01.11. The Jungle in the Heart
Chapter 11 THE JUNGLE IN THE HEART. The seventeen manifestations of the carnal mind or inbred sin given by Paul in one of his epistles is certainly startling and alarming. But when we see clearly traced in scripture the outlines of various forms of animal life projected in character by the same principle of evil, and find these ghastly portraitures or pictures reproduced today in men and women around us, the sensation of surprise turns into an emotion of horror. The thought that "the body of sin" within us can take upon itself the appearance, spirit and action of a certain forest animal is fearful enough, but when we discover that the carnal mind is a kind of complex nature and can assume in succession a multiplicity of animal forms and characteristics, the revelation is simply overwhelming to the mind and heart sickening beyond words to express.
If carnality in each unregenerate and regenerate heart in a church or neighborhood took but one semblance and wrong spirit, even that would make every congregation to possess a menagerie; but to see it taught in the Word of God, and proved in life that there is a deep swarming infested jungle in each individual breast is the thought that is full of such unutterable horror to every spiritually illumined mind.
We do not doubt but that if each honest inquirer after truth would keep a faithful diary of his moods and conduct he would find that in the course of a single year that everything which creepeth, crawleth, stingeth, hisseth, biteth, crusheth and killeth in the jungle of India has had its moment, hour or day in his own heart. The Jungle is a quiet, peaceful looking piece of dense woodland to the outside observer; but in those same shadowy recesses, and under the tangled vines and inter-twisted boughs, and all through its brakes and sloughs there is a multiplicity and fearfulness of moving forms that completely belie the outward appearance of peace and safety.
It is certainly one thing to look at the outside of a man’s life, to observe the immaculate dress, gracious demeanor, carefully studied language and modulated tones of voice; and a totally different affair to get a sudden insight into the thought life, heart realm, and real history of the individual. The man in the pulpit, on the platform, in the office, on the street, is one sight; but the same person at home or far away from home, and from all who know him, may be a spectacle as different as it is possible for language to describe, and revealing such Jungle features as would remain an astounding memory forever.
Think of an arm that once protected becoming a boa-constrictor to crush. Of a tongue that formerly cooed like a dove, darting out like the poison prongs from the red throat of a rattlesnake, to injure and destroy. Of a face that an hour or day before beamed with kindness, suddenly taking on the frightful features and expressions of an infuriated hyena or tiger. These instances are but the faintest hints of what is going on in, and coming out of, the Jungle of the human heart. The panther has a cry like a little baby; the serpent has a soft sibilant sound like a quick sigh; the anaconda covers its victim with a froth from its own mouth before swallowing it alive; the boa-constrictor enfolds quietly with fleshy coils and then gradually strangles and kills; the vampire sucks away the lifeblood, after first having fanned its prey to sleep. So even in the Jungle denizens there is an attractive, bewildering or false outside which covers an opposite nature underneath.
Truly we do not have to live long or go far before we hear the serpent’s sibilant whisper in the social circle, note the vampire wing, mark the mouth froth and feel the enveloping coils of a human Python who would crush heart, body and soul alike.
Holmes, the murderer of over thirty people, had a most ingratiating manner. Nearly all who met him were charmed with his conversation and deportment. The young man who killed two young women in a church in San Francisco, was so outwardly well bred and altogether pleasing in his ways, that he was not only a great social favorites but had been elected assistant superintendent of the Sunday school. What vampire wings, serpent whispers and panther baby cries these men had!
There are animals of the feline order in the world, soft, sinuous, purring and apparently grateful for every gentle rubbing and smoothing received, which are suddenly transformed by a single adverse stroke of the patter and petter, into a raging, eye-blazing, claws-scratching singe cat. A judge of the Supreme Court in Pennsylvania said recently in the trial of a case before him that "all women were cats." But he would have spoken a deeper truth is he had said that every unsanctified human heart is an East India Jungle.
Well may we wonder as we stand at the borders of such a life and say, what will be the next manifestation, the latest animal form which will come forth, show itself unmistakably and then retire into the deep, dark, unknown depths of the soul? In a single day or week, a human being with this nature can reveal the opossum, porcupine, ostrich, jackal, snake, vulture, bear and lion. We are kept in amazement at the transformations of the person before us, and wonder what will be the following appearance.
We have seen Inbred Sin when located inside an hungry body growl like a bear until dinner came on, next eat like a famished wolf, then gradually change into a meek contented looking sheep, and still later take upon itself the sportiveness and playfulness of a harmless gazelle. But unfortunately the gazelle sipped too much wine in the following half hour, or some one crossed him in some way, whereupon the amiable antelope became first a hedge hog, then a wild boar, and then a glaring-eyed tiger, and the whole household trembled at this latest revelation of the Jungle.
We have seen inbred sin cooing in a woman who was well dressed and had everything coming her way to gratify and satisfy until we thought that a dove with downiest feathers and most liquid of notes had strayed away from its companions, preferring her gentler nature, and was roosting somewhere in her graceful body. Later, suddenly vexed, first with her husband and then her son, we saw the straight bill turn instantaneously into a curved one, and the innocent pedal extremity of a Philomel become the sharp, hooked claw of the hawk. Still later we ran unexpectedly on her in the hall where she was violently scolding a poor servant girl, and this time we looked upon a fierce eyed female tigress in trailing draperies circling about the frightened, pale faced young woman. The dove, nightingale, hawk and eagle had disappeared in the Jungle, and a panting, swollen featured cougar had come forth and was now in the house wearing skirts.
We never hold a meeting but in the prayer of convicted people we hear confession of heart and life sins, some times a half dozen in number, that as to nature have their startling types in the bogs, brakes and tangled depths of the wilderness.
We do not question but that every true examiner of carnality in the heart would discover so many things which correspond to what we read in Natural history as to creeping, clawing, squirming, stinging, scratching, biting, growling, roaring, tearing, rending, devouring qualities and performances, that he would never say again that he obtained a pure heart in regeneration, but would in horror and agony of mind begin to cry to God for deliverance.
It would be well before death to explore this Jungle in the soul. Its revelations in that late and trying hour are often so fearful that hope sickens, faith is paralyzed and the soul goes out in a voiceless despair into the darkness of the World of the Lost.
It would pay to investigate the Jungle at once. God has great axes of Truth to hew the way into the profound and tangled mazes of the heart. His Spirit, stronger than ten thousand arc lights; mightier in its radiance than our sun; than vega, nine hundred times larger than our sun; than Arcturus, three thousand times greater and brighter than our sun; can flood the mind with a light beyond all these, and reveal within us every glittering eye, gleaming tooth, dripping tongue, piercing fang, ripping claw, ponderous paw, crushing hoof and goring born that ever has or ever will proceed from or belong to Sin. The same power which exposes, can also destroy. And He who shows the awfulness and peril of the Jungle can in a moment depopulate it of its inhabitants, transform it into a Garden of Eden, fill it with forms of peace, love and moral beauty, and delight the observer with as many manifestations of goodness in the same breast as once amazed and distressed him with appearances and actions of evil.
We can but marvel that men seem to prefer an inward fellowship of wild animals and hating, raging devils to the presence of the heavenlies, the communion of the Holy Ghost and the unbroken companionship of the Son of God. Would that we had more like the Man of Gadara who in wretchedness and despair at the torment, rending and tearing of evil spirits within him, cried out to Jesus, and accepted His great deliverance. The life picture of all such would be exactly like that of this Bible character. Devils cast out; Heaven within; clothed and in their right mind; sitting at the feet of Jesus; looking in love, gratitude and devotion into the face of the Son of God, and saying, "Behold wherever you go, I beseech Thee let me be with you."
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