134 CHAPTER VIII. THE HARDENED HEART-THE "But when Pharaoh saw that there was respite he hardened his heart." "And Pharaoh hardened his heart at this time also." "He that hardeneth his heart shall fall into mischief." Yea, they made their hearts as an adamant stone." In our admirable liturgy we pray to be delivered from "hardness of heart;" and perhaps in reference to none of the evils there enumerated and deprecated, has the believer greater cause to respond, in the sincerity and fervency of his spirit, "Good Lord deliver us!" It would seem, then, that the Church evidently contemplated this "hardness of heart," as a possible and probable evil-as one of those sins or sinful conditions of the soul, so easily besetting us, as to be worthy of constant and special remembrance before God in public prayer. Whether hardness is one of the invariable attributes of the natural heart, I am not prepared to decide. The negative of the question would perhaps be best supported by facts. In the plastic season of childhood, there certainly is much tenderness of feeling, a lively sensibility to impression, and much pliancy of disposition; and to these the Saviour doubtless had reference when he said, "Except ye be converted and become as little children," &c. The infant or childish heart, rarely, most rarely, steels itself against human kindness; nor is there visible any decided repugnance to the admission of the more solemn and sacred claims of religion. Without admitting the vain and fanciful idea of natural or intuitive religiousness, we must still perceive that facile, deep, and permanent impressions belong to childhood and youth, of which the later periods of life are utterly incapable. This susceptibility constitutes the charm and the attractiveness, the importance and the value of these introductory periods of human existence. Every Christian parent makes this childish tenderness of feeling and conscience the basis of early moral culture; and Christendom, as a whole, has at length put forth a parent's efforts and a parent's tenderness for the young of her bosom, "the children which God hath given her." But whatever comparative softness of heart and of character favourable to religious influence may be supposed to exist in the young, it is certain that it rapidly disappears and evanesces with succeeding years. Except where the direct early induration, while in others, the hardening influence which years of spiritual neglect might have been expected to produce, has been retarded or modified by occasional counteractive efforts, and seasons of softening sacred impulse. The heart may be pronounced hard, or far advanced in the hardening process, when the natural susceptibility, the docile disposition which usually characterizes childhood, has given place to a growing callousness and indifference to all that is serious and sacred; and when this has become confirmed and increased, so that there is hardly an occasional impulse of spiritual feeling, nor a feeble gushing forth of emotion-when the heart is insensible to any appeal, then have we the stony heart. When there is not merely insensibility, but positive resistance to sacred influence-when that "word of God," which is as a fire, or a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces," makes no impression, but is forcibly repelled at every stroke, then see we the marks of the heart of adamant. Rarely indeed is that broken or melted to repentance. Becoming literally "past feeling," there is stupid insensibility, brutish obstinacy, daring defiance, or a calm and desperate waiting for of judgment. The judgment comes; and they that on earth seemed stronger than the God of grace, crushed and agonizing in the grasp of his Omnipotence, feel, and feel for ever, that "it is a fearful thing to fall into the can only operate through the last, I am disposed to view the stony or adamantine heart, that almost invariable concomitant of adult and aged impenitency, as the result of personal induration. Men harden their own hearts. The illustration of this truth; The mode in which this self-hardening is ef fected; The several steps which are taken, or degrees which are passed in the course, with the distinctive marks of each; The preventive and remedial discipline in the case. These points properly considered will perhaps place this important subject fully before the reader in its practical bearings. I. The induration of the heart is a personal work. Men harden their own hearts. I hold this to be almost a religious axiom; scarcely seriously disputable under any circumstances, and rather to be admitted by the spontaneous and immediate acknowledgment of con-science, than to be established by process of reasoning; and yet such is the lamentable selfdeception of the human heart, that very many, I am persuaded, of those persons who do the most certainly harden their own hearts, "yea, make them as an adamant stone," will profess to others, and endeavour to persuade themselves, that they are most desirous of having them softened and impressed. It will be well to test their self-excuses, their crimination of others, their professions. Would they throw the blame upon the necessary and unavoidable influences of their worldly condition, or upon the artifices of spiritual enemies? The agency of these we admit in its utmost extent. Yet will it not excuse them, nor disprove their own share in the promotion of their own spiritual injury. that That the world, with its vanity and corruptions that evil men and seducers, by their converse and example-and that Satan, by his numberless devices-lend their combined influence to harden the soul, is most clear from Scripture and experience. But then it must be recollected, these could have had no power over the heart, unless it were given to them by itself. That from without cannot injure, except through the concurrence of the will within: so that upon ourselves must at last be charged the guilt of all that was effected through their seduction-and that very hardness which we have connived at their effecting, may be regarded as having been accomplished by ourselves. As to charging this state of the soul upon God, it is an excess of impiety from which reason and genuine piety alike revolt. We pity those who can so far delude themselves as to give it a place |