The Prince of Preachers Charles
Haddon Spurgeon has been called England's greatest contribution
to the spread of the gospel in the
19th century.
One of his contemporaries said that the chief
secret of Spurgeon's attractiveness was the fact that,
in every sermon, no matter what the text
or the occasion, he explained the way of
salvation in simple terms.
Spurgeon's messages remain one of the great treasure
houses of Christian literature, still bringing the light
of the gospel and the comfort of the
scriptures to hungry souls long after the preacher
has passed into glory.
This is Charles Kelch inviting you to listen
to a message from the Prince of Preachers.
C.
H.
Spurgeon preached this message on September 25th, 1859,
at the Music Hall of the Royal Surrey
Gardens.
It is entitled, A Divided Heart.
The text is found in Hosea chapter 10
and verse 2.
Their heart is divided, now shall they be
found faulty.
This passage may be taken as referring to
the people of Israel as a nation, and
it is not less applicable to the church
of God.
It is one grand and grievous fault with
the church of Christ at the present day
that it is not merely divided somewhat in
its creed and somewhat also in its practice
of the ordinances, but alas, it is also
somewhat divided in heart.
When the differences are of such a character
that as people of God we can still
love each other and still unite in the
common battle against the cause of evil and
in the common end of building of the
church, then there is but little that is
faulty.
But when our doctrinal divisions grow to so
great a head that we cease to cooperate,
when our opinions upon mere ordinances become so
acid towards each other that we can no
longer extend the right hand of fellowship to
those who differ from us, then indeed is
the church of God found faulty.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
Even Beelzebub with all his craft cannot stand
when once his hosts are divided.
If Beelzebub be divided against himself, even he
must fall, and assuredly this must be the
case with those who lack that craft which
might tend to overcome disunion.
O my brethren, nothing can so cast down
a church from the high place, mar its
glories, and diminish its opportunities of success as
divisions among the hearts of God's people.
If we would grieve the Holy Spirit and
cause Him to be gone, if we would
provoke the anger of the Most High and
bring down trying providences on the churches, we
have nothing to do but to be divided
in our hearts, and all will be accomplished.
If we wish that every vial may empty
out its ill and that every vessel may
withhold its oil, we have but to cherish
our bickerings till they become animosities, we have
but to nurse our animosities till they become
hatreds, and all the work will be fully
completed.
And if this be the case in the
church at large, it is peculiarly true in
those various sections of it which we now
call apostolic churches.
O my brethren, the smallest church in the
world is potent for good when it hath
but one heart and one soul, when pastor,
elders, deacons, and members are bound together by
a threefold cord that cannot be broken.
Then are they mighty against every attack.
But however great their numbers, however enormous their
wealth, however splendid may be the talents with
which they are gifted, they are powerless for
good the moment that they become divided among
themselves.
Union is strength.
Blessed is the army of the living God
in that day when it goeth forth to
battle with one mind, and when its soldiers,
as with the tramp of one man, in
undivided march go onwards towards the attack.
But a curse awaiteth a church which runneth
hither and thither, and which, divided in itself,
hath lost the mainstay of its strength, with
which it should batter against the enemy.
Division cuts our bowstrings, snaps our spears, hawks
our horses, and burns our chariots in the
fire.
We are undone the moment the link of
love is snapped.
Let this perfect bond be once cut in
twain, and we fall down, and our strength
is departed.
By union we live, and by disunion we
expire.
I intend, however, to take the text this
morning specially with reference to our individual condition.
We shall look at the separate individual heart
of each man.
If divisions in the great main body, if
separation among the distinct classes of that body
should each promote disasters, how much more disastrous
must be a division in that better kingdom,
the heart of man.
If there be civil tumult in the town
of Mansoul, even when no enemy attacks its
walls, it will be in a sufficiently dangerous
position.
If the Isle of Man be governed by
two kings, then it is disorganized, and it
will soon be destroyed.
I address myself this morning to some of
whom it can be said, Their heart is
divided, now shall they be found faulty.
And thus shall I address you, first of
all, noticing a fearful disease, secondly, its usual
symptoms, thirdly, its sad effects, and fourthly, its
future consequences.
Observe, then, that our text describes a fearful
disease.
Their heart is divided.
I have called it a fearful disease, and
this will very readily appear if you observe,
first of all, the seat of it.
It affects a vital part.
It is not merely a disease of the
hand that reformation might cure.
It is not merely a disease of the
foot that restraint might sometimes mollify.
It is not merely a disease of the
eye which hath but to be couched to
let the light stream in upon it.
It is a disease of the vital region
of the heart, a disease in a part
so vital that it affects the whole man.
The utmost extremity of the frame suffers when
once the heart becomes affected, and especially so
affected as to be divided.
There is no power, no passion, there is
no motive, no principle, which does not become
vitiated when once the heart is diseased.
Hence it is that Satan, who is always
crafty, endeavors to strike at the heart.
He will give you the hand if you
please, you may be honest.
He will give you the eye if you
please, you shall be outwardly chased.
He will give you the foot if you
please, you shall appear to run in the
way of righteousness.
Only let him keep the heart, only let
him rule in the citadel, and he will
be well content to give up all the
rest.
John Bunyan describes this as being one of
the terms which old Diabolus was said to
make with King Shaddai.
O, said he, I will give up all
the city of Mansoul if thou wilt but
permit me to live in the citadel of
the heart.
Surely there was but little in his terms
and conditions.
Ay, but give up everything else.
If thou retainest the heart, thou retainest all,
O fiend, for out of the heart are
the issues of life.
Thus the disease of our text is one
that touches a vital part, a part which,
if once affected, tends to vitiate the whole
frame.
But you will observe the disease here described
not only deals with a vital part, but
touches it after the most serious fashion.
It does not simply say the heart palpitates.
It does not declare that the life-floods
that issue from it have become more shallow
and less rapid, but it declares something worse
than all these, namely, that the heart was
cleft in twain and utterly divided.
A stony heart may be turned to flesh,
but turn a divided heart into whatsoever you
please, so long as it is divided, all
is ill.
Nothing can go right when that which should
be one organ becomes two.
When the one motive power begins to send
forth its life-floods into two diverse channels,
and so creates intestine strife and war, a
united heart is life to a man.
But if the heart be cut in twain,
in the highest, deepest, and most spiritual sense,
he dies.
It is a disease which is not only
affecting a vital part, but affecting it after
the most deadly fashion.
But we must observe again of this divided
heart that it is a division in itself
peculiarly loathsome.
Men who are possessed of it do not
feel themselves to be unclean.
In fact, they will visit all society, they
will venture into the church, they will propose
to receive her communion and to be numbered
with her members, and they will afterwards go
and mingle with the world.
They do not feel that they have become
dishonest.
They think themselves fit to mingle with honest
worldlings and with sincere Christians, too.
If a man had spots upon his countenance,
or some disease that stared everyone else in
the face as often as he was beheld,
surely he would retire from society and endeavor
to keep himself a recluse.
But not so the man with a divided
heart.
He goes everywhere, utterly unconscious that his disease
is of the most loathsome character.
Shall I show you how it is so?
Take the glass and look at the man's
heart, and you will discern that it is
loathsome, because Satan and sin reign there.
Although the man goes about and has sufficient
ideas of what is right and what is
wrong to be uneasy in his sin, yet
has he such an intense love of all
manner of iniquity that he allows the most
loathsome demons to come and dwell in his
heart.
But his loathsomeness is worse than this, because
all the while that he is really living
in sin, he is a loathsome hypocrite, pretending
that he is a child of God.
Of all things in the world that stink
in the nostrils of an honest man, hypocrisy
is the worst.
If thou be a worldling, be a worldling.
If thou serve Satan, serve him.
If Baal be God, serve him.
But mask not thy service of self and
sin by a pretended service of God.
Appear to be what thou art.
Tear off thy masks.
The church was never meant to be a
masquerade.
Stand out in thy true colors.
If thou preferest Satan's shrine, say so, and
let men know it.
But if thou wilt serve God, serve him,
and do it heartily, as knowing him who
was a jealous God, and searcheth the hearts,
and tryeth the reins of the children of
men.
It is a terribly loathsome disease, this of
a divided heart.
If the man were but known, his disease
is so loathsome that the most wicked men
in the world would have nothing to do
with him.
I have known some instances of this.
A man who pretended to be religious and
regularly attended his place of worship is seen
on one occasion entering into a ballroom of
the very lowest class.
He begins at once to plunge into its
gaieties with the most evil intentions.
He is at once observed.
The right senses even of the wicked themselves
are awakened.
Kick that man downstairs, is the unanimous verdict,
and he receives it, and he deserved it
right well.
When a man has a divided heart, tries
to do right and to do wrong, to
serve God and to serve Satan at the
same time, I say his disease is of
so loathsome and degraded a character that the
very worldling whose leprosy is on his brow
despises, hates him, and avoids him.
And yet again, not merely is the disease
loathsome, but I must observe it is one
always difficult to cure because it is chronic.
It is not an acute disease which brings
pain and suffering and sorrow with it, but
it is chronic.
It has got into the very nature of
the man.
A divided heart, how are you to get
at that?
If it were a disease in any other
part, the Lancet might find it out, or
some medicine might heal it.
But what physician can join together a divided
heart?
What skillful surgeon can set together the disrupted
members of a soul that has been divided
between God and mammon?
This is a disease which enters into the
very nature and will lie in the blood,
though the most powerful medicines search it out.
This is a disease, in fact, which nothing
but omnipotent grace can ever overcome.
But he has no grace whose heart is
divided between God and mammon.
He is an enemy to God.
He is an injury to the Church.
He is a despiser of God's word.
He is a sheath ripening for the harvest
of eternal fire.
His disease is deeply rooted within him, and
if left alone, it will come to a
most dreadful end.
Its end is sure destruction.
I must observe once more, and then I
will leave this point of the disease, that
according to the Hebrew of my text, the
disease is a very difficult one to deal
with, from the fact that it is a
flattering disease.
The text might be rendered, their heart flatters
them.
Now are they found faulty.
There are many cunning flatterers in the world,
but the most cunning is man's own heart.
A man's own heart will flatter him even
about his sins.
A man is a grasping miser.
His heart flatters him that he is only
exercising proper business habits.
A man, on the other hand, is extravagant
and spends the good gifts of God upon
his own evil passions, and then his heart
tells him that he is a liberal soul.
The heart turns sweet into bitter, and bitter
into sweet.
It is so deceitful above all things, and
so desperately wicked, that it has the impudence
to put darkness for light, and light for
darkness.
Now when a man has a divided heart,
he generally flatters himself.
Well, says he, it is true I drink
too much, but then there is never a
time that I refuse a dollar towards a
charity.
It is true, says he, I am certainly
not what I should be in my moral
character, but still see how regularly I keep
to my church or chapel.
It is true, says he, I don't now
and then mind a trick or two in
my trade, but I am always ready to
help the poor.
And so he imagines that he blocks out
an evil trade in his character with a
good one, and thus flatters his heart.
And see how self-contented and satisfied he
is.
The poor child of God is trying his
own heart with the deepest possible anxiety.
This man knows of no such thing.
He is always fully assured that he is
right.
The true believer is sitting down and turning
over his accounts day by day to see
whether he be really on the road to
heaven, or whether he has mistaken his evidence
and has been deceived.
But this man, self-satisfied, bandages his own
eyes and walks deliberately on, singing at every
step, straight to his own destruction.
I know of some such now.
It will not suffice for me simply to
state what their character is, unless God the
Holy Spirit should open their eyes.
They will be sure not to know their
own likeness, even though I should paint it
to the very life and put in every
touch and stroke.
Yet will they say, Ah, he could not
refer to me.
I am so good and so godly.
There could have been no reference to me
in anything that he said.
Do you know a class of people that
pull the most tremendously long faces, that always
look so serious, that talk the English language
with a kind of unctuous twang, that give
a savoury pronunciation to every word they utter?
Beware of them.
When a man wears all his religion in
his face, he has generally but a very
small stock in his heart.
Those tradesmen that put such a great display
in their windows frequently have very little behind.
So with these professors.
No one would know they were religious, so
they label themselves, that you may not make
a mistake.
You would think they were worldlings, if it
were not for their sanctimonious appearance.
But by putting that on, they think to
glide through the world with credit.
I hope they are not imagining that they
shall stand accepted before the bar of God
and deceive the omniscient.
Alas for them!
Their heart is divided.
This is no uncommon disease, despite its loathsomeness
and its terrible fatality.
Rife is it in this day.
Tens of thousands of Englishmen, who are reckoned
good and honourable, are afflicted with it.
Their whole head is sick, and their whole
heart faint from the fact that their heart
is divided.
They lack the courage to be thorough-going
sinners, and they have not sincerity enough to
be truly devoted people of God.
Having thus described the disease, I proceed to
notice its usual symptoms.
When a man's heart is divided, one of
the most frequent symptoms is formality in his
religious worship.
You know some men, perhaps, who are very
stringent believers of a certain form of doctrine,
and very great admirers of a certain shape
of church rule and government.
You will observe them utterly despising and abhorring
and hating all who differ from their predilections.
Albeit the difference be but as a jot
or a tittle, they will stand up and
fight for every rubric, defend every old rusty
nail in the church door, and think every
syllable in their peculiar creed should be accepted
without challenge.
As it was in the beginning, so must
it be now, and so must it ever
be even unto the end.
Now it is an observation, which your experience
will probably warrant, as mine certainly does, that
mostly these people stand up so fiercely for
the form, because lacking the power, that is
all they have to boast of.
They have no faith, though they have a
creed.
They have no life within, and they supply
its place with outward ceremony.
What wonder, therefore, that they fiercely defend that.
The man who knows how precious the life
of godliness is, the man who understands its
vitality, its deep-seated, deeply-rooted heart-power,
he also loves the form, but not as
he loves the spirit.
He approves the letter, but he likes the
pith and the marrow better.
He is apt, perhaps, to think less of
forms than he should do, for he will
mingle first with one body of sincere Christians,
and then with another, and he will say,
If I can enjoy my Master's presence, it
is but little matter to me where I
am found.
If I can but find the name of
Christ extolled and His simple gospel preached, this
is all I desire.
Not so the man whose heart is divided,
who has no soul in godliness.
He is bigoted to the extreme, and, well,
I repeat it, he may be.
Poor man!
All he has is the empty shell.
What wonder, therefore, that he should be ready
to fight for it!
You will notice many persons punctilious with regard
even to the form of our own simple
worship.
They will have it that there must always
be observed not simply reverent behavior in the
house of God, but something more than mere
reverence.
There must be an abject, slavish, tyrannical fear
upon the hearts of all who are gathered.
They will have it that every jot and
tittle of our worship must always be conducted
with a certain traditional decorum.
Now these people, as frequently as not, know
nothing whatever of the power of godliness, and
only contend for these little shells because they
have not the kernel.
They fight for the surface, albeit they have
never discovered the deep that couches beneath.
They know not the precious ores that lie
in the rich mines of the gospel, and
therefore the surface, covered though it be with
weeds and thistles, is quite enough for them.
Formality in religion is very often a trait
in the character of a man who has
a divided heart.
But this, perhaps, is not the most prominent
symptom.
Another mark in such a man's character is
his inconsistency.
You must not see him always, if you
would have a good opinion of him.
You must be guarded as to the days
on which you call upon him.
Call upon him on a Sunday, and you
will find him like a saint.
Don't call upon him on the Saturday night.
You might, perhaps, find him very much like
the worst of sinners.
O, of all the men in the world
whom I fear most for, because I know
their dangerous and deceitful position, they are those
among you who try with all your might
to follow the church and yet follow the
world.
You can come up and sing the sacred
hymns of Zion one evening, and another time
you can go to your haunts and sing
a profane and lascivious song.
You can drink one day at the table
of the Lord and another day at the
table of devils.
You appear to run first of all with
God's people in His service, and then afterwards
run with a multitude to do evil.
Ah, men and brethren, this indeed is a
terrible fact, a terrible index of a frightful
disease.
You must have a divided heart if you
lead an inconsistent life.
It is a happy circumstance, when a minister
can believe of his church, that he has
no hypocrite in the whole number.
But I am bold to say, though with
the deepest sorrow, this is more than I
could believe of so large a church as
that over which I am called to preside.
Ah, friends, there may be some of you
who practice sins unseen by your pastor's eye,
neither elder or deacon has yet tracked you
out.
You have been cunning in your iniquity.
Perhaps your sin is of such an order
that church discipline would altogether fail to touch
it.
You know, however, and your conscience tells you
that your life is not consistent with your
profession.
I adjure you by the living God, as
you and I must stand at the last
great day face to face at His tremendous
bar, either give up your profession or be
true to it.
Cease to be called a Christian, or else
be a Christian in truth.
Seek more grace that you may live up
to the example of your master, or else
I entreat of you.
And do it honestly, and if you would
take me at my word, I would rejoice
that you had done so.
Renounce your membership and no longer make a
profession of godliness.
An inconsistent life, I say, is a sure
token of a divided heart.
And again I must observe there is another
token of a divided heart, namely variableness in
object.
I might depict a character which you have
met with often in your life.
A man who attends a public meeting upon
some religious matter is seized with a sudden
enthusiasm to do good.
If he will not be a missionary to
the heathen himself, yet he will undertake to
devote of his substance to the cause, and
for the next week there is nothing on
his tongue but the missionary enterprise.
A little while after he attends some political
meeting, and now there is nothing before him
but the reformation of politics.
Another week and he is called to attend
some sanitary commission, and now there is nothing
wanted but proper drainage.
Religion, politics, social economy, each in its turn
and everything else, must give place to the
last topic which has engrossed his attention.
These men run first in one direction, then
in another.
Their religion is all spasmodic.
They are taken with it as men are
taken with an ague.
They shake by fits, and anon they are
calm.
They are sometimes hot and feverish, and anon
they are chilly and cold.
They take up their religion, and then they
lay it down again.
What does this prove concerning them but that
they have a divided heart, and they are
in the sight of God-diseased, loathsome persons
who shall never see his face with joy?
To conclude the list of symptoms, once more,
frivolity in religion is often a token of
a divided heart, and here I address myself
more immediately to those of my own age.
It is perhaps too common a sin with
young persons to treat religion with a light
and frivolous air.
There is a seriousness which is well becoming,
especially in youthful Christians.
Cheerfulness should be the constant aim of the
aged.
Their tendency is towards sadness.
Perhaps a proper seriousness and solemnity should be
the aim of the youthful believer, whose tendency
will be rather to levity than to despondency.
O my brethren, when we can talk about
religious things with flippancy, when we can quote
texts of Scripture in order to make jests
upon them, when we come up to the
Lord's table as if it were but a
common repast, when we come to baptism as
though it were but an ordinary observance about
which no solemnity is to be found, then
I fear we prove that our heart is
divided.
And I know that any soul conscious of
its guilt, if it has really been brought
to know the love of Christ, will always
come to sacred things in a sacred manner.
We do not come to the Lord's table
with likeness of heart.
There have been times when it has seemed
too solemn a matter for us to come
at all.
And as for baptism, he that comes to
baptism without having searched his heart, without having
looked well to his motives, without true devotion
of spirit, comes altogether in vain.
As the wrong communicant may eat and drink
damnation to himself, so may he who would
be thus wrongly baptized receive condemnation instead of
a blessing.
Frivolity of spirit is often a sign of
a divided heart.
This brings us to the third point, the
sad effects of a divided heart.
When a man's heart is divided, he is
at once everything that is bad.
With regard to himself, he is an unhappy
man.
Who can be happy while he has rival
powers within his own breast?
The soul must find a nest for itself,
or else it cannot find rest.
The bird that would seek to rest upon
two twigs would never have peace.
And the soul that endeavors to find two
resting places, first the world and then the
Savior, will never have any joy or comfort.
A united heart is a happy heart.
Hence David says, Unite my heart to fear
thy name.
They that give themselves wholly to God are
a blessed people, for they find that the
ways of religion are ways of pleasantness, and
all her paths are peace.
Men who are neither this nor that, neither
one thing nor another, are always uneasy and
miserable.
The fear of discovery and the consciousness of
being wrong conspire together to agitate the soul
and make it full of unease, disease, and
restlessness of spirit.
Such a man is unhappy in himself.
He is in the next place useless in
the church.
Of what good is such a man to
us?
We cannot put him in the pulpit to
propound the gospel that he does not practice.
We cannot put him in the deaconship to
serve the church, which his life would ruin.
We cannot commit to his charge the spiritual
matters of the church and the eldership, because
we discern that, not being spiritual himself, he
is not to be entrusted with them.
In no respect is he of any good
to us.
Reprobate silver shall men call them.
His name may be in the church book,
but it had better be taken away.
He may sit among us and give us
his contribution, but we should be better without
it, and without him than with either, though
he should double his talent and treble his
contributions.
We know that no man who is not
united in his heart vitally and entirely to
Christ can ever be of the slightest service
to the church of God.
But not only this.
He is a man dangerous to the world.
Such a man is like a leper going
abroad in the midst of healthy people.
He spreads the disease.
The drunkard is a leper set apart by
himself.
He doth but little harm comparatively, for he,
in his drunkenness, is like the leper when
he is driven out from society.
His very drunkenness cries out, Unclean!
Unclean!
But this man is a professor of religion,
and therefore tolerated.
He says he is a Christian, and therefore
he is admitted into all society, and yet
he is inwardly full of rottenness and deception.
Though outwardly whitewashed like a sepulcher, he is
more dangerous to the world, I say, than
the most vicious of men.
Tie him up, let him not go loose,
build a prison for him.
But what am I saying?
If you would build a prison for hypocrites,
all London would not suffice for ground for
the prisons.
O my brethren, notwithstanding the impossibility of binding
them, I do say that the maddest dog
in the hottest weather is not one half
so dangerous to men as a man who
has a divided heart, one who runs about
with the rabid poison of his hypocrisy upon
his lips, and destroys the souls of men
by contamination.
Not only unhappy himself, useless to the church,
and dangerous to the world, but he is
contemptible to everybody.
When he is found out, nobody receives him.
Scarcely will the world own him, and the
church will have nothing to administer to him
but its censure.
The most solemn consideration, however, is that this
man is reprobate in the sight of God.
To the eye of infinite purity, he is
one of the most obnoxious and detestable of
beings.
His heart is divided.
A pure and holy God hates, first, his
sin, and, secondly, the lies with which he
endeavors to cover it.
Oh, if there be a place where sinners
are more loathsome to God than anywhere else,
it is in his church.
A dog in its kennel is well enough,
but a dog in the throne room is
quite out of place.
A sinner in the world is bad enough,
but in the church he is hideous.
A madman in an asylum is a creature
to be pitied, but a madman who protests
he is not mad, and who will thrust
himself among us that he may obtain means
of doing mischief is not merely to be
pitied.
He is to be avoided and needs to
be restrained.
God hateth sin anywhere, but when sin puts
its fingers upon his divine altar, when it
comes and lays its insolent hand upon the
sacrifice that is burning there, then God spurns
it from him with disgust.
Of all men who stand in the most
likely place to receive the mightiest thunderbolt and
the most terrible lightning's flash, those are the
men who have a divided heart and profess
to serve God, while with their souls they
are serving sin.
Take heed, sinner!
Take heed!
Running on in thy sin thou wilt meet
with punishment.
But after all, O hypocrite, look well to
thy ways, for thy sin and thy lie
together shall bring down a dread and swift
destruction upon thy devoted head.
In conclusion, I have to address some remarks
to you with regard to the future punishment
of the man whose heart is divided unless
he be rescued by a great salvation.
I have endeavored to preach faithfully this morning,
as faithfully as I could, but I am
conscious that many of the children of God
do not find food under such a sermon
as this, nor is it my intention that
they should do so.
It is not rightly possible to blend the
sieve of sifting with the bushel of the
gospel.
We cannot well bring you the wheat and
the sieve, too.
This morning I have sought to take the
fan ministerially into my hand and to thoroughly
purge this floor in the name of Him
who shall be the great purger at the
last day.
We all need it, whether we know it
or not.
The best Christian needs sometimes to question himself
as to his motives.
And when God's children are not fed, it
is often more profitable to them to be
led to examine themselves than it would be
if they had some rich promise to feed
upon.
My hearers, out of so vast a number
this morning, are there none among you with
divided hearts?
Is it possible that this whole congregation is
made up of sincere Christians, truly enlightened, called,
and saved?
Is there not one man who, mistaking his
place, has put himself among the sheep when
he should have been among the goats?
Is there not one man here who, without
making a mistake, has dared impudently to thrust
himself into the number of God's priests when
he really is a worshipper of Baal?
Let me then, in the last place, that
I may with faithfulness discharge my mission, describe
the terrible condition of the hypocrite when God
shall come to judge the world.
He comes with brazen face.
He comes in the midst of the congregation
of the righteous.
The mandate has gone from the throne.
Gather out first the tares.
He hears the mandate, and his cheek pales
not.
His impudence continues with him even now.
He would still knock at the door and
say, Lord, Lord, open to me.
The dividing angel flies.
Terror is on the face of the wicked,
as on the left the tares are bound
in bundles to burn.
Imagine, however, the still greater consternation of this
individual, who, standing in the midst of ministers,
saints, and apostles, suddenly finds himself about to
be gleaned from them.
With a tremendous swoop, like an eagle descending
from its lofty height, the deaf angel bears
upon him, snatches him away, and claims him
as his own.
Thou art, says the black angel, thou art
a tare.
Thou hast grown side by side with the
wheat, but that has not changed thy nature.
The dew that falls upon the wheat has
fallen upon thee, the sun which shone upon
it thou hast enjoyed also.
But thou art still a tare, and thy
doom remaineth the same.
Thou shalt be bound up with the rest
in bundles to be burned.
O hearer, what must be his consternation when
with mighty hand that angel plucks him up
by the roots, carries him away, and he
that thought himself a saint is bound up
with sinners for destruction?
And now imagine the reception that he meets.
He is brought into the midst of the
wicked, the wicked who once with Pharisaic tongue
he had reproved.
Here he comes, they say, the man who
instructed us, the good man who taught us
to do better.
Here he comes himself, found out at last
to be no better than those whom he
despised.
Then imagine, if you dare, the inner dungeon,
the reserved seats of that fiery abode, and
the heaviest chain of despair.
Imagine, I say, if you can, the terrible
destruction, terrible beyond every other, which shall overwhelm
the man who in this world deceived the
church and dishonored God, but who is now
detected to his shame.
Common sinners have the common prison, but this
man shall be thrust into the inner prison
and made fast in the stocks of despair.
Tremble, professors!
Tremble, you who are half and half religious
men!
Tremble, you who pretend to fear God, but
like the Samaritans worship your idols also!
Oh, tremble now, lest your trembling should come
upon you in a day when you are
not aware of it, when you shall long
for the rocks to hide and for the
mountains to cover you, but shall be without
a shelter in the day of the fierce
anger of the God of the whole earth.
And now I cannot send you away without
preaching the gospel for a moment or two.
I have perhaps one here who is saying,
Sir, my heart is not only divided, but
it is broken.
Ah, there's a great deal of difference between
a divided heart and a broken heart.
The divided heart is cut in twain, the
broken heart is broken in pieces, all asunder,
and yet it is not divided.
It is all in pieces in one sense
as to its proud hope, and it is
melted in another sense as to its earnest
longing that it may be saved.
Poor broken heart, I was not rebuking thee.
Art thou desirous this morning to have thy
sins put away?
Then from the bottom of thy poor broken
heart cry today, Lord, save me from hypocrisy.
Whatever I may be, do not permit me
to think I am one of thine if
I am not.
Are you breathing out this prayer to God?
Lord, make me truly thine.
Put me among thy children.
Let me call thee my Father and not
turn away from thee.
Give me a new heart and a right
spirit.
Oh, wash me in the blood of Christ
and make me clean.
Make me what thou wouldst have me be,
and I will praise thee forever.
Remember, my dear hearer, if that is the
desire of thy heart, thou art this day
bidden to believe that Christ is able to
save thee and willing to save thee and
waiting to be gracious unto thee and more
ready to bestow mercy than thou art to
receive it.
Therefore thou art commanded to trust Him, for
all thy sins have been punished on Him
as thy surety, and for the sake of
Christ God is willing now to receive thee,
now to bless thee.
Come, close with Him this morning.
Lift thine eye to Him that did die
upon the tree.
Put thy trust in Him who is my
Redeemer and thy Redeemer too.
Let the blood which flows from His side
be received into thy heart.
Open thy poor wounds and say, My Master,
heal these wounds for me.
O Jesus, I know no other trust.
If Thou wilt save me, I will know
no other love.
My heart is undivided in its love.
It looks to Thee alone.
It shall be soon undivided in its gratitude.
I will praise Thee and Thee alone.
Poor broken-hearted penitent, I said not ill
when I contradicted myself by saying, Though thy
heart be broken, it is not divided.
Bring it just as it is and say,
Lord, receive me through the blood of Christ
and let me be thine now and thine
forever through Jesus.
Amen.
This message, A Divided Heart, was preached by
Charles Haddon Spurgeon on September 25th, 1859.
This is Charles Kelsch inviting you to join
me again for another message from the Prince
of Preachers.