The Heart of Stone

A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you, and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh. — EZEKIEL xxxvi. 26.

SPHERE is a mine of sound sense in the adage of an old divine, “seriousness is the greatest wisdom, temperance the most efficient physic, and a good conscience the very best estate.” Early habits of self-restraint, total abstinence from all excess, diligence in business, attention to our duties, and that tranquillity of mind which piety brings, and which they enjoy who are at peace with God — these, we confidently affirm, would do more to abate disease than all our physicians, much more to feed the hungry and clothe the naked than our poor laws and charitable institutions, and very much more than any Acts of Parliament to promote the comforts of the people and preserve the liberties of the commonwealth. The older we grow, and the more our observation enlarges, the deeper grows our conviction that “godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come.”

One of the most remarkable instances of this truth, which it was ever our good fortune to see, presented itself in the vicinity of this house of God. A weary day had passed in visiting a wretched neighbourhood. Its scenes were sad, sickening, repulsive. Famine, fever, want, squalid nakedness, moral and physical impurities, drunkenness, death, and the devil were all reigning there. Those only who have known the sinking of heart which the miseries of such scenes produce — especially when aggravated by a close and tainted atmosphere — can imagine the grateful surprise with which, on opening a door, we stepped into a comfortable apartment. Its whitewashed walls were hung round with prints; the household furniture shone like a looking-glass; and a bright fire was dancing merrily over a clean hearth-stone. It was an oasis in the desert. And we well remember, ere question was asked or answered, of saying to ourselves, “Surely the fear of God is in this place; this must be the house of a church-going family.” It proved to be so; yet it was a home where squalid poverty might have been excused. A blind man dwelt there. And carrying away with us a lively sense of the temporal advantages of piety, we felt inclined to chalk these words on the blind man’s door as a lesson to his godless neighbours — “The fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding.”

Suppose — and we suppose nothing impossible, nor in coming days improbable, for the promise waits fulfilment, “a nation shall be born in a day” — suppose, then, that in the plenitude of his grace, God should bend an eye of pity on the wretched inhabitants of our immediate neighbourhood, and pour down his Spirit in the affluence of Pentecostal showers. At present, with a few happy exceptions, they are the votaries, and victims of dissipation — I say votaries and victims, because vice is such a damning thing, that he who begins by ministering at her altar always ends by becoming the sacrifice. Around us live thousands who never enter a house of God. Their children, unless they have the good fortune to die early, are reared in ignorance, vice, and crime; while of the adult population many are reduced by habits of intemperance to pinching hunger, and a squalid wretchedness, ill-relieved by the uncertain supplies of charity. Now, suppose that God were pleased to send life to these “dry bones” — suppose that from lip to lip, and house to house, the cry were passing, “Oh, sirs, what shall I do to be saved?” — suppose that the last shilling which vice had left them were spent in the purchase of a Bible, and that, like water by men parched in the desert and dying of thirst, God’s word were bought, borrowed, or begged — suppose that, rising to the summons of the Sabbath bell, these streets — where only a solitary worshipper may now be seen — were crowded with the unaccustomed spectacle of a ragged congregation pouring into the house of God; — how soon would their common aspect change? A few weeks, and we should hardly recognise them.

Save these picturesque and old-fashioned tenements, the blue heavens above, that rocky citadel with its frowning batteries, yonder noble arm of the sea, and the same green fields, rich valleys, and romantic crags of the everlasting hills around us, all old things else would have passed away. Prisons, that now complain of crowded cells, would be found too large; and many churches, cold now with empty pews, would be found too small. The smouldering fever, like an unfed fire, would go out for want of fuel; and rank churchyards would grow green at Christmas, for lack of their too frequent burials. The brutal features of dissipation would give place to an expression of intelligence and humanity; roses would blow on childhood’s pallid cheek, and mother’s smiles would chase the sadness from many a poor, sallow, infant face. Under the patronage of religion, and the sign of the Bible, the craft of the honest mechanic, and the trade of the useful merchant would flourish, while the panderer to vice would fall into unpitied bankruptcy, and the voice of a sober people would tell him to shut shop and begone. Furniture would crowd these empty rooms; the rags, through whose loopholes poverty stared out upon an unpitying world, would change into decent attire. Piety, descending like an angel from the skies, would visit these dwellings with a prophet’s blessing; beneath her celestial feet, happiness would spring up like summer flowers; plenty would pour her full horn into the lap of poverty; meal would be found in every household barrel, and oil in every widow’s cruse. Underneath the virtuous, benign, and heavenly influences of religion, this wilderness would be glad; our city Ishmaelites would change into Israelites; and these moral deserts would rejoice and blossom like the rose. “Even so, come, Lord Jesus; come quickly.”

The truth is, the world’s great want is the want of religion. Perhaps men want more equal laws, more liberal institutions, and through their happy influence, better and more stable governments. The greatest want of nations, however, is, that without which liberty has no solid pedestal to stand on — a genuine, mass-pervading piety. To drop all reference to foreign countries, I am r sure that he who attempts to cure our social maladies, independently of this best and most sanatory element, may be a philanthropist, but is not a philosopher. We had almost said he is a fool. He is a fantastic schemer, who has set himself to make bricks without straw, and heal the waters of Jericho without the prophet’s salt, His theories are as baseless and unsolid as if they conceived of man as a creature without a soul — of the solar system as without its central sun — of the universe with out its God. Religion is the mortar that binds society together; the pedestal of liberty; the very backbone of the social system. But while the poor man may support, and be assured that if he leave his family no inheritance save his prayers and the priceless legacy of a godly example, he leaves them rich indeed. — while an education of domestic piety is better than all Greek and Roman lore, — and while godliness is the most stable basis on which to erect an earthly fortune, — I pray you to observe that the change promised in the text does not necessarily imply any temporal advantage — any improvement either in our bodily condition or worldly circumstances. We live in a world of mysteries. We sometimes see religion languishing neglected on a bed of sickness; and, in other cases than that of Lazarus, piety may be found clad in rags and covered with sores, sitting a beggar at the rich man’s gate. The change is on the man within. It affects the tenant, not the tenement; the soul, not the body; our circumstances, not so much in this life as in the life to come. If by faith in Christ you come to God, I cannot promise for him that he will pour luxuries into your cup, health into your veins, or money into your purse. But he will endow you with better, infinitely better gifts. Hear his promise in the text — “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you;’ and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.”

Having already illustrated the greatness of this change, I now proceed to examine its nature; and remark —

I. The old heart is taken away, and a new one put in its place.

The head was justly considered by the ancients to be the residence of the intellectual faculties, where the soul, presiding over all, sat enthroned, as in a palace. On the other hand, they regarded the affections as have ing their home in the heart — that other great organ of our system. Within the breast, love and hatred, grief and joy, aversion and desire, generosity, jealousy, pity, revenge, were supposed to dwell; and thus (to dismiss the metaphor), that substitution of one heart for another which is promised in the text, just implies an entire change in the character and current of our affec-

K>i£t. &-A-W. tions. Now, a change may be simply a reform, or, extending deeper and taking a wider range, it may pass

into a revolution. Conversion is not a mere reform. No. If aught was ever worthy of the name, it is a revolution — a spiritual, mighty revolution — one greater than the tomes of profane history or any old.^monuments of stone or of brass record. It changes the heart, the

‘.^habits, the eternal destiny of an immortal being. On the banner borne in triumph at the head of this movement, I read the words which doom all old things to ruin, “Overturn, Overturn, Overturn.” In place of the old mischievous laws which it repeals, it introduces a new code of statutes. Changing the laws, it changes the reigning dynasty, wrenches the sceptre from a usurper’s hand, and, banishing him forth of the kingdom, in restoring the throne to God, restores it to its rightful monarch.

The Gospel is in the highest sense revolutionary; — there can be no doubt of the fact. The old charge brought against its preachers is quite true. “These that have turned the world upside down, are come hither also.” But the world requires to be turned upside down. Like a boat capsized by a sudden squall, and floating keel uppermost in the sea, with men clinging to it and drowning around it, the world has been turned upside down already. To be set right, it must just be turned upside down again. If the order which God

: established has been reversed by sin — if in our hearts and habits time has usurped the place of eternity — the body of the soul — earth of heaven, and self of God; — if that is first which should be last, and that last which should be first — if that is uppermost which should be undermost, and that undermost which should be uppermost, then things must be turned “upside down;” and happy the homes and the hearts of which, in reference to the entrance of God’s Word, of the Holy Spirit, of converting grace, it can be said, “TJiese that have turned the world upside down, are come hither also.”

Where, it may be asked, lies any absolute necessity for a change so pervadingly elementary, so radical, so revolutionary? such an inward and total change? To discover that necessity we must search in the records of a distant past. It lies in an old event — in the Fall. By reason of that great crime and most sad disaster, the condition of our hearts, in reference at least to spiritual objects and interests, has become naturally so bad as not to admit of repair. We understand how this, may be averred of a house. The tenement has fallen into such utter decay, so many cracks gape in its bulged and tottering walls, the timbers are so moth-eaten, the foundations so shaken, post, pillar, and lintel so mouldered away, that nothing remains but to pull it down level with the ground, and on its old site to erect a new and stately edifice. Or — -to vary the illustration — a watch, which has slipped through careless fingers, and crashed on the pavement, may be so shattered that its works are damaged beyond repair. It passes the skill of the most accomplished mechanic to mend them. He must clear out the shell, take away the old works, and substitute new machinery. In that case, although wheels, axles, levers, move within the old casements, the watch, in point of fact, is new; even so, when converted, although the man suffers no loss of personal identity, he who gets a new heart becomes, in a sense, a new man: to use the Apostle’s words, “He is, in Christ, a new creature.”

It is no doubt true that many, and some very serious injuries admit of repair. A steady, honest, industrious, enterprising merchant may repair a bankrupt fortune; a sagacious statesman may solder a broken crown; a physician may patch up a shattered and worn-out constitution; even some Mary Magdalene, returning

if to the paths of virtue, may repair that most fragile of all things — a woman’s character; and, with time and God’s grace given me, I would undertake to heal a broken heart. In the divine government we see the most remarkable provision made for the reparation of those injuries to /- which his creatures are exposed. The bark grows on the peeled surface of an old elm or oak, so as in time to obliterate the letters that friendship or doting love has

% carved. From the lips of the gaping wound a liquid flesh is poured, which, receiving nerves and blood-vessels into its substance, solidifies, and at length fills up the breach. From its shattered surfaces, the broken limb

ep discharges a fluid bone — a living cement — which, growing solid, restores the continuity of the shaft, and gives the sufferer a leg or arm, strong as before. In some of the lower animals, indeed, this power is equal to the task, not only of repairing a broken, but of even restoring a lost member. With such renovating energy has God endowed them, that, if by accident or otherwise, the writhing worm, for example, is divided, the headless portion not only survives such a formidable lesion, but, strange to see! produces and puts on a new head; offering us an example of animal life, which besides being fortified against the most formidable injuries, is actually multiplied by division. “How marvellous are thy works, Lord God Almighty!”

Now while there are many striking and very interesting analogies between grace and nature, there is no analogy between these cases and the case before us. So far as man’s natural and inherent powers are concerned, his heart sustained an irreparable injury by the fall. Sin is that deadly disease which our constitution has no power to throw off; and which no human skill can remove. The preacher is here assisted by none of that “healing power of nature” which in the sick chamber is the physician’s best ally. Not only so, but God himself — with whom in a sense all things are pos sible, and to whom nothing is too hard — does not attempt its repair. In the work of conversion, it is not an old heart which is to be mended, but a new one which is to be given. In any attempt to patch up the old garment, the new cloth is lost, and the rent gapes but wider. Be assured that heaven is wiser than waste her costly wine on old, frail, musty bottles. The truth is, man does not admit of being repaired; and the more we become acquainted with our hearts, the more ready shall we be to describe their desperate and deplorable condition in the words of holy Scripture — “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.” The first thing, therefore, which you, who are seeking the kingdom of God and his righteousness, have need to seek, is what God has promised in the text, and David pleads for in this prayer — “Create in me a clean heart, 0 God, and renew a right spirit within me.”

Let me press this truth upon your thoughtful attention. May God impress it upon your hearts! It is a truth of the highest importance. To be sensible of our need of a new spirit, to feel that this old heart will not mend nor make better, is, in fact, the first step in salvation; and the deeper our impression of the reality of this truth, the more diligently shall we labour, and the more earnest shall be our prayers to be renewed day by day. Such an impression will secure our cordial assent to the memorable saying, with which one of England’s greatest men, her bravest and noblest spirits, closed an illustrious career on the scaffold of an ungrateful country. As Sir Walter Kaleigh laid his head upon the block, he was asked by the executioner, whether it lay right. Whereupon, with the calmness of a hero, and the faith of a Christian, he returned an answer — the power of which all of us shall feel, when our head is tossing and turning on death’s uneasy pillow —” It matters little, my friend, how the head lies, provided the heart is right.

Now, as the view of the old heart, given in my text, is eminently calculated, with the divine blessing, to shew us how much we need a new one, let us consider —

II. The view which our text gives of the natural heart.

It is a heart of stone. “I will take the stony heart out of your flesh.” We shall best understand the meaning and appreciate the power of this figure, by considering, in a popular point of view, some of the characteristic properties of a stone.

A stone is cold. Coldness, indeed, is characteristic of a stone. Hence, the lapidary, using his tongue to test the temperature, can, by that simple means, tell whether the seeming jewel is paste, or a real gem. Hence, also, when our eye has been deceived by the skill of the artist, the sense of touch has informed us, that what seemed marble was only painted wood. It is a common saying, “As cold as a stone.” But what stone so cold as that which sin has lodged in man’s breast? Cold is the bed of the houseless, who lies stretched on the wintry pavement, cold the cell within whose dank stone walls the shivering prisoner is immured; but colder far by nature this heart of ours in its affections to God and Christ. We are lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. He is not the object of our love, nor do we make any return to Jesus for his warm and matchless affection. Blessed Lord! he had many a cold lodging on this ungrateful earth; his couch was oft the open field, where his locks were wet with the dews of night ;. drenched with the spray of the sea, and the lashing rain, his weary frame found sleep on the hard benches of a fisher’s boat; yet on these he lay not on so cold a bed as he would find in the dark, dreary chambers of an unrenewed heart. Sin has quenched a fire that once burned bright and holy there, and nothing now is left on that chill hearth, but embers and ashes — cold as death. “The carnal mind is enmity against God; is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.”

A stone is hard. Fire melts wax, but not stone; water softens clay, but not stone; a hammer bends the stubborn iron, but not stone. Stone resists these; and, emblem of a heart crushed, but unsanctified by affliction, it may be broken into fragments, or ground to powder, yet its atoms are as hard as ever. This is illustrated in the practice of the arts; it is with the dust of diamonds that the diamond is cut. We have stood on a sea rock, when every billow, swung on by the tempest, broke against it with the roar of artillery, and shot up a shower of snowy spray; we have looked to the crag, on whose bald brows the storm was bursting; and have wondered how these, for so many thousand years, had braved the war and wear of elements. There is more cause to be surprised at what a man’s heart will stand. He sits in the church under a series of affecting sermons, — or a succession of affecting and afflicting providences like great sea waves break over him; and he is unshaken, at least unaltered; to all but divine grace unalterable. He can be saved; but he only can be saved, because there is nothing impossible to God. Sitting there, so cold and hard, he reminds us of a mountain crag, cut by nature’s fantastic hand into the features of a human face, which looks out with stony eye upon the gathering tempest, prepared, as it has already weathered a thou sand storms, to weather a thousand more.

The man who remains unmoved under a ministry of mercy, who is insensible at once to the most appalling and appealing lessons of providence, who fears no more than a rock the thunders that peal and lightnings that play round his brow, and feels no more than a rock the influences that fall like summer sunbeams from the face and cross of Jesus, is manifestly beyond all human power. I would despair of his salvation, but for the omnipotence and benevolence of God; and, because I know that he, who of the stones of the street could raise up children to Abraham, can turn that heart of stone into a heart of flesh. What need here of the Spirit of God! Oh! there is in unconverted men an obstinacy, an obduracy, a strength of resistance, an impenetrability to impression, before which man, however anxious to save, is utterly powerless. And in dealing with such a case,, we seem to hear the voice of God addressing us in his words to Job — “Canst thou draw out leviathan with a hook? or his tongue with a cord which thou lettest down? Canst thou put a hook into his nose, or bore his jaw through with a thorn? Wilt thou take him for a servant? Wilt thou play with him as a bird? or wilt thou bind him for thy maidens? His scales are his pride; joined one to another they stick together that they cannot be sundered. His eyes are like the eyelids of the morning. Out of his mouth go burning lamps, and sparks of fire leap out. The sword of him that layeth at him cannot hold; the spear, the dart, nor the habergeon. He esteemeth iron as straw, and brass as rotten wood. Darts are counted as stubble; he laugheth at the shaking of a spear. He maketh the deep to boil like a pot; he maketh the sea like a pot of ointment; he maketh a path to shine after him; one would think the deep to be hoary. His heart is as firm as a stone, yea as hard as a piece of the nether mill-stone.”

A stone is dead. It has no vitality, no feeling, no power of motion. It lies where it is laid. The tombstone above and the dead body in its grave below undergo no change, other than that both, by a slower or speedier decay, are mouldering into dust. Enter that hall of nobles and see how the marble forms of departed statesmen look down unmoved upon scenes where once they played a distinguished part, and stand, alike unmoved, whether their policy be reviled or praised. Look at this statue — however skilful the sculptor’s imitation — there is no life here; no speech breaks from these mute lips; the limbs seem instinct with power, yet they never leave their pedestal; no fire flashes in these dull grey eyes, nor passions burn within that stony breast; the stone is deaf, and dumb, and dead. In grief’s wild and frantic outbursts affection may indeed address the form of one deeply loved, and for ever lamented. Speak to it, it returns no answer; weep over it, it sheds no tears; image of a lost and loved one, it feels not the grief that itself can move. Now, how many sit in the house of God as unmoved? Careless as spectators who have no concern in what takes place before them, they take no interest in anything that was done on Calvary! And is it not sad to think that more tears are shed in playhouses than in churches; and how by those who call themselves Christians, the new novel is sought more eagerly, and devoured more greedily than the New Testament? What a deplorable account of the human heart! One would think it is of stories, and yet it is of living men, too like, alas! to many of ourselves — these words are spoken — “Having eyes, they see not; having ears, they hear not; neither do they understand.”

We have described a stone as cold, hard, dead. And is this, some may ask, a just and correct picture of the human heart? The question is a fair one, and deserves a frank answer. Now, I should hinder a cause I desire to help, and do injustice to the truth of God, were I to answer that question by simply affirming, that the picture is a true portrait of the natural heart in respect of all its sentiments and emotions. Human nature is bad enough, and there is no need to exaggerate its evils. In one sense, they do not admit of exaggeration. But, if we dared, instead of exaggerating, we should be happy to excuse them, and render to our mother nature the kind and filial office of casting a cloak upon her shame.

We know as well as others do, and would ever remember, that although man be dead to gracious affections, until sin has had “its perfect work,” he is not dead to many tender and lovely emotions of nature. Many beauties are lingering about this ruin — the engaging, but melancholy vestiges of its former glory. We

u freely admit, that, so far as regards father and mother, wife and children, brother and sister, and the beloved friends of our social circles, an unrenewed heart may be the warm nest of kindliest affections. There can be no doubt, I think, that the Christian will prove the best father, the best husband, the best wife, the best master, the best servant, the best citizen, the truest, trustiest, friend. Nay, for their pith and truth, notwithstanding their homeliness, I will venture to quote the words of Rowland Hill, who said, “I would give nothing for the Christianity of a man whose very dog and cat were not the better of his religion.” Still, it is no treason against the Gospel to believe, that one, as yet unhappily a stranger to the grace of God, may be endowed with many most pleasant and lovely virtues.

Away among the rough moors, by the banks of tumbling river, or the skirts of green wood, or on sloping acclivity, or steep hill side, we have gathered, remote from gardens and the care of men, bunches of wild flowers, which, although very perishing, were exquisitely beautiful, and steeped in fragrant odours; and such as these are some men and women, who have never yet been transplanted into a state of grace. There is no sin in loving them. In the young ruler who declined to take up his cross and follow Christ, was not there so much that was amiable, gentle, attractive, that Jesus’ heart was drawn to him? It is said that he “loved him:” and the emotions of a Saviour’s bosom cannot be wrong in mine. Nor is his a rare phenomenon — a solitary case. We have seen men who made no great profession of religion, who certainly were not pious, and yet so kind, tender, affectionate, generous, large hearted, and open handed, that it was impossible not to love them. Nature never asked our permission. Whether we would or would not, we felt drawn to them, as our Lord to the amiable youth who refused to follow him. And as we have rooted up from the moor some wild flower to blow and shed its fragrance in a sweeter than its native home, have we not longed to do the same with these fine specimens of the natural man? Transplanted by grace into the garden of the Lord, baptized with the dews of heaven, converted to the faith, they would be flowers fit to form a wreath for the brow that men wreathed with thorns. I am compelled to acknow ledge, that I have known some, whom even charity could not reckon among true Christians, who, yet in point of natural virtues, put Christians to shame. In some beautiful traits of character they were more like Jesus than not a few of his real disciples.

Let there be no mistake, then. When I speak of the heart as a stone, I am looking at it as it looks on God, a Saviour, salvation, and eternity. However distressing it may be (and it is most distressing) to think that persons otherwise most lovely and of most loving hearts, are so cold and callous to the claims of Jesus, yet, so far as divine love to sinners, and so far as the kindnesses of saving mercy are concerned, I am convinced that among the rocks which beat back the roaring sea — up on the mountain peaks where dews, and rain, and bright sunbeams fall — down in earth’s darkest and deepest mines, there lies bedded no stone colder, harder, less impressible, more impenetrable, than an unrenewed heart. Does unbelief suggest the question, Why, then, preach to the unconverted? as well preach to tomb-stones? as well knock with thy hand upon a door which is locked on a coffin and a corpse? In a sense true; and altogether true, but for the promise — “Lo I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” That promise is the soul of hope and the life of preaching. It forbids despair. And should recreant ministers, yielding to despair, hold their tongues, and pulpits all be silent, Christ still were preached. Strange evangelists would start up from our streets to break this awful silence; for did not our Lord, when required by an envious priesthood to silence the hosannahs of the multitude, turn on them and say, “I tell you, that if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out?” Thus assured, not only of our children, of our people, of the dead womb of Sarah, but even of the very stones of the street, that “God can raise up children to Abraham,” despair we cannot feel, and dumb we dare not be. He who shall raise the dead in churchyards can waken the dead in churches. Therefore we anticipate conversions; and in hope offer Christ to the chief of sinners, beseeching you, “Be ye reconciled to God.”