The Evil of the Heart.
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"The human heart is most deceitful and desperately wicked! Who really knows how bad it is?" Jeremiah 17:9
I read of Basil persuading himself, that if he were in the wilderness, free from the company of men—that he would be happy, and serve God more devoutly. But when he came there he said, "I have forsaken all things—yet I retain my old heart! I have often sought the most private place for duty, and pressed to hear the best men, and to enjoy the best means, hoping to gain much advantage from the particular place, and ordinance; and yet I have obtained little good, because I carried with me a bad heart!
I find it is not the one who treads the path of retirement, that grows in grace—but he who walks first into the cloisters of his own heart, in the secret places and crooked turnings of his own spirit.
It is not he who merely comes to the pure ordinances, who advances his communion with God; but it is he who brings a pure heart!"
O for a glance of heavenly day,
To take this stubborn stone away:
And thaw with beams of love divine
This heart, this frozen heart of mine!
The rocks can rend, the earth can quake,
The seas can roar, the mountains shake;
Of feeling, all things show some sign,
But this unfeeling heart of mine!
To hear the sorrows you have felt,
Dear Lord, an adamant would melt:
But I can read each moving line,
And nothing moves this heart of mine!
Eternal Spirit, mighty God!
I beg apply the Saviour's blood!
'Tis his rich blood, and his alone,
Can move and melt this heart of stone!
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