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THE HUMAN HEART

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · June 17, 1880

FromThe Review and Herald, Vol. 55, No. 25

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THE HUMAN HEART.

By F. H. Sisley

[Some years ago the following lines were read and copied; and though the author is forgotten, his words are suggestive of deep thought, and remind us how powerful is the influence of one heart upon another. We copy them for the readers of the REVIEW, hoping that they may serve to quicken us to a realizing sense of the need of living, each day, carefully before God and our fellow-men. F. H. SISLEY.]
ALAS! How little do we understand the human heart, although each mortal breast doth feel the throb and own its presence there! How oft we strike its saddest chords with words unkind and harsh! how oft destroy its peace by some unguarded glance, some selfish act, that vanishes like morning mist, never again to be thought of by ourselves, although it comes and goes forever in that other heart!
How do we wring the heart with agony, when we forsooth would only jest! How do we crush it by unjust remarks, and ways that speak a lack of trust, and though we know what balm would soonest heal our own, we fail to find the remedy for other hearts. We give the fewest, faintest words of cheer when they are needed most; and we withhold our love when deepest yearned for, prayed for, almost asked! Oh, if heart could only read the heart, what unknown things, what secret sorrows, would be then and there revealed! Mysterious, strange it is, aye, more than strange, that hearts will not unto each other, yield themselves and give the contents up! Yet so it is! they never unbar the bolted doors; and when they light the mystic lamps within their chambers deep, they keep the curtains closely drawn, so that the unvailed light of truth may never gleam from out the windows.
Oh, the human heart! None, none but God can penetrate its mask and truly understand its life of lives,—the soul-communings that are whispered there; the anguish and the woe; the hopes in bud, and those all spoiled by blight; the wasted love and untold struggles that are traced upon the sacred tablets of its hidden cells.