Bible Commentaries
Proverbs 4

Verses 18-19

The Two Paths

But the path of the righteous is as the shining light,

That shineth more and more unto the perfect day.

The way of the wicked is as darkness:

They know not at what they stumble.— Proverbs 4:18-19

The “path” which a man pursues signifies, according to the most usual meaning of the word, his style and manner of conduct, the principles according to which he acts. Thus is the word used in Proverbs 4:11 of this chapter: “I have taught thee in the way of wisdom; I have led thee in right paths.” There is another sense in which we find the word “path” sometimes employed; it indicates the condition or destiny of a man; thus, in Job 8:11-13, “Can the rush grow up without mire? can the flag grow without water? Whilst it is yet in his greenness, and not cut down, it withereth before any other herb. So are the paths of all that forget God; and the hypocrite’s hope shall perish.” In the text “the path of the righteous” cannot properly be taken in either of these senses exclusively; it includes both. It signifies simply the just man’s course through life, comprising the development alike of his own character and conduct and of his destiny as a child of light. The word “light” is used here in a peculiar and limited sense, to mean the dawn, the sunrise. So it is used, as our English Bible expressly indicates, in Nehemiah 8:3: “And he [Ezra] read therein before the street that was before the water gate, from the light [from the morning] until midday.” Only when we consider this do we perceive the full force and beauty of the text. “Perfect ( i.e. steadfast, immovable) day” signifies, in the figurative language of the text, noon. And in this we have an example of the incompetency of that which is natural to express the spiritual and eternal. In the day of the soul there is no mere momentary noon, declining into afternoon and night. But what the thing could not properly express, the word translated “perfect” is fitted to suggest.

Inverting the order of the text we shall consider, first, the way of darkness, and, secondly, the way of light.

I

The Way of Darkness

“The way of the wicked is as darkness: they know not at what they stumble.”

These words present a picture of a man out on a dangerous mountain track. He has determined upon going this way. He has despised the advice and entreaties of the guides, although aware that his track is beset with dangers. He was told before he started of the deep ravines and yawning precipices. At times, while trying to find his way, he feels the peril that he has exposed himself to in venturing upon a path so dangerous, a path with which he is totally unacquainted. Now the darkness is coming on; but he still hopes to find his way. Presently the darkness has completely hidden the path, and made it doubly perilous. To stand still is to perish in the night; and yet he cannot hope to find his way now, but wanders on in the darkness. He does not know where he is, or where he is going; the man is lost in the dark; he goes stumbling on till suddenly he stumbles upon his fate and is lost in night.

1. The way of sin at the beginning.—Sin makes us do things we should never think of doing in our right senses. It makes us the subject of the cruellest delusion. To close our eyes against the light is to surrender to the devil, who leads us captive at his will into ever-deepening darkness.

“There are none so blind as those who will not see,” and it is really astonishing to notice how determined many people are not to see what their sinful course must lead to and must end in. I have very seldom known, indeed I do not remember a single case, in which either disease, or pain, or early death, or poverty, or disgrace, or imprisonment, or madness, or any other result of wrong-doing, acted to any great extent as a warning to others pursuing the same way to destruction. The effect, if there be any effect at all, soon passes off. Not a week passes but some one is detected in fraud and embezzlement, but every other thief thinks himself cunning enough to be safe. “Dead through excessive drinking” is the verdict given day by day, all the week through, and all the year round; but every other excessive drinker thinks that he does not drink to excess, or that he has a constitution that will stand it. Thus, verily, “the way of the wicked is darkness.” 1 [Note: H. S. Brown, Manliness, 89.]

Where chiefly the beauty of God’s working was manifested to men, warning was also given, and that to the full, of the enduring of His indignation against sin. It seems one of the most cunning and frequent of self-deceptions to turn the heart away from this warning, and refuse to acknowledge anything in the fair scenes of the natural creation but beneficence. Men in general lean towards the light, so far as they contemplate such things at all, most of them passing “by on the other side” either in mere plodding pursuit of their own work, irrespective of what good or evil is around them, or else in selfish gloom, or selfish delight, resulting from their own circumstances at the moment. What between hard-hearted people, thoughtless people, busy people, humble people, and cheerfully-minded people, giddiness of youth, and preoccupations of age,—philosophies of faith, and cruelties of folly,—priest and Levite, masquer and merchantman, all agreeing to keep their own side of the way,—the evil that God sends to warn us gets to be forgotten, and the evil that He sends to be mended by us gets left unmended. And then, because people shut their eyes to the dark indisputableness of the facts in front of them, their Faith, such as it is, is shaken or uprooted by every darkness in what is revealed to them. In the present day it is not easy to find a well-meaning man among our more earnest thinkers, who will not take upon himself to dispute the whole system of redemption, because he cannot unravel the mystery of the punishment of sin. But can he unravel the mystery of the punishment of No sin?… We cannot reason of these things. But this I know—and this may by all men be known—that no good or lovely thing exists in this world without its correspondent darkness; and that the universe presents itself continually to mankind under the stern aspect of warning, or of choice, the good and the evil set on the right hand and the left. 2 [Note: Ruskin, Modern Painters, vol. iv. chap. xix. § 32.]

2. The way of sin as it continues.—It is a road that runs through sombre passes, like some of those paths far in the heart of the mountains, on which the sun never shines. This is worse than the Valley of the Shadow of Death, for in the fearful path of sin there is no guiding hand and no protecting staff. The darkness of this course is exhaled from the evil committed upon it.

The horrible features of Vanity Fair are carefully concealed from the young man or woman setting out in life. Satan appears then as an angel of light, with seductive air and promises of boundless pleasure and enjoyment. The unhappy victim soon begins to realize the deceitfulness of the tempter and the bitterness of sin. As he rushes with the crowd of pleasure-seekers into the haunts and circles of evil men, he becomes absorbed in their follies and fashions; opportunities of improvement are neglected, facilities of progress are forgotten, virtuous habits are thrown off, and care for higher things is neglected. By degrees, the mind and spirit become the mere vassals of animal passion or selfish gratification, and the day of life passes without any preparation for a blessed future. Amid the whirl and excitement of pleasure-seeking or money-hunting, there soon come hours of gloom and sadness. The fruits of sin are like the fabled apples of Sodom, fair to outside view but poisonous within. Many who frequent gay and festive scenes carry into them sad and heavy hearts, many of them cherish memories of days when innocence and truth gave brightness to their souls; many are haunted by lapses from virtue, and deeds of evil which were committed perhaps long ago, but which memory revives, until the heart sinks and the spirit writhes beneath the rankling of the wound. As life creeps on, the pursuit of sin becomes more irksome, the burden of a wounded conscience becomes more rankling; and unless by a heartfelt repentance, and an acceptance of mercy through Christ, the transgressor returns to the Father’s house, the end comes in darkness. 1 [Note: W. J. Townsend, The Ladder of Life, 256.]

Of what Christians call “the Divine Government”—but which he regarded as “the sum of the customs of matter,” Huxley believed it to be “wholly just.” “The more I know intimately of the lives of other men (to say nothing of my own),” he wrote, “the more obvious it is to me that the wicked does not flourish, nor is the righteous punished. But for this to be clear we must bear in mind what almost all forget—that the rewards of life are contingent upon obedience to the whole law—physical as well as moral—and that moral obedience will not atone for physical sin, or vice versa. The ledger of the Almighty is strictly kept, and every one of us has the balance of his operations paid over to him at the end of every minute of his existence. The absolute justice of the system of things is as clear to me as any scientific fact. The gravitation of sin to sorrow is as certain as that of the earth to the sun, and more so—for experimental proof of the fact is within reach of us all—nay, is before us all in our own lives, if we had but eyes to see it.” 1 [Note: Life of T. H. Huxley, by his Son, i. 220.]

3. The way of sin as it ends.—The sinner has no prospect of light beyond. There are no Beulah heights for him at the farther end of the gloomy valley. His night of sin will be followed by no dawn of blessed light. He presses on only to deeper and yet deeper darkness. If he will not return, there is nothing before him but the darkness of death. The one way of escape is backwards—to retrace his steps in humble penitence. Then, indeed, he may see the welcome light of his Father’s home, and even earlier the Light of the world, the Saviour who has come out into the darkness to lead him back to God. For the sinner who persists in his evil course there can be no better prospect than that described by Byron in his poem on “Darkness”—

The world was void,

The populous and the powerful was a lump,

Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless,

A lump of death—a chaos of hard clay.

The rivers, lakes, and ocean all stood still,

And nothing stirr’d within their silent depths;

Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,

And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp’d

They slept on the abyss without a surge—

The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,

The moon, their mistress, had expired before;

The winds were wither’d in the stagnant air,

And the clouds perish’d; Darkness had no need

Of aid from them—She was the Universe.

The death of Lord Pembroke, whose character and aims Spencer estimated very highly, removed one more from the ever narrowing circle of his friends and acquaintances. To the Countess of Pembroke he wrote on 26th June 1895: “On the great questions you raise I should like to comment at some length had I the energy to spare. The hope that continual groping, though in the dark, may eventually discover the clue is one I can scarcely entertain, for the reason that human intelligence appears to me incapable of framing any conception of the required kind. It seems to me that our best course is to submit to the limitations imposed by the nature of our minds, and to live as contentedly as we may in ignorance of that which lies behind things as we know them. My own feeling respecting the ultimate mystery is such that of late years I cannot even try to think of infinite space without some feeling of terror, so that I habitually shun the thought.” 1 [Note: D. Duncan, The Life and Letters of Herbert Spencer, 370.]

II

The Shining Way

“The path of the righteous is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.”

1. The “path of the righteous” has all the great characteristics suggested by light, namely, truth, purity, joy, life. Perhaps the leading idea is that of holy gladness. In Scripture the favourite emblem of heaven and the heavenly, of God and the godly, is light,—of the evil power and the evil place, darkness; and none could be more striking and expressive. It is expressive of all the phenomena of the two contrasted worlds, alike in their nature, in their origin, and in their consequences. And light, as symbolical of the good, speaks to us of enlightenment of the understanding, the purity of holiness, and true happiness, even as darkness speaks to us of the opposites. Light means wisdom and holiness; and thus the Apostle Paul, writing to the Ephesians, uses it: “Ye were sometimes darkness” ( i.e. foolish and unholy), “but now are ye light in the Lord”: your ignorance, that is to say, has been dispelled by the knowledge in Christ of the Holy God and reconciled Father. “Walk as children of light”; act, that is, in accordance with those principles of heavenly wisdom wherewith your darkened understanding has been enlightened, and shine in the bright purity of holiness. The just man, then, is a child of light, first of all, because through Divine grace he has been endued with wisdom, and has the seeds of holiness implanted within him.

The message of Fox was to make men realize that individual inspiration was not a thing of the past, and that true assurance and guidance were open to every man who would follow the inward illumination. Attention to this inner light resulted in the discovery of sin and of the overcoming life in Christ. “Every one of you hath a light from Christ which lets you see you should not lie, nor do wrong to any nor swear nor curse nor take God’s name in vain, nor steal. It is the light that shows you these evil deeds: which, if you love and come unto it and follow it, will lead you to Christ who is the way to the Father, from whom it comes: where no unrighteousness enters nor ungodliness. If you hate this light it will be your condemnation: but if you love it and come to it, you will come to Christ.” The important thing for men to realize is that they have the witness of God in their own hearts against moral evils. It is not any outward code, scriptural or social, which reveals sin as sin, but the light of God in the conscience. If men would humbly and patiently wait upon God, the path of obedience would be made plain and the power to obey be abundantly bestowed. 1 [Note: H. G. Wood, George Fox, 28.]

2. The life of the righteous is a life of increasing lustre. Like the light, it shineth “more and more.” The day does not burst upon the earth at once. The night does not vanish and come to an end in a moment. There is a slow and gradual change; at first a very faint light far away in the eastern sky, while all the rest is dark; then it spreads gently wider and higher, and wakes up all things to a new life, bringing to sight mountains and valleys, streams and woods, which lay but now in the thick darkness, as though they were not. Then, at last, when all the shadows have grown pale, and the flood of shining light has poured its streams into every secret place, so that there is night and darkness no more—then the glorious sun comes forth, “like a giant refreshed,” at first indeed made dim by the mists that still hang upon the earth, but soon breaking through, as it were, till he rides high in the clear sky, and, with the full power of his light and heat, pours down upon earth “the perfect day.” But it is not always so. There are mornings of a different sort. Sometimes clouds and storms come with the breaking day. The sullen thunder-cloud, or the heavy gloom of mists and rain, half hide the feeble light. The sun passes behind great folds of heavy cloud, and you can see his rays only now and then through some rent or opening in the curtain that hides him from view. But he stays not, he changes not, in his course. He fulfils his daily round. He is the same, whatever else may be. And, whether it be in calm, or whether it be in storm, the light “shineth more and more unto the perfect day.”

Such is the parable of the text. The path of the righteous begins like the light of dawn. It is small in its beginning. The new-born Christian is like a rising sun struggling through the mists of morn. It must travel to its noon. Moving in the skies, far beyond all malign influence of earth, no hand but that of the Creator can stay it in its onward progress. Black clouds may steal it from the eye, but no cloud touches its fiery rim. Behind and above the cloud, it travels to its noon. For us its brightness may be absorbed in darkness, but in itself it shineth bright as ever. Even so is it with the Christian. Far above and beyond the malign influences of this sinful world, he too travels to his everlasting noon. No hand but the hand of the Almighty Redeemer, who set him forth on his glorious course, can touch him. Clouds of sorrow, and it may be clouds of sin, may dim his glory to the earthly eye, or leave him even in black eclipse; but behind the darkness he proceedeth from height to height, climbing the heavens.

“Divine grace” (says Leighton, on 1 Peter 1:7), “even in the heart of weak and sinful man, is an invincible thing. Drown it in the waters of adversity, it rises more beautiful, as not being drowned indeed, but only washed: throw it into the furnace of fiery trials, it comes out purer, and loses nothing but the dross which our corrupt nature mixes with it.” It belongeth then, by very necessity of nature, to the child of God that he grow—grow, so to speak, in bulk of spiritual life, grow in strength of all spiritual faculties, grow in largeness of spiritual result. Where there is no growth, there is no life. The path of the just is as the shining light, which shineth more and more. 1 [Note: J. Hamilton, Faith in God, 334.]

(1) Growth in the spiritual life is the gradual unfolding within of the powers of a life communicated to us. There is a supernatural life within the justified, for through union with the Incarnate Word we have received from Him the life that is in Himself. The life of God dwells without measure in the Son, and passes in measure into His members. In the justified this gift of life is no longer dormant, but is stirred up, and becomes an active principle within, as its presence is recognized and responded to. This life, thus willingly yielded to, is ever manifesting its vigour in the inward growth. As in nature, so in grace, the babe becomes the child, the child develops into the young man, the young man ripens into the father. But there cannot be this growth in the Divine life without the communication to us, through the Holy Ghost, of the life of God, and our surrender to it by repentance and faith. It will not do to imagine that a man may live and die in darkness, and that then a dazzling light will be shed upon him, like some splendid garment outside him, which will make him all at once meet for the inheritance of the saints in light. No, the light must be within, kindled in the soul, growing there, cleansing and beautifying it; the soul must grow in the light. This is what we call the internal glory, the growth of the character in beauty.

Throughout these pages [of his annotated Bible], we are constantly impressed by the large mental frontier of Smetham—his range of faculty, his many-sidedness. Here is a fragrant wild flower of the sermonic type, which crops up in that paradise of perfumed philosophy, Solomon’s Proverbs. It elucidates that celestial metaphor of the soul’s advancement, “The path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.” The annotation is this: “The nature of the light remains the same. The first feeble ray of the morning has the same chemical elements as those of the brightest noon. So with Christian character.” 1 [Note: W. G. Beardmore, James Smetham, Painter, Poet, Essayist, 82.]

(2) To walk in the light gives expansion to all man’s capacities. There is no mental or moral faculty of human nature which is not improved and perfected by walking in the path which leads to eternal life. This results from close and constant association with the Christ, who is the treasury of wisdom and knowledge, and the sum of all excellence. Intimate fellowship with Him is health-giving in the highest degree. It means purity of atmosphere, for He takes us to the mount of vision above the fogs and vapours of impurity and sin; it means strength, because He is the Bread of Life, of which if a man eat he lives for ever; it means growth on every side of life, because the Christians say: “Of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace.” Thus in Him and through Him the Christian is perfected.

When Christian was passing through the Valley of the Shadow of Death it was night, and he could scarcely see his way, but the day began to break as he came near the end of the first part of it, and the sun shone ever brighter and brighter upon the more dangerous part of the valley, so that he was able to walk more safely. Then said he, “His candle shineth on my head, and by His light I go through the darkness.” And so, while there may be but a feeble light on your path when you first begin to love and serve Jesus, it will grow brighter like the rising sun as you continue to do Song of Solomon 1 [Note: J. Jeffrey, The Way of Life, 52.]

(3) “Unto the perfect day.” At this point the simile of the text fails. Here the sun rises but to set; it travels to its midday splendour only to give place to midnight gloom. It is not so there: her “sun shall no more go down,” for “there is no night there.” Here light streams to us from God only through created media of His appointment. He “made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also” ( Genesis 1:16), and through them light streams from Him to us. Hence it is in nature as it is in grace; light and darkness are constantly interchanged, whilst we receive His gifts through created media. But in the Heavenly Country there is no such change, because “the Lord himself is her everlasting light,” and the light that is in Him streams forth upon the children of light in one unending day. Blessed permanence of that unending day, that undecaying light! There is no night there, thank God! It is not advance and retrogression, but one unchecked progress; it is not the interchange of happiness and misery, but one unending song of the children of the day, revelling in the everlasting light.

This means not only glory, but also the development of humanity beneath the rays that stream from the light of God. It is there that the hidden powers of the intellect are developed, and the magnificence of mind is manifested. It is there that the capacities of the heart to love are recognized, for there alone its hidden depths are sounded. It is there that the wondrous energies of the spirit are unfolded, in a degree now inconceivable to us, as it is flooded with the vision of God. There, and there only, is the grandeur of humanity realized, where the varied capacities of each created nature attain their perfection. In the imperfect there is no rest, but when we are perfect, “as he is perfect, in the perfect day,” then shall be realized by us the joy of the sons of God.

When the organism of the oak and the environment which fosters its growth unite to produce the sturdy king of the forest, we consider ourselves justified in concluding that God meant an oak-tree to be the outcome. And when we find a moral nature so constituted that it tends to develop along the line of rectitude, purity, and love, and an environment which offers the least resistance in the direction of righteousness, it is a safe inference that God purposed the development of that nature in the direction of righteousness. When He made the way of transgressors hard, and caused the path of the just to shine brighter and brighter unto the perfect day, God pointed the direction in which our race was to move. He indicated the destiny of man. He forecast the consummation of the work of the ages. He foreshadowed in that one fact the moral order and progress of man.

One God, one law, one element,

And one far-off divine event

To which the whole creation moves. 1 [Note: J. C. Adams, The Leisure of God, 46.]

Our destiny is potential within ourselves. Every man, woman, and child possesses this potentiality, this shaping spirit of prayer and the love of God. The golden stairs are in every home, in every house of business, and workshop, whereby, in deep communings like those of Jesus on the Galilean hills, we may bring down troops of joys and graces to fill the common day with song. It is our fault altogether if the lower chambers of life are dull and spiritless. The task is difficult no doubt. So much the more need for that steadfast communion with the Indwelling Love which gives the soul a power and persistence not long to be denied. Resolute always to see what good there is, and to throw the whole weight of our soul on to the side of that good, we shall find our love consuming the evil, and liberating kindred souls to co-operate with us. 2 [Note: T. J. Hardy, The Gospel of Pain.]

Through love to light, O wonderful the way

That leads from darkness to the perfect day!

From darkness and from sorrow of the night,

To morning that comes singing o’er the sea.

Through love to light; through light, O God, to Thee

Who art the Love of love, the eternal Light of light

Literature

Adams (J. C.), The Leisure of God, 35.

Body (G.), The Life of Justification, 175.

Brown (H. S.), Manliness, 83.

Guthrie (T.), Man and the Gospel, 274.

Hamilton (J.), Faith in God, 324.

Jeffrey (J.), The Way of Life, 50.

Kemble (C.), Memorials of a Closed Ministry, ii. 199.

Lucas (H.), At the Parting of the Ways, 294.

Maclaren (A.), Expositions: Esther, etc., 108.

Owen (J. W.), Some Australian Sermons, 158.

Parr (R. H.), The Path of the Just, 294.

Christian World Pulpit, xxv. 286 (W. M. Statham).

Church Family Newspaper, July 15, 1910 (A. F. W. Ingram).

Homiletic Review, lix. 390 (R. L. Swain).

Literary Churchman, xxxv. (1889) 15 (J. E. Vernon).

Preacher’s Magazine, vi. 513 (E. J. Lyndon).

Verse 23

The Heart

Keep thy heart with all diligence;

For out of it are the issues of life.— Proverbs 4:23

1. In the Bible, and more especially in the Book of Proverbs, the word “heart” is among the most pregnant in all language. As the heart physically is the central organ of the body, it is often used to denote the life, the soul itself. “My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out unto the living God.” Then there is a large group of passages which show that the heart in the Bible stands for the seat of the emotions, as in the popular phraseology of every language. But in Hebrew it also represented the seat of intelligence, the tone and quality of the character, as when a clear, pure, sincere heart is ascribed to any one, or when it is said, “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” Further, it stands for will or purpose: “Do all that is in thine heart” means “in thine intention or desire.” Because the heart is thus the focus of the personal life, the secret laboratory in which every influence which penetrates thither is reacted upon, so that it passes out charged with the colour and quality of the inner life, it is natural that it should be spoken of here as the central fact of our nature, and that God should demand it for His own. When we give our heart to Him, we give Him the most precious, because the most determinative, element in our life.

2. The Greek version, which was very generally used in our Lord’s time, had a beautiful variation of the text: “In order that thy fountains may not fail thee, guard them in the heart.” It was after all but a new emphasis on the old teaching of the Book of Proverbs when Jesus taught the necessity of heart purity, and when He showed that out of the heart come forth evil thoughts, and all the things which defile a man. Yet this lesson of inwardness has always been the most difficult of all to learn. Christianity itself has always been declining from it and falling into the easier but futile ways of externalism; and even Christian homes have usually failed in their influence on the young, chiefly because their religious observances have fallen into formalism, and, while the outward conduct has been regulated, the inner springs of action have not been touched.

Visit the electrical power-house of any large town. Watch the whirling dynamo. Here is the energy that drives the car; here is generated the spark that lights the night; here is born the impulse that begets the motion and brightness outside. Musing thus, you will understand what is meant by the heart. Press the illustration further; mark how this monster is guarded and controlled, and then think of the last thunderstorm you can remember. In the engine-house the power is in subjection, watched with all diligence; outside in the wide universe it is untamed, uncontrolled, wrecking and damaging and contorting. On the one hand, assisting commerce, giving brightness and cheerfulness—the issues of life. On the other, devastation and ruin—the issues of death. Life and death by the same power. Controlled, life; uncontrolled, death. This power is analogous to the heart of Man_1:1 [Note: J. H. Ward.]

I

The Centre of Life

1. The heart that we carry in our body may rightly be called the centre of life. The physical heart is a large bunch of muscles, placed between the two lungs and acting as a fountain of life to the whole body. How wonderful it is in its structure—its auricles, and ventricles, its valves and blood-vessels! “The blood is the life”; and every moment it is being driven by the unresting stroke of the heart’s pump into the great arteries and all through the body. The heart is the central organ of the human frame; and the health of the body depends upon its soundness and its proper action. Only when this action is healthy and true will the whole body be full of power, energy, and beauty. When, on the other hand, the heart is feeble or diseased, it will send languor and mischief through the whole system. This organ, in short, is the mainspring, the determining factor in the life of the body. The other organs work well or ill according to the state of the heart.

2. But the Old Testament locates in the heart the centre of personal being. It is not merely the home of the affections, but also the seat of will, of moral purpose. As this text says, “the issues of life” flow from it in all the multitudinous variety of their forms. The stream parts into many heads, but it has one fountain. To the Hebrew thinkers the heart was the indivisible, central unity which manifested itself in the whole of the outward life. “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” The heart is the man. And that personal centre has a moral character which comes to light in, and gives unity and character to, all his deeds.

(1) Out of the heart are the issues of life. It is not the mind, the thought-power, the judgment-forming part of our nature that holds the primacy and sits upon the throne. The mind, with its thoughts, its judgments, its ideas, is the servant of our practical needs. The mind, in fact, came into being, was organized and developed because of our practical needs. It is not the regal and aristocratic member of our being that it has sometimes been assumed to be. It is a veritable slave and lackey, serving in homespun, continually driven, and made to work overtime at the whip’s end of the dominant forces of life. Because primitive man was conscious of hunger, he contrived a way to till the ground, to plant, to reap, to grind and bake. The mind did not invent bread, and then coax the appetite to eat, because bread forsooth was good. Man was hungry; the appetite was imperious master, and it compelled the mind to find some way of satisfying that need. Because man was naked, he also invented dress, first from the skins of wild beasts, then from their woolly covering,” woven into a fabric. Because he was subjected to the wind and the rain, to the sun and the frost, he drove the thinking part of him to devise a tent and a roof, a protecting shelter from the prowling lion, or a stockade against human foe. Here is the invariable order: need—invention—satisfaction. And this is actually all that the mind, with its knowledge, has ever done for man; in the last analysis it will always reduce to this—the discovery of a way, continuously a better way, between these two terms; need, and the satisfaction of the need. Out of the heart have been the issues of life from the outset. The needs, the desires, the great passions, the urgent impulses—these have been in control. It is they who have sat on the throne.

(2) The condition of the heart determines our influence. The world over, the most potent force is not thought, but love. Argument often convinces while affection sways in a contrary direction. A teacher’s wisdom, with all the fascinations of the schools, moves us less than a mother’s pleading and tears. Even where masses of men bow before eloquent oratory, it is the power of sincerity and earnestness in the speaker that moves even those who differ. We all instinctively feel that the secret of heroism is noble affection, unselfish love, and sacrifice. There is a sort of righteousness that only awakens a cold admiration; while goodness, which is righteousness touched with love, leads men to die for its possessor.

When Wilberforce, the great apostle of liberty in Europe, was turning the world upside-down, one man asked another, “What is the secret of the power of Wilberforce? There are many men with more brains and more culture.” And his friends answered, “The secret of Wilberforce is that he has a heart full of sympathy.” And that is the secret of multitudes of people who are doing great good in the world. Do not keep guard over your heart with the purpose only of keeping bad things out of it, but keep watch over it to see that the fountains of sympathy and brotherly kindness are open and flowing day by day. 1 [Note: L. A. Banks, The Problems of Youth, 85.]

(3) That which goes so far to mould character and to shape influence, must determine destiny. When the great judicial scales of the Universal Judge are at last hung, it cannot be otherwise than that the central affections should settle which way those scales preponderate: what we have most truly loved must have vital connexion with the eternal future—not only with the entrance into Heaven, but the capacity for its joys. Our affections both reveal what character essentially is and forecast what it is to be—even more than our thoughts; for the affections largely prompt our habits of thought, determining what images we love to contemplate. The essence both of sin and of holiness is largely here; for the acts both of sin and of saintliness could have little moral quality were there no moral preference behind them. It is the love of evil that makes sin so damning, and the love of holiness that is the heart of sainthood. But for this heart affection for evil, how could the imagination be employed as sin’s artist, or memory as its treasure gatherer, or the will as its marshal? But for this, even the Devil’s hook would be bare of bait, and his wiles would find no response in us, as they found none in our tempted Master.

In a letter to his mother at Scotsbrig. Carlyle writes from Craigenputtock, in September 1833: “But I must tell you something of myself: for I know many a morning, my dear mother, you ‘come in by me’ in your rambles through the world after those precious to you. If you had eyes to see on these occasions you would find everything quite tolerable here. I have been rather busy, though the fruit of my work is rather inward, and has little to say for itself. I have yet hardly put pen to paper; but foresee that there is a time coming. All my griefs, I can better and better see, lie in good measure at my own door: were I right in my own heart, nothing else would be far wrong with me. This, as you well understand, is true of every mortal, and I advise all that hear me to believe it, and to lay it practically to their own case.” 1 [Note: J. A. Froude, Thomas Carlyle, 1795–1835, ii. 368.]

In the course of a walk in the park at Edgeworthstown, I happened to use some phrase which conveyed (though not perhaps meant to do so) the impression that I suspected Poets and Novelists of being a good deal accustomed to look at life and the world only as materials for art. A soft and pensive shade came over Scott’s face as he said, “I fear you have some very young ideas in your head; are you not too apt to measure things by some reference to literature—to disbelieve that anybody can be worth much care who has no knowledge of that sort of thing, or taste for it? God help us! what a poor world this would be if that were the true doctrine! I have read books enough, and observed and conversed with enough of eminent and splendidly cultivated minds, too, in my time; but, I assure you, I have heard higher sentiments from the lips of poor uneducated men and women, when exerting the spirit of severe yet gentle heroism under difficulties and afflictions, or speaking their simple thoughts as to circumstances in the lot of friends and neighbours, than I ever yet met with out of the pages of the Bible. We shall never learn to feel and respect our real calling and destiny, unless we have taught ourselves to consider everything as moonshine, compared with the education of the heart.” 1 [Note: Lockhart, Life of Sir Walter Scott, ch. lxiii.]

Too soon did the Doctors of the Church forget that the heart, the moral nature, was the beginning and the end; and that truth, knowledge, and insight were comprehended in its expansion. This was the true and first apostasy,—when in council and synod the Divine Humanities of the Gospel gave way to speculative Systems, and Religion became a Science of Shadows under the name of Theology, or at best a bare Skeleton of Truth, without life or interest, alike inaccessible and unintelligible to the majority of Christians. For these, therefore, there remained only rites and ceremonies and spectacles, shows and semblances. Thus among the learned the Substance of things hoped for passed into Notions; and for the unlearned the Surfaces of things became Substance. The Christian world was for centuries divided into the Many that did not think at all, and the Few who did nothing but think,—both alike unreflecting, the one from defect of the act, the other from the absence of an object. 2 [Note: Coleridge, Aids to Reflection.]

II

The Keeping of the Heart

“Keep thy heart above all keeping.” God guards very carefully the heart He has put in our body. He has put the strongest bones all round it, so that, though other parts may be easily hurt, the heart is safe. Well, the text says that we should guard the heart of our real lives in the same way “with all diligence,” above everything else; because, if the heart goes wrong, the whole life goes wrong with it.

One of the most famous and valuable diamonds in the world is the “Koh-i-nur,” or Mountain of Light, which belongs to the British Crown. This gem was exhibited in the Great Exhibition of 1851, and was an object of special interest. It lay upon a little cushion in a case with glass panels, the inside being lighted up with gas. And there was always a group of people crowding to see it. But it was also an object of peculiar care. For while the whole of the Crystal Palace, which contained so many treasures, was well guarded, a special watchman paced to and fro by day and night to guard the “Koh-i-nur.” Even so ought every Christian, above all other valuables that he has to guard, to “keep” his heart, for it is the citadel of his life. 1 [Note: C. Jerdan, For the Lambs of the Flock, 63.]

1. Our nature is evidently not a republic, but a monarchy. It is full of blind impulses, and hungry desires, which take no heed of any law but their own satisfaction. If the reins are thrown on the necks of these untamed horses, they will drag the man to destruction. They are safe only when they are curbed and bitted, and held well in. Then there are tastes and inclinations which need guidance and are plainly meant to be subordinate. The will is to govern all the lower self, and conscience is to govern the will. Unmistakably there are parts of every man’s nature which are meant to serve, and parts which are appointed to rule, and to let the servants usurp the place of the rulers is to bring about as wild a confusion within as the Preacher lamented that he had seen in the anarchic times when he wrote—princes walking and beggars on horseback. As George Herbert has it—

Give not thy humours way;

God gave them to thee under lock and key.

Savage tribes not only fight with poisoned arrows; they have been known to creep into another tribe’s country, and put poison into the wells, so that when the tired soldier, the thirsting woman and child, and the poor beasts of the forest came to the well to slake their thirst, they drank death in every drop of water that passed their lips. Now, would you think a chief stern, or too particular, if at war-time he ordered his people to guard the wells? Would not such an order be a kind one? Would not the meaning of it be, “Save your own lives, and the lives of your wives and children”? Well, your heart, your mind, is the well of your life. If that is poisoned, your best life will die. And the Book that bids you guard it well is not a stern book, but a kind, loving book, that wishes you well, and is your best friend. 2 [Note: J. M. Gibbon, In the Days of Youth, 32.]

2. Keeping or guarding is plainly imperative, because there is an outer world which appeals to our needs and desires, irrespective altogether of right and wrong, and of the moral consequences of gratifying these. Put a loaf before a starving man, and his impulse will be to clutch and devour it, without regard to whether it is his or not. Show any of our animal propensities its appropriate food, and it asks no questions as to right or wrong, but is stirred to grasp its natural food. And even the higher and nobler parts of our nature are but too apt to seek their gratification without having the licence of conscience for doing so, and sometimes in defiance of its plain prohibitions.

Many telegraph wires run under and over our streets, over the mountains and under the oceans, coming from scenes of war and of peace, of industry and of learning, of sorrow and of joy, each carrying some swift current. And these wires are gathered at last into some central office of many clicking instruments. The operator translates these currents into intelligence, and sends them out in the form of messages of commerce, of war, of crime, or of love. So our five senses are main wires going out into the world about us, gathering observations, sensations, and experience from the streets of the city, the scenes of the country, the companions we meet, the books we read, the pictures at which we look. Another wire goes down, like an ocean cable, into the depths of our own nature, bringing up mysterious messages given by our own consciousness, speaking of God and good, of right and wrong, and of judgment to come. Thus there are wires from heaven above, on which God and good angels are sending messages; wires from hell below, on which the devil and his angels are sending suggestions, promptings; wires from men and women about us, conveying subtle trains of thought and of feeling. And the heart of man is the central office into which these wires run, pouring in there this raw material of thought-stuff. 1 [Note: R. Mackenzie, The Loom of Providence, 248.]

III

The Keeper of the Heart

1. The inherent weakness of all attempts at self-keeping is that, keeper and kept being one and the same personality, the more we need to be kept the less able we are to effect it. If in the very garrison there are traitors, how shall the fortress be defended? In order, then, to exercise an effectual guard over our characters and control over our natures, we must have an outward standard of right and wrong which shall not be deflected by variations in our temperature. We need a fixed light to steer towards, which is stable on the stable shore, and is not tossing up and down on our decks. We shall cleanse our way only when we “take heed thereto, according to thy word.” For even God’s viceroy within, the sovereign conscience, can be warped, perverted, silenced, and is not immune from the spreading infection of evil. When it turns to God, as a mirror to the sun, it is irradiated and flashes bright illumination into dark corners, but its power depends on its being thus lit by radiations from the very Light of Life. And if we are ever to have a coercive power over the rebellious powers within, we must have God’s power breathed into us, giving grip and energy to all the good within, quickening every lofty desire, satisfying every aspiration that feels after Him, cowing all our evil and being the very self of ourselves.

To know that God does not depend upon our feelings, but our feelings upon God, to know that we must claim a certain spiritual position as our right before we can realize it in our apprehensions, to be assured that we have the Spirit of God within us, and that He is distinct from all the emotions, energies, affections, sympathies in our minds, the only source and inspirer of them all, this is most necessary for us, the peculiar necessity, if I am not mistaken, of this age. The confidence of a power always at work within us, manifesting itself in our powerlessness, a love filling up our lovelessness, a wisdom surmounting our folly, the knowledge of our right to glory in this love, power, and wisdom, the certainty that we can do all righteous acts by submitting to this Righteous Being, and that we do them best when we walk in a line chosen for us, and not of our choosing, this is the strength surely, and nothing else, which carries us through earth and lifts us to heaven. 1 [Note: The Life of Frederick Denison Maurice, i. 246.]

2. The heart will not be satisfied till it is given to the highest and best. It demands a permanent investment for its affections; wealth, earthly ambition, the happiness that comes from without are only a loan at the best, and capital and interest will be demanded at death. The heart demands something substantial; glory, praise, reputation are full of promise till they are ours; and then, a last year’s nest, out of which the bird has flown! In one word, the heart demands a person greater, nobler, purer, stronger than itself, in whose affections and favour it can live and move and have its being; and God, as revealed in His Son Jesus Christ, is the only One whose nature is great enough to environ the soul with perfect peace and feed it with unfailing strength, in whose favour is life, and at whose right hand are pleasures for evermore.

The wise Augustine, who, after many wild wanderings, in which he had drained the fountain of knowledge, and quaffed to the dregs the cup of earthly delights, and given himself to every device by which the libertine and the fool endeavour to slake their souls at the salt pools of death, came back to God, like a bird to its forsaken nest, and said, “O Lord, broken is our heart and unquiet, and full of sorrow it must be, till it finds rest in Thee!” 1 [Note: E. Griffith-Jones, in Comradeship and Character, 261.]

“I wish you would change my heart,” said the chief Sekomi to Livingstone, “Give me medicine to change it, for it is proud, proud and angry, angry always.” He would not hear of the New Testament way of changing the heart; he wanted an outward, mechanical way—and that way was not to be found. 2 [Note: R. F. Horton, The Book of Proverbs, 58.]

3. That Divine Power is exerted for our keeping on condition of our trusting ourselves to Him and trusting Him for ourselves. And that condition is no arbitrary one, but is prescribed by the very nature of Divine help and of human faith. If God could keep our souls without our trust in Him, He would. He does so keep them as far as is possible, but for all the choicer blessings of His giving, and especially for that of keeping us free from the domination of our lower selves, there must be in us faith, if there is to be in God help. The hand that lays hold on God in Christ must be stretched out and must grasp His warm, gentle, and strong hand, if the tingling touch of it is to infuse strength. If the relieving force is victoriously to enter our hearts, we must throw open the gates and welcome it. Faith is but the open door for God’s entrance. It has no efficacy in itself any more than a door has, but all its blessedness depends on what it admits into the hidden chambers of the heart.

“To conquer,” said Napoleon, “you must replace.” You cannot expel bad thoughts by no thoughts. “Whatsoever things are pure, think on these things.” One thought there is which above all others is fruitful and powerful, and which should be familiar to every tempted Christian soul; it is the thought of the Cross and of Christ Crucified. “ In hoc signo vinces.” David slew the Philistine with a sling and with a stone, but the sling was ready in his hand, and foresight had caused him to fill the bag with stones out of the brook. To the soul which fights the faithful battle in the realm of thought, and cries aloud in the darkness of its night to Christ Crucified, what wondrous light and power are given by the merits of the Cross and Passion.

Here is the heart’s true bulwark found!

And here is rest secure;

And here is love’s most certain ground,

And here salvation sure. 1 [Note: The Lenten Collects, 33.]

O how well he is guarded and armed against the snares of the devil and evil thoughts and impure imaginations, who has the image of the Crucified fixed in his heart, penetrating all his interior: and always and everywhere urging to the thought and performance of every good! Then inwardly consoled with wondrous sweetness of heart from the presence of Christ shall he be able justly to say, what holy David with great joy sang to God: “I have run the way of thy commandments; when thou didst enlarge my heart.” 2 [Note: Thomas à Kempis, Sermons to the Novices Regular, 76.]

Literature

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Calthrop (G.), The Lost Sheep Found, 153.

Davidson (T.), Thoroughness, 101.

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Fürst (A.), Christ the Way, 12.

Gibbon (J. M.), In the Days of Youth, 28.

Griffith-Jones (E.), in Comradeship and Character, 253.

Jeffrey (J.), The Way of Life, 55.

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