HEART

The Hebrews regarded the heart as the source of wit, understanding, love, courage, grief, and pleasure. Hence are derived many modes of expre ion. “An honest and good heart,” Luke viii, 15, is a heart studious of holine , being prepared by the Spirit of God to receive the word with due affections, dispositions, and resolutions. We read of a broken heart, a clean heart, an evil heart, a liberal heart. To “turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers,” Mal. iv, 6, signifies to cause them to be perfectly reconciled, and that they should be of the same mind. To want heart, sometimes denotes to want understanding and prudence: “Ephraim is like a silly dove, without heart,” Hosea vii, 11. “O fools, and slow of heart,” Luke xxiv, 25; that is, ignorant, and without understanding. “This people’s heart is waxed gro , lest they should understand with their heart,” Matt. xiii, 15; their heart is become incapable of understanding spiritual things; they resist the light, and are proof against all impre ions of truth. “The prophets prophesy out of their own heart,” Ezekiel xiii, 2; that is, according to their own imagination, without any warrant from God. The heart is said to be dilated by joy, contracted by sadne , broken by sorrow, to grow fat, and be hardened by prosperity. The heart melts under discouragement, forsakes one under terror, is desolate in affliction, and fluctuating in doubt. To speak to any one’s heart is to comfort him, to say pleasing and affecting things to him. The heart expre es also the middle part of any thing: “Tyre is in the heart of the seas,” Ezekiel xxvii, 4; in the midst of the seas. “We will not fear though the mountains be carried into the heart (middle) of the sea,” Psalm xlvi, 2. The heart of man is naturally depraved and inclined to evil, Jer. xvii, 9. A divine power is requisite for its renovation, John iii, 1–11. When thus renewed, the effects will be seen in the temper, conversation, and conduct at large. Hardne of heart is that state in which a sinner is inclined to, and actually goes on in, rebellion against God.