The Spiritual Feast by John Fraser
My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness (Psalm 63:5). It is a great mercy to enjoy divine ordinances in their purity; but it is a greater mercy to have our souls feasted in them. And we should not content ourselves with an external attendance, without drawing near to God in the institutions of his grace. The pure ordinances are precious to believers, and a day in his courts is better to them than a thousand; but they are not satisfied with the enjoyment of these ordinances, without enjoying their God and their Redeemer in them; and this is one thing by which they are distinguished from hypocrites and formalists. David was in a wilderness, and deprived of the public institutions of religion, when he composed this Psalm: he was detained by persecution from the courts of God; and we find him expressing his high esteem and vehement desire of them. But it was not merely the external ordinances his soul desired; he thirsted after that communion with God which he had formerly ...