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Who will not recognize the immense importance in every pursuit and employment of having the heart at one, the character consistent? "Methinks," says , "it would be better for my lyre to be out of tune and discordant, and even the chorus of singers whom I lead, — yea, better for the whole world to be at variance with me and contradict me, — than that I in my own person should be out of concord with myself and self-contradicting." Yes, anything is better for a man than a distracted, unharmonized, inconsistent character. Yet with how many is this the case! I speak not now of that progress of gradually ripening opinion and judgment which is the necessary condition of all thoughtful minds: I require not that a man's mature age should be brought to be measured by the unripe words and hasty inferences of his youth: it were better, indeed, and happier for him, if the whole life unfolded itself gradually and consistently; but of this progress, or of the lack of it, I am not speaking now. Few of us, I suppose, can look back many years without being sensible of more than a mere expanding change; few who are not conscious that while they have purchased some experience it has been at the reluctantly paid price of much of their former self-confidence. But what I do reprobate is this, — that the same man, at the same time, should be uncertain, self-counteracting, divided against himself, — in words, in acts, in the influence of his character over others. Anxious to appear like others in society, the young often profess strong opinions, and take decided courses, with regard to matters on which, from their very limited experience, they can know but little; they become strong upholders of this or that side in difficult questions, imitating, and going beyond, the partizanship of their elders. And hence, from this very pertinacity, comes fickleness and self-contradiction. As, by widening experience, the light of truth breaks in here and there, the young heart, if brought up under purifying and hallowing influences, is ever susceptible of just and generous impressions; and these very often clash with the artificial or traditional views before so strongly upheld, and bring about inconsistency and confusion. And these thoughts lead us to one remark; that with the young especially, one of the first conditions of this unity of heart is a humble and conscientious adoption of opinions. And here I say that it is lamentable to see men punctiliously upholding an accredited opinion which we have reason to knew they do not themselves hold. O it is by such men and such lives that mighty systems of wrong have grown up under the semblance of right; by such, that vast fabrics of conventional belief have been upheld for power's sake and for gain's sake, long after their spirit has departed; it is in spite of such men that the God of truth has broken these systems to pieces one after another, and has strewn the history of His world with the wrecks of these fair-seeming fabrics. Let us not be consistent thus. Our prayer does not run after this sort, "unite my acts, that I may make me a name and become great;" but far otherwise — "Unite my heart that I may fear Thy name." Now, it is plain to all that these last words, "to fear Thy name," must have a meaning very far removed from that of mere dread or terror of God. This he may have, and has, whose heart is not united; the inconsistent and the unprincipled, even in his worst moments, has the bitter drop of the terror of God and His judgments abiding at the bottom of his soul. Besides, such a terror is as unreasonable as it is undesirable. A heart at unity with itself cannot be in disunion with the chief object of its being; and that object is to serve and glorify Him who is its Creator and Redeemer. Manifestly then we must seek here for another definition of fear than mere dread; and to that definition our last consideration will guide us. Take that consideration in this form. If our hearts are to be brought into real and wholesome unity, it must be by the objects of their affections being in their right relative places. A united heart, for instance, cannot place Him in a low or secondary position of affection and regard whom nature and reason themselves combine to place first. If it be so, conscience will ever and anon be bearing testimony against the disproportion, — and infinite disunion will be the result. No; if we would be consistent men, God must be first in everything. If this is so, the first consequence will be that our motives will be consistent. We shall not be acting from a selfish desire now, and a generous impulse then; openly and frankly to one man, and covertly and craftily to another; but this fear of God will abide as a purifying influence in the very centre of our springs of action; His eye ever looking on us, His benefits ever constraining us. And union of the heart in God's fear will save you also from grievous or fatal inconsistency in opinion.

(Dean Afford.)

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KJV: Teach me thy way, O LORD; I will walk in thy truth: unite my heart to fear thy name.

WEB: Teach me your way, Yahweh. I will walk in your truth. Make my heart undivided to fear your name.