You are assembled together, my dear hearers, that you may learn something concerning your everlasting welfare. I am glad to meet you; and shall be happy to communicate any thing that I understand on this important subject. I pray God to bless it for your good! You have heard many sermons preached, and yet, perhaps, have been but little profited; and you may hear many more to as little purpose. Religion consists not merely in hearing sermons; nor in going away, and talking how you like or dislike the preacher. Religion is not found among noise, and clamour, and dispute. It does not consist in either applauding or censuring men. If ever you hear to any purpose, it will make you forget the preacher, and think only of yourselves. You will be like a smitten deer, which, unable to keep pace with the herd, retires to the thicket and bleeds alone. This is the effect that I long to see produced in you. It is for the purpose of impressing this upon your minds that I have read the above passage, and wish to discourse to you upon it. In doing this, all I shall attempt will be to explain and enforce the admonition. Let us attempt,
I. To explain the meaning of it. The persons admonished in this Psalm were men who set themselves against David, and persecuted him without a cause; accusing him, perhaps, to king Saul: and, what greatly aggravates their guilt, they are said to have turned his glory into shame; that is, they reproached him on account of his religion, which was his highest honour. There are such scoffers in the world now; and as these wicked men opposed David, so they oppose our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of David according to the flesh. And by how much Christ is superior to David, by so much greater is the wickedness of those who mock at his gospel and people than the other. They were, many of them, men of property; their corn and their wine, it seems, increased; and it is likely that some of them were people in high life, who had access even to the king. But all this would not screen them from the displeasure of God. Even kings and judges themselves must submit to the Son, or perish from the way.
And if riches will not profit in the day of wrath, neither will poverty. It is true, the Scriptures wear a favourable aspect towards the poor. Jesus preached the gospel to them; and God is often represented as threatening and punishing those that oppress them: but if a man be wicked as well as poor, (as it is well known great numbers are,) his poverty will excite no pity; he must bear his iniquity.
Presumptuous and thoughtless sinners are admonished to “stand in awe, and sin not; to commune with their own hearts upon their bed, and be still.” Bold as any of you may be in sin, there is one above you, who will call you to an account: pause, therefore, and think what you are about. To commune with our hearts means much the same as to ponder the matter over with ourselves. It is said of the adulteress, that, “lest thou shouldest ponder the path of life, her ways are movable, that thou canst not know them.” She leads on her thoughtless admirers, from one degree of sin to another, in quick succession; just as a person who should wish to lose you in a wood, and there murder you, would lead you on, under some fair pretence, from path to path, through one winding direction after another, never suffering you to stand still and pause, lest you should turn back and effect your escape. Thus it is with sinners; they are hurried on, by delusion, from sin to sin, from company to company, and from one course of evil to another, while the enemy of their souls is doing every thing in his power to secure his dominion over them.
That which the adulteress most dreaded was thought, close and serious thought; and this it is which the enemy of your souls most dreads. It is by pondering the path of life, if at all, that you must escape the snare. If sinners are saved, it is from their sins. Their souls must be converted to the love of Christ; and the ordinary way that God takes to convert them is, by convincing them of sin, which is never effected but by their being brought to close and serious thought. It was by “thinking of his ways” that David “turned his feet to God’s testimonies.”
The place and time particularly recommended for this exercise is, upon your bed, at night. If there be any time more favourable to reflection than others, it must be that in which you are free from all intruding company, and interruptions from without. Then, when you have retired from the world, and the world from you; when the hurry of business is withdrawn; when the tumult of the soul subsides, and is succeeded by a solemn stillness; when the darkness which surrounds you prevents the interference of sensible objects, and invites the mental eye to look inward; then commune with your own heart; take a reckoning with your soul; inquire what course you are in, and whither it will lead you!
It might be well to examine the actions of your life; but as the heart is the spring-head of action, the state of your heart must be the chief object of your inquiry. As to actions, they are neither good nor evil, but as they are the expressions of the heart. Were you to kill a fellow creature, you know, there would be no evil in it provided it was by mere accident, and not from any malicious design, criminal passion, or careless neglect; and if you did ever so much good to your neighbour, yet if it were by accident, and not from design, there would be no goodness in it. It is the disposition of our hearts that denominates our characters in the sight of God. In all your communings, therefore, commune with your hearts.
Fuller, A. G. (1988). “Solitary Reflection.” Sermon XI. The Complete Works of Andrew Fuller: Memoirs, Sermons, Etc. (J. Belcher, Ed.; Vol. 1, pp. 221–222). Sprinkle Publications.
