God speaks
to us first in our own hearts.' Happily for us our Lord has annotated
His own text and has told us that an honest heart is the alone root of
all true religion. Honest, that is, with itself, and with God and man
about itself. As David says in his so honest psalm, 'Behold, Thou
desirest truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden part Thou shalt
make me to know wisdom.' And, indeed, all the preachers and writers in
Scripture, and all Scriptural preachers and writers outside of Scripture,
are at one in this: that all true wisdom begins at home, and that it all
begins at the heart. And they all teach us that he is the wisest of men
who has the worst opinion of his own heart, as he is the foolishest of
men who does not know his own heart to be the worst heart that ever any
man was cursed with in this world. 'Here is wisdom': not to know the
number of the beast, but to know his mark, and to read it written so
indelibly in our own heart.
And where this first and best of all wisdom is not, there, in our Lord's
words, there is no deepness of earth, no root, and no fruit.
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