Pure in heart

“ Every man, says he, that hath this hope, purifieth himself as he is pure. And our Saviour applies this purity to the heart, to shew how that ought to be disposed for happiness. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. O infinite purity, what heart will be fit to see thee, if thou dost not purge and cleanse it? O purify us by thy grace, and so fit us for thy glory! ”

“ If you once in purity of soul, in the pure affection of your heart, go and bestow a kindness from a pure and fervent spirit, you will awaken a chord which will vibrate harmoniously in your soul to all eternity. ”

“ Does not our Lord Himself tell us, "Blessed are the pure in hearty for they shall see God"? And does not purity of heart mean no mixed motives, no substitutes, no easy concessions, no compromises, no arrangements, but only the truth and the light, single and undefiled? ”

“ If we are pure, when we see a pure and holy being, clothed with all the glory of the heavens, surrounded with light that far outshines the sun at noonday, so much so that his eye discerns all things and pierces the inmost recesses of the heart,—when we can look him in the face, a, thrill of joy will run through our bodies, and we shall be happy. ”

“ His heart is pure who sees thy face, His spirit is made whole. From every sickness, by thy word, From every foul disease, Saved, and to perfect health restored, To perfect holiness: He walks in glorious liberty, To sin entirely dead: The Truth, the Son hath made him free, And he is free indeed. Throughout his soul thy glories shine, His soul is all renew'd, And deck'd in righteousness divine, And clothed and fill'd with God. This is the rest, the life, the peace, Which all thy people prove; Love is the bond of perfectness, And all their soul is love. ”

“ There is for me a singular charm in confidences so vague, and yet so exact, made to an unknown individual, who appreciates the state of my heart with such infinite delicacy. I have been struck with what you tell me as to the happiness of loving even without hope, even as one loves God for God's sake, and of finding in the sole devotion to the adored object a pure and unutterable felicity. ”

“ We must shut our heart against pride, against sensuality, and all the other passions, as one shuts the doors and windows that nobody may be able to get in. What joy is it to the guardian angel to conduct a pure soul! My children, when a soul is pure, all Heaven looks upon it with love! Pure souls will form the circle round Our Lord. The more pure we have been on earth, the nearer we shall be to Him in Heaven. When the heart is pure, it cannot help loving, because it has found the source of love, which is God. ”

“ We desire unfeignedly that all the thoughts and designs of our minds, all the affections and tempers of our hearts, and all the actions of our life, may be pure, holy, and unreproveable in thy sight.
Search us, O Lord, and prove us; try out our reins and our heart. Look well if there be any way of wickedness in us, and lead us in the way everlasting. Let thy favour be better to us than life itself; that so in all things we may approve our hearts before thee, and feel the sense of thy acceptance of us, giving us a joy which the world cannot give. ”

“ I need not quote the words. I need only remind you that purity must have its home in the heart, if it is to be the glory of the life. "Blessed are the pure in heart," is the Master's beatitude. "You are pure, you say ”

“ The heart must be pure, in opposition to mixture—an honest heart that aims well; and pure, in opposition to pollution and defilement; as wine unmixed, as water unmuddied. The heart must be kept pure from fleshly lusts, all unchaste thoughts and desires; and from worldly lusts; covetousness is called filthy lucre; from all filthiness of flesh and spirit, all that which come out of the heart, and defiles the man. The heart must be purified by faith, and entire for God; must be presented and preserved a chaste virgin to Christ. Create in me such a clean heart, O God! ”

“ We are all formed to love what is beautiful and sublime, and I know of nothing more beautiful, than beautiful features lit up by purity of heart—or more God-like and sublime, than great powers of mind rightly directed; for, even when fallen and degraded from their high estate, we cannot divest them of interest. And when he came to reside with us, his pious resignation under suffering, and his deep absorbing love for our blessed Saviour, made me feel as in the presence of a pure spirit! ”

“ FOR THEY SHALL SEE GOD The Pure of Heart are those who have no other wish than for perfection, no other joy than victory over the evil which hunts us down on every side. He who has his heart crammed with furious desires, with earthly ambitions, with carnal pride 91and with all the lusts which convulse this ant-heap of the earth, can never see God face to face, will never know the sweetness of His magnificent felicity. ”

“ And most fully: They are in the highest grade of purity of heart, who have cleansed their hearts from all creature love, that their hearts may be like that of an angel—a pure mirror—and shrine of the Deity. ”

“ It is written, 'With a pure heart you will see God.' But how can your heart be pure if you do not live according to your own will? Without one's freedom there is no true faith, but only a fictitious one. ”

“ Likewise, so long as our hearts are kept warm by the rays of God's love shining therein, our pure moral state is easily maintained; but when we lose the warmth of that love, lower things begin to attract us and soon we fall down toward the former level. Keep your heart ever turned toward the Sun of Righteousness, cherish its soul-warming rays of love, and you will float on the atmosphere of heaven far above the things of sin. ”

“ myself myself confound!
Heaven and fortune bar me happy hours!
Day, yield me not thy light; nor, night, thy rest!
Be opposite all planets of good luck
To my proceeding!—if, with pure heart's love,
Immaculate devotion, holy thoughts,
I tender not thy beauteous princely daughter! ”

“ Except that I prize thy gentle heart,
Free from ambition, falsehood, or art,
And thy good mind,
Daily refined,
By pure desire
To fan the heaven-seeking fire:
May it rise higher and higher; ”

“ Everything depends upon the heart. The heart makes the life. A beautiful soul will make even a homely face beautiful. Seek, dear girls, to be "all glorious within."
There is only one way. Our natural hearts are not beautiful, not pure, not glorious. We must let Christ wash our souls till they are made whiter than snow. We must let the Holy Spirit cleanse us and purify us and glorify our life within. Here is a little prayer for all who would have their hearts transformed:
"Holy Spirit, dwell with me ”

“ Should I say it is a ray of the seven colors in a pure drop of water, still I should not have described it, for it is not so much a form as an odor, and a savor, in the depths of the human heart. Who has such a lofty understanding, such deep thoughts, as to be able to say what love truly is! ”

“ We are told in poetry and romance that the human face divine is the index of the spirit. That its ever changing lines express every mood of the mind and every emotion of the soul, from a smile of ineffable beauty to a midnight frown, from the sunshine of hope, and joy, and gladness, to clouds of wrath and hatred. That the spirit looks out through the eye and melts you with a beam of tenderness, or pierces your heart with a flash of electric love, or charms you by revealing in its crystal depths the pearl of purity, or transfixes you with a glance of displeasure. ”

“ Well is it when our eyes are filled with His beauty and our hearts are occupied with Him. In the measure in which this is true of us we shall recognize the correlative truth that His great heart is occupied with us. ”

“ It was thus, the innate purity of the mind betrayed the unconscious sensibility of the heart, while the passions became so intimately incorporated with the spirit, as to leave their influence and agency almost equal. ”

“ Lord, if my heart had the love of all hearts, my conscience the purity of all angels, and my soul the beauty of all souls, so that by Thy grace I should be worthy of Thee, I wish to receive Thee to-day so affectionately, and so to bury and sink Thee to the bottom of my heart and soul, that neither joy nor sorrow, neither life nor death, could separate me from Thee. ”

“ Everything is beautiful, and all nature is glad and rejoicing. Arise, my soul, and be thou glad likewise. Cast off thy gloomy fears. The God who made all the beautiful things by which thou art surrounded is not unmindful of thee. Oh, wondrous condescension! God is not forgetful of me. He gazes upon me with an eye of compassion; he pities my distress and my weakness. Amazing love! Oh, that I were more worthy of it; Oh, that I loved him as fervently as I ought! But my heart is callous, and I am nothing but a poor, cold, vile and helpless sinner: nothing but sin dwells hi my heart. ”

“ I awake from dreams of you to feel your presence still with me; and my first emotion is gratitude to God for having given me this happiness. Forgive me, beloved father! that I can be so content without you! The bonds of nature are weakened, when an absorbing emotion fills the heart. The time may come when nature will be avenged. Ah, it cannot be wrong to love as I do. God has opened this fountain in the desert of life, as a solace for all its evils. Ah, how can those who love be sufficiently grateful to God? Every hour should be an act of adoration and praise. ”

“ Oh, poor heart—love, if thou willest; but, thine own soul still possessing,
Live thy life: not a reflection or a shadow of his own:
Lean as fondly, as completely, as thou willest—but confessing
That thy strength is God’s, and therefore can, if need be, stand alone. ”

“ Her large and sympathetic heart is attuned to such harmony with humanity, or rather she so expresses this beautiful harmony of her own soul with God, with nature, and with humanity, that the human heart that has suffered or enjoyed, vibrates and responds like a harp-string to the master-hand. ”

“ Humbly prostrate, with all our hearts we pray thee to vouchsafe in thy goodness to be born again in spirit in our souls, that, led captive by thy loveliness and sweetness, they may ever live united to thy most sweet and loving heart. ”

“ The things of the heart—love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness and the Hke, are what the heart esteems worth while the world over. The way then for him who would enter the door is to bring of these gifts which the heart always craves. ”

“ Here, as well as in innumerable other places, are we told that true love is not a mere evanescent feeling of the heart, but an inwrought and abiding habit of the will. It is not a suffering, it is a doing. ”

“ CHILL NOT THE HEART THAT TRUSTS
THEE.
Chill not the heart that trusts thee, O, my soul!
Be brave to bear, to suffer, to forgive;
Life's tempestuous billows wildly roll
But love and live.
Chill not the heart that trusts thee, though thine eyes
With tears are dim, and ev'ry effort pain;
A day reveals, perchance, this sad surprise,
Eternal gain.
Chill not the heart that trusts thee, dark indeed
The way may seem, but sacred is the trust
Of faith, which while it may not stoop to plead
Is ever just.
Chill not the heart that trusts thee, cares defeat
The true, the good, the noble, who can tell? ”

“ Then, when God had made me worthy of a good man's love, the desire of my heart came to me, in so sweet and natural a way that it broke down the last barrier of pride and left me humbly at the foot of the cross, marvelling at God's goodness! ”

“ I will see you with joy, part from you with regret, grieve in your griefs, enter with zeal into your concerns, interest myself in your honour and welfare, and endeavour, with all my little power, to contribute to your comfort and satisfaction.—Is your heart so differently constituted from every other human heart, that an affection, thus ardent and sincere, excites in it no grateful, and soothing, emotions? ”

“ For this cause, the kindest fatherly word which ever reached man's ear, the surest scheme for happiness that ever touched his reason, was one from God's own heart—"My son, give me thy heart."
They lived upon the blessing of that Word, our noble, kindly pair. To enlarge upon the thought as respects a better world is well for those who will: for if He that made the eye and framed the ear, by the stronger argument Himself must see and hear, so he that fashioned loveliness and moulded the affections, how well-deserving must that Beautiful Spirit be of his rational creature's heart! ”

“ Does his heart thrill with a deeper pleasure in doing good? Can his soul writhe in more bitter agony under the consciousness of evil or wrong? Is the sunshine more glorious, the air more quiet, the sounds of harmony more soothing, the perfume of flowers [Pg 113] more exquisite, or forms of beauty more soul-satisfying to his senses, than to hers? ”

“ Hidden deep in every human heart, though frequently covered up with a mass of hard and almost impenetrable accretions, is the spirit of Divine Love, whose holy and spotless essence is undying and eternal. It is the Truth in man ”

“ They bring comfort, but also they bring tears into the eyes and pain into the heart. The message of a tender soul—what does it bring but ineffable comfort to the heart? You do not feel that it is a message, you do not feel it to be a divinely beautiful thing. ”

“ If you desire to cultivate love, create harmony in all your feelings and faculties. Remember that all that is pure, holy and virtuous in love flows from the deepest fountain of the human soul. Poison the fountain and you change virtue to vice, and happiness to misery. ”

“ Has any one—with any heart—ever received such a package? To such a one there is no need to tell the glow of pleasure, the rush of affection and joy, which filled Faith's heart and her face; to anybody else it's no use. ”

“ If ye lay bound upon the wheel of change, And no way were of breaking from the chain, The Heart of boundless Being is a curse, The Soul of Things fell Pain. Ye are not bound! the Soul of Things is sweet, The Heart of Being is celestial rest; Stronger than woe is will: that which was Good Doth pass to Better—Best. I, Buddh, who wept with all my brothers' tears, Whose heart was broken by a whole world's woe, Laugh and am glad, for there is Liberty Ho! ”