(5.) M.y fifth advice and counsel is this, Labour to bring your hearts into all your closet-prayers and performances. Look that your tongues and your hearts keep time and tune. Ps. xvii. 1, ' Give ear unto my prayer, that goeth not out of feigned Ups,' or, as it is in the Hebrew, * without lips of deceit.' Heart and tongue must go together ; word and work, lip and life, prayer and practice, must echo one to another, or else thy prayers and thy soul will be lost together. The labour of the lips and the travail of the heart must go together.
The Egyptians of all fruits made choice of the peach to consecrate to their goddess, and for no other cause, but that the fruit thereof is like
256 THE PRIVY KEY OF HEAVEN. [MAT. VL 6.
to one's heart, and the leaf to one's tongue. These very heathens in the worship of their gods, thought it necessary that men's hearts and tongues should go together. Ah, Christians ! when in your closet duties your hearts and your tongues go together, then you make that sweet and delightful melody that is most taking and pleasing to the King of kings. The very soul of prayer lies in the pouring out of the soul before God, 1 Sam. i. 15. Ps. xlii. 4, ' When I remember these things I pour out my soul in me.' So the Israelites poured out their souls like water before the Lord. So the church : ' The desire of our soul is to thy name, and to the remembrance of thee. With my soul have I desired thee in the night, yea, with my spirit within me will I seek thee early,' Isa. xxvi. 8, 9. So Lament, iii. 41, ' Let us lift up our heart with our hands unto God in the heavens.' So Heb. x. 22, 'Let us draw near with a true heart,' &c. So Rom. i, 9, ' For God is my witness, whom I serve in the spirit.' 1 Cor. xiv. 15, * I will pray with the spirit, and sing with the spirit.' Philip, iii. 3, ' We are the circumcision which wor- ship God in the spirit.' Under the law the inward parts were only to be offered to God in sacrifice ; the skin belonged to the priests. Whence we may easily gather, that truth in the inward parts, is that which is most pleasing in a sacrifice. When the Athenians would know of the oracle the cause of their often unprosperous success in battle against the Lacedaemonians, seeing they offered the choicest things they could get, in sacrifice to the gods, which their enemies did not, the oracle gave them this answer, that ' the gods were better pleased with their inward supplication without ambition, than with all their outward pomp in costly sacrifices.' Ah, sirs ! the reason why so many are so unsuccessful in their closet-duties and services is because there is no more of their hearts in them. No man can make sure work or happy work in prayer but he that makes heart-work on it. When a man's heart is in his prayers, then great and sweet will be his returns from heaven. That is no prayer in which the heart of the person bears no part. When the soul is separated from the body the man is dead ; and so when the heart is separated from the lip in prayer, the prayer is dead.
The Jews at this day write upon the walls of their synagogues these ■words, Tophillah belo cavannah ceguph belo neshamah ; that is, a prayer without the heart, or without the intention of the affection, is like a body without a souL
In the law of Moses the priest was commanded to wash the inwards and the feet of the sacrifices in water ; and this was done, saith Philo, ' not without a mystery, to teach us to keep our hearts and affections clean when we draw nigh to God.' In all your closet-duties God looks first and most to your hearts : ' My son, give me thy heart,' Prov. xxiii. 26. It is not a piece, it is not a comer of the heart, that will satisfy the Maker of the heart ; the heart is a treasure, a bed of spices, a royal throne wherein he delights. God looks not at the elegancy of your prayers, to see how neat they are; nor yet at the geometry of your prayers, to see how Jong they are; nor yet at the arithmetic of your prayers, to see how many they are ; nor yet at the music of your prayers, nor yet at the sweetness of your voice, nor yet at the logic of your prayers ; but at the sincerity of your prayers, how hearty they are. There is no prayer acknowledged, approved, accepted, recorded, or rewarded
Mat. VI. 6.] the privy key of heaven. 257
by God, but that wherein the heart is sincerely and wholly. The true mother would not have the child divided. As God loves a broken and a contrite heart, so he loathes a divided heart, Ps. li. 17, James, i. 8. God neither loves halting nor halving; he will be served truly and totally. The royal law is, ' Thou shalt love and serve the Lord thy God, with all thy heart, and with all thy soul.' Among the heathens, when the beasts were out up for sacrifice, the first thing the priest looked upon was the heart, and if the heart was naught, the sacrifice was re- jected. Verily, God rejects all those services and sacrifices, wherein the heart is not, as you may see by comparing the Scriptures in the margin together.' Prayer without the heart is but as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. Prayer is only lovely and weighty, as the heart is in it, and no otherwise. It is not the lifting up of the voice, nor the wring- ing of the hands, nor the beating of the breasts, nor an affected tone, nor studied motions, nor seraphical expressions, but the stirrings of the heart, that God looks at in prayer. God hears no more than the heart gpeaks. If the heart be dumb, God will certainly be deaf. No prayer takes with God, but that which is the travail of the heart.
The same day Julius Caesar came to the imperial dignity, sitting in his golden chair, he offered a beast in sacrifice to the gods; but when the beast was opened, it was without a heart, which the soothsayers looked upon as an ill omen. It is a sad omen, that thou wilt rather pro- voke the Lord than prevail with him, who art habitually heartless in thy closet duties. Of the heart, God seemeth to say to us, as Joseph did to his brethren, concerning Benjamin, 'Ye shall not see my face without it.' It was the speech of blessed Bradford, that 'he would never leave a duty, till he had brought his heart into the frame of the duty; he would not leave confession of sin, till his heart was broken for sin ; he would not leave petitioning for grace, till his heart was quickened and enlivened in a hopeful expectation of more grace; he would not leave gratulation, till his heart was enlarged with the sense of the mercies he enjoyed, and quickened in the return of praise.'