April 20

Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts.—1 Peter 3:15.

CONTEMPLATIVE men have always taken notice of that grand malady of our nature—disquietude and restlessness of mind between vain hopes and fears—and have attempted in many ways the cure of it, have bestowed much pains in seeking out prescriptions and rules for the attainment of a settled tranquillity of spirit, free from the fears and troubles that perplex us; but they have proved but mountebanks, who give big words enough, and do little or nothing—all physicians of no value, or of nothing, good for nothing, as Job speaks. Some things they have said well concerning the outward causes of the inward evil, and of the inefficacy of inferior outward things to help it; but they have not descended to the bottom and inward cause of this our wretched, unquiet condition; much less have they ascended to the true and only remedy of it; this we have in the words before us.

Sanctify the Lord God. He is holy, most holy, the fountain of holiness. It is he, he alone, who powerfully sanctifies us, and then, and not till then, we sanctify him. When he hath made us holy, we know and confess him to be holy, we worship and serve our holy God, we glorify him with our whole souls and all our affections. We sanctify him by acknowledging his greatness and power, and—which is here more particularly intended—we do this by a holy fear of him and faith in him. These within us confess his greatness, and power, and goodness: as the prophet is express, Sanctify him, and let him be your fear and your dread: Isaiah 8:13; and then he adds, If thus you sanctify him, you shall further sanctify him. He shall be your sanctuary: you shall account him so, in believing in him, and shall find him so, in his protecting you; you shall repose on him for safety. And these particularly cure the heart of undue fears.

In your hearts. We are to be sanctified in our words and actions, but primarily in our hearts, as the root and principle of the rest. He sanctifies his own throughout, makes their language and their lives holy, but first, and most of all, their hearts. And he chiefly sanctifies the heart, it chiefly sanctifies him; acknowledges and worships him often when the tongue and body do not, and possibly can not well join with it: it fears, and loves, and trusts in him, which properly the outward man can not do, though it does follow and is acted on by these affections, and so shares in them according to its capacity.

Beware of an external, superficial sanctifying of God, for he accepts it not; he will interpret that a profaning of him and his name. Be not deceived, God is not mocked. He looks through all visages and appearances, in upon the heart; sees how it entertains him, and stands affected to him; whether it be possessed with reverence and love, more than either thy tongue or carriage can express. And if it be not so, all thy seeming worship is but injury, and thy speaking of him is but babbling, be thy discourse never so excellent; yea, the more thou hast seemed to sanctify God, while thy heart hath not been chief in the business, thou shalt not, by such service, have the less, but the more fear and trouble, when it comes upon thee. No estate is so far off from true consolation, and so full of horrors, as that of the rotten-hearted hypocrite: his rotten heart is sooner shaken to pieces than any other. If you would have heart-peace in God, you must have this heart-sanctifying of him. It is the heart that is vexed and troubled with fears, the disease is there; and if the prescribed remedy reach not thither, it will do no good. But let your hearts sanctify him, and then he shall fortify and establish your hearts.

"That wisdom, Lord, on us bestow, From every evil to depart,— To stop the mouth of every foe, While, upright both in life and heart, The proofs of godly fear we give, And show them how the Christians live."