Skip to main content

A New Affection - Part Four

“THE EXPULSIVE POWER OF A NEW AFFECTION”

Even the Strongest Resolve is Not Enough to Dislodge an Affection by Leaving a Void

It will now be seen, perhaps, why it is that the heart keeps by its present affections with so much tenacity – when the attempt is, to do them away by a mere process of extirpation. It will not consent to be so desolated. The strong man, whose dwelling-place is there, may be compelled to give way to another occupier – but unless another stronger than he, has power to dispossess and to succeed him, he will keep his present lodgment inviolable. The heart would revolt against its own emptiness. It could not bear to be so left in a state of waste and cheerless insipidity. The moralist who tries such a process of dispossession as this upon the heart, is thwarted at every step by the recoil of its own mechanism. You have all heard that Nature abhors a vacuum. Such at least is the nature of the heart, that though the room which is in it may change one inmate for another, it cannot be left void without the pain of most intolerable suffering. It is not enough then to argue the folly of an existing affection.

It is not enough, in the terms of a forcible or an affecting demonstration, to make good the evanescence of its object. It may not even be enough to associate the threats and the terrors of some coming vengeance, with the indulgence of it. The heart may still resist the every application, by obedience to which, it would finally be conducted to a state so much at war with all its appetites as that of downright inanition. So to tear away an affection from the heart, as to leave it bare of all its regards and of all its preferences, were a hard and hopeless undertaking – and it would appear, as if the alone powerful engine of dispossession were to bring the mastery of another affection to bear upon it.

We know not a more sweeping interdict upon the affections of Nature, than that which is delivered by the Apostle in the verse before us. To bid a man into whom there has not yet entered the great and ascendant influence of the principle of regeneration, to bid him withdraw his love from all the things that are in the world, is to bid him give up all the affections that are in his heart. The world is the all of a natural man. He has not a taste nor a desire that points not to a something placed within the confines of its visible horizon. He loves nothing above it, and he cares for nothing beyond it; and to bid him love not the world, is to pass a sentence of expulsion on all the inmates of his bosom. To estimate the magnitude and the difficulty of such a surrender, let us only think that it were just as arduous to prevail on him not to love wealth, which is but one of the things in the world, as to prevail on him to set willful fire to his own property. This he might do with sore and painful reluctance, if he saw that the salvation of his life hung upon it. But this he would do willingly, if he saw that a new property of tenfold value was instantly to emerge from the wreck of the old one.

In this case there is something more than the mere displacement of an affection. There is the overbearing of one affection by another. But to desolate his heart of all love for the things of the world, without the substitution of any love in its place, were to him a process of as unnatural violence, as to destroy all the things that he has in the world, and give him nothing in their room. So that, if to love not the world be indispensable to one’s Christianity, then the crucifixion of the old man is not too strong a term to mark that transition in his history, when all old things are done away and all things become new. We hope that by this time, you understand the impotency of a mere demonstration of this world’s insignificance. Its sole practical effect, if it had any, would be. To leave the heart in a state which to even heart is insupportable, and that is a mere state of nakedness and negation. You may remember the fond and unbroken tenacity with which your heart has often recurred to pursuits, over the utter frivolity of which it sighed and wept but yesterday. The arithmetic of your short-lived days, may on Sabbath make the clearest impression upon your understanding – and from his fancied bed of death, may the preacher cause a voice to descend in rebuke and mockery on all the pursuits of earthliness – and as he pictures before you the fleeting generations of men, with the absorbing grave, whither all the joys and interests of the world hasten to their sure and speedy oblivion, may you, touched and solemnized by his argument, feel for a moment as if on the eve of a practical and permanent emancipation from a scene of so much vanity.

But the morrow comes, and the business of the world, and the objects of the world, and the moving forces of the world come along with it – and the machinery of the heart, in virtue of which it must have something to grasp, or something to adhere to, brings it under a kind of moral necessity to be actuated just as before – and in utter repulsion to wards a state so unkindly as that of being frozen out both of delight and of desire, does it feel all the warmth and the urgency of its wonted solicitations – nor in the habit and history of the whole man, can we detect so much as one symptom of the new creature – so that the church, instead of being to him a school of obedience, has been a mere sauntering place for the luxury of a passing and theatrical emotion; and the preaching which is mighty to compel the attendance of multitudes, which is mighty to still and to solemnize the hearers into a kind of tragic sensibility, which is mighty in the play of variety and vigour that it can keep up around the imagination, is not mighty to the pulling down of strong holds.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Painted Patio Wall Transformation - Our New "Secret Garden"

Michael and I have discovered a Secret Garden every where we have lived since getting married in 2010.  Whether it was the creek that ran behind our first apartment in Sacramento or the tiny little space of our 520 square foot, 1962 single-wide, mobile home in Rancho Cordova, California, we were always able to discover and create a unique sanctuary to call home.  Even though, in years past, we did what we could to make our surroundings uniquely wonderful, we never had the room to go really crazy until now. Since moving to our new home in North Carolina in May, we have not only discovered a world of exotic creatures and plants outdoors, but we have also started taking full advantage of the additional space we now have available to add our own touch of whimsy to the new "Wood's Secret Garden". Our first major project was the Patio which joins the in-law quarters (where mom lives) to the kitchen entrance into the main house.  We have received so many questions abou

The Project!

So, I had a huge jar of left over glass pebbles--you know the kind that you get at the craft store in those little net bags. I use the flawless ones to make my custom art pendants and rather than throw away the flawed ones, I kept collecting them in a large glass jar hoping someday I would come up with a brilliant idea. Well, here it is! It's a work in progress... Clip I first cut out pages from an old pocket Bible that was falling apart and missing pages. Clip I them spent a good part of a day, decoupaging them to a long section of the hallway wall. Clip Once the decoupage had dried; I began at the bottom of the wall, gluing one glass bead at a time, using (you guessed it) E6000. This process took at least 10 separate, 1 hour sessions. Once I glued about 5 or 6 rows, I used lengths of scotch tape to secure them to the wall and allowed the glue to dry over night before starting another section. Clip This took a really, really, l

Custom Doll Trunk with Doll and tons of clothes and accessories now available!

This took forever!  After transforming the 24 inch Bratz Dolls into "Just K.I.D.S" as part of the campaign to help rescue kids trapped in the sex trafficking industry, I got the crazy idea to convert a vintage suitcase into a doll trunk.  After making the inside compartments and decoupaging and hand painting the entire outside of the suitcase (both front and back) the set is now complete and up for auction on Ebay. Leave a comment if you want to bid on this amazing doll trunk.  You even get to pick which doll you want to be included.