200 CHAPTER IV. THE BROKEN AND CONTRITE "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise." "Now I rejoice not that ye were made sorry, but that ye sorrowed to repentance." "For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation, not to be repented of-but the sorrow of the world worketh death." "For behold the self-same thing that ye sorrowed after a godly sort, what carefulness it wrought in you, yea, what clearing of yourselves, yea, what indignation, yea, what fear, yea, what vehement desire, yea, what zeal, yea, what revenge!" SPIRITUAL Sorrow naturally follows in the train of spiritual concern. The religiously anxious mind usually leads to "the broken spirit—the broken and contrite heart." He who seriously reflects on the serious topics connected with his eternal state, will find cause to mourn for the sins of his present state. And he who mourns aright for sin, will have his heart broken to "repentance not to be repented of." The terms which form the title of this chapter are highly figurative, and beautifully expressive. Like others which have been noted, they are drawn from the consideration of the natural or fleshly heart. Let us analyze them, that we may perceive their significanty, and correctly understand the state which they were meant to designate. The expression, "a broken and a contrite. heart," immediately suggests to us the idea of force applied. That force, as we shall presently show, is a moral force-the force of moral, motive, and appeal-the stroke of God's word and spirit upon the heart and conscience of man. The terms further imply, a state of pain and suffering; and such is that state of spiritual feeling which they were intended to describe. The word broken, when applied to the body, is always associated with the idea of much physical suffering; but in its connexion with the spirit, the heart, this signification is deepened. The "broken heart" points out that extremity of anguish, beyond which nature, unable to endure, dies. The word contrite is so generally understood in its secondary and figurative sense, as synonymous with penitent, that we have almost lost sight of its original meaning, which is, bruised and rubbed together. In this sense it is here used; the heart is broken or crushed; and its wounded parts are painfully brought into collision, and rubbed as it were together. These terms then point out the extreme of anguish, and precisely that kind of anguish which is felt hy the convinced soul. Its sorrow is indeed keen and sharp; and sensitive as it is to every impression, there is a constant chafing or trituration of its wounded surface, which is correctly pronounced, a state of con trition. There is another idea fitly conveyed by these terms-that of lowliness and self-humiliation. When the pride of the heart is crushed and broken, and the resistance against God is at an end, then there comes to the natural man, the feeling of defeat, and the unwonted spirit of submission: and thence the Septuagint and some Latin versions, instead of the contrite heart, pronounce it the humbled or lowly heart. Humiliation then, is another characteristic of the state of him who "has fallen upon the stone laid in Zion," until his obstinacy is broken in pieces, or on whom it has fallen with all its weight of evidence and motive, until it may be said to have "ground him to powder." I am aware, that by some it is deemed a very easy thing to slip quietly out of non-profession into the cold decencies of a worldly profession of a Gospel that is not worldly; that very little of feeling is deemed requisite or proper-that the calculating assent of the understanding, and a vague impression of some obligation to a religious life, and a quiet chilling sense of propriety in the matter, are deemed amply sufficient as an introduction to the Christian life and to the Christian Church, without any heart-rending sorrow for sin, any thing that could at all, even by hyperbole, be termed a contrition of the broken spirit; nay, that there are some by whom it would be deemed either hypocrisy or enthusiasm, to speak of excruciating exercises-availing to "the rending asunder of soul and spirit, of the joints and the marrow. With such, the act of profession is all in all; although it may well be doubted, whether in their case, profession either furthers or evinces any moral or spiritual change whatsoever; and whether they are not virtually the same in the temper and disposition of their minds. -and the same in the sight of God, except the guilt in his esteem, of callousness to that which should touch and move the inmost soul, and of an unmeaning sporting with sacred names, sacred vows, and binding duties. In opposition to any such cool and phlegmatic entrance upon a Christian profession, in which there is but little of regret, far less of sorrow, felt or expressed for the wasted and ungodly past, and little of holy determination for the future that should be redeemed, the "broken and contrite heart," my readers, must ever be regarded as an indispensable item in all genuine Christian experience, as the dividing point between the carelessness of irreligion in worldly and unrenewed hearts, on the one side, and "the peace and joy in believing" of firm and renewed believers, on the other. The degree to which the heart will be broken, will of course vary, according to its original conformation, its greater or less degrees of native sensitiveness, the degrees of previous sinfulness, the force of the first stroke of conviction, and the relative period during which conviction has been continued and yet resisted, as well as according to the mode and character of the advice or counsel ministered during conviction: Still, in the case of all, even of those who have naturally the greatest hebetude of feeling, and whose previous lives have been the least stained by practical defilement, there will be something that will answer to the expression of " a broken and contrite heart." Any mode, by which careless, sinful men may become meek and lowly believers, thorough practical Christians, independently of this trying process, is a means of man's devising, unsanctioned of God, and utterly unknown to the saints of old under the first dispensation, as well as to those who, under the second dispensation, preached and received the Gospel of "repentance towards God, and of faith towards the Lord Jesus Christ.” Let not this state, however, be confounded with that of the broken heart of which the world is wont to speak, and by which, many who were of the world, have "gone down to the grave mourn |