With the Children on Sundays: Through Eye-Gate and Ear-Gate into the City of Child-SoulStall, Sylvanus
Religion
With the Children on Sundays: Through Eye-Gate and Ear-Gate into the City of Child-Soul
Stall, Sylvanus
Children -- Religious life; Children's sermons; Moral education
Now the Bible represents the natural heart as being wicked. We are told
in the Bible that our hearts have no feeling; that God loves us, and yet
that we do not appreciate it; that God bestows upon us our daily food,
and that He clothes us, and blesses us with every good, and has provided
for us mansions in the skies, and that He desires to give us everlasting
salvation. He loves us so much that He gave His only begotten Son, Jesus
Christ, to die for us, and yet with the natural heart no one ever loves
God, or appreciates anything that He has done for us. And so God
desires, as He tells us in the Bible, to take away, out of our flesh
this heart of stone, and give us a heart of flesh, so that we may
appreciate and love Him in return for all that He has done for us.
The heart is spoken of in the Bible as the seat of the affections, and
therefore it is that God desires us to have a new heart, a changed
heart, a heart that can love Him. The Bible says that each one is to
keep his heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.
We are told also that "the heart is deceitful above all things and
desperately wicked."
[Illustration: Assaulting the City of Child-Soul.]
Many years ago in England there was a man by the name of John Bunyan. I
suppose you have all heard of his wonderful book entitled the "Pilgrim's
Progress." I hope that many of you have read it. All of you should read
it, if you have not yet done so. Get your mother or father to read it
for you, if you cannot read it yourself.
This man Bunyan also wrote a book entitled the "Holy War." In this book
he represents the human soul or the human heart as a city, and calls it
the "City of Mansoul." This city has various gates, and at all these
gates the enemy is trying to gain admission into the city, so that he
may capture it. It is, indeed, a very apt illustration of the human
heart. Do you know that your heart is like a city, and that Satan is
trying to capture and to get possession of it? Indeed, he may already
have possession of it. And when God by His grace shall come and cast out
Satan and all his evil companions, they will come back and try to get
into the city again. They will come to the various gates of the city;
for your heart has various avenues of approach, which may be called
gates. There is eye-gate. Satan comes and he appeals to you and tries to
get into your heart through the eye. Bad pictures that are posted upon
the bulletin boards along our streets, and wicked things upon which you
and I ought not to look--worthless papers, bad books--these Satan
desires to have us look upon, and in that way get evil thoughts into our
minds and wicked purposes into our hearts, so that he can once more get
possession of our hearts.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account