089. As For Secret Thoughts, I Took No Notice Of Them.

LXXXIX ‘As For Secret Thoughts, I Took No Notice Of Them.’

MR. EDISON, that eminent American man of science, was once asked whether he ever expected with all his inventiveness to be able to advertise an instrument to enable a man to see down into his neighbour’s secret thoughts. And the answer of that most original man was to this effect:

‘Even if I could construct such a terrible instrument, God forbid that I should ever publish it to the world. For,’ he said, ‘did we all see down into the secret thoughts of one another about one another, human life would no longer be bearable on the earth. There would not be two friends left to trust one another, and to love one another, in the whole world. Family life itself would instantly fly into pieces. Human society, in all its combinations, would at once become dissolved. For all men would flee to the rocks, and to the mountains, and would cry to them, “Fall on us and hide us and all our secret thoughts from before the faces of all men.”’

Now though our Almighty Maker, the Great Inventor, has not intrusted us with an instrument wherewith to see down into our neighbour’s secret thoughts about us, He has done far better than that. For He has committed to our keeping and to our constant use an infallible instrument for seeing down into our own secret thoughts about ourselves, and about our neighbours, and about everything else. And that secret window is so wonderfully constructed, and is so filled in all its frames with such wonderful glass, that every pane of it is as dark as midnight to every eye but the Eye of the Great Inventor and our own eye. And thus it is that my God and Saviour and I myself are the sole spectators of all that goes on in my mind and in my heart and down among my secret thoughts.

‘O Lord, Thou hast searched me and known me. Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising. Thou understandest my thoughts afar off.’

Well then that being so, to go back to that little company of four poor women and one poor tinker on that eventful forenoon in Bedford, they all had that same secret window in themselves, and they all had it opening down into their own secret thoughts. Only, up till now, there had been this great difference between them. Those four wise women scarce ever gave a glance into any other window but their own. Whereas that born fool of a tinker never looked into his own inward window at all. In his own ashamed and remorseful words written long afterwards he says:

‘As for my secret thoughts, I had taken no notice of them at all. Neither had I the very least understanding of Satan’s suggestions and temptations, nor how those suggestions and temptations were to be withstood and resisted.’

Now, this large congregation in Edinburgh this evening is exactly like that little company in Bedford that forenoon. There are some people here who are exactly like those four poor women. There are those here whose inward eyes are so occupied with their own secret thoughts that they have neither time nor taste to think much about anything else in this world. But on the other hand, it is much to be feared that there are not a few people among us who are exactly like that blind and besotted tinker. They think about everybody but themselves. They watch everybody but themselves. They suspect injury from everybody but themselves. Their ears are open to the faults of everybody but themselves. Their eyes wander over the whole city looking into everybody’s window but their own. John Bunyan describes them in this exact description of himself, ‘As for my secret thoughts, I took no notice of them at all.’

Now, my brethren, in the measure that we take notice of our secret thoughts some most important results will most certainly follow to us as well as to those four poor and pious women. And first, a great and a growing contrition of heart will follow, a great and a growing humiliation of heart will follow, and a great and a growing horror of heart will follow. ‘If thou hast thought evil in thine heart,’ says a wise man, ‘then lay thy hand upon thy mouth.’ And thus it was that the hands of those four wise women were never off their mouths night nor day. Now what do you say to that? Who among you will join with Agur and with those four wise women in laying your hands on your mouths? And that because of the indescribable evil of so many of your secret thoughts? Because of the indescribable vanity and folly and lawlessness and disorderliness of your secret thoughts, even when they are not so absolutely evil. Yes, Mr. Edison, stand to your resolution. Keep that terrible instrument of yours to yourself. Over here we do not need it. For our great Inventor has been beforehand with you. He has long ere now produced and perfected a secret instrument for our own exclusive use. And as often as we honestly make use of that secret instrument upon ourselves we have no wish left to see down into any man’s secret thoughts but our own. If our neighbour’s secret thoughts toward us are ever as selfish, and as mean, and as treacherous, and as envious, and as malicious, and as murderous as our secret thoughts so often are toward him, — No, sir, we do not need your fearful invention. For to us every hour of the day and every watch of the night the word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. When Thomas Fuller was under examination by Oliver Cromwell’s Puritan triers, they proposed this test to him: Whether he had ever had any experience of a work of grace in his own heart? To which question Fuller was able to answer that he could appeal to the Searcher of hearts that he had for long made conscience toward God of his very thoughts. ‘With that answer, ‘says Calamy, ‘the triers were quite satisfied,’ as, indeed, they might well be. Now can you take an appeal to the Great Trier and say as much as honest Thomas Fuller said? For if so then your conscience holds no sinecure amid the multitude of your secret thoughts within you. And a second result of your taking notice of your secret thoughts will be this: Obsta principiis. That is to say, you will learn to strangle your sins in their very birth. You will learn to detect and to detest and to denounce and to deliver over to instant death your most secret thoughts as soon as they show the least taint of original sin. Luther, like Paul his master, was a great noticer of his own sinful thoughts. Preaching one of his plain-spoken sermons he said that he was not always able to keep unclean birds from circling and screaming round his head. But, God helping him, they should not alight and roost and breed and bring forth their abominable young ones under his hat. And Thomas A’Kempis has this classical passage to the very same effect: Cogitatio, imagin-atio, delectatio, assentio. That is to say, there is first the bare thought of the sin. Then there is an imaginative anticipation of it. Then with that the sinner’s heart enters into the speculative enjoyment of it. And then immediately after that the stupid sinner has sold himself for nought. Resist therefore the very first beginnings of sin, even in thought. But comfort my people, saith your God. Well, in fulfilment of that command, one of John Bunyan’s ablest and best and most heartcomforting contemporaries has this comforting passage.

‘The bulk,’ he says, ‘of the unregenerate part in the most of Christian men, is far greater than the bulk of the truly regenerate and sanctified part. So much is this the case that if a Christian man were to go to measure himself by the bulk of sin in his secret thoughts he might well despair of himself. But he is to make a careful measurement of himself, not by the multitude, or the frequency, or the urgency, of his sinful thoughts, but, rather, by the entertainment they receive at his hands when they arise within him. If his sinful thoughts are welcomed, and are encouraged, and are hospitably entertained, he may well despair. But, on the other hand, if his sinful thoughts, as they arise, are instantly hated, and are instantly repudiated, and are instantly cast out of his mind and his heart, then that man may honestly take comfort and say with another of God’s people, Now, then, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man.’

Watch, then, what manner of thoughts arise incessantly in your most inward mind and heart. And at the same time watch with all your inward eyes what reception, and what entertainment, they receive at the hands of your inward man. And then God’s people are to be comforted in this way also. Let them watch well the good thoughts that arise in their hearts from time to time. As also watch well the reception and the welcome and the kind of entertainment those good thoughts get when they so arise. Such good thoughts as these: their kind thoughts towards other people; their tenderhearted and charitable thoughts towards other people; their sympathising and friendly thoughts towards other people; their forgiving and their forgetting thoughts towards their enemies; their meek and lowly-minded thoughts about themselves, and their generous and magnanimous thoughts about their neighbours, and especially about their rivals, and those in the same line of life with themselves. But above all let them watch and acknowledge and cherish all their secret and spontaneous and loving and adoring thoughts about Jesus Christ. For, far above all else, it is as a man thinks about Jesus Christ in his secret thoughts so is that man in the sight of God. The time was when John Bunyan never thought whether there was a Jesus Christ or no. But that dreadful time is for ever past with many of you. Nowadays some days you scarcely think about anything else; at least not with your whole mind and heart. For instance is not this the simple truth? You never waken in the morning nowadays that your first thought is not of Jesus Christ. ‘When I awake,’ you say, ‘I am still with Thee.’

‘Dark and cheerless is the morn,’ — you sing —

‘Unaccompanied by Thee;

Joyless is the day’s return Till Thy mercy’s beams I see.’ And you put on Christ all the time you are putting on your morning clothes. Before you venture to open your letters or your newspapers you first fill your hearts with strengthening and with supporting and with calming thoughts of Jesus Christ. And so on all the day, till those who sit beside you all the day and those who lie beside you all the night would be amazed to be told who they have had all the time in the same house with them. And then before closing there is this: It was not of their neighbour’s things nor was it of their own things that those three or four poor women talked that day as they sat in the sun; it was all the time of ‘the things of God.’ That is to say, their own miserable state by nature, the suggestions and the temptations of Satan, the wretchedness of their own hearts, the filthiness and the raggedness of their own righteousness, these things and such things as these were among the things of God of which they talked that day. All these things; and then the new birth, and God’s visitation of their souls with His love in the Lord Jesus, with all His comforts and all His promises in Christ. All these things were among the things of God talked about on that doorstep in Bedford that day. Take a great comfort out of that also, all you sin-harassed and sick-hearted people of God. For your God is such a God that all your secret sinfulness, and all your untold pain and shame on account of your secret sinfulness, all that is actually counted up among the things of God. It is something not unlike this. All the diseases and all the pains and all the pollutions of his patient are the things of his physician. All the guilt and all the condemnation of the accused man are the things of his advocate. All the debts and all the imprisonments of his client are the things of his surety. And much more all the sin and all the misery of the people of God are the things of their God and of His Christ. In the covenant of grace all these things are now much more God’s things than they are your things. Take this home with you then as your crowning comfort this evening of comfort; this crowning comfort, that it was nothing less than the very things of God of which those four wise and well-taught women spake when they went so far below and then so far above the tinker’s reach as yet.

‘Thus, therefore, when I had heard and considered what they said, I left them, and went about my employment again. But their talk and discourse went with me. Also my heart would tarry with them; for I was greatly affected with their words; both because, by these words of theirs, I was convinced that I wanted the true tokens of a truly godly man; and, also, because by their words I was convinced of the happy and blessed condition of him that was such an one as they were, who thus sat in the sun and talked together of the things of God.’

‘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.’