(3) That which goes so far to mould character and to shape influence, must determine destiny. When the great judicial scales of the Universal Judge are at last hung, it cannot be otherwise than that the central affections should settle which way those scales preponderate : what we have most truly loved must have vital connexion with the eternal future — not only with the entrance into Heaven, but the capacity for its joys. Our affections both reveal what character essentially is and forecast what it is to be — even more than our thoughts ; for the affections largely prompt our habits of thought, determining what images we love to contemplate. The essence both of sin and of holiness is largely h«»re ; for the acts both of sin and of saintliness could have little
• L. A. Banks, 2'he Problems of Youth, 86.
PROVERBS IV. 23 245
t moral quality were there no moral preference behind them. It is the love of evil that makes sin so damning, and the love of ' holiness that is the heart of sainthood. But for this heart I affection for evil, how could the imagination be employed as sin's artist, or memory as its treasure gatherer, or the will as its marshal ? But for this, even the Devil's hook would be bare of bait, and his wiles would find no response in us, as they found none in our tempted Master.
^ In a letter to his mother at Scotsbrig, Carlyle writes from Craigenputtock, in September 1833: "But I must tell you something of myself: for I know many a morning, my dear mother, you ' come in by me ' in your rambles through the world after those precious to you. If you had eyes to see on these occasions you would find everything quite tolerable here. I have been rather busy, though the fruit of my work is rather inward, and has little to say for itself. I have yet hardly put pen to paper ; but foresee that there is a time coming. All my griefs, I can better and better see, lie in good measure at my own door : were I right in my own heart, nothing else would be far wrong with me. This, as you well understand, is true of every mortal, and I advise all that hear me to believe it, and to lay it practically to their own case." ^
^ In the course of a walk in the park at Edgeworthstown, I happened to use some phrase which conveyed (though not perhaps meant to do so) the impression that I suspected Poets and Novelists of being a good deal accustomed to look at life and the world only as materials for art. A soft and pensive shade came over Scott's face as he said, " I fear you have some very young ideas in your head ; are you not too apt to measure things by some reference to literature — to disbelieve that anybody can be worth much care who has no knowledge of that sort of thing, or taste for it ? God help us ! what a poor world this would be if that were the true doctrine ! I have read books enough, and observed and conversed with enough of eminent and splendidly cultivated minds, too, in my time ; but, I assure you, I have heard higher sentiments from the lips of poor uneducated men and women, when exerting the spirit of severe yet gentle heroism under difficulties and afflictions, or speaking their simple thoughts as to circumstances in the lot of friends and neighbours, than I ever yet met with out of the pages of the Bible. We shall never learn to feel and respect our real calling and destiny, unless we
» J. A. Froude, Thomas Carlyle, 1795-1835, ii. 368.
246 THE HEART
have taught ourselves to consider everything as moonshine, com- pared with the education of the heart." ^
^ Too soon did the Doctors of the Church forget that the heart, the moral nature, was the beginning and the end ; and that truth, knowledge, and insight were comprehended in its expansion. This was the true and first apostasy, — when in council and synod the Divine Humanities of the Gospel gave way to speculative Systems, and Eeligion became a Science of Shadows under the name of Theology, or at best a bare Skeleton of Truth, without life or interest, alike inaccessible and unintelligible to the majority of Christians. For these, therefore, there remained only rites and ceremonies and spectacles, shows and semblances. Thus among the learned the Substance of things hoped for passed into Notions ; and for the unlearned the Surfaces of things became Substance. The Christian world was for centuries divided into the Many that did not think at all, and the Few who did nothing but think, — both alike unreflecting, the one from defect of the act, the other from the absence of an object.^
n.
The Keeping of the Heart.
" Keep thy heart above all keeping." God guards very care- fully the heart He has put in our body. He has put the strongest bones all round it, so that, though other parts may be easily hurt, the heart is safe. Well, the text says that we should guard the heart of our real lives in the same way " with all diligence," above everything else ; because, if the heart goes wrong, the whole life goes wrong with it.