OUR HEARTS by Eliza H. Morton

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 12, 1876

OUR HEARTS.

By Eliza H. Morton

The heart is the vital part of the human organism; in the Bible sense it is the fountain of all purity and sin; and out of it are the “issues of life.” The attributes of the heart are many, and capable of infinite improvement. The character of the man is formed by his heart culture in youth.

The heart of the child is best reached through the affections. Those parents make a terrible mistake, who think it a weakness to manifest by outward acts the love they feel for their children. They may love them enough to make any sacrifice for them, and yet never seek to win their hearts by any of those little endearing acts and loving words which children so delight in.

Some parents think if they fondle, kiss, or caress, their children, it will spoil them, make them effeminate, and unfit them for the duties of life; so they move about like icebergs, and effectually chill, wither, blast, and freeze, the tender hearts of the little ones. Children have their little trials and troubles, and if encouraged, will readily pour out their griefs into the parental ear. If discouraged, they will keep their feelings to themselves, become secretive by nature, and cold and distant in their manners. When they become older, they are apt to seek elsewhere what they failed to find at home, and sometimes make friends of those unworthy of their love or confidence.

When parents lose their children by death, then, in an agony of grief, they smooth back the curly hair with tearful tenderness, fold the tiny hands with lingering caress, press warm, loving kisses upon the white, frozen lips, and give to the dumb, unconscious clay those tokens of affection they refused the living, loving child.

Parents, do not keep your kisses for that dead, cold brow. Those glassy eyes cannot soften with the light of love. Those little ears are forever closed to your endearing words. Those little white arms can no more twine around your neck in fond embrace. That dreamless rest needs no tenderness. Give, oh! give your living children the sympathy they yearn for, and express your love by many an endearing word, act, and look. By so doing, you will strengthen the cords of affection, and so effectually bind their hearts to yours that time, place, or circumstance can never estrange them from you.

God is love; hence love is divine. Jesus had his beloved disciple; therefore it is not wrong for us to have particular friends. Indeed, an unselfish love for a worthy earthly friend will crowd out of our natures a great deal of evil, make us more gentle, more sympathetic, more refined, and more like Him whose heart overflows with love for the whole human race. Therefore, my brethren and sisters, let us cultivate our heart’s best affections, and imitate the example of Him who is “altogether lovely and the chiefest among ten thousand;” for the heart of flesh is tenderer than the heart of stone, and “he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God and God in him.”

ELIZA H. MORTON.

Allen’s Corner, Me.