Character Tested — And Detected
“God left him to try him, that he might know all that was in his heart.” — II Chhonicles xxxii, 31.
Next to the study of this blessed book, and of Him who gave us this book, I know of none more important than the study of human character. Every man is apt to have his favorite study — some speciality that engages his most eager attention. An astronomer lives in the heavens; his converse is with Orion and the seven stars. While the star-student ascends, the geologist descends to examine the rocks and the strata. His thoughts are of the trilobites and the primitive formations. A fascinating study; but the “primitive formation” of character, and the hidden caverns of motive and the several strata of habits (good or evil) which are all the while accumulating — can he safely neglect these? Here comes the botanist, fragrant with flowers — with a portfolio full of the autographs of the Creator — His handwriting on the cunning hibiscus leaf, the Victoria Regia lily and the imperial rose.
But the budding of character, the flowering out of heart-grace — the eradication of sin’s weeds from the heart-garden — surely here is work for Him too.
The merchant looks every morning for commercial news. Ah! he might sometimes seek for tidings from within as well as from abroad! The mechanist is busy with his inventions. But is there a chronometer whose springs dis-I)lay the subtle delicacy of the inner springs that move human conduct? Is there an engine imprisoned in the womb of the sea-going steamer, or palpitating through its fiery course on the railway track that equals in fervor or in power the throb of a great human heart?
The statesman is absorbed with the management of states and empires. But how to rule the heart-realm — how to keep it in subjection to the King of kings — how to dislodge sin and encourage holiness — this is employment worthy of the most gifted intellect. Here is an occupation for every one of us. For the discipline of the human heart affords one of the grandest arenas on which God expends the Divine wisdom and exercises the Divine love. To cultivate the soul of man for the highest ideal of life on earth and for a higher life in Heaven, is a chief part of God’s providential dealings with us. He “tries the reins.” He tests the heart. He discovers to us our unsuspected frailties and vices of character. And by the combination of discovery and discipline, He trains His children to graduate into eternal glory.
This is the subject to which I now invite you. A fruitful subject and a practical. My text affords an admirable illustration of character tested and weakness exposed. It was Hezekiah’s character which was tested; it was Hezekiah’s own eye which was made to discover Hezekiah’s own weaknesses.
How does God deal with the backsliding king? He so orders it that ambassadors are sent to Hezekiah from the heathen city of Babylon. They come in pomp and barbaric splendor; and with pomp and splendor Hezekiah receives them. He escorts them through his palace. He exhibits to them the temple of God with its utensils of solid gold. All the glory is displayed, and that glory is taken to himself. God is not even mentioned. There is no acknowledgment on the part of the king that Jehovah is his God, and that these are the symbols of His worship and, in fact, all the treasures about him are the gift of God’s love. No mention is made of the religion of his fathers by the forgetful monarch. Like too many, he hides away his religion under the hatchway, while he displays the magnificence of his vesssl. Now God “left him” to do all this “to try him,” and that the king might “know all that was in his heart,”
What a heart was discovered! What an amount of pride and of self-conceit! How little is he like the 13enitent Hezekiah who not long before had been moaning on his bed of sickness and devoutly praying to God for recovery. Then God was all in all. Now He is ignored completely! Even this shameless ingratitude — even all this self-sufficiency and pride were in Hezekiah’ s heart. God left him to himself to try him, and very soon the discovery is made.
You will observe that a practical test was necessary to answer the purpose. This is God’s plan. He employs actual trial as the most thorough detector and also as the most thorough discipliner of the heart. Whether He would bring out the unsuspected evil qualities or the unknown good qualities of a man He employs the same practical test.
For example: when Peter the boastful is to be made sensible of his own presumption and inconstancy, does Christ rebuke him for that braggart speech,’’ though all men should forsake Thee, yet will not I? “No! He simply “leaves him” in Pilate’s judgment hall. Leaves him standing by that fire — for the servant maid to hurl into his teeth the taunt, “thou also wast with Jesus of Nazareth.”
When Jehovah wished to bring out the latent faith in Abraham’s heart, He commands him to Mount Moriah and to offer up there his well-beloved son Isaac.
Now in each of these two signal cases there was a test of character. Each of these two individuals got a look into his own heart. God left them to themselves to “try” them. They were just permitted to develop their own interiors. One of them came out of the test a far less courageous man than he claimed to be. He provoked the tingling rebuke of Christ, and his own tears of shame.
The other — majestic Abraham — received the approbation of his heavenly Father — “Now I know that thou lovest God, seeing that thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son Isaac.” That trial displayed more faith, perhaps, than Abraham had given himself credit for. And certainly Peter was forced to abate his own self-exaggeration as a hero.
With these Scriptural illustrations of our text, let us look at the several truths involved in it.
I. And the first truth is that within every heart lies a whole world of undiscovered territory — a vast amount of undeveloped character. Happy the man who often plays the Columbus to his own soul!
Each heart contains a vast amount of undeveloped character. It is there, but the owner is not aware of it. If he suspects its
250 GHABAGTEll TESTED — A^D DETECTED.
existence, he does not know its extent. Abraham did not know how much of faith he possessed until he was called to flash the naked blade over the breast of his darling son. Nor knew Moses the extent of his own meekness until he was tried with the “contradictions” of those stubborn sinners in the wilderness. Judas may have fancied himself equal to the fair average of honesty till the bag was entrusted with him and the chief 13riests began to tamper with his conscience. Peter insisted and stoutly, too, on his own courage and constancy, till God discovered to him the flaw in the iron — and there the iron broke! All along that flaw had existed in Peter’s character. It may have been constitutional. But what was needed for the disciple was that he should know it. That was a part of the divine training of him for his apostleship. It was needful that Satan “sift” him, in order that the church should have “the wheat” — the Devil got only his chaff.
This truth of undeveloped character is just as true now as in the olden days of Bible history. For the hearts of men are generically as similar as human faces. The undeveloped part of our character is the very part from which we may expect the greatest danger. The undetected flaw lets the axle break when the locomotive is spinning over the track at forty miles per hour — and hence the frightful wreck of cars, freight and human lives. And never are we in greater peril than when dashing along in high success amid the gaze and admiration of all on-lookers. At such times, look out for the axle.
The secret defects of character work the greatest mischief to us. There they lie — away down in the hidden recesses of the soul. They lie dormant — like certain seeds that will remain in the bosom of the earth for a prodigious length of time until some application is made to them. Then they spring up. If no awakening substance touches them, they slumber on unseen and unknown forever.
They tell us that in Scotland is a battle-field on which the natives of the soil and their Saxon neighbors once met in terrible conflict. No monument marks the scene of the bloody fight. All over the field grows the beautiful Scotch heather — except in one spot. There a little blue flower grows abundantly. No flowers like them are to be found for many a league around. Why are they there? The reason is this. Just in the si)ot where they grow, the bodies of the slain were buried, and the earth was saturated with the blood and the remains of the unhappy victims. The seeds of these flowers were there before. As soon as the blood touched them, they sprung up. They developed. And every blue flower on Culloden’s field, as it bends to the breeze, is a memorial of the brave warriors who dyed that heathery sod with their crimson gore.
So is it with character. The seeds of action lie deep beneath the surface — seeds of heroism and the seeds of crime. The seeds of lofty deeds yet unperformed — or of sensualities, frauds, and treacheries yet unperj)etrated. These principles, or germs of action, lie dormant. They may remain latent for years — for a lifetime — may (in fact) never be developed in this lower world. The seeds of the blue flowers at Culloden would, probably, have lain there undetected to this day, but for the trickling about them of human blood. That called them forth.
Benedict Arnold was for many years a patriot above reproach. ISTo one endured the long marches through the pine forests of Maine and Canada better than he. Had he perished in those forests he would have left a name to be linked with the names of Knox and Schuyler, of Wayne and Marion. But when British gold glittered before his eyes, and he found himself deeply in debt, then the latent devil broke forth. The seed sprouted as soon as the gold touched it. The inward lust broke out into hideous treason, and the gallant hero of the northern forests sank into the outcast traitor of West Point. He found out (the whole world, too)” what was in his heart.”
There is a kindred example in the biogTai)liy of David, We do not read that the Jewish king had ever before stained his conscience by any acts of lechery. But when the fair wife of Uriah comes athwart his vision in unexpected exi)osnre, up leaps the latent passion and subdues him. It starts on him like a tiger from the jungles! He is left wounded and disgraced, and turns murderer only that he may cease to be an adulterer! He was left to be ‘’tried” and the sudden test brought up so much filth from the bottom of his heart that he was forced to cry out in the agonies of remorse, “Create in me a clean heart, O God! renew a right spirit wdthin me 1”
A young man leaves his country home for the maelstrom of a great city and brings with Mm little else but a character hitherto honest. He thinks himself honest; his homespun father thought so too. He gets — unhaipily — into an establishment wdiere frauds are frequently iracticed — but “all in the way of business.” His rustic notions are laughed at. His shopmates pity his verdant simplicity. It goes hard with him when he finishes off and polishes up the first cunning lie. It rouges his cheek a little. But he soon gets used to it. He grows sharp by practice. He fleeces customers for his employer’s sake and at length fleeces his employer for his own sake. His master’s dollars begin to find their way into the box office of the theaters or the “banks” of the faro-players. When he goes into business for himself, the swindle is tried on a larger scale and he ends his career as the hero of a stuyendous “explosion” which blows its fragments right and left through the counting rooms of a score of victimized creditors! How do yon explain all this? The solution is easy. That youth brought with him into the city the seeds of knavery in his heart. Circumstances brought them out. That’s all.
In order to verify this princix)le to your own satisfaction, my hearer, just examine your own moral experience. Were you never startled by the discovery of many a latent passion or lust? You hoped — perhaps believed — it was not there. But the proper test to bring it out had never been applied. God had not “left you to try you” in that particular. Many a defaulting bank officer has stood at the counter and handled money for years without allowing a single dime to stick to his fingers. As he read of other men who had turned defaulters he said, “would I be such a fool as to do such a thing?” Ah! the temptation had never touched him just where it touched those other men. But as soon as Satan could offer to him the bril)e he wanted and in the emergency that made Ms conscience weak, he capitulated to the Devil, and “went to his own place” like Judas Iscariot.
“Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.” The only reason why some men stand at all — or stand up so long — is that they were never yut upon slippery places. If they had been, the xlaces of respectability that loY “know them” would long since have “known them no more.”
Even the best and strongest here may be carrying about in their hearts the latent spark that (should a sudden draught blow in upon it) might kindle into a devouring flame! What need of close heart- searching!
What need of sustaining grace! What need of God’s eternal arm! What need of an atoning Saviour! But for that all-kind, all-supporting arm of Jesus, what man of business here but might have been in a felon’s cell? What woman but might have been the companion of those whose feet” take hold on hell?” What Christian here but might have been a blaspheming outcast or a I’ibald scoffer!
II. But again: there is a bright side of this subject. Bright as hope and Heaven! If temptation brings out unknown and unsuspected defects and vices — if, as in David’s case, it brings out wantonness — if, as in Peter’s case, it develops presumption — if, as in Hezekiah’s case, it exhibits pride and ingratitude, yet on the other hand temptation often develops virtues and graces of the rarest hue! A man is left to be tried and he finds in his heart a stout healthy pprinciple that is proof against bribes or snares, or threats or blandishments! The temi)ted soul comes off more than conqueror. He bears uj) like a cedar against the hurricane. A latent grace is developed — a firm substratum of sterling godliness is found underlying his moral and spiritual man that holds him like the rock-ribbed hills! When tempted, he stands.
As the quaint old version hath it:
“Sticking to God in stable trust, As Zion’s mount he stands full just, Which moveth no whit, nor yet can reel, But standeth forever as stiff as steel.”
He stands as Nathan Hale stood, or the patriot Reed under the seductions of foreign gold; he stands as John Huss stood before the Council — as Joseph stood against the wanton wiles of the shameless wife of Potiphar — as Daniel stood against the king of Babylon, or Paul before the throne of Nero, the imperial tiger! The Lord “left all these men to try them” and in their several hearts were found patriotism, constancy, fortitude, chastity and the overcoming loyalty to Christ.
There is this difference, however, in the two classes of cases under review. When men fall it is through their own weakness.
When they stand firm it is God’s imparted strength. “Stand, therefore, having your loins girt about with truth and having on the breastplate of righteousness. Above all take the shield of faith wherewith ye shall be able to quench the fiery darts of the Evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Sx)irit which is the Word of God, praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit.”
III. My last thought is that the best regimen for us, after all, is the regimen of trial. When God means to grow an oak the acorn is not cast into a hothouse. It is flung into the outdoor earth, and struggles bravely upward through the mountain sod. It strikes its roots far below the surface and takes mighty hold, as with subterranean cables. The winter comes down oft and again upon it. The tempest wrestles with its brawny boughs. And through the regimen of storm and gale it earns its imperial place — the monarch of the forest. God leaves the old tree to “try” it, and it comes out an oak!
So when God would have an oak -like Christian, He exposes that Christian to a discipline of toil or of trial — or of both combined. He gives him a work to do — a work for the ignorant — to instruct them — a work for the inebriate in warring against the drinking usages and the hideous traffic in the drink that maddens the brain and kills the soul — a work for the oppressed to break their chains — a work of Christ-like love to the vagrant city child — a work of some kind in sowing truth and in saving men. Oh! how the man is straightened until the work is accomplished! The Devil looks on and waits to see the sinews crack and the courage break like the XDotter’s vessels. But the inward grace is more than sufficient and the tried philanthropist finds “in his heart” a faith that does not fail — a love that casts out all fear — a fidelity that endureth forever. Luther tried is an overmatch for the scarlet monster on the seven hills — the tried Wilberforce is an overmatch for the “Giant Grim” of oppression, and Wesley for the host of formalism in his native land. God leaves many a poor missionary in his frontier cabin — with nothing but the p)romises to live on — and in his heart he finds a Saviour in possession and Heaven in expectation.
Nor is it only by toil that God tests a Christian. He employs affliction too. Property sometimes takes wing, and leaves God’s child with nothing but an empty jmrse and a full Bible. Sickness smites him perhaps, and lays him on a weary bed of wasting, wearing pain. Death breaks into the household. A little cradle, over which the mother hovered,
CHARACTEn TESTED — AND DETECTED. 259
slowly turns into a coffin and the little treasure that nestled so warmly in her arms lies cold enough below the grassy turf! A husband is taken mayhap — the “silver cord” of wedded love is sundered at the “cistern” and the world grows dark in an instant!
But out from these terrible trials comes the triumphant child of God — wet with the baj)tism of suffering and radiant as “Mercy” rising from the river of death to the pearly gates, and as she cometh out she exclaims with adoring gratitude,” Oh ’ my God! Thou hast tried me — but when thou didst try me, I came forth as gold!” For
“The deepest trials that we know
A higher grace discloses;
Men saw the thorns on Jesus’ brow,
But angels saw the roses!”