102. I Thought Now That Every One Had A Better Heart Than I Had, And I Could Have Changed Hearts...

CII ‘I Thought Now That Every One Had A Better Heart Than I Had, And I Could Have Changed Hearts With Anybody.’

NOW, my Brethren, I will tell you the honest truth about this part of my work which I resume among you this evening. This question has arisen a hundred times in my mind during these past weeks, — Shall I go on with John Bunyan’s terrible book about the chief of sinners, or shall I stop these distressing discourses? And no later than last Saturday afternoon, when I was taking my farewell walk among the hills above Plockton and Strome Ferry, that same question challenged me, and indeed assaulted me, and that in more ways than one. Till suddenly, just as I was almost determining never to mention indwelling sin to you any more, what seemed to me to be a Divine Voice spoke with all-commanding power in my conscience, and said to me as clear as clear could be:

‘No! Go on, and flinch not! Go back and boldly finish the work that has been given you to do. Speak out and fear not. Make them, at any cost, to see themselves in God’s holy law as in a glass. Do you that, for no one else will do it. No one else will so risk his life and his reputation as to do it. And you have not much of either left to risk. Go home and spend what is left of your life in your appointed task of showing My people their sin and their need of My salvation.’

I shall never forget the exact spot where that clear command came to me and where I got fresh authority and fresh encouragement to finish this part of my work. I know quite well that some of you think me little short of a monomaniac about sin. But I am not the first that has been so thought of and so spoken about. I am in good company and I am content to be in it. Yes, you are quite right in that. For I most profoundly feel that I have been separated first to the personal experience of sin, and then to the experimental preaching of sin, above and beyond all my contemporaries in the pulpit of our day. And I think I know why that is so. But that it is indeed so I cannot for one moment doubt. Well then, with His support who so spoke in my heart last Saturday, and with your continued patience who have been so long patient with me, I shall go on for a few more Sabbath evenings with John Bunyan under the character of the chief of sinners. As thus:

‘Now, my inward and original pollution, that, that was my plague and my affliction; that, I say, at a dreadful rate, was always putting itself forth within me. That I had the guilt of, to absolute amazement. By reason of that I was more loathsome in my own eyes than was a toad, and I thought I was so in God’s eyes also. Sin and corruption would as naturally bubble out of my heart as water would bubble out of a fountain. I thought now that every one had a better heart than I had, and I could have changed hearts with anybody. I thought none but the devil himself could equalise me for inward wickedness and pollution of mind. And thus I continued a long while, even for some years together.

‘Now I quite admit that chapter was not written for Sabbath-school children, any more than was this kindred chapter that we have from the same master hand.’ The Interpreter then has them into the very best room in his house, and a very brave room it was, so he bid them look round about and see if they could find anything profitable there. Then they looked round and round, for there was nothing there to be seen but a very great spider on the wall, and that they overlooked. Then said Mercy, “Sir, I see nothing,” but Christiana held her peace. Then said the Interpreter, “Look again.” She therefore looked again, and said, “Here is not anything but an ugly spider, who hangs by her hands upon the wall.” Then said the Interpreter, “Is there but one spider in all this spacious room?” Then the water stood in Christiana’s eyes, for she was a woman quick of apprehension, and she said, “Yes, lord, there are here more than one. Yea, and spiders whose venom is far more destructive than that which is in her.” The Interpreter then looked pleasantly upon her, and said, “Thou hast said the truth.” This made Mercy blush, and the boys to cover their faces, for they all began now to understand the riddle.

‘Now, what do you say to all that? How do you feel about all that? Is John Bunyan out of all reasonable bounds in all that? If you were to speak out what you think, is he simply beside himself in such passages as those about the spider, and about the toad, and about the devil? Or on the other hand, do you subscribe, and that with tears and blood, to all he says and to more than even he dares to say? Do you have all those awful passages of his by heart? Do you turn to them and dwell on them till you feel that you are not wholly alone or wholly hopeless in your valley of the shadow of death? When you count up and go over all your best blessings, do you ever put God’s servant John Bunyan, and his Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners high up among them? I hope so. I most fervently hope so. And I shall continue to labour and to pray that it may more and more be so.

‘But my original and inward pollution, that, that was my plague and my affliction.’ These are very dreadful words, my brethren; but no words of God or of man are half so dreadful as is the simple truth. To begin with, this awful pollution of ours is ‘original.

‘That is St. Augustine’s word about it, and his word about it has been accepted by the whole Church of Christ ever since he first uttered it. Yes, our pollution is original — that is to say, it is native and natural to us. We were all born with it, and it grows and grows with all our growth. And even when we fain would outgrow it and cast it out and leave it behind us, we cannot. With all we can do, we cannot. And all the time it is the pollution of all pollutions. It is the parent pollution. Without it there would be no pollution anywhere. Take away our original pollution and there would be nothing to be called pollution in all the world. And then this original pollution is so inward that we cannot get down to it, all we can do, so as to cast it out. There is no bottom to the original pollution of our sinful hearts. It is an abyss. Our sin-polluted hearts are the true bottomless pit and there is no other. It is this same original and inward pollution that makes the man after God’s own heart to cry continually, ‘Wash me thoroughly, O my God. Purge me with hyssop, O my God. And create in me a clean heart.’ And it is this same thing that makes Job answer the Lord and say, ‘Behold, I am vile: wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.’ And Isaiah, ‘Woe is me, for I am undone.’ And Daniel, ‘All my comeliness is turned to corruption.’ And the holiest of men, ‘O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?’ ‘I had that original and inward pollution to amazement,’ says John Bunyan. How true and how fit is that word amazement! You must all have felt the truth and the power and the fitness of that word. You must often be simply amazed and overwhelmed with the original and inward pollution of your own hearts. Where does that sudden and awful pollution come from? you must often stand amazed at yourself and say. It is the mystery of all mysteries to you. ‘Who can understand his errors?’ the psalmist exclaims; that is to say, his own sin-polluted heart. I greatly like that word amazement. Amid all the unspeakable bitterness of the thing, to have it so aptly described by a master of spiritual language gives me a genuine delight. There is such childlike simplicity in this word amazement. There is such manhood reality in it. There is such a sure note of personal experience in it. And, withal, there is such true literary genius in it. Yes, ‘amazement’ is the very word. Amazement at my original and inward pollution, at such a dreadful rate always putting itself forth within me. What a delight there is in John Bunyan’s English, even in his most dreadful passages, such as this!

‘I thought now that every one had a better heart than I had, and I could have changed hearts with anybody.’ What do you say to that offer, my brethren? Suppose you had been in Bedford in Bunyan’s day, and with your present heart, would you have struck an exchange of hearts on the spot with Bunyan? I would, and I would have given him good boot to the bargain. With all that he so honestly says in crying down his own goods, I would at once have negotiated the exchange, and been glad to do it. And I feel certain that the foolish and precipitate man would have repented all his days the bad bargain he had made with me. The sin-polluted heart so knows its own bitterness that it simply cannot believe that there is its match on earth or even in hell. And now to return to this gospel in Ezekiel before I let you go: ‘A new heart will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you.’ Only there is no good in going back to that, unless you have first gone through John Bunyan’s eighty-fourth paragraph and have made it your very own. For you will not understand one syllable of what a new and a clean and a holy heart means unless you are amazed and are in despair at your own polluted heart. But to those of you who are so amazed and are in such despair, to you are all Ezekiel’s promises sent. And all his promises about a new heart and a right spirit are to you yea and amen in Jesus Christ; that is to say, you must always go directly and immediately to Jesus Christ for your new heart and for your right spirit. And you must plead with Him and press Him day and night as long as you live for a copy of the heart that His Father so graciously gave to Him. Reason and expostulate with Him first about His own heart, and then about yours. Be bold with Him; be very bold with Him. A lost soul, half down into hell, cannot be expected to choose soft and sleeping words. Remind Him then, remind Him that with all His horror and all His amazement in the Garden and on the Tree, He never had any such horror at Himself, or any such amazement at Himself, as you always have at yourself. With all the hell into which He descended He never came near the mouth of a hell like your heart. Tell Him that. Go to your closet and shut your door and fasten it firm and fall down on your face and open your whole fearful heart to Him, and plead with Him to take your heart at once in hand. Implore Him not to spit upon you, or to loathe you, or to hate you, or to cast you out of His presence. Ask if in all His experience He has ever had a heart on His hands quite like yours. Tell Him that if He wishes ever to see the full travail of His soul that it must be seen in you and in your holiness-healed heart. Tell Him that He has an opportunity in you, the like of which He will never have again to all time. Tell Him that you are quite the uttermost sinner on this side hell, and that your new heart and your right spirit will be by far His highest trophy in His Father’s house. And to encourage you, I must, and I will, tell you this. When He gave me my new commission in this matter last Saturday afternoon near Duncraig, He added this, as I shall always remember: ‘Comfort My people,’ He said. ‘Speak comfortably to My people, and say to them that I know all their sorrow. Cast them down with all your might,’ He said. ‘Cast them down continually to death and hell: they have not far to go. But always hasten, after that, to lift them up. Tell them,’ He said, ‘about all the chief sinners that I have had written out and put in a book for their encouragement. All the Old Testament and all the New Testament sinners whose names they know so well. And add to them,’ He said, ‘all those great sinners whose books are on your table at Balmacara.’ You know yourselves how homely and how home-comingly He sometimes speaks to yourselves. ‘Tell them,’ He said — at any rate, I took it for His voice, for no one has a voice just like His voice — ‘tell the congregation and the classes this season about St. Augustine and his sin,’ He said,

‘and about Dante and his sin, and about Luther and his sin, and about Behmen and his sin, and about Teresa and her sin, and about Hooker and his sin, and about Shepard and his sin, and about Bunyan and his sin, and about Brea and his sin, and about Halyburton and his sin, and about Andrewes and his sin, and about Goodwin and his sin, and about Marshall and his sin, and about Pascal and his sin, and about Law and his sin, and about the Catechism and its teaching about sin and salvation, and about the Hymn-book and its songs of sin and salvation.’ And when His voice ceased, I answered and said, Spare me this year also, and by Thy grace I will do what Thou hast so clearly commanded me to do in the pulpit and in the class.