Garment-rendering and other outward signs of religious emotion,
are easily manifested and are frequently hypocritical; but to feel
true repentance is far more difficult, and consequently far less
common. Men will attend to the most multiplied and minute ceremonial
regulations--for such things are pleasing to the flesh--but true
religion is too humbling, too heart-searching, too thorough for the
tastes of the carnal men; they prefer something more ostentatious,
flimsy, and worldly. Outward observances are temporarily comfortable;
eye and ear are pleased; self-conceit is fed, and self- righteousness
is puffed up: but they are ultimately delusive, for in the article of
death, and at the day of judgment, the soul needs something more
substantial than ceremonies and rituals to lean upon. Apart from
vital godliness all religion is utterly vain; offered without a
sincere heart, every form of worship is a solemn sham and an impudent
mockery of the majesty of heaven.
HEART-RENDING is divinely wrought and solemnly felt. It is a
secret grief which is personally experienced, not in mere form, but
as a deep, soul-moving work of the Holy Spirit upon the inmost heart
of each believer. It is not a matter to be merely talked of and
believed in, but keenly and sensitively felt in every living child of
the living God. It is powerfully humiliating, and completely sin-
purging; but then it is sweetly preparative for those gracious
consolations which proud unhumbled spirits are unable to receive; and
it is distinctly discriminating, for it belongs to the elect of God,
and to them alone.
The text commands us to rend our hearts, but they are naturally
hard as marble: how, then, can this be done? We must take them to
Calvary: a dying Saviour's voice rent the rocks once, and it is as
powerful now. O blessed Spirit, let us hear the death-cries of Jesus,
and our hearts shall be rent even as men rend their vestures in the
day of lamentation.
