Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Proverbs 4:23
Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it [are] the issues of life.
23. with all diligence ] Lit. above all keepings, that is bestowed on aught beside. , LXX. Omni custodia, Vulg. Others, with R.V. marg., above all that thou guardest; “pr omnibus rebus custodiendis,” Maurer.
“It is very strange that Judaism should ever have sunk into a formal religion of outward observance, when its own wisdom was so explicit on this point ‘Keep them in the midst of thy heart Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.’ The Greek version, which was very generally used in our Lord’s time, had a beautiful variation of this last clause. [It is really of Pro 4:21, where by a slight change in the Heb. punctuation they read ‘fountains’ for ‘eyes’]: ‘In order that thy fountains may not fail thee, guard them in the heart’ [ , , Pro 4:21, LXX.]. It was after all but a new emphasis on the old teaching of the Book of Proverbs, when Jesus taught the necessity of heart purity, and when He shewed that out of the heart came forth evil thoughts and all the things which defile a man (Mat 15:19).” Horton.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Better, as in the margin, i. e., with more vigilance than men use over anything else. The words that follow carry on the same similitude. The fountains and wells of the East were watched over with special care. The heart is such a fountain, out of it flow the issues of life. Shall men let those streams be tainted at the fountain-head?
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Pro 4:23
Keep thy heart with all diligence.
Heart-keeping
The great defect in our system of education is that it turns a man away from himself. Many a schoolboy can describe the continents and islands of the earth, trace out the intricacies of the planetary system, naming suns and moons and stars, who would stand abashed should you ask him the number of bones in the human body, or to trace out the marvellous nervous system that God has given him. Now, Christianity turns mans attention to himself. No other teacher ever equalled Christ in this respect.
I. The heart. If we ask why the heart is chosen rather than the understanding, the judgment, or memory, we find our answer in the fact that the understanding may be always subject to circumstances, or may be enfeebled by disease; the judgment may be in error, and the memory may fail. There are three reasons why the heart is chosen.
1. A pathological; it is the fountain of life, through which the blood passes, to be distributed to every part of the system. Stop the heart, and death follows.
2. The heart is the region of sensibility. When the great passions of hope and fear, of love and hate, of joy and sorrow, take hold of a man, he realises the sensation in the region of the heart.
3. The intellect is controlled by the heart more than the heart by the intellect. Men do not follow their thinkings, but their feelings, yet there are teachers proclaiming a religion of pure intellect, excluding the passions or feelings of the soul. Christianity appeals to the emotions.
II. The keeping. We are not to destroy our appetites and passions, but to keep them in subordination: keeping the heart is not murdering it. Vigilance is the price of everything good and great in earth or heaven, Nothing but unceasing watchfulness can keep the heart in harmony with Gods heart. (Christian Age.)
Supremely good advice
I. Some of those weighty considerations upon which the advice is founded.
1. The heart is the source of all human conduct. The greatest and basest actions of men did once exist as a simple and insignificant thought. The sallyings forth of purpose might easily have been checked at the gate of the citadel, whereas, when once beyond control, the consequences might prove such as we never ventured to anticipate.
2. Every man is that really which he is in his heart. Conduct is not always a trustworthy basis of estimate. The heart imparts a tinge and character to those streams which issue from it.
3. Scripture represents the heart of man as not in a trustworthy condition, and therefore the more to be diligently kept and guarded.
4. The fact that out of the heart come the issues of life adds to the importance of this counsel. What is meant is the issues of our future never-ending existence.
II. Point out in what way this duty may be best performed.
1. Watch narrowly the course and current of our thoughts and affections.
2. Check them at once, when we discover them to have taken a wrong course.
3. Exercise the mind as much as possible with holy and heavenly themes.
4. Earnestly call down the aid and blessing of the Holy Spirit. (Essex Congregational Remembrancer.)
The government of the thoughts
Keep a strict guard over the workings of your mind, your thoughts, and inclinations; for your life and conversation will be conformable to the main current of your thoughts and desires. The soul is ever busy and at work. There is no pause, no suspension of thought, at least while we are awake. Think we must, but what to think is the question.
I. How far may we have a command over our thoughts?
1. It is impossible to hinder irregular, fantastic, evil thoughts from rising up in our minds. But we may choose whether we will cultivate a familiarity with them.
2. It is not in our power to prevent distractions even in our religious addresses to God. While the soul is immersed in matter, it will sometimes fly off in airy wanderings, or flag into a supine heaviness. This is our frailty or misfortune, but will not be imputed to us as a sin, provided we strive against it.
3. Our thoughts are not absolutely free, just after we have received some considerable loss or disaster. But we must not give up our mind as a prey to melancholy, and wilfully indulge our sorrows.
4. Angry thoughts have to be taken into consideration; the passion of anger; the first starts or sallies of this passion; the deliberate and settled consent of the will to it. We are invested with the power to withhold the determinate consent of the will to these primary motions. We may counterbalance one passion by another, and may turn their artillery upon themselves. We may call in our fear to subdue our anger. So far as our thoughts are involuntary, so far they are not sinful. The mind is passive in receiving its notices of things, whether pure or impure; but it is active in its determination, whether to harbour or discard them. So far as it is active it is accountable. It is active when we dwell upon impure thoughts with complacency. We can suspend our judgment. Our mature examination is the consulting of the guide; the determination of the will thereupon is the following of that guide. We may habituate ourselves to the contemplation of the greatest good, and then lesser delights will shine with a diminished lustre.
II. Some rules for the conduct of our thoughts.
1. We must not go too much into light amusements. The mind fixed on trifles is disabled and indisposed for greater and more important business.
2. We must avoid the reading of bad books.
3. Call in other ideas to your aid as soon as ever any passion begins to ferment. When we observe in ourselves the least approaches towards anger, lust, envy, and discontent, we should seek Gods assistance, and pray for the succours of His Holy Spirit.
4. We must often descend into ourselves.
5. Much may be done by the pursuit of knowledge. The more variety of knowledge the mind is enriched with, the more channels there will be to divert our minds into. (J. Seed, M.A.)
The heart, and the issues of life
In its elements and outward scenery nature is the same to all. Light and night, sun and stars, air and earth and landscapes, offer a common enclosure and background to our existence. But the various impulses and aptitudes for work with which we are born–which press from the very core of our being–diversify the world as widely as if we were distributed upon different globes. To one set of men it is a place to think and learn and grow wise in. Another finds the world a place to work in. Others find it a garden of beauty in which the stars are more valuable as blossoms of poetic light than for their astronomic truth, and the air richer for its hues than for its uses, and the mountains grander for their millinery of mist and shadow and their draperies of verdure and snow than for their service to the climates and housekeeping of nations. Still others see the world as a place to trade in and grow rich–a gorge between gold mountains, where they must quarry. Or it is a pleasure-ground for giddy or elegant enjoyment. It is plain, therefore, that our natural bent in the line of work does a great deal to impress a character upon the universe. Even when no moral quality is involved, we see how life gets coined at our mint, so that the world, Gods world, somehow wears the stamp of the die cut into our heart. And temperament, natural temperament, has an effect on life that must be considered in this connection. If a man has a music-box in his heart, the pulse of the sun will seem to beat with it, and the trees to throb and bud with its melody. If his bosom is strung as an AEolian harp, nature will be full of weird and sad cadences. You know how experience, also, interprets the same principle, even in cases where moral considerations are not prominent. You know how a piece of good-fortune brightens the air, how prosperous hours make the globe buoyant, how some impending evil puts the edge of a spiritual eclipse upon the sun as solemnly as the shadow of the moon settles on its burning disc, how suddenly ill-fortune in business will seem to make the very springs of beauty bankrupt, how the sickness of a dear friend turns nature pallid, how the death of wife, husband, or child will convert all the trees to cypress, and set the music of nature in a minor key, as s dirge or requiem. All these facts, which belong rather to the margin of our subject, enforce the duty of keeping the heart. For though aptitudes, temperaments, and moods have much to do with the tone and quality of our life, states have more. A dark moral state stretches a permanent veil of cloud over the heart, that thins and chills all the light, while a mood or a sorrow may sail only like the swift blackness of a shower through our air. And we can do a great deal to control the moral states of the heart; we are responsible for them. Moral evils, such as envy, avarice, selfishness, license, only vivify with various colouring the one fundamental evil, sin–distance from sympathy with God, alienation from the heavenly Father, indifference or disloyalty to His will and love. This is our central foe. This is what corrupts the issues of life. This is the serpent at the fountain. Back of all sins is sin. The one comprehensive purpose of life is to bring Infinite grace to bear on that, and drive it from the inmost artery of the soul. The first thing to do, in order that such life may issue from your heart, is to get your heart broken. Not because it is totally corrupt, but because it is not centrally dedicated–because God is not invited and admitted to the inner shrine, to rule thence with His wisdom and purity, so that you shall consciously live for Him. This world, with its hard conditions and mysteries, is built for an upper and nether millstone to grind pride out of human hearts, to crush their natural state, so that, in penitence and humility, God may come into the spirit, and the world seem remade because the soul is regenerate in consecration and the beginning of a filial life. You are to keep your heart with all diligence, by desiring and praying for this spirit of sympathy with God and allegiance to Him. And you are also to keep it by living in fellowship with great truths and sentiments. If you have had any seasons or season when you have seen the value and blessedness of a religious conception of the universe and of religious principle, honour that; honour your souls own witness to sacred realities, by trying to keep in the society of those noble truths and ideas. (T. Starr King.)
Keeping the heart with diligence
I. Some of our hearts are not worth keeping. Addressing some unconverted men, I say, The sooner you get a new heart the better. God is very plain in telling us no good can come out of these corrupt, degenerate hearts that we all have by nature.
II. Inasmuch as out of the heart are the issues of life, it is important to keep the reservoir full. It is bad enough to have an empty head, but an empty heart is worse still. For, other things being equal, a mans force in the world is just in proportion to the fulness of his heart. Heart is power. We all want more heart in our Masters service.
III. Strive with all diligence to keep the heart pure. A full reservoir is not enough–the water must be clean. A full reservoir means spreading the seeds of pestilence and death. If the heart be not pure, the thoughts will not be pure, nor the conversation, nor the life. A scrupulous conscience and thorough transparency of character are all-important.
IV. Keep your heart tranquil. Seek to have a soul calm and peaceful, and at rest. The state of the heart has far more to do with ones comfort, and prosperity, and success, than most people imagine. From your heart, as from a clear mountain spring, there shall issue influences of health and benediction, to gladden your own lives and to bless all around you. (J. Thain Davidson, D.D.)
Keeping the heart
Either keep thy heart with all sorts and degrees of care and diligence, or keep thy heart as thy most precious thing.
1. Mark or attend unto, inquire into and study the heart.
2. The governance and good management of our hearts, keeping all the motions thereof in due order, within fit compass, applying them to good, and restraining them from bad things.
3. Or preserving, guarding, securing from mischief or damage. It is a peculiar excellency of human nature that man can reflect on all that is done within him, can discern the tendencies of his soul, is acquainted with his own purposes. It is, therefore, his work to regulate as well the internal workings of his soul as his external actions, to settle his thoughts on due objects, to bend his inclinations into a right frame, to constrain his affections within due bounds, to ground his purposes on honest reasons, and direct them unto lawful matters. It is our duty to be looking inward on ourselves, observing what thoughts spring up within us; what imaginations find most welcome harbour in our breasts, what prejudices possess our minds, etc. Thus we may arrive at a competent knowledge of ourselves. This preserves from self-conceit; disposes to equanimity; qualifies our opinion of others; makes wise and prudent; helps to reforming our lives and regulating our devotions, and enables us properly to govern our hearts. (I. Barrow, D. D.)
The keeping of the heart a practicable and important duty
I. What is it to keep the heart? It evidently needs to be kept. It is prone to go astray.
1. The heart is to be kept from all improper objects; every object which has no proper connection with present duty.
2. The heart is to be guarded against all improper affections. When placed upon proper objects, the heart may have very improper affections towards them.
II. Show how the heart is kept.
1. Men should always attend to those subjects only with which they are properly concerned.
2. Men must pursue the same method to keep their hearts from improper affections, as from improper objects. They must, therefore, exercise good affections. Love will exclude hatred; faith will exclude unbelief; repentance will exclude impenitence; submission will exclude opposition; humility will exclude pride. Any gracious exercise will exclude any sinful one: only by the exercise of holiness can the heart be kept from sin.
III. The importance of mens keeping their hearts with the greatest care and constancy.
1. While they neglect to keep their hearts, all their moral exercises will be sinful. Those who neglect to keep their hearts live in the continual exercise of selfish and sinful affections.
2. While men neglect to keep their hearts, all their thoughts will be sinful. Though bare thoughts have no moral good or evil in themselves considered, yet in connection with the heart they all acquire a good or bad moral quality. No thought is indifferent after the heart has been exercised about it.
3. While men neglect to keep their hearts, all their words will be sinful. Men never speak but of choice, so that their hearts are concerned in all their vain or serious conversation.
4. While men neglect to keep their hearts, all their intentions, purposes, or designs will be evil. Every evil design is first formed in the heart of the projector.
5. Let men pursue what employment they will, whether public or private, high or low, civil or religious, their daily business will become their daily sin, unless they keep their hearts with all diligence.
6. Men must keep their hearts lest they abuse all the blessings of providence with which they are favoured, and all the troubles and afflictions which they are called to suffer.
Improvement–
1. Men are never under a natural necessity of sinning.
2. Since men can guard their hearts against evil, they can guard them also against good.
3. Those who neglect the duty enjoined in the text are in imminent danger.
4. None can be sincere in religion who entirely neglect to keep their hearts.
5. The Christian warfare consists in watching, guarding, and keeping the heart.
6. It is both important and helpful diligently to attend the means of grace. (N. Emmons, D. D.)
On keeping the heart
I. The duty enjoined. We must keep the whole heart in–
1. A state of holy watchfulness.
2. A state of continued devotion.
3. A state of joy and confidence.
4. A state of lively activity.
5. A state of preparedness for death and uncertainty.
II. The mode of performing it specified.
1. Under all circumstances.
2. In all places.
3. At all times.
4. With all intensity of solicitude.
III. The motive designed.
1. Thoughts are formed there.
2. Purposes are planned there.
3. Words originate there.
4. Actions proceed from thence.
Learn–
1. The means of spiritual safety: preservation of the heart.
2. The importance of this exercise. All depends upon it.
3. The necessity of cleaving to God with purpose of heart.
4. Urge sinners without delay to believe the gospel and give their hearts to the Lord. (J. Burns, D. D.)
On the government of the heart
Men are apt to consider the regulation of external conduct as the chief object of religion. If they can act their part with decency, and maintain a fair character, they conceive their duty to be fulfilled. The wise man advises us to attend to our thoughts and desires. The issues of life are justly said to be out of the heart, because the state of the heart is what determines our moral character, and what forms our chief happiness or misery.
I. The state of the heart determines our moral character. The tenor of our actions will always correspond to the dispositions that prevail within. On whatever side the weight of inclination hangs, it will draw the practice after it. Independent of all action, it is, in truth, the state of the heart itself which forms our character in the sight of God. In the eye of the Supreme Being, dispositions hold the place of actions; and it is not so much what we perform as the motive which moves us to performance that constitutes us good or evil in His sight. The rectification of our principles of action is the primary object of religious discipline. The regeneration of the heart is everywhere represented in the gospel as the most essential requisite in the character of a Christian.
II. The state of the heart forms our principal happiness or misery. In order to acquire a capacity of happiness, it must be our first study to rectify inward disorders. Whatever discipline tends to accomplish this purpose is of greater importance to man than the acquisition of the advantages of fortune. Think what your heart now is, and what must be the consequence of remitting your vigilance in watching over it. The human temper is to be considered as a system, the parts of which have a mutual dependence on each other. Introduce disorder into any one part, and you derange the whole.
III. In what does the government consist?
1. The thoughts are the prime movers of the whole human conduct. Many regard thought as exempted from all control. To enjoy unrestrained the full range of imagination appears to them the native right and privilege of man. To the Supreme Being thoughts bear the character of good or evil as much as actions. The moral regulation of our thoughts is the particular test of our reverence for God. Thought gives the first impulse to every principle of action. Actions are, in truth, no other than thoughts ripened into consistency and substance. But how far are thoughts subject to the command of our will? They are not always the offspring of choice. Vain and fantastic imaginations sometimes break in upon the most settled attention, and disturb even the devout exercises of pious minds. Instances of this sort must be placed to the account of human frailty. Allowing for this, there is still much scope for the government of our thoughts. As–
(1) When the introduction of any train of thought depends upon ourselves, and is our voluntary act.
(2) When thoughts are indulged with deliberation and complacency. Study to acquire the habit of attention to thought: acquire the power of fixing your minds, and of restraining their irregular motions. Guard against idleness, which is the great fomenter of all corruptions in the human heart; it is the parent of loose imaginations and inordinate desires. Provide honourable employment for the native activity of your minds. When criminal thoughts arise, attend to all the proper methods of speedily suppressing them. Impress your minds with an habitual sense of the presence of the Almighty.
2. Passions are strong emotions, occasioned by the view of apprehending good or evil. They are original parts of the constitution of our nature; and therefore to extirpate them is a mistaken aim. Religion requires us to moderate and rule them. Passions, when properly directed, may be subservient to very useful ends. They are the active forces of the soul. It is the present infelicity of human nature that the strong emotions of the mind are become too powerful for the principle that ought to rule them. Two principles may be assumed.
(1) That through the present weakness of our understanding, our passions are often directed towards improper objects.
(2) That even when their direction is just, and their objects are innocent, they perpetually tend to run into excess; they always hurry us towards their gratification with a blind and dangerous impetuosity. To govern our passions, we must ascertain the proper objects of their pursuit, and restrain them in that pursuit, when they would carry us beyond the bounds of reason. To obtain command of passion is one of the highest attainments of the rational nature.
To obtain it we must–
1. Study to acquire just views of the comparative importance of those objects that are most ready to attract desire.
2. Gain the power of self-denial; which consists in our being ready, on proper occasions, to abstain from pleasure, or to submit to sacrificing, for the sake of duty or conscience, or from a view to some higher or more extensive good.
3. Impress your minds with this persuasion, that nothing is what it appears to be, when you are under the power of passion.
4. Oppose early the beginnings of passion. Avoid particularly all such objects as are apt to excite passions which you know to predominate within you.
5. The excess of every passion will be moderated by frequent meditation on the vanity of the world, the short continuance of life, the approach of death, judgment, and eternity.
6. To our own endeavours for regulating our passions, let us join earnest prayer to God. Lastly, the government of the temper is included in keeping the heart. Temper is the disposition which remains after the emotions are past, and which forms the habitual prosperity of the soul. The proper regulation of temper affects the character of man in every relation which he bears.
(1) With respect to God, the good man ought to cultivate a devout temper.
(2) Point out the proper state of our temper with respect to one another. A peaceable, candid, kind, generous, sympathising temper.
(3) The proper state of temper as it respects the individual himself. The basis of all good dispositions is humility. Hence will naturally arise a contented temper; and from this will spring a cheerful one. To the establishment of this happy temper, the due regulation of the thoughts and government of the temper naturally conduce, and in this they ought to issue. (Hugh Blair, D.D.)
The government of the passions
I. When do our passions become culpable? A sect of ancient philosophers condemned all emotion, held every passion to be culpable, because inconsistent with that serenity of temper, that equal tranquillity of mind, which they thought should ever be preserved. We cannot, however, lay aside our innate dispositions, and with equal indifference meet health or sickness, pleasure or pain. The Stoical doctrine is better calculated for heaven than earth. The passions and affections were all originally designed to have either our own personal good or the good of others for their object, though they are too generally misapplied by our corruption, and degenerate into vices. Our rational and moral powers ought always to have dominion over the inferior principles of our nature. We all stand accountable for the use of our reason, and where reason points out to us good and evil, if we choose the latter, we doubtless appear guilty in the eye of our heavenly Judge. If we cannot wholly extirpate or subdue our passions, yet to subjugate them to government is not only the duty, but the proper and most important employment, of a rational being.
II. Our happiness here, as well as hereafter, is determined by the conduct of our passions. When they are duly regulated, and act under the guidance and direction of reason, we may promise ourselves all the happiness that our station, or other circumstances of life, will admit. They who are at no pains to discipline and govern their passions, but, disregarding right and wrong, indiscriminately follow whithersoever inclination points the way, may find some pleasure in such pursuits, but none that can compensate for the loss of those interior satisfactions, as well as exterior advantages, that naturally result from a wise and virtuous conduct.
III. The means by which this self-government may be attained. Consideration, or a right use of reason, is our only remedy. We must often retire into ourselves, and in some calm hour of reflection review the state of the heart. Passions, however strong and vigorous by nature, may be checked in their growth by timely care and prudent opposition. Let us accustom ourselves to deliberate before we act. We should observe, with a watchful eye, all our passions, desires, and affections; keep a constant guard on every avenue to the heart, and be careful to oppose the admittance of any wrong inclination. In order to succeed in this arduous and important work, let us, to our own efforts, add our supplications to Him who alone can order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men. (G. Carr, B.A.)
Governing our own thoughts
I. What power a man hath over his own thoughts! Some men, by the very principles of their make and constitution, are much better able to govern their thoughts than others. Some that are naturally weaker, have, by long use and many trials, obtained a greater power over their thoughts than others. All have a greater power over the motions of their minds at some times than at others.
1. The first motions of our minds are very little, if at all, in our power. We cannot help suggestions coming to us.
2. When a mans mind is vigorously affected and possessed, either with the outward objects of sense, or with inward passions of any kind, in that case he hath little or no command of his thoughts.
3. A mans thoughts are sometimes in a manner forced upon him, from the present temper and indisposition of his body.
4. We have liberty of thinking, and may choose our own thoughts. It is in our power to determine what suggestions we will fix our minds upon.
5. It is always in our power to assent to our thoughts, or to deny our consent to them. Here the morality of our thoughts begins. No man is drawn to commit sin by any state or condition that God hath put him into, nor by any temptation, either outward or inward, that is presented to him. Our sin begins when we yield to the temptation. The sin becomes great as it grows into action.
II. The art of governing our thoughts.
1. We must rightly pitch our main designs, and choose that for the great business of our lives that really ought to be so.
2. We must avoid two things, viz., idleness and loose company.
3. We must be as attentive as possible to the first motions of our minds; so that when we find them tending towards something that is forbidden, we may stop them at once.
4. There are some particular exercises which would prove helpful. Converse with discreet and pious persons; reading good books, and especially the Bible; taking times for meditation; and fervent and constant prayer to God.
5. With our diligence we must join discretion. We must have a care not to intend our thoughts immoderately, and more than our tempers will bear, even to the best things. We must so keep our hearts as at the same time to keep our health and the vigour of our minds. As long as we consist of bodies and souls, we cannot always be thinking of serious things. (Archbp. John Sharp.)
The keeping of the heart
I. The suggestive saying, Out of (the heart) are the issues of life.
1. All our words and actions originate there. All these evil things come from within, and they defile the man.
2. The moral quality of every word and action depends on its inner motive.
3. Thoughts and feelings themselves, apart from actions, are all either good or evil. The thought of foolishness is sin.
4. Within the heart is formed that character which determines most of the actions of the man. We give the name character to that complex collection of tendencies and habits which grows up within us all as the sum and result of individual acts continually repeated. The germs of the ultimate character can often be detected in the child.
5. The issues of life, in outward condition, depend most of all on the heart within us.
6. The everlasting issues of life come out of the heart.
II. Take up the admonition, Keep thy heart with all diligence. The margin reads, Keep thy heart above all keeping. The common estimate of the relative value of the outside and the inside is terribly astray. It creeps into our very religion.
1. We can avoid the evil.
2. We can fill up the heart with good. (F. H. Marling.)
On keeping the heart
I. The duty here enjoined. The heart is the seat of the thoughts, the will, and the affections. The avenues which lead to this habitation are the senses, through which a great variety of objects are ever soliciting admission. By the original frame of our nature, there was also another way of admission into the heart, viz., faith. Over these was placed the judgment, as a faithful sentinel, to direct the will Scarcely, however, had this happy constitution of our nature existed when, the judgment being perverted, the will was induced to make a wrong choice. Upon this great revolution in our nature, sensible objects began to occupy our chief attention. They tend to produce the utmost irregularity in the affections, and to banish God, and heaven, and eternity, from the mind. To keep the heart while in this state, would only be to shut up the enemy within the wails. The enemy must be ejected. This God promises to do. To keep the heart with all diligence is to set a constant guard on every avenue which leads to it. It is to exercise the strictest vigilance over our thoughts, and to subject them to the most rigid scrutiny, for the purpose of suppressing, upon its first appearance, what is base, impious, or unjust, and of giving every possible encouragement to the slightest emotions of piety and benevolence. So nice and delicate are the hearts springs of action, so susceptible is it of impressions from external objects, and so greatly is it in danger of being disordered by means of these, that we can never be sufficiently apprised of the manner in which it may be kept with safety.
II. The way in which this duty may be best discharged.
1. By summoning up to the view just apprehensions of God, of His greatness, and glory, and holiness, and justice, and authority, and mercy, and love, as exhibited in the plan of redemption, and endeavouring to have these apprehensions habitually impressed upon the mind.
2. We should beware, after having been engaged in any of the solemnities of religion, of exposing them suddenly to the renewed incursion of loose and worldly thoughts, by foolish talking or mixing with vain and giddy associates.
3. We must beware of evil company. And there are secret, as well as open, enemies of goodness.
4. We must carefully abstain from idleness, and rightly occupy every portion of our time.
III. Recommend the duty to serious attention. You live in a world where ten thousand objects are ever ready to pollute the heart, and to seduce it from God. God requireth the heart of man–the whole heart, and nothing but the heart. A heart that is not kept with diligence is not reconciled to God; is not impressed with the love of Jesus; is not sanctified by the Spirit, and is not fit for heaven. (James Somerville, D. D.)
The duty and blessedness of keeping the heart
I. Occasions when it is of the utmost moment to attend to this duty.
1. When you draw near to God in the solemn exercise of religious duty. You have then to do with a God who searches the heart. Be upon your guard against those vain excursions of the soul that eat out all the life and spirit of devotion.
2. When you are surrounded with an abundance of worldly enjoyments. There is something in prosperity that tends to intoxicate the mind.
3. When Gods afflicting hand is upon you. In the day of adversity consider; for consideration and a guard upon the heart are needful.
4. When under provocations from your fellow-creatures. These are very trying periods, and the spirit that is in us often lusteth to resentment and retaliation. Do not be too sensitive of injuries.
5. When your hands are full of worldly business. We walk in the midst of snares. It is no easy thing to keep our souls disengaged, and to live above, while we ere in, the world. Love nothing with a very strong affection that is not immortal as thyself, and immutable as thy God.
6. When you are engaged in diversions and recreations. Very many are in excess given to pleasure, make it the main business of their existence. We ought not to give too much time to recreations, nor seek them for themselves.
7. When you find any tumultuous passions are excited within you. Think what inflammable matter you carry in your bosoms, and be watchful against the approach of whatever may kindle it into a flame.
8. Keep thy heart with all diligence in solitude and retirement. Solitude is not necessarily a blessing. Then only it is a blessing when it is employed piously, with holy feelings and a holy object in view. Whenever you are alone, be present with your God.
II. Arguments urging attention to this duty. This duty is important, because–
1. It is the heart that falls directly under the cognizance of God. Be a mans actions ever so regular, if his heart be not right with God, he will, when weighed in the balances, be found wanting.
2. Because of the influence which the state of the heart has upon the conduct. He who is concerned about making the tree good will surely make the fruit good also.
3. Because keeping the heart is essential to our peace. Is there nothing peaceful, pleasant, comforting, in being masters over our own spirits, able to suppress any rising passion, to restrain any rebellious lust that threatens the peace of Gods kingdom within–of that inner house of man, himself? What a poor, contemptible, miserable creature is he who has no rule over his spirit, in respect of present things as well as future!
III. Directions for keeping the heart.
1. If you desire to keep your heart, endeavour by all means to know it. Endeavour to know human nature in general, its weakness and its corruption. Above all, endeavour to know your own heart, your particular weakness: knowing it, watch that point carefully.
2. If you desire to keep your heart, solemnly feel as in the Divine presence. Seriously consider that God searches the hearts, and that He is with you wherever you are, and whatever you do.
3. If you would keep your hearts, be often calling them to account. I hope that none of you live without self-examination.
4. See to it that your mind be well furnished. Lay in a stock of useful knowledge from the Word of God, from observations of providence, from converse with your fellow-creatures.
5. If you would keep your heart, be often looking up to Him who made it. To find our hearts taken off from dependence on ourselves, and fixed upon God, is a token for good in every part of our Christian course. (T. Munns, M. A.)
The custody of the heart
The heart, in Scripture, implies the whole spiritual end aspiring part in man. Keeping the heart is controlling the whole spiritual condition of our nature.
I. The degree of responsibility implied in the command to keep the heart. We are not mere machines, we are free, immortal, intelligent beings, fallen indeed from our first estate, crippled in body and soul, yet raised again in Christ. We are free to choose good or ill, and therefore responsible for the choice. To keep the heart is to guard it, to watch it, to subdue it. It is attempting, and by Gods grace achieving, the work of self-conquest. The keeping must be habitual. Unless we have been previously vigilant, the tempter, when he comes, will be sure to conquer. One of the miseries of old transgressions is, that it mars the keeping of the heart. We are apt to fall back into a sin which we have committed before. Old sins tend to soften the soul–to emasculate its energies, to destroy those habits of carefulness which are so important in resisting temptation. It is the inward reciprocation with the outward temptation which forms the tempters vantage-ground. Each sin diminishes by so much our chance of repentance, inasmuch as a fresh lesion and hurt has been inflicted on the soul.
II. We must chiefly regard our will and our affections, because these sway and control the rest of the inner man. By the will we mean that power of the soul which determines and chooses; by the affection, that attribute which loves and adheres. The one is the strength of the character, the other is its sweetness and beauty. And these are specially concerned in the service of God, for if man fulfils his end, God is the choice of his will and the object of his affection. God is the choice of mans will. The will of man must submit to Gods will, for Gods wisdom and goodness are necessities of his being. By the original constitution of mans nature, God was the object of his affection. Then he should keep his affections for God above all keeping.
III. All the other powers of the soul must also be kept; for influences deteriorating or elevating are being hourly exercised upon them. The memory may be filled with vile images and unholy recollections, or it may be stored with pious thoughts and the sweet remembrance of past mercies. The imagination may be crowded with foul pictures, worldly fancies, and daring speculations, or it may be consecrated by visions of the beauty of God and the splendours of the New Jerusalem. The intellect may revel in the deceitful charms of scepticism and inquiry, or it may bow down in adoration before the tremendous supernatural truths of the Christian Church. The judgment may take its portion in this life and wed itself to earthly success, or it may choose the better part–sit at Jesus feet and listen to His words. So the whole heart may be perverted or directed; and hence the urgent necessity of keeping it with diligence. (Bp. A. P. Forbes.)
The stronghold of the Christian sentinel
I. The citadel which the Christian has to guard. The heart of man is a wondrous mystery, a strange world in itself; its feelings, affections, desires, emotions, cravings, reasonings, wonderings–who shall tell them? The heart given the Christian soldier in charge is a heart that is renewed and yet unrenewed, that is holy and yet unholy, that is spirit and yet flesh. Such is the heart of every man that is born of the Spirit. The germ is there, but all that is good of that germ has yet to be unfolded and perfected. So long as the heart is kept a man is comparatively safe, for it is the key of the position.
II. The importance of maintaining this citadel. Out of it are the issues of life in mans whole course and conduct, and out of it is the final result of a mans career and course of life. All the streams of life proceed from within. A mans life is regulated by his heart. If the heart be kept the man is kept, and it matters little what else a man keeps; for, after all, a man is what he is in principles, in desires, in emotions, and affections. Every Christian soldier must be aware that it is only by constant vigilance that he can maintain the citadel and prevent its being betrayed. There are two perils–betrayal within and surprise from without. There are many who, instead of keeping their heart, leave its keeping to Satan. And many fall because they allow their hearts to get out of their control. (H. Stowell, M. A.)
Watch the heart
If you would keep the eye from injury, much more keep the heart, so susceptible as it is of complete disorganisation from the mere dust of an evil thought. If there is anything in the world which should be the object of unsleeping, anxious guardianship, it is the heart. Then keep it above all keeping. It is evident, even to reason, that without this precaution of watchfulness over the heart every other counsel for resisting temptation must be of no avail. The heart is the key of the entire spiritual position. But the dangers of the heart are not merely external. There are many traitors in the camp. The exports and imports of the heart are exceedingly numerous. What a fertility of thought, sentiment, impression, feeling is there in the heart of a single man! There are a thousand doors of access to the heart. Passengers are busily passing in and thronging out at every door. Active steps must be taken to ensure against mischief-makers. Solitude is scarcely less dangerous in our spiritual welfare than company, because temptations of self and the devil meet us then. The remedy, in company or in solitude, is to guard, as far as in us lies, the first springs of thought and will. By every spiritual man an attempt is made to bring the region of the heart–the motives, desires, affections–under the sceptre of Christ. It will be found that all the more grievous falls of the tempted soul come from this–that the keeping of the heart has been neglected, that the evil has not been nipped in the bud. There is no safety for us except in making our stand at the avenues of the will and rejecting at once every questionable impulse. This cannot be done without watchfulness and self-recollection. Endeavour to make your heart a little sanctuary, in which you may continually realise the presence of God, and from which unhallowed thoughts, and even vain thoughts, must carefully be excluded. We must watch, but we must also pray. Man must give his exertion, but he must never lean upon it. Prayer is, or ought to be, the expression of human dependance upon God–the throwing ourselves upon His protecting wisdom and power and love. When our Saviour counsels us to unite prayer with watching He counsels us to throw ourselves upon God, under a sense of our own weakness and total insufficiency. To God, then, let us commit the keeping of our souls in the most absolute self-distrust. (Dean Goulburn.)
God only judgeth of the heart
I. An admonition.
1. The act: Keep. Our hearts are untrusty, unruly, and obvious to be surprised; for such things we are wont to keep.
II. The object: The heart. By heart understand inward thoughts, motions, and affections of the soul and spirit, whereof the heart is the chamber. We should keep our hearts in a state of–
1. Purity.
2. Loyalty. A loyal heart cherishes no darling sin; scruples at small sins; hates sin at all times. A loyal heart is the same as a perfect heart.
III. The means of keeping the heart above all keeping. Nature hath placed the heart in the most fenced part of the body.
1. As those who keep a city have special care of the gates and posterns, so must we watch over the senses, the gates and windows of the soul, especially the eye and the ear.
2. Make exceeding much of all good motions put into our hearts by Gods Spirit, and resist at its first rising every exorbitant thought which draws to sin.
3. Let him that would guard his heart take heed of familiar and friendly converse with lewd, profane, and ungracious company. This keeping must be done, because all spiritual life and living actions issue from the heart. This issuing of our works and actions from the heart is that which is called sincerity and truth, so much commended unto us in Scripture. That which is wanting in the measure of obedience and holiness is made up in the truth and sincerity thereof. (Joseph Mede, B.D.)
The issues of life out of the heart
First the fountain, then the streams; first the heart, and then the life-course. The issues of life are manifold; three of their main channels are mapped out here–the lips, the eyes, and the feet. The corruption of the heart, the pollution of the spring-head, where all lifes currents rise, is a very frequent topic in the Scriptures. The precept, Keep thy heart with all diligence, sounds very like some of the sayings of Jesus. He said, Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries. Therefore keep with all diligence that prolific spring. Here, as in all other cases, prayer and pains must go together. Keep it with all keeping is the precise statement. Leave no means untried. Out of our own conduct will we be condemned if we do not effectually keep our own hearts. We keep other things with success as often as we set about it in earnest. In other keepings man is skilful and powerful too, but in keeping his own heart, unstable as water, he does not excel. Keep it from getting evil, as a garden is kept: keep it from doing evil, as the sea is kept at bay from reclaimed netherlands.
1. The first of the three streams marked on this map as issuing from an ill-kept heart is a froward mouth. Words form the first and readiest egress for evil. The power of speech is one of the grand peculiarities which distinguish man. A vain, biting, untruthful, polluted, profane tongue cannot be in the family of God when the family are at home in their Fathers presence. The evil must be put away; the tongue must be cleansed; and now is the day for such exercises.
2. The next outlet from the fountain is by the eyes. Let the hearts aim be simple and righteous. No secret longings and side-glances after forbidden things, no crooked by-ends and hypocritical pretences. When the eye is single the whole body will be full of light. Straightforwardness is the fairest jewel of our commercial crown.
3. The last of these issues is by the feet. Ponder, therefore, thy path. The best time to ponder any path is not at the end, not even at the middle, but at the beginning of it. The right place for weighing the worth of any course is on this side of its beginning. Those who ponder after they have entered it are not in a position either to obtain the truth or to profit by it. The injunction applies to every step in life, small or great. The value of weighing anything depends all on the justness of the balance and the weights. By the Word of God paths and actions will be weighed in the judgment. By the Word of God, therefore, let paths and actions, great and small, be pondered now. (W. Arnot, D. D.)
The fountain of life
(to children):–In each one of you there is a small organ or member which is sometimes called the seat or throne of life. Its work is to beat out the blood to every part of the body, and so to keep the red stream of life always moving. The text speaks about another heart and another life which we all have. There is a something within a child with which he thinks and loves, hates and wishes, and that something the Bible calls our heart. It means your very self. Out of this heart are the issues, the flowings or streams, of life. A mans real life flows from his love. Thoughts and wishes, likes and dislikes, love and hate–these are the great workers that build up and pull down and do all that is done in the world. Every human life, good or bad, flows like a stream from good or bad thoughts, good or bad wishes. When a man loves goodness, longs for it, thinks about it, a life full of noble, kindly deeds flows like a pure stream out of his heart. But if a man likes what is wrong, thinks wicked thoughts, a stream of bad deeds will flow out of his heart. God guards carefully the heart He has put into your body. He has put the strongest bones all round it, so that, though other parts may be easily hurt, the heart is safe. The text says we should guard the heart of our real lives–our mind–in the same way with all diligence, because, if the heart goes wrong, the whole life goes wrong with it. How can we guard the heart? By keeping bad thoughts, bad wishes, out of it. (J. M. Gibbon.)
The heart more than the head
Most men practically underrate the influence of the heart, compared with that of the head, on success and happiness. Reason, the intellect, the head and not the heart, is usually regarded as mans dignity. But it is his reason as manifested in his active and moral powers. Knowledge is not power–personal power–but only one of its instruments. The power is not in the knowledge, but in the moral qualities or passions which accompany it, which lie behind it, constituting what is called force of character. The essence of greatness, always and everywhere, is a great spirit. If we aspire not only to be great, but to be truly happy, the heart is not only the principal thing, it is almost everything. What is happiness but the sum total of the gratifications of a mans affections and desires? The heart has more to do than the head in determining the distinctions of character. A mans real character depends, not on his outward actions, but on the principles from which he acts–those principles which are real springs of action. All the distinctions of character resolve themselves at last into distinctions of disposition and temper, and not of intellect or understanding. In everything pertaining to human greatness and human happiness, to moral and Christian character, to final salvation, the heart is more than the head. The heart is the principal thing. Out of that, and that alone, are the issues of life. (James Walker.)
Dependence on our inward frame
I. The issues of life, in a religious respect, depend upon the heart. All things relating to religious conduct are reducible either to some matter of belief or practice. How far are belief and practice subject to be influenced by the heart?
1. To begin with belief. How much that depends upon the temper and disposition of the heart is easily seen from Scripture, history, and daily experience.
2. Our practice. How far is the practice apt to be governed by the inclination of the heart without the concurrence of the judgment, or even in opposition to it? Men are generally more swayed by their affections and passions than by their principles, and principles are of very little force or efficacy except when they fall in with inclination or grow up into it. Knowledge is one thing and grace another. Orthodoxy is not probity. A sound head may often be consistent with a corrupt heart. It is not what we believe, but what we affect and incline to, that determines us. But our irregular actions seem rather ultimately resolvable into the false judgments which we make than into affection or inclination; the head is first tainted, then the heart. The error, however, both of judgment and practice is really due to the corruption of the heart. When some sensible good is presented to the eye or to the mind the man judges it to be agreeable or pleasant to the sense, and so far judges right. Yet this alone would not determine his choice, because other considerations, more weighty, might keep him from it. But he dwells upon the thought till his heart is inflamed: then he chooses, and not till then. The drift and bent of his soul leaning too much toward it, he cuts off all farther consideration, and is precipitately determined by it. It is the desire, the impatience, the passion of his heart that hurries him into it. Men act against principle, driven on by a prevailing passion.
(1) Either we think not at all for the time of the general principles which we hold, but suffer them to lie dormant and useless in us; or
(2) if we think of them, we neglect to apply them to our own particular case, imagining ourselves to be unconcerned in them; or
(3) if we do apply them, and consequently are self-condemned and sensible of it, yet we hope to repent and to be saved notwithstanding.
II. What is implied or contained in the precept of the text. It must consist of two parts or offices–
1. To preserve our good dispositions.
2. To correct our bad ones. These will each of them imply two other things–a frequent examination of our own hearts, and a constant endeavour to wean our affections from this world and to fix them on another. (D. Waterland, D.D.)
The importance of keeping the heart
A most important reason is here assigned for keeping the heart with all diligence, because out of it are the issues of life.
I. The heart in the body of man is the centre of life. As the heart is, so is our general conduct. But if the fountain is poisoned, the streams will carry death and desolation in their course. If the principle of the action be defective or vitiated, the action cannot be otherwise. Keep thy heart with all diligence, because the state of it determines our real character; and because upon the state of it essentially depends the comfort or wretchedness of our lives. When temptations suited to the latest propensity to sin are presented–when strong inducements are offered to passion not under due control–the practice will follow the corrupt desire of the heart. Thus the evil heart will show itself, and, by its acting, prove the melancholy truth that when the heart itself is not kept, no mere professions, no outward restrictions, will be sufficient to keep us from falling. But, further, a right state of heart is essential to our own comfort and welfare. A mans happiness consists not in the abundance of the things which he possesses. These are things without a man, which cannot adapt themselves to his wants within. What can outward means avail in lessening the terrors of guilt in an awakened conscience, or in calming the fears of an approaching judgment? To the natural principles of evil in the heart, moreover, Satan is ever adapting his temptations and wiles. And where lies his chief hope of success? Is it not in our remissness? Whilst we sleep he is awake.
II. We proceed to offer some suggestions as to the manner in which this important duty may be most effectually discharged.
1. The right keeping of the heart especially includes the government of our thoughts, our passions, and our temper. If, either wilfully or through neglect and inattention, we suffer our hearts to lie open to thoughts of foolishness and sin, and permit them to lodge within us, then the guilt of these thoughts becomes our own. But the due control of the passions is equally essential, if we would keep our hearts aright. As originally implanted in our nature, and kept in subserviency to reason, these were designed to be instruments of good–the elements of what was great and virtuous in human conduct. But sin has disordered them all. In the Christian, the passions are subjugated to Christ. This is an essential feature in his character.
2. But to keep the heart is also to regulate the temper. Whatever difference there may be in natural dispositions, settled depravity of temper, without any effort to correct it, can arise only from the deep and unaltered corruption of our hearts. To oppose and to destroy this natural and sinful bias is one of the great aims of the religion of the Bible; and where this has been in no measure secured it is a mournful proof that the heart has never been brought or kept under the influence of religion at all. If these things be implied as essential to the keeping the heart, how valuable and important are those means which, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, will most successfully realise this great object! Amongst these means, watchfulness and prayer. (C. Buck, M. A.)
Guarding the heart
More exactly the meaning is this: Keep thine heart beyond everything else you keep; guard thine heart above all else, for out of it are the issues of life. Not your health, not your reputation, not your business credit, not your property–beyond all these things give time and thought to the culture of your heart. If you must take time from one thing or another, rather starve your business than let your heart run to waste. Your heart–what has your heart got to do with your actual life? John Stuart Mills father thought it counted for nothing, or, rather, it was a bad debt, it was a loss, it was a detriment to have a heart, to have feelings, to have emotions. Power, intellect, and strength of will, these were the elements to make a man, and the less heart he carried about with him–well, the less dead weight and the less risk of his being led wrong. And the Bible comes in and says to the business man, Beyond your books and your accounts and your shops and your speculations and your clients, watch over your heart, think about it, take care of it, toil to keep it in health and in beauty. The Bible comes and says the same thing to the servant girl trying to do her duty faithfully, to the working man wishing to improve his position in the world, to the learned man bent on discovering new truth. Yes, your toil, your ambition, your researches, your discoveries, commerce, industry, learning, are all of them good, but the most precious thing is the human heart. Whatever else suffers, see that your heart does not suffer. This proverb runs right in the teeth of the whole mass of our daily life; runs against the whole current and tendency of our education, and our habits, and our notions. The proverb gives its reason–a reason that will stand and hold its own in the court of common sense, as well as at the last judgment. Beyond everything else, take care of your heart, for out of your heart are the issues of your life. Not out of your body, not out of your intellect, not out of your business, not out of your property, not out of your wisdom, not out of your fame–out of your heart are the essential elements and sustenance of your life, its last results for joy or for sorrow. Out of the heart are the issues of life. The phrase makes a picture. You are travelling in the desert with a caravan over the hot sand. The sky above you with a sultry sun in it, the hot ground beneath your feet, your eye wearied, tired, inflamed by the glare above, the glare below; you long to set eyes on the green leaf. In the distance you get sight of something in the air. You draw nearer to it, it grows and forms itself, framed there in the wilderness like a picture–a clump of palm-trees; beneath, green grass; in the branches, birds singing; lazy cattle reclining on the herbage, sheep bleating. You penetrate into it, you discover the tents and homes of men; women and children playing around, life, beauty. Whence, whence all that? Right there in the centre of it you come on a deep, brimming pool of water, fed by a perpetual fountain, like an eye looking up to the sky–ah, more than an eye, the very fountain of all that greenness and beauty; blossom, herbage, sheep, cow, bird, man, woman, child, all of them the outcome of that springing fountain of water. Out of it are the issues of life. Poison it, and all that dies. Turn it brackish, and all withers and diminishes and decays. Quench it, stop it, and the desert flows over the green oasis. Like that fountain of living water is your heart within you. Your heart it is that makes your life to flow, fair, radiant, or poor, poverty-stricken, cold, dead. What is your heart like? What is a mans heart? Well, it is not easy to describe that, and yet we all know well enough what we mean by it. We cannot just put our finger on where it is, or say precisely what it is; but oh, how well you know when your heart bounds with joy, or when it grips together with sharp pain, sorrow, disappointment! Oh, you know it is just the inner core of cravings and hopes and eager wishes and conscious personal thoughts and plans and purposes and attributes that makes you your own very self, that gives you your disposition, that makes up your temperament, that settles your character, that fashions your conduct. Oh, what a blunder a man makes when he thinks that his life will be planned and made by his intellect! There never yet was a man who thought that by his mind he could steer his own course through the world that did not find his heart steal a march upon him. A mans heart–that is what makes him, that is what determines a mans choice at all the great critical points in life. A mans heart it is that settles what his home is to be, that chooses the partner that is to be his, for better, for worse, for him, for her. It is a mans heart that chooses fleshly, that chooses spiritually; that chooses unselfishly, that chooses selfishly; that chooses for the outward appearance, or chooses for heart-worth. Oh, you say, there is not much heart in a great many of these things. I beg your pardon, there is: plenty of heart, but it is base, worldly, greedy, grasping heart; or silly, selfish, vain, flattered heart. When a mans life shows little or nothing of the echoes of lofty, generous, chivalrous thought and purpose and endeavour, we constantly use a false expression, saying, He has got no heart. How is it that a score of men that are your daily associates or friends, all of them educated pretty much on the same level, similar to one another in manner, of the same deportment, and even the same politics–how is it they are all so unlike you? Is it that the one mans talk is tiresome and wearisome? How is it that you feel as if he were made of wood? How is it that the other man has that glow and sparkle that sends a thrill through you, that stimulates you, that makes you think, that so brings out responses that you admire your own cleverness? What makes the difference? Why, it is not the amount of grammar the one learned more than the other, or that the one has read more books. No, not that. It is the inner core and kernel of the one man compared with what is inside the other. Heart, rich heart! for out of the heart in very deed and truth are the ripe, supreme issues of life–life social, life personal, life earthly, and life eternal. Now, if that be true, that a mans life really depends, beyond everything else, on his inner man, on his heart, on his disposition, on his temperament, on his character formed within him, how is it that we do not take a deal more trouble to take care of our hearts? Ah, there are a lot of books that talk about success that are full of the devils lies. A man is a great success because he died a millionaire! Oh, a man may make himself a millionaire and miss making himself a man in the image of God, in the likeness of Christ. Success in life is measured by the heart you die with. Why, then, do not we take more pains about our hearts? How many of us do it? For every one of you knows that is just the thing we neglect. Even our bodily hearts, I suppose, physicians would tell us, we do not take half care enough of. Rather than lose five minutes and miss a train we run, and risk sudden death, or actually damage the working of the central fountain of life in our bodies. And how we ever toil and tax the whole inner core of that body of ours for things not worth it. For, if a man loses his health, what is money to him? Yes, we imagine that our hearts take care of themselves. No man imagines that his accounts will collect themselves. No man imagines that his house will repair itself. Why, you must give as much care to the ties of love and children, if you are to keep these beautiful and fair, as you do to make your garden free from weeds, and your house water-tight and weather-tight, and your business a solvent concern. And besides, there is another mistake that people make. They say to themselves, I am not the one that makes my heart. It is the life that I have to live that should make my heart; it is my circumstances, my fortunes. I am a very miserable man indeed, always careworn and anxious; never able to feel bright and cheerful. When I hear my neighbour whistling in the evening in his garden I envy him; but then he has not the worries that I have. Very likely he has got much worse ones, but he has got the sense to leave them down in the office. That is how he kept his health. It was not easy. The cares and anxieties followed him into the train, got out at the station, stole up the garden; but the man had the wisdom and the strength to slam the door and not let them in. That is how he kept his heart and brain and health up, and his inmost heart of all. How is a man to make the most of his heart? How to keep it pure in this foul world? How to lift it above the grime, and the dust, and the tear and wear? How to make it large and noble, the biggest and most beautiful according to Gods plan? By not leaving it in this world, but by taking it out of this world? Ah, no; not out of this world, but in this world to bring it into another World; not by keeping it to yourself and making it in the measure of your own self, but by taking that heart of yours and letting Christ into it–the real, simple human Jesus. Oh, beyond all thy keeping, keep thy heart! and that thou shalt do best by giving it away to Christ. (Prof. Elmslie.)
What is imported in keeping the heart, and the best means of doing it
I. Explain the meaning of this precept. We need not, it should seem, be told that we are each of us endowed with a power of reflecting upon our own desires and affections, and with a certain invariable standard within us, by which we are enabled to judge whether these inward principles are right or wrong. Nor should we need to be told that our affections and passions are in a great measure under the influence of conscience, and of the superior calm principles, and instincts, by which it was intended they should be controlled. He is the man of worth, he only is truly so, who can hazard an appeal to the Searcher of Hearts, that he does not indulge any vicious affection within him, but makes it his constant business to purify the heart. I have only to add farther, that the great duty recommended in my text must be understood to signify that we should watch over and resist the first workings of passion, the conceptions of lust.
II. The most effectual helps for our doing this with success.
1. And here, in the first place, we are to turn our thoughts to our Creator. Frequent and serious contemplation of His perfections, and of the relation in which we stand to Him, is undoubtedly the most effectual of all means, in forming the heart to goodness.
2. The second thing I would recommend is a virtuous industry. We are formed for action; and when the powers are not employed in something worthy, they are likely enough to find employment of another sort.
3. It is of very great importance that men choose such to be their intimate familiar acquaintances as have a right temper and a just taste in life; that their daily conversation may be such as will not only not endanger innocence and virtue, but contribute to the guarding and strengthening of them. There is a mighty power in conversation, in the behaviour of our familiar acquaintances, to affect the mind, and to render us like them in temper.
4. Conversing much with the heart, observing the tendencies of the affections with care, and endeavouring to preserve always a just sense of things upon the mind, will be found of the greatest use. Taking the tendency of our desires and inclinations to task with severity, and examining the pretences under which the various gratifications of them are recommended. By such a careful attention to ourselves we shall find out the deceitfulness of sin, and those snares which prejudice conceals from the unthinking; we shall be able to resist temptations with firmness and resolution; for in truth, the success of them, where they do prevail, is in a great measure owing to carelessness and inattention. (Jas. Duchal, D. D.)
Keeping the heart
(a sermon to children):–All wise people like to go deeply into a thing, to go to the root of it. What is your root? Where is it? Your heart. A little boy had a very nice watch; but it would not go right. It had a very pretty case, and face; but it sometimes went too fast, and sometimes too slow. He asked his mother what he should do about it. She told him to take it to the watchmakers. He did so; and he said, Master John, it has its hands all right, but it will not go right. Therefore leave it with me, and come again in a few days, and I will tell you what is the matter with it. John went again to him in a few days, and the watchmaker said to him, I opened your watch, and I found there was the right number of wheels, and pins, and screws; but I found a little part called the spring which was wrong; and because the main-spring was wrong, it sometimes went too fast, and sometimes too slow. Now, I think, you are all like watches. Something within you goes tick, tick, and you have hands and inside works. But how do you go? Sometimes too fast, and sometimes too slow. Does not the tongue sometimes go too fast or too slow? Are not the feet sometimes too fast or too slow? Are not the hands sometimes going wrong? How is this? Let us examine–though I am not the watchmaker–God is the watchmaker: the main-spring is the heart. Everything in you depends upon your heart. God always looks most at the heart. What do you think God will look at in the day of judgment? Your heart. That is what He will want to know about. Now as it is so important to keep the heart right, I want to try to help you to do so, by giving you a little advice thereupon. Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life. One thing is to keep it as we keep a garden–neat. Now, then, if you would keep your garden, you must often look into it. And I will tell you what you will find there–every day there will grow lumps of weeds; however well you may have weeded it yesterday, you will find more weeds to-day. Pull them out! Then another thing–you must water it. This wants doing very often. Do you know what I mean? If not, look at the fourth of John, to what Jesus Christ said about water, and what it is. Bring the Holy Spirit into your heart. Pray that God will pour good thoughts–His grace–into your heart: that is water. If you want to keep your heart, do not let there be any empty corners therein. God likes all boys and girls to be employed–sometimes at their lessons, sometimes at play; sometimes helping somebody, thinking, reading, or playing, to be always employed. I must tell you, if you do not always employ yourselves–if you are idle, and thinking about nothing, the devil is sure to come into your hearts. Another piece of advice I give you is this, be very particular whom you make your intimate friends. You must keep your heart from catching those evil desires that naughty boys and girls will suggest. One thing more. Have you not sometimes, when anybody has given you anything uncommonly valuable, taken it to your father, and said, It is too precious for me to keep, I am afraid of losing it, do take care of it for me? It is very wise for boys and girls to do this with their treasures. Oh, that you would do this with your heart! You cannot keep it yourself; therefore often take it to God: ask Him to keep your heart. (J. Vaughan, M.A.)
Things the heart is like
1. The heart is a lamp, which the High and Holy One has entrusted to our care. Keep it well trimmed.
2. The heart is a ship. Look to the hull and the rudder, the masts, the sails, and the rigging. Have an eye to the crew, and take care what merchandise you have aboard; mind that you have plenty of ballast, and do not carry too much sail.
3. The heart is a temple. Keep it pure and undefiled.
4. The heart is a besieged city, and liable to attacks on all sides. While you defend one part, keep a good look-out on the other. (Old Humphrey.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 23. Keep thy heart with all diligence] “Above all keeping,” guard thy heart. He who knows any thing of himself, knows how apt his affections are to go astray.
For out of it are the issues of life.] totseoth chaiyim, “the goings out of lives.” Is not this a plain allusion to the arteries which carry the blood from the heart through the whole body, and to the utmost extremities? As long as the heart is capable of receiving and propelling the blood, so long life is continued. Now as the heart is the fountain whence all the streams of life proceed, care must be taken that the fountain be not stopped up nor injured. A double watch for its safety must be kept up. So in spiritual things: the heart is the seat of the Lord of life and glory; and the streams of spiritual life proceed from him to all the powers and faculties of the soul. Watch with all diligence, that this fountain be not sealed up, nor these streams of life be cut off. Therefore “put away from thee a froward mouth and perverse lips – and let thy eyes look straight on.” Or, in other words, look inward – look onward – look upward.
I know that the twenty-third verse is understood as principally referring to the evils which proceed from the heart, and which must be guarded against; and the good purposes that must be formed in it, from which life takes its colouring. The former should be opposed; the latter should be encouraged and strengthened. If the heart be pure and holy, all its purposes will be just and good. If it be impure and defiled, nothing will proceed from it but abomination. But though all this be true, I have preferred following what I believe to be the metaphor in the text.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Thy heart; thy mind and thoughts, and especially the will and affections, which are the more immediate and effectual cause of all mens actions.
Out of it are the issues of life; from thence proceed all the actions, as of the natural, so of the spiritual life, which lead to eternal life and happiness; as, on the contrary, all evil actions tending to death spring from thence, which is here implied.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
23. with all diligenceor,”above,” or “more than all,” custody(compare Margin), all that is kept (compare Eze38:7), because the heart is the depository of all wisdom and thesource of whatever affects life and character (Mat 12:35;Mat 15:19).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Keep thy heart with all diligence,…. The mind from vanity, the understanding from error, the will from perverseness, the conscience clear of guilt, the affections from being inordinate and set on evil objects, the thoughts from being employed on bad subjects; and the whole from falling into the hands of the enemy, or being the possession of Satan: great diligence had need be used in keeping it, since it is naturally so deceitful and treacherous; a strict eye is to be kept upon it; all the avenues to it to be watched, that nothing hurtful enters, or evil comes out; it is to be kept by all manner of means that can be thought of, by prayer, hearing, reading, meditation; and, above all, by applying to Christ for his grace and Spirit to sanctify, preserve, and keep it. Or, “above all keeping, keep thine heart” b; though other things are to be kept, and care taken of them, as kingdoms and cities, and towns and families, and treasures and riches; yet the heart above all:
for out of it [are] the issues of life; of natural life: it is the seat of it, from whence all actions of life are derived; it is, as philosophers say, the first that lives, and the last that dies; and it is the seat of spiritual life the principle of it is formed in it; from whence all spiritual and vital actions flow, and which lead unto and issue in eternal life: as is a man’s heart, such is his state now, and will be hereafter; if the heart is quickened and sanctified by the grace of God, the man will live a life of faith and holiness here, and enjoy everlasting life hereafter: and if the heart is right, so will the actions of men be; they are regulated and denominated by it; they will then spring from right principles, and be directed to right ends, and performed with right views; great care therefore should be taken of the heart, since so much depends upon it, and it is so well known to God the searcher of it.
b “prae omni custodia”, Vatablus, Baynus, Mercerus, Gejerus, Michaelis, Schultens; so Aben Ezra and Ben Melech.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
After this general preface the exhortation now becomes special:
23 Above all other things that are to be guarded, keep thy heart,
For out from it life has its issues.
24 Put away from thee perverseness of mouth,
And waywardness of lips put far from thee.
25 Thine eyes should look straight forward,
And thine eyelids look straight to the end before thee.
26 Make even the path of thy feet,
And let all thy ways be correct.
27 Turn not aside to the right and to the left;
Remove thy foot from evil.
Although in itself and in this connection may mean the object to be watchfully avoided ( cavendi ) ( vid., under Pro 2:20): thus the usage of the language lying before us applies it, yet only as denoting the place of watching or the object observandi ; so that it is not to be thus explained, with Raschi and others: before all from which one has to protect himself ( ab omni re cavenda ), guard thine heart; but: before all that one has to guard ( prae omni re custodienda ), guard it as the most precious of possessions committed to thy trust. The heart, which according to its etymon denotes that which is substantial ( Kernhafte ) in man (cf. Arab. lubb , the kernel of the nut or almond), comes here into view not as the physical, but as the intellectual, and specially the ethical centrum .
Pro 4:24 The are the point of a thing, e.g., of a boundary, from which it goes forth, and the linear course proceeding from thence. If thus the author says that the go out from the heart,
(Note: The correct form here is , with the Makkeph to .)
he therewith implies that the life has not only its fountain in the heart, but also that the direction which it takes is determined by the heart. Physically considered, the heart is the receptacle for the blood, in which the soul lives and rules; the pitcher at the blood-fountain which draws it and pours it forth; the chief vessel of the physically self-subsisting blood-life from which it goes forth, and into which it disembogues ( Syst. der bib. Psychol. p. 232). What is said of the heart in the lower sense of corporeal vitality, is true in the higher sense of the intellectual soul-life. The Scripture names the heart also as the intellectual soul-centre of man, in its concrete, central unity, its dynamic activity, and its ethical determination on all sides. All the radiations of corporeal and of soul life concentrate there, and again unfold themselves from thence; all that is implied in the Hellenic and Hellenistic words , , , , lies in the word ; and all whereby (the body) and (the spirit, anima) are affected comes in into the light of consciousness ( Id. p. 251). The heart is the instrument of the thinking, willing, perceiving life of the spirit; it is the seat of the knowledge of self, of the knowledge of God, of the knowledge of our relation to God, and also of the law of God impressed on our moral nature; it is the workshop of our individual spiritual and ethical form of life brought about by self-activity – the life in its higher and in its lower sense goes out from it, and receives from it the impulse of the direction which it takes; and how earnestly, therefore, must we feel ourselves admonished, how sacredly bound to preserve the heart in purity (Psa 73:1), so that from this spring of life may go forth not mere seeming life and a caricature of life, but a true life well-pleasing to God! How we have to carry into execution this careful guarding of the heart, is shown in Pro 4:24 and the golden rules which follow. Mouth and lips are meant (Pro 4:24) as instruments of speech, and not of its utterance, but of the speech going forth from them. , distorsio , refers to the mouth (Pro 6:12), when what it speaks is disfiguring and deforming, thus falsehood as the contrast of truth and love (Pro 2:12); and to the lips , when that which they speak turns aside from the true and the right to side-ways and by-ways. Since the Kametz of such abstracta, as well of verbs ‘ ‘ like , Eze 32:5, as of verbs ‘ ‘ like , Isa 45:13, , Isa 28:18, is elsewhere treated as unalterable, there lies in this either an inconsistency of punctuation, or it is presupposed that the form was vocalized like = , Num 21:29.
Pro 4:25 Another rule commends gathering together (concentration) in opposition to dissipation. It is also even externally regarded worthy of consideration, as Ben-Sira, Pro 9:5, expresses it: – purposeless, curious staring about operates upon the soul, always decentralizing and easily defiling it. But the rule does not exhaust itself in this meaning with reference to external self-discipline; it counsels also straight-forward, unswerving directness toward a fixed goal (and what else can this be in such a connection than that which wisdom places before man?), without the turning aside of the eye toward that which is profitless and forbidden, and in this inward sense it falls in with the demand for a single, not squinting eye, Mat 6:22, where Bengel explains by simplex et bonus, intentus in caelum, in Deum, unice . (R. ) means properly fixing, or holding fast with the look, and (as the Arab. najad , to be clear, to be in sight, shows) the rising up which makes the object stand conspicuous before the eyes; both denote here that which lies straight before us, and presents itself to the eye looking straight out. The naming of the (from , to flutter, to move tremblingly), which belongs not to the seeing apparatus of the eye but to its protection, is introduced by the poetical parallelism; for the eyelids, including in this word the twinkling, in their movement follow the direction of the seeing eye. On the form (fut. Hiph. of , to be straight), defective according to the Masora, with the Jod audible, cf. Hos 7:12; 1Ch 12:2, and under Gen 8:17; the softened form does not occur, we find only or .
Pro 4:26 The understanding of this rule is dependent on the right interpretation of , which means neither “weigh off” (Ewald) nor “measure off” (Hitzig, Zckler). has once, Psa 58:3, the meaning to weigh out, as the denom. of , a level, a steelyard;
(Note: The Arabic word tefls , said to be of the same signification (a balance), and which is given in the most recent editions of Gesenius’ Lexicon, has been already shown under Job 37:16 to be a word devoid of all evidence.)
everywhere else it means to make even, to make level, to open a road: vid., under Isa 26:7; Isa 40:12. The admonition thus refers not to the careful consideration which measures the way leading to the goal which one wishes to reach, but to the preparation of the way by the removal of that which prevents unhindered progress and makes the way insecure. The same meaning appears if , of cognate meaning with , denoted first to level, and then to make straight with the level (Fleischer). We must remove all that can become a moral hindrance or a dangerous obstacle, in our life-course, in order that we may make right steps with our feet, as the lxx (Heb 12:13) translate. 26b is only another expression for this thought. (2Ch 27:6) means to give a direction to his way; a right way, which keeps in and facilitates the keeping in the straight direction, is accordingly called ; and “let all thy ways be right” (cf. Psa 119:5, lxx ) will thus mean: see to it that all the ways which thou goest lead straight to the end.
Pro 4:27 In closest connection with the preceding, 27a cautions against by-ways and indirect courses, and 27b continues it in the briefest moral expression, which is here instead of , Pro 3:7, for the figure is derived from the way. The lxx has other four lines after this verse (27), which we have endeavoured to retranslate into the Hebrew (Introd. p. 47). They are by no means genuine; for while in 27a right and left are equivalent to by-ways, here the right and left side are distinguished as that of truth and its contrary; and while there [in lxx] the is required of man, here it is promised as the operation of God, which is no contradiction, but in this similarity of expression betrays poverty of style. Hitzig disputes also the genuineness of the Hebrew Pro 4:27. But it continues explanatorily Pro 4:26, and is related to it, yet not as a gloss, and in the general relation of 26 and 27a there comes a word, certainly not unwelcome, such as 27b, which impresses the moral stamp on these thoughts. That with Pro 4:27 the admonition of his father, which the poet, placing himself back into the period of his youth, reproduces, is not yet concluded, the resumption of the address , Pro 5:1, makes evident; while on the other hand the address in Pro 5:7 shows that at that point there is advance made from the recollections of his father’s house to conclusions therefrom, for the circle of young men by whom the poet conceives himself to be surrounded. That in Pro 5:7. a subject of the warning with which the seventh address closes is retained and further prosecuted, does not in the connection of all these addresses contradict the opinion that with Pro 5:7 a new address begins. But the opinion that the warning against adultery does not agree (Zckler) with the designation , Pro 4:3, given to him to whom it is addressed, is refuted by 1Ch 22:5; 2Ch 13:7.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
(23) Keep thy heart with all diligence.Rather, above all things that are to be guarded.
For out of it are the issues of life.That is, from it comes life (and also death). From it proceed all holy desires, all good counsels, and all just works, signs of the life with God within the soul; or, evil thoughts, murders, &c. (Mat. 15:19), the end of which things is death (Rom. 6:21).
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
23. Keep Guard.
Thy heart with all diligence Literally, above all keeping or guarding. More than any thing else guard thy heart, for out of it are the issues (goings forth, or currents) of life. As the living stream issues from the physical heart in its normal, healthy condition, to vitalize and nourish every part of the body, so from the pure healthy heart ( tropically) go forth good feelings, purposes, thoughts, words, and actions, all of which, as they spring from the inner life of the soul, tend to conserve and increase that life more and more, and to secure as a final result eternal life. The fountains and wells of the East were watched over with special care. A stone was rolled to the mouth of the well, so that “a spring shut up, a fountain sealed,” became the type of all that is most guarded. So it is here. “The heart is such a fountain; out of it flow the issues of life. Shall we let those streams be tainted at the fountainhead?” Bible Commentary. Compare Mat 15:19.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Pro 4:23. Keep thy heart with all diligence Above all keeping keep thy heart. Schultens. The life and death of the soul proceed from the heart: an upright, clear, enlightened, watchful heart gives life; a heart corrupted, dissipated, without knowledge, without wisdom, brings death: from the heart proceeds all evil. See Mat 11:18-19. Guard it therefore most carefully; with all kind of diligence, and above all other cares: guard it from evil thoughts and evil desires: for if you have evil desires, it is impossible for you to refrain from evil actions. Your heart, corrupted as it is, will cause your destruction, if you do not employ all your care, in dependence on the blessing of God, to guard it well; to observe its motions, to regulate its inclinations, to repress its sallies.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
DISCOURSE: 764
KEEPING THE HEART
Pro 4:23. Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.
IT is certainly of infinite importance that we be deeply convinced of our utter inability to do any thing that is good, and of our entire dependence upon God for the effectual aids of his Holy Spirit. But we must not imagine, that, because we have no sufficiency of ourselves to do the will of God, we are not bound in duty to do it, or not to be exhorted and stimulated to the performance of it. Our duty is the same, whatever be the circumstances to which we have reduced ourselves; and it is in, and by, our personal exertions, that God has promised to work all our works in us. Hence, in the Scriptures of Truth, we are continually exhorted to serve our God in the way of his commandments. It is obvious that we cannot preserve the life of our bodies for one single moment; yet God expects, that we keep ourselves from those things which would destroy life, and use all proper means of preserving it: so neither can we, of ourselves, preserve the life of our souls; yet are we bound to keep our heart with all diligence; since out of it are the issues of life.
It is indeed supposed here, that a new heart has been given to us; because from the unregenerated heart no good thing can issue: but inasmuch as even the renewed heart has still innumerable corruptions within it, we must keep it with all diligence.
To impress this duty on our minds, let us consider,
I.
The duty enjoined
To keep the heart is indeed an arduous task. To assist you in the performance of it, we will offer such suggestions as appear suitable to the occasion:
1.
Fortify it with good principles
[A city unfortified is open to assault on every side: and so is the heart, if not duly fortified by the principles of true religion. As a sinner redeemed by the precious blood of Christ, and sanctified by his Spirit, I am the Lords peculiar property: I live by him; and I must live for him: having been bought with a price, I am not my own, but his who bought me: and I have nothing to do but to glorify him with my body and my spirit, which are his. When therefore any thing attempts to gain possession of my heart, I must keep it for Him; for Him wholly; for Him alone. Nothing is to break in upon this principle. Let earth and hell assault me, I must oppose them in this impregnable bulwark; Depart from me, ye evil-doers; I will keep the commandments of my God [Note: Psa 119:115.]. The Christian is furnished by God with armour for this contest [Note: Eph 6:11-16.]; and, clothed in this panoply, he must maintain the conflict even unto death [Note: Rev 2:10.].]
2.
Watch all its most secret motions
[A citadel, however strong, if filled with traitors waiting for an occasion to open it to the enemy, needs to be guarded with peculiar care: the professed defenders of it must themselves be watched. So it is with the heart, notwithstanding it be at present garrisoned for the Lord. It is inconceivably difficult in many instances to distinguish between the loyal and the treacherous. They are both habited in the same uniform; and both make the very same professions: both too appear actuated by the same holy zeal. The Apostles, when disputing with each other who should be the greatest, and forbidding others to cast out devils, because they followed not with them, and desiring to call fire from heaven to avenge their Masters cause, appeared as faithful as men could be [Note: Luk 9:46; Luk 9:49; Luk 9:54.]: yet were they in reality actuated by pride and envy, in the garb of zeal and love: and, had not these corrupt passions been checked at first, who can tell, how great a matter this little fire might have kindled [Note: Jam 3:5.]? There is not a motion of the heart but must be strictly marked: its associates must be carefully noticed; its tendencies examined; its professions scrutinized; lest Satan himself be found there, under the semblance of an angel of light [Note: 2Co 11:13-14.].]
3.
Combine all its energies in the service of your God
[The Psalmist has a remarkable expression on this subject; Unite my heart, O Lord, to fear thy name [Note: Psa 86:11.]. If the powers of the soul be scattered, they will be as inefficient as soldiers that are dispersed. It is by a combination of efforts for a preconcerted end, and by simultaneous movements for its accomplishment, that success is attained. The various powers of the soul must act in unison: the understanding, the will, the affections, the memory, the conscience, must all have the same object in view, each defending its proper post to the uttermost, and ready to succour the other with all its might. If, whilst the understanding is occupied about spiritual and heavenly things, the will and the affections are running after earthly and carnal things, what can be expected, but that the enemy shall soon gain undisguised and permanent possession of the soul? Every one knows, that a house divided against itself, falleth; and a divided heart must become a prey to the great adversary of God and man. All its powers must center in God, if God is to inhabit it as his temple, and to possess it as his inheritance.]
4.
Call in for it the most effectual aid
[Human efforts, unassisted by God, will be of little avail. Indeed we can do nothing but as we are assisted by the Captain of our Salvation [Note: Joh 15:5.]. To him then must we look to strengthen us with might by his Spirit in our inward man [Note: Eph 3:16.]: we must go forth against our enemies, as David did against Goliath, not in dependence on an arm of flesh, but in the name of the Lord God of Israel: we must be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might [Note: Eph 6:10.]. Then we may defy all our adversaries: we may boldly ask the greatest amongst them; Who art thou, O thou great Mountain? Before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain. See how Paul taught the first Christians to triumph, whilst yet in the midst of all their conflicts: Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? No: in all these things we are more than conquerors [Note: Rom 8:35-37.]: so then may the weakest of us triumph, if we call in our blessed Lord to our aid: for through Christ strengthening us, we can do all things [Note: Php 4:13.].]
But to form a right judgment of our duty, we must yet more distinctly notice,
II.
The particular instruction relating to it
We must keep our heart with all diligence. Our attention to it must be,
1.
Earnest
[It is not a slight or superficial attention to it that will suffice. The work is too great to be effected in such a way. To keep the heart from sin amidst so many temptations on every side, and to keep it in the exercise of all holy and heavenly graces, from every one of which it is by nature alienated; this is a great work indeed, and requires the utmost possible exertion on our part. The metaphors by which the Christians life is set forth, sufficiently shew what efforts are called for on our part. A race is not to be won without straining every nerve: an adversary, whether in fight or in wrestling, is not to be overcome without putting forth all our strength. Can we then suppose, that, when our contest is not with flesh and blood only, but with all the principalities and powers of hell, the victory can be gained without the most strenuous exertions? No; it cannot: and our Lord plainly tells us that it cannot: Strive, says he, to enter in at the strait gate: for many shall seek to enter in, and not be able. Know then, that whatever you have to do in the keeping of your heart, you must do it with all your might.]
2.
Constant
[The work which we have to do, is not like that of a painter or a statuary, who may leave his work for a time, and find it afterwards in the state in which he left it: it is rather like that of one who is rolling up hill a stone, which will return upon him, as soon as ever he intermits his labour. Our hearts of themselves are bent to backslide from God, ever ready to start aside as a deceitful bow: and Satan is ever on the watch to draw us aside. If he intermit his labours, it is in appearance only, and not in reality: for he is ever going about, as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. His wiles and devices are innumerable: and, if once he can find us off our guard, he will assuredly avail himself of the occasion to deceive and, if possible, to destroy us. We therefore must be always on our watch-tower, according to that direction of our blessed Lord, Watch and pray; lest ye enter into temptation: and, what I say unto you, I say unto all, Watch.]
3.
Persevering
[There is no state at which we can arrive in this world that supersedes the necessity of continued vigilance and care. Were we as eminent as Paul himself, we must still, like him, keep our body under and bring it into subjection, lest by any means, after having preached to others, we ourselves become castaways. Let our circumstances be ever so favourable, we know not but that we shall fall the very next moment. Hezekiah was but just recovered from a dangerous illness, and that by miracle; yet when the Babylonish ambassadors came to offer him their masters congratulations, he fell, and offended God by the pride of his heart [Note: 2Ch 32:24-26.]. Peter also was but just descended from Mount Tabor, where he had beheld his Lord transfigured, and shining forth in all his glory, when he acted Satans part in dissuading his Lord from completing the work assigned him: so that he drew forth from his Divine Master that just reprimand, Get thee behind me, Satan [Note: Mat 16:23-24.]. We may add too, that there is no wickedness so great, but we may be drawn to the commission of it. Who can reflect on Davids adultery and murder, or on Peters denial of his Lord with oaths and curses, and not see reason to cry continually to God, Hold thou me up, and I shall be safe!
Thus then we see, it is not enough to keep our hearts, but we must keep them with all diligence, engaging in the work with earnestness, and maintaining it with constancy and perseverance to the latest hour of our lives.]
Let us now attend to,
III.
The reason with which both the one and the other are enforced
The heart may in some respects be considered as the seat of vitality in the human body, because from thence issues the blood that circulates through the whole frame. But still more may it be said of the heart in a spiritual view, that out of it are the issues of life. For,
1.
It is the proper source of all evil
[There are many evils to which our corrupt nature is apt to yield: some are spiritual, and some are fleshly: but the womb where all are generated, and from whence they proceed, is the heart. Adultery, and murder, and theft, with many other evils, might be supposed to arise rather out of external circumstances connected with our outward man: but they are all traced by our blessed Lord to the heart: From within, out of the heart of man, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: all these things come from within [Note: Mar 7:21-23.]. Now, if the heart be the fruitful spring of such evils, ought it not to be watched? ought it not to be kept with all diligence? It is evident that, without continual care, the whole man would soon be inundated with evil: should we not then watch the sluices? should we not guard the banks, and keep them in good repair? In other words, should we not do all in our power to prevent such fatal effects? Let it never be forgotten, that the smallest breach in a bank will soon yield to the torrent, and, by its extension, bid defiance to any remedy that can be applied: consequently, if we would not be overrun with all manner of evil, we must guard against the irruption of any. A little leaven will soon leaven the whole lump.]
2.
It is the proper seat of all good
[Grace is planted in the heart: it has no other residence: it may operate by the members: but its seat is in the heart. Repentance flows from thence, even from the broken and contrite heart. Faith has there its first formation. With the heart man believeth unto righteousness. Love combines and concentrates all its powers: We are to love God with all the heart; yea, Christ himself dwells in our hearts by faith. Whatever then proceeds not from the heart, is of no value: all our best services for God are no other than hypocrisy, if the heart be far from him [Note: Mat 15:7-8.]. Must we not then keep the heart with all diligence, to see that it be duly influenced by divine grace, and that all which we do is the result of gracious principles implanted there? Truly, if a man may give all his goods to feed the poor, and his body to be burned, and, after all, be no better than sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal, because his actions proceed not from a principle of love in the heart, we are called upon to watch over our hearts with all imaginable care, that they be duly stored with all that is good. This is the plain and obvious inference from what our Lord himself hath distinctly affirmed in those memorable words. The evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil; and the good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good: in both cases the produce is from the abundance of the heart [Note: Luk 6:45.]: and the tree is known by its fruits.]
3.
By it shall our state be determined in the last day
[Even in courts of judicature amongst ourselves, it is not so much the act, as the heart, that is the object of investigation. Murder itself is not accounted murder, if it was not attended with a purpose of heart to injure and destroy. Much more therefore may it be expected that God will inquire into the designs and purposes of our hearts: He looketh not on the outward appearance, but at the heart: and he searcheth the heart, and trieth the reins, on purpose to give to every man according to the fruit of his doings. For this end he will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the heart. To our hearts then must we look, if ever we would give up our account with joy: for, as our hearts are, so shall we appear in his sight [Note: Pro 23:7.]. Let us then not only search and try ourselves, but beg of God also to search and try us, and to see if there be any wicked way in us, and to lead us in the way everlasting.]
Application
1.
Grudge not your labour in the way to heaven
[You cannot make any attainments in this life without labour: how then can you hope to attain without it the glory and felicity of heaven? True it is, that heaven is a gift of God; a gift altogether of his free and sovereign grace: but it is also true, that we must labour for it, according to that direction of our Lord; Labour not for the meat that perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you [Note: Joh 6:27.]. Labour then with all earnestness, and constancy, and perseverance. If you be frequently foiled, still return to your post, and increase your vigilance in proportion as you discover the deceitfulness and wickedness of your hearts: and be assured, that, however great your toil may be, heaven will be an abundant recompence for all.]
2.
Doubt not but that your labour shall at last be crowned with success
[Were your success dependent on an arm of flesh, you might well despond: but your God and Saviour is pledged to carry on in you the work he has begun, and to perfect that which concerneth you. Your enemies may renew their assaults as often as they will; but they shall not prevail: for God has said, that No weapon that is formed against you shall prosper [Note: Isa 54:17.]: and again. The law of God is in his heart: his footsteps shall not slide [Note: Psa 37:31.]. Go on then: watch ye: stand fast in the faith; quit you like men: be strong [Note: 1Co 16:13.]: and know for your comfort what the all-gracious and unchanging God hath spoken: Be not weary in well-doing: for in due season ye shall reap, if ye faint not [Note: Gal 6:9.].]
Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)
Pro 4:23 Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it [are] the issues of life.
Ver. 23. Keep thy heart. ] Filth free, as much as may be; keep a constant counterguard against all inroads made by flesh, world, and devil. Keep the heart always supple and soluble, for else thou canst not be long in spiritual health. Quod sanitas in corpore, id sanctitas in corde. Keep it ever well in tune, and then all shall go well. If in a viol I find the treble string in tune, I make no question of the bass; that goes not out so easily. So here.
For out of it are the issues of life.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Proverbs
KEEPING AND KEPT
Pro 4:23
The former of these texts imposes a stringent duty, the latter promises divine help to perform it. The relation between them is that between the Law and the Gospel. The Law commands, the Gospel gives power to obey. The Law pays no attention to man’s weakness, and points no finger to the source of strength. Its office is to set clearly forth what we ought to be, not to aid us in becoming so. ‘Here is your duty, do it’ is, doubtless, a needful message, but it is a chilly one, and it may well be doubted if it ever rouses a soul to right action. Moralists have hammered away at preaching self-restraint and a close watch over the fountain of actions within from the beginning, but their exhortations have little effect unless they can add to their icy injunctions the warmth of the promise of our second text, and point to a divine Keeper who will make duty possible. We must be kept by God, if we are ever to succeed in keeping our wayward hearts.
I. Without our guarding our hearts, no noble life is possible.
That solemn thought that every one of us has a definite moral character, and that our deeds are not an accidental set of outward actions but flow from an inner fountain, needs to be driven home to our consciences, for most of the actions of most men are done so mechanically, and reflected on so little by the doers, that the conviction of their having any moral character at all, or of our incurring any responsibility for them, is almost extinct in us, unless when something startles conscience into protest.
It is this shrouded inner self to which supreme care is to be directed. All noble ethical teaching concurs in this-that a man who seeks to be right must keep, in the sense both of watching and of guarding, his inner self. Conduct is more easily regulated than character-and less worth regulating. It avails little to plant watchers on the stream half way to the sea. Control must be exercised at the source, if it is to be effectual. The counsel of our first text is a commonplace of all wholesome moral teaching since the beginning of the world. The phrase ‘with all diligence’ is literally ‘above all guarding,’ and energetically expresses the supremacy of this keeping. It should be the foremost, all-pervading aim of every wise man who would not let his life run to waste. It may be turned into more modern language, meaning just what this ancient sage meant, if we put it as, ‘Guard thy character with more carefulness than thou dost thy most precious possessions, for it needs continual watchfulness, and, untended, will go to rack and ruin.’ The exhortation finds a response in every heart, and may seem too familiar and trite to bear dwelling on, but we may be allowed to touch lightly on one or two of the plain reasons which enforce it on every man who is not what Proverbs very unpolitely calls ‘a fool.’
That guarding is plainly imposed as necessary, by the very constitution of our manhood. Our nature is evidently not a republic, but a monarchy. It is full of blind impulses, and hungry desires, which take no heed of any law but their own satisfaction. If the reins are thrown on the necks of these untamed horses, they will drag the man to destruction. They are only safe when they are curbed and bitted, and held well in. Then there are tastes and inclinations which need guidance and are plainly meant to be subordinate. The will is to govern all the lower self, and conscience is to govern the will. Unmistakably there are parts of every man’s nature which are meant to serve, and parts which are appointed to rule, and to let the servants usurp the place of the rulers is to bring about as wild a confusion within as the Ecclesiast lamented that he had seen in the anarchic times when he wrote-princes walking and beggars on horseback. As George Herbert has it-
‘Give not thy humours way;
God gave them to thee under lock and key.’
But again, seeing that the world has more evil than good in it, the keeping of the heart will always consist rather in repelling solicitations to yielding to evil. In short, the power and the habit of sternly saying ‘No’ to the whole crowd of tempters is always the main secret of a noble life. ‘He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city broken down and without walls.’
II. There is no effectual guarding unless God guards.
We need an outward motive which will stimulate and stir to effort. Our wills are lamed for good, and the world has strong charms that appeal to us. And if we are not to yield to these, there must be somewhere a stronger motive than any that the sorceress world has in its stores, that shall constrainingly draw us to ways that, because they tend upward, and yield no pabulum for the lower self, are difficult for sluggish feet. To the writer of this Book of Proverbs the name of God bore in it such a motive. To us the name of Jesus, which is Love, bears a yet mightier appeal, and the motive which lies in His death for us is strong enough, and it alone is strong enough, to fire our whole selves with enthusiastic, grateful love, which will burn up our sloth, and sweep our evil out of our hearts, and make us swift and glad to do all that may please Him. If there must be fresh reinforcements thrown into the town of Mansoul, as there must be if it is not to be captured, there is one sure way of securing these. Our second text tells us whence the relieving force must come. If we are to keep our hearts with all diligence, we must be ‘kept by the power of God,’ and that power is not merely to make diversion outside the beleaguered fortress which may force the besiegers to retreat and give up their effort, but is to enter in and possess the soul which it wills to defend. It is when the enemy sees that new succours have, in some mysterious way, been introduced, that he gives up his siege. It is God in us that is our security.
III. There is no keeping by God without faith.
That divine Power is exerted for our keeping on condition of our trusting ourselves to Him and trusting Him for ourselves. And that condition is no arbitrary one, but is prescribed by the very nature of divine help and of human faith. If God could keep our souls without our trust in Him He would. He does so keep them as far as is possible, but for all the choicer blessings of His giving, and especially for that of keeping us free from the domination of our lower selves, there must be in us faith if there is to be in God help. The hand that lays hold on God in Christ must be stretched out and must grasp His warm, gentle, and strong hand, if the tingling touch of it is to infuse strength. If the relieving force is victoriously to enter our hearts, we must throw open the gates and welcome it. Faith is but the open door for God’s entrance. It has no efficacy in itself any more than a door has, but all its blessedness depends on what it admits into the hidden chambers of the heart.
I reiterate what I have tried to show in these poor words. There is no noble life without our guarding our hearts; there is no effectual guarding unless God guards; there is no divine guarding unless through our faith. It is vain to preach self-governing and self-keeping. Unless we can tell the beleaguered heart, ‘The Lord is thy Keeper; He will keep thee from all evil; He will keep thy soul,’ we only add one more impossible command to a man’s burden. And we do not apprehend nor experience the divine keeping in its most blessed and fullest reality, unless we find it in Jesus, who is ‘able to keep us from falling, and to present us faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy.’
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
Keep . . . with all diligence. Above all that must be guarded. The preposition M (hebrew character) marks the place or person that keeps: the meaning being, guard the heart as the great citadel, for out of it are the source and outgoings of life. Same word as in verses: Pro 6:13. Not the same word as in verses: Pro 4:21.
froward. See notes on Pro 2:12 and Pro 6:12, the only other examples of frowardness of mouth.
(23-27) Note the Alternation in these verses.
Positive. Heart.
Negative. Mouth.
Positive. Eyes.
27. Negative. Feet.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
The Heart
Keep thy heart with all diligence;
For out of it are the issues of life.Pro 4:23
1. In the Bible, and more especially in the Book of Proverbs, the word heart is among the most pregnant in all language. As the heart physically is the central organ of the body, it is often used to denote the life, the soul itself. My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out unto the living God. Then there is a large group of passages which show that the heart in the Bible stands for the seat of the emotions, as in the popular phraseology of every language. But in Hebrew it also represented the seat of intelligence, the tone and quality of the character, as when a clear, pure, sincere heart is ascribed to any one, or when it is said, As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. Further, it stands for will or purpose: Do all that is in thine heart means in thine intention or desire. Because the heart is thus the focus of the personal life, the secret laboratory in which every influence which penetrates thither is reacted upon, so that it passes out charged with the colour and quality of the inner life, it is natural that it should be spoken of here as the central fact of our nature, and that God should demand it for His own. When we give our heart to Him, we give Him the most precious, because the most determinative, element in our life.
2. The Greek version, which was very generally used in our Lords time, had a beautiful variation of the text: In order that thy fountains may not fail thee, guard them in the heart. It was after all but a new emphasis on the old teaching of the Book of Proverbs when Jesus taught the necessity of heart purity, and when He showed that out of the heart come forth evil thoughts, and all the things which defile a man. Yet this lesson of inwardness has always been the most difficult of all to learn. Christianity itself has always been declining from it and falling into the easier but futile ways of externalism; and even Christian homes have usually failed in their influence on the young, chiefly because their religious observances have fallen into formalism, and, while the outward conduct has been regulated, the inner springs of action have not been touched.
Visit the electrical power-house of any large town. Watch the whirling dynamo. Here is the energy that drives the car; here is generated the spark that lights the night; here is born the impulse that begets the motion and brightness outside. Musing thus, you will understand what is meant by the heart. Press the illustration further; mark how this monster is guarded and controlled, and then think of the last thunderstorm you can remember. In the engine-house the power is in subjection, watched with all diligence; outside in the wide universe it is untamed, uncontrolled, wrecking and damaging and contorting. On the one hand, assisting commerce, giving brightness and cheerfulnessthe issues of life. On the other, devastation and ruinthe issues of death. Life and death by the same power. Controlled, life; uncontrolled, death. This power is analogous to the heart of Man 1:1 [Note: J. H. Ward.]
I
The Centre of Life
1. The heart that we carry in our body may rightly be called the centre of life. The physical heart is a large bunch of muscles, placed between the two lungs and acting as a fountain of life to the whole body. How wonderful it is in its structureits auricles, and ventricles, its valves and blood-vessels! The blood is the life; and every moment it is being driven by the unresting stroke of the hearts pump into the great arteries and all through the body. The heart is the central organ of the human frame; and the health of the body depends upon its soundness and its proper action. Only when this action is healthy and true will the whole body be full of power, energy, and beauty. When, on the other hand, the heart is feeble or diseased, it will send languor and mischief through the whole system. This organ, in short, is the mainspring, the determining factor in the life of the body. The other organs work well or ill according to the state of the heart.
2. But the Old Testament locates in the heart the centre of personal being. It is not merely the home of the affections, but also the seat of will, of moral purpose. As this text says, the issues of life flow from it in all the multitudinous variety of their forms. The stream parts into many heads, but it has one fountain. To the Hebrew thinkers the heart was the indivisible, central unity which manifested itself in the whole of the outward life. As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. The heart is the man. And that personal centre has a moral character which comes to light in, and gives unity and character to, all his deeds.
(1) Out of the heart are the issues of life. It is not the mind, the thought-power, the judgment-forming part of our nature that holds the primacy and sits upon the throne. The mind, with its thoughts, its judgments, its ideas, is the servant of our practical needs. The mind, in fact, came into being, was organized and developed because of our practical needs. It is not the regal and aristocratic member of our being that it has sometimes been assumed to be. It is a veritable slave and lackey, serving in homespun, continually driven, and made to work overtime at the whips end of the dominant forces of life. Because primitive man was conscious of hunger, he contrived a way to till the ground, to plant, to reap, to grind and bake. The mind did not invent bread, and then coax the appetite to eat, because bread forsooth was good. Man was hungry; the appetite was imperious master, and it compelled the mind to find some way of satisfying that need. Because man was naked, he also invented dress, first from the skins of wild beasts, then from their woolly covering, woven into a fabric. Because he was subjected to the wind and the rain, to the sun and the frost, he drove the thinking part of him to devise a tent and a roof, a protecting shelter from the prowling lion, or a stockade against human foe. Here is the invariable order: needinventionsatisfaction. And this is actually all that the mind, with its knowledge, has ever done for man; in the last analysis it will always reduce to thisthe discovery of a way, continuously a better way, between these two terms; need, and the satisfaction of the need. Out of the heart have been the issues of life from the outset. The needs, the desires, the great passions, the urgent impulsesthese have been in control. It is they who have sat on the throne.
(2) The condition of the heart determines our influence. The world over, the most potent force is not thought, but love. Argument often convinces while affection sways in a contrary direction. A teachers wisdom, with all the fascinations of the schools, moves us less than a mothers pleading and tears. Even where masses of men bow before eloquent oratory, it is the power of sincerity and earnestness in the speaker that moves even those who differ. We all instinctively feel that the secret of heroism is noble affection, unselfish love, and sacrifice. There is a sort of righteousness that only awakens a cold admiration; while goodness, which is righteousness touched with love, leads men to die for its possessor.
When Wilberforce, the great apostle of liberty in Europe, was turning the world upside-down, one man asked another, What is the secret of the power of Wilberforce? There are many men with more brains and more culture. And his friends answered, The secret of Wilberforce is that he has a heart full of sympathy. And that is the secret of multitudes of people who are doing great good in the world. Do not keep guard over your heart with the purpose only of keeping bad things out of it, but keep watch over it to see that the fountains of sympathy and brotherly kindness are open and flowing day by day.1 [Note: L. A. Banks, The Problems of Youth, 85.]
(3) That which goes so far to mould character and to shape influence, must determine destiny. When the great judicial scales of the Universal Judge are at last hung, it cannot be otherwise than that the central affections should settle which way those scales preponderate: what we have most truly loved must have vital connexion with the eternal futurenot only with the entrance into Heaven, but the capacity for its joys. Our affections both reveal what character essentially is and forecast what it is to beeven more than our thoughts; for the affections largely prompt our habits of thought, determining what images we love to contemplate. The essence both of sin and of holiness is largely here; for the acts both of sin and of saintliness could have little moral quality were there no moral preference behind them. It is the love of evil that makes sin so damning, and the love of holiness that is the heart of sainthood. But for this heart affection for evil, how could the imagination be employed as sins artist, or memory as its treasure gatherer, or the will as its marshal? But for this, even the Devils hook would be bare of bait, and his wiles would find no response in us, as they found none in our tempted Master.
In a letter to his mother at Scotsbrig. Carlyle writes from Craigenputtock, in September 1833: But I must tell you something of myself: for I know many a morning, my dear mother, you come in by me in your rambles through the world after those precious to you. If you had eyes to see on these occasions you would find everything quite tolerable here. I have been rather busy, though the fruit of my work is rather inward, and has little to say for itself. I have yet hardly put pen to paper; but foresee that there is a time coming. All my griefs, I can better and better see, lie in good measure at my own door: were I right in my own heart, nothing else would be far wrong with me. This, as you well understand, is true of every mortal, and I advise all that hear me to believe it, and to lay it practically to their own case.1 [Note: J. A. Froude, Thomas Carlyle, 17951835, ii. 368.]
In the course of a walk in the park at Edgeworthstown, I happened to use some phrase which conveyed (though not perhaps meant to do so) the impression that I suspected Poets and Novelists of being a good deal accustomed to look at life and the world only as materials for art. A soft and pensive shade came over Scotts face as he said, I fear you have some very young ideas in your head; are you not too apt to measure things by some reference to literatureto disbelieve that anybody can be worth much care who has no knowledge of that sort of thing, or taste for it? God help us! what a poor world this would be if that were the true doctrine! I have read books enough, and observed and conversed with enough of eminent and splendidly cultivated minds, too, in my time; but, I assure you, I have heard higher sentiments from the lips of poor uneducated men and women, when exerting the spirit of severe yet gentle heroism under difficulties and afflictions, or speaking their simple thoughts as to circumstances in the lot of friends and neighbours, than I ever yet met with out of the pages of the Bible. We shall never learn to feel and respect our real calling and destiny, unless we have taught ourselves to consider everything as moonshine, compared with the education of the heart.1 [Note: Lockhart, Life of Sir Walter Scott, ch. lxiii.]
Too soon did the Doctors of the Church forget that the heart, the moral nature, was the beginning and the end; and that truth, knowledge, and insight were comprehended in its expansion. This was the true and first apostasy,when in council and synod the Divine Humanities of the Gospel gave way to speculative Systems, and Religion became a Science of Shadows under the name of Theology, or at best a bare Skeleton of Truth, without life or interest, alike inaccessible and unintelligible to the majority of Christians. For these, therefore, there remained only rites and ceremonies and spectacles, shows and semblances. Thus among the learned the Substance of things hoped for passed into Notions; and for the unlearned the Surfaces of things became Substance. The Christian world was for centuries divided into the Many that did not think at all, and the Few who did nothing but think,both alike unreflecting, the one from defect of the act, the other from the absence of an object.2 [Note: Coleridge, Aids to Reflection.]
II
The Keeping of the Heart
Keep thy heart above all keeping. God guards very carefully the heart He has put in our body. He has put the strongest bones all round it, so that, though other parts may be easily hurt, the heart is safe. Well, the text says that we should guard the heart of our real lives in the same way with all diligence, above everything else; because, if the heart goes wrong, the whole life goes wrong with it.
One of the most famous and valuable diamonds in the world is the Koh-i-nur, or Mountain of Light, which belongs to the British Crown. This gem was exhibited in the Great Exhibition of 1851, and was an object of special interest. It lay upon a little cushion in a case with glass panels, the inside being lighted up with gas. And there was always a group of people crowding to see it. But it was also an object of peculiar care. For while the whole of the Crystal Palace, which contained so many treasures, was well guarded, a special watchman paced to and fro by day and night to guard the Koh-i-nur. Even so ought every Christian, above all other valuables that he has to guard, to keep his heart, for it is the citadel of his life.1 [Note: C. Jerdan, For the Lambs of the Flock, 63.]
1. Our nature is evidently not a republic, but a monarchy. It is full of blind impulses, and hungry desires, which take no heed of any law but their own satisfaction. If the reins are thrown on the necks of these untamed horses, they will drag the man to destruction. They are safe only when they are curbed and bitted, and held well in. Then there are tastes and inclinations which need guidance and are plainly meant to be subordinate. The will is to govern all the lower self, and conscience is to govern the will. Unmistakably there are parts of every mans nature which are meant to serve, and parts which are appointed to rule, and to let the servants usurp the place of the rulers is to bring about as wild a confusion within as the Preacher lamented that he had seen in the anarchic times when he wroteprinces walking and beggars on horseback. As George Herbert has it
Give not thy humours way;
God gave them to thee under lock and key.
Savage tribes not only fight with poisoned arrows; they have been known to creep into another tribes country, and put poison into the wells, so that when the tired soldier, the thirsting woman and child, and the poor beasts of the forest came to the well to slake their thirst, they drank death in every drop of water that passed their lips. Now, would you think a chief stern, or too particular, if at war-time he ordered his people to guard the wells? Would not such an order be a kind one? Would not the meaning of it be, Save your own lives, and the lives of your wives and children? Well, your heart, your mind, is the well of your life. If that is poisoned, your best life will die. And the Book that bids you guard it well is not a stern book, but a kind, loving book, that wishes you well, and is your best friend.2 [Note: J. M. Gibbon, In the Days of Youth, 32.]
2. Keeping or guarding is plainly imperative, because there is an outer world which appeals to our needs and desires, irrespective altogether of right and wrong, and of the moral consequences of gratifying these. Put a loaf before a starving man, and his impulse will be to clutch and devour it, without regard to whether it is his or not. Show any of our animal propensities its appropriate food, and it asks no questions as to right or wrong, but is stirred to grasp its natural food. And even the higher and nobler parts of our nature are but too apt to seek their gratification without having the licence of conscience for doing so, and sometimes in defiance of its plain prohibitions.
Many telegraph wires run under and over our streets, over the mountains and under the oceans, coming from scenes of war and of peace, of industry and of learning, of sorrow and of joy, each carrying some swift current. And these wires are gathered at last into some central office of many clicking instruments. The operator translates these currents into intelligence, and sends them out in the form of messages of commerce, of war, of crime, or of love. So our five senses are main wires going out into the world about us, gathering observations, sensations, and experience from the streets of the city, the scenes of the country, the companions we meet, the books we read, the pictures at which we look. Another wire goes down, like an ocean cable, into the depths of our own nature, bringing up mysterious messages given by our own consciousness, speaking of God and good, of right and wrong, and of judgment to come. Thus there are wires from heaven above, on which God and good angels are sending messages; wires from hell below, on which the devil and his angels are sending suggestions, promptings; wires from men and women about us, conveying subtle trains of thought and of feeling. And the heart of man is the central office into which these wires run, pouring in there this raw material of thought-stuff.1 [Note: R. Mackenzie, The Loom of Providence, 248.]
III
The Keeper of the Heart
1. The inherent weakness of all attempts at self-keeping is that, keeper and kept being one and the same personality, the more we need to be kept the less able we are to effect it. If in the very garrison there are traitors, how shall the fortress be defended? In order, then, to exercise an effectual guard over our characters and control over our natures, we must have an outward standard of right and wrong which shall not be deflected by variations in our temperature. We need a fixed light to steer towards, which is stable on the stable shore, and is not tossing up and down on our decks. We shall cleanse our way only when we take heed thereto, according to thy word. For even Gods viceroy within, the sovereign conscience, can be warped, perverted, silenced, and is not immune from the spreading infection of evil. When it turns to God, as a mirror to the sun, it is irradiated and flashes bright illumination into dark corners, but its power depends on its being thus lit by radiations from the very Light of Life. And if we are ever to have a coercive power over the rebellious powers within, we must have Gods power breathed into us, giving grip and energy to all the good within, quickening every lofty desire, satisfying every aspiration that feels after Him, cowing all our evil and being the very self of ourselves.
To know that God does not depend upon our feelings, but our feelings upon God, to know that we must claim a certain spiritual position as our right before we can realize it in our apprehensions, to be assured that we have the Spirit of God within us, and that He is distinct from all the emotions, energies, affections, sympathies in our minds, the only source and inspirer of them all, this is most necessary for us, the peculiar necessity, if I am not mistaken, of this age. The confidence of a power always at work within us, manifesting itself in our powerlessness, a love filling up our lovelessness, a wisdom surmounting our folly, the knowledge of our right to glory in this love, power, and wisdom, the certainty that we can do all righteous acts by submitting to this Righteous Being, and that we do them best when we walk in a line chosen for us, and not of our choosing, this is the strength surely, and nothing else, which carries us through earth and lifts us to heaven.1 [Note: The Life of Frederick Denison Maurice, i. 246.]
2. The heart will not be satisfied till it is given to the highest and best. It demands a permanent investment for its affections; wealth, earthly ambition, the happiness that comes from without are only a loan at the best, and capital and interest will be demanded at death. The heart demands something substantial; glory, praise, reputation are full of promise till they are ours; and then, a last years nest, out of which the bird has flown! In one word, the heart demands a person greater, nobler, purer, stronger than itself, in whose affections and favour it can live and move and have its being; and God, as revealed in His Son Jesus Christ, is the only One whose nature is great enough to environ the soul with perfect peace and feed it with unfailing strength, in whose favour is life, and at whose right hand are pleasures for evermore.
The wise Augustine, who, after many wild wanderings, in which he had drained the fountain of knowledge, and quaffed to the dregs the cup of earthly delights, and given himself to every device by which the libertine and the fool endeavour to slake their souls at the salt pools of death, came back to God, like a bird to its forsaken nest, and said, O Lord, broken is our heart and unquiet, and full of sorrow it must be, till it finds rest in Thee!1 [Note: E. Griffith-Jones, in Comradeship and Character, 261.]
I wish you would change my heart, said the chief Sekomi to Livingstone, Give me medicine to change it, for it is proud, proud and angry, angry always. He would not hear of the New Testament way of changing the heart; he wanted an outward, mechanical wayand that way was not to be found.2 [Note: R. F. Horton, The Book of Proverbs, 58.]
3. That Divine Power is exerted for our keeping on condition of our trusting ourselves to Him and trusting Him for ourselves. And that condition is no arbitrary one, but is prescribed by the very nature of Divine help and of human faith. If God could keep our souls without our trust in Him, He would. He does so keep them as far as is possible, but for all the choicer blessings of His giving, and especially for that of keeping us free from the domination of our lower selves, there must be in us faith, if there is to be in God help. The hand that lays hold on God in Christ must be stretched out and must grasp His warm, gentle, and strong hand, if the tingling touch of it is to infuse strength. If the relieving force is victoriously to enter our hearts, we must throw open the gates and welcome it. Faith is but the open door for Gods entrance. It has no efficacy in itself any more than a door has, but all its blessedness depends on what it admits into the hidden chambers of the heart.
To conquer, said Napoleon, you must replace. You cannot expel bad thoughts by no thoughts. Whatsoever things are pure, think on these things. One thought there is which above all others is fruitful and powerful, and which should be familiar to every tempted Christian soul; it is the thought of the Cross and of Christ Crucified. In hoc signo vinces. David slew the Philistine with a sling and with a stone, but the sling was ready in his hand, and foresight had caused him to fill the bag with stones out of the brook. To the soul which fights the faithful battle in the realm of thought, and cries aloud in the darkness of its night to Christ Crucified, what wondrous light and power are given by the merits of the Cross and Passion.
Here is the hearts true bulwark found!
And here is rest secure;
And here is loves most certain ground,
And here salvation sure.1 [Note: The Lenten Collects, 33.]
O how well he is guarded and armed against the snares of the devil and evil thoughts and impure imaginations, who has the image of the Crucified fixed in his heart, penetrating all his interior: and always and everywhere urging to the thought and performance of every good! Then inwardly consoled with wondrous sweetness of heart from the presence of Christ shall he be able justly to say, what holy David with great joy sang to God: I have run the way of thy commandments; when thou didst enlarge my heart.2 [Note: Thomas Kempis, Sermons to the Novices Regular, 76.]
Literature
Burgess (F. G.), Little Beginnings, 117.
Calthrop (G.), The Lost Sheep Found, 153.
Davidson (T.), Thoroughness, 101.
Dewhurst (F. E.), The Investment of Truth, 107.
Frst (A.), Christ the Way, 12.
Gibbon (J. M.), In the Days of Youth, 28.
Griffith-Jones (E.), in Comradeship and Character, 253.
Jeffrey (J.), The Way of Life, 55.
Jerdan (C.), For the Lambs of the Flock, 59.
King (T. S.), Christianity and Humanity, 254.
Mackenzie (R.), The Loom of Providence, 245.
Maclaren (A.), Expositions: Esther, etc., 116.
Pierson (A. T.), Godly Self-Control, 1.
Rowland (A.), in The Ladder of Life, 33.
Spurgeon (C. H.), New Park Street Pulpit, iv. (1858), No. 179.
Stowell (H.), Sermons, 72.
Vaughan (J.), Sermons to Children, i. 205.
Wagner (C.), Courage, 69.
Wiseman (N.), Sermons for Children, 116.
Christian World Pulpit, v. 132 (R. Tuck); lxxv. 76 (W. E. Breakey), 309 (J. H. Ward).
Church of England Magazine, xxv. 256 (J. Bull).
Church of England Pulpit, lxii. 68 (W. R. Inge).
Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible
Keep: Pro 22:5, Pro 23:19, Pro 28:26, Deu 4:9, Psa 139:23, Psa 139:24, Jer 17:9, Mar 14:38, Heb 12:15
with all diligence: Heb. above all keeping, Pro 4:7, Pro 3:21, Pro 11:16, Pro 13:3, Ecc 5:13
for: Mat 12:35, Mat 15:19, Mar 7:21-23, Jam 1:14, Jam 1:15
Reciprocal: Exo 20:17 – wife Exo 35:21 – General Deu 4:15 – Take ye Deu 15:9 – Beware Jos 7:21 – took them Jos 22:5 – take Jos 23:11 – Take good 2Sa 22:24 – kept 1Ki 11:9 – his heart 2Ki 10:31 – took no heed Psa 68:20 – issues Psa 119:80 – sound Pro 14:30 – sound Pro 23:26 – give Son 8:12 – vineyard Isa 39:2 – was glad Jer 6:7 – a fountain Jer 17:21 – Take Mal 2:15 – take Mat 6:21 – there Mar 7:15 – but 2Pe 1:5 – giving 1Jo 5:18 – keepeth
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Pro 4:23. Keep thy heart with all diligence The Hebrew is, Above all keeping, keep thy heart, that is, thy mind and thoughts, thy will and affections, which are the more immediate cause of mens actions. Out of it are the issues of life The life or death of the soul proceeds from the heart: an upright, enlightened, renewed, devout, and watchful heart gives birth to those holy dispositions, words, and actions, which manifest spiritual life, and lead to eternal life: on the contrary, a heart insincere, unenlightened, unrenewed, and corrupt, without knowledge, without grace, produces those tempers, words, and works, which imply spiritual death, and lead to eternal death. From the heart proceeds all evil, Mat 15:11-19. Guard it therefore most carefully, with every kind of diligence, and above all other cares.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
4:23 Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it [are] the issues of {k} life.
(k) For as the heart is either pure or corrupt, so is the whole course of man’s life.