Oliver Heywood
THIS extract, with some editing, has been taken from Heart Treasure by the Rev. Oliver Heywood (1629-1702), a work that is based on Matthew 12:35, “A good man, out of the good treasure of the heart, bringeth forth good things.” Heywood, one of the ejected ministers of 1662, was frequently persecuted. Under his preaching believers were much edified, and large numbers of the impenitent were converted. See November 1996 issue for the extract, Heart Treasure – Known by God.
ONE class of precious and useful treasure which the believer should lay up in his heart, is composed of those various experiences which meet him in all the passages of his life. By collecting and preserving these, he may secure much benefit; for to do so is a plain duty, a mark of wisdom, and a means of more. Thus the Psalmist, after a glowing record of the varied operations of Divine Providence, says, “Whoso is wise, and will observe these things, even they shall understand the loving and kindness of the Lord.” It is as if he had said, “They that set themselves to consider the Lord’s works in the world have wise and observant spirits, and shall grow still wiser, and see more of God in His dispensations than other men.” God opens His secret cabinet to those who humbly and devoutly study the developments of His moral government
But, on the other hand, God views with displeasure those who are blind to His dealings, and threatens them with the heaviest punishment. “Because they regard not the works of the Lord, nor the operation of His hands, He shall destroy them, and not build them up.” Rightly to ponder the agency of God in all earthly affairs, is a work too high for the sottish minds of irreligious men.
It is only the true Christian that suitably recognizes this agency, and derives from it the lessons which it is intended to teach. “The righteous man wisely considereth the house of the wicked;” that is, he considers what becomes of it, how the Lord deals with wicked men and with their houses; and observes, in all the vicissitudes of human things, the dispensations of God towards the good and the evil, in mercy and in judgment. “Who is wise, and he shall understand these things? prudent, and he shall know them? for the ways of the Lord are right, and the just shall walk in them; but the transgressors shall fall therein.”
It is my purpose, however, to notice in this connection the personal experience of the believer in matters relating to himself, and to view them as having reference to four particulars: the vanity of the world, the treachery of his own heart, the bitterness of sin, and heavenly discoveries. From each of these departments, I would urge every child of God to draw salutary instruction for his future guidance.
First, lay up experiences of the world’s vanity.
Solomon was engaged, during his whole life, in making such a collection; and in his old age he recorded it in the Book of Ecclesiastes as a lesson to all after generations. He possessed unrivalled faculties and opportunities for prosecuting such an experiment. He knew better than any man what the world can do for its most favoured votaries. But, after having tasted its most intoxicating delights, he pronounces the sad and disheartening result. “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” And the whole book, in which he thus describes his experience, is an induction of facts and arguments to prove his assertion. What then “can the man do that cometh after the king?” If you make the like investigation, you will be forced to come to the same conclusion. You cannot search deeper than he did into the nature of earthly good, nor drink fuller draughts from the fountains of worldly pleasure; yet he found but emptiness and vexation in all the enjoyments which sense can offer. And have you not found the same? Read the wise man’s last and soundest lectures on the vanity of every pursuit that terminates here; recall your past history as you read, and let dearly bought experience give its comment; and then lay up both text and comment in your hearts.
Say, did you ever trust the world but it deceived you? Has it not failed you at such a time? and disappointed you in such a case? O, how you blessed yourself in such an expectation, but alas, you grasped the sand or smoke. Have you not found riches uncertain, friends inconstant, relations vanishing? Have you not seen the world passing away, and its pleasures, profits and honours to be like a swift gliding river hastening onward to the dark ocean of forgetfulness? However men may be bewitched with the world’s splendour, the Spirit of God judges of it as a mere phantasy – a pageant show that glitters with a hollow and deceitful lustre. What solid content have you ever found in it? When you have sought to the creature for happiness, has it not answered, “It is not in me?” Can have you not learned that all created joys are, at best, but as a dream of the night, when the hungry and thirsty think they eat and drink, but wake and still are faint? Have you not found this true in your own sad experience? If so, then treasure up these results; regard them as settled facts; and learn from them to trust the world no more.
O, would you endanger your soul again? Will you lean again upon this broken reed that will run into your hand and heart, and pierce you with many sorrows? Will you, by striving to be rich, “fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition?” The truth is, there is nothing in this world which can answer our desires and hopes. No earthly pursuit or attainment is capable of affording us what we expect from it. We find the world but a lie. Its brightest glories are a mocking vision; its fairest promises turn into disappointments that strike and wound us; and thus what we trusted to as our leaning-staff becomes a knocking cudgel. Well, then, since you have found it so, look upon it as such, and carefully preserve the experience.
Secondly, lay up experiences of the treachery of your own heart.
The heart is a mournful book; but you must peruse and re-peruse it, if you would not live and die in fatal ignorance. Study, then, the multifarious windings, and artifices, and concealments of your depraved heart. Consider and remember well all its ways of guile and guilt which have cost you so dear. In thus reviewing your inward history, you will find, that in a certain duty your heart gave you the slip; in such a temptation your heart led away your feet, or hands, or tongue, and caused your flesh to sin. In such an enjoyment your perfidious heart stole away; in such a moment of worldly success your grovelling heart prostrated itself in bestial idolatry at the altar of Mammon; in such an affliction your murmuring heart rose up against God, and your tumultuous, quarrelsome spirit made you speak unadvisedly.
And will you trust your deceitful heart again? Who but a fool will venture his whole estate with a known thief? What wise man will be imposed on by a detected juggler? “He that trusteth his own heart is a fool.” And will not you be the greatest fool that breathes, if after so many cheating tricks, you still confide in this unmitigated traitor? Ah, reader, I appeal to your own experience. How many a woeful instance you have had of the heart’s deceitfulness! It is prone to deceive, and equally prone to be deceived, and the latter is more dangerous. The heart, since the fall, is naturally of a crafty, subtle, and fickle temper, and is made still worse by the deceitfulness of sin which is woven and twisted, as it were, into its very texture. These two cheats, deceitful sin and the deceitful heart, conspire to undo the soul. And were not God a better friend to us than we are to ourselves, our salvation would be impossible. Every man is a satan to himself; and the sincere Christian will pray, most of all, to be delivered from that evil one, himself. He is far more afraid of the folly bound up in his own heart, than of all the outward assaults of the world, and the machinations of hell.
The reason that any man indulges self-confidence, is because he is ignorant of the treacherous workings of his own heart, or having felt them, neglects the experience. As a desperate bankrupt shrinks from inspecting his accounts, lest the evidences of his ruin should glare too frightfully upon him; so a poor deceived sinner dares not look into his heart, from a vague, but uneasy consciousness that he will not find things there exactly as he wishes; and thus he seeks to cover it over, and to conceal even from himself a sight so destructive to his peace. The real child of God, however, cannot but see what others overlook, or strive to hide; and willingly does he see it, and as sadly does he lament it, and as watchfully labour to subdue and extirpate it.
And it deserves to be noted, that though the deceptions of the heart are a source of great evil and danger, yet to observe and remember them is of singular benefit to a serious mind, and one of its strongest safeguards against their power. May God enable us all so to know and fear our own hearts, that we shall henceforth trust them less, and Him more.
Thirdly, lay up experiences of the bitterness of sin.
Consider what have been the insinuating ways of sin and Satan to entangle you, and the sad effects which followed. Consider what tears, and groans, and painful strugglings it has cost you to extricate your captive souls and regain freedom and peace. O, the intricate windings of that crooked serpent! What strange and subtle devices has he used to entrap you in his snares, or overtake you with his furious assaults! How often has he presented the bait, and hid the hook! Has he not set before your credulous souls the pleasure or profit of a base lust? Has he not extenuated sin at first to induce you to commit it, and afterwards aggravated it to drive you to despair? Sin cheats us with the prospect of golden mountains, and lures us on in pursuit of the delusive vision, till it leaves us in the mire at last. Though its beginning may seem delightful, its end is always bitter.
Has not such been your experience? Ask your own hearts, what fruit you had in those things whereof you are now ashamed? The awakened conscience will answer, that their only fruit is death – deadly pain now, or eternal death hereafter – the death-like throes of repentance in this world, or the death-dealing inflictions of vengeance in the world to come. Your wild oats, sown with delight in youth, sprung up, in your riper years, into bitter hemlock and wormwood. Though wickedness was sweet on your lips, it turned to the gall of asps within – a biting, scathing poison, filling your very soul with agony. O, the dreadful stings and pangs that sin leaves behind it! With what fears and horrors, with what wearing griefs and crushing anxieties, does it fill the penitent soul!
Consider also what broken bones and affrighting cares must the prodigal endure, before he is received into his Father’s sweet embraces! How long is the humble suitor compelled to lie at the gates of mercy before he can obtain admission, or see the King’s face, or taste the joy of His salvation! And this arises not from any unwillingness on the part of God to bestow forgiveness, or from any delight which He feels in the anguish of a sinner; but from His desire to impress the heart with the evil of sin, to stir it up to more earnest longing for His grace, to lead it to prize Christ and pardon more, and to teach it to hate and to avoid sin for the future. He, therefore, often keeps the soul long in suspense, even when He yearns over it, as Joseph did over his brethren. He deals with the soul, as He dealt with Miriam in the cure of her leprosy. When Moses besought Him to pardon her sin, and heal her, although He listened to the prayer, yet, in order to affect her mind with a just sense of the offence which she had committed, He required her to wait seven days, and to be shut out, during the interval, from the congregation. Thus God would have us know the worth of His favour, by the want of it for a season.
Surely, if you would lay such sad experience in store, it would prove a powerful antidote against future temptation. O, what abhorrence of sin did the soul feel in the hour of its deep humiliation, and what earnest resolves did it form to sin no more! If, while David was bathing himself in briny tears, he had been asked, What sayest thou now to murder? How dost thou like thy fleshly lusts? Wilt thou buy repentance at so dear a rate, and fall again into uncleanness? Would he not have answered, “O no! God forbid that I should sin again: I will be racked, or torn in pieces, rather than dishonour my God, grieve His Spirit, and fill my poor soul with such tormenting troubles?” When he was roaring by reason of the disquietness of his spirit, when there was no rest in his bones because of his sin, he had far other thoughts of his sin than when he was adventuring upon it. There is scarcely any man so brutish as not to abstain from that which experience tells him has done him great harm. Every man of the least prudence will forbear such food and drink as he knows will infallibly bring upon him excruciating pain.
So the Christian, who has learned by experience the bitterness of sin, and how dear it has cost him, will be careful not to commit it again. Thus will he reason, “I remember into what a sad condition sin brought me. It behoves me to sin no more lest a worse thing come upon me. Sin broke my bones; but now, if I sin again, I fear it will break my neck. Sin filled my soul with heart-shaking fears; but I may expect it will now fill me with heart-desolating despair. It brought a hell into my conscience before; but I fear it will now cast my soul into hell.” Lay up and thoughtfully ponder such sad experience, and I may then almost say, Sin if you dare.
Fourthly, treasure up the divine discoveries, of which your souls have had sweet and satisfying experience.
If you are Christians, such discoveries have doubtless been vouchsafed to you; and they were bestowed, not merely to be enjoyed, but to be remembered, contemplated, and improved. Of this class of experiences there are two kinds which I would recommend you to preserve; special providences, and spiritual influences.
You should lay up experiences of the particular manifestations of divine providence towards you. The wisdom of God has so disposed affairs with respect to His people, that one part of our life may help us in another; the van of our days contributing to bring up the rear. From the recollection of past deliverances, the soul may thus argue: “The Lord helped me in such a strait, directed in such a doubt, prevented such a fear, broke such a snare; He is the same God still, and will, therefore, help for the future.” At every fresh interposition of Divine goodness, set up an Ebenezer, so that from the portion of your pilgrimage which has been accomplished, you may derive memorials and encouragements for that which is to come. In each hour of perplexity and difficulty, sustain yourselves by the conclusive and scriptural argument, “The Lord has delivered; He does deliver; and, therefore, He will deliver.”
Write down signal providences, or lock them up in the safe depository of a sanctified memory, and produce them when you are in extremity and have your back to the wall. Sweet experiences of former displays of God’s care and protection are not the least part of the Christian’s treasure. I would not, indeed, have you dote upon them, or imagine that God can go no further than He has gone – a supposition which can only serve to daunt you in new and greater troubles. Nevertheless, be careful not to despise or slight these proofs of His kindness, but lay them up and plead them with Him, whenever the storm of calamity threatens to renew its violence. One part of the seventy-fourth Psalm contains a sad complaint of God’s anger, and the afflictions of the Church; while the other glows with a cheering rehearsal of former exhibitions of the power and mercy of Jehovah. Thus the merciful assistance vouchsafed in the past, sheds hope and confidence over the darkness of the future.
You must also treasure up the spiritual enlargements and comforts, which have gladdened your religious course. Call them to mind; review them with humility and gratitude; and in the season of desponding gloom draw from them encouragement and consolation thus:
“In such an ordinance I met with God, and beheld His reconciled face. In such a duty my graces were quickened, exercised, increased. In such a season of secret prayer, my heart was warmed, melted, satisfied. In such a company, in such a society, in such a time of public worship, my whole soul was enlarged, filled, and sweetly transported beyond myself. O what a blessed time was that to me, when I experienced the manifestations of God’s favour, enjoyed the smiles of His love, and felt the witness of His Spirit, sealing my forgiveness and acceptance.
“Well do I remember it; and my heart dances within me at the recollection. Those hours of blissful fellowship with God come over my spirit still, like gleams of Paradise. Such moments are not always to be expected. These heavenly dainties are not the Christian’s ordinary fare. A pining time may come. I will, therefore, highly prize and carefully store up such foretastes of divine joy against the hour of need. God forbid that I should lose this token for good, this broken ring, this pledge from heaven. This may stand me in stead, in a dark and gloomy day when the Lord may frown upon me as an enemy, and seem to put me from Him as though He would forsake me.
“Then, with Job, will I say unto Him, ‘Thou knowest that I am not wicked.’ Lord, dost thou deal so with wicked men, or reveal thyself thus to men who know thee not? Art thou wont to stir up in the careless world such penitent bemoanings, such ardent breathings, and such vehement pantings after thyself? And hast thou ever given to unregenerate souls such familiar discoveries of thy grace, as my heart hath many a time received? Are these thy ways with unsanctified men? Wilt thou hold communion with those who were never united to thee? Does not such communion presuppose a union? Either my experience is false and counterfeit, or I am thine; for whom thou lovest once, thou lovest to the end. Though I am fickle and inconsistent, thou art the same, changeless in thy love, as in thy nature. I dare not say that all my sweet experiences were mere fictions, shadows, dreams.
“No. I humbly hope they were genuine evidences of thy special love, arising from thy word, and built upon it; yea, they carried their evidence along with them, and left such impressions on my soul as can never be forgotten or effaced. I can appeal to thyself, O Lord, if tokens have not come from thee to me, such as thou only couldst give, and none but a renewed heart could receive. And since thou canst not deny thy name, engraven on my heart, and sweetly sealed to me, I commit the matter wholly to thee. Though now thou seemest to deal strangely with me, as if thou hadst quite cast me off; yet thou art my God still; my loving Father; my only Friend. I cannot part from thee – I will not let thee go. There was once love between us; and though now, in wisdom and faithfulness, thou appearest to smother and restrain thy love; yet I know, by the workings which I feel in my own breast towards thee, that thou hast the same heart which thou wast wont to have. And, therefore, Lord, I hang upon thee, and plead with David, ‘Where are thy former lovingkindnesses which thou swarest unto me’?”
Thus lay up your sweet experiences, and thus draw them forth in the black night of despondency and spiritual desertion. O, when God deals graciously with you, neglect not the testimonies of His love, but garner them in the recesses of your heart, as mementoes from your Husband, Christ, to be your solace and joy during the dark and lonely hours in which you mourn His absence! ●