Tj God called for my life and I offered it at His footstool ; but He gave it me as a Prey, with unspeakable addition. He called for my will, and I resigned it at His call, but He returned me His own in token of His love. He called for the world and I laid it at His feet, with the crowns thereof ; I withheld them not at the beckoning of His hand. But mark the benefit of Exchange ! For He gave me, instead of Earth, a Kingdom of Eternal Peace, and in lieu of the Crowns of Vanity a Crown of Glory. . . . He gave me Joy which no tongue can express and Peace which passeth understanding. My heart was melted with the Height of Com- fort ; my Soul was immersed in the Depth of Love ; my eyes overflowed with tears of greatest pleasure ... I begged Himself and He gave me All.2
^ Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure. This
1 C. H. Spurgeon.
2 A Journal of the Life of Thomas Story, 20.
EZEKIEL xxxvi. 26 221
frail vessel thou emptiest again and again, and fillest it ever with fresh life.
This little flute of a reed thou hast carried over hills and dales, and hast breathed through it melodies eternally new.
At the immortal touch of thy hands my little heart loses its limits in joy and gives birth to utterances ineffable.
Thy infinite gifts come to me only on these very small hands of mine. Ages pass, and still thou pourest, and still there is room to fill.1
4. This gift which God promises is something v:e all need. We can do without anything else, but a new heart is absolutely requisite. A nature is fundamental All acts, words, thoughts, are effluences of the nature. The heart is the root and fount of all things. "With what finality and power our Lord described the fundamentally of the heart ! " Out of the heart come forth evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, railings," How radical is the teaching of Jesus in this as in all matters ! He never treats things superficially. He will not rest in second causes. He traces all evil to the heart of man. And the Bible is equally thorough in all its teachings. It focusses all attention, all prayer, all endeavour, upon the heart. It will not allow that any man is right except his heart be right. Always its deep solicitude is concerning the heart. Hence all manner and types of heart are described in Scripture : a ■ wicked heart," a ■ pure heart," a " true heart," a " broken heart," a " clean heart," a " perfect heart." " A new heart also will I give you." A needed gift indeed, for till the heart is rectified the life is all astray.
In this precious gift of a new heart lies the secret of a wealthy inner life. Inward peace depends upon a new heart. Self- negation depends upon a new heart. Prayer and thanksgiving and praise depend upon a new heart. All generous impulses, all sublime ideals, all lofty and strenuous purposes depend upon a new heart. Xo inward Tightness can be attained unless God's promised gift of a new heart be received.
^[ Mr. If Cullagh's Recollections of my Ministry in East London contains an account of two or three remarkable conversions which followed his mission sermons in Poplar and Limehouse.
1 Rabiadraiiith Tagore, Gitanjali (Song Offerings), 1.
222 A NEW HEART
At one service a stranger presented himself as a penitent. He complained that he did not and could not " feel." " I have a great stone here," said he, putting his hand on his breast. He was reasoned with in vain. He repeated several times his com- plaint of "the stone." Then the preacher quoted to him the promise to take away the stony heart. The man could not believe it was in the Bible, until a copy was shown to him, for it seemed as though made to suit his case exactly. He, too, believed and entered into rest.1
Tf Describing some of the remarkable conversions among the boatmen who had been induced to attend his Water Street Mission in New York, Jerry McAuley says, "I asked one of them who was saved at that time, when he was testifying, ' How do you know you were converted ? '
" ' Well, I'll tell you,' he replied : • I went from here to my boat, and, locking the door, just made up my mind never to open it until converted. And 1 kept my word ! ' " ' How could you tell when it was done ? ' " ' Well, I'll have to explain that in my own way,' he answered, ' but it seems to me the Lord just took, as it were, something like a barnacle-scraper [a keen, sharp-edged, three-cornered piece of steel, fastened to a long handle, and used to scrape off the shell- fish and other deposits that gather on the bottom of vessels] and scraped my heart all out clean, and I haven't felt anything wrong there since ! ' " 2
Tf That rare thing, the real Christian, is a genuinely new creation ; not an ordinary man with a new and inspiring creed. " If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature," said St. Paul ; and described in those words a most actual phenomenon, the perennial puzzle of the religious psychologist. The re-birth which is typified by the Church's sacrament of initiation, and the participation in the Divine Life which is dramatized in its sacra- ment of communion — " the food of the full-grown " — these are facts, these are things which really happen to Christian mystics ; to all those, in fact, who follow this path of development, whatsoever their theological creed. The authentic documents of Christianity — those produced by minds which have submitted to the discipline and experienced the growth — speak with no uncertain voice as to the actual and unique character of this life. Its result, they say, is no splitting up of personality, no isolation of the " spiritual sense"; but the lifting of the whole man to new levels of existence " where the soul has f ulhead of perception by divine