Binding Up the Broken Heart
‘“* He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds.’’ — PsaLM cxlvii. 3.
WHAT a sweep there is in this Psalm! As, indeed, what a sweep there is in most of the Psalms! The Psalmists are like eagles which spread their wings and with mighty beat of pinion soar into lofty spaces, and after wide journeyings return to their own nest, where the eaglets are resting on a ridge of precipitous crag. The Psalmists move in tremendous circles of meditation, and they come back from their vast orbits to the tiny circles of their own necessities, and to their own wonderful relationship with the Eternal God. And here is a typical sweep of thought : — ‘‘ He telleth the number of the stars, He calleth them all by their names; He healeth the broken in heart and bindeth up their wounds.” The strong singer sees the mighty God in His immeasurable journeyings through unknown worlds, and then he sees Him as a good Samaritan on the little road to Jericho, bringing out His wallet of oil and wine, and ministering to a wayfarer who is lying bruised and broken by the way. His thought is like Wordsworth’s Skylark, the ethereal pilgrim of the sky which is true to “the kindred points of heaven and home.”
What kind of ministries have we for binding up a broken heart? Where can I turn, in all this great city where I live, for ligaments and balms which will make the wounded spirit whole? Where is there a hostel, which does not bear the signs of the Lord, where a wounded pilgrim can find the requisite skill and wisdom which will restore him and set him joyfully on his road again? I remember that George Eliot said, in her later years, and after what she called many heart-cutting experiences, that she had as many proofs as experiences that “‘ opinions are a very poor cement for souls.” And she was right. Opinions are very poor stuff for binding souls together. There is not the making of a tenacious friendship in such a shifting material. And even kindred convictions are not much better, they do not offer anything much more adhesive. Two people can hold the self-same creed, but the creed does not help them in vital and intimate communion. And as it is in a society of souls, so it is in the individual soul. Opinions will not bind a soul together in strong and vital consistency. Nor will mental convictions make the spirit whole. Neither will opinions and convictions take the pain out of the heart, and stay its bleeding, and make it quiet in vital rest and union. If the hugging of opinions would do the healing, then what is called the New Thought has found the ultimate secret in life. ‘‘ Hold to the thought,”’ they say, “‘ and the thought will do the rest.” If I may use the Scriptural figure, these people are building their house with untempered mortar, and it will never hold together.
No, it is not holding to a thought, it is holding to the Lord. It is not the power of my own thinking, it is the Presence of the Great Physician! It is not a mental abstraction before which the soul must kneel, It is the living Lord, Who is the - resurrection and the life, and Who carries in His right hand all the ministries of redeeming grace. ‘‘ Come, ye disconsolate, wheresoever ye languish, Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal.”