J.C. Ryle on Private Communion with Christ

"Let us cultivate the habit of keeping up more private meditation and communion with Christ.  Let us resolutely make time for getting alone occasionally, for talking with our own souls like David, for pouring out our hearts to our great High Priest, Advocate, and Confessor at the right hand of God.  We want more auricular confession - but not to man.  The confessional we want is not in a box in the vestry, but the throne of grace.  I see some professing Christians always running about after spiritual food, always in public, and always out of breath and in a hurry, and never allowing themselves leisure to sit down quietly to digest, and take stock of their spiritual condition.  I am never surprised if such Christians have a dwarfish, stunted religion and do not grow and if, like Pharaoh's lean kin, they look no better for their public religious feasting, but rather worse.  Spiritual prosperity depends immensely on our private religion, and private religion cannot flourish unless we determine that by God's help we will make time, whatever trouble it may cost us, for thought, for prayer, for the Bible, and for private communion with Christ.  Alas!  That saying of our Master is sadly overlooked: 'Enter into your closet and shut the door' (Matt. 6:6)" (Holiness, J.C. Ryle).