The Thought-Mill by Theodore L. Cuyler

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 10, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 22.

The Thought-Mill.

By Theodore L. Cuyler

EVERY one of us carries in his or her person a more marvelous apparatus than human skill ever conceived. It may be likened to a mill, which is running without any pause, unless it be during the unconscious hours of sleep. The Creator who fashioned this wonderful mill has provided the wheat and the corn, which, if well ground, furnish food to nourish and strengthen and make us happy. But the evil one is ever on the watch to throw in worthless chaff or poisonous tares, which, if ground out and consumed, are fatal to health, and may breed disease and death. This marvelous mill is the mind—fearfully and wonderfully made. Fill it with the golden wheat of pure thoughts, noble thoughts, and the outcome of it will be a life worth carrying up to the Judgment seat. If selfishness and Satan supply the grist, then the outcome will be mischief, misery, and perdition. Keep thy heart-mill with all diligence and watchfulness; for out of it are the issues of thy life. As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.

A person is known by the company he keeps. So the thoughts which we harbor within us, and which go out through the door of our senses, decide our characters. Let me but know what thoughts occupy most your mind when you are alone, and I will determine what manner of person you are. A true child of God gives house-room to pure, quickening, and holy thoughts; and he is constantly striving to bar up door and windows against wicked intruders. He watches his heart-mill lest the tempter fill it with nettles, or clog it with gravel.

Habitual thinking determines whether we are Christ's servants or Satan's bond-slaves. A sensualist is only a filthy thinker. The walls of his mind are hung around with lascivious pictures; his very soul becomes a brothel, and it is no easy task after conversion to clean this house of unclean imagery. Do a man's thoughts run every day upon the bottle? Then he is a tippler or a sot. A miser's mind is simply a money bag. Does another man's mind-mill welcome every golden thought from God's word, from nature, and from the workings of the Holy Spirit? Then as the sweet, nutritious flour pours from between the rollers of a Minnesota grain-mill, so do inspiring words and useful plans and godly deeds stream out from that Christian's consecrated heart.

One of the highest of spiritual luxuries is the companionship of pure, exhilarating, and holy thoughts. "I thought of Jesus," said devout Samuel Rutherford, "until every stone in the walls of my prison cell shone like a ruby." We can imagine how the white doves fluttered in, and lighted on John Bunyan's rude table in his little Bedford gaol. No king entertained such royal guests as the poor tinker, when he set open his soul's windows towards Heaven.

On the other hand, there is no greater torment than to be an unclean or intensely selfish or profane thinker. Such a man is "grievously vexed with a devil." Out of such hearts proceed evil thoughts, revenges, cruelties, fornications, pride, and blasphemies. What a hell it is to have such a heart!

Do you say that you are troubled with impure and defiling thoughts? Then don't think them. Are you haunted with doubting and distrusting and skeptical thoughts against God and his promises? Don't think them. Watch the mill, and fling them out. All thoughts have their germs. The surest way to kill a sin is to kill it in the egg. At the very moment when a wicked thought is conceived, or is thrust into your mind, crush it! The little serpent will soon become the anaconda which will enfold you, and strangle you like the fabled Laocoon in the embrace of the sea-monsters.

How important, too, is it to nurse into vigorous life every germ of pure and Heaven-inspired thought! Your whole spiritual life will depend upon the reception and the treatment you give to every good idea born in your soul, or awakened there by the divine Spirit. To smother a good thought is often a quenching of the Holy Spirit; it has cost the eternal ruin of millions; it may rob you of a heavenly hope.

A wonderful apparatus indeed is this thought-mill within our breasts. We cannot guard it too carefully. Christ offers to us his precious truth to supply it—his help to keep it clear from the wretched garbage which the evil one would fling into it—and his propelling power to drive it with all useful and holy activities. Keep this ever-busy, ever-tempted, ever-active heart of thine with ceaseless care and with prayer; and in Heaven you will find that the pure in heart shall see God.—Theodore L. Cuyler, in Christian at Work.