Page images
PDF
EPUB

CHAPTER VIII.

THE HARDENED HEART-THE HEART OF

ADAMANT.

"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."
"Being past feeling."

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 knows the value of this childish tenderness of feeling and conscience, in order to 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 and meliorating influence of religion is brought in, the heart, left to itself and to the world, rapidly hardens. It would seem as though a change, "growing with its growth, and strengthening with its strength," passed

over it, analogous to that which the body experiences. As in it the almost cartilaginous bones of infancy become ossified, and the muscles acquire firmness, even so in the spiritual part, that which was flexible becomes firm and unyielding, and toughness and rigidity come over all that was tender. Every year, and month, and day of unrepentant existence hardens the heart more and more. When the bodily organ becomes the seat of a special disease, physicians inform us that its orifices and ventricles become ossified, and by that ossification utterly incapable of continuing the action and reaction essential to the continuance of animal life. No spiritual physician who has made the spiritual diseases of the heart his careful study, can be ignorant that something analogous to this ossification is far more common in "the inner man" than in the natural and animal part. Whether there be hardness originally or not, in all the impenitent it gradually supervenes. Much of it comes through intercourse and collision with the world; much of it through the gradual influence of time upon the mental and spiritual faculties; and much of it is to be traced to self-the carelessness or the wilfulness of men. And as the two former causes 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.

[ocr errors]

Men harden their own hearts.

The illustration of this truth;

The mode in which this self-hardening is effected;

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 conscience, than to be established by process of reasoning; and yet such is the lamentable self-deception 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 world

ly 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 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 that 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 in their minds or their creeds. Whatever be their professions, we can scarcely imagine that they believe it themselves. There is so much of absurdity or profanity in making God the author of sin, and still its subsequent punisher, that it scarcely calls for serious refutation. The only case

« PreviousContinue »