How God Would Win The Heart

How God Would Win the Heart A Talk to City Men

What has God done to win our hearts? If a father has lost the love of his child, our first question would be, "Does he do anything to get it back?" Our God is always doing much to gain man's heart. He maketh His sun to rise upon the evil and upon the good, and He gives the rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons. We have much happiness, for this world is not, after all, a prison, or a penal colony. We have bright days, and elastic spirits; we sometimes rejoice with great joy, and are never quite hopeless. He who gives us our many mercies says, as He gives them, "Wilt thou not love Me, My child, because these things are given to thee? Wilt thou not see My hand and believe in My love?" If God has prospered thee in business, if God has spared thee the wife of thy youth, if He has given thee children to laugh upon thy knee, love Him for them. These are His love-tokens wooing thee to love Him. Yes, and when He changes His hand, and gives us trouble, He has still the same end and aim. We have our household idols, and He cannot bear these rivals, for He is God alone, and must have our whole heart, and therefore He removes the idols. From some He takes away wealth; for when crushed with the fear of poverty the soul has often sought its wealth in God, and God has been kinder in the taking away than in the giving. A dear child is taken home whose curly ringlets had entangled all our affections, and when it has gone among the angels we also send our hearts to Heaven. Just as a sheep that will not follow the shepherd is made to follow him when the shepherd takes its lamb and carries it in his bosom, so has it been with many a father's heart. Dear babes have been evangels—gospels in flesh and blood, little messengers of mercy to call us back to our great Father. Men are not without troubles, I am certain. There is not one among us but has had his wintry months and his long nights of darkness. To us, then, as in the visions of the night, God speaks, and He says, "Wilt thou not turn away from the broken cisterns which can hold no water, and drink of Me the everlasting fount of joy and love?" Thus with silvery words of gentleness and harsher syllables of trial He calls for our love. And He has put in all of us a conscience which works to the same end. Some have tried to drug conscience, and, alas! it goes to be drugged till it is stupefied. Conscience will become silent by degrees, but yet there is a conscience in us which cries every now and then, "This is not right; this is not right. There is no peace in this course of life. There is no future bliss to be hoped for in this way." Conscience rings the alarm-bell, and knocks at our door, like the watchman at night when the house is on fire; conscience says to us, "Things will be wrong for ever, unless there is an amendment. Awake and seek thy God!" Do you hear a still small voice within you calling you to seek your God? Hearken to it at once, for it is your life.

But, best of all, to win our love, God has unveiled Himself in the book of inspiration, and in the person of His dear Son. The face of God is so supremely beautiful that angels at the sight of it perpetually adore, and when men behold it, though it be but "in a glass darkly," love is inevitable. Dr. Watts has well sung—

"His worth if all the nations knew, Sure the whole world would love Him too."

"How did He unveil His face?" say you. It was in the person of His only begotten Son, who sooner than that we should die would die Himself, who out of pure disinterested love left the throne and the royalties of Heaven to descend to the manger and to be made like ourselves: here to live in poverty and at last to die. Lo! on Calvary, where God Himself bears the consequences of sin that we might escape from them; where Jehovah-Jesus bows His head that was girt with a crown of thorns, and gives up the ghost in order that, without any violation of justice, God might extend boundless mercy—it was there He said, "Men, see what I am! the God of love! Just, but even in My stern justice anxious not to unsheathe the sword or to inflict the penalty upon you if you will but turn unto Me, and now give Me your hearts and accept My love in Jesus Christ, trusting My Son with your souls." To-day the God of love publishes an act of amnesty and oblivion for all the past. No matter how little ye may have loved, now may ye begin to love, for He will cast your transgressions into the depths of the sea. No matter how far we have gone into the far-off country, He is willing to press us to His bosom, and to take us back again as if we had never wandered—yea, and to rejoice over us as the father in the parable rejoiced over the returning prodigal. He will say concerning our offences, if we believe in Jesus as the propitiation for sin, "I have cast all their sins behind My back. They shall not be remembered against them any more for ever." And then to show His love He puts before us a very simple way of salvation. If you go into a dark room, and set before yourself the problem, "How can I get this darkness out?" you will be in a great difficulty. You may send round to all your philosophers and thinkers this puzzle—"How can we pump the darkness out of the room?" and they will not be able to solve the question. But a little child comes in, and opens the window, and the darkness is gone. Now all the sin and enmity that is in the human heart it would be impossible for us to remove; but, lo! the gospel says, "Believe in the love of God as it is revealed in Jesus Christ, trust Him and all will be light." That opens a window, and the darkness flies at once; the soul has light and peace, and begins to love God, not because it ought, but because it cannot help loving One who has forgiven so readily and so freely, and given His own Son for our redemption—yea, given that Son to death itself, in order that all the past might once for all be obliterated. It is wonderful what effects accompany a childlike faith in Jesus; the transformations which it works are moral miracles. Many a man would like to be a child again, and stand at his mother's knee, where he learned his first prayer. He would like to be laid in the cradle again, to have the name of Jesus mingled with the hush of lullaby, and begin life anew with wiser purposes and nobler aims. But, oh! those dark years which have come in between our childhood and to-day, those years of wandering and sin! But, courage, you may begin again. Your dream may be in some sense realized. Behold, the Lord proposes to you that you should be born again—that you should be made new creatures in Jesus Christ; and whosoever will come and trust Christ—for that is faith, simply coming and trusting God in Christ Jesus,—shall find himself reconciled to God by the death of His Son. Nor fail to remember that the Lord has promised one other great gift which proves His love by a present boon: He has given us the promise of His Holy Spirit. Inasmuch as our spirit has become weak and wayward, He gives His own Divine Spirit to come and dwell within us. Young man, that Holy Spirit will dwell in you, and subdue all errant passion, and excite in you all holy desire, till you shall be unto God His living and loving servant so long as you live. Men of middle life, the Holy Ghost will deliver you from carking care and greed and worldliness, and give you sublimer objects of pursuit. Aged men, that Divine Spirit will dwell in you and ripen you for the great day of ingathering, and for the Heaven which is prepared for believers. To one and all the Holy Ghost is indispensable, but it is written, "If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children; how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?"

I hear one excuse made. Somebody says, "I know these claims, and I mean to think of them by-and-by; but I have no time just now." Well, your excuse will not avail, because God has given you time. When He made you and appointed your place He gave you time, and you have wasted it, or appropriated it to lower ends. Recollect, your time is not yours; you are only a servant, and you are responsible to your Master for every moment of it. If you happen to be a clerk, and your employer says, "That book is not posted up; that account was never made out," you do not say, "I could not spare the time." Why, your time belongs to him whose servant you are. And our time is not our time, but God's time, and the first thing a man has to do is to see that it is rightly used. Besides, this business does not take any time away from needful avocations. A man shall have all his time for other pursuits just as much, when his main pursuit, which sanctifies all, is the glory of God. Do not tell me you have no time. The most industrious business men are also very frequently Christian men, and I have seen men who have found time for the Sunday-school, time for the deaconate in our churches—ay, and time to preach, who nevertheless are among the most diligent in business. If they did neglect their business they would also be failing, I think, in the service of their God, since there is no sharp line of division to be made between business and religion: when rightly viewed our religion becomes our business, and our business is a living part of our religion. It is mischievous to make a gulf in life between one set of actions and another, for life ought to be all of a piece. "Whether ye eat or drink, do all to the glory of God." Somebody found fault with us for praying about politics. I know no politics that I shall not pray about I know nothing among men that does not come under the broad heavens of my religion; even if it be something downright wrong, still may I pray against it. Religion should sit as queen both over politics and business. "Oh, but," they say, "business is business." I know it is, but business has no business to be such business as it often is. The greatest business of a business man should be to pay his debts to his God, and seek to live to His praise. He can do that, and yet find time enough to pay his debts to man.

Another replies as if he had given a conclusive answer, "But you see my heart is wrong. I have a heart which will not love God." Ah, that is the mischief of it, but it is your fault, not your excuse. Here is a man brought before my Lord Mayor, charged with theft, and the excuse he makes is that somehow or other he never could be honest. He always found his heart so much inclined to roguery, "I was going to give you a month," says the Lord Mayor, "but I shall give you two after that, because, by your own confession, you are a rogue in grain. Your theft was not a chance action; it is evident that you are a bad fellow, and had better be kept under lock and key." And when a man says, "But my heart is so hard; my heart is set upon evil,"—well, that is a confession of a still greater sin. Having made it, do not use it as an excuse, but look upon it as a reason for humbling yourself before your God, and saying, "Create in me a clean heart, O God: renew a right spirit within me." These excuses evidently do not hold water even now. What shall we do when we have to give in our last account? I was once told that the Stock Exchange was shut, for it was settling-day. I do not understand the mysteries of that institution, but I do know that there is a settling-day coming to us all. You may feast if you will, but you will have to pay the reckoning. You may rejoice in your youth and your manhood, and spend your time and substance as you please, but He cometh on the clouds of heaven who will judge us all. I wish each man would quietly sit down and say, "I will suppose this to be the place where I shall be found at the judgment-day," then look you up, and with a little imagination you can picture the great white throne, and hear the last assize proclaimed by the archangel's trumpet. What will you say in that day to this question, "Didst thou love God with all thy heart?" If you have lived a stranger to the ever blessed God you will give no answer but your silence, and that silence will seal your doom. God grant that you may not be found a defaulter in that day, but may you now be led of the Holy Spirit to repentance of past shortcomings, and to a simple, earnest trust in Jesus, and then you will meet the last summons without a shade of fear!