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REV. C.H. SPURGEON
At the Music Hall, Royal Surrey Gardens
"Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life."—Proverbs 4:23.
If I should vainly attempt to fashion my discourse after
lofty models, I should this morning compare the human heart to the ancient city of Thebes,
out of whose hundred gates multitudes of warriors were wont to march. As was the city,
such were her armies, as was her inward strength, such were they who came forth of her. I
might then urge the necessity of keeping the heart, because it is the metropolis of our
manhood, the citadel and armory of our humanity. Let the chief fortress surrender to the
enemy, and the occupation of the rest must be an easy task. Let the principal stronghold
be possessed by evil, the whole land must be overrun thereby. Instead, however, of doing
this, I shall attempt what possibly I may be able to perform, by a humble metaphor and a
simple figure, which will be easily understood; I shall endeavor to set forth the wise
man's doctrine, that our life issues from the heart, and thus I shall labor to show the
absolute necessity of keeping the heart with all diligence.
You have seen the great reservoirs provided by our water companies, in which the water
which is to supply hundreds of streets and thousands of houses is kept. Now, the heart is
just the reservoir of man, and our life is allowed to flow in its proper season. That life
may flow through different pipes—the mouth, the hand, the eye; but still all the
issues of hand, of eye, of lip, derive their source from the great fountain and central
reservoir, the heart; and hence there is no difficulty in showing the great necessity that
exists for keeping this reservoir, the heart, in a proper state and condition, since
otherwise that which flows through the pipes must be touted and corrupt. May the Holy
Spirit now direct our meditations.
Mere moralists very often forget the heart, and deal exclusively with the lesser powers.
Some of them say, "If a man's life be wrong, it is better to alter the principles
upon which his conduct is modeled: we had better adopt another scheme of living; society
must be re-modeled, so that man may have an opportunity for the display of virtues, and
less temptation to indulge in vice." It is as if, when the reservoir was filled with
poisonous or polluted fluid, some sage counsellor should propose that all the piping had
better be taken up, and fresh pipes laid down, so that the water might run through fresh
channels; but who does not perceive that it would be all in vain, if the fountain-head
were polluted, however good the channels. So in vain the rules by which men hope to
fashion their lives; in vain the regimen by which we seek to constrain ourselves to the
semblance of goodness, unless the heart be right, the very best scheme of life shall fall
to the ground, and fail to effect its design. Others say, "Well, if the life be
wrong, it would be better to set the understanding right: you must inform man's judgment,
educate him, teach him better, and when his head is well informed, then his life will be
improved. Now, understanding is, if I may use such a figure, the stopcock which
controls the emotions, lets them flow on, or stops them; and it is as if some very wise
man, when a reservoir had been poisoned, proposed that there should be a new person
employed to turn the water off or on, in hope that the whole difficulty would thus be
obviated. If we followed his advice, if we found the wisest man in the world to have
control of the fountain, Mr. Understanding would still be incapable of supplying us with
healthy streams, until we had first of all purged the cistern whence they flowed. The
Arminian divine, too, sometimes suggests another way of improving man's life. He deals
with the will. He says, the will must first of all be conquered, and if the will be
right, then every thing will be in order. Now, will is like the great engine which
forces the water out of the fountain-head along the pipes, so that it is made to flow into
our dwellings. The learned counsellor proposes that there should be a new steam-engine
employed to force the water along the pipes. "If," says he, "we had the
proper machinery for forcing the fluid, then all would be well." No, sir, if the
stream be poisonous, you may have axles to turn on diamonds, and you may have a machine
that is made of gold, and a force as potent as Omnipotence, but even then you have not
accomplished your purpose until you have cleansed the polluted fountain, and purged the
issues of life which flow therefrom. The wise man in our text seems to say, "Beware
of misapplying your energies, be careful to begin in the right place." It is very
necessary the understanding should be right; it is quite needful the will should have its
proper predominance; it is very necessary that you should keep every part of man in a
healthy condition; "but," says he, "if you want to promote true holiness,
you must begin with the heart, for out of it are the issues of life; and when you have
purged it, when you have made its waters pure and limpid, then shall the current flow and
bless the inhabitants with clear water; but not till then." Here let us pause and ask
the solemn and vital question, "Is my heart right in the sight of God?" For
unless the inner man has been renewed by the grace of God, through the Holy Spirit, our
heart is full of rottenness, filth, and abominations. And if so, here must all our
cleansing begin, if it be real and satisfactory. Unrenewed men, I beseech you ponder the
words of an ancient Christian which I here repeat in thine ear:—"It is no matter
what is the sign, though an angel, that hangs without, if the devil and sin dwell therein.
New trimmings upon an old garment will not make it new, only give it a new appearance; and
truly it is no good husbandry to bestow a great deal of cost in mending up an old suit,
that will soon drop to tatters and rags, when a little more might purchase a new one that
is lasting. And is it not better to labor to get a new heart, that all thou dost may be
accepted, and thou saved, than to lose all the pains thou takest in religion, and thyself
also for want of it?"
Now, ye who love the Lord, let me take you to the reservoir of your heart, and let, me
urge upon you the great necessity of keeping the heart right, if you would have the stream
of your life happy for yourselves and beneficial to others.
I. First, keep the heart full. However pure the water may be in the central
reservoir, it will not be possible for the company to provide us with an abundant supply
of water, unless the reservoir itself be full. An empty fountain will most assuredly beget
empty pipes; and let the machinery be never so accurate, let every thing else be well
ordered, yet if that reservoir be dry, we may wait in vain for any of the water that we
require. Now, you know many people—(you are sure to meet with them in your own
society, and your own circle; for I know of no one so happy as to be without such
acquaintances)—whose lives are just dry, good-for-nothing emptiness. They never
accomplish anything; they have no mental force; they have no moral power; what they say,
nobody thinks of noticing; what they do is scarcely ever imitated. We have known fathers
whose moral force has been so despicable, that even their children have scarcely been able
to imitate them. Though imitation was strong enough in them, yet have they unconsciously
felt, even in their childhood, that their father was, after all, but a child like
themselves, and had not grown to be a man. Do you not know many people, who if they were
to espouse a cause, and it were entrusted to them, would most certainly pilot it to
shipwreck. Failure would be the total result. You could not use them as clerks in your
office, without feeling certain that your business would be nearly murdered. If you were
to employ them to manage a concern for you, you would be sure they would manage to spend
all the money, but could never produce a doit. If they were placed in comfortable
circumstances for a few months, they would go on carelessly till all was gone. They are
just the flats, preyed on by the sharpers in the world; they have no manly strength, no
power at all. See these people in religion: it does not matter much what are their
doctrinal sentiments, it is quite certain they will never affect the minds of others. Put
them in the pulpit: they are the slaves of the deacons, or else the, are over-ridden by
the church; they never have an opinion of their own, can not come out with a thing; they
have not the heart to say, "Such a thing is, and I know it is." These men just
live on, but as far as any utility to the world is concerned, they might almost as well
never have been created, except it were to be fed upon by other people. Now, some say that
this is the fault of men's heads: "Such a one," they say, "could not get
on; he had a small head; it was clean impossible for him to prosper, his head was small,
he could not do anything; he had not enough force." Now, that may be true; but I know
what was truer still—he had got a small heart and that heart was empty. For, mark
you, a man's force in the world, other things being equal, is just in the ratio of the
force and strength of his heart. A full-hearted man is always a powerful man: if he be
erroneous, then he is powerful for error; if the thing is in his heart, he is sure to make
it notorious, even though it may be a downright falsehood. Let a man be never so ignorant,
still if his heart be full of love to a cause, he becomes a powerful man for that object,
because he has got heart-power, heart-force. A man may be deficient in many of the
advantages of education, in many of those niceties which are so much looked upon in
society; but once give him a good strong heart, that beats hard, and there is no mistake
about his power. Let him have a heart that is right full up to the brim with an object,
and that man will do the thing, or else he will die gloriously defeated, and will glory in
his defeat. HEART IS POWER. It is the emptiness of men's hearts that makes them so feeble.
Men do not feel what they are at. Now, the man in business that goes heart and soul into
his business, is more likely to prosper than anybody else. That is the preacher we want,
the man that has a full soul. Let him have a head—the more he knows the better; but,
after all, give him a big heart; and when his heart beats, if his heart be full, it will,
under God, either make the hearts of his congregation beat after him; or else make them
conscious that he is laboring hard to compel them to follow. O! if we had more heart in
our Master's service, how much more labor we could endure. You are a Sunday-school
teacher, young man, and you are complaining that you can not get on in the Sunday-school.
Sir, the service-pipe would give out plenty of water if the heart were full. Perhaps you
do not love your work. O, strive to love your work more, and then when your heart is full,
you will go on well enough. "O," saith the preacher, "I am weary of my work
in preaching; I have little success; I find it a hard toil." The answer to that
question is, "Your heart is not full of it, for if you loved preaching, you would
breathe preaching, feed upon preaching, and find a compulsion upon you to follow
preaching; and your heart being full of the thing, you would be happy in the employment. O
for a heart that is full, and deep, and broad! Find the man that hath such a soul as that,
and that is the man from whom the living waters shall flow, to make the world glad with
their refreshing streams.
Learn, then, the necessity of keeping the heart full; and let the necessity make you ask
this question—"But how can I keep my heart full? How can my emotions be strong?
How can I keep my desires burning and my zeal inflamed?" Christian! there is one text
which will explain all this. "All my springs are in thee," said David. If thou
hast all thy springs in God, thy heart will be full enough. If thou dost go to the foot of
Calvary, there will thy heart be bathed in love and gratitude. If thou dost frequent the
vale of retirement, and there talk with thy God, it is there that thy heart shall be full
of calm resolve. If thou goest out with thy Master to the hill of Olivet, and dost with
him look down upon a wicked Jerusalem, and weep over it with him, then will thy heart be
full of love for never-dying souls. If thou dost continually draw thine impulse, thy life,
the whole of thy being from the Holy Spirit, without whom thou canst do nothing; and if
thou dost live in close communion with Christ, there will be no fear of thy having a dry
heart. He who lives without prayer—he who lives with little prayer—he who seldom
reads the Word—he who seldom looks up to heaven for a fresh influence from on
high—he will be the man whose heart will become dry and barren; but he who calls in
secret on his God—who spends much time in holy retirement—who delights to
meditate on the words of the Most High—whose soul is given up to Christ—who
delights in his fullness, rejoices in his all-sufficiency, prays for his second coming,
and delights in the thought of his glorious advent—such a man, I say, must have an
overflowing heart; and as his heart is, such will his life be. It will be a full life; it
will be a life that will speak from the sepulcher, and wake the echoes of the future.
"Keep thine heart with all diligence," and entreat the Holy Spirit to keep it
full; for, otherwise, the issues of thy life will be feeble, shallow, and superficial; and
thou mayest as well not have lived at all.
2. Secondly, it would be of little use for our water companies to keep their reservoirs
full, if they did not also keep them pure. I remember to have read a complaint in
the newspaper of a certain provincial town, that a tradesman had been frequently supplied
with fish from the water company, large eels having crept down the pipe, and sometimes
creatures a little more loathsome. We have known such a thing as water companies supplying
us with solids when they ought to have given us nothing but pure crystal. Now, no one
likes that. The reservoir should be kept pure and clean; and unless the water comes from a
pure spring, and is not impregnated with deleterious substances, however full the
reservoir may be, the company will fail of satisfying or of benefiting its customers. Now
it is essential for us to do with our hearts as the company must do with its reservoir. We
must keep our hearts pure; for if the heart be not pure, the life can not be pure. It is
quite impossible that it should be so. You see a man whose whole conversation is impure
and unholy; when he speaks he lards his language with oaths; his mind is low and
groveling; none but the things of unrighteousness are sweet to him, for he has no soul
above the kennel and the dunghill. You meet with another man who understands enough to
avoid violating the decencies of life; but still, at the same time he likes filthiness;
any low joke, anything that will in some way stir unholy thoughts is just the thing that
he desires. For the ways of God he has no relish; in God's house he finds no pleasure, in
his Word no delight. What is the cause of this? Say some, it is because of his family
connections—because of the situation in which he stands—because of his early
education, and all that. No, no; the simple answer to that is the answer we gave to the
other inquiry; the heart is not right; for, if the heart were pure, the life would be pure
too. The unclean stream betrays the fountain. A valuable book of German parables, by old
Christian Scriver, contains the following homely metaphor:—"A drink was brought
to Gotthold, which tasted of the vessel in which it had been contained; and this led him
to observe. We have here an emblem of our thoughts, words, and works. Our heart is defiled
by sin, and hence a taint if sinfulness cleaves unfortunately to everything we take in
hand; and although, from the force of habit, this may be imperceptible to us, it does not
escape the eye of the omniscient, holy, and righteous God." Whence come our
carnality, covetuousness, pride, sloth and unbelief? Are they not all to be traced to the
corruption of our hearts? When the hands of a clock move in an irregular manner, and when
the bell strikes the wrong hour, be assured there is something wrong within. O how needful
that the main-spring of our motives be in proper order, and the wheels in a right
condition.
Ah! Christian keep thy heart pure. Thou sayest, "How can I do this?" Well, there
was of old a stream of Marah, to which the thirsty pilgrims in the desert came to drink;
and when they came to taste of it, it was so brackish that though their tongues were like
torches, and the roofs of their mouths were parched with heat, yet they could not drink of
that bitter water. Do you remember the remedy which Moses prescribed? It is the remedy
which we prescribe to you this morning. He took a certain tree, and he cast it into the
waters, and they became sweet and clear. Your heart is by nature like Marah's water,
bitter and impure. There is a certain tree, you know its name, that tree on which the
Saviour hung, the cross. Take that tree, put it into your heart, and though it were
even more impure than it is, that sweet cross, applied by the Holy Spirit, would soon
transform it into its own nature, and make it pure. Christ Jesus in the heart is the sweet
purification. He is made unto us sanctification. Elijah cast salt into the waters;
but we must cast the blood of Jesus there. Once let us know and love Jesus, once let his
cross become the object of our adoration and the theme of our delight, the heart will beam
its cleansing, and the life will become pure also. Oh! that we all did learn the sacred
lesson of fixing the cross in the heart! Christian man! love thy Saviour more; cry to the
Holy Spirit that thou mayest have more affection for Jesus; and then, how ever gainful may
be thy sin, thou wilt say with the poet,
"Now for the love I bear his name,
What was my gain I count my loss;
My former pride I call my shame,
And nail my glory to his cross."
The cross in the heart is the purifier of the
soul; it purges and it cleanses the chambers of the mind. Christian! keep thy heart pure,
"for out of it are the issues of life."
3. In the third place, there is one thing to which our water companies need never pay much
attention; that is to say, if their water be pure, and the reservoir be full, they need
not care to keep it peaceable and quiet, for let it be stirred to a storm, we
should receive our water in the same condition as usual. It is not so, however, with the
heart. Unless the heart be kept peaceable, the life will not be happy. If calm doth not
reign over that inner lake within the soul which feeds the rivers of our life, the rivers
themselves will always be in storm. Our outward acts will always tell that they were born
in tempests, by rolling in tempests themselves. Let us just understand this, first,
with regard to ourselves. We all desire to lead a joyous life; the bright eye and the
elastic foot are things which we each of us desire; to carry about a contented mind is
that to which most men are continually aspiring. Let us all remember, that the only way to
keep our life peaceful and happy is to keep the heart at rest; for come poverty, come
wealth, come honor, come shame, come plenty, or come scarcity, if the heart be quiet there
will be happiness anywhere. But whatever the sunshine and the brightness, if the heart be
troubled the whole life must be troubled too. There is a sweet story told in one of the
German martyrologies well worth both my telling and your remembering. A holy martyr who
had been kept for a long time in prison, and had there exhibited, to the wonderment of all
who saw him, the strongest constancy and patience, was at last, upon the day of execution,
brought out, and tied to the stake preparatory to the lighting of the fire. While in this
position he craved permission to speak once more to the Judge, who, according to the Swiss
custom, was required to be also present at the execution. After repeatedly refusing, the
judge at last came forward, when the peasant addressed him thus: You have this day
condemned me to death. Now, I freely admit that I am a poor sinner, but positively deny
that I am a heretic, because from my heart I believe and confess all that is contained in
the Apostles' Creed (which he thereupon repeated from beginning to end). Now, then, sir,
he proceeded to say, I have but one last request to make, which is, that you will approach
and place your hand, first upon my breast and then upon your own, and afterwards frankly
and truthfully declare, before this assembled multitude, which of the two, mine or yours,
is beating most violently with fear and anxiety. For my part, I quit the world with
alacrity and joy, to go and be with Christ, in whom I have always believed; what your
feelings are at this moment is best known to yourself. The judge could make no answer, and
commanded them instantly to light the pile. It was evident, however, from his looks, that
he was more afraid than the martyr."
Now, keep your heart right. Do not let it smite you. The Holy Spirit says of David,
"David's heart smote him." The smiting of the heart is more painful to a good
man than the rough blows of the fist. It is a blow that can be felt; it is iron that
enters into the soul. Keep your heart in good temper. Do not let that get fighting with
you. Seek that the peace of God which passeth all understanding, may keep your heart and
mind through Christ Jesus. Bend your knee at night, and with a full confession of sin,
express your faith in Christ, then you may "dread the grave as little as your
bed." Rise in the morning and give your heart to God, and put the sweet angels of
perfect love and holy faith therein, and you may go into the world, and were it full of
lions and of tigers you would no more need to dread it than Daniel when he was cast into
the lion's den. Keep the heart peaceable and your life will be happy.
Remember, in the second place, that it is just the same with regard to other men. I
should hope we all wish to lead quiet lives, and as much as lieth in us to live peaceably
with all men. There is a particular breed of men—I do not know where they come from,
but they are mixed up now with the English race and to be met with here and there—men
who seem to be born for no other reason whatever but to fight—always quarreling, and
never pleased. They say that all Englishmen are a little that way—that we are never
happy unless we have something to grumble at, and that the worst thing that ever could be
done with us would be to give us some entertainment at which we could not grumble, because
we should be mortally offended, because we had not the opportunity of displaying our
English propensities. I do not know whether that is true of all of us, but it is of some.
You can not sit with them in a room but they introduce a topic upon which you are quite
certain to disagree with them. You could not walk with them half a mile along the public
streets but they would be sure to make an observation against every body and every thing
they saw. They talk about ministers: one man's doctrine is too high, another's is too low;
one man they think is a great deal too effeminate and precise, another they say is so
vulgar they would not hear him at all. They say of another man that they do not think he
attends to visiting his people; of another, that he visits so much that he never prepares
for the pulpit. No one can be right for them.
Why is this? Whence arises this continual snarling? The heart must again supply the
answer, they are morose and sullen in the inward parts, and hence their speech betrayeth
them. They have not had their hearts brought to feel that God hath made of one blood all
nations that dwell upon the face of the earth, or if they have felt that, they have never
been brought to spell in their hearts—"By this shall all men know that ye are my
disciples, if ye love one another." Whichever may have been put there of the other
ten, the eleventh commandment was never written there. "A new commandment give I unto
you, that ye love one another." That they forgot. Oh! dear Christian people, seek to
have your hearts full of love, and if you have had little hearts till now that could not
hold love enough for more than your own denomination, get your hearts enlarged, so that
you may have enough to send out service-pipes to all God's people throughout the habitable
globe; so that whenever you meet a man who is a true-born heir of heaven, he has nothing
to do but to turn to the tap, and out of your loving heart will begin to flow issues of
true, fervent, unconstrained, willing, living love. Keep thine heart peaceable, that thy
life may be so; for out of the heart are the issues of life.
How is this to be done? We reply again, we must ask the Holy Spirit to pacify the heart.
No voice but that which on Galilee lake said to the storm "Be still," can ever
lay the troubled waters of a stormy heart. No strength but Omnipotence can still the
tempest of human nature. Cry out mightily unto him. He still sleeps in the vessel with his
church. Ask him to awake, lest your piety should perish in the waters of contention. Cry
unto him that he may give your heart peace and happiness. Then shall your life be
peaceful; spend ye it where ye may, in trouble or in joy.
4. A little further. When the water-works company have gathered an abundance of water in
the reservoir, there is one thing they must always attend to, and that is, they must take
care they do not attempt too much, or otherwise they will fail. Suppose they lay on a
great main pipe in one place to serve one city, and another main pipe to serve another,
and the supply which was intended to fill one channel is diverted into a score of streams,
what would be the result? Why nothing would be done well, but everyone would have cause to
complain. Now, man's heart is after all so little, that there is only one great direction
in which its living water can ever flow; and my fourth piece of advice to you from this
text is, Keep your heart undivided. Suppose you see a lake, and there are twenty or
thirty streamlets running from it: why, there will not be one strong river in the whole
country; there will be a number of little brooks which will be dried up in the summer, and
will be temporary torrents in the winter. They will every one of them be useless for any
great purposes, because there is not water enough in the lake to feed more than one great
stream. Now, a man's heart has only enough life in it to pursue one object fully. Ye must
not give half your love to Christ, and the other half to the world. No man can serve God
and mammon because there is not enough life in the heart to serve the two. Alas! many
people try this, and they fail both ways. I have known a man who has tried to let some of
his heart run into the world, and another part he allowed to drip into the church, and the
effect has been this: when he came into the church he was suspected of hypocrisy.
"Why," they said, "if he were truly with us, could he have done yesterday
what he did, and then come and profess so much to-day?" The church looks upon him as
a suspicious one: or if he deceive them they feel he is not of much use to them, because
they have not got all his heart. What is the effect of his conduct in the world? Why, his
religion is a fetter to him there. The world will not have him, and the church will not
have him; he wants to go between the two, and both despise him. I never saw anybody try to
walk on both sides of the street but a drunken man: he tried it, and it was very
awkward work indeed; but I have seen many people in a moral point of view try to walk on
both sides of the street, and I thought there was some kind of intoxication in them, or
else they would have given it up as a very foolish thing. Now, if I thought this world and
the pleasures thereof worth my seeking, I would just seek them and go after them, and I
would not pretend to be religious; but if Christ be Christ, and if God be God, let us give
our whole hearts to him, and not go shares with the world. Many a church member manages to
walk on both sides of the street in the following manner: His sun is very low
indeed—it has not much light, not much heat, and is come almost to its setting. Now
sinking suns cast long shadows, and this man stands on the world's side of the street, and
casts a long shadow right across the road, to the opposite side of the wall just across
the pavement. Ay, it is all we get with many of you. You come and you take the sacramental
bread and wine; you are capsized; you join the church; and what we get is just your
shadow; there is your substance on the other side of the street, after all. What is the
good of the empty chrysalis of a man? And yet many of our church members are little
better. They just do as the snake does that leaves its slough behind. They give us their
slough, their skin, the chrysalis case in which life once was, and then they go themselves
hither and thither after their own wanton wills; they give us the outward, and then give
the world the inward. O how foolish this, Christian! Thy master gave himself wholly for
thee; give thyself unreservedly to him. Keep not back part of the price. Make a full
surrender of every motion of thy heart; labor to have but one object, and one aim. And for
this purpose give God the keeping of thine heart. Cry out for more of the divine
influences of the Holy Spirit, that so when thy soul is preserved and protected by him, it
may be directed into one channel, and one only, that thy life may run deep and pure, and
clear and peaceful; its only banks being God's will, its only channel the love of Christ
and a desire to please him. Thus wrote Spencer in days long gone by: "Indeed, by
nature, man's heart is a very divided, broken thing, scattered and parceled out, a piece
to this creature, and a piece to that lust. One while this vanity hires him (as Leah did
Jacob of Rachel), anon when he hath done some drudgery for that, he lets out himself to
another: thus divided is man and his affections. Now the elect, whom God hath decreed to
be vessels of honor, consecrated for his holy use and service, he throws into the fire of
his word, that being there softened and melted, he may by his transforming Spirit cast
them anew, as it were, into a holy oneness; so that he who before was divided from God,
and lost among the creatures, and his lusts, that shared him among them, now, his heart is
gathered into God from them all; it looks with a single eye on God, and acts for him in
all that he doth: if therefore thou wouldest know whether thy heart be sincere, inquire
whether it be thus made anew."
5. Now, my last point is rather a strange one perhaps. Once upon a time, when one of our
kings came back from a captivity, old historians tell us that there were fountains in
Cheapside that did run with wine. So bounteous was the king, and so glad the people, that
instead of water, they made wine flow free to everybody. There is a way of making our life
so rich, so full, so blessed to our fellow men, that the metaphor may be applicable to us,
and men may say, that our life flows with wine when other men's lives flow with water. Ye
have known some such men. There was a Howard. John Howard's life was not like our poor
common lives; he was so benevolent, his sympathy with the race so self-denying, that the
streams of his life were like generous wine. You have known another, an eminent saint, one
who lived very near to Jesus: when you talked yourself, you felt your conversation was
poor watery stuff; but when he talked to you, there was an unction and a savor about his
words, a solidity, and a strength about his utterances, which you could appreciate, though
you could not attain unto it. You have sometimes said, "I wish my words were as full,
as sweet, as mellow, and as unctuous as the words of such an one! Oh! I wish my actions
were just as rich, had as deep a color, and as pure a taste as the acts of so-and-so. All
I can do seems but little and empty when compared with his high attainments. Oh, that I
could do more! Oh, that I could send streams of pure gold into every house, instead of my
poor dross," Well, Christian, this should teach thee to keep thine heart full of rich
things. Never, never neglect the Word of God; that will make thy heart rich with precept,
rich with understanding; and then thy conversation, when it flows from thy mouth, will be
like thine heart, rich, unctuous, and savory. Make thy heart full of rich, generous love,
and then the stream that flows from thy hand will be just as rich and generous as thine
heart. Above all, get Jesus to live in thine heart, and then out of thy belly shall flow
rivers of living water, more rich, more satisfying than the water of the well of Sychar of
which Jacob drank. Oh! go, Christians, to the great mine of riches, and cry unto the Holy
Spirit to make thy heart rich unto salvation. So shall thy life and conversation be a boon
to thy fellows; and when they see thee, thy face shall be as the angel of God. Thou shalt
wash thy feet in butter and thy steps in oil; they that sit in the gate shall rise up when
they see thee, and men shall do thee reverence.
But one single sentence, and we have done. Some of your hearts are not worth keeping. The
sooner you get rid of them the better. They are hearts of stone. Do you feel today that
you have a stony heart? Go home, and I pray the Lord hear my desire that thy polluted
heart may be removed. Cry unto God and say, "Take away my heart of stone, and give me
a heart of flesh;" for a stony heart is an impure heart, a divided heart, an
unpeaceful heart. It is a heart that is poor and poverty-stricken, a heart that is void of
all goodness, and thou canst neither bless thyself nor others, if thy heart be such. O
Lord Jesus! wilt thou be pleased this day to renew many hearts? Wilt thou break the rock
in pieces, and put flesh instead of stone, and thou shalt have the glory, world without
end!
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