Evil heart

“ This fire of self-love in the heart, engendering pride, hatred, contempt, scorn, menace, revenge, malice, cruelty and all evil passions, is the hell-fire which torments the wicked for ever and ever.
The heat and light of the spiritual world correspond to the love and wisdom of those there, or to their opposites. The mind of an angel is radiant with intelligence, because his heart is glowing with love. The mind of a devil is dark with falsity, because his heart burns with hate. ”

“ I was driven by the devil, allured by sin and corruption, and deceived by my own evil heart.”
About this time likewise, it pleased our Lord to visit him with a fit of illness, by which his fears and misery were considerably increased. He often bewailed himself in the uttermost anguish of spirit, with weeping and lamentation, breathing out his soul in moans. “O the guilt of sin; when charged home upon the conscience by the Spirit of God, what an intolerable load! A wounded spirit who can bear!” ”

“ His crimes, however, rather than his virtues, have illustrated and distinguished him with an unhappy pre-eminence above all other created things. His heart is evil, and, left to its uncontrolled impulses, he becomes licentious, merciless and more cruel than the fiercest beasts of prey. ”

“ You ought to say “I,” as every one else does; and as for spirits going out of you, or going into a herd of swine, or anything else, that is all a superstition and a fancy. There is nothing to come out of you, there is nothing in you except yourself. All the evil in you is your own, the disease of your own brain, and the violent passions of your own heart. ”

“ I will celebrate thee, bodily sickness, when thou layest thy hand on the head and heart of man, and sayest to the sufferings of his spiritm 'Enough!' Thou art called on earth an evil; oh! how often art thou a good, a healing balsam, under whose benign influence the soul rests after its hard struggles, and its wild storms are still! More than once hast thou prevented suicide, and preserved from madness. The terrible, the bitter words which destroy the heart, are by degrees obliterated during the feverish dreams of illness ”

“ Our vanity, our pride, our malice, our impurity, our deceit, our every evil passion, has free play, and shows us its finished result, and in so vivid and true though caricatured a form that we are startled and withdrawn from our purpose. The evil thought we have suffered to creep about our heart seems in our dreams to become a deed, and we wake in horror and thank God we can yet refrain. ”

“ That such temptation fell not to our lot:
The human heart is evil in itself,
And, like a child, requires restraint and care;
Restraint to keep from wrong, and care to soothe
Its wilder beatings into peace and love. ”

“ Out of evil, evil will come. We do not gather figs of thistles. Your life has been evil; your heart is bad. Can good emanate from this? You will go forth to the world in fair seeming, no trace of your sin visible to the eye, and you will spread the contagion of your sin. Listen to me, Myron Holder. ”

“ Nothing will enable us to meet 'evil' with a patient yielding love which does not bring the faintest tinge of anger even into the cheek reddened by a rude hand, but the 'love of God shed abroad in the heart,' and when that love fills a man, 'out of him will flow a river of living water,' which will bury evil below its clear, gentle abundance, and, perchance, wash it of its foulness. ”

“ A billion angels at his right, intermingling with others—the saints of might. Who has ascended from death, enthroned with his light. Those that were [Pg 45] burned in the fire by the wicked, to spite. Comes inclosing the evil in their eternal dark night.
The voice of the serpent,—that whispers from the mire of the sea. Or that sigh of the evil, from the dust ascending before thee. Each soul is still weeping—each heart in sorrow alone. Or that mind of the living that fell from his great throne.
What joy thought the evil, that wandered in sorrow's broad trend. ”

“ Something of the original passion of the evil-doer, and of the horror felt by his victim, enters the heart of the innocent watcher, and he becomes suddenly conscious of tingling nerves, creeping skin, and a chilling of the blood. ”

“ Is his wrong to thee
Less than his wrong to me?—and I forgive him!
May Heaven have pity on my woman’s heart—
I love this man!
Gott. (after a pause) . Go, sir—I spare thy life.
My heart has lost its vigour, and my hand
Is stayed against thee. Go! thou knowest now
The virtue of her love—its alchemy
Hath made thee sacred in mine eyes! Go, sir,
Amend thy mis-spent life—she loveth thee!
When evil thoughts assail thine impious soul,
Remember that, despite thy wrong to her,
She loveth thee!
If a man’s heart is beating in thy breast, [Pg 200]
That amulet should hold thee Satan-proof! ”

“ This irrepressible delight and interest in the active life of the world, what could it be but the tendency to evil, most strongly developed? These heart-burnings whenever she witnessed men and women rejoicing in the exercise of their natural affections, what could that be but the proneness to evil in its grossest form? ”

“ We are not saved by the emotions of our own hearts, however sacred and delightful they may seem. Nor do they always indicate just what we are and shall be. A few weeks since you thought your heart had become the abiding-place of all that was good; now, it seems to you to be possessed by evil. This is common experience ”

“ Since we approached that world from without, and never felt the pulse of its heart's blood, we had nothing but doubt after doubt when we contemplated the evil that seemed to be in it. Our efforts to explain evil seemed hollow and worthless. ”

“ His heart is bare, and he sees it is all sin, deceitful above all things, desperately wicked; that it is altogether corrupt and abominable, more than it is possible for tongue to express: that there dwelleth therein no good thing, but unrighteousness and ungodliness only; every motion thereof, every temper and thought, being only evil continually. ”

“ For from within, out of the heart of men, evil thoughts proceed, like the uncharitable and bitter judgments of His accusers—and thence come also the sensual indulgences which men ascribe to the flesh, but which depraved imaginations excite, and love of God and their neighbour would restrain—and thence are the sins of violence which men excuse by pleading sudden provocation, whereas the spark led to a conflagration only because the heart was a dry fuel—and thence, plainly enough, come deceit and railing, pride and folly. ”

“ Now the clustered texts about the human heart insist as a body, not on any inherent corruption in all hearts, but on the terrific distinction between the bad and the good ones. "A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good, and an evil man, out of the evil treasure, bringeth forth that which is evil." ”

“ When I walk slowly I consider calmly the question of how much evil I should need to kill off my finer feelings, to poison thoroughly this soul of unrest and this wooden heart so that they would never more be conscious of too-brilliant lights, and to make myself over into a quite different creature. ”

“ Casting himself with a broken heart, at the feet of the divine mercy, desiring nothing but that, from that time, every moment of his life might be given unto God, in the most perfect denial of every temper and inclination that nourished the corruption of his nature: wishing and praying from the bottom of his heart, that God would lead him into and thro’ every thing inwardly and outwardly, that might destroy the evil workings of his nature, and awaken all that was holy and heavenly within him. ”

“ Suppose, then, both religion and morals discarded; and man left, not merely to the unrestrained indulgence of his evil passions, but those passions excited by intoxicating and maddening stimulants, what then would be the consequences? The heart sickens whilst the mind pictures to itself some of the frightful excesses, the horrible enormities, of which one man may be capable under such circumstances. ”

“ Could we but have the heart of the wicked laid open before us; could we but see how it is torn and wrung by the evil passions that harbour within it; could we but mark how, even in the strongest and most determined breast, when bent upon evil purposes, or engaged in wicked acts, fear and apprehension go hand in hand with every deed of evil, while repentance, remorse, and punishment follow more slowly, though not less surely, in the distance ”

“ We are prone to do wrong, or, as the preacher has recorded:—"Yea, also the heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in their heart while they live, and after that they go to the dead." ”

“ Is he not at heart a demon—an evil spirit? For is he not precisely opposite, in his essential character, to God and to the angels? and is not the opposite of good, evil,—and the opposite of essential good, essential evil? Then, when such a man comes to die, that is, to throw off the material body, and appear in his spirit, where else can he go than amongst his like, that is amongst the evil? ”

“ The state of the heart will determine the state of the man after death and forever. If the heart be filled with the love of evil rather than of good, then the man after death cannot but go amongst the evil: and the evil or wicked, thus collected together, form to themselves that state and place, which is called, in Scripture, hell. And such a state cannot but be an unhappy one, because it is the nature of evil to pain and torment the spirit—precisely as disease gives pain to the body; for evil is moral disease. ”

“ All of them cannot make one hair that is black, white, much less redeem the soul. But besides, they are destructive. They pretend to deliver, but they destroy. A desperate wicked heart imagineth evil continually, evil against God, and evil to our own souls. And a deceitful heart smooths over the evil, and presents it under another notion, and so, under pretence of a friend, it is the greatest enemy a man hath,—a bosom-enemy. ”

“ Thou hast searched since, and found all these gradations in the ill of our hearts, that every imagination [Pg 73] of the thoughts of our hearts is only evil continually. [150] Dost thou remember this, and wouldst thou have my heart? O God of all light, I know thou knowest all, and it is thou [151] that declarest unto man what is his heart. Without thee, O sovereign Goodness, I could not know how ill my heart were. Thou hast declared unto me, in thy word, that for all this deluge of evil that hath surrounded all hearts, yet thou soughtest and foundest a man after thine own heart ”

“ For if the goodness of our hearts will intitle us to the reward of good actions, which we never performed; it is certain that the badness of our hearts, will bring us under the guilt of actions that we have never committed.
*As he that lusteth after a woman shall be reckoned an adulterer, tho’ he has only committed the crime in his heart; so the malicious, spiteful, ill-natured man, that only secretly rejoices at evil, shall be reckoned a murderer, tho’ he has shed no blood. ”

“ Are we definitely prepared to say that the heart which we carry in our breast, whatever our friend's heart may be, is such that under no change of circumstances could it, being what it is, conceivably develop the forms of evil branded in this passage? Ah, who, that knows himself, does not know that there lies in him indefinitely more than he can know of possible evil? ”

“ Behold, now let my heart confess to thee what it was seeking there, when I was being gratuitously wanton, having no inducement to evil but the evil itself. It was foul, and I loved it. I loved my own undoing. I loved my error--not that for which I erred but the error itself. A depraved soul, falling away from security in thee to destruction in itself, seeking nothing from the shameful deed but shame itself. ”

“ For our evil tempers, then, our passion, our wrath, our sullen pride, our fretful irritability, our outbreaks of sarcasm, our malignant sneers, there is only one possible cure; we must bring the heart, out of which all the evil comes, to Jesus Christ, that He may create it anew; we must accept our failures as evidence of an imperfect surrender, and come afresh with a more insistent cry, and a more perfect faith, that He may reign in our hearts as undisputed Lord, checking, subduing, warring down, every evil motion there. ”

“ But evil is wrought by want of Thought,
As well as want of Heart!" ”

“ But there is this difference—there it is said, The imagination of man's heart is evil continually, that is, "his actual transgressions continually cry against him;" here it is said, It is evil from his youth or childhood. It is bred in the bone ”

“ "Know'st thou not all germs of evil In thy heart await their time? Not thyself, but God's restraining, Stays their growth of crime. ”

“ Indeed, whence should they spring? 'Out of the heart of man,' if at all, 'proceed evil thoughts.' If, therefore, the heart be no longer evil, then evil thoughts no longer proceed out of it: For 'a good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit.'
"And as they are freed from evil thoughts, so likewise from evil tempers. Every one of these can say, with St. Paul, 'I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me;' - - words that manifestly describe a deliverance from inward as well as from outward sin. ”

“ Your carnal mind is enmity against God, and your heart "hard as an adamant;" is filled with all unrighteousness, is "deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; and out of it do proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witncss, blasphemies." With horror contemplate the number of your vain thoughts, your idle words, your evil works! "they are more than the hairs of your head, which cannot be numbered." ”

“ We see that this is a true picture of the unregenerated heart, which has no good thing in it. We also see that it is not an evil thought presented to the mind from without which defileth the man, but it is the evil thought that comes from within a corrupted heart. ”