A Lamp to the Path / Or, The Word of God in the Heart, the Home, the Workshop and the Market-Place

by W. K. Tweedie

THE
WAYWARD
HEART. But amid this affluence of mercy, this plenitude of love, one of them continues indifferent, hardened, and without God. Every new appeal is resisted, and so thickens the incrustation which has gathered round the heart. All within is dead and cold. Religion brings no joy. It seems a system to fetter, and not to emancipate; and as that man cannot both sin and be a Christian, his heart continues shut against the influence which would separate him from his sins. The secret of all this is, that that heart is still the victim or the dupe of lies. There is no Christianity admitted into it. The truth of God is kept far away from the centre of man’s being. Lest that truth should enter the heart, it is kept carefully guarded; it is crowded with worldly cares, or plunged into worldly follies, but left dreary and desolate as to all that is divine; the waters of Marah are never sweetened there; the soul is perishing with redemption in its offer; it is self-doomed to woe and to bitterness, while the Spirit of God through his Word is beckoning it to glory and to honour.

The other of the two worshippers, however, has found out that “one thing is needful.” He has listened to conscience. He has taken counsel with right reason. He has surrendered the heart to God, and that is the decisive moment when man’s name is written in the book of life. It is then that the kingdom of God begins to be within us, then that we learn both how wayward is the heart, and how mighty is the grace of God to subdue it. Light now radiates where all was dark before; joy is now felt where all was cheerless; and the new-born sensation of spiritual freedom brings a presage of the glorious liberty of the children of God.

CONTRASTS AND COLLISIONS.

And what renders it more needful to urge on this ascendancy of truth in the heart is, the opposition which it is sure to encounter in the world. While we sail down the world’s stream, we may glide pleasantly along, and need neither the canvass nor the oar; but the moment we attempt to stem it, the struggle and the conflict begin: we must either earnestly contend, or be carried down to ruin. CONTRASTS
AND
COLLISIONS. What is it that produces thunder? It is the meeting of contraries, or fire and water. What is it that produces the earthquake? It is a similar cause—the meeting of contraries, or substances which cannot quietly co-exist. What is it that occasions war, and massacre, and devastation? It is still a similar cause. It is passion in collision with passion. It is the tyrant seeking to oppress the free. It is ambition grasping at more and more, and trampling upon all who oppose its pleasure—and the same law obtains in religion. Why are God’s people often of all men the most miserable? Whence come persecutions? They come because holiness in the godly and sin in the world have come into collision. The will of God is opposing or protesting against the passions of men, and on that account there is war on the one hand, produced by inflamed passion on the other.

A church, a flock, for farther example, has long been afflicted with an unconverted ministry, and all is peaceful there, for all is spiritual death. But there comes a change. A converted ministry is raised up, and now begins the collision between spiritual life and spiritual death. Ere the truth get access to the heart, it must fight every inch of the way.

Or there is a family where, up to a certain period, all is unmitigated worldliness; not one soul is there alive to God.—But in His sovereign time one member is converted, and then perhaps begin the collision and the strife. The world resents the intrusion or the rebuke implied in spiritual decision; and if that heart will love God’s pure truth, it must zealously contend.

THE VICTORY.

Or there is an individual soul. It has long slumbered, as the world does, without God and without hope. No compunction has roused it, and no alarm been felt. But something at last occurs to disturb that false peace. Truth enters the conscience. It operates there like a visit from the living to the catacombs of Egypt, when the night-birds are disturbed in crowds, and threaten, by their multitudinous flutterings, to blind or to destroy the intruder. Thus, if truth will take possession of a heart for God, it must encounter and vanquish a thousand enemies. THE
VICTORY. In that conflict man needs the whole armour of God, for he has to fight the good fight of faith. His enemies may be those of his own household, or even his own heart; and nothing but the free Spirit of the living God can make man sure of victory in that contest.

THE NEW HEART.

Perhaps it is superfluous to occupy so much time in illustrating what is, in truth, so plain. Yet, as many overlook this plainness, it should be urged in line upon line, that if we would begin aright, we must begin at the heart, out of which flow the issues of life. THE NEW
HEART. One of the most earnest prayers in the Bible is, “Create in me a clean heart, O God,”[2] and one of its most emphatic or comprehensive promises is, “A new heart will I give you.”[3] And would men learn that simple lesson, did they in their several places and relations as superiors, inferiors, or equals, seek to begin at the beginning, and have the heart right with God through the new-creating power of His Spirit, O how sweetly would the whole framework of society soon be adjusted! how surely would “all the building, fitly framed together, grow into an holy temple in the Lord!” The Church would be more pure. The world would not be so often cheered in its ungodly ways, by the example of men professing the truth, but holding it in unrighteousness, because they are destitute of Christianity in the heart, where it should ever reign as the unchallenged and unrivalled queen.—There are some ruins of ancient cities now buried deep under water. When the waves above them are calm, these ruins can still be seen, though centuries have rolled away since they were first submerged. Yet who would regard these waste places as the abodes of living men? Who would speak of them as the haunts of the happy? Nay, life has vanished from them; all that ever lived there have been for centuries destroyed. And, in the same way, the heart that is sunk in worldliness or saturated with what is earthly and sensual, is cut off from all communion with the living God; it is dead to holiness and Him.