But not a better heart. He found himself suddenly fitted for the new place to which Providence had summoned him. In this there was nothing magical or extraordinary. It is indeed said that God gave him another heart, but we are not to understand the words as indicating a Divine operation independent of outward means and natural influences, or at all distinguishable, in the consciousness of its subject, from the effects of external circumstances. It is not more true that the man makes the place than that the place makes the man. Both, indeed, are most pregnant and concerning truths. Saul, transplanted into a new station, brought into new relations to life and society, felt the simultaneous upspringing within him of sentiments and purposes suited to his position, and became conscious of capabilities which had before lain dormant, and might have always remained so, but for this transformation of his outward state. Made a king, he became kingly. His soul expanded to the horizon of his new dignity and office. But, alas! there was no spiritual element in his change, and, therefore, it yielded no happy fruit for him, or to the church of God. It was but the direction of the same earthly mind to larger objects, stander schemes, a wider range. We may properly take occasion from this case, to discriminate between certain other changes to which the spirit of man is subject, and that great spiritual change which alone affects him savingly, planting in him the germ of holiness and immortal felicity; or to point out the difference between another heart and a new heart.
1. And, first, I will direct your attention to the nature and effects of spurious religious excitement. There is excitement almost necessarily in the serious and earnest contemplation of religious truth. Its revelations are fitted to stir the spirit of man deeply; the interests to which it pertains are too momentous to be contemplated without emotion. The nature of men is sympathetic. Hence feeling is contagious, and not only so, but excitement, where it exists already, rises, by the reacting influence of those who come within its sphere and imbibe its infection. But excitement is bounded by limits fixed in the constitution of our nature; and when these are reached a revulsion takes place, which issues either in stagnation or in a new excitement of a different description. And when these opposite emotions are produced by religious causes they are thought to indicate a work of the Spirit and involve conversion. It is quite remarkable, how little the moral and truly spiritual nature of man may have to do with such a process, how little of anything else there may be in it beside imagination and nervous sensibility. And yet, on the strength of it, a man often accounts himself a new man; and, whether he be right in that judgment or not, not infrequently, he thereupon becomes and permanently remains another man. His life henceforward assumes a new bent. He adopts new opinions, he talks a new language, he affects new associates, he frequents new walks, he lends himself to the promotion of new interests. And yet he is not new man. Only his outward life has taken a new impress, as Saul’s did, in which the same worldly spirit finds a concealment and disguise.
2. There is another very different transformation to which men are subject, which yet is at no greater value; and tends to no better results--that which is brought about by the slow operation of time and the gradual alteration of outward circumstances. The lesson of life is a sobering lesson. The fire of youth burns out as the period of youth expires. Every day some leaf fails from the flower he is seeking to grasp. Continually the stern hand of irresistible Providence shuts up some avenue that allures his steps. But the worst disappointment is that which waits upon success--the bitter pain of finding a thing, when it is gotten, not worth the pains of getting. Sometimes there is but a change of follies and vices, the substitution of a calmer and more private form of sensuality or dissipation for another of a more boisterous and public character; but the impress of sin and worldliness remains, and is too visible to allow the supposition of any moral improvement. The result of time upon human character is very various, yet it seldom fails in one way or another to be evident and marked, and among persons whose course is not an abandoned one, is generally distinguished by a nearer approximation to the apparent effects of religion; and thus few men live on over the meridian of life without coming to have another heart, one which, in many instances, it may not be very difficult for themselves or others to mistake for a new and a better heart. What I said may be wanting in either of these, is a spiritual element, and as the absence of this fatally vitiates these cases, and every other ease where it appears, so its presence in either of them, or in any other change which the soul of man may undergo, declares the work to be of God, and furnishes a true mark of meetness for life eternal. Let us then look a little at this as it stands contradistinguished from all alterations, whose seat is either the imagination or the outward deportment, whose affinity to religion is limited to a certain accidental coincidence or similarity in some particulars, and whose religious phases are confined to the inferior and superficial portion of human nature.
(1) And first, look at this change in reference to the effect upon the heart of the grand and peculiar features of the Gospel an irreligious mind has either no clear or definite views of the scheme of salvation by Jesus Christ; or if it comprehends it intellectually, and is able to think and speak of it with a scientific precision, it does not perceive and feel its fitness and necessity. It wears an arbitrary appearance. The Gospel is unreal to it. But with the rise of spiritual affections the film is cleared away. The truths of the Gospel come forth from their obscurity and vagueness, and the heart at once learns what they are, loses its indifference to them, appreciates their value, loves them, and lives upon them.
(2) Look, secondly, at this change in respect to the power and influence of the Divine will upon the soul. The spirit of religion is an obedient spirit. The spirit of irreligion is a disobedient spirit. If a child pursue a course of conduct coincident with its parent’s will purely for its own gratification, that, is not obedience; or if it complies with his commands simply from fear of punishment, that is not obedience. Man’s eyes may not distinguish it from obedience, but it is not obedience. Obedience requires a filial and submissive heart. There is the recognition of a new authority, the acknowledgment of a new rule. The man does the same act for a different reason.
(3) Look, thirdly, at this change as it affects a man’s view of eternity. The view of the worldly man is comprised within the bounds of time. If he ever looks beyond it, it is with a stealthy and uneasy glance. There is a quickening of that man’s spiritual nature to whom eternity comes forth out of this vague and unreal condition, and becomes a near and interesting reality, full of interests for which he would fain make provision, to be habitually borne in mind and cared for, to secure the benefit of which he counts it a privilege to live and labour. (R. A. Hallam, D. D.)
Getting another heart
He had come home from college, the minister’s son. He had been a wild, harum-scarum kind of boy before he went. Many a sore heart did the minister get as the boisterous exploits of his wayward son oozed out to him from all parts of the parish. But at length he has gone to college and has come home now at the end of winter. The parish has heard of his shooting ahead of his fellows in the college classes, and they were all proud of their minister’s boy. He is in the study along with his old father, but he is not receiving this time the usual parental little lecture. He is opening a tiny little case, while his father’s eyes are dancing with gladness. It is the gold medal for the best student of the year, and, as the looks of the father and son meet in tenderness, the once careless lad whispers in his father’s ear what brings a sob from the minister, but not a sob of sorrow: “I have got something else than the gold medal this winter. I thought I would best tell it now. I have also got the new heart.” There had been a revival that winter in the city, and many of the students had been converted, and among them the gold medallist of the year, our minister’s brilliant boy. (John Robertson.)
