CHAPTER XXII.

WHAT SHUTS OUT CHRIST FROM OUR HEARTS?

“There was no room for them in the inn.”—LuKE ii. 7.

HOSE who have followed along our course of

THOSE

argument in the present treatise will probably come to the conclusion, that, if Holiness be what we have described it to be, the great majority of persons who pass for religious with themselves and others, nay, to whom the credit of being in a greater or less degree religious cannot be denied, are very backward in the pursuit of it. It may be profitable in this concluding Chapter to explore the causes of this backwardness. In doing so we shall see how to remedy what is amiss in us. And this accidental advantage also will accrue, that we shall be furnished with tests of spiritual progress, which we may apply to our own hearts.

Now, first, it is evident that our backwardness in true Religion (or in other words, in the knowledge and love of God) cannot in any measure be attributed

to God Himself. God is a full-charged fountain of grace, who seeks to inundate every human intelligence and every human heart with His knowledge and His love. And we are told emphatically that He "is no respecter of persons;" He is not partial in the gifts and influences which He distributes. Human parents have often favourites among their children, whom they indulge with the coat of many colours, and the Benjamin's mess. But God has no such weak fondness in the treatment of His children; if He loves one better than another, it is because that one is worthier of His love. God in grace is like the sun in nature, whose property it is to diffuse itself into every cranny, where it is not absolutely shut out; or like the precious dew of heaven, which drops indifferently on the salt places of the wilderness and on the rich and fruitful soil. God may say to His people, as the Apostle said to the Corinthians; "O my people, my mouth is opened unto you, my heart is enlarged. Ye are not straitened in me, but ye are straitened in your own bowels." These (though they are not so applied by the inspired writer) are exactly the accents in which God addresses every human soul. He is impatient of being perfectly loved by every soul; longing and desirous to pour out upon every soul the riches of His mercy and grace. He laments our narrowness; He beseeches us to be enlarged in our own hearts, and to make a worthy response to His affection.

And this reference leads us on a step farther in our argument. It is in ourselves that we are straitened, and not in God. The sun may shed his light and warmth around, so that there is nothing hid from the heat thereof; but if a man constructs a hovel of boards, and stops the chinks between the boards with thick clay, the sun's rays cannot reach him. The dew may drop on the wilderness; but the salt places and the heath have no capacity of bringing forth a crop. The water of the river may be free to all comers, but without a vessel to contain it, it cannot be drunk, and with only a small vessel it cannot be drunk in large measure. Christ may come to the door of the inn, desiring to take up His abode there; but if there is no room for Him, He must be cradled in the manger outside. An inn; what an appropriate figure of the soul of man as it is by nature! What a multiplicity and what a prodigious variety of thoughts are always coming and going in the soul,-the passengers these which throng the inn, and some of whom are so fugitive, that they do not even take up their abode there for the night! And what distraction, discomposure, and noise, do these outgoing and incoming thoughts produce, so that perhaps scarcely ever in the day is our mind collected and calm, except just for the few moments spent in private prayer before we lie down and when we rise-the hurry and confusion this, produced by the constant arrivals at, and departures from, an inn. And then some of these thoughts leave

traces of defilement upon the soul, as they pass away, much as the careless and slovenly wayfarer leaves a soil or a rent upon the furniture. And, by way of completing the figure, Christ offers Himself at the door of the soul, as the passenger offers himself at the door of an inn. He seeks and longs to pass into the soul, that He may take up His abode there, and dwell in the heart by faith. "Behold," cries He, “I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear My voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me." Oh! it is because we do not give Him room to work within us, that He works so faintly and feebly in our souls. It is because we bring such poor narrow hearts to Him, that we receive so little of His fulness. It is because we close ourselves up in the chamber of our selfishness, that we inhale so seldom the free, fresh atmosphere of His Spirit.

"There was no room for them in the inn." Now in what does the obstacle to Christ's entrance into our hearts consist? What is it which occupies the room which He seeks and condescendingly asks to occupy? Two things principally, under which all others will fall; first self-will, and then confidence in the creature for happiness.

1. First, self-will. The least trace of self-will excludes pro tanto God and His working from the soul. Absolute surrender to His Will and Word in every thing is the only condition on which the Lord will take

up His abode in the depth of the soul, and give to the heart that calm and repose, which only His Presence can give. There are many Christians who, in seeking counsel and help from God, are not perfectly sincere, do not absolutely resign their will into His hand. They "keep back part of the price" in their dealings with Him, make reserves, and except certain districts of their life from His jurisdiction. They make the vain attempt to serve two masters, seeking to please God much, and themselves a little, in what they do. They are quite willing to pray, and read the Holy Scriptures, and attend Public Worship, and receive Holy Communion; but they have a great dislike to be pressed upon such points as systematic almsgiving, fasting, restraint of the tongue, self-denial in recreations, and mortification of the will, although they have a growing conviction in their minds that God requires from them some measure of these things. They have not that delicate sensibility to God's inspirations which He loves to find in a soul, and which, when He does find it, enables Him to do many mighty works therein. You know how delicately a wind-vane is poised on the top of a building, so that with the slightest breath of wind (hardly sufficient on a hot day to fan the cheek agreeably) it veers round at once. It is so in Nature; but alas! in the moral world there is many a will which does not sit loose upon its pivot, but is fixed in the quarter to which its natural inclinations point, and which moves not therefore, when the breath of God's