.

And now, O Blessed Spirit, teach me the way of holy meditation! Then shall I have the open vision. I seem now so often to have to feel my way in the dark. Give me the undimmed eye of faith.

I ask no dream, no prophet ecstasies,
No sudden rending of this veil of clay;
No angel visitant, no opening skies
But take the dimness of my soul away.

Too often spiritual things appear as mere shadows. May I begin to see that they are the great realities of life. Show me, O Lord, how to open the door of heavenly contemplation, and then, in the “secret of His presence,” I shall come to know better the reality and authority of the spiritual. Make me a mystic in the highest and best sense of that much misunderstood word. May I come to know the hidden things of God. Thou hast said that “the secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him.” Thou knowest, O Lord, that I fear Thee and love Thee. But I want to know Thee better and love Thee more. Therefore I wait at Thy feet, and plead for Thy mercy. Be gracious, Lord, even unto me, and “let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer.” Amen.