The Great Reservoir

The Great Reservoir

A Sermon

(No. 179)

Delivered on Sabbath Morning, February 21, 1858, by the

REV. C.H. SPURGEON

at the Music Hall, Royal Surrey Gardens.

"Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of
life."–Proverbs 4:23.

WF I SHOULD VAINLY ATTEMPT to fashion my discourse after lofty models,
I should this morning compare the human heart to the ancient city of
Thebes, out of whose hundred gates multitudes of warriors were wont to
march. As was the city, such were her armies, as was her inward
strength, such were they who came forth of her. I might then urge the
necessity of keeping the heart, because it is the metropolis of our
manhood, the citadel and armory of our humanity. Let the chief fortress
surrender to the enemy, and the occupation of the rest must be an easy
task. Let the principal stronghold be possessed by evil, the whole land
must be overrun thereby. Instead, however, of doing this, I shall
attempt what possibly I may be able to perform, by a humble metaphor
and a simple figure, which will be easily understood; I shall endeavor
to set forth the wise man's doctrine, that our life issues from the
heart, and thus I shall labor to show the absolute necessity of keeping
the heart with all diligence.

You have seen the great reservoirs provided by our water companies, in
which the water which is to supply hundreds of streets and thousands of
houses is kept. Now, the heart is just the reservoir of man, and our
life is allowed to flow in its proper season. That life may flow
through different pipes–the mouth, the hand, the eye; but still all
the issues of hand, of eye, of lip, derive their source from the great
fountain and central reservoir, the heart; and hence there is no
difficulty in showing the great necessity that exists for keeping this
reservoir, the heart, in a proper state and condition, since otherwise
that which flows through the pipes must be touted and corrupt. May the
Holy Spirit now direct our meditations.

Mere moralists very often forget the heart, and deal exclusively with
the lesser powers. Some of them say, "If a man's life be wrong, it is
better to alter the principles upon which his conduct is modeled: we
had better adopt another scheme of living; society must be re-modeled,
so that man may have an opportunity for the display of virtues, and
less temptation to indulge in vice." It is as if, when the reservoir
was filled with poisonous or polluted fluid, some sage counsellor
should propose that all the piping had better be taken up, and fresh
pipes laid down, so that the water might run through fresh channels;
but who does not perceive that it would be all in vain, if the
fountain-head were polluted, however good the channels. So in vain the
rules by which men hope to fashion their lives; in vain the regimen by
which we seek to constrain ourselves to the semblance of goodness,
unless the heart be right, the very best scheme of life shall fall to
the ground, and fail to effect its design. Others say, "Well, if the
life be wrong, it would be better to set the understanding right: you
must inform man's judgment, educate him, teach him better, and when his
head is well informed, then his life will be improved. Now,
understanding is, if I may use such a figure, the stopcock which
controls the emotions, lets them flow on, or stops them; and it is as
if some very wise man, when a reservoir had been poisoned, proposed
that there should be a new person employed to turn the water off or on,
in hope that the whole difficulty would thus be obviated. If we
followed his advice, if we found the wisest man in the world to have
control of the fountain, Mr. Understanding would still be incapable of
supplying us with healthy streams, until we had first of all purged the
cistern whence they flowed. The Arminian divine, too, sometimes
suggests another way of improving man's life. He deals with the will.
He says, the will must first of all be conquered, and if the will be
right, then every thing will be in order. Now, will is like the great
engine which forces the water out of the fountain-head along the pipes,
so that it is made to flow into our dwellings. The learned counsellor
proposes that there should be a new steam-engine employed to force the
water along the pipes. "If," says he, "we had the proper machinery for
forcing the fluid, then all would be well." No, sir, if the stream be
poisonous, you may have axles to turn on diamonds, and you may have a
machine that is made of gold, and a force as potent as Omnipotence, but
even then you have not accomplished your purpose until you have
cleansed the polluted fountain, and purged the issues of life which
flow therefrom. The wise man in our text seems to say, "Beware of
misapplying your energies, be careful to begin in the right place." It
is very necessary the understanding should be right; it is quite
needful the will should have its proper predominance; it is very
necessary that you should keep every part of man in a healthy
condition; "but," says he, "if you want to promote true holiness, you
must begin with the heart, for out of it are the issues of life; and
when you have purged it, when you have made its waters pure and limpid,
then shall the current flow and bless the inhabitants with clear water;
but not till then." Here let us pause and ask the solemn and vital
question, "Is my heart right in the sight of God?" For unless the inner
man has been renewed by the grace of God, through the Holy Spirit, our
heart is full of rottenness, filth, and abominations. And if so, here
must all our cleansing begin, if it be real and satisfactory. Unrenewed
men, I beseech you ponder the words of an ancient Christian which I
here repeat in thine ear:–"It is no matter what is the sign, though an
angel, that hangs without, if the devil and sin dwell therein. New
trimmings upon an old garment will not make it new, only give it a new
appearance; and truly it is no good husbandry to bestow a great deal of
cost in mending up an old suit, that will soon drop to tatters and
rags, when a little more might purchase a new one that is lasting. And
is it not better to labor to get a new heart, that all thou dost may be
accepted, and thou saved, than to lose all the pains thou takest in
religion, and thyself also for want of it?"

Now, ye who love the Lord, let me take you to the reservoir of your
heart, and let, me urge upon you the great necessity of keeping the
heart right, if you would have the stream of your life happy for
yourselves and beneficial to others.

I. First, keep the heart full. However pure the water may be in the
central reservoir, it will not be possible for the company to provide
us with an abundant supply of water, unless the reservoir itself be
full. An empty fountain will most assuredly beget empty pipes; and let
the machinery be never so accurate, let every thing else be well
ordered, yet if that reservoir be dry, we may wait in vain for any of
the water that we require. Now, you know many people–(you are sure to
meet with them in your own society, and your own circle; for I know of
no one so happy as to be without such acquaintances)–whose lives are
just dry, good-for-nothing emptiness. They never accomplish anything;
they have no mental force; they have no moral power; what they say,
nobody thinks of noticing; what they do is scarcely ever imitated. We
have known fathers whose moral force has been so despicable, that even
their children have scarcely been able to imitate them. Though
imitation was strong enough in them, yet have they unconsciously felt,
even in their childhood, that their father was, after all, but a child
like themselves, and had not grown to be a man. Do you not know many
people, who if they were to espouse a cause, and it were entrusted to
them, would most certainly pilot it to shipwreck. Failure would be the
total result. You could not use them as clerks in your office, without
feeling certain that your business would be nearly murdered. If you
were to employ them to manage a concern for you, you would be sure they
would manage to spend all the money, but could never produce a doit. If
they were placed in comfortable circumstances for a few months, they
would go on carelessly till all was gone. They are just the flats,
preyed on by the sharpers in the world; they have no manly strength, no
power at all. See these people in religion: it does not matter much
what are their doctrinal sentiments, it is quite certain they will
never affect the minds of others. Put them in the pulpit: they are the
slaves of the deacons, or else the, are over-ridden by the church; they
never have an opinion of their own, can not come out with a thing; they
have not the heart to say, "Such a thing is, and I know it is." These
men just live on, but as far as any utility to the world is concerned,
they might almost as well never have been created, except it were to be
fed upon by other people. Now, some say that this is the fault of men's
heads: "Such a one," they say, "could not get on; he had a small head;
it was clean impossible for him to prosper, his head was small, he
could not do anything; he had not enough force." Now, that may be true;
but I know what was truer still–he had got a small heart and that
heart was empty. For, mark you, a man's force in the world, other
things being equal, is just in the ratio of the force and strength of
his heart. A full-hearted man is always a powerful man: if he be
erroneous, then he is powerful for error; if the thing is in his heart,
he is sure to make it notorious, even though it may be a downright
falsehood. Let a man be never so ignorant, still if his heart be full
of love to a cause, he becomes a powerful man for that object, because
he has got heart-power, heart-force. A man may be deficient in many of
the advantages of education, in many of those niceties which are so
much looked upon in society; but once give him a good strong heart,
that beats hard, and there is no mistake about his power. Let him have
a heart that is right full up to the brim with an object, and that man
will do the thing, or else he will die gloriously defeated, and will
glory in his defeat. HEART IS POWER. It is the emptiness of men's
hearts that makes them so feeble. Men do not feel what they are at.
Now, the man in business that goes heart and soul into his business, is
more likely to prosper than anybody else. That is the preacher we want,
the man that has a full soul. Let him have a head–the more he knows
the better; but, after all, give him a big heart; and when his heart
beats, if his heart be full, it will, under God, either make the hearts
of his congregation beat after him; or else make them conscious that he
is laboring hard to compel them to follow. O! if we had more heart in
our Master's service, how much more labor we could endure. You are a
Sunday-school teacher, young man, and you are complaining that you can
not get on in the Sunday-school. Sir, the service-pipe would give out
plenty of water if the heart were full. Perhaps you do not love your
work. O, strive to love your work more, and then when your heart is
full, you will go on well enough. "O," saith the preacher, "I am weary
of my work in preaching; I have little success; I find it a hard toil."
The answer to that question is, "Your heart is not full of it, for if
you loved preaching, you would breathe preaching, feed upon preaching,
and find a compulsion upon you to follow preaching; and your heart
being full of the thing, you would be happy in the employment. O for a
heart that is full, and deep, and broad! Find the man that hath such a
soul as that, and that is the man from whom the living waters shall
flow, to make the world glad with their refreshing streams.

Learn, then, the necessity of keeping the heart full; and let the
necessity make you ask this question–"But how can I keep my heart
full? How can my emotions be strong? How can I keep my desires burning
and my zeal inflamed?" Christian! there is one text which will explain
all this. "All my springs are in thee," said David. If thou hast all
thy springs in God, thy heart will be full enough. If thou dost go to
the foot of Calvary, there will thy heart be bathed in love and
gratitude. If thou dost frequent the vale of retirement, and there talk
with thy God, it is there that thy heart shall be full of calm resolve.
If thou goest out with thy Master to the hill of Olivet, and dost with
him look down upon a wicked Jerusalem, and weep over it with him, then
will thy heart be full of love for never-dying souls. If thou dost
continually draw thine impulse, thy life, the whole of thy being from
the Holy Spirit, without whom thou canst do nothing; and if thou dost
live in close communion with Christ, there will be no fear of thy
having a dry heart. He who lives without prayer–he who lives with
little prayer–he who seldom reads the Word–he who seldom looks up to
heaven for a fresh influence from on high–he will be the man whose
heart will become dry and barren; but he who calls in secret on his
God–who spends much time in holy retirement–who delights to meditate
on the words of the Most High–whose soul is given up to Christ–who
delights in his fullness, rejoices in his all-sufficiency, prays for
his second coming, and delights in the thought of his glorious
advent–such a man, I say, must have an overflowing heart; and as his
heart is, such will his life be. It will be a full life; it will be a
life that will speak from the sepulcher, and wake the echoes of the
future. "Keep thine heart with all diligence," and entreat the Holy
Spirit to keep it full; for, otherwise, the issues of thy life will be
feeble, shallow, and superficial; and thou mayest as well not have
lived at all.

2. Secondly, it would be of little use for our water companies to keep
their reservoirs full, if they did not also keep them pure. I remember
to have read a complaint in the newspaper of a certain provincial town,
that a tradesman had been frequently supplied with fish from the water
company, large eels having crept down the pipe, and sometimes creatures
a little more loathsome. We have known such a thing as water companies
supplying us with solids when they ought to have given us nothing but
pure crystal. Now, no one likes that. The reservoir should be kept pure
and clean; and unless the water comes from a pure spring, and is not
impregnated with deleterious substances, however full the reservoir may
be, the company will fail of satisfying or of benefiting its customers.
Now it is essential for us to do with our hearts as the company must do
with its reservoir. We must keep our hearts pure; for if the heart be
not pure, the life can not be pure. It is quite impossible that it
should be so. You see a man whose whole conversation is impure and
unholy; when he speaks he lards his language with oaths; his mind is
low and groveling; none but the things of unrighteousness are sweet to
him, for he has no soul above the kennel and the dunghill. You meet
with another man who understands enough to avoid violating the
decencies of life; but still, at the same time he likes filthiness; any
low joke, anything that will in some way stir unholy thoughts is just
the thing that he desires. For the ways of God he has no relish; in
God's house he finds no pleasure, in his Word no delight. What is the
cause of this? Say some, it is because of his family
connections–because of the situation in which he stands–because of
his early education, and all that. No, no; the simple answer to that is
the answer we gave to the other inquiry; the heart is not right; for,
if the heart were pure, the life would be pure too. The unclean stream
betrays the fountain. A valuable book of German parables, by old
Christian Scriver, contains the following homely metaphor:–"A drink
was brought to Gotthold, which tasted of the vessel in which it had
been contained; and this led him to observe. We have here an emblem of
our thoughts, words, and works. Our heart is defiled by sin, and hence
a taint if sinfulness cleaves unfortunately to everything we take in
hand; and although, from the force of habit, this may be imperceptible
to us, it does not escape the eye of the omniscient, holy, and
righteous God." Whence come our carnality, covetuousness, pride, sloth
and unbelief? Are they not all to be traced to the corruption of our
hearts? When the hands of a clock move in an irregular manner, and when
the bell strikes the wrong hour, be assured there is something wrong
within. O how needful that the main-spring of our motives be in proper
order, and the wheels in a right condition.

Ah! Christian keep thy heart pure. Thou sayest, "How can I do this?"
Well, there was of old a stream of Marah, to which the thirsty pilgrims
in the desert came to drink; and when they came to taste of it, it was
so brackish that though their tongues were like torches, and the roofs
of their mouths were parched with heat, yet they could not drink of
that bitter water. Do you remember the remedy which Moses prescribed?
It is the remedy which we prescribe to you this morning. He took a
certain tree, and he cast it into the waters, and they became sweet and
clear. Your heart is by nature like Marah's water, bitter and impure.
There is a certain tree, you know its name, that tree on which the
Saviour hung, the cross. Take that tree, put it into your heart, and
though it were even more impure than it is, that sweet cross, applied
by the Holy Spirit, would soon transform it into its own nature, and
make it pure. Christ Jesus in the heart is the sweet purification. He
is made unto us sanctification. Elijah cast salt into the waters; but
we must cast the blood of Jesus there. Once let us know and love Jesus,
once let his cross become the object of our adoration and the theme of
our delight, the heart will beam its cleansing, and the life will
become pure also. Oh! that we all did learn the sacred lesson of fixing
the cross in the heart! Christian man! love thy Saviour more; cry to
the Holy Spirit that thou mayest have more affection for Jesus; and
then, how ever gainful may be thy sin, thou wilt say with the poet,

"Now for the love I bear his name,

What was my gain I count my loss;

My former pride I call my shame,

And nail my glory to his cross."

The cross in the heart is the purifier of the soul; it purges and it
cleanses the chambers of the mind. Christian! keep thy heart pure, "for
out of it are the issues of life."

3. In the third place, there is one thing to which our water companies
need never pay much attention; that is to say, if their water be pure,
and the reservoir be full, they need not care to keep it peaceable and
quiet, for let it be stirred to a storm, we should receive our water in
the same condition as usual. It is not so, however, with the heart.
Unless the heart be kept peaceable, the life will not be happy. If calm
doth not reign over that inner lake within the soul which feeds the
rivers of our life, the rivers themselves will always be in storm. Our
outward acts will always tell that they were born in tempests, by
rolling in tempests themselves. Let us just understand this, first,
with regard to ourselves. We all desire to lead a joyous life; the
bright eye and the elastic foot are things which we each of us desire;
to carry about a contented mind is that to which most men are
continually aspiring. Let us all remember, that the only way to keep
our life peaceful and happy is to keep the heart at rest; for come
poverty, come wealth, come honor, come shame, come plenty, or come
scarcity, if the heart be quiet there will be happiness anywhere. But
whatever the sunshine and the brightness, if the heart be troubled the
whole life must be troubled too. There is a sweet story told in one of
the German martyrologies well worth both my telling and your
remembering. A holy martyr who had been kept for a long time in prison,
and had there exhibited, to the wonderment of all who saw him, the
strongest constancy and patience, was at last, upon the day of
execution, brought out, and tied to the stake preparatory to the
lighting of the fire. While in this position he craved permission to
speak once more to the Judge, who, according to the Swiss custom, was
required to be also present at the execution. After repeatedly
refusing, the judge at last came forward, when the peasant addressed
him thus: You have this day condemned me to death. Now, I freely admit
that I am a poor sinner, but positively deny that I am a heretic,
because from my heart I believe and confess all that is contained in
the Apostles' Creed (which he thereupon repeated from beginning to
end). Now, then, sir, he proceeded to say, I have but one last request
to make, which is, that you will approach and place your hand, first
upon my breast and then upon your own, and afterwards frankly and
truthfully declare, before this assembled multitude, which of the two,
mine or yours, is beating most violently with fear and anxiety. For my
part, I quit the world with alacrity and joy, to go and be with Christ,
in whom I have always believed; what your feelings are at this moment
is best known to yourself. The judge could make no answer, and
commanded them instantly to light the pile. It was evident, however,
from his looks, that he was more afraid than the martyr."

Now, keep your heart right. Do not let it smite you. The Holy Spirit
says of David, "David's heart smote him." The smiting of the heart is
more painful to a good man than the rough blows of the fist. It is a
blow that can be felt; it is iron that enters into the soul. Keep your
heart in good temper. Do not let that get fighting with you. Seek that
the peace of God which passeth all understanding, may keep your heart
and mind through Christ Jesus. Bend your knee at night, and with a full
confession of sin, express your faith in Christ, then you may "dread
the grave as little as your bed." Rise in the morning and give your
heart to God, and put the sweet angels of perfect love and holy faith
therein, and you may go into the world, and were it full of lions and
of tigers you would no more need to dread it than Daniel when he was
cast into the lion's den. Keep the heart peaceable and your life will
be happy.

Remember, in the second place, that it is just the same with regard to
other men. I should hope we all wish to lead quiet lives, and as much
as lieth in us to live peaceably with all men. There is a particular
breed of men–I do not know where they come from, but they are mixed up
now with the English race and to be met with here and there–men who
seem to be born for no other reason whatever but to fight–always
quarreling, and never pleased. They say that all Englishmen are a
little that way–that we are never happy unless we have something to
grumble at, and that the worst thing that ever could be done with us
would be to give us some entertainment at which we could not grumble,
because we should be mortally offended, because we had not the
opportunity of displaying our English propensities. I do not know
whether that is true of all of us, but it is of some. You can not sit
with them in a room but they introduce a topic upon which you are quite
certain to disagree with them. You could not walk with them half a mile
along the public streets but they would be sure to make an observation
against every body and every thing they saw. They talk about ministers:
one man's doctrine is too high, another's is too low; one man they
think is a great deal too effeminate and precise, another they say is
so vulgar they would not hear him at all. They say of another man that
they do not think he attends to visiting his people; of another, that
he visits so much that he never prepares for the pulpit. No one can be
right for them.

Why is this? Whence arises this continual snarling? The heart must
again supply the answer, they are morose and sullen in the inward
parts, and hence their speech betrayeth them. They have not had their
hearts brought to feel that God hath made of one blood all nations that
dwell upon the face of the earth, or if they have felt that, they have
never been brought to spell in their hearts–"By this shall all men
know that ye are my disciples, if ye love one another." Whichever may
have been put there of the other ten, the eleventh commandment was
never written there. "A new commandment give I unto you, that ye love
one another." That they forgot. Oh! dear Christian people, seek to have
your hearts full of love, and if you have had little hearts till now
that could not hold love enough for more than your own denomination,
get your hearts enlarged, so that you may have enough to send out
service-pipes to all God's people throughout the habitable globe; so
that whenever you meet a man who is a true-born heir of heaven, he has
nothing to do but to turn to the tap, and out of your loving heart will
begin to flow issues of true, fervent, unconstrained, willing, living
love. Keep thine heart peaceable, that thy life may be so; for out of
the heart are the issues of life.

How is this to be done? We reply again, we must ask the Holy Spirit to
pacify the heart. No voice but that which on Galilee lake said to the
storm "Be still," can ever lay the troubled waters of a stormy heart.
No strength but Omnipotence can still the tempest of human nature. Cry
out mightily unto him. He still sleeps in the vessel with his church.
Ask him to awake, lest your piety should perish in the waters of
contention. Cry unto him that he may give your heart peace and
happiness. Then shall your life be peaceful; spend ye it where ye may,
in trouble or in joy.

4. A little further. When the water-works company have gathered an
abundance of water in the reservoir, there is one thing they must
always attend to, and that is, they must take care they do not attempt
too much, or otherwise they will fail. Suppose they lay on a great main
pipe in one place to serve one city, and another main pipe to serve
another, and the supply which was intended to fill one channel is
diverted into a score of streams, what would be the result? Why nothing
would be done well, but everyone would have cause to complain. Now,
man's heart is after all so little, that there is only one great
direction in which its living water can ever flow; and my fourth piece
of advice to you from this text is, Keep your heart undivided. Suppose
you see a lake, and there are twenty or thirty streamlets running from
it: why, there will not be one strong river in the whole country; there
will be a number of little brooks which will be dried up in the summer,
and will be temporary torrents in the winter. They will every one of
them be useless for any great purposes, because there is not water
enough in the lake to feed more than one great stream. Now, a man's
heart has only enough life in it to pursue one object fully. Ye must
not give half your love to Christ, and the other half to the world. No
man can serve God and mammon because there is not enough life in the
heart to serve the two. Alas! many people try this, and they fail both
ways. I have known a man who has tried to let some of his heart run
into the world, and another part he allowed to drip into the church,
and the effect has been this: when he came into the church he was
suspected of hypocrisy. "Why," they said, "if he were truly with us,
could he have done yesterday what he did, and then come and profess so
much to-day?" The church looks upon him as a suspicious one: or if he
deceive them they feel he is not of much use to them, because they have
not got all his heart. What is the effect of his conduct in the world?
Why, his religion is a fetter to him there. The world will not have
him, and the church will not have him; he wants to go between the two,
and both despise him. I never saw anybody try to walk on both sides of
the street but a drunken man: he tried it, and it was very awkward work
indeed; but I have seen many people in a moral point of view try to
walk on both sides of the street, and I thought there was some kind of
intoxication in them, or else they would have given it up as a very
foolish thing. Now, if I thought this world and the pleasures thereof
worth my seeking, I would just seek them and go after them, and I would
not pretend to be religious; but if Christ be Christ, and if God be
God, let us give our whole hearts to him, and not go shares with the
world. Many a church member manages to walk on both sides of the street
in the following manner: His sun is very low indeed–it has not much
light, not much heat, and is come almost to its setting. Now sinking
suns cast long shadows, and this man stands on the world's side of the
street, and casts a long shadow right across the road, to the opposite
side of the wall just across the pavement. Ay, it is all we get with
many of you. You come and you take the sacramental bread and wine; you
are capsized; you join the church; and what we get is just your shadow;
there is your substance on the other side of the street, after all.
What is the good of the empty chrysalis of a man? And yet many of our
church members are little better. They just do as the snake does that
leaves its slough behind. They give us their slough, their skin, the
chrysalis case in which life once was, and then they go themselves
hither and thither after their own wanton wills; they give us the
outward, and then give the world the inward. O how foolish this,
Christian! Thy master gave himself wholly for thee; give thyself
unreservedly to him. Keep not back part of the price. Make a full
surrender of every motion of thy heart; labor to have but one object,
and one aim. And for this purpose give God the keeping of thine heart.
Cry out for more of the divine influences of the Holy Spirit, that so
when thy soul is preserved and protected by him, it may be directed
into one channel, and one only, that thy life may run deep and pure,
and clear and peaceful; its only banks being God's will, its only
channel the love of Christ and a desire to please him. Thus wrote
Spencer in days long gone by: "Indeed, by nature, man's heart is a very
divided, broken thing, scattered and parceled out, a piece to this
creature, and a piece to that lust. One while this vanity hires him (as
Leah did Jacob of Rachel), anon when he hath done some drudgery for
that, he lets out himself to another: thus divided is man and his
affections. Now the elect, whom God hath decreed to be vessels of
honor, consecrated for his holy use and service, he throws into the
fire of his word, that being there softened and melted, he may by his
transforming Spirit cast them anew, as it were, into a holy oneness; so
that he who before was divided from God, and lost among the creatures,
and his lusts, that shared him among them, now, his heart is gathered
into God from them all; it looks with a single eye on God, and acts for
him in all that he doth: if therefore thou wouldest know whether thy
heart be sincere, inquire whether it be thus made anew."

5. Now, my last point is rather a strange one perhaps. Once upon a
time, when one of our kings came back from a captivity, old historians
tell us that there were fountains in Cheapside that did run with wine.
So bounteous was the king, and so glad the people, that instead of
water, they made wine flow free to everybody. There is a way of making
our life so rich, so full, so blessed to our fellow men, that the
metaphor may be applicable to us, and men may say, that our life flows
with wine when other men's lives flow with water. Ye have known some
such men. There was a Howard. John Howard's life was not like our poor
common lives; he was so benevolent, his sympathy with the race so
self-denying, that the streams of his life were like generous wine. You
have known another, an eminent saint, one who lived very near to Jesus:
when you talked yourself, you felt your conversation was poor watery
stuff; but when he talked to you, there was an unction and a savor
about his words, a solidity, and a strength about his utterances, which
you could appreciate, though you could not attain unto it. You have
sometimes said, "I wish my words were as full, as sweet, as mellow, and
as unctuous as the words of such an one! Oh! I wish my actions were
just as rich, had as deep a color, and as pure a taste as the acts of
so-and-so. All I can do seems but little and empty when compared with
his high attainments. Oh, that I could do more! Oh, that I could send
streams of pure gold into every house, instead of my poor dross," Well,
Christian, this should teach thee to keep thine heart full of rich
things. Never, never neglect the Word of God; that will make thy heart
rich with precept, rich with understanding; and then thy conversation,
when it flows from thy mouth, will be like thine heart, rich, unctuous,
and savory. Make thy heart full of rich, generous love, and then the
stream that flows from thy hand will be just as rich and generous as
thine heart. Above all, get Jesus to live in thine heart, and then out
of thy belly shall flow rivers of living water, more rich, more
satisfying than the water of the well of Sychar of which Jacob drank.
Oh! go, Christians, to the great mine of riches, and cry unto the Holy
Spirit to make thy heart rich unto salvation. So shall thy life and
conversation be a boon to thy fellows; and when they see thee, thy face
shall be as the angel of God. Thou shalt wash thy feet in butter and
thy steps in oil; they that sit in the gate shall rise up when they see
thee, and men shall do thee reverence.

But one single sentence, and we have done. Some of your hearts are not
worth keeping. The sooner you get rid of them the better. They are
hearts of stone. Do you feel today that you have a stony heart? Go
home, and I pray the Lord hear my desire that thy polluted heart may be
removed. Cry unto God and say, "Take away my heart of stone, and give
me a heart of flesh;" for a stony heart is an impure heart, a divided
heart, an unpeaceful heart. It is a heart that is poor and
poverty-stricken, a heart that is void of all goodness, and thou canst
neither bless thyself nor others, if thy heart be such. O Lord Jesus!
wilt thou be pleased this day to renew many hearts? Wilt thou break the
rock in pieces, and put flesh instead of stone, and thou shalt have the
glory, world without end!
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