Heart Searching | AdventAI

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 3, 1857

Heart Searching.

THE Psalmist prayed, Search me, O God, and know my heart. Did he comprehend the import of that prayer? Do we comprehend its import when in our most pious frames we repeat the petition? To come to the knowledge of ourself, to go down to the foundation of one's character and hopes, is a more serious and earnest matter when God answers the prayer than we imagine when we utter it. It is like descending the shaft of a mine; your first descent is by an easy flight of steps, and the novelty enlivens, the coolness refreshes you; but at the bottom of these you come to a narrow archway, through which you must creep to the next descent, which is by a slender perpendicular ladder that trembles beneath your weight; you grow dizzy and wish yourself safely out again; the air becomes more chill and damp, and you are wet and soiled with the drippings of the vari-colored strata through which you pass; again you crawl through a yet narrower passage, tearing your flesh at every motion, and now you are on the verge of a deep well into which you must be lowered by crank and bucket. You look down into the awful unbroken gloom. You cast in a pebble and listen nervously for the distant plash. You ask the guide, Are there ever explosions here? His affirmative answer does not nerve your courage. You ask again, Do rocks ever fall here? Again the answer is in the affirmative, accompanied by the details of a recent accident. Does the rope ever break? Yes, again. Your knees smite together as you launch into the abyss. The bottom reached, you here find countless avenues with mystery on mystery. Now your breath is stifled; now your frame is chilled; now your flesh is wounded; now your sight is gone; again and again you wish yourself at the surface, yet cannot brave the perilous ascent. Who would have imagined that under the smooth grassy mound, the fragrant clover, or the teeming orchard, such wonders and such dangers lay concealed. It is even so with the heart of man. Yet must we at times take the candle of God's word, and fathom its utmost depths. Though it chill our blood, palsy our nerves and sicken our brain, yet must we go down, down into the caverns of the heart. What find we there?

Self-examination is apt to be an occasional and a very superficial work. We look into our hearts enough to see that evil is there, and in the gross we make confession of sin and purpose repentance; but we shrink from the details. To tell the number of our sins is an unwelcome task; we avert our eyes from them, we seek to cover them, we hope to outgrow them and feel assured at least that death will emancipate us from them. This is a wretched policy. "He that covereth his sins shall not prosper." We cannot get rid of sin by any such process. It cannot be concealed; it will not die out; it cannot be outlived; death will not cancel it. Where sin is harbored in the soul, suffered to live on without repentance or correction, what is there in death to destroy it? Nay, the soul that comes to death with cherished sin must needs go to judgment without repentance and without pardon. Death works no such miraculous transformation. Let me not delude myself with such a thought. "Search me, O God!"

Sometimes God searches us by an array of providences that expose us to ourselves; he holds up on every side a mirror, and whichever way we turn some phase of our own heart is reflected upon us. Sometimes he deals directly with the heart, and probes it gently to the quick; sometimes he tears it open with one gaping wound, and as it lies quivering in its black deformity we must look on while conscience, guided by his hand, lays bare this evil motive, this self-interest, this idolatrous affection, this impure imagination, this envious desire, till as in the chambers of imagery that Ezekiel saw, we discover within us every abomination. Such a searching is like the attempt to cleanse a well whose waters are turbid and foul. You draw out a few buckets, and give time for the pure water to flow in and settle; you then draw again, but to your surprise it is still turbid; you empty bucket after bucket till a deluge of slime is heaped around you; the pure water is flowing in, but so foul is the well that it is continually discolored; again and again must you empty it, before it will send up a limpid pail, and reflect the clear azure of the overhanging sky.

Blessed be God, if in the heart blackened by sin there is a well-spring of life, that after all this wearisome and loathsome emptying of self, will bubble up pure, and from its placid depths mirror forth the light of his countenance. "Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts, and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting."