Too Strange to Self-Communion

R.L. Dabney, "Meditation as a Means of Grace," in Discussions, Vol. 1, pp. 652-653:

...the Christian life must have its seasons of quietude and calm meditation. Too much of even a religious bustle is unwholesome for the soul. Time must be allowed in sacred seasons for divine truth to steep the heart with its influence. Our hurry and externality has impoverished our graces. Solitude is essential to the health of the soul. Is not our modern life far too hurried? Surely we are in too much haste to be rich; we are too strange to self-communion; our very education is too stimulating and mercenary; and while we degrade the heavenly minister, science, to material uses, we teach our young men to forget that the true, the beautiful, and the good are in themselves the happy heritage of the soul. The clangor of our industry and the dust and glare of our skill have repelled the heavenly Dove and exhaled the dews of his grace out of our life. How woeful is the waste of our holiness and happiness by this mistake! Let us, then, learn to commune with our own hearts and be still.