October 26

"The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, you will not despise." Psalm 49:17

THERE is a sense in which the history of the world is the history of broken hearts. Were the epitaph of many over whose graves—those "mountain-peaks of a new and distant world"—we thoughtlessly pass, faithfully inscribed upon the marble tablet that rears above them so proudly its beautifully chiseled form, it would be this—"Died of a broken heart." Worldly adversity, blighted hope, the iron heel of oppression, or the acid tongue of slander, crushed the sensitive spirit, and it fled where the rude winds blow not, and "where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest." Passing beyond the limit of time, we visit in imagination the gloomy precincts of the lost, and lo! we find that the abodes of the finally impenitent are crowded with weeping, mourning, despairing souls. Yes! there are broken hearts there, and there are tears there, and there is repentance there, such as the betrayer of his Lord felt, before he "went to his own place,"—but, alas! it is the "sorrow of the world, which works death." In all this grief there enters nothing of that element which gives its character and complexion to the sorrow of David—the broken and contrite heart, the sacrifice of God which He despises not. A man may weep, and a lost soul may despair, from the consequences of sin; but in that sorrow and in that despair there shall be no real heartfelt grief for sin itself, as a thing against a holy and a righteous God. But we are now to contemplate, not the broken spirit merely, but the contrite heart also—the sorrow of sincere repentance and deep contrition springing up in the soul for sin—its exceeding sinfulness and abomination in the sight of God.

This state defines the first stage in conversion. The repentance which is enkindled in the heart at the commencement of the divine life may be legal and tending to bondage; nevertheless it is a spiritual, godly sorrow for sin, and is "unto life." The newly awakened and aroused sinner may at first see nothing of Christ, he may see nothing of the blood of atonement, and of God's great method of reconciliation with him, he may know nothing of faith in Jesus as the way of peace to his soul—yet he is a true and sincere spiritual penitent. The tear of holy grief is in his eye—ah! we do not forget with what ease some can weep; there are those the fountain of whose sensibility lies near the surface; an arousing discourse, an affecting book, a thrilling story, will quickly moisten the eye; but still we must acknowledge that the religion of Jesus is the religion of sensibility; that there is no godly repentance without feeling, and no spiritual contrition apart from deep emotion. Yes! the tear of holy grief is in his eye; and if ever it is manly to weep, surely it is now, when for the first time the soul that had long resisted every appeal to its moral consciousness is now smitten to the dust, the heart of adamant broken, and the lofty spirit laid low before the cross of Jesus. Oh, it is a holy and a lovely spectacle, upon which angels, and the Lord of angels Himself, must look with ineffable delight. Reader, have you reached this, the primary stage in the great change of conversion? Have you taken this, the first step in the soul's travel towards heaven? It is the knowledge of the disease which precedes the application to the remedy; it is the consciousness of the wound which brings you into contact with the Healer and the healing.

Oh who, once having experienced the truth, would wish to escape this painful and humiliating process? who would refuse to drink the wormwood and the gall, if only along this path he could reach the sunlight spot where the smiles of a sin-pardoning God fill the heart with joy and gladness? Who would not bare his bosom to the stroke, when the hand that plucks the dart and heals the wound is the hand through whose palm the rough nail was driven—when "wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities"? Who would not endure the uneasiness of sin, but to feel the rest that Jesus gives to the weary? and who would not experience the mourning for transgression, but to know the comfort which flows from the loving heart of Christ? Again the question is put—has the Spirit of God revealed to you the inward plague, has He brought you just as you are to Jesus, to take your stand upon the doctrine of His unmerited, unpurchased mercy—asking for pardon as a beggar, praying for your discharge as a bankrupt, and beseeching Him to take you as a homeless wanderer into the asylum of His loving and parental heart?