Note: Outer silence is necessary for creating and building inner silence. And inner silence is indispensable for walking the path of the spiritual life. Throughout our day we should make recourse to the inner silence whenever we find ourselves uncentered or distracted from God.

Quote: “Outward silence is very requisite for the cultivation and improvement of inward; and, indeed, it is impossible we should become truly interior, without loving silence and retirement. God saith by the mouth of his prophet, “I will lead her into solitude, and there will I speak to her heart (Hos. ii. 14); and unquestionably the being internally engaged with God is wholly incompatible with being externally busied about a thousand trifles.”

Source: Spiritual Progress: or, Instructions in the Divine Life of the Soul from the French of Fenelon and Madame Guyon: Intended for Such as are Desirous to Count all Things Loss that they may Win Christ. Edited by James W. Metcalf. NY: M.W. Dodd, 1853; quote is from chapter 14 of Madame Guyon’s Method of Prayer.