"I have inclined my heart to perform thy statutes always, even unto the end.”PSALM 119: 112.

It is impossible to compress a truth with all its qualifications and explanations into one short sentence. The Psalmist here speaks of what he had done in order to secure his own obedience to God, and leaves out of sight for the time what God had done. He thinks of his state of mind, and of his own agency in its existence, without thinking of the agency of God which went before and enabled him to act. He might have said with equal truth, "Thou hast inclined my heart," and "I have inclined my heart;" for the one prepared the way for the other.

There was a time, however, in the life of the godly man when he could not have used this language, "I have inclined my heart to perform thy statutes." He felt the binding force of the spiritual law, but he found himself to be carnal, sold under sin. And this bondage was a bondage of his will; such a bondage that the occasional longings which he felt to escape from it were powerless, and his struggles to do right were without fruit. From these efforts of his unassisted nature to turn the current of his own will he discovers his weakness, as well as the misery of being in thraldom to sin. And when he finds that this bondage of his will to sin has been removed, experience has taught him that he did not make himself willing, that a mightier than he broke the chain of his captivity. He now cries out to God, "Thou hast inclined my heart to perform thy statutes; thou hast worked in me to will and to do of thy good pleasure."

Thus the original inclination of his heart to obedience comes from God, as he feels and owns with gratitude. He has therefore become possessed of a new moving power; and just as a lame man when cured by a physician may say, "I walk,” or “I run,” so may he say, when he contemplates his efforts to be obedient after his conversion, "I have inclined my heart to perform thy statutes." Nor can he ever lose sight of the cause which has rectified his will and has imparted to him this new power, any more than the lame man can attribute to himself the recovery from his infirmity. But there is this difference between the lame man and him. The former can go about without the physician, and perhaps will never need to call for his aid again during life. It is a past fact, and it may be an isolated fact in his history that a strength beyond his own gave him the use of a lost power. But it is not true that the godly man can incline his heart to perform the statutes without the aid of God. And whether this continual aid of God is necessary to sustain his new nature because of its weakness in the state of trial on earth, or whether-what is more probableno finite being, man or angel, can go alone upon a path of virtue, but the security of all must consist in their taking hold of God's arm-whencesoever this necessity arises, it is real, and found to be real in his constant experience. If he thinks to say, "I can incline my heart to perform thy statutes," because at one time in my history thou madest me inclined by thy power, such a feeling, which cuts the cord binding him to a present God, is the prelude to a fall. When therefore he uses language like that in the text respecting what he has done or can do, it is always used with the tacit understanding that a supply of power for such exertions of his own comes from the Omnipotent fountain. He is now like a man who has no money of his own, but is allowed to use the name of a rich friend to an unlimited extent. He can say, without the least shadow of boasting or self-confidence, "I will engage in such and such a transaction involving very large liabilities;" he shrinks from no outlay because it is vast, and calls the operation his own; knowing all the while that he is nothing but a poor man sustained by the unfailing capital of another. And the good man is often found to have such a confidence in the strength of an ever-present God, that he is not afraid to calculate upon the future, and to affirm what his conduct will be in certain contingencies where he may be exposed to trial. He says, "I can do all things," but he always adds, if not in word at least in thought, "through Christ Jesus which strengtheneth me.'

Thus the power of the Christian to sway his own will always implies a co-operation of the Divine Spirit and himself. What he does, as his part of the labor, consists not in simple desiring or longing, however intense. There is no inclining his heart by the

simple will to incline it. That is not consistent with the nature of a rational being, and lies beyond the reach of finite power. In order to do what the Psalmist speaks of in the text, hard work upon himself must have gone before. He must have brought the truth of God before his reason, his conscience, and his feelings; he must have roused his sluggish soul, as he would rouse a sleeper amid the flames; he must have meditated long enough upon the Divine Word to have it exclude other thoughts, and occupy his soul. When after such efforts he finds his heart roused into an inclination or tendency towards obedience, he can very truly say, "I have inclined my heart," because his actings were the cause without which the inclination would not have taken place. But he knows full well that these labors would not be crowned with success without the presence of a higher cause in its fulness of power.

From these first reflections suggested by the text we pass on to the remark that it is his heart which the Christian inclines or bends to the performance of duty. Not merely his choice, taking all things into view, moves in that direction; not merely his conscience; but his heart, as including all the free and glad movements of his nature. This indeed is admitted in all our systems of theology, and in all our treatises upon religious experience, that a religion without affections is worth nothing; but after all we need to feel how important the affections are for the elevation of Christian character as well as for its enjoyment. Although Christianity at the root is alike in all, there may be said to be two sorts of Christians: one class to a great degree contemplate the life of the soul as a series of duties, and are controlled by the feeling of obligation; the other class regard the essence of religion as lying in feeling towards God, which they seek to arouse by acts of meditation and worship. It is obvious that the habits of thinking of both classes are attended with peculiar dangers. The one class is liable to slide down to a dead routine of duties, and their religious life scarcely rises higher, as it sometimes appears, than that of the moralist who frets and chafes at the restraints of obligation. The other class is peculiarly prone to self-deception, and when sincere, is apt to be satisfied with the deliciousness of religious emotion without going farther. But still, supposing the men of both these types to be real followers of Christ, I have no hesitation in saying that the man with a heart has risen to a higher level than the man with a conscience. For it is quite possible that the conscience shall recognize a moral law without taking into full view the living, personal Law-giver. We are in great danger, when we act from a sense of duty, of living amid abstractions; of separating in thought the part we have to act in the world from the great Author of the natural and moral system. It seems as if there

would be duties and rights, were there no moral Governor of the universe. Thus such a principle of action does not bind us to the throne of God, but rather, taking a lower aim, attaches us to the rules and laws which he upholds. The affections, on the contrary, bring us into direct communion with God himself, and lend the aid derived from love of the Law-giver to the satisfaction which our moral nature takes in the law, which emanates from his character. If there could be two persons, one of whom had love without the sense of duty, and the other the sense of duty without a capacity for love, the latter could be only a laborious moralist, while the former, even without the feeling of right, could do what is right out of regard to the God whom he loves. This latter supposition indeed can never be true in matter of fact. There never was a being made without a sense of right and without conscience. Much more then, when this property is present in the soul, will the man who loves act so as to please God.

There is a lamentable defect in such Christianity as is without emotion. After allowing for differences of temperament, we cannot but feel that the little of heart manifest in religion, compared with the amount of moral feeling, argues a low state of the religious principle in the soul. We are too far off from a personal God and a personal Saviour, and therefore life circulates feebly through us, as through the extremities of the body. We bend our purposes to do right; we run into a thousand schemes having the benefit of man in view, but the heart scarcely beats. Our religion rather enables us to do good in this world than prepares us for the employments of the celestial home where God is the centre of all affections.

And this fact, that we do not enough incline our hearts, renders our characters also unattractive. That man, certainly, who acts from impulse and uncalculating generosity, is not much to be commended; and yet all men love to look upon such exhibitions of character. This common suffrage is testimony in favor of the emotions and of their occupying a prominent place in the character. They are more strictly personal than any thing else which belongs to man. They reach forth towards persons, and they arrest the regards of persons. If then our Christian life is to be love, it must have a large measure of heart in it. We must love God and man to such a degree that the province of duty may be to restrain us from pouring ourselves out, so to speak, upon other beings - from overlooking our own valuable interests in our zeal for what is foreign to ourselves. The heart must not only be a moving force, but a very strong moving force, the wind which fills the sails; while reason and conscience ought to be like the man at the bowsprit and the man at the helm of the vessel.

The Psalmist proceeds to inform us of the point towards which he bends his affections. "I have inclined my heart to perform thy statutes." His affections do not find their gratification simply in meditating on God or on his word; but they pass beyond the regions of contemplation into those of practice. The philosopher, who vainly aims to purify himself by lofty thought and by intimacy with elevating objects, may stop short of this; he may incline his reason or discursive faculty to reject the gross materials of thinking on which the mass of minds feed; but the result of all this is nothing more than that the habit of meditation becomes stronger the longer it lasts. His soul is not purified from selfish affections, nor drawn to God-the centre of obedience, and the source of activity to virtuous minds. He is rather rendered more selfish by his habits of philosophical meditation; for he finds them so much pleasanter and easier than the hard work of active self-sacrifice, that it is next to impossible to arouse him from his sluggish inactivity. Thus there is no performance, no action in his system, which begins and ends with speculation.

Nor again does the godly man stop at inclining his heart to desire to perform the statutes of God. This is the limit which many reach; and this the highest attainment of their lives, to long to be good, to wish that they were obedient without being so. There is so much intrinsic beauty in such a character, and there is of necessity so much dissatisfaction with a life of sin, that the heart while yet unrenewed, without turning from sin, turns in eager longings towards a holier and better life. But still the man stays long, perhaps for ever, in his state of sin, drawing encouragement, it may be, from these very longings, that it is not with him as with other men, yet never ripening them into the fruits of effectual resolve. He is like a man lost in thick darkness amid the wilds, and seeing a light afar: inclined to go in that direction; and yet never performing the journey lest there should be swamps or pitfalls between him and the light.

Actual obedience is the proof to which we must come at last, in our own case, as well as in that of others, of the sincerity of our religion. There is no real inclination of heart towards God which fails of securing the performance of his statutes. The evidence of true piety is a life of holiness and usefulness, springing forth from a heart where God is enthroned. And, without this evidence, we must decide that the law of Christ, as a system of practice, is rejected by the soul.

That which the godly man's heart is inclined to perform is denoted by the term, thy statutes. On these words we remark, ia the first place, that the Psalmist does not describe his state