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Try Your Motives

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The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Michigan · Feb 21, 1865

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 25, No. 13.

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Try Your Motives.

By E. B. Saunders

It becomes us who are looking for our Lord, to closely examine our motives, or, in other words, to look into our own hearts. "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?" The next verse tells us who can know it. "I the Lord search the heart; I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings." If the thoughts of our hearts are to receive such a close examination, we ought to look well to our motives, while space is left us for repentance.
But, how shall I test my motives? how may I know what is in my own heart? We may know what secret power prompts us to act, whether it is supreme love to God, or self-love; whether it is to honor the Lord, or ourselves, whether it is to please him, or our own carnal desires. But in our judgment we must not rely upon the evidence of feeling alone; our own actions will test what is in our hearts, better than feeling alone. The feeling of the Hindoo is just as intense in a false religion, as our own in the true.
We may learn from the text already referred to, that while the Lord searches the hearts, and tries the reins, he rewards man according to his ways, or deeds, and according to his fruits. Our actions are a better test of character even to ourselves, than our feelings. We will act out what is in our hearts. "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh." The truest test of our motives is our deeds; thus, if we love God, we will keep his commandments; not simply the Sabbath alone, but all of his commandments; in other words, if the love of God is in our hearts, it will prompt us to obey him in all things, whether it is popular or not; no matter if the world mocks or hates; no matter how humbling the work we have to do, so it but honor the Lord, 'tis all that is asked.
The Christian religion does not consist in an occasional happy flight of feeling alone, but in an everyday action on our part, which will evidence both to ourselves and others, that we love God. If our everyday course is such as to glorify God, causing happiness to mankind, and angels to rejoice over our progress, it is better evidence that our hearts are right than an occasional happy flight of feeling, or longing desire.
On the other hand, if we perform some of the duties of religion to keep up appearances, or to please our neighbors, and get their praise or good-will, our religion will be sheer hypocrisy, and our works will not differ from those of the multitude in the broad way to perdition. Such will generally shun the cross, only so far as it is popular.
Sometimes, when we urge the necessity of the Sabbath, baptism, or washing of feet, we are told, "The Lord knows my heart; he does not require us to wash feet, but wants us to be humble enough to do it." Such know not their own hearts; if they really had the humility they profess, their actions would proclaim it quite as loudly as their tongues. God will judge every one, not by a hidden feeling, but by their works, or, according to their deeds.
We may seek to get much of this world's goods, and make the cause of God our excuse or pretext for so doing, saying that we are getting to help the cause, and we may really suppose that such is the case; but if we give but a small portion of our gains, it would be well to see if there was not some other object prompting us besides the cause of God. If we are getting to help the cause, we shall begin to help as soon as we begin to get.
Words are wanting to express that supreme love to God which ought to be the main spring of all our actions, the foundation of all our motives; and it ought to be so evident that such is the foundation we build upon, that the case will not need much argument to convince ourselves of its truth.
Selfishness, love of the world, pride, covetousness, &c., are but idols to cheat us of Heaven. Let us fear, lest they find in our heart a lodgment, and finally usurp the dominion, and rule our lives.
E. B. Saunders.
Penfield, N. Y.