The Excellence of Meditation

Thomas Watson, The Christian on the Mount: A Treatise on Meditation, p. 92:

Aristotle places felicity in the contemplation of the mind. Meditation is highly commended by Augustine, Chrysostom, and Cyprian as the nursery of piety. Jerome calls it his paradise. With what words shall I set it forth? Other duties have done excellently, but you excel them all. Meditation is a friend to all the graces; it helps to water the plantation. I may call it, in Basil's expression, the treasury where all the graces are locked up, and, with Theophylact, the very gate and portal by which we enter into glory. By meditation the spirits are raised and heightened to a kind of angelic frame. Meditation sweetly puts us in heaven before we arrive there. Meditation brings God and the soul together.

Meditation is the saints' looking glass, by which they see things invisible. Meditation is the golden ladder by which they ascend to paradise. Meditation is the spy they send abroad to search the land of promise, and it brings a cluster of the grapes of Eshcol with it. Meditation is the dove they send out, and it brings an olive branch of peace in its mouth. But who can tell how sweet honey is save they that taste it? The excellence of meditation I leave to experienced Christians, who will say the comfort of it may be better felt than expressed.