Religious Retirement.
xxvi. 20. Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee.
An exhortation to religious retirement. Man was intended for society, but also for contemplation. When devoted to pious purposes, retirement is highly useful to man and most acceptable to God (H. E. I., 3466–3525). It is commended to us both by precept and example (Gen. xxiv. 63; Matt. xiv. 23, &c.) But the retreat which the Scriptures commend is temporary, not total; not that of a monk to his cell, in which he passes his days in barren and unprofitable speculation, but that of men living in the world, who go out of it for a time in order that they may return to it better fitted for the duties which God has assigned them there. That you may be stimulated to this duty, consider its advantages.
I. Religious retirement takes off the impression that the neighbourhood of evil has a tendency to make upon the mind. We need often to escape from it in order that we may see its true character, and renew our strength to resist it.
II. Religious retirement is favourable for fixing pious purposes in the mind, and strengthening our habits of virtue. Dazzled no longer by the false glitter of the world, we open our eyes to the beauties of the better country; stunned no more with the noise of folly, we can listen in silence to the still small voice. At leisure we can reflect by what temptations we were formerly foiled, that we may guard against them in time to come; for seeing the evil day, we can prepare ourselves for its conflicts.
III. In religious retirement we attain to self-knowledge. Here wisdom begins. We can never ascend to the knowledge of Him whom to know is life eternal, without knowing ourselves; and we can never know ourselves without stripping off whatever is artificial about us, without throwing off the veil which we wear before men, and devoting our sacred hours to serious consideration.
IV. Retirement and meditation will open up a source of new and better entertainment than you meet with in the world (Ps. civ. 34).—John Logan: Sermons, vol. ii. pp. 156–164.