BUNYAN CHARACTERS (Second Series)
Lectures delivered in St. George's Free Church Edinburgh




IGNORANCE



"I was alive without the law once."--Paul.

"I was now a brisk talker also myself in the matter of religion."--
Bunyan.

This is a new kind of pilgrim.  There are not many pilgrims like
this bright brisk youth.  A few more young gentlemen like this, and
the pilgrimage way would positively soon become fashionable and
popular, and be the thing to do.  Had you met with this young
gentleman in society, had you noticed him beginning to come about
your church, you would have lost no time in finding out who he was.
I can well believe it, you would have replied.  Indeed, I felt sure
of it.  I must ask him to the house.  I was quite struck with his
appearance and his manners.  Yes; ask him at once to your house;
show him some pointed attentions and you will never regret it.  For
if he goes to the bar and works even decently at his cases, he will
be first a sheriff and then a judge in no time.  If he should take
to politics, he will be an under-secretary before his first
parliament is out.  And if he takes to the church, which is not at
all unlikely, our West-end congregations will all be competing for
him as their junior colleague; and, if he elects either of our
Established churches to exercise his profession in it, he will have
dined with Her Majesty while half of his class-fellows are still
half-starved probationers.  Society fathers will point him out with
anger to their unsuccessful sons, and society mothers will smile
under their eyelids as they see him hanging over their daughters.

Well, as this handsome and well-appointed youth stepped out of his
own neat little lane into the rough road on which our two pilgrims
were staggering upward, he felt somewhat ashamed to be seen in
their company.  And I do not wonder.  For a greater contrast you
would not have seen on any road in all that country that day.  He
was at your very first sight of him a gentleman and the son of a
gentleman.  A little over-dressed perhaps; as, also, a little lofty
to the two rather battered but otherwise decent enough men who,
being so much older than he, took the liberty of first accosting
him.  "Brisk" is his biographer's description of him.  Feather-
headed, flippant, and almost impudent, you might have been tempted
to say of him had you joined the little party at that moment.  But
those two tumbled, broken-winded, and, indeed, broken-hearted old
men had been, as an old author says, so emptied from vessel to
vessel--they had had a life of such sloughs and stiff climbs--they
had been in hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness so often--that
it was no wonder that their dandiacal companion walked on a little
ahead of them.  'Gentlemen,' his fine clothes and his cane and his
head in the air all said to his two somewhat disreputable-looking
fellow-travellers,--"Gentlemen, you be utter strangers to me:  I
know you not.  And, besides, I take my pleasure in walking alone,
even more a great deal than in company, unless I like it better."
But all his society manners, and all his costly and well-kept
clothes, and all his easy and self-confident airs did not impose
upon the two wary old pilgrims.  They had seen too much of the
world, and had been too long mixing among all kinds of pilgrims,
young and old, true and false, to be easily imposed upon.  Besides,
as one could see from their weather-beaten faces, and their
threadbare garments, they had found the upward way so dreadfully
difficult that they both felt a real apprehension as to the future
of this light-hearted and light-headed youth.  "You may find some
difficulty at the gate," somewhat bluntly broke in the oldest of
the two pilgrims on their young comrade.  "I shall, no doubt, do at
the gate as other good people do," replied the young gentleman
briskly.  "But what have you to show at the gate that may cause
that the gate be opened to you?"  "Why, I know my Lord's will, and
I have been a good liver all my days, and I pay every man his own.
I pray, moreover, and I fast.  I pay tithes, and give alms, and
have left my country for whither I am going."  Now, before we go
further:  Do all you young gentlemen do as much as that?  Have you
always been good livers?  Have you paid every man and woman their
due?  Do you pray to be called prayer?  And, if so, when, and
where, and what for, and how long at a time?  I do not ask if your
private prayer-book is like Bishop Andrewes' Devotions, which was
so reduced to pulp with tears and sweat and the clenching of his
agonising hands that his literary executors were with difficulty
able to decipher it.  Clito in the Christian Perfection was so
expeditious with his prayers that he used to boast that he could
both dress and do his devotions in a quarter of an hour.  What was
the longest time you ever took to dress or undress and say your
prayers?  Then, again, there is another Anglican young gentleman in
the same High Church book who always fasts on Good Friday and the
Thirtieth of January.  Did you ever deny yourself a glass of wine
or a cigar or an opera ticket for the church or the poor?  Could
you honestly say that you know what tithes are?  And is there a
poor man or woman or child in this whole city who will by any
chance put your name into their prayers and praises at bedtime to-
night?  I am afraid there are not many young gentlemen in this
house tonight who could cast a stone at that brisk lad Ignorance,
Vain-Hope, door in the side of the hill, and all.  He was not far
from the kingdom of heaven; indeed, he got up to the very gate of
it.  How many of you will get half as far?

Now (what think you?), was it not a very bold thing in John Bunyan,
whose own descent was of such a low and inconsiderable generation,
his father's house being of that rank that is meanest and most
despised of all the families in the land--was it not almost too
bold in such a clown to take such a gentleman-scholar as Saul of
Tarsus, the future Apostle of the Lord, and put him into the
Pilgrim's Progress, and there go on to describe him as a very brisk
lad and nickname him with the nickname of Ignorance?  For, in
knowledge of all kinds to be called knowledge, Gamaliel's gold
medallist could have bought the unlettered tinker of Elstow in one
end of the market and sold him in the other.  And nobody knew that
better than Bunyan did.  And yet such a lion was he for the truth,
such a disciple of Luther was he, and such a defender and preacher
of the one doctrine of a standing or falling church, that he fills
page after page with the crass ignorance of the otherwise most
learned of all the New Testament men.  Bunyan does not accuse the
rising hope of the Pharisees of school or of synagogue ignorance.
That young Hebrew Rabbi knew every jot and tittle of the law of
Moses, and all the accumulated traditions of the fathers to boot.
But Bunyan has Paul himself with him when he accuses and convicts
Saul of an absolutely brutish ignorance of his own heart and hidden
nature.  That so very brisk lad was always boasting in himself of
the day on which he was circumcised, and of the old stock of which
he had come; of his tribe, of his zeal, of his blamelessness, and
of the profit he had made of his educational and ecclesiastical
opportunities.  Whereas Bunyan is fain to say of himself in his
Grace Abounding that he is "not able to boast of noble blood or of
a high-born state according to the flesh.  Though, all things
considered, I magnify the Heavenly Majesty for that by this door He
brought me into this world to partake of the grace and life that is
in Christ by the Gospel."

As we listen to the conversation that goes on between the two old
pilgrims and this smartly appointed youth, we find them striving
hard, but without any sign of success, to convince him of some of
the things from which he gets his somewhat severe name.  For one
thing, they at last bluntly told him that he evidently did not know
the very A B C about himself.  Till, when too hard pressed by the
more ruthless of the two old men, the exasperated youth at last
frankly burst out:  "I will never believe that my heart is thus
bad!"  There is a warm touch of Bunyan's own experience here, mixed
up with his so dramatic development of Paul's morsels of
autobiography that he lets drop in his Epistles to the Philippians
and to the Galatians.  "Now was I become godly; now I was become a
right honest man.  Though as yet I was nothing but a poor painted
hypocrite, yet I was proud of my godliness.  I read my Bible, but
as for Paul's Epistles, and such like Scriptures, I could not away
with them; being, as yet, but ignorant both of the corruptions of
my nature and of the want and worth of Jesus Christ to save me.
The new birth did never enter my mind, neither knew I the
deceitfulness and treachery of my own wicked heart.  And as for
secret thoughts, I took no notice of them."  My brethren, old and
young, what do you think of all that?  What have you to say to all
that?  Does all that not open a window and let a flood of daylight
into your own breast?  I am sure it does.  That is the best
portrait of you that ever was painted.  Do you not see yourself
there as in a glass?  And do you not turn with disgust and loathing
from the stupid and foolish face?  You complain and tell stories
about how impostors and cheats and liars have come to your door and
have impudently thrust themselves into your innermost rooms; but
your own heart, if you only knew it, is deceitful far above them
all.  Not the human heart as it stands in confessions, and in
catechisms, and in deep religious books, but your own heart that
beats out its blood-poison of self-deceit, and darkness, and death
day and night continually.  "My heart is a good heart," said that
poor ill-brought-up boy, who was already destroyed by his father
and his mother for lack of self-knowledge.  I entirely grant you
that those two old sinners by this time were taking very
pessimistic and very melancholy views of human nature, and,
therefore, of every human being, young and old.  They knew that no
language had ever been coined in any scripture, or creed, or
catechism, or secret diary of the deepest penitent, that even half
uttered their own evil hearts; and they had lived long enough to
see that we are all cut out of one web, are all dyed in one vat,
and are all corrupted beyond all accusation or confession in Adam's
corruption.  But how was that poor, mishandled lad to know or
believe all that?  He could not.  It was impossible.  "You go so
fast, gentlemen, that I cannot keep pace with you.  Go you on
before and I will stay a while behind.  Then said Christian to his
companion:  "It pities me much for this poor lad, for it will
certainly go ill with him at last."  "Alas!" said Hopeful, "there
are abundance in our town in his condition:  whole families, yea,
whole streets, and that of pilgrims too."  Is your family such a
family as this?  And are you yourself just such a pilgrim as
Ignorance was, and are you hastening on to just such an end?

And then, as a consequence, being wholly ignorant of his own
corruption and condemnation in the sight of God, this miserable man
must remain ignorant and outside of all that God has done in Christ
for corrupt and condemned men.  "I believe that Christ died for
sinners and that I shall be justified before God from the curse
through His gracious acceptance of my obedience to His law.  Or,
then, to take it this way, Christ makes my duties that are
religious acceptable to His Father by virtue of His merits, and so
shall I be justified."  Now, I verify believe that nine out of ten
of the young men who are here to-night would subscribe that
statement and never suspect there was anything wrong with it or
with themselves.  And yet, what does Christian, who, in this
matter, is just John Bunyan, who again is just the word of God--
what does the old pilgrim say to this confession of this young
pilgrim's faith?  "Ignorance is thy name," he says, "and as thy
name is, so art thou:  even this thy answer demonstrateth what I
say.  Ignorant thou art of what justifying righteousness is, and as
ignorant how to secure thy soul through the faith of it from the
heavy wrath of God.  Yea, thou also art ignorant of the true effect
of saving faith in this righteousness of Christ's, which is to bow
and win over the heart to God in Christ, to love His name, His
word, His ways, and His people."  Paul sums up all his own early
life in this one word, "ignorant of God's righteousness."  "Going
about," he says also, "to establish our own righteousness, not
submitting ourselves to be justified by the righteousness that God
has provided with such wisdom and grace, and at such a cost in His
Son Jesus Christ."  Now, young men, I defy you to be better born,
better brought up, or to have better prospects than Saul of Tarsus
had.  I defy you to have profited more by all your opportunities
and advantages than he had done.  I defy you to be more blameless
in your opening manhood than he was.  And yet it all went like
smoke when he got a true sight of himself, and, with that, a true
sight of Christ and His justifying righteousness.  Read at home to-
night, and read when alone, what that great man of God says about
all that in his classical epistle to the Philippians, and refuse to
sleep till you have made the same submission.  And, to-night, and
all your days, let SUBMISSION, Paul's splendid submission, be the
soul and spirit of all your religious life.  Submission to be
searched by God's holy law as by a lighted candle:  submission to
be justified from all that that candle discovers:  submission to
take Christ as your life and righteousness, sanctification and
redemption:  and submission of your mind and your will and your
heart to Him at all times and in all things.  Nay, stay still, and
say where you sit, Lord, I submit.  I submit on the spot to be
pardoned.  I submit now to be saved.  I submit in all things from
this very hour and house of God not any longer to be mine own, but
to be Thine, O God, Thine, Thine, for ever, in Jesus Christ Thy Son
and my Saviour!

"But, one day, as I was passing in the field, and that, too, with
some dashes in my conscience, fearing lest all was not right,
suddenly this sentence fell upon my soul, Thy Righteousness is in
heaven!  And, methought, I saw with the eyes of my soul Jesus
Christ at God's right hand.  There, I saw, was my Righteousness.  I
also saw, moreover, that it was not my good frame of heart that
made my Righteousness better, nor my bad frame of heart that made
my Righteousness worse:  for my Righteousness was Jesus Christ
Himself, the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.  'Twas
glorious to me to see His exaltation, and the worth and prevalency
of His benefits.  And that because I could now look from myself to
Him and should reckon that all those graces of God that were now
green in me were yet but like those crack-groats and four-pence
halfpennies that rich men carry in their purses when their gold is
in their trunks at home!  Oh, I saw that day that my gold was all
in my trunk at home!  Even in Christ, my Lord and Saviour!  Now,
Christ was all to me:  all my wisdom, all my righteousness, all my
sanctification and all my redemption."


"Methinks in this God speaks,
No tinker hath such power."



LITTLE-FAITH



"O thou of little faith."--Our Lord.

Little-Faith, let it never be forgotten, was, all the time, a good
man.  With all his mistakes about himself, with his sad
misadventure, with all his loss of blood and of money, and with his
whole after-lifetime of doleful and bitter complaints,--all the
time, Little-Faith was all through, in a way, a good man.  To keep
us right on this all-important point, and to prevent our being
prematurely prejudiced against this pilgrim because of his somewhat
prejudicial name--because give a dog a bad name, you know, and you
had better hang him out of hand at once--because, I say, of this
pilgrim's somewhat suspicious name, his scrupulously just, and,
indeed, kindly affected biographer says of him, and says it of him
not once nor twice, but over and over and over again, that this
Little-Faith was really all the time a truly good man.  And, more
than that, this good man's goodness was not a new thing with him it
was not a thing of yesterday.  This man had, happily to begin with,
a good father and a good mother.  And if there was a good town in
all those parts for a boy to be born and brought up in it was
surely the town of Sincere.  "Train up a child in the way he should
go, and when he is old he will not depart from it."  Well, Little-
Faith had been so trained up both by his father and his mother and
his schoolmaster and his minister, and he never cost either of them
a sore heart or even an hour's sleep.  One who knew him well, as
well, indeed, as only one young man knows another, has been fain to
testify, when suspicions have been cast on the purity and integrity
of his youth, that nothing will describe this pilgrim so well in
the days of his youth as just those beautiful words out of the New
Testament--"an example to all young men in word, in conversation,
in charity, in spirit, in faith even, and in purity"--and that, if
there was one young man in all that town of Sincere who kept his
garments unspotted it was just our pilgrim of to-night.  Yes, said
one who had known him all his days, if the child is the father of
the man, then Little-Faith, as you so unaccountably to me call him,
must have been all along a good man.

It was said long ago in Vanity Fair about our present Premier that
if he were a worse man he would be a better statesman.  Now, I do
not repeat that in this place because I agree with it, but because
it helps to illustrate, as sometimes a violent paradox will help to
illustrate, a truth that does not lie all at once on the surface.
But it is no paradox or extravagance or anything but the simple
truth to say that if Little-Faith had had more and earlier
discoveries made to him of the innate evil of his own heart, even
if it had been by that innate evil bursting out of his heart and
laying waste his good life, he would either have been driven out of
his little faith altogether or driven into a far deeper faith.  Had
the commandment come to him in the manner it came to Paul; had it
come so as that the sinfulness of his inward nature had revived, as
Paul says, under its entrance; then, either his great goodness or
his little faith must have there and then died.  God's truth and
man's goodness cannot dwell together in the same heart.  Either the
truth will kill the goodness, or the goodness will kill the truth.
Little-Faith, in short, was such a good man, and had always been
such a good man, and had led such an easy life in consequence, that
his faith had not been much exercised, and therefore had not grown,
as it must have been exercised and must have grown, had he not been
such a good man.  In short, and to put it bluntly, had Little-Faith
been a worse sinner, he would have been a better saint.  "O felix
culpa!" exclaimed a church father; "O happy fault, which found for
us sinners such a Redeemer."  An apostrophe which Bishop Ken has
put into these four bold lines -


"What Adam did amiss,
Turned to our endless bliss;
O happy sin, which to atone,
Drew Filial God to leave His throne."


And John Calvin, the soberest of men, supports Augustine, the most
impulsive of men, in saying the same thing.  All things which
happen to the saints are so overruled by God that what the world
regards as evil the issue shows to be good.  For what Augustine
says is true, that even the sins of saints are, through the guiding
providence of God, so far from doing harm to them, that, on the
contrary, they serve to advance their salvation.  And Richard
Hooker, a theologian, if possible, still more judicious than even
John Calvin, says on this same subject and in support of the same
great father, "I am not afraid to affirm it boldly with St.
Augustine that men puffed up through a proud opinion of their own
sanctity and holiness receive a benefit at the hands of God, and
are assisted with His grace, when with His grace they are not
assisted, but permitted, and that grievously, to transgress.  Ask
the very soul of Peter, and it shall undoubtedly make you itself
this answer:  My eager protestations, made in the glory of my
ghostly strength, I am ashamed of; but those crystal tears,
wherewith my sin and weakness were bewailed, have procured my
endless joy:  my strength hath been my ruin, and my fall my stay."
And our own Samuel Rutherford is not likely to be left far behind
by the best of them when the grace of God is to be magnified.  "Had
sin never been we should have wanted the mysterious Emmanuel, the
Beloved, the Chief among ten thousand, Christ, God-man, the Saviour
of sinners.  For, no sick sinners, no soul-physician of sinners; no
captive, no Redeemer; no slave of hell, no lovely ransom-payer of
heaven.  Mary Magdalene with her seven devils, Paul with his hands
smoking with the blood of the saints, and with his heart sick with
malice and blasphemy against Christ and His Church, and all the
rest of the washen ones whose robes are made fair in the blood of
the Lamb, and all the multitude that no man can number in that best
of lands, are all but bits of free grace.  O what a depth of
unsearchable wisdom to contrive that lovely plot of free grace.
Come, all intellectual capacities, and warm your hearts at this
fire.  Come, all ye created faculties, and smell the precious
ointment of Christ.  Oh come, sit down under His shadow and eat the
apples of life.  Oh that angels would come, and generations of men,
and wonder, and admire, and fall down before the unsearchable
wisdom of this gospel-art of the unsearchable riches of Christ!"
And always pungent Thomas Shepard of New England:  "You shall find
this, that there is not any carriage or passage of the Lord's
providence toward thee but He will get a name to Himself, first and
last, by it.  Hence you shall find that those very sins that
dishonour His name He will even by them get Himself a better name;
for so far will they be from casting you out of His love that He
will actually do thee good by them.  Look and see if it is not so
with thee?  Doth not thy weakness strengthen thee like Paul?  Doth
not thy blindness make thee cry for light?  And hath not God out of
darkness oftentimes brought light?  Thou hast felt venom against
Christ and thy brother, and thou hast on that account loathed
thyself the more.  Thy falls into sin make thee weary of it,
watchful against it, long to be rid of it.  And thus He makes thy
poison thy food, thy death thy life, thy damnation thy salvation,
and thy very greatest enemies thy very best friends.  And hence Mr.
Fox said that he thanked God more for his sins than for his good
works.  And the reason is, God will have His name."  And, last, but
not least, listen to our old acquaintance, James Fraser of Brea:
"I find advantages by my sins:  'Peccare nocet, peccavisse vero
juvat.'  I may say, as Mr. Fox said, my sins have, in a manner,
done me more good than my graces.  Grace and mercy have more
abounded where sin had much abounded.  I am by my sins made much
more humble, watchful, revengeful against myself.  I am made to see
a greater need to depend more upon Him and to love Him the more.  I
find that true which Shepard says, 'sin loses strength by every new
fall.'"  Have you followed all that, my brethren?  Or have you
stumbled at it?  Do you not understand it?  Does your superficial
gin-horse mind incline to shake its empty head over all this?  I
know that great names, and especially the great names of your own
party, go much farther with you than the truth goes, and therefore
I have sheltered this deep truth under a shield of great names.
For their sakes let this sure truth of God's best saints lie in
peace and undisputed beside you till you arrive to understand it.

But, to proceed,--the thing was this.  At this passage there comes
down from Broadway-gate a lane called Dead-Man's-lane, so called
because of the murders that are commonly done there.  And this
Little-Faith going on pilgrimage, as we now do, chanced to sit down
there and fell fast asleep.  Yes; the thing was this:  This good
man had never been what one would call really awake.  He was not a
bad man, as men went in the town of Sincere, but he always had a
half-slept half-awakened look about his eyes, till now, at this
most unfortunate spot, he fell stone-dead asleep.  You all know, I
shall suppose, what the apostle Paul and John Bunyan mean by sleep,
do you not?  You all know, at any rate, to begin with, what sleep
means in the accident column of the morning papers.  You all know
what sleep meant and what it involved and cost in the Thirsk
signal-box the other night. {1}  When a man is asleep, he is as
good as dead, and other people are as good as dead to him.  He is
dead to duty, to danger, to other people's lives, as well as to his
own.  He may be having pleasant dreams, and may even be laughing
aloud in his sleep, but that may only make his awaking all the more
hideous.  He may awake just in time, or he may awake just too late.
Only, he is asleep and he neither knows nor cares.  Now, there is a
sleep of the soul as well as of the body.  And as the soul is in
worth, as the soul is in its life and in its death to the body, so
is its sleep.  Many of you sitting there are quite as dead to
heaven and hell, to death and judgment, and to what a stake other
people as well as yourselves have in your sleep as that poor
sleeper in the signal-box was dead to what was coming rushing on
him through the black night.  And as all his gnashing of teeth at
himself, and all his sobs before his judge and before the laid-out
dead, and before distracted widows and half-mad husbands did not
bring back that fatal moment when he fell asleep so sweetly, so
will it be with you.  Lazarus! come forth!  Wise and foolish
virgins both:  Behold the Bridegroom cometh!  Awake, thou that
sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee
light!

And, with that, Guilt with a great club that was in his hand struck
Little-Faith on the head, and with that blow felled him to the
earth, where he lay bleeding as one that would soon bleed to death.
Yes, yes, all true to the very life.  A man may be the boast and
the example of all the town, and yet, unknown to them all, and all
but unknown to himself till he is struck down, he may have had
guilt enough on his track all the time to lay him half dead at the
mouth of Dead-Man's-lane.  Good as was the certificate that all men
in their honesty gave to Little-Faith, yet even he had some bad
enough memories behind him and within him had he only kept them
ever present with him.  But, then, it was just this that all along
was the matter with Little-Faith.  Till, somehow, after that sad
and yet not wholly evil sleep, all his past sins leapt out into the
light and suddenly became and remained all the rest of his life
like scarlet.  So loaded, indeed, was the club of Guilt with the
nails and studs and clamps of secret aggravation, that every nail
and stud left its own bleeding bruise in the prostrate man's head.
I have myself, says the narrator of Little-Faith's story, I have
myself been engaged as he was, and I found it to be a terrible
thing.  I would, as the saying is, have sold my life at that moment
for a penny; but that, as God would have it, I was clothed with
armour of proof:  ay, and yet though I was thus harnessed, I found
it hard work to quit myself like a man.  No man can tell what in
that combat attends us but he that hath been in the battle himself.
Great-Grace himself,--whoso looks well upon his face shall see
those cuts and scars that shall easily give demonstration of what I
say.

Most unfortunately there was no good Samaritan with his beast on
the road that day to take the half-dead man to an inn.  And thus it
was that Little-Faith was left to lie in his blood till there was
almost no more blood left in him.  Till at last, coming a little to
himself, he made a shift to scrabble on his way.  When he was able
to look a little to himself, besides all his wounds and loss of
blood, he found that all his spending money was gone, and what was
he to do, a stranger in such a plight on a strange road?  There was
nothing for it but he must just beg his way with many a hungry
belly for the remainder of his way.  You all understand the parable
at this point?  Our knowledge of gospel truth; our personal
experience of the life of God in our own soul; our sensible
attainments in this grace of the Spirit and in that; in secret
prayer, in love to God, in forgiveness of injuries, in good-will to
all men, and in self-denial that no one knows of,--in things like
these we possess what may be called the pocket-money of the
spiritual life.  All these things, at their best, are not the true
jewel that no thief can break through nor steal; but though they
are not our best and truest riches, yet they have their place and
play their part in sending us up the pilgrim way.  By our long and
close study of the word of God, if that is indeed our case; by
divine truth dwelling richly and experimentally in our hearts; and
by a hidden life that is its own witness, and which always has the
Holy Spirit's seal set upon it that we are the children of God,--
all that keeps, and is designed by God to keep our hearts up amid
the labours and the faintings, the hopes and the fears of the
spiritual life.  All that keeps us at the least and the worst above
famine and beggary.  Now, the whole pity with Little-Faith was,
that though he was not a bad man, yet he never, even at his best
days, had much of those things that make a good and well-furnished
pilgrim; and what little he had he had now clean lost.  He had
never been much a reader of his Bible; he had never sat over it as
other men sat over their news-letters and their romances.  He had
never had much taste or talent for spiritual books of any kind.  He
was a good sort of man, but he was not exactly the manner of man on
whose broken heart the Holy Ghost sets the broad seal of heaven.
But for his dreadful misadventure, he might have plodded on, a
decent, humdrum, commonplace, everyday kind of pilgrim; but when
that catastrophe fell on him he had nothing to fall back upon.  The
secret ways of faith and love and hope were wholly unknown to him.
He had no practice in importunate prayer.  He had never prayed a
whole night all his life.  He had never needed to do so.  For were
we not told when we first met him what a blameless and pure and
true and good man he had always been?  He did not know how to find
his way about in his Bible; and as for the maps and guide-books
that some pilgrims never let out of their hand, even when he had
some spending money about him, he never laid it out that way.  And
a more helpless pilgrim than Little-Faith was all the rest of the
way you never saw.  He was forced to beg as he went, says his
historian.  That is to say, he had to lean upon and look to wiser
and better-furnished men than himself.  He had to share their
meals, look to them to pay his bills, keep close to their company,
walk in their foot-prints, and at night borrow their oil, and it
was only in this poor dependent way that Little-Faith managed to
struggle on to the end of his dim and joyless journey.

It would have been far more becoming and far more profitable if
Christian and Hopeful, instead of falling out of temper and calling
one another bad names over the sad case of Little-Faith, had tried
to tell one another why that unhappy pilgrim's faith was so small,
and how both their own faith and his might from that day have been
made more.  Hopeful, for some reason or other, was in a rude and
boastful mood of mind that day, and Christian was more tart and
snappish than we have ever before seen him; and, altogether, the
opportunity of learning something useful out of Little-Faith's
story has been all but lost to us.  But, now, since there are so
many of Little-Faith's kindred among ourselves--so many good men
who are either half asleep in their religious life or are begging
their way from door to door--let them be told, in closing, one or
two out of many other ways in which their too little faith may
possibly be made stronger and more fruitful.

Well, then, faith, like everything else, once we have it, grows
greater by our continual exercise of it.  Exercise, then,
intentionally and seriously and on system your faith every day.
And exercise it habitually and increasingly on your Bible, on
heaven, and on Jesus Christ.  And let your faith on all these
things, and places, and persons, work by love,--by love and by
imagination.  Our love is cold and our faith is small and weak for
lack of imagination.  Read your Psalm, your Gospel, your Epistle
every morning and every night with your eye upon the object.  Think
you see the Psalmist amid all his deep and divine experiences.
Think you see Jesus Christ speaking His parables, saying His
prayers, and doing His good works.  Walk up and down with Him,
observing His manner, His look, His gait, His divinity in your
humanity, till Galilee and Jerusalem become Scotland and Edinburgh;
that is, till He is as much with you, and more, than He was with
Peter and James and John.  Never close your eye a single night till
you have again laid your hand on the very head of the Lamb of God,
and till you feel that your sin and guilt have all passed off your
hand and on upon His head.  And never rise without, like William
Law, saluting the rising sun in the name of God, as if he had just
been created and sent up into your sky to let you see to serve God
and your neighbour for another day.  And be often out of this world
and up in heaven.  Beat all about you at building castles in the
air; you have more material and more reason.  For is not faith the
substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen?
Walk often in heaven's friendly streets.  Pass often into heaven's
many mansions filled with happy families.  Imagine this unhappy
life at an end, and imagine yourself sent back to this probationary
world to play the man for a few short years before heaven finally
calls you home.  Little-Faith was a good man, but there was no
speculation in his eyes and no secrets of love in his heart.  And
if your faith also is little, and your spending money also is run
low, try this way of love and imagination.  If you have a better
way, then go on with it and be happy yourself and helpful to
others; but if your faith is at a standstill and is stricken with
barrenness, try my counsel of putting more heart and more inward
eye, more holy love and more heavenly joy, into your frigid and
sterile religion.



THE FLATTERER



"A man that flattereth his neighbour spreadeth a net for his
feet."--The Wise Man.

Both Ignorance and Little-Faith would have had their revenge and
satisfaction upon Christian and Hopeful had they seen those two so
Pharisaical old men taken in the Flatterer's net.  For it was
nothing else but the swaggering pride of Hopeful over the pitiful
case of Little-Faith, taken along with the hard and hasty ways of
Christian with that unhappy youth Ignorance, that so soon laid them
both down under the small cords of the Shining One.  This word of
the wise man, that pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty
spirit before a fall, was fulfilled to the very letter in Christian
and Hopeful that high-minded day.  At the same time, it must be
admitted that Christian and Hopeful would have been more than human
if they had not both felt and let fall some superiority, some
scorn, and some impatience in the presence of such a silly and
upsetting stripling as Ignorance was; as, also, over the story of
such a poor-spirited and spunging creature as Little-Faith was.
Christian and Hopeful had just come down from their delightful time
among the Delectable Mountains, and they were as full as they could
hold of all kinds of knowledge, and faith, and hope, and assurance;
when, most unfortunately, as it turned out, they first came across
Ignorance, and then, after quarrelling with him, they fell out
between themselves over the case of Little-Faith.  Their superior
knowledge of the truth, and their superior strength of faith, ought
to have made them more able to bear with the infirmities of the
weak, and with the passing moods, however provoking, of one
another.  But no.  And their impatience and contempt and bad temper
all came at this crisis to such a head with them that they could
only be cured by the small cords and the stinging words of the
Shining One.  The true key to this so painful part of the parable
hangs at our own girdle.  We who have been born and brought up in
an evangelical church are thrown from time to time into the company
of men--ministers and people--who have not had our advantages and
opportunities.  They have been born, baptized, and brought up in
communities and churches the clean opposite of ours; and they are
as ignorant of all New Testament religion as Ignorance himself was;
or, on the other hand, they are as full of superstition and terror
and spiritual starvation as Little-Faith was.  And then, instead of
recollecting and laying to heart Who made us to differ from such
ignorance and such unbelief, and thus putting on love and humility
and patience toward our neighbours, we speak scornfully and roughly
to them, and boast ourselves over them, and as good as say to them,
Stand by thyself, come not near to me, for I am wiser, wider-
minded, stronger, and better every way than thou.  And then, ere
ever we are aware of what we are doing, we have let the arch-
flatterer of religious superiority and of spiritual pride seduce us
aside out of the lowly and heavenly way of love and humility till
we are again brought back to it with rebukes of conscience and with
other chastisements.  You all understand, my brethren, that the man
black of flesh but covered with a white robe was no wayside seducer
who met Christian and Hopeful at that dangerous part of the road
only and only on that high-minded day.  You know from yourselves
surely that both Christian and Hopeful carried that black but
smooth-spoken man within themselves.  The Flatterer who led the two
pilgrims so fatally wrong that day was just their own heart taken
out of their own bosom and personified and dramatised by Bunyan's
dramatic genius, and so made to walk and talk and flatter and puff
up outside of themselves till they came again to see who in reality
he was and whence he came,--that is to say, till they were brought
to see what they themselves still were, and would always be, when
they were left to themselves.  "Where did you lie last night? asked
the Shining One with the whip.  With the Shepherds on the
Delectable Mountains, they answered.  He asked them then if they
had not of those shepherds a note of direction for the way?  They
answered, Yes.  But did you not, said he, when you were at a stand
pluck out and read your note?  They answered, No.  He asked them
why?  They said they forgot.  He asked, moreover if the shepherds
did not bid them beware of the Flatterer?  They answered, Yes; but
we did not imagine, said they, that this fine-spoken man had been
he."

All good literature, both sacred and profane, both ancient and
modern, is full of the Flatterer.  Let me not, protests Elihu in
his powerful speech in the book of Job, let me not accept any man's
person; neither let me give flattering titles unto man, lest in so
doing my Maker should soon take me away.  And the Psalmist in his
powerful description of the wicked men of his day:  There is no
faithfulness in their mouth; their inward part is very wickedness;
their throat is an open sepulchre; they flatter with their tongue.
And again:  They speak with flattering lips, and with a double
heart do they speak.  But the Lord shall cut off all flattering
lips, and the tongue that speaketh proud things.  "The perpetual
hyperbole" of pure love becomes in the lips of impure love the
impure bait that leads the simple ones astray on the streets of the
city as seen and heard by the wise man out of his casement.  My
son, say unto wisdom, Thou art my sister, and call understanding
thy kinswoman; that they may keep thee from the strange woman, from
the stranger which flattereth thee with her words, which forsaketh
the guide of her youth, and forgetteth the covenant of her God.
And then in the same book of Hebrew aphorisms we find this text
which Bunyan puts on the margin of the page:  "A man that
flattereth his neighbour spreadeth a net for his feet."  And now,
before we leave the ancient world, if you would not think it
beneath the dignity of the place we are in, I would like to read to
you a passage out of a round-about paper written by a satirist of
Greece about the time of Ezra and Nehemiah in Jerusalem.  You will
easily remark the difference of tone between the seriousness and
pathos of the Hebrew prophet and the light and chaffing touch of
Theophrastus.  "The Flatterer is a person," says that satirist of
Greek society, "who will say to you as he walks with you, 'Do you
observe how people are looking at you?  This happens to no man in
Athens but to you.  A fine compliment was paid you yesterday in the
Porch.  More than thirty persons were sitting there when the
question was started, Who is our foremost man?  Every one mentioned
you first, and ended by coming back to your name."  The Flatterer
will laugh also at your stalest joke, and will stuff his cloak into
his mouth as if he could not repress his amusement when you again
tell it.  He will buy apples and pears and will give to your
children when you are by, and will kiss them all and will say,
'Chicks of a good father.'  Also, when he assists at the purchase
of slippers he will declare that the foot is more shapely than the
shoe.  He is the first of the guests to praise the wine and to say
as he reclines next the host, 'How delicate your fare always is';
and taking up something from the table, 'Now, how excellent that
is!'"  And so on.  Yes, we have heard it all over and over again in
Modern Athens also.  The Greek fable also of the fox and the crow
and the piece of cheese is only another illustration of the truth
that the God of truth and integrity never left Himself without a
witness.  Our own literature also is scattered full of the
Flatterer and his too willing dupes.  "Of praise a mere glutton,"
says Goldsmith of David Garrick, "he swallowed what came.  The puff
of a dunce he mistook it for fame."  "Delicious essence," exclaims
Sterne, "how refreshing thou art to poor human nature!  How sweetly
dost thou mix with the blood, and help it through the most
difficult and tortuous passages to the heart."  "He that slanders
me," says Cowper, "paints me blacker than I am, and he that
flatters me whiter.  They both daub me, and when I look in the
glass of conscience, I see myself disguised by both."  And then he
sings:


"The worth of these three kingdoms I defy
To lure me to the baseness of a lie;
And of all lies (be that one poet's boast),
The lie that flatters I abhor the most."


Now, praise, which is one of the best and sweetest things in human
life, so soon passes over into flattery, which is one of the worst
things, that something must here be said and laid to heart about
praise also.  But, to begin with, praise itself must first be
praised.  There is nothing nobler than true praise in him who
speaks it, and there is nothing dearer and sweeter to him who hears
it.  God Himself inhabits the praises of Israel.  All God's works
praise Him.  Whoso offereth praise glorifieth Me.  Praise waiteth
for Thee, O God, in Zion.  Enter into His gates with thanksgiving,
and into His courts with praise.  Violence shall no more be heard
in thy land, wasting nor destruction within thy borders; but thou
shalt call thy walls Salvation, and thy gates Praise.  And such
also is all true praise between man and man.  How deliciously sweet
is praise!  How we labour after it! how we look for it and wait for
it! and how we languish and die if we do not get it!  Again, when
it comes to us, how it cheers us up and makes our face to shine!
For a long time after it our step is so swift on the street and our
face beams so that all men can quite well see what has come to us.
Praise is like wine in our blood; it is new life to our fainting
heart.  So much is this the case that a salutation of praise is to
be our first taste of heaven itself.  It will wipe all tears off
our eyes when we hear our Lord saying to us, "Well done!" when all
our good works that we have done in the body shall be found unto
praise and honour and glory in the great day of Jesus Christ.

At the same time, this same love of praise is one of our most
besetting and fatal temptations as long as we are in this false and
double and deceptive world.  Sin, God curse it! has corrupted and
poisoned everything, the very best things of this life, and when
the best things are corrupted and poisoned they become the worst
things.  And praise does not escape this universal and fatal law.
Weak, evil, and self-seeking men are near us, and we lean upon
them, look to them, and listen to them.  We make them our strength
and support, and seek repose and refreshment from them.  They
cannot be all or any of these things to us; but we are far on in
life, we are done with life, before we have discovered that and
will admit that.  Most men never discover and admit that till they
are out of this life altogether.  Christ's praise and the applause
of His saints and angels are so future and so far away from us, and
man's praise and the applause of this world, hollow and false as it
is, is so near us, that we feed our souls on offal and garbage,
when, already, in the witness of a good conscience, we might be
feasting our souls on the finest of the wheat, and satisfying them
with honey out of the rock.  And, then, this insatiable appetite of
our hearts, being so degraded and perverted, like all degraded and
perverted appetites, becomes an iron-fast slave to what it feeds
upon.  What miserable slaves we all are to the approval and the
praise of men!  How they hold us in their bondage!  How we lick
their hands and sit up on our haunches and go through our postures
for a crumb!  How we crawl on our belly and lick their feet for a
stroke and a smile!  What a hound's life does that man lead who
lives upon the approval and the praise and the patronage of men!
What meanness fills his mind; what baseness fills his heart!  What
a shameful leash he is led about the world in!  How kicked about
and spat upon he is; while not half so much as he knows all the
time that he deserves to be!  Better far be a dog at once and bay
the moon than be a man and fawn upon the praises of men.

If you would be a man at all, not to speak of a Christian man,
starve this appetite till you have quite extirpated it.  You will
never be safe from it as long as it stirs within you.  Extirpate
it!  Extirpate it!  You will never know true self-respect and you
will never deserve to know it, till you have wholly extirpated your
appetite for praise.  Put your foot upon it, put it out of your
heart.  Stop fishing for it, and when you see it coming, turn away
and stop your ears against it.  And should it still insinuate
itself, at any rate do not repeat to others what has already so
flattered and humbled and weakened you.  Telling it to others will
only humble and weaken you more.  By repeating the praise that you
have heard or read about yourself you only expose yourself and
purchase well-deserved contempt for yourself.  And, more than that,
by fishing for praise you lay yourself open to all sorts of
flatterers.  Honest men, men who truly respect and admire you, will
show you their dignified regard and appreciation of you and your
work by their silence; while your leaky slaves will crowd around
you with floods of praise that they know well will please and
purchase you.  And when you cannot with all your arts squeeze a
drop out of those who love and honour you, gallons will be poured
upon you by those who have respect neither for themselves nor for
you.  Faugh!  Flee from flatterers, and take up only with sternly
true and faithful men.  "I am much less regardful," says Richard
Baxter, "of the approbation of men, and set much lighter store by
their praise and their blame, than I once did.  All worldly things
appear most vain and unsatisfying to those who have tried them
most.  But while I feel that this has had some hand in my distaste
for man's praise, yet it is the increasing impression on my heart
of man's nothingness and God's transcendent greatness; it is the
brevity and vanity of all earthly things, taken along with the
nearness of eternity;--it is all this that has at last lifted me
above the blame and the praise of men."

To conclude; let us make up our mind and determine to pass on to
God on the spot every syllable of praise that ever comes to our
eyes or our ears--if, in this cold, selfish, envious, and grudging
world, any syllable of praise ever should come to us.  Even if pure
and generous and well-deserved praise should at any time come to
us, all that does not make it ours.  The best earned usury is not
the steward's own money to do with it what he likes.  The principal
and the interest, and the trader too, are all his master's.  And,
more than that, after the wisest and the best trader has done his
best, he will remain, to himself at least, a most unprofitable
servant.  Pass on then immediately, dutifully, and to its very last
syllable, to God all the praise that comes to you.  Wash your hands
of it and say, Not unto us, O God, not unto us, but unto Thy name.
And then, to take the most selfish and hungry-hearted view of this
whole matter, what you thus pass on to God as not your own but His,
He will soon, and in a better and safer world, return again to the
full with usury to you, and you again to God, and He again to you,
and so on, all down the pure and true and sweet and blessed life of
heaven.



ATHEIST



" . . . without God [literally, atheists] in the world."--Paul.

"Yonder is a man with his back toward Zion, and he is coming to
meet us.  So he drew nearer and nearer, and at last came up to
them.  His name was Atheist, and he asked them whither they were
going?  We are going to the Mount Zion, they answered.  Then
Atheist fell into a very great laughter.  What is the meaning of
your laughter? they asked.  I laugh to see what ignorant persons
you are to take upon you so tedious a journey, and yet are like to
have nothing but your travel for your pains.  Why, man?  Do you
think we shall not be received? they said.  Received!  There is no
such place as you dream of in all this world.  But there is in the
world to come, replied Christian.  When I was at home, Atheist went
on, in mine own country I heard as you now affirm, and, from that
hearing, I went out to see, and have been seeking this city you
speak of this twenty years, but find no more of it than I did the
first day I set out.  And, still laughing, he went his way."

Having begun to tell us about Atheist, why did Bunyan not tell us
more?  We would have thanked him warmly to-night for a little more
about this unhappy man.  Why did the dreamer not take another eight
or ten pages in order to tell us, as only he could have told us,
how this man that is now Atheist had spent his past twenty years
seeking Mount Zion?  Those precious unwritten pages are now buried
in John Strudwick's vault in Bunhill Fields, and no other man has
arisen able to handle Bunyan's biographic pen.  Had Bunyan but put
off the entrance of Christian and Hopeful into the city till he had
told us something more about the twenty years it had taken this
once earnest pilgrim to become an atheist, how valuable an
interpolation that would have been!  What was it that made this man
to set out so long ago for the Celestial City?  What was it that so
stoutly determined him to leave off all his old companions and turn
his back on the sweet refreshments of his youth?  How did he do at
the Slough of Despond?  Did he come that way?  What about the
Wicket Gate, and the House Beautiful, and the Interpreter's House,
and the Delectable Mountains?  What men, and especially what women,
did he meet and converse with on his way?  What were his fortunes,
and what his misfortunes?  How much did he lay out at Vanity Fair,
and on what?  At what point of his twenty years' way did his
youthful faith begin to shake, and his youthful love begin to
become lukewarm?  And what was it that at last made him quite turn
round his back on Zion and his face to his own country?  I cannot
forgive Bunyan to-night for not telling us the story of Atheist's
conversion, his pilgrimage, and his apostasy in full.

At the same time, though it cannot be denied that Bunyan has lost
at this point a great opportunity for his genius and for our
advantage,--at the same time, he undoubtedly did a very courageous
thing in introducing Atheist at all; and, especially, in
introducing him to us and making him laugh so loudly at us when we
are on the very borders of the land of Beulah.  A less courageous
writer, and a writer less sure of his ground, would have left out
Atheist altogether; or, if he had felt constrained to introduce
him, would have introduced him at any other period of our history
rather than at this period.  Under other hands than Bunyan's we
would have met with this mocking reprobate just outside the City of
Destruction; or, perhaps, among the booths of Vanity Fair; or,
indeed, anywhere but where we now meet him.  And, that our greater-
minded author does not let loose the laughter of Atheist upon us
till we are almost out of the body is a stroke of skill and truth
and boldness that makes us glad indeed that we possess such a
sketch at Bunyan's hand at all, all too abrupt and all too short as
that sketch is.  In the absence, then, of a full-length and
finished portrait of Atheist, we must be content to fall back on
some of the reflections and lessons that the mere mention of his
name, the spot he passes us on, and the ridicule of his laughter,
all taken together, awaken in our minds.  One rapid stroke of such
a brush as that of John Bunyan conveys more to us than a full-
length likeness, with all the strongest colours, of any other
artist would be able to do.

1.  One thing the life-long admiration of John Bunyan's books has
helped to kindle and burn into my mind and my imagination is this:
What a universe of things is the heart of man!  Were there nothing
else in the heart of man but all the places and all the persons and
all the adventures that John Bunyan saw in his sleep, what a world
that would open up in all our bosoms!  All the pilgrims, good and
bad--they, or the seed and possibility of them all, are all in your
heart and in mine.  All the cities, all the roads that lead from
one city to another, with all the paths and all the by-paths,--all
the adventures, experiences, endurances, conflicts, overthrows,
victories,--all are within us and never are to be seen anywhere
else.  Heaven and hell, God and the devil, life and death,
salvation and damnation, time and eternity, all are within us.
"There is no Mount Zion in all this world," bellowed out this
blinded fool.  "No; I know that quite well," quickly responded
Christian; "but there is in the world to come."  He would have said
the whole truth, and he would have been entirely right, had he
taken time to add, "and in the world within."  "And more," he
should have said to Atheist, "much more in the world within than in
any possible world to come."  The Celestial City, every Sabbath-
school child begins gradually to understand, is not up among the
stars; till, as he grows older, he takes in the whole of the New
Testament truth that the kingdom of heaven is wholly within him.
You all understand, my brethren, that were we swept in a moment up
to the furthest star, by all that infinite flight we would not be
one hair's-breadth nearer the heavenly city.  That is not the right
direction to that city.  The city whose builder and maker is God
lies in quite a different direction from that altogether; not by
ascending up beyond sun and moon and stars to all eternity would we
ever get one hand's-breadth nearer God.  But if you deny yourself
sleep to-night till you have read His book and bowed your knees in
His closet; if, for His sake, you deny yourself to-morrow when you
are eating and drinking; as often as you say, "Not my will, but
Thine be done"; as often as you humble yourself when others exalt
themselves; as often as you refuse praise and despise blame for His
sake; as often as you forgive before God your enemy, and rejoice
with your friend,--Behold! the kingdom of heaven, with its King and
all His shining court of angels and saints is around you;--is,
indeed, within you.  No; there is no such place.  Heaven is not in
any place:  heaven is in a person where it is at all; and you are
that person as often as you put off an earthly and put on a
heavenly mind.  That mocking reprobate, with his secret heart all
through those twenty years hungering after the lusts of his youth,-
-he was wholly right in what he so unintentionally said; there is
no such place in all this world.  And, even if there were, it would
spue him and all who are like him out of its mouth.

2.  And, then, in all that universe of things that fills that
bottomless pit and shoreless sea the human heart, there is nothing
deeper down in it than just its deep and unsearchable atheism.  The
very deepest thing, and the most absolutely inexpugnable thing, in
every human heart is its theism; its original and inextinguishable
convictions about itself and about God.  But, all but as deep as
that--for all around that, and all over that, and soaking all
through that--there lies a superincumbent mass of sullen, brutish,
malignant atheism.  Nay, so deep down is the atheism of all our
hearts, that it is only one here and another there of the holiest
and the ripest of God's saints who ever get down to it, or even get
at their deepest within sight of it.  Robert Fleming tells us about
Robert Bruce, that he was a man that had much inward exercise about
his own personal case, and had been often assaulted anent that
great foundation truth, if there was a God.  And often, when he had
come up to the pulpit, after being some time silent, which was his
usual way, he would say, "I think it is a great matter to believe
there is a God"; telling the people that it was another thing to
believe that than they judged.  But it was also known to his
friends what extraordinary confirmations he had from the Lord
therein, and what near familiarity he did attain to in his heart-
converse with God:  Yea, truly, adds Fleming, some things I have
had thereanent that seem so strange and marvellous that I forbear
to set them down.  And in Halyburton's priceless Memoirs we read:
"Hereby I was brought into a doubt about the truths of religion,
the being of God, and things eternal.  Whenever I was in dangers or
straits and would build upon these things, a suspicion secretly
haunted me, what if the things are not?  This perplexity was
somewhat eased while one day I was reading how Robert Bruce was
shaken about the being of God, and how at length he came to the
fullest satisfaction."  And in another place:  "Some days ago
reading Ex. ix. and x., and finding this, "That ye may know that I
am God" frequently repeated, and elsewhere in passages innumerable,
as the end of God's manifesting Himself in His word and works; I
observe from it that atheism is deeply rooted even in the Lord's
people, seeing they need to be taught this so much.  The great
difficulty that the whole of revelation has to grapple with is
atheism; its whole struggle is to recover man to his first
impressions of a God.  This one point comprehends the whole of
man's recovery, just as atheism is the whole of man's apostasy."
And, again, in another part of the same great book, Halyburton
says:  "I must observe, also, the wise providence of God, that the
greatest difficulties that lie against religion are hid from
atheists.  All the objections I meet with in their writings are not
nearly so subtle as those which are often suggested to myself.  The
reason of this is obvious from the very nature of the thing--such
persons take not a near-hand view of religion, and while persons
stand at a distance neither are the advantages nor the difficulties
of religion discerned."  And now listen to Bunyan, that arch-
atheist:  "Whole floods of blasphemies both against God, Christ,
and the Scriptures were poured upon my spirit, to my great
confusion and astonishment.  Against the very being of God and of
His only beloved Son; or, whether there were, in truth, a God and a
Christ, or no.  Of all the temptations that ever I met with in my
life, to question the being of God and the truth of the Gospel is
the worst, and the worst to be borne.  When this temptation comes
it takes away my girdle from me, and removeth the foundation from
under me."


"Fool, said my Muse to me, look in thy heart and write."


And John Bunyan looked into his own deep and holy heart, and out of
it he composed this incident of Atheist.

3.  It may not be out of place at this point to look for a moment
at some of the things that agitate, stir up, and make the secret
atheism of our hearts to fluctuate and overflow.  Butler has a fine
passage in which he points out that it is only the higher class of
minds that are tempted with speculative difficulties such as those
were that assaulted Christian and Hopeful after they were so near
the end of their journey.  Coarse, common-place, and mean-minded
men have their probation appointed them among coarse, mean, and
commonplace things; whereas enlightened, enlarged, and elevated men
are exercised after the manner of Robert Bruce, Thomas Halyburton,
John Bunyan, and Butler himself.  "The chief temptations of the
generality of the world are the ordinary motives to injustice or
unrestrained pleasure; but there are other persons without this
shallowness of temper; persons of a deeper sense as to what is
invisible and future.  Now, these persons have their moral
discipline set them in that high region."  The profound bishop
means that while their appetites and their tempers are the
stumbling-stones of the most of men, the difficult problems of
natural and revealed and experimental religion are the test and the
triumph of other men.  As we have just seen in the men mentioned
above.  Students, whose temptations lie fully as much in their
intellects as in their senses, should buy (for a few pence)
Halyburton's Memoirs.  "With Halyburton," says Dr. John Duncan, "I
feel great intellectual congruity.  Halyburton was naturally a
sceptic, but God gave that sceptic great faith."

Then again, what Atheist calls the "tediousness" of the journey has
undoubtedly a great hand in making some half-in-earnest men
sceptics, if not scoffers.  Many of us here to-night who can never
now take this miserable man's way out of the tedium of the
Christian life, yet most bitterly feel it.  Whether that tedium is
inherent in that life, and inevitable to such men as we are who are
attempting that life; how far that feature belongs to the very
essence of the pilgrim life, and how far we import our own tedium
into the pilgrimage; the fact remains as Atheist puts it.  As
Atheist in this book says, so the Atheist who is in our hearts
often says:  We are like to have nothing for all our pains but a
lifetime of tedious travel.  Yes, wherever the blame lies, there
can be no doubt about it, that what this hilarious scoffer calls
the tediousness of the way is but a too common experience among
many of those who, tediousness and all, will still cleave fast to
it and will never leave it.

Then, again, great trials in life, great straits, dark and too-
long-continued providences, prayer unanswered, or not yet answered
in the way we dictate, bad men and bad causes growing like a green
bay tree, and good men and good work languishing and dying; these
things, and many more things such as these, of which this world of
faith and patience is full, prove quite too much for some men till
they give themselves up to a state of mind that is nothing better
than atheism.  "My evidences and my certainty," says Halyburton,
"were not answerable to the weight I was compelled to lay upon
them."  A figure which Goodwin in his own tender and graphic way
takes up thus:  "Set pins in a wall and fix them in ever so
loosely, yet, if you hang nothing upon them they will seem to stand
firm; but hang a heavy weight upon them, or even give them the
least jog as you pass, and the whole thing will suddenly come down.
The wall is God's word, the slack pin is our faith, and the weight
and the jog are the heavy burdens and the sudden shocks of life,
and down our hearts go, wall and pin and suspended vessel and all.

When the church and her ministers, when the Scriptures and their
anomalies, and when the faults and failings of Christian men are
made the subject of mockery and laughter, the reverence, the fear,
the awe, the respect that all enter so largely into religion, and
especially into the religion of young people, is too easily
destroyed; and not seldom the first seeds of practical and
sometimes of speculative atheism are thus sown.  The mischief that
has been done by mockery and laughter to the souls, especially of
the young and the inexperienced, only the great day will fully
disclose.

And then, two men of great weight and authority with us, tell us
what we who are ministers would have found out without them:  this,
namely, that the greatest atheists are they who are ever handling
holy things without feeling them.

"Is it true," said Christian to Hopeful, his fellow, "is it true
what this man hath said?"  "Take heed," said Hopeful, "remember
what it hath cost us already for hearkening to such kind of
fellows.  What!  No Mount Zion!  Did we not see from the Delectable
Mountains the gate of the City?  And, besides, are we not to walk
by faith?  Let us go on lest the man with the whip overtakes us
again."  Christian:  "My brother, I said that but to prove thee,
and to fetch from thee a fruit of the honesty of thy heart."  Many
a deep and powerful passage has Butler composed on that thesis
which Hopeful here supplies him with; and many a brilliant sermon
has Newman preached on that same text till he has made our
"predispositions to faith" a fruitful and an ever fresh commonplace
to hundreds of preachers.  Yes; the best bulwark of faith is a good
and honest heart.  To such a happy heart the truth is its own
unshaken evidence.  To whom can we go but to Thee?--they who have
such a heart protest.  The whole bent of such men's minds is toward
the truth of the gospel.  Their instincts keep them on the right
way even when their reason and their observation are both
confounded.  As Newman keeps on saying, they are "easy of belief."
They cannot keep away from Christ and His church.  They cannot turn
back.  They must go on.  Though He slay them they will die yearning
after Him.  They often fall into great error and into great guilt,
but their seed remaineth in them, and they cannot continue in error
or in guilt, because they are born of God.  They are they in whom


"Persuasion and belief
Have ripened into faith; and faith become
A passionate intuition."



HOPEFUL



"We are saved by hope."--Paul

Up till the time when Christian and Faithful passed through Vanity
Fair on their way to the Celestial City, Hopeful was one of the
most light-minded men in all that light-minded town.  By his birth,
and both on his father's and his mother's side, Hopeful was, to
begin with, a youth of an unusually shallow and silly mind.  In the
jargon of our day he was a man of a peculiarly optimistic
temperament.  No one ever blamed him for being too subjective and
introspective.  It took many sharp trials and many bitter
disappointments to take the inborn frivolity and superficiality out
of this young man's heart.  He was far on in his life, he was far
on even in his religious life, before you would have ever thought
of calling him a serious-minded man.  Hopeful had been born and
brought up to early manhood in the town of Vanity, and he knew
nothing better and desired nothing better than to lay out his whole
life and to rest all his hopes on the things of the fair; on such
things, that is, as houses, lands, places, honours, preferments,
titles, pleasures, and delights of all sorts.  And that vain and
empty life went on with him, till, as he told his companion
afterwards, it had all ended with him in revelling, and drinking,
and uncleanness, and Sabbath-breaking, and all such things as
destroyed his soul.  But in Hopeful's happy case also the blood of
the martyrs became the seed of the church.  Hopeful, as he was
afterwards called, had suffered so many bitter disappointments and
shipwrecks of expectation from the things of the fair, that is to
say, from the houses, the places, the preferments, the pleasures
and what not, of the fair, that even his heart was ripe for
something better than any of those things, when, as God would have
it, Christian and Faithful came to the town.  Hopeful was still
hanging about the booths of the fair; he was just fingering his
last sixpence over a commodity that he knew quite well would be
like gall in his belly as soon as he had bought it; when,--what is
that hubbub that rolls down the street?  Hopeful was always the
first to see and to hear every new thing that came to the town, and
thus it was that he was soon in the thick of the tumult that rose
around Christian and Faithful.  Had those two pilgrims come to the
town at any former time, Hopeful would have been among the foremost
to mock at and smite the two men; but, to-day, Hopeful's heart is
so empty, and his purse also, that he is already won to their side
by the loving looks and the wise and sweet words of the two ill-
used men.  Some of the men of the town said that the two pilgrims
were outlandish and bedlamite men, but Hopeful took courage to
reprove some of the foremost of the mob.  Till, at last, when
Faithful was at the stake, it was all that his companions could do
to keep back Hopeful from leaping up on the burning pile and
embracing the expiring man.  And then, when He who overrules all
things so brought it about that Christian escaped out of their
hands, who should come forth and join him at the upward gate of the
city but just Hopeful, who not only joined himself to the lonely
pilgrim, but told him also that there were many more of the men of
the city who would take their time and follow after.  And thus,
adds his biographer, when one died to make his testimony to the
truth, another rose up out of his ashes to be a companion to
Christian.

When Madame Krudener was getting her foot measured by a pietist
shoemaker, she was so struck with the repose and the sweetness and
the heavenly joy of the poor man's look and manner that she could
not help but ask him what had happened to him that he had such a
look on his countenance and such a light in his eye.  She was
miserable, though she had all that heart could wish.  She had all
that made her one of the most envied women in Europe; she had
birth, talents, riches, rank, and the friendship of princes and
princesses, and yet she was of all women the most miserable.  And
here was a poor chance shoemaker whose whole heart was running over
with a joy such that all her wealth could not purchase to her heart
one single drop of it.  The simple soul soon told her his secret;
it was no secret:  it was just Jesus Christ who had done it all.
And thus her poor shoemaker's happy face was the means of this
great lady's conversion.  And, in like manner, it was the beholding
of Christian and Faithful in their words and in their behaviour at
the fair that decided Hopeful to join himself to Christian and
henceforth to be his companion.

What were the things, asked Christian of his young companion, that
first led you to leave off the vanities of the fair and to think to
be a pilgrim?  Many things, replied Hopeful.  Sometimes if I did
but meet a good man in the street.  Or if mine head began
unaccountably, or mine heart, to ache.  Or if some one of my
companions became suddenly sick.  Or if I heard the bell toll that
some one was dead.  But, especially, when I thought of myself that
I must quickly come to judgment.  And then it is told in the best
style of the book how peace and rest and the beginning of true
satisfaction came to poor Hopeful's heart at last.  But you must
promise me to read the passage for yourselves before you sleep to-
night; and to read it again and again till, like Hopeful's, your
heart also is full of joy, and your eyes full of tears, and your
affections running over with love to the name and to the people and
to all the ways of Jesus Christ.

And then, it is very encouraging and reassuring to us to see how
Hopeful's true conversion so deepened and sobered and strengthened
his whole character.  He remained to the end in his mental
constitution and whole temperament, as we say, the same man he had
always been; but, while remaining the same man, at the same time a
most wonderful change gradually began to come over him, till, by
slow but sure degrees, he became the Hopeful we know and look to
and lean upon.  To use his own autobiographic words about himself,
it was "by hearing and considering of things that are Divine" that
his natural levity was so completely whipped out of his soul till
he was made at last an indispensable companion to Christian,
strong-minded and serious-minded man as he was.  "Conversion to
God," says William Law, "is often very sudden and instantaneous,
unexpectedly raised from variety of occasions.  Thus, one by seeing
only a withered tree, another by reading the lives and deaths of
the antediluvian fathers, one by hearing of heaven, another of
hell, one by reading of the love or wrath of God, another of the
sufferings of Christ, may find himself, as it were, melted into
penitence all of a sudden.  It may be granted also that the
greatest sinner may in a moment be converted to God, and may feel
himself wounded in such a degree as perhaps those never were who
have been turning to God all their lives.  But, then, it is to be
observed that this suddenness of change or flash of conviction is
by no means of the essence of true conversion.  This stroke of
conversion is not to be considered as signifying our high state of
a new birth in Christ, or a proof that we are on a sudden made new
creatures, but that we are thus suddenly called upon and stirred up
to look after a newness of nature.  The renewal of our first birth
and state is something entirely distinct from our first sudden
conversion and call to repentance.  That is not a thing done in an
instant, but is a certain process, a gradual release from our
captivity and disorder, consisting of several stages and degrees,
both of life and death, which the soul must go through before it
can have thoroughly put off the old man.  It is well worth
observing that our Saviour's greatest trials were near the end of
His life.  This might sufficiently show us that our first
awakenings have carried us but a little way; that we should not
then begin to be self-assured of our own salvation, but should
remember that we stand at a great distance from, and are in great
ignorance of, our severest trials."  Such was the way that
Christian in his experience and in his wisdom talked to his young
companion till his outward trials and the consequent discoveries he
made of his own weakness and corruption made even Hopeful himself a
sober-minded and a thoughtful man.  "Where pain ends, gain ends
too."

Then, again, no one can read Hopeful's remarkable history without
discovering this about him, that he showed best in adversity and
distress, just as he showed worst in deliverance and prosperity.
It is a fine lesson in Christian hope to descend into Giant
Despair's dungeon and hear the older pilgrim groaning and the
younger pilgrim consoling him, and, again, to stand on the bank of
the last river and hear Hopeful holding up Christian's drowning
head.  "Be of good cheer, my brother, for I feel the bottom, and it
is good!"  Bless Hopeful for that, all you whose deathbeds are
still before you.  For never was more true and fit word spoken for
a dying hour than that.  Read, till you have it by heart and in the
dark, Hopeful's whole history, but especially his triumphant end.
And have some one bespoken beforehand to read Hopeful in the River
to you when you have in a great measure lost your senses, and when
a great horror has taken hold of your mind.  "I sink in deep
waters," cried Christian, as his sins came to his mind, even the
sins which he had committed both since and before he came to be a
pilgrim.  "But I see the gate," said Hopeful, "and men standing at
it ready to receive us."  "Read to me where I first cast my
anchor," said John Knox to his weeping wife.

The Enchanted Ground, on the other hand, threatened to throw
Hopeful back again into his former light-minded state.  And there
is no saying what shipwreck he might have made there had the older
man not been with him to steady and reprove and instruct him.  As
it was, a touch now and then of his old vain temper returned to him
till it took all his companion's watchfulness and wariness to carry
them both out of that second Vanity Fair.  "I acknowledge myself in
a fault," said Hopeful to Christian, "and had I been here alone I
had run in danger of death.  Hitherto, thy company hath been my
mercy, and thou shalt have a good reward for all thy labour."

Now, my brethren, in my opinion we owe a great debt of gratitude to
John Bunyan for the large and the displayed place he has given to
Hopeful in the Pilgrim's Progress.  The fulness and balance and
proportion of the Pilgrim's Progress are features of that wonderful
book far too much overlooked.  So far as my reading goes I do not
know any other author who has at all done the justice to the saving
grace of hope that John Bunyan has done both in his doctrinal and
in his allegorical works.  Bunyan stands alone and supreme not only
for the insight, and the power with which he has constructed the
character and the career of Hopeful, but even for having given him
the space at all adequate to his merits and his services.  In those
eighty-seven so suggestive pages that form the index to Dr. Thomas
Goodwin's works I find some hundred and twenty-four references to
"faith," while there are only two references to "hope."  And that
same oversight and neglect runs through all our religious
literature, and I suppose, as a consequence, through all our
preaching too.  Now that is not the treatment the Bible gives to
this so essential Christian grace, as any one may see at a glance
who takes the trouble to turn up his Cruden.  Hope has a great
place alongside of faith and love in the Holy Scriptures, and it
has a correspondingly large and eloquent place in Bunyan.  Now,
that being so, why is it that this so great and so blessed grace
has so fallen out of our sermons and out of our hearts?  May God
grant that our reading of Hopeful's autobiography and his
subsequent history to-night may do something to restore the blessed
grace of hope to its proper place both in our pulpit and in all our
hearts.

To kindle then, to quicken, and to anchor your hope, my brethren,
may I have God's help to speak for a little longer to your hearts
concerning this neglected grace!  For, what is hope?  Hope is a
passion of the soul, wise or foolish, to be ashamed of or to be
proud of, just according to the thing hoped for, and just according
to the grounds of the hope.  Hope is made up of these two
ingredients--desire and expectation.  What we greatly desire we
take no rest till we find good grounds on which to build up our
expectations of it; and when we have found good grounds for our
expectations, then a glad hope takes possession of our hearts.
Now, to begin with, how is it with your desires?  You are afraid to
say much about your expectations and your hopes.  Well; let us come
to your hearts' desires.--Men of God, I will enter into your hearts
and I will tell you your hearts' desires better than you know them
yourselves; for the heart is deceitful above all things.  The time
was, when, like this young pilgrim before he became a pilgrim, your
desires were all set on houses, and lands, and places, and honours,
and preferments, and wives, and children, and silver, and gold, and
what not.  These things at one time were the utmost limit of your
desires.  But that has all been changed.  For now you have begun to
desire a better city, that is, an heavenly.  What is your chief
desire for this New Year? {2}   Is it not a new heart?  Is it not a
clean heart?  Is it not a holy heart?  Is it not that the Holy
Ghost would write the golden rule on the tables of your heart?
Does not God know that it is the deepest desire of your heart to be
able to love your neighbour as yourself?  To be able to rejoice
with him in his joy as well as to weep with him in his sorrow?
What would you not give never again to feel envy in your heart at
your brother, or straitness and pining at his prosperity?  One
thing do I desire, said the Psalmist, that mine ear may be nailed
to the doorpost of my God:  that I may always be His servant, and
may never wander from His service.  Now, that is your desire too.
I am sure it is.  You would not say it of yourself, but I defy you
to deny it when it is said about you.  Well, then, such things
being found among your desires, what grounds have you for expecting
the fulfilment of such desires?  What grounds?  The best of grounds
and every ground.  For you have the sure ground of God's word.  And
you have more than His word:  you have His very nature, and the
very nature of things.  For shall God create such desires in any
man's heart only to starve and torture that man?  Impossible!  It
were blasphemy to suspect it.  No.  Where God has made any man to
be so far a partaker of the Divine nature as to change all that
man's deepest desires, and to turn them from vanity to wisdom, from
earth to heaven, and from the creature to the Creator, doubt not,
wherever He has begun such a work, that He will hasten to finish
it.  Yes; lift up your heavy hearts, all ye who desire such things,
for God hath sent His Son to say to you, Blessed are ye that hunger
and thirst after righteousness, for ye shall be filled.  Only, keep
desiring.  Desire every day with a stronger and a more inconsolable
desire.  Desire, and ground your desire on God's word, and then
heave your hope like an anchor within the veil whither the
Forerunner is for you entered.  May I so hope? you say.  May I
venture to hope?  Yes; not only may you hope, but you must hope.
You are commanded to hope.  It is as much your bounden duty to hope
always, and to hope for the greatest and best things, as it is to
repent of your sins, to love God and your neighbour, to keep
yourself pure, and to set a watch on the door of your lips.  You
have been destroyed, I confess and lament it, for lack of knowledge
about the nature, the grounds, and the duty of hope.  But make up
now for past neglect.  Hope steadfastly, hope constantly, hope
boldly; hope for the best things, the greatest things, the most
divine and the most blessed things.  If you forget to-night all
else you have heard to-day, I implore you not any longer to forget
and neglect this, that hope is your immediate, constant, imperative
duty.  No sin, no depth of corruption in your heart, no assault on
your heart from your conscience, can justify you in ceasing to
hope.  Even when trouble "comes tumbling over the neck of all your
reformations" as it came tumbling on Hopeful, let that only drive
you the more deeply down into the true grounds of hope; even
against hope rejoice in hope.  Remember the Psalmist in the
hundred-and-thirtieth Psalm,--down in the deeps, if ever a fallen
sinner was.  Yet hear him when you cannot see him saying:  I hope
in Thy word!  And--for it is worthy to stand beside even that
splendid psalm,--I beseech you to read and lay to heart what
Hopeful says about himself in his conversion despair.

And then, as if to justify that hope, there always come with it
such sanctifying influences and such sure results.  The hope that
you are one day to awaken in the Divine likeness will make you lie
down on your bed every night in self-examination, repentance,
prayer, and praise.  The hope that your eyes are one day to see
Christ as He is will make you purify yourself as nothing else will.
The hope that you are to walk with Christ in white will make you
keep your garments clean; it will make you wash them many times
every day in the blood of the Lamb.  The hope that you are to cast
your crown at His feet will make you watch that no man takes your
crown from you.  The hope that you are to drink wine with Him in
His Father's kingdom will reconcile you meanwhile to water, lest
with your wine you stumble any of His little ones.  The hope of
hearing Him say, Well done!--how that will make you labour and
endure and not faint!  And the hope that you shall one day enter in
through the gates into the city, and have a right to the tree of
life,--how scrupulous that will make you to keep all His
commandments!  And this is one of His commandments, that you gird
up the loins of your mind, and hope to the end for the grace that
is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.



TEMPORARY



"They are they, which, when they hear, receive the word with joy;
and have no root, which for a while believe, and in time of
temptation fall away."--Our Lord.

"Well, then, did you not know about ten years ago one Temporary in
your parts who was a forward man in religion?  Know him! replied
the other.  Yes.  For my house not being above three miles from his
house he would ofttimes come to me, and that with many tears.
Truly I pitied the man, and was not altogether without hope of him;
but one may see that it is not every one who cries Lord, Lord.  And
now, since we are talking about him, let us a little inquire into
the reason of the sudden backsliding of him and such others.  It
may be very profitable, said Christian, but do you begin.  Well,
then, there are in my judgment several reasons for it."  And then,
with the older man's entire approval, Hopeful sets forth several
reasons, taken from his own observation of backsliders, why so many
men's religion is such a temporary thing; why so many run well for
a time, and then stand still, and then turn back.

1.  The fear of man bringeth a snare, said Hopeful, moralising over
his old acquaintance Temporary.  And how true that observation is
every evangelical minister knows to his deep disappointment.  A
young man comes to his minister at some time of distress in his
life, or at some time of revival of religion in the community, or
at an ordinary communion season, and gives every sign that he is
early and fairly embarked on an honourable Christian life.  He
takes his place in the Church of Christ, and he puts out his hand
to her work, till we begin to look forward with boastfulness to a
life of great stability and great attainment for that man.  Our
Lord, as we see from so many of His parables, must have had many
such cases among His first followers.  Our Lord might be speaking
prophetically, as well as out of His own experience, so well do His
regretful and lamenting words fit into so many of our own cases to-
day.  For, look at that young business man.  He has been born and
brought up in the Church of Christ.  He has gladdened more hearts
than he knows by the noble promise of his early days.  Many
admiring and loving eyes have been turned on him as he took so
hopefully the upward way.  But a sifting-time soon comes.  A time
of temptation comes.  A time comes when sides must be taken in some
moral, religious, ecclesiastical controversy.  This young man is at
that moment a candidate for a post that will bring distinction,
wealth, and social influence to him who holds it.  And the
candidate we are so much interested in is admittedly a man of such
outstanding talents that he would at once get the post were it not
that the holder of that post must not have his name so much
associated with such and such a church, such and such political and
religious opinions, and such and such public men.  He is told that.
Indeed, he is not so dull as to need to be told that.  He has seen
that all along.  And at first it is a dreadful wrench to him.  He
feels how far he is falling from his high ideals in life; and, at
first, and for a long time, it is a dreadful humiliation to him.
But, then, there are splendid compensations.  And, better than
that, there are some good, and indeed compelling, reasons that
begin to rise up in our minds when we need them and begin to look
for them, till what at first seemed so mean and so contemptible,
and so ungrateful, and so dishonourable, as well as so spiritually
perilous, comes to be faced and gone through with positively on a
ground of high principle, and, indeed, of stern moral necessity.
So deceitful is the human heart that you could not believe what
compelling reasons such a mean-spirited man will face you with as
to why he should leave all the ways he once so delighted in for a
piece of bread, and for the smile of the open enemies of his
church, and his faith, not to say his Saviour.  You will meet with
several such men any afternoon coming home from their business.
Sometimes they have still some honest shame on their faces when
they meet you; but still oftener they pass you with a sullen hatred
and a fierce defiance.  This is he who heard the word, and anon
with joy received it.  Yet had he not root in himself, but dured
for a while; for when tribulation or persecution arose because of
the word by and by he was offended.  They went out from us, says
John, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us they
would no doubt have continued with us; but they went out that they
might be made manifest that they were not all of us.

2.  Guilt, again, Hopeful went on, and to meditate terror, are so
grievous to most men, that they rather choose such ways as will but
harden their hearts still more and more.  You all know what it is
to meditate terror?  "Thine heart shall meditate terror," says the
prophet, "when thou sayest to thyself, who among us shall dwell
with the devouring fire? who among us shall dwell with everlasting
burnings?"  The fifty-first Psalm is perhaps the best meditation
both of guilt and of terror that we have in the whole Bible.  But
there are many other psalms and passages of psalms only second to
the fifty-first Psalm, such as the twenty-second, the thirty-
eighth, the sixty-ninth, and the hundred-and-thirtieth.  Our Lord
Himself also was meditating terror in the garden of Gethsemane, and
Paul both guilt and terror when he imagined himself both an
apostate preacher and a castaway soul.  And John's meditations of
terror in the Revelation rose into those magnificent pictures of
the Last Judgment with which he has to all time covered the walls
of the Seven Churches.  In his own Grace Abounding there are
meditations of terror quite worthy to stand beside the most
terrible things of that kind that ever were written, as also in
many others of our author's dramatical and homiletical books.  I
read to you the other Sabbath morning a meditation of terror that
was found among Bishop Andrewes' private papers after his death.
You will not all have forgotten that meditation, but I will read it
to you to-night again.  "How fearful," says Andrewes, in his
terror, "will Thy judgment be, O Lord, when the thrones are set,
and the angels stand around, and men are brought in, and the books
are opened, and all our works are inquired into, and all our
thoughts are examined, and all the hidden things of darkness!
What, O God, shall Thy judgment that day be upon me?  Who shall
quench my flame, who shall lighten my darkness, if Thou pity me
not?  Lord, as Thou art loving, give me tears, give me floods of
tears, and give me all that this day, before it be too late.  For
then will be the incorruptible Judge, the horrible judgment-seat,
the answer without excuse, the inevitable charge, the shameful
punishment, the endless Gehenna, the pitiless angels, the yawning
hell, the roaring stream of fire, the unquenchable flame, the dark
prison, the rayless darkness, the bed of live coals, the unwearied
worm, the indissoluble chains, the bottomless chaos, the impassable
wall, the inconsolable cry.  And none to stand by me; none to plead
for me; none to snatch me out."  Now, no Temporary ever possessed
anything like that in his own handwriting among his private papers.
A meditation like that, written out with his own hand, and hidden
away under lock and key, will secure any man from it, even if he
had been appointed to backsliding and reprobation.  Bishop
Andrewes, as any one will see who reads his Private Devotions, was
the chief of sinners; but his discovered and deciphered papers will
all speak for him when they are spread out before the great white
throne, "glorious in their deformity, being slubbered," as his
editors say, "with his pious hands, and watered with his
penitential tears."

Thomas Shepard's Ten Virgins is the most terrible book upon
Temporaries that ever was written.  Temporaries never once saw
their true vileness, he keeps on saying.  Temporaries are, no
doubt, wounded for sin sometimes, but never in the right place nor
to the right depth.  And again, sin, and especially heart-sin, is
never really bitter to Temporaries.  In an "exhortation to all new
beginners, and so to all others," "Be sure," Shepard says, "your
wound for sin at first is deep enough.  For all the error in a
man's faith and sanctification springs from his first error in his
humiliation.  If a man's humiliation be false, or even weak or
little, then his faith and his hold of Christ are weak and little,
and his sanctification counterfeit.  But if a man's wound be right,
and his humiliation deep enough, that man's faith will be right and
his sanctification will be glorious.  The esteem of Christ is
always little where sin lies light."  And Hopeful himself says a
thing at this point that is quite worthy of Shepard himself, such
is its depth and insight.  He speaks of the righteous actually
LOVING the sight of their misery.  He does not explain what he
means by that startling language because he is talking all the
time, as he knows quite well, to one who understood all that before
he was born.  Nor will I attempt to explain or to vindicate what he
says.  Those of you who love the sight of your own misery as
sinners will understand what Hopeful says without any explanation;
while those who do not understand him would only be the more
stumbled by any explanation of him.  The love of the sight of their
misery, and the unearthly sweetness of their sorrow for sin, are
only another two of those provoking paradoxes of which the lives of
God's true saints are full--paradoxes and impossibilities and
incoherencies that make the literature of experimental religion to
be positively hateful and unbearable to Temporary and to all his
self-seeking and apostate kindred.

3.  But even where the consciences of such men are occasionally
awakened, proceeds Hopeful, in his so searching discovery of
Temporaries, yet their minds are not changed.  There you are pretty
near the business, replied his fellow; for the bottom of all is,
for want of a change of their mind and will.  Now, one would have
been afraid and ashamed for one moment to suspect that Temporary's
mind was not completely changed, so "forward" was he at first in
his religion.  But, no:  forward before all his neighbours as
Temporary was, to begin with, yet all the time his mind was not
really changed.  His forwardness did not properly spring out of his
true mind at all, but only out of his momentarily awakened
conscience and his momentarily excited heart.  A sinner with a
truly changed mind is never forward.  His mind is so changed that
forwardness in anything is utterly alien to it, and especially all
forwardness in the profession of religion.  The change that had
taken place in Temporary, whatever was the seat of it, only led him
to bully men like Christian and Hopeful, who would not go fast
enough for him.  "Come," said Pliable, in the beginning of the
book, "come on and let us mend our pace."  "I cannot go so fast as
I would," humbly replied Christian, "because of this burden on my
back."  It is a common observation among mountaineers that he who
takes the hill at the greatest spurt is the last climber to come to
the top, and that many who so ostentatiously make spurts at the
bottom of the hill never come within sight of the top at all.  And
this is one of the constant dangers that wait on all revivals,
religious retreats, conferences, and even communion seasons.  Our
hot fits, the hotter they are, are only the more likely, unless we
take the greatest care, to cast us down into all the more deadly a
chill.  It is this danger that our Lord points out so plainly in
His parable of apostasy.  The same is he, says our Lord, that
heareth the word, and anon with joy receiveth it; yet hath he not
root in himself, but dureth for a while.  In Hopeful's words, his
mind and will were never changed with all his joy, only his passing
moods and his momentary emotions.

Multitudes of men who are as forward at first as Pliable and
Temporary were turn out at last to have no root in themselves; but
here and there you will discover a man who is all root together.
There are some men whose whole mind and heart and will, whose whole
inward man, has gone to root.  All the strength and all the fatness
of their religious life retreat into its root.  They have no leaves
at all, and they have too little fruit as yet; but you should see
their roots.  Only, no eye but the eye of God can see sorrow for
sin--secret and sore humiliation on account of secret sin--the
incessant agony that goes on within between the flesh and the
spirit, between sin and grace, between very hell and heaven itself.
To know your own evil hearts, my brethren, say to you on that
subject what any Temporary will, is the very root of the whole
matter to you.  Whatever Dr. Newman's mistakes as to outward
churches may have been, he was a master of the human heart, the
most difficult of all matters to master.  Listen, then, to what he
says on the matter now in hand.  "Now, unless we have some just
idea of our hearts and of sin, we can have no right idea of a Moral
Governor, a Saviour, or a Sanctifier; that is, in professing to
believe in them we shall be using words without attaching any
distinct meaning to them.  Thus self-knowledge is at the root of
all real religious knowledge; and it is vain,--it is worse than
vain,--it is a deceit and a mischief, to think to understand the
Christian doctrines as a matter of course, merely by being taught
by books, or by attending sermons, or by any outward means, however
excellent, taken by themselves.  For it is in proportion as we
search our hearts and understand our own nature that we understand
what is meant by an Infinite Governor and Judge; it is in
proportion as we comprehend the nature of disobedience and our
actual sinfulness that we feel what is the blessing of the removal
of sin, redemption, pardon, sanctification, which otherwise are
mere words.  God speaks to us primarily in our hearts.  Self-
knowledge is the key to the precepts and doctrines of Scripture.
The very utmost that any outward notices of religion can do is to
startle us and make us turn inward and search our hearts; and then,
when we have experienced what it is to read ourselves, we shall
profit by the doctrine of the Church and the Bible."  My brethren,
the temper in which you receive that passage, and receive it from
its author, may be safely taken by you as a sure presage whether
you are to turn out a Temporary and a Castaway or no.

Now, to conclude with a word of admission, and, bound up with it, a
word of encouragement.  After all that has been said, I fully admit
that we are all Temporaries to begin with.  We all cool down from
our first heat in religion.  We all halt from our first spurt.  We
all turn back from faith and from duty and from privilege through
our fear of men, or through our corrupt love of ourselves, or
through our coarse-minded love of this present world.  Only, those
who are appointed to perseverance, and through that to eternal
life, always kindle again; they are kindled again, and they love
the return of their lost warmth.  They recover themselves and
address themselves again and again to the race that is still set
before them.  They prove themselves not to be of those who draw
back unto perdition, but of those that believe to the saving of the
soul.  Now, if you have only too good ground to suspect that you
are but a temporary believer, what are you to do to make your sure
escape out of that perilous state?  What, but to keep on believing?
You must cry constantly, Lord, I believe, help Thou mine unbelief!
When at any time you are under any temptation or corruption, and
you feel that your faith and your love are letting slip their hold
of Christ and of eternal life, then knot your weak heart all the
faster to the throne of grace, to the cross of Christ, and to the
gate of heaven.  Give up all your mind and heart, and all that is
within you, to the one thing needful.  Labour night and day in your
own heart at believing on Christ, at loving your neighbour, and at
discovering, denying, and crucifying yourself.  It will all pay you
in the long run.  For if you do all these things, and persistently
do them, then, though you are at this moment all but dead to all
divine things, and all but a reprobate, it will be found at last
that all the time your name was written among the elect in heaven.

The perseverance of the saints, the "five points" notwithstanding,
is not a foregone conclusion.  The final perseverance of the ripest
and surest saint is all made up of ever-new beginnings in
repentance, in faith, in love, and in obedience.  Begin, then,
every new day to repent anew, to return anew, to believe and to
love anew.  And if all your New-Year repentances and returnings and
reformations are all already proved to be but temporary--even if
they lie all around you already a bitter mockery of all your
professions--still, begin again.  Begin to-night, and begin again
to-morrow morning.  Spend all the remainder of your days on earth
beginning.  And, ere ever you are aware, the final perseverance of
another predestinated saint will be found accomplished in you.



SECRET



"The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him."--David.

A truly religious life is always a secret life:  it is a life hid,
as Paul has it, with Christ in God.  The secret of the Lord, says
the Psalmist, is with them that fear Him.  And thus it is that when
men begin to fear God, both their hearts and their lives are
henceforth full of all kinds of secrets that are known to
themselves and to God only.  It was when Christiana's fearful
thoughts began to work in her mind about her husband whom she had
lost--it was when all her unkind, unnatural, and ungodly carriages
to her dear friend came into her mind in swarms, clogged her
conscience, and loaded her with guilt--it was then that Secret
knocked at her door.  "Next morning," so her opening history runs,
"when she was up, and had prayed to God, and talked with her
children awhile, one knocked hard at the door to whom she spake
out, saying, If thou comest in God's name, come in.  So he who was
at the door said, Amen, and opened the door, and saluted her with,
Peace be to this house.  The which when he had done, he said,
Christiana, knowest thou wherefore I am come?  Then she blushed and
trembled, also her heart began to wax warm with desires to know
whence he came, and what was his errand to her.  So he said unto
her, My name is Secret, I dwell with those that are high.  It is
talked of where I dwell as if thou hadst a desire to go thither;
also, there is a report that thou art aware now of the evil thou
formerly didst to thy husband in hardening of thy heart against his
way, and in keeping of thy babes in their ignorance.  Christiana,
the Merciful One has sent me to tell thee that He is a God ready to
forgive, and that He taketh delight to multiply to pardon offences.
He would also have thee know that He inviteth thee to come into His
presence, even to His table, and that He will there feed thee with
the fat of His house, and with the heritage of Jacob thy father.
Christiana at all this was greatly abashed in herself, and she
bowed her head to the ground, while her visitor proceeded and said,
Christiana, here is a letter for thee which I have brought from thy
husband's King.  So she took it and opened it, and, as she opened
it, it smelt after the manner of the best perfume; also it was
written in lettering of gold.  The contents of the letter was to
this effect, that the King would have her do as did Christian her
husband, for that was the way to come to the city and to dwell in
His presence with joy for ever.  At this the good woman was
completely overcome.  So she said to her visitor, Sir, will you
carry me and my children with you that we may go and worship this
King?  Then said the heavenly visitor, Christiana, the bitter is
before the sweet.  Thou must through troubles, as did he that went
before thee, enter this celestial city."  And so on.

1.  Now, to begin with, you will have noticed the way in which
Christiana was prepared for the entrance of Secret into her house.
She was a widow.  She sat alone in that loneliness which only
widows know and understand.  More than lonely, she was very
miserable.  "Mark this," says the author on the margin, "you that
are churls to your godly relations."  For this widow felt sure that
her husband had been taken from her because of her cruel behaviour
to him.  Her past unnatural carriages toward her husband now rent
the very caul of her heart in sunder.  And, again and again, about
that same time strange dreams would sometimes visit her.  Dreams
such as this.  She would see her husband in a place of bliss with a
harp in his hand, standing and playing upon it before One that sat
on a throne with a rainbow round His head.  She saw also as if he
bowed his head with his face to the paved work that was under the
Prince's feet, saying, I heartily thank my Lord and King for
bringing me to this place.  You will easily see how ready this lone
woman was with all that for his entrance who knocked and said,
Peace be to this house, and handed her a letter of perfume from her
husband's King.  Then you will have remarked also some of the
things this visitor from on high said to her of the place whence he
had come.  He told her, to begin with, how they sometimes talked
about her in his country.  She thought that she was a lonely and
forgotten widow, and that no one cared what became of her.  But her
visitor assured her she was quite wrong in thinking that.  He had
often himself heard her name mentioned in conversation above; and
the most hopeful reports, he told her, were circulated from door to
door that she was actually all but started on the upward way.  Yes,
he said, and we have a place prepared for you on the strength of
these reports, a place among the immortals close beside your
husband.  And all that, as you will not wonder, was the beginning
of Christiana's secret life.  After that morning she never again
felt alone or forgotten.  I am not alone, she would after that say,
when any of her old neighbours knocked at her door.  No, I am not
alone, but if thou comest in God's name, come in.

2.  And from that day a long succession of secret providences began
to enter Christiana's life, till, as time went on, her whole life
was filled full of secret providences.  And not her present life
only, but her discoveries of God's secret providences towards her
and hers became retrospective also, till both her own parentage and
birth, her husband's parentage and birth also, the day she first
saw him, the day of their espousals, the day of their marriage, and
the day of his death, all shone out now as so many secret and
special providences of God toward her.  Bishop Martensen has a fine
passage on the fragmentariness of our knowledge, not only of divine
providence as a whole, but even of those divine providences that
fill up our own lives.  And he warns us that, till we have heard
the "Prologue in Heaven," many a riddle in our lives must of
necessity remain unsolved.  Christiana could not have told her
inquiring children what a prologue was, nor an epilogue either, but
many were the wise and winning discourses she held with her boys
about their father now in heaven, about her happiness in having had
such a father for her children, and about their happiness that the
road was open before them to go to where he now is.  And there are
many poor widows among ourselves who are wiser than all their
teachers, because they are in that school of experience into which
God takes His afflicted people and opens to them His deepest
secrets.  They remember, with Job, when the secret of the Lord was
first upon their tabernacle.  Their widowed hearts are full of holy
household memories.  They remember the days when the candle of the
Lord shone upon their head when they washed their steps with
butter, and the rock poured them out rivers of oil.  And still,
when, like Job also, they sit solitary among the ashes, the secret
of the Lord is only the more secretly and intimately with them.
John Bunyan was well fitted to be Christiana's biographer, because
his own life was as full as it could hold of these same secret and
special providences.  One day he was walking--so he tells us--in a
good man's shop, bemoaning himself of his sad and doleful state--
when a mighty rushing wind came in through the window and seemed to
carry words of Scripture on its wings to Bunyan's disconsolate
soul.  He candidly tells us that he does not know, after twenty
years' reflection, what to make of that strange dispensation.  That
it took place, and that it left the most blessed results behind it,
he is sure; but as to how God did it, by what means, by what
instruments, both the rushing wind itself and the salutation that
accompanied it, he is fain to let lie till the day of judgment.
And many of ourselves have had strange dispensations too that we
must leave alone, and seek no other explanation of them for the
present but the blessed results of them.  We have had divine
descents into our lives that we can never attempt to describe.
Interpositions as plain to us as if we had both seen and spoken
with the angel who executed them.  Miraculous deliverances that
throw many Old and New Testament miracles into the shade.
Providential adaptations and readjustments also, as if all things
were actually and openly and without a veil being made to work
together for our good.  Extrications also; nets broken, snares
snapped, and such pavilions of safety and solace opened to us that
we can find no psalm secret and special enough in which to utter
our life-long astonishment.  Importunate prayers anticipated,
postponed, denied, translated, transmuted, and then answered till
our cup was too full; sweet changed to bitter, and bitter changed
to sweet, so wonderfully, so graciously, and so often, that words
fail us, and we can only now laugh and now weep over it all.  Poor
Cowper knew something about it -


"God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants His footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm.

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take,
The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy, and shall break
In blessings on your head.

"Blind unbelief is sure to err,
And scan his work in vain;
God is His own interpreter,
And He will make it plain.


3.  Secret scriptures also--from that enlightening day Christiana's
Bible became full of them.  Peter says that no prophecy is of any
private interpretation; and, whatever he means by that, what he
says must be true.  But Christiana would have understood the
apostle better if he had said the exact opposite of that,--if not
about the prophecies, at least about the psalms.  Leave the
prophecies in this connection alone; but of the psalms it may
safely be said that it is neither the literal nor the historical
nor the mystical interpretation that gets at the heart of those
supreme scriptures.  It is the private, personal, and, indeed,
secret interpretation that gets best at the deepest heart of the
psalms.  An old Bible came into my hands the other day--a Bible
that had seen service--and it opened of its own accord at the Book
of Psalms.  On turning over the yellow leaves I found a date and a
deep indentation opposite these words:  "Commit thy way unto the
Lord:  trust also in Him:  and He will bring it to pass."  And as I
looked at the figures on the margin, and at the underscored text, I
felt as if I were on the brink of an old-world secret.  "Create in
me a clean heart" had a significant initial also; as had this:
"The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit."  The whole of the
hundred-and-third psalm was bracketed off from all public
interpretation; while the tenth, the cardinal verse of that secret
psalm, had a special seal set upon it.  Judging from its stains and
scars and other accidents, the whole of the hundred-and-nineteenth
psalm had been a special favourite; while the hundred-and-forty-
third also was all broidered round with shorthand symbols.  But the
secret key of all those symbols and dates and enigmatical marks was
no longer to be found; it had been carried away in the owner's own
heart.  But, my head being full of Christiana at the time, I felt
as if I held her own old Bible in my hand as I turned over those
ancient leaves.

4.  Our Lord so practised secrecy Himself in His fasting, in His
praying, and in His almsgiving, and He makes so much of that same
secrecy in all His teaching, as almost to make the essence of all
true religion to stand in its secrecy.  "When thou prayest," says
our Lord, "shut thy door and pray in secret."  As much as to say
that we are scarcely praying at all when we are praying in public.
Praying in public is so difficult that new beginners, like His
disciples, have to practise that so difficult art for a long time
in secret.  Public prayer has so many besetting sins, it is open to
so many temptations, distractions, and corruptions, that it is
almost impossible to preserve the real essence of prayer in public
prayer.  But in secret all those temptations and distractions are
happily absent.  We have no temptation to be too long in secret
prayer, or too loud, or too eloquent.  Stately old English goes for
nothing in secret prayer.  We never need to go to our knees in
secret trembling, lest we lose the thread of our prayer, or forget
that so fit and so fine expression.  The longer we are the better
in secret prayer.  Much speaking is really a virtue in secret
prayer; much speaking and many repetitions.  Also, we can put
things into our secret prayers that we dare not come within a
thousand miles of in the pulpit, or the prayer-meeting, or the
family.  We can enter into the most plain-spoken particulars about
ourselves in secret.  We can put our proper name upon ourselves,
and upon our actions, and especially upon our thoughts when our
door is shut.  Then, again, we can pray for other people by name in
secret; we can enter, so far as we know them, into all their
circumstances in a way it is impossible to do anywhere but in the
utmost secrecy.  We can, in short, be ourselves in secret; and,
unless it is to please or to impress men, we had better not pray at
all unless we are ourselves when we are engaged in it.  You can be
yourself, your very worst self; nay, you must be, else you will not
long pray in secret, and even if you did you would not be heard.  I
do not remember that very much is said in so many words in her
after-history about Christiana's habits of closet-prayer.  But that
Secret taught her the way, and waited till she had tasted the
sweetness and the strength of being a good while on her knees
alone, I am safe to say; indeed, I read it between the lines in all
her after-life.  She was rewarded openly in a way that testifies to
much secret prayer; that is to say, in the early conversion of her
children, in the way they settled in life, and such like things.
Pray much for those things in secret that you wish to possess
openly.

5.  But perhaps the best and most infallible evidence we can have
of the truth of our religion in this life is in the steady increase
of our secret sinfulness.  Christiana had no trouble with her own
wicked heart so long as she was a woman of a wicked life.  But
directly she became a new creature, her heart began to swarm, such
is her own expression, with sinful memories, sinful thoughts, and
sinful feelings; till she had need of some one ever near her, like
Greatheart, constantly to assure her that those cruel and deadly
swarms, instead of being a bad sign of her salvation, were the very
best signs possible of her good estate.  Humility is the foundation
of all our graces, and there is no humility so deep and so ever-
deepening as that evangelical humility which in its turn rises out
of and rests upon secret sinfulness.  Not upon acts of secret sin.
Do not mistake me.  Acts of secret sin harden the heart and debauch
the conscience.  But I speak of that secret, original, unexplored,
and inexpugnable sinfulness out of which all a sinner's actual
sins, both open sins and secret, spring; and out of which a like
life of open and actual sins would spring in God's very best
saints, if only both He and they did not watch night and day
against them.  Sensibility to sin, or rather to sinfulness, is far
and away the best evidence of sanctification that is possible to us
in this life.  It is this keen and bitter sensibility that secures,
amid all oppositions and obstructions, the true saint's onward and
upward progress.  Were it not for the misery of their own hearts,
God's best saints would fall asleep and go back like other men.  A
sinful heart is the misery of all miseries.  It is the deepest and
darkest of all dungeons.  It is the most painful and the most
loathsome of all diseases.  And the secrecy of it all adds to the
bitterness and the gall of it all.  We may know that other men's
hearts are as sinful as our own, but we do not feel their
sinfulness.  We cannot sensibly feel humiliation, bondage,
sickness, and self-loathing on account of another man's envy, or
ill-will, or resentment, or cruelty, or falsehood, or impurity.
All these things must be our own before we can enter into the pain
and the shame of them; but, when we do, then we taste what death
and hell are indeed.  As I write these feeble words about it, a
devil's shaft of envy that was shot all against my will into my
heart this morning, still, after a whole day, rankles and festers
there.  I have been on my knees with it again and again; I have
stood and looked into an open grave to-day; but there it is sucking
at my heart's blood still, like a leech of hell.  Who can
understand his errors?  Cleanse Thou me from secret faults.  Create
in me a clean heart, O God, O wretched man that I am!  "Let a man,"
says William Law when he is enforcing humility, "but consider that
if the world knew all that of him which he knows of himself:  if
they saw what vanity and what passions govern his inside, and what
secret tempers sully and corrupt his best actions, he would have no
more pretence to be honoured and admired for his goodness and
wisdom than a rotten and distempered body to be loved and admired
for its beauty and comeliness.  This is so true, and so known to
the hearts of almost all people, that nothing would appear more
dreadful to them than to have their hearts fully discovered to the
eyes of all beholders.  And, perhaps, there are very few people in
the world who would not rather choose to die than to have all their
secret follies, the errors of their judgments, the vanity of their
minds, the falseness of their pretences, the frequency of their
vain and disorderly passions, their uneasinesses, hatreds, envies,
and vexations made known to all the world."  Where did William Law
get that terrible passage?  Where could he get it but in the secret
heart of the miserable author of the Serious Call?

6.  The half cannot be told of the guilt and the corruption, the
pain and the shame and the manifold misery of secret sin; but all
that will be told, believed, and understood by all men long before
the full magnificence of their sanctification, and the superb
transcendence of their blessedness, will even begin to be described
to God's secret saints.  For, all that sleepless, cruel, and soul-
killing pain, and all that shameful and humbling corruption,--all
that means, all that is, so much holiness, so much heaven, working
itself out in the soul.  All that is so much immortal life,
spotless beauty, and incorruptible joy already begun in the soul.
Every such pang in a holy heart is a death-pang of another sin and
a birth-pang of another grace.  Brotherly love is at last being
born never to die in that heart where envy and malice and
resentment and revenge are causing inward agony.  And humility and
meekness and the whole mind of Christ are there where pride and
anger and ill-will are felt to be very hell itself.  And holiness,
even as God is holy, will soon be there for ever where the
sinfulness of sin is a sinner's acutest sorrow.  "As for me," said
one whose sin was ever before him, "I will behold Thy face in
righteousness; I shall be satisfied when I wake with Thy likeness."



MRS. TIMOROUS



"But the fearful [literally, the timid and the cowardly] shall have
their part in the second death."--Revelation xxi.

No sooner had Secret bidden Christiana farewell than she began with
all her might to make ready for her great journey.  "Come, my
children, let us pack up and begone to the gate that leads to the
Celestial City, that we may see your father and be with him, and
with his companions, in peace, according to the laws of that land."
And then:  "Come in, if you come in God's name!" Christiana called
out, as two of her neighbours knocked at her door.  "Having little
to do at home this morning," said the elder of the two women, "I
have come across to kill a little time with you.  I spent last
night with Mrs. Light-mind, and I have some good news for you this
morning."  "I am just preparing for a journey this morning," said
Christiana, packing up all the time, "and I have not so much as one
moment to spare."  You know yourselves what Christiana's
nervousness and almost impatience were.  You know how it upsets
your good temper and all your civility when you are packing up for
a long absence from home, and some one comes in, and will talk, and
will not see how behindhand and how busy you are.  "For what
journey, I pray you?" asked Mrs. Timorous, for that was her
visitor's name.  "Even to go after my good husband," the busy woman
said, and with that she fell a-weeping.  But you must read the
whole account of that eventful morning in Christiana's memoirs for
yourselves till you have it, as Secret said, by root-of-heart.  On
the understanding that you are not total strangers to that so
excellently-written passage I shall now venture a few observations
upon it.

1.  Well, to begin with, Mrs. Timorous was not a bad woman, as
women went in that town and in that day.  Her companions,--her
gossips, as she would have called them,--were far worse women than
she was; and, had it not been for her family infirmity, had it not
been for that timid, hesitating, lukewarm, and half-and-half habit
of mind which she had inherited from her father, there is no saying
what part she might have played in the famous expedition of
Christiana and Mercy and the boys.  Her father had been a pilgrim
himself at one time; but he had now for a long time been known in
the town as a turncoat and a temporary, and all his children had
unhappily taken after their father in that.  Had her father held on
as he at one time had begun--had he held on in the face of all fear
and all danger as Christiana's noble husband had done--to a
certainty his daughter would have started that morning with
Christiana and her company, and would have been, if a timid, easily
scared, and troublesome pilgrim, yet as true a pilgrim, and made as
welcome at last, as, say, Miss Much-afraid, Mr. Fearing, and Mr.
Ready-to-halt were made.  But her father's superficiality and
shakiness, and at bottom his warm love of this world and his
lukewarm love of the world to come, had unfortunately all descended
to his daughter, till we find her actually reviling Christiana on
that decisive morning, and returning to her dish of tea and tittle-
tattle with Mrs. Bats-eyes, Mrs. Inconsiderate, Mrs. Light-mind,
and Mrs. Know-nothing.

2.  The thing that positively terrified Mrs. Timorous at the very
thought of setting out with Christiana that morning was that
intolerable way in which Christiana had begun to go back upon her
past life as a wife and a mother.  Christiana could not hide her
deep distress, and, indeed, she did not much try.  Such were the
swarms of painful memories that her husband's late death, the visit
of Secret, and one thing and another had let loose upon
Christiana's mind, that she could take pleasure in nothing but in
how she was to escape away from her past life, and how she could in
any way mend it and make up for it where she could not escape from
it.  "You may judge yourself," said Mrs. Timorous to Mrs. Light-
mind, "whether I was likely to find much entertainment with a woman
like that!"  For, Mrs. Timorous too, you must know, had a past life
of her own; and it was that past life of hers all brought back by
Christiana's words that morning that made Mrs. Timorous so revile
her old friend and return to the society we so soon see her with.
Now, is not this the case, that we all have swarms of evil memories
that we dare not face?  There is no single relationship in life
that we can boldly look back upon and fully face.  As son or as
daughter, as brother or as sister, as friend or as lover, as
husband or as wife, as minister or as member, as master or as
servant--what swarms of hornet-memories darken our hearts as we so
look back!  Let any grown-up man, with some imagination, tenderness
of heart, and integrity of conscience, go back step by step, taking
some time to it,--at a new year, say, or a birthday, or on some
such suitable occasion:  let him go over his past life back to his
youth and childhood--and what an intolerable burden will be laid on
his heart before he is done!  What a panorama of scarlet pictures
will pass before his inward eye!  What a forest of accusing fingers
will be pointed at him!  What hissing curses will be spat at him
both by the lips of the living and the dead!  What untold pains he
will see that he has caused to the innocent and the helpless!  What
desolating disappointments, what shipwrecks of hope to this man and
to that woman!  What a stone of stumbling he has been to many who
on that stone have been for ever broken and lost!  What a rock of
offence even his mere innocent existence, all unknown to himself
till afterwards, has been!  Swarms, said Christiana.  Swarms of
hornets armed, said Samson.  And many of us understand what that
bitter word means better than any commentator on Bunyan or on
Milton can tell us.  One of the holiest men the Church of England
ever produced, and one of her best devotional writers, used to shut
his door on the night of every first day of the week, and on his
knees spread out a prayer which always contained this passage:  "I
worship Thee, O God, on my face.  I smite my breast and say with
the publican, God be merciful to me a sinner; the chief of sinners;
a sinner far above the publican.  Despise me not--an unclean worm,
a dead dog, a putrid corpse.  Despise me not, despise me not, O
Lord.  But look upon me with those eyes with which Thou didst look
upon Magdalene at the feast, Peter in the hall, and the thief on
the cross.  O that mine eyes were a fountain of tears that I might
weep night and day before Thee!  I despise and bruise myself that
my penitence is not deeper, is not fuller.  Help Thou mine
impenitence, and more and more pierce, rend, and crush my heart.
My sins are more in number than the sand.  My iniquities are
multiplied, and I have no relief."  Perish your Puritanism, and
your prayer-books too!  I hear some high-minded and indignant man
saying.  Perish your Celestial City and all my desire after it,
before I say the like of that about myself!  Brave words, my
brother; brave words!  But there have been men as blameless as you
are, and as brave-hearted over it, who, when the scales fell off
their eyes, were heard crying out ever after:  O wretched man that
I am!  And:  Have mercy on me, the chief of sinners!  And so, if it
so please God, will it yet be with you.

3.  "Having had little to do this morning," said Mrs. Timorous to
Mrs. Light-mind, "I went to give Christiana a visit."  "Law," I
read in his most impressive Life, "by this time was well turned
fifty, but he rose as early and was as soon at his desk as when he
was still a new, enthusiastic, and scrupulously methodical student
at Cambridge."  Summer and winter Law rose to his devotions and his
studies at five o'clock, not because he had imperative sermons to
prepare, but because, in his own words, it is more reasonable to
suppose a person up early because he is a Christian than because he
is a labourer or a tradesman or a servant.  I have a great deal of
business to do, he would say.  I have a hardened heart to change; I
have still the whole spirit of religion to get.  When Law at any
time felt a temptation to relax his rule of early devotion, he
again reminded himself how fast he was becoming an old man, and how
far back his sanctification still was, till he flung himself out of
bed and began to make himself a new heart before the servants had
lighted their fires or the farmers had yoked their horses.  Shame
on you, he said to himself, to lie folded up in a bed when you
might be pouring out your heart in prayer and in praise, and thus
be preparing yourself for a place among those blessed beings who
rest not day and night saying, Holy, Holy, Holy.  "I have little to
do this morning," said Mrs. Timorous.  "But I am preparing for a
journey," said Christiana.  "I have now a price put into my hand to
get gain, and I should be a fool of the greatest size if I should
have no heart to strike in with the opportunity."

4.  Another thing that completely threw out Christiana's idle
visitor and made her downright angry was the way she would finger
and kiss and read pieces out of the fragrant letter she held in her
hand.  You will remember how Christiana came by that letter she was
now so fond of.  "Here," said Secret, "is a letter I have brought
thee from thy husband's King."  So she took it and opened it, and
it smelt after the manner of the best perfume; also it was written
in letters of gold.  " I advise thee," said Secret, "that thou put
this letter in thy bosom, that thou read therein to thy children
until you have all got it by root-of-heart."  "His messenger was
here," said Christiana to Mrs. Timorous, "and has brought me a
letter which invites me to come."  And with that she plucked out
the letter and read to her out of it, and said:  "What now do you
say to all that?"  That, again, is so true to our own life.  For
there is nothing that more distastes and disrelishes many people
among us than just that we should name to them our favourite books,
and read a passage out of them, and ask them to say what they think
of such wonderful words.  Samuel Rutherford's Letters, for
instance; a book that smells to some nostrils with the same
heavenly perfume as Secret's own letter did.  A book, moreover,
that is written in the same ink of gold.  Ask at afternoon tea to-
morrow, even in so-called Christian homes, when any of the ladies
round the table last read, and how often they have read, Grace
Abounding, The Saint's Rest, The Religious Affections, Jeremy
Taylor, Law, a Kempis, Fenelon, or such like, and they will smile
to one another and remark after you are gone on your strange taste
for old-fashioned and long-winded and introspective books.  "Julia
has buried her husband and married her daughters, and since that
she spends her time in reading.  She is always reading foolish and
unedifying books.  She tells you every time she sees you that she
is almost at the end of the silliest book that ever she read in her
life.  But the best of it is that it serves to dispose of a good
deal of her spare time.  She tells you all romances are sad stuff,
yet she is very impatient till she can get all she can hear of.
Histories of intrigue and scandal are the books that Julia thinks
are always too short.  The truth is, she lives upon folly and
scandal and impertinence.  These things are the support of her dull
hours.  And yet she does not see that in all this she is plainly
telling you that she is in a miserable, disordered, reprobate state
of mind.  Now, whether you read her books or no, you perhaps think
with her that it is a dull task to read only religious and
especially spiritual books.  But when you have the spirit of true
religion, when you can think of God as your only happiness, when
you are not afraid of the joys of eternity, you will think it a
dull task to read any other books.  When it is the care of your
soul to be humble, holy, pure, and heavenly-minded; when you know
anything of the guilt and misery of sin, or feel a real need of
salvation, then you will find religious and truly spiritual books
to be the greatest feast and joy of your mind and heart."  Yes.
And then we shall thank God every day we live that He raised us up
such helpers in our salvation as the gifted and gracious authors we
have been speaking of.

5.  "The further I go the more danger I meet with," said old
Timorous, the father, to Christian, when Christian asked him on the
Hill Difficulty why he was running the wrong way.  "I, too, was
going to the City of Zion," he said; "but the further on I go the
more danger I meet with."  And, in saying that, the old runaway
gave our persevering pilgrim something to think about for all his
days.  For, again and again, and times without number, Christian
would have gone back too if only he had known where to go.  Go on,
therefore, he must.  To go back to him was simply impossible.
Every day he lived he felt the bitter truth of what that old
apostate had so unwittingly said.  But, with all that he kept
himself in his onward way till, dangers and difficulties, death and
hell and all, he came to the blessed end of it.  And that same has
been the universal experience of all the true and out-and-out
saints of God in all time.  If poor old Timorous had only known it,
if he had only had some one beside him to remind him of it, the
very thing that so fatally turned him back was the best proof
possible that he was on the right and the only right way; ay, and
fast coming, poor old castaway, to the very city he had at one time
set out to seek.  Now, it is only too likely that there are some of
my hearers at this with it tonight, that they are on the point of
giving up the life of faith, and hope, and love, and holy living;
because the deeper they carry that life into their own hearts the
more impossible they find it to live that life there.  The more
they aim their hearts at God's law the more they despair of ever
coming within sight of it.  My supremely miserable brother! if this
is any consolation to you, if you can take any crumb of consolation
out of it, let this be told you, that, as a matter of fact, all
truly holy men have in their heart of hearts had your very
experience.  That is no strange and unheard-of thing which is
passing within you.  And, indeed, if you could but believe it, that
is one of the surest signs and seals of a true and genuine child of
God.  Dante, one of the bravest, but hardest bestead of God's
saints, was, just like you, well-nigh giving up the mountain
altogether when his Greatheart, who was always at his side,
divining what was going on within him, said to him -


"Those scars
That when they pain thee most then kindliest heal."


"The more I do," complained one of Thomas Shepard's best friends to
him, "the worse I am."  "The best saints are the most sensible of
sin," wrote Samuel Rutherford.  And, again he wrote, "Sin rages far
more in the godly than ever it does in the ungodly."  And you dare
not deny but that Samuel Rutherford was one of the holiest men that
ever lived, or that in saying all that he was speaking of himself.
And Newman:  "Every one who tries to do God's will"--and that also
is Newman himself--"will feel himself to be full of all
imperfection and sin; and the more he succeeds in regulating his
heart, the more will he discern its original bitterness and guilt."
As our own hymn has it:

"They who fain would serve Thee best
Are conscious most of wrong within."


Without knowing it, Mrs. Timorous's runaway father was speaking the
same language as the chief of the saints.  Only he said, "Therefore
I have turned back," whereas, first Christian, and then Christiana
his widow, said, "Yet I must venture!"

And so say you.  Say, I must and I will venture!  Say it; clench
your teeth and your hands and say it.  Say that you are determined
to go on towards heaven where the holy are--absolutely determined,
though you are quite well aware that you are carrying up with you
the blackest, the wickedest, the most corrupt, and the most
abominable heart either out of hell or in it.  Say that, say all
that, and still venture.  Say all that and all the more venture.
Venture upon God of whom such reassuring things are said.  Venture
upon the Son of God of whom His Father is represented as saying
such inviting things.  Venture upon the cross.  Survey the wondrous
cross and then make a bold venture upon it.  Think who that is who
is bleeding to death upon the cross, and why?  Look at Him till you
never afterwards can see anything else.  Look at God's Eternal,
Divine, Well-pleasing Son with all the wages of sin dealt out to
Him, body and soul, on that tree to the uttermost farthing.  And,
devil incarnate though you indeed are, yet, say, if that spectacle
does not satisfy you, and encourage you, and carry your cowardice
captive.  Venture! I say, venture!  And if you find at last that
you have ventured too far--if you have sinned and corrupted
yourself beyond redemption--then it will be some consolation and
distinction to you in hell that you had out-sinned the infinite
grace of God, and had seen the end of the unsearchable riches of
Christ.  Timid sinner, I but mock thee, therefore venture!  Fearful
sinner, venture!  Cowardly sinner, venture.  Venture thyself upon
thy God, upon Christ thy Saviour, and upon His cross.  Venture all
thy guilt and all thy corruption taken together upon Christ hanging
upon His cross, and make that tremendous venture now!



MERCY



"Blessed are the merciful:  for they shall obtain mercy."--Our
Lord.

The first time that we see Mercy she is standing one sunshine
morning knocking along with another at Christiana's door.  And all
that we afterwards hear of Mercy might be described as, A morning
call and all that came of it; or, How a godly matron led on a poor
maid to fall in love with her own salvation.  John Bunyan, her
biographer, in all his devotion to Mercy, does not make it at all
clear to us why such a sweet and good girl as Mercy was could be on
such intimate terms with Mrs. Timorous and all her so questionable
circle.  Could it be that Mercy's mother was one of that unhappy
set?  And had this dear little woman-child been brought up so as to
know no better than to figure in their assemblies, and go out on
their morning rounds with Mrs. Light-mind and Mrs. Know-nothing?
Or, was poor Mercy an orphan with no one to watch over her, and had
her sweet face, her handsome figure, and her winning manners made
her one of the attractions of old Madam Wanton's midnight routs?
However it came about, there was Mercy out on a series of morning
calls with a woman twice her age, but a woman whose many years had
taught her neither womanliness nor wisdom.  "If you come in God's
name, come in," a voice from the inside answered the knocking of
Mrs. Timorous and Mercy, her companion, at Christiana's door.  In
all their rounds that morning the two women had not been met with
another salutation like that; and that strange salutation so
disconcerted and so confounded them that they did not know whether
to lift the latch and go in, or to run away and leave those to go
in who could take their delight in such outlandish language.  "If
you come in God's name, come in."  At this the women were stunned,
for this kind of language they used not to hear or to perceive to
drop from the lips of Christiana.  Yet they came in; but, behold,
they found the good woman preparing to be gone from her house.  The
conversation that ensued was all carried on by the two elder women.
For it was often remarked about Mercy all her after-days that her
voice was ever soft, and low, and, especially, seldom heard.  But
her ears were not idle.  For all the time the debate went on--
because by this time the conversation had risen to be a debate--
Mercy was taking silent sides with Christiana and her distress and
her intended enterprise, till, when Mrs. Timorous reviled
Christiana and said, "Come away, Mercy, and leave her in her own
hands," Mercy by that time was brought to a standstill.  For, like
a rose among thorns, Mercy was thoughtful and wise and womanly far
beyond her years.  So much so, that already she had made up her
mind to offer herself as a maidservant to help the widow with her
work and to see her so far on her way, and, indeed, though she kept
that to herself, to go all the way with her, if the way should
prove open to her.  First, her heart yearned over Christiana; so
she said within herself, If my neighbour will needs be gone, I will
go a little way with her to help her.  Secondly, her heart yearned
over her own soul's salvation, for what Christiana had said had
taken some hold upon Mercy's mind.  Wherefore she said within
herself, I will yet have more talk with this Christiana, and if I
find truth and life in what she shall say, myself with all my heart
shall also go with her.  "Neighbour," spoke out Mercy to Mrs.
Timorous, "I did indeed come with you to see Christiana this
morning, and since she is, as you see, a-taking of her last
farewell of her country, I think to walk this sunshine morning a
little way with her to help her on the way."  But she told her not
of her second reason, but kept that to herself.  I would fain go on
with Mercy's memoirs all night.  But you will take up that inviting
thread for yourselves.  And meantime I shall stop here and gather
up under two or three heads some of the more memorable results and
lessons of that sunshine-morning call.

1.  Well, then, to begin with, there was something quite queen-
like, something absolutely commanding, about Christiana's look and
manner, as well as about all she said and did that morning.
Mercy's morning companion had all the advantages that dress and
equipage could give her; while Christiana stood in the middle of
the floor in her housewife's clothes, covered with dust and
surrounded with all her dismantled house; but, with all that, there
was something about Christiana that took Mercy's heart completely
captive.  All that Christiana had by this time come through had
blanched her cheek and whitened her hair:  but all that only the
more commanded Mercy's sensitive and noble soul.  To be open to
impressions of that kind is one of the finest endowments of a
finely endowed nature; and, all through, the attentive reader of
her history will be sure to remark and imitate Mercy's exquisite
and tenacious sensibility to all that is true and good, upright and
honourable and noble.  And then, what a blessing it is to a girl of
Mercy's mould to meet at opening womanhood with another woman, be
it a mother, a mistress, or a neighbour, whose character then, and
as life goes on, can supply the part of the supporting and
sheltering oak to the springing and clinging vine.  Christiana
being now the new woman she was, as well as a woman of great
natural wisdom, dignity, and stability of character, the safety,
the salvation of poor motherless Mercy was as good as sure.
Indeed, all Mercy's subsequent history is only one long and growing
tribute to the worth, the constant love, and the sleepless
solicitude of this true mother in Israel.

2.  Now, it was so, that, wholly unknown to all her companions,
young and old, in her own very remarkable words, Mercy had for a
long time been hungering with all her heart to meet with some
genuinely good people,--with some people, as she said herself,--"of
truth and of life."  These are remarkable words to hear drop from
the lips of a young girl, and especially a girl of Mercy's
environment.  Now, had there been anything hollow, had there been
one atom of insincerity or exaggeration about Christiana that
morning, had she talked too much, had all her actions not far more
than borne out all her words, had there not been in the broken-
hearted woman a depth of mind and a warmth of heart far beyond all
her words, Mercy would never have become a pilgrim.  But the
natural dignity of Christiana's character; her capable, commanding,
resolute ways; the reality, even to agony, of her sorrow for her
past life--all taken together with her iron-fast determination to
enter at once on a new life--all that carried Mercy's heart
completely captive.  Mercy felt that there was a solemnity, an
awesomeness, and a mystery about her new friend's experiences and
memories that it was not for a child like herself to attempt to
intrude into.  But, all the more because of that, a spell of love
and fear and reverence lay on Mercy's heart and mind all her after-
days from that so solemn and so eventful morning when she first saw
Christiana's haggard countenance and heard her remorseful cries.
My so churlish carriages to him!  Now, such carriages between man
and wife had often pained and made ashamed Mercy's maidenly heart
beyond all expression.  Till she had sometimes said to herself,
blushing with shame before herself as she said it, that if ever she
was a wife--may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth before I
say one churlish word to him who is my husband!  And thus it was
that nothing that Christiana said that morning in the uprush of her
remorse moved Mercy more with pity and with love than just what
Christiana beat her breast about as concerning her lost husband.
Mercy used to say that she saw truth and life enough in one hour
that morning to sober and to solemnise and to warn her to set a
watch on the door of her lips for all her after-days.

3.  Before Mrs. Timorous was well out of the door, Mercy had
already plucked off her gloves, and hung up her morning bonnet on a
nail in the wall, so much did her heart heave to help the cumbered
widow and her fatherless children.  "If thou wilt, I will hire
thee," said Christiana, "and thou shalt go with me as my servant.
Yet we will have all things common betwixt thee and me; only, now
thou art here, go along with me."  At this Mercy fell on
Christiana's neck and kissed her mother; for after that morning
Christiana had always a daughter of her own, and Mercy a mother.
And you may be sure, with two such women working with all their
might, all things were soon ready for their happy departure.

Mr. Kerr Bain invites his readers to compare John Bunyan's Mercy at
this point with William Law's Miranda.  I shall not tarry to draw
out the full comparison here, but shall content myself with simply
repeating Mr. Bain's happy reference.  Only, I shall not content
myself till all to whom my voice can reach, and who are able to
enjoy only a first-rate book, have Mr. Bain's book beside their
Pilgrim's Progress.  That morning, then, on which Mrs. Timorous,
having nothing to do at home, set out with Mercy on a round of
calls--that was Mercy's last idle morning for all her days.  For
her mind was, ever after that, to be always busying of herself in
doing, for when she had nothing to do for herself she would be
making of hosen and garments for others, and would bestow them upon
those that had need.  I will warrant her a good housewife, quoth
Mr. Brisk to himself.  So much so that at any place they stopped on
the way, even for a day and a night to rest and refresh themselves,
Mercy would seek out all the poor and all the old people, and ere
ever she was aware what she was doing, already a good report had
spread abroad concerning the pilgrims and their pilgrimage.  At the
same time, it must be told that poor Mercy's heart was more heavy
for the souls of the poor people than for their naked bodies and
hungry bellies.  So much was this so that when the shepherds,
Knowledge, Experience, Watchful, and Sincere, took her to a place
where she saw one Fool and one Want-wit washing of an Ethiopian
with intention to make him white, but the more they washed him the
blacker he was, Mercy blushed and felt guilty before the
shepherds,--she so took home to her charitable heart the bootless
work of Fool and Want-wit.  Mercy put on the Salvationist bonnet at
her first outset to the Celestial City, and she never put it off
till she came to that land where there are no more poor to make
hosen and hats for, and no more Ethiopians to take to the fountain.

4.  There are not a few young communicants here to-night, as well
as not a few who are afraid as yet to offer themselves for the
Lord's table; and, as it so falls out to-night, Mercy's case
contains both an encouragement and an example to all such.  For
never surely had a young communicant less to go upon than Mercy had
that best morning of all her life.  For she had nothing to go upon
but a great desire to help Christiana with her work; some desire
for truth and for life; and some first and feeble yearnings over
her own soul,--yearnings, however, that she kept entirely to
herself.  That was all.  She had no remorses like those which had
ploughed up Christiana's cheeks into such channels of tears.  She
had no dark past out of which swarms of hornets stung her guilty
conscience.  Nor on the other hand, had she any such sweet dreams
and inviting visions as those that were sent to cheer and encourage
the disconsolate widow.  She will have her own sweet dreams yet,
that will make her laugh loud out in her sleep.  But that will be
long after this, when she has discovered how hard her heart is and
how great God's grace is.  "How shall I be ascertained," she put it
to Christiana, "that I also shall be entertained?  Had I but this
hope, from one that can tell, I would make no stick at all, but
would go, being helped by Him that can help, though the way was
never so tedious.  Had I as good hope for a loving reception as you
have, I think no Slough of Despond would discourage me."  "Well,"
said the other, "you know your sore, and I know mine; and, good
friend, we shall all have enough evil before we come to our
journey's end."  And soon after that, of all places on the upward
way, Mercy's evil began at the Wicket Gate.  "I have a companion,"
said Christiana, "that stands without.  One that is much dejected
in her mind, for that she comes, as she thinks, without sending
for; whereas I was sent to by my husband's King."  So the porter
opened the gate and looked out; but Mercy was fallen down in a
swoon, for she fainted and was afraid that the gate would not be
opened to her.  "O sir," she said, "I am faint; there is scarce
life left in me."  But he answered her that one once said, "When my
soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came
in into Thee, into Thy holy temple.  Fear not, but stand up upon
thy feet, and tell me wherefore thou art come."  "I am come, sir,
into that for which I never was invited, as my friend Christiana
was.  Her invitation was from the Lord, and mine was but from her.
Wherefore, I fear that I presume."  Then said he to those that
stood by, "Fetch something and give it to Mercy to smell on,
thereby to stay her fainting."  So they fetched her a bundle of
myrrh, and a while after she revived.--Let young communicants be
content with Mercy's invitation.  She started for the City just
because she liked to be beside a good woman who was starting
thither.  She wished to help a good woman who was going thither;
and just a little desire began at first to awaken in her heart to
go to the city too.  Till, having once set her face to go up, one
thing after another worked together to lead her up till she, too,
had her life full of those invitations and experiences and
interests and occupations and enjoyments that make Mercy's name so
memorable, and her happy case such an example and such an
inspiration, to all God-fearing young women especially.

5.  John Bunyan must be held responsible for the strong dash of
romance that he so boldly throws into Mercy's memoirs.  But I shall
postpone Mr. Brisk and his love-making and his answer to another
lecture.  I shall not enter on Mercy's love matters here at all,
but shall leave them to be read at home by those who like to read
romances.  Only, since we have seen so much of Mercy as a maiden,
one longs to see how she turned out as a wife.  I can only imagine
how Mercy turned out as a wife; but there is a picture of a
Scottish Covenanting girl as a married wife which always rises up
before my mind when I think of Mercy's matronly days.  That picture
might hang in Bunyan's own peculiar gallery, so beautiful is the
drawing, and so warm and so eloquent the colouring.  Take, then,
this portrait of one of the daughters of the Scottish Covenant.
"She was a woman of great worth, whom I therefore passionately
loved and inwardly honoured.  A stately, beautiful, and comely
personage; truly pious and fearing the Lord.  Of an evenly temper,
patient in our common tribulations and under her personal
distresses.  A woman of bright natural parts, and of an uncommon
stock of prudence; of a quick and lively apprehension in things she
applied herself to, and of great presence of mind in surprising
incidents.  Sagacious and acute in discerning the qualities of
persons, and therefore not easily imposed upon.  [See Mr. Brisk's
interviews with Mercy.]  Modest and grave in her deportment, but
naturally cheerful; wise and affable in conversation, also having a
good faculty at speaking and expressing herself with assurance.
Being a pattern of frugality and wise management in household
affairs, all such were therefore entirely committed to her; well
fitted for and careful of the virtuous education of her children;
remarkably useful in the countryside, both in the Merse and in the
Forest, through her skill in physic and surgery, which in many
instances a peculiar blessing appeared to be commanded upon from
heaven.  And, finally, a crown to me in my public station and
pulpit appearances.  During the time we have lived together we have
passed through a sea of trouble, as yet not seeing the shore but
afar off."

"The words of King Lemuel, the prophecy that his mother taught him.
What, my son? and what, the son of my womb? and what, the son of my
vows?  Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above
rubies.  Her children arise up and call her blessed; her husband
also, and he praiseth her.  Favour is deceitful, and beauty is
vain; but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised."



MR. BRISK



"Be ye not unequally yoked."--Paul.

There were some severe precisians in John Bunyan's day who took the
objection to the author of the Pilgrim's Progress that he sometimes
laughed too loud.


"One may (I think) say, both he laughs and cries,
May well be guessed at by his watery eyes.
Some things are of that nature as to make
One's fancy chuckle while his heart doth ake.
When Jacob saw his Rachel with the sheep,
At the same time he did both laugh and weep."


And even Dr. Cheever, in his excellent lectures on the Pilgrim's
Progress, confesses that though the Second Part never ceases for a
moment to tell the serious story of the Pilgrimage, at the same
time, it sometimes becomes so merry as almost to pass over into
absolute comedy.  "There is one passage," says Cheever, "which for
exquisite humour, quiet satire, and naturalness in the development
of character is scarcely surpassed in the language.  It is the
account of the courtship between Mr. Brisk and Mercy which took
place at the House Beautiful."

Now, the insertion of such an episode as that of Mr. Brisk into
such a book as the Pilgrim's Progress is only yet another proof of
the health, the strength, and the truth to nature of John Bunyan's
mind.  His was eminently an honest, straightforward, manly, English
understanding.  A smaller man would not have ventured on Mr. Brisk
in such a book as the Pilgrim's Progress.  But there is no
affectation, there is no prudery, there is no superiority to nature
in John Bunyan.  He knew quite well that of the thousands of men
and women who were reading his Pilgrim there was no subject, not
even religion itself, that was taking up half so much of their
thoughts as just love-making and marriage.  And, like the wise man
and the true teacher he was, he here points out to all his readers
how well true religion and the fullest satisfaction of the warmest
and the most universal of human affections can be both harmonised
and made mutually helpful.  In Bunyan's day love was too much left
to the playwrights, just as in our day it is too much left to the
poets and the novelists.  And thus it is that in too many instances
affection and passion have taken full possession of the hearts and
the lives of our young people before any moral or religious lesson
on these all-important subjects has been given to them:  any lesson
such as John Bunyan so winningly and so beautifully gives here.
"This incident," says Thomas Scott, "is very properly introduced,
and it is replete with instruction."

Now, Mr. Brisk, to begin with, was, so we are told, a young man of
some breeding,--that is to say, he was a young man of some social
position, some education, and of a certain good manner, at least on
the surface.  In David Scott's Illustrations Mr. Brisk stands
before us a handsome and well-dressed young man of the period, with
his well-belted doublet, his voluminous ruffles, his heavily-
studded cuffs, his small cane, his divided hair, and his delicate
hand,--altogether answering excellently to his name, were it not
for the dashed look of surprise with which he gets his answer, and,
with what jauntiness he can at the moment command, takes his
departure.  "Mr. Brisk was a man of some breeding," says Bunyan,
"and that pretended to religion; but a man that stuck very close to
the world."  That Mr. Brisk made any pretence to religion at any
other time and in any other place is not said; only that he put on
that pretence with his best clothes when he came once or twice or
more to Mercy and offered love to her at the House Beautiful.  The
man with the least religion at other times, even the man with no
pretence to religion at other times at all, will pretend to some
religion when he is in love with a young woman of Mercy's mind.
And yet it would not be fair to say that it is all pretence even in
such a man at such a time.  Grant that a man is really in love;
then, since all love is of the nature of religion, for the time,
the true lover is really on the borders of a truly religious life.
It may with perfect truth be said of all men when they first fall
in love that they are, for the time, not very far away from the
kingdom of heaven.  For all love is good, so far as it goes.  God
is Love; and all love, in the long-run, has a touch of the divine
nature in it.  And for once, if never again, every man who is
deeply in love has a far-off glimpse of the beauty of holiness, and
a far-off taste of that ineffable sweetness of which the satisfied
saints of God sing so ecstatically.  But, in too many instances, a
young man's love having been kindled only by the creature, and,
never rising from her to his and her Creator, as a rule, it sooner
or later burns low and at last burns out, and leaves nothing but
embers and ashes in his once so ardent heart.  Mr. Brisk's love-
making might have ended in his becoming a pilgrim but for this
fatal flaw in his heart, that even in his love-making he stuck so
fast to the world.  It is almost incredible:  you may well refuse
to believe it--that any young man in love, and especially a young
gentleman of Mr. Brisk's breeding, would approach his mistress with
the question how much she could earn a day.  As Mr. Brisk looks at
Mercy's lap so full of hats and hosen and says it, I can see his
natty cane beginning to lengthen itself out in his soft-skinned
hand and to send out teeth like a muck-rake.  Give Mr. Brisk
another thirty years or so and he will be an ancient churl, raking
to himself the sticks and the straws and the dust of the earth,
neither looking up to nor regarding the celestial crown that is
still offered to him in exchange for his instrument.

"Now, Mercy was of a fair countenance, and, therefore, all the more
alluring."  But her fair countenance was really no temptation to
her.  "Sit still, my daughter," said Naomi to Ruth in the Old
Testament.  And it was entirely Mercy's maidenly nature to sit
still.  Even before she had come to her full womanhood under
Christiana's motherly care she would have been an example to Ruth.
Long ago, while Mercy was still a mere girl, when Mrs. Light-mind
said something to her one day that made her blush, Mercy at last
looked up in real anger and said, We women should be wooed; we were
not made to woo.  And thus it was that all their time at the House
Beautiful Mercy stayed close at home and worked with her needle and
thread just as if she had been the plainest girl in all the town.
"I might have had husbands afore now," she said, with a cast of her
head over the coat that lay on her lap, "though I spake not of it
to any.  But they were such as did not like my conditions, though
never did any of them find fault with my person.  So they and I
could not agree."  Once Mercy's mouth was opened on the subject of
possible husbands it is a miracle that she did not go on in
confidence to name some of the husbands she might have had.  Mercy
was too truthful and too honourable a maiden to have said even on
that subject what she did say if it had not been true.  No doubt
she believed it true.  And the belief so long as she mentioned no
names, did not break any man's bones and did not spoil any man's
market.  Don't set up too prudishly and say that it is a pity that
Mercy so far forgot herself as to make her little confidential
boast.  We would not have had her without that little boast.  Keep-
at-home, sit-still, hats and hosen and all--her little boast only
proves Mercy to have been at heart a true daughter of Eve after
all.

There is an old-fashioned word that comes up again and again in the
account of Mr. Brisk's courtship,--a word that contains far more
interest and instruction for us than might on the surface appear.
When Mr. Brisk was rallied upon his ill-success with Mercy, he was
wont to say that undoubtedly Mistress Mercy was a very pretty lass,
only she was troubled with ill conditions.  And then, when Mercy
was confiding to Prudence all about her possible husbands, she said
that they were all such as did not like her conditions.  To which
Prudence, keeping her countenance, replied, that the men were but
few in their day that could abide the practice that was set forth
by such conditions as those of Mercy.  Well, tossed out Mercy, if
nobody will have me I will die a maid, or my conditions shall be to
me as a husband!  As I came again and again across that old
seventeenth-century word "conditions," I said to myself, I feel
sure that Dr. Murray of the Oxford Scriptorium will have noted this
striking passage.  And on turning up the Sixth Part of the New
English Dictionary, there, to be sure, was the old word standing in
this present setting.  Five long, rich, closely packed columns
stood under the head of "Condition"; and amid a thousand
illustrations of its use, the text:  "1684, Bunyan, Pilgr., ii. 84.
He said that Mercy was a pretty lass, but troubled with ill
conditions."  Poor illiterate John Bunyan stood in the centre of a
group of learned and famous men, composed of Chaucer, Wyclif,
Skelton, Palsgrave, Raleigh, Featly, Richard Steel, and Walter
Scott--all agreeing in their use of our word, and all supplying
examples of its use in the best English books.  By Mercy's
conditions, then, is just meant her cast of mind, her moral nature,
her temper and her temperament, her dispositions and her
inclinations, her habits of thought, habits of heart, habits of
life, and so on.

"Well," said Mercy proudly, "if nobody will have me, I will die a
maid, or my conditions shall be to me as a husband.  For I cannot
change my nature, and to have one that lies cross to me in this,--
that I purpose never to admit of as long as I live."  By this time,
though she is still little more than a girl, Mercy had her habits
formed, her character cast, and, more than all, her whole heart
irrevocably set on her soul's salvation.  And everything--husband
and children and all--must condition themselves to that, else she
will have none of them.  She had sought first the kingdom of God
and His righteousness, and she will seek nothing, she will accept
nothing--no, not even a husband--who crosses her choice in that.
She has chosen her life, and her husband with it.  Not the man as
yet, but the whole manner of the man.  The conditions of the man,
as she said about herself; else she will boldly and bravely die a
maid.  And there are multitudes of married women who, when they
read this page about Mercy, will gnash their teeth at the madness
of their youth, and will wildly wish that they only were maids
again; and, then, like Mercy, they would take good care to make for
themselves husbands of their own conditions too--of their own
means, their own dispositions, inclinations, tastes, and pursuits.
For, according as our conditions to one another are or are not in
our marriages,


"They locally contain or heaven or hell;
There is no third place in them."


What untold good, then, may all our young women not get out of the
loving study of Mercy's sweet, steadfast, noble character!  And
what untold misery may they not escape!  From first to last--and we
are not yet come to her last--I most affectionately recommend Mercy
to the hearts and minds of all young women here.  Single and
married; setting out on pilgrimage and steadfastly persevering in
it; sitting still till the husband with the right conditions comes,
and then rising up with her warm, well-kept heart to meet him--if
any maiden here has no mother, or no elder sister, or no wise and
prudent friend like Prudence or Christiana to take counsel of--and
even if she has--let Mercy be her meditation and her model through
all her maidenly days.

"Nay, then," said Mercy, "I will look no more on him, for I purpose
never to have a clog to my soul."  A pungent resolve for every
husband to read and to think to himself about, who has married a
wife with a soul.  Let all husbands who have such wives halt here
and ask themselves with some imagination as to what may sometimes
go on, at communion times, say, in the souls of their wives.  It is
not every wife, it is true, who has a soul to clog; but some of our
wives have.  Well, now, let us ask ourselves:  How do we stand
related to their souls?  Do our wives, when examining the state of
their souls since they married us, have to say that at one time
they had hoped to be further on in the life of the soul than they
yet are?  And are they compelled before God to admit that the
marriage they have made, and would make, has terribly hindered
them?  Would they have been better women, would they have been
living a better life, and doing far more good in the world, if they
had taken their maidenly ideals, like Mercy, for a husband?  Let us
sometimes imagine ourselves into the secrets of our wives' souls,
and ask if they ever feel that they are unequally and injuriously
yoked in their deepest and best life.  Do we ever see a tear
falling in secret, or hear a stolen sigh heaved, or stumble on them
at a stealthy prayer?  A Roman lady on being asked why she
sometimes let a sob escape her and a tear fall, when she had such a
gentleman of breeding and rank and riches to her husband, touched
her slipper with her finger and said:  "Is not that a well-made, a
neat, and a costly shoe?  And yet you would not believe how it
pinches and pains me sometimes."

But some every whit as good women as Mercy was have purposed as
nobly and as firmly as Mercy did, and yet have wakened up, when it
was too late, to find that, with all their high ideals, and with
all their prudence, their husband is not in himself, and is not to
them, what they at one time felt sure he would be.  Mercy had a
sister named Bountiful, who made that mistake and that dreadful
discovery; and what Mercy had seen of married life in her sister's
house almost absolutely turned her against marriage altogether.
"The one thing certain," says Thomas Mozley in his chapter on Ideal
Wife and Husband, "is that both wife and husband are different in
the result from the expectation.  Age, illness, an increasing
family, no family at all, household cares, want of means,
isolation, incompatible prejudices, quarrels, social difficulties,
and such like, all tell on married people, and make them far other
than they once promised to be."  When that awakening comes there is
only one solace, and women take to that supreme solace much more
often than men.  And that solace, as you all know, is true, if too
late, religion.  And even where true religion has already been,
there is still a deeper and a more inward religion suited to the
new experiences and the new needs of life.  And if both husband and
wife in such a crisis truly betake themselves to Him who gathereth
the solitary into families, the result will be such a remarriage of
depth and tenderness, loyalty and mutual help, as their early
dreams never came within sight of.  Not early love, not children,
not plenty of means, not all the best amenities of married life
taken together, will repair a marriage and keep a marriage in
repair for one moment like a living and an intense faith in God; a
living and an intense love to God; and then that faith in and love
for one another that spring out of God and out of His love alone.


"The tree
Sucks kindlier nurture from a soil enriched
By its own fallen leaves; and man is made,
In heart and spirit, from deciduous hopes
And things that seem to perish."



MR. SKILL



"The vine of Sodom."--Moses.

With infinite delicacy John Bunyan here tells us the sad story of
Matthew's sore sickness at the House Beautiful.  The cause of the
sore sickness, its symptoms, its serious nature, and its complete
cures are all told with the utmost plainness; but, at the same
time, with the most exquisite delicacy.  Bunyan calls the ancient
physician who is summoned in and who effects the cure, Mr. Skill,
but you must believe that Bunyan himself is Mr. Skill; and I
question if this skilful writer ever wrote a more skilful page than
just this page that now lies open before him who has the eyes to
read it.

Matthew, it must always be remembered, was by this time a young
man.  He was the eldest son of Christiana his mother, and for some
time now she had been a sorely burdened widow.  Matthew's father
was no longer near his son to watch over him and to warn him
against the temptations and the dangers that wait on opening
manhood.  And thus his mother, with all her other cares, had to be
both father and mother to her eldest son; and, with all her good
sense and all her long and close acquaintance with the world, she
was too fond a mother to suspect any evil of her eldest son.  And
thus it was that Christiana had nearly lost her eldest son before
her eyes were open to the terrible dangers he had for a long time
been running.  For it was so, that the upward way that this
household without a head had to travel lay through a land full of
all kinds of dangers both to the bodies and to the souls of such
travellers as they were.  And what well-nigh proved a fatal danger
to Matthew lay right in his way.  It was Beelzebub's orchard.  Not
that this young man's way lay through that orchard exactly; yet,
walled up as was that orchard with all its forbidden fruit, that
evil fruit would hang over the wall so that if any lusty youth
wished to taste it, he had only to reach up to the over-hanging
branches and plash down on himself some of the forbidden bunches.
Now, that was just what Matthew had done.  Till we have him lying
at the House Beautiful, not only not able to enjoy the delights of
the House and of the season, but so pained in his bowels and so
pulled together with inward pains, that he sometimes cried out as
if he were being torn to pieces.  At that moment Mr. Skill, the
ancient physician, entered the sick-room, when, having a little
observed Matthew's intense agony, with a certain mixture of
goodness and severity he recited these professional verses over the
trembling bed:


"O conscience, who can stand against thy power?
Endure thy gripes and agonies one hour?
Stone, gout, strappado, racks, whatever is
Dreadful to sense, are only toys to this -
No pleasures, riches, honours, friends can tell
How to give ease to this, 'tis like to hell."


And then, turning to the sick man's mother, who stood at the bed's
head wringing her hands, the ancient leech said to her:  "This boy
of yours has been tampering with the forbidden fruit!"  At which
the angry mother turned on the well-approved physician as if he had
caused all the trouble that he had come to cure.  But the ancient
man knew both the son and the mother too, and therefore he
addressed her with some asperity:  "I tell you both that strong
measures must be taken instantly, else he will die."  When Mr.
Skill had seen that the first purge was too weak, he made him one
to the purpose; and it was made, as he so learnedly said, ex carne
et sanguine Christi.  The pills were to be taken three at a time,
fasting, in half a quarter of a pint of the tears of repentance.
After some coaxing, such as mothers know best how to use, Matthew
took the medicine and was soon walking about again with a staff,
and was able to go from room to room of the hospitable and happy
house.  Understandest thou what thou readest? said Philip the
deacon to Queen Candace's treasurer as he sat down beside him in
the chariot and opened up to him the fifty-third of the prophet
Isaiah.  And, understandest thou what thou here readest in Matthew
and Mr. Skill?

1.  Now, on this almost too closely veiled case I shall venture to
remark, in the first place, that multitudes of boys grow up into
young men, and go out of our most godly homes and into a whole
world of temptation without due warning being given them as to
where they are going.  "I do marvel that none did warn him of it,"
said Mr. Skill, with some anger.  What Matthew's father might have
done in this matter had he been still in this world when his son
became a man in it we can only guess.  As it was, it never entered
his mother's too fond mind to take her fatherless boy by himself
when she saw Beelzebub's orchard before him, and tell him what
Solomon told his son, and to point out to him the prophecy that
King Lemuel's mother prophesied to her son.  Poor Matthew was a
young man before his mother was aware of it.  And, poor woman, she
only found that out when Mr. Skill was in the sick-room and was
looking at her with eyes that seemed to say to her that she had
murdered her child.  She had loved too long to look on her first-
born as still a child.  When he went at any time for a season out
of her sight, she had never followed him with her knowledge of the
world; she had never prevented him with an awakened and an anxious
imagination; till now she had got him home with no rest in his
bones because of his sin.  And then she began to cry too late, O
naughty boy, and, O careless mother, what shall I do for my son!

2.  "That food, to wit, that fruit," said Mr. Skill, "is even the
most hurtful of all.  It is the fruit of Beelzebub's orchard."  So
it is.  There is no fruit that hurts at all like that fruit.  How
it hurts at the time, we see in Matthew's sick-room; and how it
hurts all a man's after days we see in Jacob, and in Job, and in
David, and in a thousand sin-sick souls of whose psalms of remorse
and repentance the world cannot contain all the books that should
be written.  "And yet I marvel," said the indignant physician,
"that none did warn him of it; many have died thereof."  Oh if I
could but get the ears of all the sons of godly fathers and mothers
who are beginning to tamper with Beelzebub's orchard-trees, I feel
as if I could warn them to-night, and out of this text, of what
they are doing!  I have known so many who have died thereof.  Oh if
I could but save them in time from those gripes of conscience that
will pull them to pieces on the softest and the most fragrant bed
that shall ever be made for them on earth!  It will be well with
them if they do not lie down torn to pieces on their bed in hell,
and curse the day they first plashed down into their youthful hands
the vine of Sodom.  Both the way to hell and the way to heaven are
full of many kinds of hurtful fruits; but that species of fruit
that poor misguided Matthew plucked and ate after he had well
passed the gate that is at the head of the way is, by all men's
testimony, by far the most hurtful of all forbidden fruits.

3.  The whole scene in Matthew's sick-room reads, after all, less
like a skilful invention than a real occurrence.  Inventive and
realistic as John Bunyan is, there is surely something here that
goes beyond even his genius.  After making all allowance for
Bunyan's unparalleled powers of creation and narration, I am
inclined to think, the oftener I read it, that, after all, we have
not so much John Bunyan here as very Nature herself.  Yes; John
Gifford surely was Mr. Skill.  Sister Bosworth surely was Matthew's
mother.  And Matthew himself was Sister Bosworth's eldest son,
while one John Bunyan, a travelling tinker, was busy with his
furnaces and his soldering-irons in Dame Bosworth's kitchen.  Young
Bunyan, with all his blackguardism, had never plashed down
Beelzebub's orchard.  He swears he never did, and we are bound to
believe him.  But young Bosworth had been tampering with the
forbidden fruit, and Gifford saw at a glance what was wrong.  John
Gifford was first an officer in the Royalist army, then a doctor in
Bedford, and now a Baptist Puritan pastor; and the young tinker
looked up to Gifford as the most wonderful man for learning in
books and in bodies and souls of men in all the world.  And when
Gifford talked over young Bosworth's bed half to himself and half
to them about a medicine made ex carne et sanguine Christi, the
future author of the Pilgrim's Progress never forgot the phrase.
At a glance Gifford saw what was the whole matter with the sick
man.  And painful as the truth was to the sick man's mother, and
humiliating with a life-long humiliation to the sick man himself,
Gifford was not the man or the minister to beat about the bush at
such a solemn moment.  "This boy has been tampering with that which
will kill him unless he gets it taken off his conscience and out of
his heart immediately."  Now, this same divination into our
pastoral cases is by far and away the most difficult part of a
minister's work.  It is easy and pleasant with a fluent tongue to
get through our pulpit work; but to descend the pulpit stairs and
deal with life, and with this and that sin in the lives of our
people,--that is another matter.  "We must labour," says Richard
Baxter in his Reformed Pastor, "to be acquainted with the state of
all our people as fully as we can; both to know the persons and
their inclinations and conversation; to know what sins they are
most in danger of, what duties they neglect, and what temptations
they are most liable to.  For, if we know not their temperament or
their disease, we are likely to prove but unsuccessful physicians."
But when we begin to reform our pastorate to that pattern, we are
soon compelled to set down such entries in our secret diary as that
of Thomas Shepard of Harvard University:  "Sabbath, 5th April 1641.
Nothing I do, nay, none under my shadow prosper.  I so want wisdom
for my place, and to guide others."  Yes; for what wisdom is needed
for the place of a minister like John Gifford, John Bunyan, Richard
Baxter, and Thomas Shepard!  What wisdom, what divine genius, to
dive into and divine the secret history of a soul from a twinge of
conscience, even from a drop of the eye, a tone of the voice, or a
gesture of the hand or of the head!  And yet, with some natural
taste for the holy work, with study, with experience, and with
life-long expert reading, even a plain minister with no genius, but
with some grace and truth, may come to great eminence in the
matters of the soul.  And then, with what an interest, solemn and
awful, with what a sleepless interest such a pastor goes about
among his diseased, sin-torn, and scattered flock!  All their souls
are naked and open under his divining eye.  They need not to tell
him where they ail, and of what sickness they are nigh unto death.
That food, he says, with some sternness over their sick-bed, I
warned you of it; I told you with all plainness that many have died
of eating that fruit!  "We must be ready," Baxter continues, "to
give advice to those that come to us with cases of conscience.  A
minister is not only for public preaching, but to be a known
counsellor for his people's souls as the lawyer is for their
estates, and the physician is for their bodies.  And because the
people are grown unacquainted with this office of the ministry, and
their own necessity and duty herein, it belongeth to us to acquaint
them herewith, and to press them publicly to come to us for advice
concerning their souls.  We must not only be willing of the
trouble, but draw it upon ourselves by inviting them hereto.  To
this end it is very necessary to be acquainted with practical cases
and able to assist them in trying their states.  One word of
seasonable and prudent advice hath done that good that many sermons
would not have done."

4.  As he went on pounding and preparing his well-approved pill,
the (at the bottom of his heart) kind old leech talked
encouragingly to the mother and to her sick son, and said:  "Come,
come; after all, do not he too much cast down.  Had we lived in the
days of the old medicine, I would have been compounding a purge out
of the blood of a goat, and the ashes of an heifer, and the juice
of hyssop.  But I have a far better medicine under my hands here.
This moment I will make you a purge to the purpose."  And then the
learned man, half-doctor, half-divine, chanted again the sacred
incantation as he bent over his pestle and mortar, saying:  Ex
carne et sanguine Christi!  Those shrewd old eyes soon saw that, in
spite of all their defences and all their denials, damage had been
done to the conscience and the heart that nothing would set right
but a frank admission of the evil that had been done, and a prompt
submission to the regimen appointed and the medicine prepared.  And
how often we ministers puddle and peddle with goat's blood and
heifer's ashes and hyssop juice when we should instantly prescribe
stern fasting and secret prayer and long spaces of repentance, and
then the body and the blood of Christ.  How often our people cheat
us into healing their hurt slightly!  How often they succeed in
putting us off, after we are called in, with their own account of
their cases, and set us out on a wild-goose chase!  I myself have
more than once presented young men in their trouble with apologetic
books, University sermons, and watered-down explanations of the
Confession and the Catechism, when, had I known all I came
afterwards to know, I would have sent them Bunyan's Sighs from
Hell.  I have sent soul-sick women also The Bruised Reed, and The
Mission of the Comforter with sympathising inscriptions, and sweet
scriptures written inside, when, had I had Mr. Skill's keen eyes in
my stupid head, I would have gone to them with the total abstinence
pledge in my one hand, and Jeremy Taylor's Holy Living and Dying in
my other.  "No diet but that which is wholesome!" almost in anger
answered the sick man's mother.  "I tell you," the honest leech
replied, in more anger, "this boy has been tampering with
Beelzebub's orchard.  And many have died of it!"

5.  It was while all the rest of the House Beautiful were supping
on lamb and wine, and while there was such music in the House that
made Mercy exclaim over it with wonder--it was at the smell of the
supper and at the sound of the psalmody that Matthew's gripes
seized upon him worse than ever.  All the time the others sat late
into the night Matthew lay on the rack pulled to pieces.  After
William Law's death at King's Cliffe, his executors found among his
most secret papers a prayer he had composed for his own alone use
on a certain communion day when he was self-debarred from the
Lord's table.  I do not know for certain just what fruit the young
non-juror had stolen out of Beelzebub's orchard before that
communion season; but I can see that he was in poor Matthew's exact
experience that communion night,--literally torn to pieces with
agonies of conscience while all his fellow-worshippers were at the
table of the Lord.  While the psalms and hymns are being sung at
the supper-table, lay your ear to Law's closet door.  "Whilst all
Thy faithful servants are on this day offering to Thee the
comfortable sacrifice of the body and the blood of Christ, and
feasting at that holy table which Thou hast ordained for the
refreshment, joy, and comfort of their souls, I, unhappy wretch,
full of guilt, am justly denied any share of these comforts that
are common to the Christian world.  O my God, I am an unclean worm,
a dead dog, a stinking carcass, justly removed from that society of
saints who this day kneel about Thine altar.  But, oh! suffer me to
look toward Thy holy Sanctuary; suffer my soul again to be in the
place where Thine honour dwelleth.  Reject not the sacrifice of a
broken heart, and do Thou be with me in secret, though I am not fit
to appear in Thy public worship.  Lord, if Thou wilt Thou canst
make me clean.  Lord, speak but the word, and Thy servant shall be
healed."  It is the fruit of Beelzebub's orchard.  Many have died
thereof.

6.  "Pray, sir, make me up twelve boxes of them; for if I can get
these, I will never take other physic."  "These same pills," he
replied, "are good also to prevent diseases as well as to cure when
one is sick.  But, good woman, thou must take these pills no other
way but as I have prescribed; for if you do, they will do no good."
I have taken one illustration from William Law's life; I shall take
another from that world of such illustrations and so close.  "O
God, let me never see such another day as this.  Let the dreadful
punishment of this day never be out of my mind."  And it never was.
For, after that day in hell, Law never laid down his head on his
pillow that he did not seem to remember that dreadful day.  William
Law would have satisfied Dr. Skill for a convalescent.  For he
never felt that he had any right to touch the body and blood of
Christ, either at communion times, or a thousand times every day,
till he had again got ready his heart of true repentance.  My
brethren, self-destroyed out of Beelzebub's orchard, and all my
brethren, live a life henceforth of true repentance.  Not out of
the sins of your youth only, but out of the best, the most
watchful, and the most blameless day you ever live, distil your
half-pint of repentance every night before you sleep.  For, as dear
old Skill said, unless you do, neither flesh nor blood of Christ,
nor anything else, will do you any genuine good.



THE SHEPHERD BOY



"He humbled Himself."--Paul.

Now as they were going along and talking, they espied a boy feeding
his father's sheep.  The boy was in very mean clothes, but of a
very fresh and well-favoured countenance, and as he sat by himself
he sang.  Hark, said Mr. Greatheart, to what the shepherd boy
saith.  So they hearkened and he said:


He that is down, needs fear no fall;
He that is low no pride:
He that is humble, ever shall
Have God to be his guide.
I am content with what I have,
Little be it or much:
And, Lord, contentment still I crave,
Because thou savest such.
Fulness to such a burden is
That go on pilgrimage:
Here little, and hereafter bliss,
Is best from age to age.


Then said their guide, Do you hear him?  I will dare say that this
boy lives a merrier life and wears more of that herb called
Heart's-ease in his bosom than he that is clad in silk and velvet."

Now, notwithstanding all that, nobody knew better than John Bunyan
knew, that no shepherd boy that ever lived on the face of the earth
ever sang that song; only one Boy ever sang that song, and He was
not the son of a shepherd at all, but the son of a carpenter.  And,
saying that leads me on to say this before I begin, that I look for
a man of John Bunyan's inventive and sanctified genius to arise
some day, and armed also to boot with all our latest and best New
Testament studies.  When that sorely-needed man so arises he will
take us back to Nazareth where that carpenter's Boy was brought up,
and he will let us see Him with our own eyes being brought up.  He
will lead us into Mary's house on Sabbath days, and into Joseph's
workshop on week days, and he will show us the child Jesus, not so
much learning His letters and then putting on His carpenter's
clothes, as learning obedience by the things that He every day
suffered.  That choice author will show us our Lord, both before He
had discovered Himself to be our Lord, as well as after He had made
that great discovery, always clothing Himself with humility as with
a garment; taking up His yoke of meekness and lowly-mindedness
every day, and never for one moment laying it down.  When some
writer with as holy an imagination as that of John Bunyan, and with
as sweet an English style, and with a New Testament scholarship of
the first order so arises, and so addresses himself to the inward
life of our Lord, what a blessing to our children that writer will
be!  For he will make them see and feel just what all that was in
which our Lord's perfect humility consisted, and how His perfect
humility fulfilled itself in Him from day to day; up through all
His childhood days, school and synagogue days, workshop and holy
days, early manhood and mature manhood days; till He was so meek in
all His heart and so humble in all His mind that all men were sent
to Him to learn their meekness and their humility of Him.  I envy
that gifted man the deep delight he will have in his work, and the
splendid reward he will have in the love and the debt of all coming
generations.  Only, may he be really sent to us, and that soon!
Theodor Keim comes nearest a far-off glimpse of that eminent
service of any New Testament scholar I know.  Jeremy Taylor and
Thomas Goodwin also, in their own time and in their own way, had
occasional inspirations toward this still-waiting treatment of the
master-subject of all learning and all genius--the inward
sanctification, the growth in grace, and then the self-discovery of
the incarnate Son of God.  But, so let it please God, some
contemporary scholar will arise some day soon, combining in himself
Goodwin's incomparable Christology, and Taylor's incomparable
eloquence, and Keim's incomparably digested learning, with John
Bunyan's incomparable imagination and incomparable English style,
and the waiting work will be done, and theology for this life will
take on its copestone.  In his absence, and till he comes, let us
attempt a few annotations to-night on this so-called shepherd boy's
song in the Valley of Humiliation.


He that is down, needs fear no fall.


The whole scenery of the surrounding valley is set before us in
that single eloquent stanza.  The sweet-voiced boy sits well off
the wayside as he sings his song to himself.  He looks up to the
hill-tops that hang over his valley, and every shining tooth of
those many hill-tops has for him its own evil legend.  "He thinks
he sees a little heap of bleaching bones just under where that
eagle hangs and wheels and screams.  Not one traveller through
these perilous parts in a thousand gets down those cruel rocks
unhurt; and many travellers have been irrecoverably lost among
those deadly rocks, and have never received Christian burial.  All
the shepherds' cottages and all the hostel supper-tables for many
miles round are full of terrible stories of the Hill Difficulty and
the Descent Dangerous.  And thus it is that this shepherd boy looks
up with such fear at those sharp peaks and shining precipices, and
lifts his fresh and well-favoured countenance to heaven and sings
again:  "He that is down, needs fear no fall."  Down in his own
esteem, that is.  For this is a song of the heart rather than of
the highway.  Down--safe, that is, from the steep and slippery
places of self-estimation, self-exaltation, self-satisfaction.
Down--so as to be delivered from all ambition and emulation and
envy.  Down, and safe, thank God, from all pride, all high-
mindedness, and all stout-heartedness.  Down from the hard and
cruel hills, and buried deep out of sight among those meadows where
that herb grows which is called Heart's-ease.  Down, where the
green pastures grow and the quiet waters flow.  No, indeed; he that
is down into this sweet bottom needs fear no fall.  For there is
nowhere here for a man to fall from.  And, even if he did fall, he
would only fall upon a fragrance-breathing bed of lilies.  The very
herbs and flowers here would conspire to hold him up.  Many a day,
as He grew up, the carpenter's son sat in that same valley and sang
that same song to His own humble and happy heart.  He loved much to
be here.  He loved also to walk these meadows, for He found the air
was pleasant.  Methinks, He often said with Mercy, I am as well in
this valley as I have been anywhere else in My journey.  The place,
methinks, suits with My spirit.  I love to be in such places where
there is no rattling with coaches nor rumbling with wheels.
Methinks, also, here one may without much molestation be thinking
what he is, whence he came, and to what his King has called him.


He that is low, no pride.


Low in his own eyes, that is.  For pride goeth before destruction,
and a haughty spirit before a fall.  Yes; but he who is low enough
already--none of the sure destructions that pride always works
shall ever come near to him.  "The proud man," says Sir Henry
Taylor, "is of all men the most vulnerable.  "Who calls?" asks the
old shepherd in As You Like It.  "Your betters," is the insolent
answer.  And what is the shepherd's rejoinder?  "Else are they very
wretched."  By what retort, reprisal, or repartee could it have
been made half so manifest that the insult had lighted upon armour
of proof?  Such is the invincible independence and invulnerability
of humility."


He that is humble ever shall
Have God to be his guide.


For thus saith the high and holy One that inhabiteth eternity,
whose name is Holy:  I dwell in the high and holy place, with him
also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the heart
of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones . . .
All those things hath Mine hand made, but to this man will I look,
saith the Lord, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit,
and who trembleth at My word . . . Though the Lord be high, yet
hath He respect unto the lowly; but the proud He knoweth afar off .
. . Likewise, ye younger, submit yourselves unto the elder.  Yea,
all of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility;
for God resisteth the proud and giveth grace to the humble . . .
Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty, neither do I
exercise myself in great matters, or in things too high for me.
Surely I have behaved and quieted myself, as a child that is weaned
of his mother:  my soul is even as a weaned child . . . Take My
yoke upon you and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart,
and ye shall find rest unto your souls.  For My yoke is easy and My
burden is light.


I am content with what I have,
Little be it, or much:
And, Lord, contentment still I crave,
Because thou savest such.


The only thing this sweet singer is discontented with is his own
contentment.  He will not be content as long as he has a shadow of
discontent left in his heart.  And how blessed is such holy
discontent!  For, would you know, asks Law, who is the greatest
saint in all the world?  Well, it is not he who prays most or fasts
most; it is not he who gives most alms or is most eminent for
temperance, chastity, or justice.  But it is he who is always
thankful to God, who wills everything that God willeth, who
receives everything as an instance of God's goodness, and has a
heart always ready to praise God for it.  "Perhaps the shepherd's
boy," says Thomas Scott, "may refer to the obscure and quiet
stations of some pastors over small congregations, who live almost
unknown to their brethren, but are in a measure useful and very
comfortable."  Perhaps he does.  And, whether he does or no, at any
rate such a song will suit some of our brethren very well as they
go about among their few and far-off flocks.  They are not church
leaders or popular preachers.  There is not much rattling with
coaches or rumbling with wheels at their church door.  But, then,
methinks, they have their compensation.  They are without much
molestation.  They can be all the more thinking what they are,
whence they came, and to what their King has called them.  Let them
be happy in their shut-in valleys.  For I will dare to say that
they wear more of that herb called Heart's-ease in their bosom than
those ministers do they are sometimes tempted to emulate.  I will
add in this place that to the men who live and trace these grounds
the Lord hath left a yearly revenue to be faithfully paid them at
certain seasons for their maintenance by the way, and for their
further encouragement to go on in their pilgrimage.


Here little, and hereafter bliss,
Is best from age to age.


But, now, from the shepherd boy and from his valley and his song,
let us go on without any more poetry or parable to look our own
selves full in the face and to ask our own hearts whether they are
the hearts of really humble-minded and New Testament men or no.
Dr. Newman, "that subtle, devout man," as Dr. Duncan calls him,
says that "humility is one of the most difficult of virtues both to
attain and to ascertain.  It lies," he says, "close upon the heart
itself, and its tests are exceedingly delicate and subtle.  Its
counterfeits abound."  Most true.  And yet humility is not intended
for experts in morals only, or for men of a rare religious genius
only.  The plainest of men, the least skilled and the most
unlettered of men, may not only excel in humility, but may also be
permitted to know that they are indeed planted, and are growing
slowly but surely in that grace of all graces.  No doubt our Lord
had, so to describe it, the most delicate and the most subtle of
human minds; and, no doubt whatever, He had the most practised
skill in reading off what lay closest to His own heart.  And, then,
it was just His attainment of the most perfect humility, and then
His absolute ascertainment of the same, that enabled Him to say:
Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me.  At the same time, divine as
the grace is, and divine as the insight is that is able to trace it
out in all its exquisite refinements of thought and feeling in the
sanctified soul, yet humility is a human virtue after all, and it
is open to all men to attain to it and intelligently and lovingly
to exercise it.  The simplest and the least philosophical soul now
in this house may apply to himself some of the subtlest and most
sensitive tests of humility, as much as if he were Dr. Duncan or
Dr. Newman themselves; and may thus with all assurance of hope know
whether he is a counterfeit and a castaway or no.

Take this test for one, then.  Explain this text to me:  Phil. ii.
3--"In lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than
himself."  Explain and illustrate that.  Not from a commentary, but
straight out from your own heart.  What does your heart make of
that scripture?  Does your heart turn away from that scripture
almost in anger at it?  Do you say you are certain that there must
be some other explanation of it than that?  Do you hold that this
is just another of Paul's perpetual hyperboles, and that the New
Testament is the last book in the world to be taken as it reads?
Yes; both bold and subtle father that he is:  counterfeits abound!

Another much blunter test, but, perhaps, a sufficiently sharp test,
is this:  How do you receive correction and instruction?  Does your
heart meekly and spontaneously and naturally take to correction and
instruction as the most natural and proper thing possible to you?
And do you immediately, and before all men, show forth and exhibit
the correction and the instruction?  Or, does this rather take
place?  Does your heart beat, and swell, and boil, and boil over at
him who dares to correct or counsel you?  If this is a fair test to
put our humility to, how little humility there is among us!  How
few men any of us could name among our friends to whom we would
risk telling all the things that behind their backs we point out
continually to others?  We are terrified to face their pride.  We
once did it, and we are not to do it again, if we can help it!  Let
a man not have too many irons in the fire; let him examine himself
just by these two tests for the time--what he thinks of himself,
and what he thinks of those who attempt, and especially before
other people, to set him right.  And after these two tests have
been satisfied, others will no doubt be supplied till that so
humble man is made very humility itself.

And now, in the hope that there may be one or two men here who are
really and not counterfeitly in earnest to clothe themselves with
humility before God and man, let them take these two looms to
themselves out of which whole webs of such garments will be
delivered to them every day--their past life, and their present
heart.  With a past life like ours, my brethren--and everyman knows
his own--pride is surely the maddest state of mind that any of us
can allow ourselves in.  The first king of Bohemia kept his clouted
old shoes ever in his sight, that he might never forget that he had
once been a ploughman.  And another wise king used to drink out of
a coarse cup at table, and excused himself to his guests that he
had made the rude thing in his rude potter days.  Look with
Primislaus and Agathocles at the hole of the pit out of which you
also have been dug; look often enough, deep enough, and long
enough, and you will be found passing up through the Valley of
Humiliation singing:


"With us He dealt not as we sinn'd,
Nor did requite our ill!"


Another excellent use of the past is, if you are equal to it, to
call yourself aloud sometimes, or in writing, some of the names
that other people who know your past are certainly calling you.  It
is a terrible discipline, but it is the terror of the Lord, and He
will not let it hurt you too much.  I was before a blasphemer, and
a persecutor, and injurious, says Paul.  And, to show Titus, his
gospel-son, the way, he said to him:  We ourselves were sometimes
foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures,
living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another.  And
John Bunyan calls himself a blackguard, and many other worse names;
only he swears that neither with his soldiering nor with his
tinkering hands did he ever plash down Beelzebub's orchard.  But if
you have done that, or anything like that, call yourself aloud by
your true name on your knees to-night.  William Law testifies,
after five-and-twenty years' experience of it, that he never heard
of any harm that he had done to any in his house by his habit of
singing his secret psalms aloud, and sometimes, ere ever he was
aware, bursting out in his penitential prayers.

And, then, how any man with a man's heart in his bosom for a single
day can escape being the chief of sinners, and consequently the
humblest of men for all the rest of his life on earth, passes my
comprehension!  How a spark of pride can live in such a hell as
every human heart is would be past belief, did we not know that God
avenges sin by more sin; avenges Himself on a wicked and a false
heart by more wickedness and more falsehood, all ending in Satanic
pride.

Too long as I have kept you in this valley to-night, I dare not let
you out of it till I have shared with you a few sentences on
evangelical humiliation out of that other so subtle and devout man,
Jonathan Edwards.  But what special kind of humiliation is
evangelical humiliation? you will ask.  Hear, then, what this
master in Israel says.  "Evangelical humiliation is the sense that
a Christian man has of his own utter insufficiency, utter
despicableness, and utter odiousness; with an always answerable
frame of heart.  This humiliation is peculiar to the true saints.
It arises from the special influence of the Spirit of God
implanting and exercising supernatural and divine principles; and
it is accompanied with a sense of the transcendent beauty of divine
things.  And, thus, God's true saints all more or less see their
own odiousness on account of sin, and the exceedingly hateful
nature of all sin.  The very essence of evangelical humiliation
consists in such humility as becomes a man in himself exceeding
sinful but now under a dispensation of grace.  It consists in a
mean esteem of himself, as in himself nothing, and altogether
contemptible and odious.  This, indeed, is the greatest and the
most essential thing in true religion."  And so on through a whole
chapter of beaten gold.  To which noble chapter I shall only add
that such teaching is as sweet, as strengthening, and as reassuring
to the truly Christian heart as it is bitter and hateful to the
counterfeit heart.



OLD HONEST



"An honest heart."--Our Lord.

Next tell them of Old Honest, who you found
With his white hairs treading the pilgrim's ground;
Yea, tell them how plain-hearted this man was,
How after his good Lord he bare his cross:
Perhaps with some grey head this may prevail,
With Christ to fall in love, and sin bewail.

You would have said that no pilgrim to the Celestial City could
possibly have come from a worse place, or a more unlikely place,
than was that place from which Christian and Christiana and Matthew
and Mercy had come.  And yet so it was.  For Old Honest, this most
excellent and every way most delightful old saint, hailed from a
far less likely place than even the City of Destruction.  For he
came, this rare old soul, of all places in the world, from the Town
of Stupidity.  So he tells us himself.  And, partly to explain to
us the humiliating name of his native town, and partly to exhibit
himself as a wonder to many, the frank old gentleman goes on to
tell us that his birthplace actually lies four degrees further away
from the sun than does the far-enough away City of Destruction
itself.  So that you see this grey-haired saint is all that he
always said he was--a living witness to the fact that his Lord is
able to save to the uttermost, and to gather in His Father's elect
from the utmost corner of the land.  Men are mountains of ice in my
country, said Old Honest.  I was one of the biggest of those
icebergs myself, he said.  No man was ever more cold and senseless
to divine things than I was, and still sometimes am.  It takes the
Sun of Righteousness all His might to melt the men of my country.
But that He can do it when He rises to do it, and when He puts out
His full strength to do it--Look at me! said the genial old soul.

We have to construct this pilgrim's birth and boyhood and youth
from his after-character and conversation; and we have no
difficulty at all in doing that.  For, if the child is the father
of the man, then the man must be the outcome of the child, and we
can have no hesitation in picturing to ourselves what kind of child
and boy and young man dear Old Honest must always have been.  He
never was a bright child, bright and beaming old man as he is.  He
was always slow and heavy at his lessons; indeed, I would not like
to repeat to you all the bad names that his schoolmasters sometimes
in their impatience called the stupid child.  Only, this was to be
said of him, that dulness of uptake and disappointment of his
teachers were the worst things about this poor boy; he was not so
ill-behaved as many were who were made more of.  When his wits
began to waken up after he had come some length he had no little
leeway to make up in his learning; but that was the chief drawback
to Old Honest's pilgrimage.  For one thing, no young man had a
cleaner record behind him than our Honest had; his youthful
garments were as unspotted as ever any pilgrim's garments were.
Even as a young man he had had the good sense to keep company with
one Good-conscience; and that friend of his youth kept true to Old
Honest all his days, and even lent him his hand and helped him over
the river at last.  In his own manly, hearty, blunt, breezy,
cheery, and genial way Old Honest is a pilgrim we could ill have
spared.  Old Honest has a warm place all for himself in every good
and honest heart.

"Now, a little before the pilgrims stood an oak, and under it when
they came up to it they found an old pilgrim fast asleep; they knew
that he was a pilgrim by his clothes and his staff and his girdle.
So the guide, Mr. Greatheart, awaked him, and the old gentleman, as
he lifted up his eyes, cried out:  What's the matter?  Who are you?
And what is your business here?  Come, man, said the guide, be not
so hot; here is none but friends!  Yet the old man gets up and
stands upon his guard, and will know of them what they are."  That
weather-beaten oak-tree under which we first meet with Old Honest
is an excellent emblem of the man.  When he sat down to rest his
old bones that day he did not look out for a bank of soft moss or
for a bed of fragrant roses; that knotted oak-tree alone had power
to draw down under its sturdy trunk this heart of human oak.  It
was a sight to see those thin grey haffets making a soft pillow of
that jutting knee of gnarled and knotty oak, and with his well-worn
quarterstaff held close in a hand all wrinkled skin and scraggy
bone.  And from that day till he waved his quarterstaff when half
over the river and shouted, Grace reigns! there is no pilgrim of
them all that affords us half the good humour, sagacity, continual
entertainment, and brave encouragement we enjoy through this same
old Christian gentleman.

1.  Now, let us try to learn two or three lessons to-night from Old
Honest, his history, his character, and his conversation.  And, to
begin with, let all those attend to Old Honest who are slow in the
uptake in the things of religion.  O fools and slow of heart!
exclaimed our Lord at the two travellers to Emmaus.  And this was
Old Honest to the letter when he first entered on the pilgrimage
life; he was slow as sloth itself in the things of the soul.  I
have often wondered, said Greatheart, that any should come from
your place; for your town is worse than is the City of Destruction
itself.  Yes, answered Honest, we lie more off from the sun, and so
are more cold and senseless.  And his biographer here annotates on
the margin this reflection:  "Stupefied ones are worse than merely
carnal."  So they are; though it takes some insight to see that,
and some courage to carry that through.  Now, to be downright
stupid in a man's natural intellects is sad enough, but to be
stupid in the intellects of the soul and of the spirit is far more
sad.  You will often see this if you have any eyes in your head,
and are not one of the stupid people yourself.  You will see very
clever people in the intellects of the head who are yet as stupid
as the beasts in the stall in the far nobler intellects of the
heart.  You will meet every day with men and women who have
received the best college education this city can give them, who
are yet stark stupid in everything that belongs to true religion.
They are quick to find out the inefficiency of a university chair,
or a schoolmaster's desk, but they know no more of what a New
Testament pulpit has been set up for than the stupidest sot in the
city.  The Divine Nature, human nature, sin, grace, redemption,
salvation, holiness, heart-corruption, spiritual life, prayer,
communion with God, a conversation and a treasure in heaven,--to
all these noblest of studies and divinest of exercises they are as
a beast before God.  When you come upon a man who is a sot in his
senses and in his understanding, you expect him to be the same in
his spiritual life.  But to meet with an expert in science, a
classical scholar, an author or a critic in letters, a leader in
political or ecclesiastical or municipal life, and yet to discover
that he is as stupid as any sot in the things of his own soul, is
one of the saddest and most disheartening sights you can see.  Much
sadder and much more disheartening than to see stairs and streets
of people who can neither read nor write.  And yet our city is full
of such stupid people.  You will find as utter spiritual stupidity
among the rich and the lettered and the refined of this city as you
will find among the ignorant and the vicious and the criminal
classes.  Is stupidity a sin? asks Thomas in his Forty-Sixth
Question.  And the great schoolman answers himself, "Stupidity may
come of natural incapacity, in which case it is not a sin.  But it
may come, on the other hand, of a man immersing his soul in the
things of this world so as to shut out all the things of God and of
the world to come, in which case stupidity is a deadly sin."  Now,
from all that, you must already see what you are to do in order to
escape from your inborn and superinduced stupidity.  You are, like
Old Honest, to open your gross, cold, senseless heart to the Sun of
Righteousness, and you are to take care every day to walk abroad
under His beams.  You are to emigrate south for your life, as our
well-to-do invalids do, to where the sun shines in his strength all
the day.  You are to choose such a minister, buy and read such a
literature, cultivate such an acquaintanceship, and follow out such
a new life of habits and practices as shall bring you into the full
sunshine, till your heart of ice is melted, and your stupefied soul
is filled with spiritual sensibility.  For, were a man a mountain
of ice," said Old Honest, "yet if the Sun of Righteousness will
arise upon him his frozen heart shall feel a thaw; and thus hath it
been with me."  Your poets and your philosophers have no resource
against the stupidity that opposes them.  "Even the gods," they
complain, "fight unvictorious against stupidity."  But your divines
and your preachers have hope beside the dullest and the stupidest
and even the most imbruted.  They point themselves and their
slowest and dullest-witted hearers to Old Honest, this rare old
saint; and they set up their pulpit with hope and boldness on the
very causeway of the town of Stupidity itself.

2.  In the second place,--on this fine old pilgrim's birth and
boyhood and youth.  The apostle says that there is no real
difference between one of us and another; and what he says on that
subject must be true.  No; there is really no difference compared
with the Celestial City whether a pilgrim is born in Stupidity, in
Destruction, in Vanity, or in Darkland.  At the same time, nature,
as well as grace, is of God, and He maketh, when it pleaseth Him,
one man to differ in some most important respects from another.
You see such differences every day.  Some children are naturally,
and from their very infancy, false and cruel, mean and greedy;
while their brothers and sisters are open and frank and generous.
One son in a house is born a vulgar snob, and one daughter a
shallow-hearted and shameless little flirt; while another brother
is a born gentleman, and another sister a born saint.  Some
children are tender-hearted, easily melted, and easily moulded;
while others in the same family are hard as stone and cold as ice.
Sometimes a noble and a truly Christian father will have all his
days to weep and pray over a son who is his shame; and then, in the
next generation, a grandson will be born to him who will more than
recover the lost image of his father's father.  And so is it
sometimes with father Adam's family.  Here and there, in Darkland,
in Destruction, and in Stupidity, a child will be born with a
surprising likeness to the first Adam in his first estate.  That
happy child at his best is but the relics and ruins of his first
father; at the same time, in him the relics are more abundant and
the ruins more easy to trace out.  And little Honest was such a
well-born child.  For, Stupidity and all, there was a real inborn
and inbred integrity, uprightness, straightforwardness, and
nobleness about this little and not over-clever man-child.  And, on
the principle of "to him that hath shall be given," there was
something like a special providence that hedged this boy about from
the beginning.  "I girded thee though thou hast not known Me" was
never out of Old Honest's mouth as often as he remembered the days
of his own youth and heard other pilgrims mourning over theirs.  "I
have surnamed thee though thou hast not known Me," he would say to
himself in his sleep.  Slow-witted as he was, no one had been able
to cheat young Honest out of his youthful integrity.  He had not
been led, and he had led no one else, into the paths of the
destroyer.  He could say about himself all that John Bunyan so
boldly and so bluntly said about himself when his enemies charged
him with youthful immorality.  He left the town in nobody's debt.
He left the print of his heels on no man or woman or child when he
took his staff in his hand to be a pilgrim.  The upward walk of too
many pilgrims is less a walk than an escape and a flight.  The
avenger of men's blood and women's honour has hunted many men deep
into heaven's innermost gate.  But Old Honest took his time.  He
walked, if ever pilgrim walked, all the way with an easy mind.  He
lay down to sleep under the oaks on the wayside, and smiled like a
child in his sleep.  And, when he was suddenly awaked, instead of
crying out for mercy and starting to his heels, he grasped his
staff and demanded even of an armed man what business he had to
break in on an honest pilgrim's mid-day repose!  The King of the
Celestial City had a few names even in Stupidity which had not
defiled their garments, and Old Honest was one of them.  And all
his days his strength was as the strength of ten, because his heart
was pure.

3.  At the same time, honesty is not holiness; and no one knew that
better than did this honest old saint.  When any one spoke to Old
Honest about his blameless youth, the look in his eye made them
keep at arm's-length as he growled out that without holiness no man
shall see God!  Writing from Aberdeen to John Bell of Hentoun,
Samuel Rutherford says:  "I beseech you, in the Lord Jesus, to mind
your country above; and now, when old age is come upon you, advise
with Christ before you put your foot into the last ship and turn
your back on this life.  Many are beguiled with this that they are
free of scandalous sins.  But common honesty will not take men to
heaven.  Alas! that men should think that ever they met with Christ
who had never a sick night or a sore heart for sin.  I have known a
man turn a key in a door and lock it by."  "I can," says John Owen,
"and I do, commend moral virtues and honesty as much as any man
ought to do, and I am sure there is no grace where they are not.
Yet to make anything to be our holiness that is not derived from
Jesus Christ,--I know not what I do more abhor."  "Are morally
honest and sober men qualified for the Lord's Supper?" asks John
Flavel.  "No; civility and morality do not make a man a worthy
communicant.  They are not the wedding garment; but regenerating
grace and faith in the smallest measure are."  "My outside may be
honest," said this honest old pilgrim, "while all the time my heart
is most unholy.  My life is open to all men, but I must hide my
heart with Christ in God."

4.  And then this racy-hearted old bachelor was as full of delight
in children, and in children's parties, with all their sweetmeats
and nuts and games and riddles,--quite as much so--as if he had
been their very grandfather himself.  Nay, this rosy-hearted old
rogue was as inveterate a matchmaker as if he had been a mother of
the world with a houseful of daughters on her hands and with the
sons of the nobility dangling around.  It would make you wish you
could kiss the two dear old souls, Gaius the innkeeper and Old
Honest his guest, if you would only read how they laid their grey
heads together to help forward the love-making of Matthew and
Mercy.  Yes, it would be a great pity, said Old Honest,--thinking
with a sigh of his own childless old age,--it would be a great pity
if this excellent family of our sainted brother should fail for
want of children, and die out like mine.  And the two old plotters
went together to the mother of the bridegroom, and told her with an
aspect of authority that she must put no obstacle in her son's way,
but take Mercy as soon as convenient into a closer relation to
herself.  And Gaius said that he for his part would give the
marriage supper.  And I shall make no will, said Honest, but hand
all I have over to Matthew my son.  This is the way, said Old
Honest; and he skipped and smiled and kissed the cheek of the aged
mother and said, Then thy two children shall preserve thee and thy
husband a posterity in the earth!  Then he turned to the boys and
he said, Matthew, be thou like Matthew the publican, not in vice,
but in virtue.  Samuel, he said, be thou like Samuel the prophet, a
man of faith and of prayer.  Joseph, said he, be thou like Joseph
in Potiphar's house, chaste, and one that flees from temptation.
And James, be thou like James the Just, and like James the brother
of our Lord.  Mercy, he said, is thy name, and by mercy shalt thou
be sustained and carried through all thy difficulties that shall
assault thee in the way, till thou shalt come thither where thou
shalt look the Fountain of Mercy in the face with comfort.  And all
this while the guide, Mr. Greatheart, was very much pleased, and
smiled upon the nimble old gentleman.

5.  "Then it came to pass a while after that there was a post in
the town that inquired for Mr. Honest.  So he came to his house
where he was, and delivered to his hands these lines, Thou art
commanded to be ready against this day seven night, to present
thyself before thy Lord at His Father's house.  And for a token
that my message is true, all thy daughters of music shall be
brought low.  Then Mr. Honest called for his friends and said unto
them, I die, but shall make no will.  As for my honesty, it shall
go with me:  let him that comes after me be told of this.  When the
day that he was to be gone was come he addressed himself to go over
the river.  Now, the river at that time overflowed the banks at
some places.  But Mr. Honest in his lifetime had spoken to one
Good-conscience to meet him there, the which he also did, and lent
him his hand, and so helped him over.  The last words of Mr. Honest
were, Grace reigns!  So he left the world."  Look at that picture
and now look at this:  "They then addressed themselves to the
water, and, entering, Christian began to sink, and crying out to
his good friend Hopeful, he said, I sink in deep waves, the billows
go over my head, all His waters go over me.  Then said the other,
Be of good cheer, my brother, I feel the bottom, and it is good.
Then said Christian, Ah, my friend, the sorrows of death have
compassed me about; I shall not see the land that flows with milk
and honey.  And with that a great horror and darkness fell upon
Christian, so that he could not see before him; and all the words
that he spoke still tended to discover that he had horror of mind
lest he should die in that river and never obtain entrance in at
the gate.  Here also, as they that stood by perceived, he was much
in the troublesome thoughts of the sins that he had committed, both
since and before he began to be a pilgrim.  'Twas also observed
that he was troubled with apparitions of hobgoblins and evil
spirits.  Hopeful, therefore, had much ado to keep his brother's
head above water.  Yea, sometimes he would be quite gone down, and
then ere a while he would rise up again half dead."  My brethren,
all my brethren, be not deceived; God is not mocked; for whatsoever
a man soweth that shall he also reap.  Whom the Lord loveth He
chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth.  Thou, O
God, wast a God that forgavest them, but Thou tookest vengeance on
their inventions.



MR. FEARING



"Happy is the man that feareth alway."--Solomon

For humour, for pathos, for tenderness, for acute and sympathetic
insight at once into nature and grace, for absolutely artless
literary skill, and for the sweetest, most musical, and most
exquisite English, show me another passage in our whole literature
to compare with John Bunyan's portrait of Mr. Fearing.  You cannot
do it.  I defy you to do it.  Spenser, who, like John Bunyan, wrote
an elaborate allegory, says:  It is not in me.  Take all Mr.
Fearing's features together, and even Shakespeare himself has no
such heart-touching and heart-comforting character.  Addison may
have some of the humour and Lamb some of the tenderness; but, then,
they have not the religion.  Scott has the insight into nature, but
he has no eye at all for grace; while Thackeray, who, in some
respects, comes nearest to John Bunyan of them all, would be the
foremost to confess that he is not worthy to touch the shoe-latchet
of the Bedford tinker.  As Dr. Duncan said in his class one day
when telling us to read Augustine's Autobiography and
Halyburton's:- "But," he said, "be prepared for this, that the
tinker beats them all!"  "Methinks," says Browning, "in this God
speaks, no tinker hath such powers."

Now, as they walked along together, the guide asked the old
gentleman if he knew one Mr. Fearing that came on pilgrimage out of
his parts.  "Yes," said Mr. Honest, "very well.  He was a man that
had the root of the matter in him; but he was one of the most
troublesome pilgrims that ever I met with in all my days."  "I
perceive you knew him," said the guide, "for you have given a very
right character of him."  "Knew him!" exclaimed Honest, "I was a
great companion of his; I was with him most an end.  When he first
began to think of what would come upon us hereafter, I was with
him."  "And I was his guide," said Greatheart, "from my Master's
house to the gates of the Celestial City."  "Then," said Mr.
Honest, "it seems he was well at last."  "Yes, yes," answered the
guide, "I never had any doubt about him; he was a man of a choice
spirit, only he was always kept very low, and that made his life so
burdensome to himself and so troublesome to others.  He was, above
many, tender of sin; he was so afraid of doing injuries to others
that he would often deny himself of that which was lawful because
he would not offend."  "But what," asked Honest, "should be the
reason that such a good man should be all his days so much in the
dark?"  "There are two sorts of reasons for it," said the guide;
"one is, the wise God will have it so:  some must pipe and some
must weep.  Now, Mr. Fearing was one that played upon this base.
He and his fellows sound the sackbut, whose notes are more doleful
than the notes of other music are.  Though, indeed, some say that
the base is the ground of music.  And, for my part, I care not at
all for that profession that begins not with heaviness of mind.
The first string that the musician usually touches is the base when
he intends to put all in tune.  God also plays upon this string
first when He sets the soul in tune for Himself.  Only, here was
the imperfection of Mr. Fearing, that he could play upon no other
music but this till toward his latter end."

1.  Take Mr. Fearing, then, to begin with, at the Slough of
Despond.  Christian and Pliable, they being heedless, did both fall
into that bog.  But Mr. Fearing, whatever faults you may think he
had--and faults, too, that you think you could mend in him--at any
rate, he was never heedless.  Everybody has his fault to find with
poor Mr. Fearing.  Everybody blames poor Mr. Fearing.  Everybody
can improve upon poor Mr. Fearing.  But I will say again for Mr.
Fearing that he was never heedless.  Had Peter been on the road at
that period he would have stood up for Mr. Fearing, and would have
taken his judges and would have said to them, with some scorn--Go
to, and pass the time of your sojourning here with something of the
same silence and the same fear!  Christian's excuse for falling
into the Slough was that fear so followed him that he fled the next
way, and so fell in.  But Mr. Fearing had no such fear behind him
in his city as Christian had in his.  All Mr. Fearing's fears were
within himself.  If you can take up the distinction between actual
and indwelling sin, between guilt and corruption, you have already
in that the whole key to Mr. Fearing.  He was blamed and counselled
and corrected and pitied and patronised by every morning-cloud and
early-dew neophyte, while all the time he lived far down from the
strife of tongues where the root of the matter strikes its deep
roots still deeper every day.  "It took him a whole month," tells
Greatheart, "to face the Slough.  But he would not go back neither.
Till, one sunshiny morning, nobody ever knew how, he ventured, and
so got over.  But the fact of the matter is," said the shrewd-
headed guide, "Mr. Fearing had, I think, a slough of despond in his
own mind; and a slough that he carried everywhere with him."  Yes,
that was it.  Greatheart in that has hit the nail on the head.
With one happy stroke he has given us the whole secret of poor Mr.
Fearing's life-long trouble.  Just so; it was the slough in himself
that so kept poor Mr. Fearing back.  This poor pilgrim, who had so
little to fear in his past life, had yet so much scum and filth,
spume and mire in his present heart, that how to get on the other
side of that cost him not a month's roaring only, but all the
months and all the years till he went over the River not much above
wet-shod.  And, till then, not twenty million cart-loads of
wholesome instructions, nor any number of good and substantial
steps, would lift poor Mr. Fearing over the ditch that ran so deep
and so foul continually within himself.  "Yes, he had, I think, a
slough of despond in his mind, a slough that he carried everywhere
with him, or else he never could have been the man he was."  I, for
one, thank the great-hearted guide for that fine sentence.

2.  It was a sight to see poor Mr. Fearing at the wicket gate.
"Knock, and it shall be opened unto you."  He read the inscription
over the gate a thousand times, but every time he read it his
slough-filled heart said to him, Yes, but that is not for such as
you.  Pilgrim after pilgrim came up the way, read the writing,
knocked, and was taken in; but still Mr. Fearing stood back,
shaking and shrinking.  At last he ventured to take hold of the
hammer that hung on the gate and gave with it a small rap such as a
mouse might make.  But small as the sound was, the Gatekeeper had
had his eye on his man all the time out of his watch-window; and
before Mr. Fearing had time to turn and run, Goodwill had him by
the collar.  But that sudden assault only made Mr. Fearing sink to
the earth, faint and half-dead.  "Peace be to thee, O trembling
man!" said Goodwill.  "Come in, and welcome!"  When he did venture
in, Mr. Fearing's face was as white as a sheet.  You would have
said that an officer had caught a thief if you had seen poor Mr.
Fearing hiding his face, and the Gatekeeper hauling him in.  And
not all the entertainment for which the Gate was famous, nor all
the encouragement that Goodwill was able to speak, could make
terrified Mr. Fearing for once to smile.  A more hard-to-entertain
pilgrim, all the Gate declared when he had gone, they had never had
in their hospitable house.

3.  "So he came," said the guide, "till he came to our House; but
as he behaved himself at the Gate, so he did at my Master the
Interpreter's door.  He lay about in the cold a good while before
he would adventure to call.  Yet he would not go back neither.  And
the nights were cold and long then.  At last I think I looked out
of the window, and perceiving a man to be up and down about the
door, I went out to him, and asked what he was; but, poor man, the
water stood in his eyes.  So I perceived what he wanted.  I went
in, therefore, and told it in the house, and we showed the thing to
our Lord.  So He sent me out again to entreat him to come in, but I
dare say I had hard work to do it.  At last he came in, and I will
say that for my Lord, He carried it wonderful lovingly to Mr.
Fearing.  There were but a few good bits at the table, but some of
it was laid upon his trencher."  In this way the guide tells us his
first introduction to Mr. Fearing, and how Mr. Fearing behaved
himself in the Interpreter's House.  For instance, in the parlour
full of dust, when the Interpreter said that the dust is original
sin and inward corruption, you would have thought that the
Interpreter had stabbed poor Mr. Fearing to the heart, so did he
break out and weep.  Before the damsel could come with the pitcher,
Mr. Fearing's eyes alone would have laid the dust, they were such a
fountain of tears.  When he saw Passion and Patience, each one in
his chair--"I am that child in rags," said Mr. Fearing; "I have
already received all my good things!"  Also, at the wall where the
fire burned because oil was poured into it from the other side, he
perversely turned that fire also against himself.  And when they
came to the man in the iron cage, you could not have told whether
the miserable man inside the cage or the miserable man outside of
it sighed the loudest.  And so on, through all the significant
rooms.  The spider-room overwhelmed him altogether, till his sobs
and the beating of his breast were heard all over the house.  The
robin also when gobbling up spiders he made an emblem of himself,
and the tree that was rotten at the heart,--till the Interpreter's
patience with this so perverse pilgrim was fairly worn out.  So the
Interpreter shut up his significant rooms, and had this so
troublesome pilgrim into his own chamber, and there carried it so
tenderly to Mr. Fearing that at last he did seem to have taken some
little heart of grace.  "And then we," said Greatheart, "set
forward, and I went before him; but the man was of few words, only
he would often sigh aloud."

4.  "Dumpish at the House Beautiful" is his biographer's not very
respectful comment on the margin of the history.  There were too
many merry-hearted damsels running up and down that house for Mr.
Fearing.  He could not lift his eyes but one of those too-tripping
maidens was looking at him.  He could not stir a foot but he
suddenly ran against a talking and laughing bevy of them.  There
was one thing he loved above everything, and that was to overhear
the talk that went on at that season in that house about the City
above, and about the King of that City, and about His wonderful
ways with pilgrims, and the entertainment they all got who entered
that City.  But to get a word out of Mr. Fearing upon any of these
subjects,--all the king's horses could not have dragged it out of
him.  Only, the screen was always seen to move during such
conversations, till it soon came to be known to all the house who
was behind the screen.  And the talkers only talked a little louder
as the screen moved, and took up, with a smile to one another,
another and a yet more comforting topic.

The Rarity Rooms also were more to Mr. Fearing than his necessary
food.  He would be up in the morning and waiting at the doors of
those rooms before the keepers had come with their keys.  And they
had to tell him that the candles were to be put out at night before
he would go away.  He was always reading, as if he had never read
it before, the pedigree of the Lord of the Hill.  Moses' rod,
Shamgar's goad, David's sling and stone, and what not--he laughed
and danced and sang like a child around these ancient tables.  The
armoury-room also held him, where were the swords, and shields, and
helmets, and breast-plates, and shoes that would not wear out.  You
would have thought you had your man all right as long as you had
him alone among these old relics; but, let supper be ready, and the
house gathered, and Mr. Fearing was as dumpish as ever.  Eat he
would not, drink he would not, nor would he sit at the same table
with those who ate and drank with such gladness.  I remembered Mr.
Fearing at the House Beautiful when I was present at a communion
season some time back in Ross-shire.  The church was half full of
Mr. Fearing's close kindred that communion morning.  For, all that
the minister himself could do, and all that the assisting minister
could do--no! to the table those self-examined, self-condemned,
fear-filled souls would not come.  The two ministers, like Mr.
Greatheart's Master, carried it wonderful lovingly with those poor
saints that day; but those who are in deed, and not in name only,
passing the time of their sojourning here in fear--they cannot all
at once be lifted above all their fears, even by the ablest action
sermons, or by the most wise and tender table-addresses.  And,
truth to tell, though you will rebuke me all the way home to-night
for saying it, my heart sat somewhat nearer to those old people who
were perhaps a little too dumpish in their repentance and their
faith and their hope that morning, than it did to those who took to
the table with a light heart.  I know all your flippant cant about
gospel liberty and against Highland introspection, as you call it--
as well as all your habitual neglect of a close and deep self-
examination, as Paul called it; but I tell you all to-night that it
would be the salvation of your soul if you too worked your way up
to every returning Lord's table with much more fear and much more
trembling.  Let a man examine himself, Saxon as well as Celt, in
Edinburgh as well as in Ross-shire, and so let him eat of that
flesh and drink of that blood.  "These pills," said Mr. Skill, "are
to be taken three at a time fasting in half a quarter of a pint of
the tears of repentance; these pills are good to prevent diseases,
as well as to cure when one is sick.  Yea, I dare say it, and stand
to it, that if a man will but use this physic as he should, it will
make him live for ever.  But thou must give these pills no other
way but as I have prescribed; for, if you do, they will do no
good."  "Then he and I set forward," said the guide, "and I went
before; but my man was of but few words, only he would often sigh
aloud."

5.  As to the Hill Difficulty, that was no stick at all to Mr.
Fearing; and as for the lions, he pulled their whiskers and snapped
his fingers in their dumfoundered faces.  For you must know that
Mr. Fearing's trouble was not about such things as these at all;
his only fear was about his acceptance at last.  He beat Mr.
Greatheart himself at getting down into the Valley of Humiliation,
till the guide was fain to confess that he went down as well as he
ever saw man go down in all his life.  This pilgrim cared not how
mean he was, so he might be but happy at last.  That is the reason
why so many of God's best saints take so kindly and so quietly to
things that drive other men mad.  You wonder sometimes when you see
an innocent man sit down quietly under accusations and insults and
injuries that you spend all the rest of your life resenting and
repaying.  And that is the reason also that so many of God's best
saints in other ages and other communions used to pursue
evangelical humility and ascetic poverty and seclusion till they
obliterated themselves out of all human remembrance, and buried
themselves in retreats of silence and of prayer.  Yes, you are
quite right.  A garment of sackcloth may cover an unsanctified
heart; and the fathers of the desert did not all escape the depths
of Satan and the plague of their own heart.  Quite true.  A
contrite heart may be carried about an applauding city in a coach
and six; and a crucified heart may be clothed in purple and fine
linen, and may fare sumptuously every day.  A saint of God will
sometimes sit on a throne with a more weaned mind than that with
which Elijah or the Baptist will macerate themselves in the
wilderness.  Every man who is really set on heaven must find his
own way thither; and he who is really intent on his own way thither
will neither have the time nor the heart to throw stones at his
brother who thinks he has discovered his own best way.  All the
pilgrims who got to the City at last did not get down Difficulty
and through Humiliation so well as Mr. Fearing did; nor was it
absolutely necessary that they should.  It was not to lay down an
iron-fast rule for others, but it was only to amuse the way with
his account of Mr. Fearing, that the guide went on to say:  "Yes, I
think there was a kind of sympathy betwixt that valley and my man.
For I never saw him better in all his pilgrimage than when he was
in that valley.  For here he would lie down, embrace the ground,
and kiss the very flowers that grew in this valley.  He would now
be up every morning by break of day, tracing and walking to and fro
in that valley."

6.  Now, do you think you could guess how Mr. Fearing conducted
himself in Vanity Fair?  Your guess is important to us and to you
to-night; for it will show whether or no John Bunyan and Mr.
Greatheart have spent their strength for nought and in vain on you.
It will show whether or no you have got inside of Mr. Fearing with
all that has been said; and thus, inside of yourself.  Guess, then.
How did Mr. Fearing do in Vanity Fair, do you think?  To give you a
clue, recollect that he was the timidest of souls.  And remember
how you have often been afraid to look at things in a shop window
lest the shopkeeper should come out and hold you to the thing you
were looking at.  Remember also that you are the lifelong owners of
some things just because they were thrown at your head.  Remember
how you sauntered into a sale on one occasion, and, out of sheer
idleness and pure fun, made a bid, and to your consternation the
encumbrance was knocked down to your name; and it fills up your
house to-day till you would give ten times its value to some one to
take it away for ever out of your sight.  Well, what was it that
those who were so shamelessly and so pesteringly cadging about
places, and titles, and preferments, and wives, and gold, and
silver, and such like--what was it they prevailed on this poor
stupid countryman to cheapen and buy?  Do you guess, or do you give
it up?  Well, Greatheart himself was again and again almost taken
in; and would have been had not Mr. Fearing been beside him.  But
Mr. Fearing looked at all the jugglers, and cheats, and knaves, and
apes, and fools as if he would have bitten a firebrand.  "I thought
he would have fought with all the men of the fair; I feared there
we should have both been knock'd o' th' head, so hot was he against
their fooleries."  And then--for Greatheart was a bit of a
philosopher, and liked to entertain and while the away with tracing
things up to their causes--"it was all," he said, "because Mr.
Fearing was so tender of sin.  He was above many tender of sin.  He
was so afraid, not for himself only, but of doing injury to others,
that he would deny himself the purchase and possession and
enjoyment even of that which was lawful, because he would not
offend."  "All this while," says Bunyan himself, in the eighty-
second paragraph of Grace Abounding, "as to the act of sinning I
was never more tender than now.  I durst not take a pin or a stick,
though but so big as a straw, for my conscience now was sore and
would smart at every touch.  I could not now tell how to speak my
words for fear I should misplace them."  "The highest flames," says
Jeremy Taylor in his Life of Christ, "are the most tremulous."

7.  "But when he was come at the river where was no bridge, there,
again, Mr. Fearing was in a heavy case.  Now, he said, he should be
drowned for ever, and so never see that Face with comfort that he
had come so many miles to behold.  And here also I took notice of
what was very remarkable; the water of that river was lower at this
time than ever I saw it in all my life, so he went over at last not
much above wet-shod."  Then said Christiana, "This relation of Mr.
Fearing has done me good.  I thought nobody had been like me, but I
see there was some semblance betwixt this good man and I, only we
differed in two things.  His troubles were so great that they broke
out, but mine I kept within.  His also lay so hard upon him that he
could not knock at the houses provided for entertainment, but my
trouble was always such that it made me knock the louder."  "If I
might also speak my heart," said Mercy, "I must say that something
of him has also dwelt in me.  For I have ever been more afraid of
the lake, and the loss of a place in Paradise, than I have been of
the loss of other things.  Oh! thought I, may I have the happiness
to have a habitation there:  'tis enough though I part with all the
world to win it."  Then said Matthew, "Fear was one thing that made
me think that I was far from having that within me that accompanies
salvation; but if it was so with such a good man as he, why may it
not also go well with me?"  "No fears, no grace," said James.
"Though there is not always grace where there is fear of hell; yet,
to be sure, there is no grace where there is no fear of God."
"Well said, James," said Greatheart; "thou hast hit the mark, for
the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom; and, to be sure, they
that want the beginning have neither middle nor end."  But we shall
here conclude our discourse of Mr. Fearing after we have sent after
him this farewell:-


"It is because
Then thou didst fear, that now thou dost not fear.
Thou hast forestalled the agony, and so
For thee the bitterness of death is past.
Also, because already in thy soul
The judgment is begun.  That day of doom,
One and the same for this collected world -
That solemn consummation for all flesh,
Is, in the case of each, anticipate
Upon his death; and, as the last great day
In the particular judgment is rehearsed,
So now, too, ere thou comest to the Throne,
A presage falls upon thee, as a ray
Straight from the Judge, expressive of thy lot.
That calm and joy uprising in thy soul
Is first-fruit to thy recompense,
And heaven begun."



FEEBLE-MIND



"Comfort the feeble-minded."--Paul.

Feeble-mind shall first tell you his own story in his own words,
and then I shall perhaps venture a few observations upon his
history and his character.

"I am but a sickly man, as you see," said Feeble-mind to
Greatheart, "and because Death did usually knock once a day at my
door, I thought I should never be well at home.  So I betook myself
to a pilgrim's life, and have travelled hither from the town of
Uncertain, where I and my father were born.  I am a man of no
strength at all of body, nor yet of mind; but would, if I could,
though I can but crawl, spend my life in the pilgrim's way.  When I
came at the gate that is at the head of the way, the Lord of that
place did entertain me freely.  Neither objected he against my
weakly looks, nor against my feeble mind; but gave me such things
as were necessary for my journey, and bade me hope to the end.
When I came to the house of the Interpreter I received much
kindness there; and, because the Hill Difficulty was judged too
hard for me, I was carried up that hill by one of his servants.
Indeed I have found much relief from pilgrims, though none were
willing to go so softly as I am forced to do.  Yet, still, as they
came on, they bid me be of good cheer, and said that it was the
will of their Lord that comfort should be given to the feeble-
minded, and so went on their own pace.  I look for brunts by the
way; but this I have resolved on, to wit, to run when I can, to go
when I cannot run, and to creep when I cannot go.  As to the main,
I thank Him that loves me, I am fixed.  My way is before me, my
mind is beyond the river that has no bridge, though I am, as you
see, but of a feeble mind."

Then said old Mr. Honest, "Have you not some time ago been
acquainted with one Mr. Fearing, a pilgrim?"  "Acquainted with him!
yes.  He came from the town of Stupidity, which lies four degrees
to the northward of the City of Destruction, and as many off where
I was born.  Yet we were well acquainted; for, indeed, he was mine
uncle, my father's brother.  He and I have been much of a temper;
he was a little shorter than I, but yet we were much of a
complexion."  "I perceive that you know him," said Mr. Honest, "and
I am apt to believe also that you were related one to another; for
you have his whitely look, a cast like his with your eye, and your
speech is much alike."

"Alas!" Feeble-mind went on, "I want a suitable companion.  You are
all lusty and strong, but I, as you see, am weak.  I choose
therefore rather to come behind, lest, by reason of my many
infirmities, I should be both a burden to myself and to you.  I am,
as I said, a man of a weak and feeble mind, and shall be offended
and made weak at that which others can bear.  I shall like no
laughing; I shall like no gay attire; I shall like no unprofitable
questions.  Nay, I am so weak a man as to be offended with what
others have a liberty to do.  I do not yet know all the truth.  I
am a very ignorant Christian man.  Sometimes, if I hear some
rejoice in the Lord, it troubles me because I cannot do so too.  It
is with me as with a weak man among the strong, or as with a sickly
man among the healthy, or as a lamp despised."  "But, brother,"
said Greatheart, "I have it in commission to comfort the feeble-
minded and to support the weak."  Thus therefore, they went on--Mr.
Greatheart and Mr. Honest went before; Christiana and her children
went next; and Mr. Feeble-mind and Mr. Ready-to-halt came behind
with his crutches.

1.  In the first place, a single word as to Feeble-mind's family
tree.

Thackeray says that The Peerage is the Family Bible of every true-
born Englishman.  Every genuine Englishman, he tells us, teaches
that sacred book diligently to his children.  He talks out of it to
them when he sits in the house and when he walks by the way.  He
binds it upon his children's hands, and it is as a frontlet between
their eyes.  He writes its names upon the door-posts of his house,
and makes pictures out of it upon his gates.  Now, John Bunyan was
a born Englishman in his liking for a family tree.  He had no such
tree himself--scarcely so much as a bramble bush; but, all the
same, let the tinker take his pen in hand, and the pedigrees and
genealogies of all his pilgrims are sure to be set forth as much as
if they were to form the certificates that those pilgrims were to
hand in at the gate.

Feeble-mind, then, was of an old, a well-rooted and a wide-spread
race.  The county of Indecision was full of that ancient stock.
They had intermarried in-and-in also till their small stature,
their whitely look, the droop of their eye, and their weak leaky
speech all made them to be easily recognised wherever they went.
It was Feeble-mind's salvation that Death had knocked at his door
every day from his youth up.  He was feeble in body as well as in
mind; only the feebleness of his body had put a certain strength
into his mind; the only strength he ever showed, indeed, was the
strength that had its roots in a weak constitution at which
sickness and death struck their dissolving blows every day.  To
escape death, both the first and the second death, any man with a
particle of strength left would run with all his might; and Feeble-
mind had strength enough somewhere among his weak joints to make
him say, "But this I have resolved on, to wit, to run when I can,
to go when I cannot run, and to creep when I cannot go.  As to the
main, I am fixed!"

2.  At the Wicket Gate pilgrim Feeble-mind met with nothing but the
kindest and the most condescending entertainment.  It was the
gatekeepers way to become all things to all men.  The gatekeeper's
nature was all in his name; for he was all Goodwill together.  No
kind of pilgrim ever came wrong to Goodwill.  He never found fault
with any.  Only let them knock and come in and he will see to all
the rest.  The way is full of all the gatekeeper's kind words and
still kinder actions.  Every several pilgrim has his wager with all
the rest that no one ever got such kindness at the gate as he got.
And even Feeble-mind gave the gatekeeper this praise--"The Lord of
the place," he said, "did entertain me freely.  Neither objected he
against my weakly looks nor against my feeble mind.  But he gave me
such things as were necessary for my journey, and bade me hope to
the end."  All things considered, that is perhaps the best praise
that Goodwill and his house ever earned.  For, to receive and to
secure Feeble-mind as a pilgrim--to make it impossible for Feeble-
mind to entertain a scruple or a suspicion that was not removed
beforehand--to make it impossible for Feeble-mind to find in all
the house and in all its grounds so much as a straw over which he
could stumble--that was extraordinary attention, kindness, and
condescension in Goodwill and all his good-willed house.  "Go on,
go on, dear Mr. Feeble mind," said Goodwill giving his hand to Mr.
Fearing's nephew, "go on:  keep your feeble mind open to the truth,
and still hope to the end!"

3.  "As to the Interpreter's House, I received much kindness
there."  That is all.  But in that short speech I think there must
he hid no little shame and remorse.  No words could possibly be a
severer condemnation of Feeble-mind than his own two or three so
irrelevant words about the Interpreter's house.  No doubt at all,
Feeble-mind received kindness there; but that is not the point.
That noble house was not built at such cost, and fitted up, and
kept open all the year round, and filled with fresh furniture from
year to year, merely that those who passed through its significant
rooms might report that they had received no rudeness at the hands
of the Interpreter.   "Come," said the Interpreter to Feeble-mind,
"and I will show thee what will be profitable to thee."  So he
commanded his man to light the candle and bid Feeble-mind follow
him.  But it was all to no use.  Feeble-mind had neither the taste
nor the capacity for the significant rooms.  Nay, as one after
another of those rich rooms was opened to him, Feeble-mind took a
positive dislike to them.  Nothing interested him; nothing
instructed him.  But many things stumbled and angered him.  The
parlour full of dust, and how the dust was raised and laid; Passion
and Patience; the man in the iron cage; the spider-room; the muck-
rake room; the robin with its red breast and its pretty note, and
yet with its coarse food; the tree, green outside but rotten at the
heart,--all the thanks the Interpreter took that day for all that
from Feeble-mind was in such speeches as these:  You make me lose
my head.  I do not know where I am.  I did not leave the town of
Uncertain to be confused and perplexed in my mind with sights and
sounds like these.  Let me out at the door I came in at, and I
shall go back to the gate.  Goodwill had none of these unhappy
rooms in his sweet house!"  Nothing could exceed the kindness of
the Interpreter himself; but his house was full of annoyances and
offences and obstructions to Mr. Feeble-mind.  He did not like the
Interpreter's house, and he got out of it as fast as he could, with
his mind as feeble as when he entered it; and, what was worse, with
his temper not a little ruffled.

And we see this very same intellectual laziness, this very same
downright dislike at divine truth, in our own people every day.
There are in every congregation people who take up their lodgings
at the gate and refuse to go one step farther on the way.  A visit
to the Interpreter's House always upsets them.  It turns their
empty head.  They do not know where they are.  They will not give
what mind they have to divine truth, all you can do to draw them on
to it, till they die as feeble-minded, as ignorant, and as
inexperienced as they were born.  They never read a religious book
that has any brain or heart in it.  The feeble Lives of feeble-
minded Christians, written by feeble-minded authors, and published
by feeble-minded publishers,--we all know the spoon-meat that
multitudes of our people go down to their second childhood upon.
Jonathan Edwards--a name they never hear at home, but one of the
most masculine and seraphic of interpreters--has a noble discourse
on The Importance and Advantage of a thorough Knowledge of Divine
Truth.  "Consider yourselves," he says, "as scholars or disciples
put into the school of Christ, and therefore be diligent to make
proficiency in Christian knowledge.  Content not yourselves with
this, that you have been taught your Catechism in your childhood,
and that you know as much of the principles of religion as is
necessary to salvation.  Let not your teachers have cause to
complain that while they spend and are spent to impart knowledge to
you, you take little pains to learn.  Be assiduous in reading the
Holy Scriptures.  And when you read, observe what you read.
Observe how things come in.  Compare one scripture with another.
Procure and diligently use other books which may help you to grow
in this knowledge.  There are many excellent books extant which
might greatly forward you in this knowledge.  There is a great
defect in many, that through a lothness to be at a little expense,
they provide themselves with no more helps of this nature."
Weighty, wise, and lamentably true words.

"Mundanus," says William Law, "is a man of excellent parts, and
clear apprehension.  He is well advanced in age, and has made a
great figure in business.  He has aimed at the greatest perfection
in everything.  The only thing which has not fallen under his
improvement, nor received any benefit from his judicious mind, is
his devotion; this is just in the same poor state it was when he
was six years of age, and the old man prays now in that little form
of words which his mother used to hear him repeat night and
morning.  This Mundanus that hardly ever saw the poorest utensil
without considering how it might be made or used to better
advantage, has gone on all his life long praying in the same manner
as when he was a child; without ever considering how much better or
oftener he might pray; without considering how improvable the
spirit of devotion is, how many helps a wise and reasonable man may
call to his assistance, and how necessary it is that our prayers
should be enlarged, varied, and suited to the particular state and
condition of our lives.  How poor and pitiable is the conduct of
this man of sense, who has so much judgment and understanding in
everything but that which is the whole wisdom of man!"  How true to
every syllable is that!  How simple-looking, and yet how manly, and
able, and noble!  We close our young men's session with Law and
Butler to-night, and I cannot believe that our session with those
two giants has left one feeble mind in the two classes; they were
all weeded out after the first fortnight of the session; though,
after all is done, there are still plenty left both among old and
young in the congregation.  Even Homer sometimes nods; and I cannot
but think that John Bunyan has made a slip in saying that Feeble-
mind enjoyed the Interpreter's House.  At any rate, I wish I could
say as much about all the feeble minds known to me.

4.  The Hill Difficulty, which might have helped to make a man of
Feeble-mind, saw a laughable, if it had not been such a lamentable,
spectacle.  For it saw this poor creature hanging as limp as wet
linen on the back of one of the Interpreter's sweating servants.
Your little boy will explain the parable to you.  Shall I do this?
or, shall I rather do that? asks Feeble-mind at every stop.  Would
it be right? or, would it be wrong?  Shall I read that book?  Shall
I go to that ball?  Shall I marry that man?  Tell me what to do.
Give me your hand.  Take me up upon your back, and carry me over
this difficult hill.  "I was carried up that," says poor Feeble-
mind, "by one of his servants."

5.  "The one calamity of Mr. Feeble-mind's history," says our
ablest commentator on Bunyan, "was the finest mercy of his
history."  That one calamity was his falling into Giant Slay-good's
hands, and his finest mercy was his rescue by Greatheart, and his
consequent companionship with his deliverer, with Mr. Honest, and
with Christiana and her party till they came to the river.  You
constantly see the same thing in the life of the Church and of the
Christian Family.  Some calamity throws a weak, ignorant, and
immoral creature into close contact with a minister or an elder or
a Christian visitor, who not only relieves him from his present
distress, but continues to keep his eye upon his new acquaintance,
introduces him to wise and good friends, invites him to his house,
gives him books to read, and keeps him under good influences, till,
of a weak, feeble, and sometimes vicious character, he is made a
Christian man, till he is able for himself to say, It was good for
me to be afflicted; the one calamity of my history has been my best
mercy!

6.  Feeble-mind, I am ashamed to have to admit, behaved himself in
a perfectly scandalous manner at the house of Gaius mine host.  He
went beyond all bounds during those eventful weeks.  Those weeks
were one long temptation to Feeble-mind--and he went down in a
pitiful way before his temptation.  Two marriages and two
honeymoons, with suppers and dances every night, made the old
hostelry like very Pandemonium itself to poor Feeble-mind.  He
would have had Matthew's and James's marriages conducted next door
to a funeral.  Because he would not eat flesh himself, he protested
against Gaius killing a sheep.  "Man," said old Honest, almost
laying his quarterstaff over Feeble-mind's shoulders--"Man, dost
thou think because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes
and ale?"  "I shall like no laughing," said Feeble-mind; "I shall
like no gay attire; I shall like no unprofitable questions."  I
think it took some self-conceit to refuse to sit at table beside
Christiana because of her gay attire.  And I hope Mercy did not
give up dressing well, even after she was married, to please that
weak-minded old churl.  And as to unprofitable questions--we are
all tempted to think that question unprofitable which our
incapacity or our ignorance keeps us silent upon at table.  We
think that topic both ill-timed and impertinent and unsafe to which
we are not invited to contribute anything.  "I am a very ignorant
man," he went on to say; and, if that was said in any humility,
Feeble-mind never said a truer word.  "It is with me as it is with
a weak man among the strong, or as with a sick man among the
healthy, or as a lamp despised in the thought of him that is at
ease."  All which only brought Greatheart out in his very best
colours.  "But, brother," said the guide, "I have it in commission
to comfort the feeble-minded, and to support the weak.  You must
needs go along with us; we will wait for you, we will lend you our
help, we will deny ourselves of some things, both opinionative and
practical, for your sake; we will not enter into doubtful
disputations before you; we will be made all things to you rather
than that you shall be left behind."

7.  The first thing that did Mr. Feeble-mind any real good was his
being made military guard over the women and the children while the
men went out to demolish Doubting Castle.  Quis custodiet? you will
smile and say when you hear that.  Who shall protect the protector?
you will say.  But wait a little.  Greatheart knew his business.
For not only did Feeble-mind rise to the occasion, when he was put
to it; but, more than that, he was the soul of good company at
supper-time that night.  "Jocund and merry" are the very words.
Yes; give your feeble and fault-finding folk something to do.  Send
them to teach a class.  Send them down into a mission district.
Lay a sense of responsibility upon them.  Leave them to deal with
this and that emergency themselves.  Cease carrying them on your
back, and lay weak and evil and self-willed people on their back.
Let them feel that they are of some real use.  As Matthew Arnold
says, Let the critic but try practice, and you will make a new man
of him.  As Greatheart made of Feeble-mind by making him mount
guard over the Celestial caravan while the fighting men were all up
at Doubting Castle.

8.  "Mark this," says Mr. Feeble-mind's biographer on the early
margin of his history, lest we should be tempted to forget the good
parts of this troublesome and provoking pilgrim--"Mark this."
This, namely, which Feeble-mind says to his guide.  "As to the
main, I thank Him that loves me, I am fixed.  My way is before me,
my mind is beyond the river that has no bridge, though I am, as you
see, but of a feeble mind."  And that leads us with returning
regard and love to turn to the end of his history, where we read:
"After this Mr. Feeble-mind had tidings brought him that the post
sounded his horn at his chamber door.  Then he came in and told
him, saying, I am come to tell thee that thy Master hath need of
thee, and that in very little time thou must behold His face in
brightness.  Then Mr. Feeble-mind called for his friends, and told
them what errand had been brought to him, and what token he had
received of the truth of the message.  As for my feeble mind he
said, that I shall leave behind me, for I shall have no need of
that in the place whither I go.  Nor is it worth bestowing upon the
poorest pilgrim.  Wherefore, when I am gone, I desire that you
would bury it in a dung-hill.  This done, and the day being come in
which he was about to depart, he entered the river as the rest.
His last words were, Hold out, faith and patience!  So he went over
to the other side.



GREAT-HEART



"--when thou shalt enlarge my heart."--David.

On Sabbath, the 12th December 1886, I heard the late Canon Liddon
preach a sermon in St. Paul's Cathedral, in which he classed Oliver
Cromwell with Alexander the Sixth and with Richard the Third.  I
had taken my estimate of the great Protector's character largely
from Carlyle's famous book, and you can judge with what feelings I
heard the canon's comparison.  And, besides, I had been wont to
think of the Protector as having entered largely into John Bunyan's
portrait of Greatheart, the pilgrim guide.  And the researches and
the judgments of Dr. Gardiner have only gone to convince me, the
eloquent canon notwithstanding, that Bunyan could not have chosen a
better contemporary groundwork for his Greatheart than just the
great Puritan soldier.  Cromwell's "mental struggles before his
conversion," his life-long "searchings of heart," his "utter
absence of vindictiveness," his unequalled capacity for "seeing
into the heart of a situation," and his own "all-embracing
hospitality of heart"--all have gone to reassure me that my first
guess as to Bunyan's employment of the Protector's matchless
personality and services had not been so far astray.  And the
oftener I read the noble history of Greatheart, the better I seem
to hear, beating behind his fine figure, by far the greatest heart
that ever ruled over the realm of England.

1.  The first time that we catch a glimpse of Greatheart's weather-
beaten and sword-seamed face is when he is taking a stolen look out
of the window at Mr. Fearing, who is conducting himself more like a
chicken than a man around the Interpreter's door.  And from that
moment till Mr. Fearing shouted "Grace reigns!" as he cleared the
last river, never sportsman surely stalked a startled deer so
patiently and so skilfully and so successfully as Greatheart
circumvented that chicken-hearted pilgrim.  "At last I looked out
of the window, and perceiving a man to be up and down about the
door, I went out to him and asked him what he was; but, poor man,
the water stood ill his eyes.  So I perceived what he wanted.  I
went in, therefore, and told it in the house, and we showed the
thing to our Lord.  So He sent me out again to entreat him to come
in; but I dare say I had hard work to do it."  Greatheart's whole
account of Mr. Fearing always brings the water to my eyes also.  It
is indeed a delicious piece of English prose.  If I were a
professor of belles lettres instead of what I am, I would compel
all my students, under pain of rustication, to get those three or
four classical pages by heart till they could neither perpetrate
nor tolerate bad English any more.  This camp-fire tale, told by an
old soldier, about a troublesome young recruit and all his
adventures, touches, surely, the high-water mark of sweet and
undefiled English.  Greatheart was not the first soldier who could
handle both the sword and the pen, and he has not been the last.
But not Caesar and not Napier themselves ever handled those two
instruments better.

2.  Greatheart had just returned to his Master's house from having
seen Mr. Fearing safely through all his troubles and well over the
river, when, behold, another caravan of pilgrims is ready for his
convoy.  For Greatheart, you must know, was the Interpreter's armed
servant.  When at any time Greatheart was off duty, which in those
days was but seldom, he took up his quarters again in the
Interpreter's house.  As he says himself, he came back from the
river-side only to look out of the Interpreter's window to see if
there was any more work on the way for him to do.  And, as good
luck would have it, as has been said, the guide was just come back
from his adventures with Mr. Fearing when a pilgrim party, than
which he had never seen one more to his mind, was introduced to him
by his Master, the Interpreter.  "The Interpreter," so we read at
this point, "then called for a man-servant of his, one Greatheart,
and bid him take sword, and helmet, and shield, and take these, my
daughters," said he, "and conduct them to the house called
Beautiful, at which place they will rest next.  So he took his
weapons and went before them, and the Interpreter said, God-speed."

3.  Now I saw in my dream that they went on, and Greatheart went
before them, so they came to the place where Christian's burden
fell off his back and tumbled into a sepulchre.  Here, then, they
made a pause, and here also they blessed God.  "Now," said
Christiana, "it comes to my mind what was said to us at the gate;
to wit, that we should have pardon by word and by deed.  What it is
to have pardon by deed, Mr. Greatheart, I suppose you know;
wherefore, if you please, let us hear your discourse thereof."  "So
then, to speak to the question," said Greatheart.  You have all
heard about the "question-day" at Highland communions.  That day is
so called because questions that have arisen in the minds of "the
men" in connection with doctrine and with experience are on that
day set forth, debated out, and solved by much meditation and
prayer; age, saintliness, doctrinal and experimental reading, and
personal experience all making their contribution to the solution
of the question in hand.  Just such a question, then, and handled
in such a manner, was that question which whiled the way and
cheated the toil till the pilgrims came to the House Beautiful.
The great doctrinal and experimental Puritans, with Hooker at their
head, put forth their full strength and laid out their finest work
just on this same question that Christiana gave out at the place,
somewhat ascending, upon which stood a cross, and a little below,
in the bottom, a sepulchre.  But not the great Comment on The
Galatians itself, next to the Holy Bible as it is, as most fit for
a wounded conscience; no, nor that perfect mass of purest gold, The
Learned Discourse of Justification, nor anything else of that kind
known to me, is for one moment, to compare in beauty, in
tenderness, in eloquence, in scriptural depth, and in scriptural
simplicity with Greatheart's noble resolution of Christiana's
question which he made on the way from the Interpreter's house to
the House Beautiful.  "This is brave!" exclaimed that mother in
Israel, when the guide had come to an end.  "Methinks it makes my
heart to bleed to think that He should bleed for me.  O Thou loving
One!  O Thou blessed One!  Thou deservest to have me, for Thou hast
bought me.  No marvel that this made the water to stand in my
husband's eyes, and that it made him trudge so nimbly on.  O Mercy,
that thy father and thy mother were here; yea, and Mrs. Timorous
too!  Nay, I wish now with all my heart that here was Madam Wanton
too.  Surely, surely their hearts would be affected here!"  Promise
me to read at home Greatheart's discourse on the Righteousness of
Christ, and you will thank me for having exacted the promise.

The incongruity of a soldier handling such questions, and
especially in such a style, has stumbled some of John Bunyan's
fault-finding readers.  The same incongruity stumbled "the
Honourable Colonel Hacker, at Peebles or elsewhere," to whom
Cromwell sent these from Edinburgh on the 25th December 1650--"But
indeed I was not satisfied with your last speech to me about
Empson, that he was a better preacher than fighter or soldier--or
words to that effect.  Truly, I think that he that prays and
preaches best will fight best.  I know nothing that will give like
courage and confidence as the knowledge of God in Christ will; and
I bless God to see any in this army able and willing to impart the
knowledge they have for the good of others.  I pray you receive
Captain Empson lovingly:  I dare assure you he is a good man and a
good officer; I would we had no worse."

4.  "Will you not go in and stay till morning?" said the porter to
Greatheart, at the gate of the House Beautiful.  "No," said the
guide; "I will return to my lord to-night."  "O sir!" cried
Christiana and Mercy, "we know not how to be willing you should
leave us in our pilgrimage.  Oh that we might have your company
till our journey's end."  Then said James, the youngest of the
boys, "Pray be persuaded to go with us and help us, because we are
so weak and the way so dangerous as it is."  "I am at my lord's
commandment," said Greatheart.  "If he shall allow me to be your
guide quite through, I shall willingly wait upon you.  But here you
failed at first; for when he bid me come thus far with you, then
you should have begged me of him to have gone quite through with
you, and he would have granted your request.  However, at present,
I must withdraw, and so, good Christiana, Mercy, and my brave
children, adieu!"  "Help lost for want of asking for," is our
author's condemnatory comment on the margin at this point in the
history.  And there is not a single page in my history, or in
yours, my brethren, on which the same marginal lament is not
written.  What help we would have had on our Lord's promise if we
had but taken the trouble to ask for it!  And what help we once
had, and have now lost, just because when we had it we did not ask
for a continuance of it!  "No," said Greatheart to the porter, and
to the two women, and to James--"No.  I will return to my lord to-
night.  I am at my lord's commandment; only, if he shall still
allot me I shall willingly wait upon you."

Now, what with the House Beautiful, so full of the most delightful
company; what with music in the house and music in the heart; what
with Mr. Brisk's courtship of Mercy, Matthew's illness, Mr. Skill's
cure of the sick man, and what not--a whole month passed by like a
day in that so happy house.

But at last Christiana and Mercy signified it to those of the house
that it was time for them to be up and going.  Then said Joseph to
his mother, "It is convenient that you send back to the house of
Mr. Interpreter to pray him to grant that Mr. Greatheart should be
sent to us that he may be our conductor the rest of our way."
"Good boy,' said she, "I had almost forgot."  So she drew up a
petition and prayed Mr. Watchful the porter to send it by some fit
man to her good friend, Mr. Interpreter; who, when it was come and
he had seen the contents of the petition, said to the messenger,
"Go, tell them that I will send him." . . . Now, about this time
one knocked at the door.  So the porter opened, and, behold, Mr.
Greatheart was there!  But when he came in, what joy was there!
Then said Mr. Greatheart to the two women, "My lord has sent each
of you a bottle of wine, and also some parched corn, together with
a couple of pomegranates.  He has also sent the boys some figs and
raisins to refresh you on your way."  "The weak may sometimes call
the strong to prayers," I read again in the margin opposite the
mention of Joseph's name.  Not that I am strong, and not that she
is weak, but one of my people I spent an hour with last afternoon
whom you would to a certainty have called weak had you seen her and
her surrounding,--she so called me to prayer that I had to hurry
home and go straight to it.  And all last night and all this
morning I have had as many pomegranates as I could eat and as much
wine as I could drink.  Yes; you attend to what the weakest will
sometimes say to you, and they will often put you on the way to get
Greatheart back again with a load of wines and fruits and corn on
his shoulder to refresh you on your journey.  "Good boy!" said
Christiana to Joseph her youngest son, "Good boy!  I had almost
forgot!"

5.  When old Mr. Honest began to nod after the good supper that
Gaius mine host gave to the pilgrims, "What, sir," cried
Greatheart, "you begin to be drowsy; come, rub up; now here's a
riddle for you."  Then said Mr. Honest, "Let's hear it."  Then said
Mr. Greatheart,


"He that will kill, must first be overcome;
Who live abroad would, first must die at home."


"Hah!" said Mr. Honest, "it is a hard one; hard to expound, and
harder still to practise."  Yes; this after-supper riddle of Mr.
Greatheart is a hard one in both respects; and for this reason,
because the learned and much experienced guide--learned with all
that his lifelong quarters in the Interpreter's House could teach
him, and experienced with a lifetime's accumulated experience of
the pilgrim life--has put all his learning and all his life into
these two mysterious lines.  But old Honest, once he had
sufficiently rubbed up his eyes and his intellects, gave the
answer:


"He first by grace must conquered be
That sin would mortify.
And who, that lives, would convince me,
Unto himself must die."


Exactly; shrewd old Honest; you have hit off both Greatheart and
his riddle too.  You have dived into the deepest heart of the
Interpreter's man-servant.  "The magnanimous man" was Aristotle's
masterpiece.  That great teacher of mind and morals created for the
Greek world their Greatheart.  But, "thou must understand," says
Bunyan to his readers, "that I never went to school to Aristotle or
Plato.  No; but to Paul, who taught Bunyan that what Aristotle
calls magnanimity is really pride--taught him that, till there is
far more of the Christian religion in those two doggerel lines at
Gaius's supper-table than there is in all The Ethics taken
together.  And it is only from a personal experience of the same
life as that which the guide puts here into his riddle that any
man's proud heart will become really humble and thus really great,
really enlarged, and of an all-embracing hospitality like
Cromwell's and Greatheart's and John Bunyan's own.  Would you,
then, become a Greatheart too?  And would you be employed in your
day as they were employed in their day?  Then expound to yourself,
and practise, and follow out that deep riddle with which Greatheart
so woke up old Honest:


"He that will kill, must first be overcome;
Who live abroad would, first must die at home.


6.  Greatheart again and again at the riverside, Greatheart sending
pilgrim after pilgrim over the river with rapture, and he himself
still summoned to turn his back on the Celestial City, and to
retrace his steps through the land of Beulah, through the Valley of
the Shadow of Death, and through the Valley of Humiliation, and
back to the Interpreter's house to take on another and another and
another convoy of fresh pilgrims, and his own abundant entrance
still put off and never to come,--our hearts bleed for poor
Greatheart.  Back and forward, back and forward, year after year,
this noble soul uncomplainingly goes.  And, ever as he waves his
hand to another pilgrim entering with trumpets within the gates, he
salutes his next pilgrim charge with the brave words:  "Yet what I
shall choose I wot not.  For I am in a strait betwixt two:  having
a desire to depart and to be with Christ.  Nevertheless to abide in
the flesh is more needful for you, for your furtherance and joy of
faith by my coming to you again."  If Greatheart could not "usher
himself out of this life" along with Christiana, and Mercy, and Mr.
Honest, and Standfast, and Valiant-for-truth--if he had still to
toil back and bleed his way up again at the head of another happy
band of pilgrims--well, after all is said, what had the Celestial
City itself to give to Greatheart better than such blessed work?
"With every such returning journey he got a more and more enlarged,
detached, hospitable, and Christ-like heart, and the King's palace
in very glory itself had nothing better in store for this soldier-
guide than that.  A nobler heaven Greatheart could not taste than
he had already in himself, as he championed another and another
pilgrim company from his Master's earthly gate to his Master's
heavenly gate.  Like Paul, his apostolic prototype, Greatheart
sometimes vacillated just for a moment when he came a little too
near heaven, and felt its magnificent and almost dissolving
attractions full in his soul.  You will see Greatheart's mind
staggering for a moment between rest and labour, between war and
peace, between "Christ" on earth and "Christ" in heaven--you will
see all that set forth with great sympathy and great ability in
Principal Rainy's new book on Paul's Epistle to the Philippians,
and in the chapter entitled, The Apostle's Choice between Living
and Dying.

Then there came a summons for Mr. Standfast.  At which he called to
him Mr. Greatheart, and said unto him, "Sir, although it was not my
hap to be much in your good company in the days of my pilgrimage,
yet, since the time I knew you, you have been profitable to me.
When I came from home I left behind me a wife and five small
children.  Let me entreat you, at your return (for I know that you
will go and return to your master's house in hopes that you may be
a conductor to more of the holy pilgrims), that you send to my
family and let them be acquainted with all that hath and shall
happen to me.  Tell them, moreover, of my happy arrival to this
place, and of the present late blessed condition I am in, and so on
for many other messages and charges."  Yes, Mr. Standfast; very
good.  But I would have liked you on your deathbed much better if
you had had a word to spare from yourself and your wife and your
children for poor Greatheart himself, who had neither wife nor
children, nor near hope of heaven, but only your trust and charge
and many suchlike trusts and charges to carry out when you are at
home and free of all trust and all charge and all care.  But yours
is the way of all the pilgrims--so long, at least, as they are in
this selfish life.  Let them and their children only be well looked
after, and they have not many thoughts or many words left for those
who sweat and bleed to death for them and theirs.  They lean on
this and that Greatheart all their own way up, and then they leave
their widows and children to lean on whatever Greatheart is sent to
meet them; but it is not one pilgrim in ten who takes the thought
or has the heart to send a message to Mr. Greatheart himself for
his own consolation and support.  I read that Mr. Ready-to-halt
alone, good soul, had the good feeling to do it.  He thanked Mr.
Greatheart for his conduct and for his kindness, and so addressed
himself to his journey.  All the same, noble Greatheart! go on in
thy magnanimous work.  Take back all their errands.  Seek out at
any trouble all their wives and children.  Embark again and again
on all thy former battles and hardships for the good of other men.
But be assured that all this thy labour is not in vain in thy Lord.
Be well assured that not one drop of thy blood or thy sweat or thy
tears shall fall to the ground on that day when they that be wise
shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn
many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.  Go back,
then, from thy well-earned rest, O brave Greatheart! go back to thy
waiting task.  Put on again thy whole armour.  Receive again, and
again fulfil, thy Master's commission, till He has no more
commissions left for thy brave heart and thy bold hand to execute.
And, one glorious day, while thou art still returning to thy task,
it shall suddenly sound in thy dutiful ears:- "Well done! good and
faithful servant!"  And then thou too


"Shalt hang thy trumpet in the hall
And study war no more."



MR. READY-TO-HALT



"For I am ready to halt."--David.

Mr. Ready-to-halt is the Mephibosheth of the pilgrimage.  While
Mephibosheth was still a child in arms, his nurse let the young
prince fall, and from that day to the day of his death he was lame
in both his feet.  Mephibosheth's life-long lameness, and then
David's extraordinary grace to the disinherited cripple in
commanding him to eat continually at the king's table; in those two
points we have all that we know about Mr. Ready-to-halt also.  We
have no proper portrait, as we say, of Mr. Ready-to-halt.  Mr.
Ready-to-halt is but a name on John Bunyan's pages--a name set upon
two crutches; but, then, his simple name is so suggestive and his
two crutches are so eloquent, that I feel as if we might venture to
take this life-long lameter and his so serviceable crutches for our
character-lecture to-night.

John Bunyan, who could so easily and so delightfully have done it,
has given us no information at all about Mr. Ready-to-halt's early
days.  For once his English passion for a pedigree has not
compelled our author's pen.  We would have liked immensely to have
been told the name, and to have seen displayed the whole family
tree of young Ready-to-halt's father; and, especially, of his
mother.  Who was his nurse also?  And did she ever forgive herself
for the terrible injury she had done her young master?  What were
his occupations and amusements as a little cripple boy?  Who made
him his first crutch?  Of what wood was it made?  And at what age,
and under whose kind and tender directions did he begin to use it?
And, then, with such an infirmity, what ever put it into Mr. Ready-
to-halt's head to attempt the pilgrimage?  For the pilgrimage was a
task and a toil that took all the limbs and all the lungs and all
the labours and all the endurances that the strongest and the
bravest of men could bring to bear upon it.  How did this complete
cripple ever get through the Slough, and first up and then down the
Hill Difficulty, and past all the lions, and over a thousand other
obstacles and stumbling-blocks, till he arrived at mine host's so
hospitable door?  The first surprised sight we get of this so
handicapped pilgrim is when Greatheart and Feeble-mind are in the
heat of their discourse at the hostelry door.  At that moment Mr.
Ready-to-halt came by with his crutches in his hand, and he also
was going on pilgrimage.  Thus, therefore, they went on.  Mr.
Greatheart and Mr. Honest went on before, Christiana and her
children went next, and Mr. Feeble-mind and Mr. Ready-to-halt came
behind with his crutches.


"Put by the curtains, look within my veil,
Turn up my metaphors, and do not fail,
There, if thou seekest them, such things to find,
As will be helpful to an honest mind."


1.  Well, then, when we put by the curtains and turn up the
metaphors, what do we find?  What, but just this, that poor Mr.
Ready-to-halt was, after all, the greatest and the best believer,
as the New Testament would have called him, in all the pilgrimage.
We have not found so great faith as that of Mr. Ready-to-halt, no,
not in the very best of the pilgrim bands.  Each several pilgrim
had, no doubt, his own good qualities; but, at pure and downright
believing--at taking God at His bare and simple word--Mr. Ready-to-
halt beat them all.  All that flashes in upon us from one shining
word that stands on the margin of our so metaphorical author.  This
single word, the "promises," hangs like a key of gold beside the
first mention of Mr. Ready-to-halt's crutches--a key such that in a
moment it throws open the whole of Mr. Ready-to-halt's otherwise
lockfast and secret and inexplicable life.  There it all is, as
plain as a pike-staff now!  Yes; Mr. Ready-to-halt's crutches are
just the divine promises.  I wonder I did not see that all the
time.  Why, I could compose all his past life myself now.  I have
his father and his mother and his nurse at my finger-ends now.
This poor pilgrim--unless it would be impertinence to call him poor
any more--had no limbs to be called limbs.  Such limbs as he had
were only an encumbrance to this unique pedestrian.  All the limbs
he had were in his crutches.  He had not one atom of strength to
lean upon apart from his crutches.  A bone, a muscle, a tendon, a
sinew, may be ill-nourished, undeveloped, green, and unknit, but,
at the worst, they are inside of a man and they are his own.  But a
crutch, of however good wood it may be made, and however good a
lame man may be at using it--still, a crutch at its best is but an
outside additament; it is not really and originally a part of a
man's very self at all.  And yet a lame man is not himself without
his crutch.  Other men do not need to give a moment's forethought
when they wish to rise up to walk, or to run, or to leap, or to
dance.  But the lame man has to wait till his crutches are brought
to him; and then, after slowly and painfully hoisting himself up
upon his crutches, with great labour, he at last takes the road.
Mr. Ready-to-halt, then, is a man of God; but he is one of those
men of God who have no godliness within themselves.  He has no
inward graces.  He has no past experiences.  He has no attainments
that he can for one safe moment take his stand upon, or even partly
lean upon.  Mr. Ready-to-halt is absolutely and always dependent
upon the promises.  The promises of God in Holy Scripture are this
man's very life.  All his religion stands in the promises.  Take
away the promises, and Mr. Ready-to-halt is a heap of heaving rags
on the roadside.  He cannot take a single step unless upon a
promise.  But, at the same time, give Mr. Ready-to-halt a promise
in his hand and he will wade the Slough upon it, and scale up and
slide down the Hill Difficulty upon it, and fight a lion, and even
brain Beelzebub with it, till he will with a grudge and a doubt
exchange it even for the chariots and the horses that wait him at
the river.  What a delight our Lord would have taken in Mr. Ready-
to-halt had He come across him on His way to the passover!  How He
would have given Mr. Ready-to-halt His arm; how He would have made
Himself late by walking with him, and would still have waited for
him!  Nay, had that been a day of chap-books in carpenters' shops
and on the village stalls, how He would have had Mr. Ready-to-
halt's story by heart had any brass-worker in Galilee told the
history!  Our Lord was within an inch of telling that story
Himself, when He showed Thomas His hands and His side.  And at
another time and in another place we might well have had Mr. Ready-
to-halt as one more of our Lord's parables for the common people.
Only, He left the delight and the reward of drawing out this
parable to one He already saw and dearly loved in a far-off island
of the sea, the Puritan tinker of Evangelical England.

2.  And now, after all that, would you think it going too far if I
were to say that in making Himself like unto all His brethren, our
Lord made Himself like Mr. Ready-to-halt too?  Indeed He did.  And
it was because his Lord did this, that Mr. Ready-to-halt so loved
his Lord as to follow Him upon crutches.  It would not be thought
seemly, perhaps, to carry the figure too close to our Lord.  But,
figure apart, it is only orthodox and scriptural to say that our
Lord accomplished His pilgrimage and finished His work leaning all
along upon His Father's promises.  Esaias is very bold about this
also, for he tells his readers again and again that their Messiah,
when He comes, will have to be held up.  He will have to be
encouraged, comforted, and carried through by Jehovah.  And in one
remarkable passage he lets us see Jehovah hooping Messiah's staff
first with brass, and then with silver, and then with gold.  Let
Thomas Goodwin's genius set the heavenly scene full before us.
"You have it dialoguewise set forth," says that great preacher.
"First Christ shows His commission, telling God how He had called
Him and fitted Him for the work of redemption, and He would know
what reward He should receive of Him for so great an undertaking.
God at first offers low; only the elect of Israel.  Christ thinks
these too few, and not worth so great a labour and work, because
few of the Jews would come in; and therefore He says that He would
labour in vain if this were all His recompense; and yet withal He
tells God that seeing His heart is so much set on saving sinners,
to satisfy Him, He will do it even for those few.  Upon this God
comes off more freely, and openeth His heart more largely to Him,
as meaning more amply to content Him for His pains in dying.  "It
is a light thing," says God to Him, "that Thou shouldest be My
servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob--that is not worth Thy
dying for.  I value Thy sufferings more than so.  I will give Thee
for a salvation to the ends of the earth."  Upon this He made a
promise to Christ, a promise which God, who cannot lie, promised
before the world began.  God cannot lie, and, most of all, not to
His Son."

And, then, more even than that.  This same deep divine tells us
that it is a certain rule in divinity that, whatsoever we receive
from Christ, that He Himself first receives in Himself for us.  All
the promises of God's word are made and fulfilled to Christ first,
and so to us in and after Him.  In other words, our Lord's life was
so planned for Him in heaven and was so followed out and fulfilled
by Him on earth, that, to take up the metaphor again, He actually
tried every crutch and every staff with His own hands and with His
own armpits; He actually leaned again and again His own whole
weight upon every several one of them.  Every single promise, the
most unlikely for Him to lean upon and to plead, yet, be sure of
it, He somehow made experiment upon them all, and made sure that
there was sufficient and serviceable grace within and under every
one of them.  So that, Mr. Ready-to-halt, there is no possible
staff you can take into your hand that has not already been in the
hand of your Lord.  Think of that, O Mr. Ready-to-halt!  Reverence,
then, and almost worship thy staff!  Throw all thy weight upon thy
staff.  Confide all thy weakness to it.  Talk to it as thou walkest
with it.  Make it talk to thee.  Worm out of it all its secrets
about its first Owner.  And let it instruct thee about how He
walked with it and how He handled it.  The Bible is very bold with
its Master.  It calls Him by the most startling names sometimes.
There is no name that a penitent and a returning sinner goes by
that the Bible does not put somewhere upon the sinner's Saviour.
And in one place it as good as calls Him Ready-to-halt in as many
words.  Nay, it lets us see Him halting altogether for a time; ay,
oftener than once; and only taking the road again, when a still
stronger staff was put into his trembling hand.  And if John had
but had room in his crowded gospel he would have given us the very
identical psalm with which our Lord took to the upward way again,
strong in His new staff.  "For I am ready to halt," was His psalm
in the house of His pilgrimage, "and My sorrow is continually
before Me.  Mine enemies are lively, and they are strong; and they
that hate Me wrongfully are multiplied.  They also that render evil
for good are Mine adversaries; because I follow the thing that good
is.  Forsake Me not, O Lord; O My God, be not far from Me.  Make
haste to help Me, O Lord My salvation."

3.  Among all the devout and beautiful fables of the "dispensation
of paganism," there is nothing finer than the fable of blind
Tiresias and his staff.  By some sad calamity this old prophet had
lost the sight of his eyes, and to compensate their servant for
that great loss the gods endowed him with a staff with eyes.  As
Aaron's rod budded before the testimony and bloomed blossoms and
yielded almonds, so Tiresias' staff budded eyes, and divine eyes
too, for the blind prophet's guidance and direction.  Tiresias had
but to take his heaven-given staff in his hand, when, straightway,
such a divinity entered into the staff that it both saw for him
with divine eyes, and heard for him with divine ears, and then led
him and directed him, and never once in all his after journeys let
him go off the right way.  All other men about him, prophets and
priests both, often lost their way, but Tiresias after his
blindness, never, till Tiresias and his staff became a proverb and
a parable in the land.  And just such a staff, just such a crutch,
just such a pair of crutches, were the crutches of our own so
homely Mr. Ready-to-halt.  With all their lusty limbs, all the
other pilgrims often stumbled and went out of their way till they
had to be helped up, led back, and their faces set right again.
But, last as Mr. Ready-to-halt always came in the procession--
behind even the women and the children as his crutches always kept
him--you will seek in vain for the dot of those crutches on any by-
path or on any wrong road.  No; the fact is, if you wish to go to
the same city, and are afraid you lose the way; as Evangelist said,
"Do you see yon shining light?" so I would say to you to-night, "Do
you see these crutch-marks on the road?"  Well, keep your feet in
the prints of these crutches, and as sure as you do that they will
lead you straight to a chariot and horses, which, again, will carry
you inside the city gates.  For Mr. Ready-to-halt's crutches have
not only eyes like Tiresias' staff, they have ears also, and hands
and feet.  A lamp also burns on those crutches; and wine and oil
distil from their wonderful wood.  Happy blindness that brings such
a staff!  Happy exchange! eyes full of earth and sin for eyes full
of heaven and holiness!

4.  "They began to be merry," says our Lord, telling the story of
the heart-broken father who had got back his younger son from a far
country.  And even Feeble-mind and Ready-to-halt begin to be merry
on the green that day after Doubting Castle has fallen to
Greatheart's arms.  Now, Christiana, if need was, could play upon
the viol, and her daughter Mercy upon the lute; and, since they
were so merry disposed, she played them a lesson, and Mr. Ready-to-
halt would dance.  So he paid a boy a penny to hold one of his
crutches, and, taking Miss Much-afraid by the hand, to dancing they
went.  And, I promise you he footed it well; the lame man leaped as
an hart; also the girl was to be commended, for she answered the
music handsomely.  In spite of his life-long infirmity, there was
deep down in Mr. Ready-to-halt an unsuspected fund of good-humour.
There was no heartier merriment on the green that day than was the
merriment that Mr. Ready-to-halt knocked out of his nimble crutch.
"True, he could not dance without one crutch in his hand."  True,
dear and noble Bunyan, thou canst not write a single page at any
time or on any subject without thy genius and thy tenderness and
thy divine grace marking the page as thine own alone!

5.  The next time we see Mr. Ready-to-halt he is coming in on his
crutches to see Christiana, for she has sent for him to see him.
So she said to him, "Thy travel hither hath been with difficulty,
but that will make thy rest the sweeter."  And then in process of
time there came a post to the town and his business this time was
with Mr. Ready-to-halt.  "I am come to thee in the name of Him whom
thou hast loved and followed, though upon crutches.  And my message
is to tell thee that He expects thee at His table to sup with Him
in His kingdom the next day after Easter."  "I am sent for," said
Mr. Ready-to-halt to his fellow-pilgrims, "and God shall surely
visit you also.  These crutches," he said, "I bequeath to my son
that shall tread in my steps, with an hundred warm wishes that he
may prove better than I have done."  Isaac was a child of promise,
and Mr. Ready-to-halt had an Isaac also on whom his last thoughts
turned.  Isaac had been born to Abraham by a special and
extraordinary and supernatural interposition of the grace and the
power of God; and Mr. Ready-to-halt had always looked on himself as
a second Abraham in that respect.  A second Abraham, and more.
True, his son was not yet a pilgrim; perhaps he was too young to be
so called; but Greatheart will take back the old man's crutches--
Greatheart was both man-of-war and beast-of-burden to the pilgrims
and their wives and children--and will in spare hours teach young
Ready-to-halt the use of the crutch, till the son can use with the
same effect as his father his father's instrument.  Is your child a
child of promise?  Is he to you a product of nature, or of grace?
Did you receive him and his brothers and sisters from God after you
were as good as dead?  Did you ever steal in when his nurse was at
supper and say over his young cradle, He hath not dealt with me
after my sins, nor rewarded me according to my iniquities?  Is it
in your will laid up with Christ in God about your crutches and
your son what Mr. Ready-to-halt dictated on his deathbed?  And does
God know that there is no wish in your old heart a hundred times so
warm for your son as is this wish,--that he may prove better at
handling God's promises than you have been?  Then, happy son, who
has old Mr. Ready-to-halt for his father!

6.  "He whom thou hast loved and followed, though upon crutches,
expects thee at His table the next day after Easter."  Take
comfort, cripples!  Had it been said that the King so expects
Greatheart, or Standfast, or Valiant-for-truth, that would have
been after the manner of the kings of this world.  But to insist on
having Mr. Ready-to-halt beside Him by such and such a day; to send
such a post to a pilgrim who has not a single sound bone in all his
body; to a sinner without a single trustworthy grace in all his
heart; to a poor and simple believer who has nothing in his hand
but one of God's own promises--Who is a king like unto our King?
Surely King David was never a better type of Christ than when he
said to Mephibosheth, lame in both his feet from his nurse's arms:
"Fear not, Mephibosheth, for I will surely show thee kindness, and
thou shalt eat bread at my table continually."  And Mephibosheth
shall always be our spokesman when he bows himself and says in
return:  "What is thy servant, that thou shouldst look upon such a
dead dog as I am?"



VALIANT-FOR-TRUTH



"--They are not valiant for the truth."--Jeremiah

"--Ye should contend earnestly for the faith."--Jude.
"Forget not Master Valiant-for-the-Truth,
That man of courage, tho' a very youth.
Tell every one his spirit was so stout,
No man could ever make him face about."
Bunyan.

"I am of Dark-land, for there was I born, and there my father and
mother are still."  "Dark-land," said the guide; "doth not that lie
upon the same coast as the City of Destruction?"  "Yes, it doth,"
replied Valiant-for-truth.  "And had I not found incommodity there,
I had not forsaken it at all; but finding it altogether unsuitable
to me, and very unprofitable for me, I forsook it for this way.
Now, that which caused me to come on pilgrimage was this.  We had
one Mr. Tell-true came into our parts, and he told it about what
Christian had done, that went from the City of Destruction.  That
man so told the story of Christian and his travels that my heart
fell into a burning haste to be gone after him, nor could my father
and mother stay me, so I got from them, and am come thus far on my
way."

1.  A very plain and practical lesson is already read to us all in
Valiant-for-truth's explanation of his own pilgrimage.  He tells
the guide that he was made a pilgrim just by having the story of
The Pilgrim told to him.  All that Tell-true did was just to recite
the story of the pilgrim, when young Valiant's heart fell into a
burning haste to be a pilgrim too.  My brethren, could any lesson
be plainer?  Read the Pilgrim's Progress with your children.  And,
after a time, read it again till they call it beautiful, and till
you see the same burning haste in their hearts that young Valiant
felt in his heart.  Circulate the Pilgrim's Progress.  Make
opportunities to give the Pilgrim's Progress to the telegraph boys
and errand boys at your door.  Never go on a holiday without taking
a dozen cheap and tasteful copies of The Pilgrim to give to boys
and girls in the country.  Make sure that no one, old or young, of
your acquaintance, in town or country, is without a good copy of
The Pilgrim.  And the darker their house is, make all the more sure
that John Bunyan is in it.


"Now may this little book a blessing be,
To those that love this little book and me
And may its buyer have no cause to say
His money is but lost or thrown away."


2.  But the great lesson of Valiant's so impressive life lies in
the tremendous fight he had with three ruffians who all set upon
him at once and well-nigh made an end of him.  For, when we put by
the curtains here again, and turn up the metaphors, what do we
find?  What, but a lesson of first-rate importance for many men
among ourselves; for many public men, many ministers, and many
other much-in-earnest men.  For Valiant, as his name tells us, was
set to contend for the truth.  He had the truth.  The truth was put
into his keeping, and he was bound to defend it.  He was thrown
into a life of controversy, and thus into all the terrible
temptations--worse than the temptations to whoredom or wine--that
accompany a life of controversy.  The three scoundrels that fell
upon Valiant at the mouth of the lane were Wildhead, Inconsiderate,
and Pragmatic.  In other words, the besetting temptations of many
men who are set as defenders of the truth in religion, as well as
in other matters, is to be wild-headed, inconsiderate, self-
conceited, and intolerably arrogant.  The bloody battle that
Valiant fought, you must know, was not fought at the mouth of any
dark lane in the midnight city, nor on the side of any lonely road
in the moonless country.  This terrible fight was fought in
Valiant's own heart.  For Valiant was none of your calculating and
cold-blooded friends of the truth.  He did not wait till he saw the
truth walking in silver slippers.  Let any man lay a finger on the
truth, or wag a tongue against the truth, and he will have to
settle it with Valiant.  His love for the truth was a passion.
There was a fierceness in his love for the truth that frightened
ordinary men even when they were on his own side.  Valiant would
have died for the truth without a murmur.  But, with all that,
Valiant had to learn a hard and a cruel lesson.  He had to learn
that he, the best friend of truth as he thought he was, was at the
same time, as a matter of fact, the greatest enemy that the truth
had.  He had to take home the terrible discovery that no man had
hurt the truth so much as he had done.  Save me from my friend! the
truth was heard to say, as often as she saw him taking up his
weapons in her behalf.  We see all that every day.  We see Wildhead
at his disservice of the truth every day.  Sometimes above his own
name, and sometimes with grace enough to be ashamed to give his
name, in the newspapers.  Sometimes on the platform; sometimes in
the pulpit; and sometimes at the dinner-table.  But always to the
detriment of the truth.  In blind fury he rushes at the character
and the good name of men who were servants of the truth before he
was born, and whose shield he is not worthy to bear.  How shall
Wildhead be got to see that he and the like of him are really the
worst friends the truth can possibly have?  Will he never learn
that in his wild-bull gorings at men and at movements, he is both
hurting himself and hurting the truth as no sworn enemy of his and
of the truth can do?  Will he never see what an insolent fool he is
to go on imputing bad motives to other men, when he ought to be
prostrate before God on account of his own?  More than one wild-
headed student of William Law has told me what a blessing they have
got from that great man's teaching on the subject of controversy.
Will the Wildheads here to-night take a line or two out of that
peace-making author and lay them to heart?  "My dear L-, take
notice of this, that no truths, however solid and well-grounded,
will help you to any divine life, but only so far as they are
taught, nourished, and strengthened by an unction from above; and
that nothing more dries and extinguishes this heavenly unction than
a talkative reasoning temper that is always catching at every
opportunity of hearing or telling some religious matters.  Stop
your ears and shut your eyes to all religious tales . . . I would
no more bring a false charge against a deist than I would bear
false witness against an apostle.  And if I knew how to do the
deists more justice in debate I would gladly do it . . . And as the
gospel requires me to be as glad to see piety, equity, strict
sobriety, and extensive charity in a Jew or a Gentile as in a
Christian; as it obliges me to look with pleasure upon their
virtues, and to be thankful to God that such persons have so much
of true and sound Christianity in them; so it cannot be an
unchristian spirit to be as glad to see truths in one party of
Christians as in another, and to look with pleasure upon any good
doctrines that are held by any sect of Christian people, and to be
thankful to God that they have so much of the genuine saving truths
of the gospel among them . . . Selfishness and partiality are very
inhuman and base qualities even in the things of this world, but in
the doctrines of religion they are of a far baser nature.  In the
present divided state of the Church, truth itself is torn and
divided asunder; and, therefore, he is the only true Catholic who
has more of truth and less of error than is hedged in by any
divided part.  To see this will enable us to live in a divided part
unhurt by its division, and keep us in a true liberty and fitness
to be edified and assisted by all the good that we hear or see in
any other part of the Church.  And thus, uniting in heart and
spirit with all that is holy and good in all Churches, we enter
into the true communion of saints, and become real members of the
Holy Catholic Church, though we are confined to the outward worship
of only one particular part of it.  And thus we will like no truth
the less because Ignatius Loyola or John Bunyan were very jealous
for it, nor have the less aversion to any error because Dr. Trapp
or George Fox had brought it forth."  If Wildhead would take a
winter of William Law, it would sweeten his temper, and civilise
his manners, and renew his heart.

3.  Inconsiderate, again, is the shallow creature he is, and does
the endless mischief that he does, largely for lack of imagination.
He never thinks--neither before he speaks nor after he has spoken.
He never put himself in another man's place all his days.  He is
incapable of doing that.  He has neither the head nor the heart to
do that.  He never once said, How would I like that said about me?
or, How would I like that done to me? or, How would that look and
taste and feel to me if I were in So-and-so's place?  It needs
genius to change places with other men; it needs a grace beyond all
genius; and this poor headless and heartless creature does not know
what genius is.  It needs imagination, the noblest gift of the
mind, and it needs love, the noblest grace of the heart, to
consider the case of other people, and to see, as Butler says, that
we differ as much from other people as they differ from us.  And it
is by far the noblest use of the imagination, far nobler than
carving a Laocoon, or painting a Last Judgment, or writing a
"Paradiso" or a "Paradise Lost," to put ourselves into the places
of other men so as to see with their eyes, and feel with their
hearts, and sympathise with their principles, and even with their
prejudices.  Now, the inconsiderate man has so little imagination
and so little love that he is sitting here and does not know what I
am saying; and what suspicion he has of what I am saying is just
enough to make him dislike both me and what I am saying too.  But
his dull suspicion and his blind dislike are more than made up for
by the love and appreciation of those lovers and defenders of the
truth who painfully feel how wild and inconsiderate, how hot-
headed, how thoughtless, and how reckless their past service even
of God's truth has been.


"The King is full of grace and fair regard.
Consideration, like an angel, came
And whipp'd the offending Adam out of him."


4.  And as to Pragmatic, I would not call you a stupid person even
though you confided to me that you had never heard this footpad's
name till to-night.  John Bunyan has been borrowing Latin again,
and not to the improvement of his style, or to the advantage of his
readers.  It would be insufferably pragmatic in me to begin to set
John Bunyan right in his English; but I had rather offend the
shades of a hundred John Bunyans than leave my most unlettered
hearer without his full and proper Sabbath-night lesson.  The third
armed thief, then, that fell upon Valiant was, under other names,
Impertinence, Meddlesomeness, Officiousness, Over-Interference.
Pragmatic,--by whatever name he calls himself, there is no
mistaking him.  He is never satisfied.  He is never pleased.  He is
never thankful.  He is always setting his superiors right.  He is
like the Psalmist in one thing, he has more understanding than all
his teachers.  And he enjoys nothing more than in letting them know
that.  There is nothing he will not correct you in--from cutting
for the stone to commanding the Channel Fleet.  Now, if all that
has put any visual image of Pragmatic into your mind, you will see
at once what an enemy he too is fitted to be to the truth.  For the
truth does not stand in points, but in principles.  The truth does
not dwell in the letter but in the spirit.  The truth is not served
by setting other people right, but by seeing every day and in every
thing how far wrong we are ourselves.  The truth is like charity in
this, that it begins at home.  It is like charity in this also,
that it never behaves itself unseemly.  A pragmatical man, taken
along with an inconsiderate man, and then a wild-headed man added
on to them, are three about as fatal hands as any truth could fall
into.  The worst enemy of the truth must pity the truth, and feel
his hatred at the truth relenting, when he sees her under the
championship of Wildhead, Inconsiderate, and Pragmatic.

5.  The first time we see Valiant-for-truth he is standing at the
mouth of Dead-man's-lane with his sword in his hand and with his
face all bloody.  "They have left upon me, as you see," said the
bleeding man, "some of the marks of their valour, and have also
carried away with them some of mine."  And, in like manner, we see
Paul with the blood of Barnabas still upon him when he is writing
the thirteenth of First Corinthians; and John with the blood of the
Samaritans still upon him down to his old age when he is writing
his First Epistle; and John Bunyan with the blood of the Quakers
upon him when he is covertly writing this page of his autobiography
under the veil of Valiant-for-truth; and William Law with the blood
of Bishop Hoadly and John Wesley dropping on the paper as he pens
that golden passage which ends with Dr. Trapp and George Fox.
Where did you think Paul got that splendid passage about charity?
Where did you think William Law got that companion passage about
Church divisions, and about the Church Catholic?  Where are such
passages ever got by inspired apostles, or by any other men, but
out of their own bloody battles with their own wild-headedness,
intolerance, dislike, and resentment?  Where do you suppose I got
the true key to the veiled metaphor of Valiant-for-truth?  It does
not exactly hang on the door-post of his history.  Where, then,
could I get it but off the inside wall of my own place of
repentance?  Just as you understand what I am now labouring to say,
not from my success in saying it, but from your own trespasses
against humility and love, your unadvised speeches, and your wild
and whirling words.  Without shame and remorse, without self-
condemnation and self-contempt, none of those great passages of
Paul, or John, or Bunyan, or Law were ever written; and without a
like shame, remorse, self-condemnation, and self-contempt they are
not rightly read.


"Oh! who shall dare in this frail scene
On holiest, happiest thoughts to lean,
On Friendship, Kindred, or on Love?
Since not Apostles' hands can clasp
Each other in so firm a grasp,
But they shall change and variance prove.

"But sometimes even beneath the moon
The Saviour gives a gracious boon,
When reconciled Christians meet,
And face to face, and heart to heart,
High thoughts of Holy love impart
In silence meek, or converse sweet.

"Oh then the glory and the bliss
When all that pained or seemed amiss
Shall melt with earth and sin away!
When saints beneath their Saviour's eye,
Filled with each other's company,
Shall spend in love the eternal day!"


6.  Then said Greatheart to Mr. Valiant-for-truth, "Thou hast
worthily behaved thyself; let me see thy sword."  So he showed it
him.  When he had taken it in his hand and had looked thereon a
while, the guide said:  "Ha! it is a right Jerusalem blade!"  "It
is so," replied its owner.  "Let a man have one of these blades
with a hand to wield it, and skill to use it, and he may venture
upon an angel with it.  Its edges will never blunt.  It will cut
flesh, and bones, and soul, and spirit, and all."  Both Damascus
and Toledo blades were famous in former days for their tenacity and
flexibility, and for the beauty and the edge of their steel.  But
even a Damascus blade would be worthless in a weak, cowardly, or
unskilled hand; while even a poor sword in the hand of a good
swordsman will do excellent execution.  And much more so when you
have both a first-rate sword and a first-rate swordsman, such as
both Valiant and his Jerusalem blade were.  Ha! yes.  This is a
right wonderful blade we have now in our hand.  For this sword was
forged in no earthly fire; and it was whetted to its unapproachable
sharpness on no earthly whetstone.  But, best of all for us, when a
good soldier of Jesus Christ has this sword girt on his thigh he is
able then to go forth against himself with it; against his own only
and worst enemy--that is, against himself.  As here, against his
own wildness of head and pride of heart.  Against his own want of
consideration also.  "My people do not consider."  As also against
himself as a lawless invader of other men's freedom of judgment,
following of truth, public honour, and good name.  As the Arabian
warriors see themselves and dress themselves in their swords as in
a glass, so did Valiant-for-truth see the thoughts and intents, the
joints and the marrow of his own disordered soul in his Jerusalem
blade.  In the sheen of it he could see himself even when the
darkness covered him; and with its two edges all his after-life he
slew both all real error in other men and all real evil in himself.
"Thou hast done well," said Greatheart the guide.  "Thou hast
resisted unto blood, striving against sin.  Thou shalt abide by us,
come in and go out with us, for we are thy companions."

7.  "Sir," said the widow indeed to Valiant-for-truth, "sir, you
have in all places shown yourself true-hearted."  The first time
she ever saw this man that she is now seeing for the last time on
this side the river, his own mother would not have known him, he
was so hacked to pieces with the swords of his three assailants.
But as she washed the blood off the mangled man's head and face and
hands, she soon saw beneath all his bloody wounds a true, a brave,
and a generous-hearted soldier of the Cross.  The heart is always
the man.  And this woman had lived long enough with men to have
discovered that.  And with all his sears she saw that it was at
bottom the truth of his heart that had cast him into so many bloody
encounters.  There were men in that company, and men near the river
too, with far fewer marks of battle, and even of defeat, upon them,
who did not get this noble certificate and its accompanying charge
and trust from this clear-eyed widow.  And, then, she had never
forgot--how could she?--his exclamation, and almost embrace of her
as of his own mother, when he burst out with his eyes full of
blood, "Why, is this Christian's wife?  What! and going on
pilgrimage too?  It glads my heart!  Good man!  How joyful will he
be when he shall see her and her children enter after him in at the
gates into the city!"  He would have been hacked a hundred times
worse than he was before the widow of Christian, and the mother of
his children, would have seen anything but the manliest beauty in a
young soldier who could salute an old woman in that way.  It
gladdened her heart to hear him, you may be sure, as much as it
gladdened his heart to see her.  And that was the reason that she
actually set Greatheart himself aside, and left her children under
this young man's sword and shield.  "I would also entreat you to
have an eye to my children," she said.  Young men, has any dying
mother committed her children, if you at any time see them faint,
to you?  Have you ever spoken so comfortably to any poor widow
about her sainted husband that she has passed by some of our
foremost citizens, and has astonished and offended her lawyers by
putting a stripling like you into the trusteeship?  Did ever any
dying mother say to you that she had seen you to be so true-hearted
at all times that she entreated you to have an eye to her children?
Speaking at this point for myself, I would rather see my son so
trusted at such an hour by such a woman than I would see him the
Chancellor of Her Majesty's Exchequer, or the Governor of the Bank
of England.  And so to-night would you.



STANDFAST



"So stand fast in the Lord, my dearly beloved."--Paul.

In his supplementary picture of Standfast John Bunyan is seen at
his very best, both as a religious teacher and as an English
author.  On the Enchanted Ground Standfast is set before us with
extraordinary insight, sagacity, and wisdom; and then in the
terrible river he is set before us with an equally extraordinary
rapture and transport; while, in all that, Bunyan composes in
English of a strength and a beauty and a music in which he
positively surpasses himself.  Just before he closes his great book
John Bunyan rises up and once more puts forth his very fullest
strength, both as a minister of religion and as a classical writer,
when he takes Standfast down into that river which that pilgrim
tells us has been such a terror to so many, and the thought of
which has so often affrighted himself.

When Greatheart and his charge were almost at the end of the
Enchanted Ground, so we read, they perceived that a little before
them was a solemn noise as of one that was much concerned.  So they
went on and looked before them.  And behold, they saw, as they
thought, a man upon his knees, with hands and eyes lift up, and
speaking, as they thought, earnestly to one that was above.  They
drew nigh, but could not tell what he said; so they went softly
till he had done.  When he had done, he got up and began to run
towards the Celestial City.  "So-ho, friend, let us have your
company," called out the guide.  At that the man stopped, and they
came up to him.  "I know this man," said Mr. Honest; "his name, I
know, is Standfast, and he is certainly a right good pilgrim."
Then follows a conversation between Mr. Honest and Mr. Standfast,
in which some compliments and courtesies are exchanged, such as are
worthy of such men, met at such a time and in such a place.  "Well,
but, brother," said Valiant-for-truth, "tell us, I pray thee, what
was it that was the cause of thy being upon thy knees even now?
Was it for that some special mercy laid obligations upon thee, or
how?"  And then Standfast tells how as he was coming along musing
with himself, Madam Bubble presented herself to him and offered him
three things.  "I was both aweary and sleepy and also as poor as a
howlet, and all that the wicked witch knew.  And still she followed
me with her enticements.  Then I betook me, as you saw, to my
knees, and with hands lift up and cries, I prayed to Him who had
said that He would help.  So just as you came up the gentlewoman
went her way.  Then I continued to give thanks for my great
deliverance; for I verify believe she intended me no good, but
rather sought to make stop of me in my journey.  What a mercy is it
that I did resist her, for whither might she not have drawn me?"
And then, after all this discourse, there was a mixture of joy and
trembling among the pilgrims, but at last they broke out and sang:


"What danger is the pilgrim in,
How many are his foes,
How many ways there are to sin,
No living mortal knows!"


1.  "Well, as I was coming along I was musing with myself," said
Standfast.  You understand what it is to come along musing with
yourself, do you not, my brethren?  "I will muse on the work of Thy
hands," says the Psalmist.  And again, "While I was musing the fire
burned."  Well, Standfast was much given to musing, just as David
was.  Each several pilgrim has his own way of occupying himself on
the road; but Standfast could never get his fill just of musing.
Standfast loved solitude.  Standfast liked nothing better than to
walk long stretches at a time all by himself alone.  Standfast was
like the apostle when he preferred to take the twenty miles from
Troas to Assos on foot and alone, rather than to round the cape on
shipboard in a crowd.  "Minding himself to go afoot," says the
apostle's companion.  It would have made a precious chapter in the
Acts of the Apostles had the author of that book been able to give
his readers some of Paul's musings as he crossed the Troad on foot
that day.  But in the absence of Paul's musings we have here the
musings of a man whom Paul would not have shaken off had he
foregathered with him on that lonely road.  For Standfast was in a
deep and serious muse mile after mile, when, who should step into
the middle of his path right before him but Madam Bubble with her
body and her purse and her bed?  Now, had this hungry howlet of a
pilgrim been at that moment in any other but a musing mood of mind,
he had to a certainty sold himself, soul and body, Celestial City
and all, to that impudent slut.  But, as He would have it who
overrules Madam Bubble's descents, and all things, Standfast was at
that moment in one of his most musing moods, and all her smiles and
all her offers fell flat and poor upon him.  Cultivate Standfast's
mood of mind, my brethren.  Walk a good deal alone.  Strike across
country from time to time alone and have good long walks and talks
with yourself.  And when you know that you are passing places of
temptation see that your thoughts, and even your imaginations, are
well occupied with solemn considerations about the certain issue of
such and such temptations; and then, to you, as to Standfast,


"The arrow seen beforehand slacks its flight."


2.  But, musing alone, the arrow seen beforehand, and all,
Standfast would have been a lost man on that lonely road that day
had he not instantly betaken himself to his knees.  And it was
while Standfast was still on his knees that the ascending pilgrims
heard that concerned and solemn noise a little ahead of them.  Did
you ever suddenly come across a man on his knees?  Did you ever
surprise a man at prayer as Greatheart and his companions surprised
Standfast?  I do not ask, Did you ever enter a room and find a
family around their morning or evening altar?  We have all done
that.  And it left its own impression upon us.  But did you ever
spring a surprise upon a man on his knees alone and in broad
daylight?  I did the other day.  It was between eleven and twelve
o'clock in the forenoon when I asked a clerk if his master was in.
Yes, he said, and opened his master's door.  When, before I was
aware, I had almost fallen over a man on his knees and with his
face in his hands.  "I pray thee," said Valiant-for-truth, "tell us
what it was that drew thee to thy knees even now.  Was it that some
special mercy laid its obligations on thee, or how?"  I did not say
that exactly to my kneeling friend, though it was on the point of
my tongue to say it.  My dear friend, I knew, had his own
difficulties, though he was not exactly as poor as a howlet.  And
it might have been about some of his investments that had gone out
of joint that he went that forenoon to Him who had said that He
would help.  Or, like the author of the Christian Perfection and
The Spirit of Prayer, it was the sixth hour of the day, and he may
have gone to his knees for his clerks, or for his boys at school,
or for himself and for the man in the same business with himself
right across the street.  I knew that my friend had the charming
book at home in which such counsels as these occur:  "If masters
were thus to remember their servants, beseeching God to bless them,
letting no day pass without a full performance of this devotion,
the benefit would be as great to themselves as to their servants."
And perhaps my friend, after setting his clerks their several tasks
for the day, was now asking grace of God for each one of them that
they might not be eye-servants and men-pleasers, but the servants
of Christ doing the will of God from the heart.  Or, again, he may
have read in that noble book this passage:  "If a father were daily
to make some particular prayer to God that He would please to
inspire his children with true piety, great humility, and strict
temperance, what could be more likely to make the father himself
become exemplary in these virtues?"  Now, my friend (who can tell?)
may just that morning have lost his temper with his son; or he may
last night have indulged himself too much in eating, or in
drinking, or in debate, or in detraction; and that may have made it
impossible for him to fix his whole mind on his office work that
morning.  Or, just to make another guess, when he opened the book I
had asked him to buy and read, he may have lighted on this heavenly
passage:  "Lastly, if all people when they feel the first
approaches of resentment or envy or contempt towards others; or if
in all little disagreements and misunderstandings whatever they
should have recourse at such times to a more particular and
extraordinary intercession with God for such persons as had roused
their envy, resentment, or discontent--this would be a certain way
to prevent the growth of all uncharitable tempers."  You may think
that I am taking a roundabout way of accounting for my friend's so
concerned attitude at twelve o'clock that business day; but the
whole thing seemed to me so unusual at such a time and in such a
place that I was led to such guesses as these to account for it.
In so guessing I see now that I was intruding myself into matters I
had no business with; but all that day I could not keep my mind off
my blushing friend.  For, like Mr. Standfast, my dear friend
blushed as he stood up and offered me the chair he had been
kneeling at.  "But, why, did you see me?" said Mr. Standfast.
"Yes, I did," quoth the other, "and with all my heart I was glad at
the sight."  "And what did you think?" said Mr. Standfast.

3.  "Was it," asked Valiant-for-truth, in a holy curiosity, "was it
some special mercy that brought thee to thy knees even now?"  Yes;
Valiant-for-truth had exactly hit it.  Gracious wits, like great
wits, jump together.  "Yes," confessed Standfast, "I continue to
give thanks for my great deliverance."  My brethren, you all pray
importunately in your time of sore trouble.  Everybody does that.
But do you feel an obligation, like Standfast, to abide still on
your knees long after your trouble is past?  Nature herself will
teach us to pray; but it needs grace, and great grace continually
renewed, to teach us to praise, and to continue all our days to
praise.  How we once prayed, ay, as earnestly, and as concernedly,
and as careless as to who should see or hear us as Standfast
himself!  How some of us here to-night used to walk across a whole
country all the time praying!  How we hoodwinked people in order to
get away from them to pray for twenty miles at a time all by
ourselves!  Under that bush--it still stands to mark the spot; in
that wood, long since cut down into ploughed land--we could show
our children the spot to this day where we prayed, till a miracle
was wrought in our behalf.  Yes, till God sent from above and took
us as He never took a psalmist, and set our feet upon a still more
wonderful rock.  How He, yes, HE, with His own hand cut the cords,
broke the net, and set us free!  Come, all ye that fear God! we
then said, and said it with all sincerity too.  And yet, how have
we forgotten what He did for our soul?  We start like a guilty
thing surprised when we think how long it is since we had a spell
of thanksgiving.  Shame on us!  What treacherous hearts we have!
What short memories we have!  How soon we forgive ourselves, and so
forget the forgiveness of our God!  Brethren, let us still lay
plans for praise as we used to do for prayer.  If our friends will
go out with us, let us at least insist on walking home alone.  Let
us say with Paul that we get sick at sea; and, besides, that we
have some calls to make and some small accounts to settle before we
leave the country.  Tell them not to wait dinner for us.  And then
let us take plenty of time.  Let us stop at all our old stations
and call back all our old terrors; let us repeat aloud our old
psalms--the twenty-fifth, the fifty-first, the hundred and third,
and the hundred and thirtieth.  We used to terrify people with our
prayers as Standfast terrified the young pilgrims that day; let us
surprise and delight them now with our psalms of thanksgiving.
For, with all our disgraceful ingratitude in the past, if William
Law is right, we are even yet not far from being great saints, if
he is not wrong when he asks:  "Would you know who is the greatest
saint in the world?  It is not he who prays most or fasts most; it
is not he who gives most alms, or is most eminent for temperance,
chastity, or justice.  But it is he who is most thankful to God,
and who has a heart always ready to praise God.  This is the
perfection of all virtues.  Joy in God and thankfulness to God is
the highest perfection of a divine and holy life."  Well, then,
what an endless cause of joy and thankfulness have we!  Let us
acknowledge it, and henceforth employ it; and we shall, please God,
even yet be counted as not low down but high up among the saints
and the servants of God.

4.  Christiana said many kind and wise and beautiful things to all
the other pilgrims before she entered the river, but it was
observed that though she sent for Mr. Standfast, she said not one
word to him when he came; she just gave him her ring.  "The touch
is human and affecting," says Mr. Louis Stevenson, in his
delightful paper on Bagster's "Bunyan," in the Magazine of Art.  By
the way, do you who are lovers of Bunyan literature know that
remarkable and delicious paper?  The Messrs. Bagster should secure
that paper and should issue an edition de luxe of their neglected
"Bunyan," with Mr. Stevenson's paper for a preface and
introduction.  Bagster's "Illustrated Bunyan," with an introduction
on the illustrations by Mr. Louis Stevenson, if I am not much
mistaken, would sell by the thousand.

5.  Lord Rosebery knows books and loves books, and he has called
attention to the surpassing beauty of the English in the deathbed
scenes of the Pilgrim's Progress.  And every lover of pure, tender,
and noble English must, like the Foreign Secretary, have all those
precious pages by heart.  Were it not that we all have a cowardly
fear at death ourselves, and think it wicked and cruel even to hint
at his approaching death even to a fast-dying man, we would never
let any of our friends lie down on his sick-bed without having a
reassuring and victorious page of the Pilgrim read to him every
day.  If the doctors would allow me, I would have these heavenly
pages reprinted in sick-bed type for all my people.  But I am
afraid at the doctors.  And thus one after another of my people
passes away without the fortification and the foretaste that the
deathbeds of Christian, and Christiana, and Hopeful, and Mr.
Fearing, and Mr. Feeble-mind, and Mr. Honest, and Mr. Standfast
would most surely have given to them.  Especially the deathbed, if
I must so call it, of Mr. Standfast.  But as Christiana said
nothing that could be heard to Mr. Standfast about his or her
latter end, but just looked into his eyes and gave him her ring, so
I may not be able to say all that is in my heart when your doctor
is standing close by.  But you will understand what I would fain
say, will you not?  You will remember, and will have this heavenly
book read to you alternately with your Bible, will you not?  Even
the most godless doctor will give way to you when you tell him that
you know as well as he does just how it is with you, and that you
are to have your own way for the last time.  I know a doctor who
first forbade her minister and her family to tell his patient that
she was dying, and at the same time told them to take away from her
bedside all such alarming books as the Pilgrim's Progress and the
Saint's Rest, and to read to her a reassuring chapter out of Old
Mortality and Pickwick.

It will, no doubt, put the best-prepared of us into a deep muse, as
it put Standfast, when we are first told that we must at once
prepare ourselves for a change of life.  But I for one would not
for worlds miss that solemn warning, and that last musing-time.  It
will all be just as my Master pleases; but if it is within His will
I shall till then continue to petition Him that I may have a
passage over the river like the passage of Standfast.  Or, if that
may not now be, then, at least, a musing-time like his.  The post
from the Celestial City brought Mr. Standfast's summons "open" in
his hand.  And thus it was that Standfast's translation did not
take him by surprise.  Standfast was not plunged suddenly and
without warning into the terrible river.  He took the open summons
into big own hand and read it out like a man.  After which he went,
as his manner was, for a good while into a deep and undisturbed
muse.  As soon as he came out of his muse he would have Greatheart
to be sent for.  And then their last conversation together
proceeded.  And no one interfered with the two brave-hearted men.
No one interposed, or said that Greatheart would exhaust or alarm
Standfast, or would injuriously hasten his end.  Not only so, but
all the way till he was half over the river, Standfast kept up his
own side of the noble conversation.  And it is his side of that
half-earthly, whole-heavenly conversation that I would like to have
put into suitable type and scattered broadcast over all our sick-
beds.

6.  "Tell me," says Valdes to Julia in his Christian Alphabet,
"have you ever crossed a deep river by a ford?"  "Yes," says Julia,
"I have, many times."  "And have you remarked how that by looking
upon the water it seemed as though your head swam, so that, if you
had not assisted yourself, either by closing your eyes, or by
fixing them on the opposite shore, you would have fallen into the
water in great danger of drowning?"  "Yes, I have noticed that."
"And have you seen how by keeping always for your object the view
of the land that lies on the other side, you have not felt that
swimming of the head, and so have suffered no danger of drowning?"
"I have noticed that too," replied Julia.  Now, it was exactly this
same way of looking, not at the black and swirling river, but at
the angelic conduct waiting for him at the further bank, and then
at the open gate of the Celestial City,--it was this that kept
Standfast's head so steady and his heart like a glowing coal while
he stood and talked in the middle of the giddy stream.  You would
have thought it was Paul himself talking to himself on the road to
Assos.  For I defy even the apostle himself to have talked better
or more boldly to himself even on the solid midday road than
Standfast talked to himself in the bridgeless river.  "I see
myself," he said, "at the end of my journey now.  My toilsome days
are all ended.  I am going now to see that head that was crowned
with thorns, and that face that was spat upon for me.  I loved to
hear my Lord spoken of, and wherever I have seen the print of His
shoe in the earth I have coveted to set my foot also.  His name has
been to me as a civet-box; yea, sweeter than all perfumes.  His
word I did use to gather for my food, and for antidotes against my
faintings.  He has held me, and I have kept me from my iniquities.
Yea, my steps He has strengthened in my way."  Now, while Standfast
was thus in discourse his countenance changed, his strong man bowed
down under him, and after he had said "Take me!" he ceased to be
seen of them.  But how glorious it was to see how the open region
was now filled with horses and chariots, with trumpeters and
pipers, and with singers and players on stringed instruments, all
to welcome the pilgrims as they went up and followed one another in
at the beautiful gate of the city!



MADAM BUBBLE



"Vanity of vanities, all is vanity."--Solomon.

"I have overcome the world."--Our Lord.

"Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.  For
all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the
eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the
world.  And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof."--John.

"This bubble world."--Quarles.

Madam Bubble's portrait was first painted by the Preacher.  And he
painted her portrait with extraordinary insight, boldness, and
truthfulness.  There is that in the Preacher's portrait of Madam
Bubble which only comes of the artist having mixed his colours, as
Milman says that Tacitus mixed his ink, with resentment and with
remorse.  Out of His reading of Solomon and Moses and the Prophets
on this same subject, as well as out of His own observation and
experience, conflict and conquest, our Lord added some strong and
deep and inward touches of His own to that well-known picture, and
then named it by the New Testament name of the World.  And then,
after Him, His longest-lived disciple set forth the same mother and
her three daughters under the three names that still stick to them
to this day,--the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the
pride of life.  But it was reserved for John Bunyan to fill up and
to finish those outlines of Scripture and to pour over the whole
work his own depth and strength of colour, till, altogether, Madam
Bubble stands out as yet another masterpiece of our dreamer's
astonishing genius.  Let us take our stand before this heaving
canvas, then, till we have taken attentive note of some of John
Bunyan's inimitable touches and strokes and triumphs of truth and
art.  "One in very pleasant attire, but old . . . This woman is a
witch . . . I am the mistress of the world, she said, and men are
made happy by me . . . A tall, comely dame, something of a swarthy
complexion."  In the newly discovered portrait of a woman, by
Albert Durer, one of the marks of its genuineness is the way that
the great artist's initials A. D. are pencilled in on the
embroidery of the lady's bodice.  And you will note in this
gentlewoman's open dress also how J. B. is inextricably woven in.
"She wears a great purse by her side also, and her hand is often in
her purse fingering her money.  Yea, this is she that has bought
off many a man from a pilgrim's life after he had fairly begun it.
She is a bold and an impudent slut also, for she will talk with any
man.  If there be one cunning to make money in any place, she will
speak well of him from house to house . . . She has given it out in
some places also that she is a goddess, and therefore some do
actually worship her . . . She has her times and open places of
cheating, and she will say and avow it that none can show a good
comparable to hers.  And thus she has brought many to the halter,
and ten thousand times more to hell.  None can tell of the mischief
that she does.  She makes variance betwixt rulers and subjects,
betwixt parents and children, 'twixt neighbour and neighbour,
'twixt a man and his wife, 'twixt a man and himself, 'twixt the
flesh and the heart."  And so on in the great original.  "Had she
stood by all this while," said Standfast, whose eyes were still
full of her, "you could not have set Madam Bubble more amply before
me, nor have better described her features."  "He that drew her
picture was a good limner," said Mr. Honest, "and he that so wrote
of her said true".

1.  "I am the mistress of this world," says Madam Bubble.  And
though all the time she is a bold and impudent slut, yet it is the
simple truth that she does sit as a queen over this world and over
the men of this world.  For Madam Bubble has a royal family like
all other sovereigns.  She has a court of her own, too, with its
ball-room presentations and its birthday honours.  She has a
cabinet council also, and a bar and a bench with their pleadings
and their decisions.  Far more than all that, she has a church
which she has established and of which she is the head; and a faith
also of which she is the defender.  She has a standing army also
for the extension and the protection of her dominions.  She levies
taxes, too, and sends out ambassadors, and makes treaties, and
forms offensive and defensive alliances.  But what a bubble all
this World is to him whose eyes have at last been opened to see the
hollowness and the heartlessness of it all!  For all its pursuits
and all its possessions, from a child's rattle to a king's sceptre,
all is one great bubble.  Wealth, fame, place, power; art, science,
letters; politics, churches, sacraments, and scriptures--all are so
many bubbles in Madam Bubble's World.  This wicked enchantress, if
she does not find all these things bubbles already, by one touch of
her evil wand she makes them so.  She turns gold into dross, God
into an idle name, and His Word into words only; unless when in her
malice she turns it into a fruitful ground of debate and
contention; a ground of malice and hatred and ill-will.  Vanity of
vanities; all is vanity and vexation of spirit.  Still, she sits a
queen and a goddess to a great multitude:  to all men, to begin
with.  And, like a goddess, she sheds abroad her spirit in her
people's hearts and lifts up upon them for a time the light of her
countenance.

2.  "I am the mistress of the world," she says, "and men are made
happy by me."--I would like to see one of them.  I have seen many
men to whom Madam Bubble had said that if they would be ruled by
her she would make them great and happy.  But though I have seen
not a few who have believed her and let themselves be ruled by her,
I have never yet seen one happy man among them.--The truth is,
Madam Bubble is not able to make men happy even if she wished to do
it.  She is not happy herself, and she cannot dispense to others
what she does not possess.  And, yet, such are her sorceries that,
while her old dupes die in thousands every day, new dupes are born
to her every day in still greater numbers.  New dupes who run to
the same excess of folly with her that their fathers ran; new dupes
led in the same mad dance after Madam Bubble and her three
daughters.  But, always, and to all men, what a bubble both the
mother and all her daughters are!  How they all make promises like
their lying mother, and how, like her, they all lead men, if not to
the halter and to hell, as Greatheart said, yet to a life of vanity
and to a death of disappointment and despair!  What bubbles of
empty hopes both she and her three children blow up in the brains
of men!  What pictures of untold happiness they paint in the
imaginations of men!  What pleasures, what successes in life, what
honours and what rewards she pledges herself to see bestowed!  "She
has her times and open places of cheating," said one who knew her
and all her ways well.  And when men and women are still young and
inexperienced, that is one of her great cheating times.  At some
seasons of the year, and in some waters, to the fisherman's
surprise and confusion, the fish will sometimes take his bare hook;
a bit of a red rag is a deadly bait.  And Madam Bubble's poorest
and most perfunctory busking is quite enough for the foolish fish
she angles for.  And not in our salad days only, when we are still
green in judgment, but even to grey hairs, this wicked witch
continues to entrap us to our ruin.  Love, in all its phases and in
all its mixtures, first deludes the very young; and then place, and
power, and fame, and money are the bait she busks for the middle-
aged and the old; and always with the same bubble end.  The whole
truth is that without God, the living and ever-present God, in all
ages of it and in all parts and experiences of it, our human life
is one huge bubble.  A far-shining, high-soaring bubble; but sooner
or later seen and tasted to be a bubble--a deceit-filled, poison-
filled bubble.--Happy by her!  All men happy by her!  The impudent
slut!

3.  Another thing about this slut is this, that "she will talk with
any man."  She makes up to us and makes eyes at us just as if we
were free to accept and return her three offers.  And still she
talks to us and offers us the same things she offered to Standfast
till, to escape her and her offers, he betook himself to his knees.
Nay, truth to tell, after she had deceived us and ensnared us till
we lay in her net cursing both her and ourselves, so bold and so
impudent and so persistent is this temptress slut, and such fools
and idiots are we, that we soon lay our eyes on her painted beauty
again and our heads in her loathsome lap; our heads on that block
over which the axe hangs by an angry hair.  "She will talk with any
man."  No doubt; but, then, it takes two to make a talk, and the
sad thing is that there are few men among us so wise, so steadfast,
and so experienced in her ways that they will not on occasion let
Madam Bubble talk her talk to them, and talk back again to her.
The oldest saint, the oftenest sold and most dearly redeemed
sinner, needs to suspect himself to the end, till he is clear out
of Madam Bubble's enchanted ground and for ever over that river of
deliverance which shall sweep Madam Bubble and all her daughters
into the dead sea for ever.


"The grey-haired saint may fail at last,
The surest guide a wanderer prove;
Death only binds us fast
To the bright shore of love."


4.  "She highly commends the rich," the guide goes on about Madam
Bubble, "and if there be one cunning to get money in any place she
will speak well of him from house to house."  "The world," says
Faber, "is not altogether matter, nor yet altogether spirit.  It is
not man only, nor Satan only, nor is it exactly sin.  It is an
infection, an inspiration, an atmosphere, a life, a colouring
matter, a pageantry, a fashion, a taste, a witchery.  None of all
these names suit it, and all of them suit it.  Meanwhile its power
over the human creation is terrific, its presence ubiquitous, its
deceitfulness incredible.  It can find a home under every heart
beneath the poles.  It is wider than the catholic church, and it is
masterful, lawless, and intrusive within it.  We are all living in
it, breathing it, acting under its influence, being cheated by its
appearances, and unwarily admitting its principles."  Let young
ministers who wish to preach to their people on the World--after
studying what the Preacher, and the Saviour, and John, and John
Bunyan say about the World,--still read Faber's powerful chapter in
his Creator and Creature.  Yes; Madam Bubble finds a home for
herself in every heart beneath the poles.  The truth is Madam
Bubble has no home, as she has no existence, but in human hearts.
And all that Solomon, and our Saviour, and John, and John Bunyan,
and Frederick Faber say about the world and about Madam Bubble they
really say about the heart of man.  It is we, you and I, my
brethren, who so highly commend the rich.  It is we ourselves here
who speak well from house to house of him whose father or whose
self has been cunning to get money.  We either speak well or ill of
them.  We either are sick with envy at them, or we fawn upon them
and fall down before them.  How men rise in our esteem in the
degree that their money increases!  With what reverence and holy
awe we look up at them as if they were gods and the sons of gods!
They become more than mortal men to our reverent imaginations.  How
happy, how all but blessed they must be! we say to ourselves.
Within those park gates, under those high towers, in that silver-
mounted carriage, surrounded with all those liveried servants, and
loved and honoured by all those arriving and leaving guests--what
happiness that rich man must have!  We are either eaten up of lean-
eyed envy of this and that rich man, or we positively worship them
as other men worship God and His saints.  Yes; Madam Bubble is our
very mother.  She conceived us and she suckled us.  We were brought
up in her nurture and admonition.  We learned her Catechism, and
her shrine is in our heart tonight.  Like her, if only a pilgrim is
poor, we scorn him.  We will not know him.  But if there be any
one, pilgrim or no, cunning to get money, we honour him, and we
claim him as our kindred and relation, our acquaintance and our
friend.  We will speak often of him as such from house to house.
Just see if we will not.  There is room in our hearts, Madam
Bubble, there is room in our hearts for thee!

5.  "She loves them most that think best of her."  But, surely,
surely, the guide goes quite too far in blaming and being hard upon
poor Madam Bubble for that?  For, to give her fair play, she is not
at all alone in that.  Is the guide himself wholly above that?  Do
we not all do that?  Is there one in ten, is there one in a
thousand, who hates and humiliates himself because his love of men
and women goes up or down just as they think of him?  Yes;
Greatheart is true to his great name in his whole portrait of Madam
Bubble also, and nowhere more true than in this present feature.
For when any man comes to have any true greatness in his heart--how
he despises and detests himself as he finds himself out in not only
claiming kindred and acquaintance with the rich and despising and
denying the poor; but, still more, in loving or hating other men
just as they love or hate him!  The world loves her own.  Yes; but
he who has been taken out of the world, and who has had the world
taken out of him, he loves--he strives to love, he goes to his
knees every day he lives to love--those who not only do not think
well of him, but who both think ill of him and speak ill of him.
"Humility," says William Law, "does not consist in having a worse
opinion of ourselves than we deserve, or in abasing ourselves lower
than we really are.  But as all virtue is founded in truth, so
humility is founded in a true and just sense of our weakness,
misery, and sin.  He who rightly feels and lives in this sense of
his condition lives in humility.  And, it may be added, when our
hearts are wholly clothed with humility we shall be prompt to
approve the judgment and to endorse the sentence of those who think
and speak the least good of us and the most evil.

6.  "'Twas she," so the guide at last wound up, "that set Absalom
against his father, and Jeroboam against his master.  'Twas she
that persuaded Judas to sell his Lord, and that prevailed with
Demas to forsake the godly pilgrim's life.  None can tell all the
mischief that Madam Bubble does.  She makes variance between rulers
and subjects, between parents and children, 'twixt neighbour and
neighbour, 'twixt a man and his wife, 'twixt a man and himself,
'twixt the flesh and the heart."  Now, I shall leave that last
indictment and its lessons and its applications to yourselves, my
brethren.  You will get far more good out of this accumulated count
against Madam Bubble if you explain it, and open it up, and prove
it, and illustrate it to yourselves.  Explain, then, in what way
this sorceress set Absalom against his father and Jeroboam against
his master.  Point out in what way she makes variance between a
ruler and his subjects, and give illustrations.  Put your finger on
a parent and on a child between whom there is variance at this
moment on her account.  And, if you are that parent or that child,
what have you done to remove that variance?  Name two neighbours
that to your knowledge Madam Bubble has come between; and say what
you have done to be a peacemaker there.  Set down what you would
say to a man and his wife so as to put them on their guard against
Madam Bubble ever coming in between them.  And, last and best of
all, point out to yourself at what times and in what ways this
wicked witch tries to make variance between God's Holy Spirit
striving within you and your own evil heart still strong within
you.  When you are weary and sleepy and hungry as a howlet, and,
Madam Bubble and her three daughters make a ring round you, what do
you do?  Do you ever take to your knees?  Really and honestly, do
you?  When you find yourself out looking with holy fear on a rich
and lofty relation, and with insufferable contempt on a poor and
intrusive relation, by what name do you call yourself?  Write it
down.  And when she would fain put variance between you and those
who do not think well of you, what steps do you take to foil her?
Where and how do you get strength at that supreme moment to think
of others as you would have them think of you?  "Oh," said
Standfast, "what a mercy it is that I did resist her! for to what
might she not have drawn me?"



GAIUS



"Gaius, mine host."--Paul.

Goodman Gaius was the head of a hostel that stood on the side of
the highway well on to the Celestial City.  The hostess of the
hostel was no more, and the old hostel-keeper did all her once
well-done work and his own proper work into the bargain.  Every day
he inspected the whole house with his own eyes, down even to the
kitchen and the scullery.  The good woman had left our host an only
daughter; but, "Keep her as much out of sight as is possible," she
said, and so fell asleep.  And Gaius remembered his wife's last
testament every day, till none of the hostel customers knew that
there was so much as a young hostess in all the house.  "Yes,
gentlemen," replied the old innkeeper.  "Yes, come in.  It is late,
but I take you for true men, for you must know that my house is
kept open only for such."  So he took the large pilgrim party to
their several apartments with his own eyes, and then set about a
supper for those so late arrivals.  Stamping with his foot, he
brought up the cook with the euphonious and eupeptic name, and that
quick-witted domestic soon had a supper on the table that would
have made a full man's mouth water.  "The sight of all this," said
Matthew, as the under-cook laid the cloth and the trenchers, and
set the salt and the bread in order--"the sight of this cloth and
of this forerunner of a supper begetteth in me a greater appetite
to my food than I thought I had before."  So supper came up; and
first a heave-shoulder and a wave-breast were set on the table
before them, in order to show that they must begin their meal with
prayer and praise to God.  These two dishes were very fresh and
good, and all the travellers did eat heartily well thereof.  The
next was a bottle of wine red as blood.  So Gaius said to them,
"Drink freely; this is the juice of the true vine that makes glad
the heart of God and man."  And they did drink and were very merry.
The next was a dish of milk well crumbed.  At the sight of which
Gaius said, "Let the boys have that, that they may grow thereby."
And so on, dish after dish, till the nuts came with the recitations
and the riddles and the saws and the stories over the nuts.  Thus
the happy party sat talking till the break of day.

1.  Now, it is natural to remark that the first thing about a host
is his hospitality.  And that, too, whether our host is but the
head of a hostel like Goodman Gaius, or the head of a well-
appointed private house like Gaius's neighbour, Mr. Mnason.  The
first and the last thing about a host is his hospitality.  "Say
little and do much" is the example and the injunction to all our
housekeepers that Rabban Shammai draws out of the eighteenth of
Genesis.  "Be like your father Abraham," he says, "on the plains of
Mamre, who only promised bread and water, but straightway set Sarah
to knead three measures of her finest meal, while he ran to the
herd and fetched a calf tender and good, and stood by the three men
while they did eat butter and milk under the tree.  Make thy Thorah
an ordinance:  say little and do much:  and receive every man with
a pleasant expression of countenance."  Now, this was exactly what
Gaius our goodman did that night, with one exception, which we
shall be constrained to attend to afterwards.  "It is late," he
said, "so we cannot conveniently go out to seek food; but such as
we have you shall be welcome to, if that will content."  At the
same time Taste-that-which-is-good soon had a supper sent up to the
table fit for a prince:  a supper of six courses at that time in
the morning, so that the sun was already in the sky when Old Honest
closed his casement.

"Dining in company is a divine institution," says Mr. Edward White,
in his delightful Minor Moralities of Life.  "Let Soyer's art be
honoured among all men," he goes on.  "Cookery distinguishes
mankind from the beasts that perish.  Happy is the woman whose
daily table is the result of forethought.  Her husband shall rise
up and call her blessed.  It is piteous when the culinary art is
neglected in our young women's education.  Let them, as St. Peter
says, imitate Sarah.  Let them see how that venerable princess went
quickly to her kneading-trough and oven and prepared an extempore
collation of cakes and pilau for the angels.  How few ladies,
whether Gentiles or Jewesses, could do the like in the present
day!"

2.  The wistful and punctilious attention that Goodman Gaius paid
to each individual guest of his was a fine feature in his
munificent hospitality.  He made every one who crossed his
doorstep, down even to Mr. Fearing, feel at once at home, such was
his exquisite as well as his munificent hospitality.  "Come, sir,"
he said, clapping that white-faced and trembling pilgrim on the
shoulder, "come, sir, be of good cheer, you are welcome to me and
to my house; and what thou hast a mind to, that call for freely:
for what thou wouldst have my servants will do for thee, and they
will do it for thee with a ready mind."  All the same, for a long
time Mr. Fearing was mortally afraid of the servants.  He would as
soon have thought of stamping his foot for a duchess to come up as
for any of Gaius's serving-maids.  He was afraid to make any noise
in his room lest all the house should hear it.  He was afraid to
touch anything in the room lest it should fall and be broken.  We
ourselves, with all our assumed ease and elaborate abandon, are
often afraid to ring our bell even in an inn.  Mr. Fearing would as
soon have pulled the tail of a rattlesnake.  But before their
sojourn was over, the Guide was amazed at Mr. Fearing, for that
hare-hearted pilgrim would be doing things in the house that he
himself would scarcely do who had been in the house a thousand
times.  It was Gaius's exuberant heartiness that had demoralised
Mr. Fearing and made him almost too forward even for a wayside inn.
In little things also Gaius, mine host, showed his sensitive and
solicitous hospitality.  We all know housekeepers, not to say
innkeepers, and not otherwise ungenerous housekeepers either who
will grudge us a sixpennyworth of sticks and coals in a cold night,
and that, too, in a room furnished to overflowing by Morton
Brothers or the Messrs. Maple.  We take a candlestick and a dozen
candles with us in the boot of the carriage when we wish to read or
write late into the night in that great house.  Another
housekeeper, who would give you her only daughter with her wealthy
dowry, will sometimes be seen by all in her house to grudge you a
fresh cup of afternoon tea when you drop in to see her and her
daughter.  She says to herself that it is to spare the servants the
stairs; but, all the time, under the stairs, the servants are
blushing for the sometimes unaccountable stinginess of their
unusually munificent mistress.  I shall give you "line upon line,
precept upon precept, here a little and there a little" of
Aristotle upon munificence in little things till you come up to his
pagan standard.  "There is a real greatness," he says, "even in the
way that some men will buy a toy to a child.  Even in the smallest
matters the munificent man will act munificently!"  As Gaius, mine
host, munificently did.

3.  Speaking of children, what a night of entertainment good old
Gaius gave the children of the pilgrim party!  "Let the boys have
the crumbed milk," he gave orders.  "Butter and honey shall they
eat," he exclaimed over them as that brimming dish came up.  "This
was our Lord's dish when He was a child," he said to the mother of
the boys, "that He might know to refuse the evil and to choose the
good."  Then they brought up a dish of apples, and they were very
good-tasted fruit.  Then said Matthew, "May we eat apples, since
they were such by and with which the serpent beguiled our first
mother?"  Then said Gaius,


"Apples were they by which we were beguiled,
Yet sin, not apples, hath our souls defiled.
Apples forbid, if eat, corrupt the blood.
To eat such, when commanded, does us good.
Drink of His flagons then, thou Church, His Dove,
And eat His apples who are sick of love."


Then said Matthew, "I make the scruple because I awhile since was
sick with eating of fruit."  "Forbidden fruit," said the host,
"will make you sick, but not what our Lord hath tolerated."  While
they were thus talking they were presented with another dish, and
it was a dish of nuts.  Then said some at the table, "Nuts spoil
tender teeth, especially the teeth of children," which when Gaius
heard, he said,


"Hard texts are nuts (I will not call them cheaters)
Whose shells do keep their kernels from the eaters;
Ope then the shells and you shall have the meat;
They here are brought for you to crack and eat."


Then Samuel whispered to his mother and said, "Mother, this is a
very good man's house; let us stay here a good while before we go
any farther."  The which Gaius the host overhearing, said, "With a
very good will, my child."

4.  Widower as old Gaius was, and never for a single hour forgot
that he was, there was a certain sweet and stately gallantry
awakened in his withered old heart at the sight of Christiana and
Mercy, and especially at the sight of Matthew and Mercy when they
were seen together.  He seems to have fallen almost in love with
that aged matron, as he called her, and the days of his youth came
back to him as he studied the young damsel, who was to her as a
daughter.  And this set the loquacious old inn-keeper upon that
famous oration about women which every man who has a mother, or a
wife, or a sister, or a daughter has by heart.  And from that he
went on to discourse on the great advantages of an early marriage.
He was not the man, nor was he speaking to a mother who was the
woman, ever to become a vulgar and coarse-minded match-maker; at
the same time, he liked to see Matthew and Mercy sent out on a
message together, leaving it to nature and to grace to do the rest.
The pros and cons of early marriage were often up at his hearty
table, but he always debated, and Gaius was a great debater, that
true hospitality largely consisted in throwing open the family
circle to let young people get well acquainted with one another in
its peace and sweetness.  And Gaius both practised what he
preached, and at the same time endorsed his watchful wife's last
testament, when he gave his daughter Phebe to James, Christiana's
second son, and thus was left alone, poor old Gaius, when the happy
honeymoon party started upward from his hostel door.

5.  Their next host was one Mr. Mnason, a Cyprusian by nation, and
an old disciple.  "How far have you come to-day?" he asked.  "From
the house of Gaius our friend," they said.  "I promise you," said
he, "you have gone a good stitch; you may well be weary; sit down."
So they sat down.  "Our great want a while since," said Old Honest,
"was harbour and good company, and now I hope we have both."  "For
harbour," said the host, "you see what it is, but for good company
that will appear in the trial."  After they were a little rested
Old Honest again asked his host if there were any store of good
people in that town; and, "How," he said, "shall we do to see some
of them?  For the sight of good men to them that are going on
pilgrimage is like to the appearing of the moon and stars to them
that are sailing upon the seas."  Then Mr. Mnason stamped with his
foot and his daughter Grace came up, when he sent her out for five
of his friends in the town, saying that he had a guest or two in
his house at present to whom he would like to introduce them.

Now, this is another of the good qualities of a good host, to know
the best and the most suitable people in the town, and to be on
such terms with them that on short notice they will step across to
help to entertain such travellers as had come to Mr. Mnason's
table.  And it is an excellent thing to be sure that when we are so
invited we shall not only get a good dinner, but also, as good
"kitchen" with our dinner, good company and good conversation.  It
is nothing short of a fine art to gather together and to seat
suitably beside one another good and suitable people as Mr. and
Miss Mnason did in their hospitable house that afternoon.  And
then, as to the talk:  let the host and the hostess introduce the
guests, and then let the guests introduce their own topics.  And as
far as possible, in a city and a day like this, let our topics be
books rather than people.  And let the books be the books that the
guests have read rather than those that the host and the hostess
have read.  Books are a fine subject for a talk at table.  Only,
let great readers order their learned and literary talk so as not
to lead the less learned into temptation.  There is no finer
exercise of fine feeling than to be able to carry on a conversation
about matters that other people present are ignorant of, and at the
same time to interest them, to set them at ease, and to make them
forget both you and themselves.  I had a letter the other day from
an English Church clergyman, in which he tells me that his bishop
is coming this month to his vicarage for a kind of visitation and
retreat, and that they are to have William Law's Characters and
Characteristics read aloud to them when the bishop and the
assembled clergy are at their meals.  For my part, I would rather
hear a good all-round talk on that book by the bishop and his
clergy after they had all read the book over and over again at
home.  But such readings at assembled meals have all along been a
feature of the best fraternal life in the Church of England and in
some of the sister churches.

6.  Now, after dining and supping repeatedly with garrulous old
Gaius, and with the all-but-silent Mr. Mnason, I have come home
ruminating again and again on this--that a good host, the best
host, lets his guests talk while he attends to the table.  If the
truth may even be whispered to one's-self about a table that one
has just left, Gaius did his best to spoil his good supper by his
own over-garrulity.  It was good talk that he entertained his
waiting guests with, but we may have too much of a good thing.  His
oration in praise of women was an excellent oration, had it been
delivered in another house than his own; and, say, when he was
asked to give the health of Christiana, or of Matthew the
bridegroom and Mercy the bride, it would then have been perfect;
but not in his own house, and not when his guests were waiting for
their supper.  On the other hand, you should have seen that perfect
gentleman, Mr. Mnason.  For that true old Christian and old English
gentleman never once opened his mouth after he had set his guests
a-talking.  He was too busy watching when any man's dish was again
empty.  He was too much delighted to see that every one of his
guests was having his punctual share of the supper, and at the same
time his full share of the talk.  Mr. Fearing's small voice was far
more pleasant to Mr. Mnason than his own voice was in his own best
story.  As I opened my own door the other night after supping with
Mr. and Miss Mnason, I said to myself--One thing I have again seen
and learned to-night, and that is, that a host, and still more a
hostess, should talk less at their own table than their most
silent, most bashful, and most backward guest.  "Make this an
ordinance for thee," said Rabban Shammai to his sons in the law;
"receive all thy guests with a pleasant expression of countenance,
and then say little and do much."



CHRISTIAN



"The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch."--Luke.

"Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian."--King Agrippa.

"Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from
iniquity."--Paul.

All the other personages in the Pilgrim's Progress come and go;
they all ascend the stage for a longer or shorter time, and then
pass off the stage and so pass out of our sight; but Christian in
the First Part, and Christiana in the Second Part, are never for a
single moment out of our sight.  And, accordingly, we have had
repeated occasion and opportunity to learn many excellent lessons
from the chief pilgrim's upward walk and heavenly conversation.
But so full and so rich are his life and his character, that some
very important things still remain to be collected before we
finally close his history.  "Gather up the fragments that nothing
be lost," said our Lord, after His miraculous meal of multiplied
loaves and fishes with His disciples.  And in like manner I shall
now proceed to gather up some of the remaining fragments of
Christian's life and character and experience.  And I shall collect
these fragments into the three baskets of his book, his burden, and
his sealed roll and certificate.

1.  And first, a few things as to his book.  "As I slept I dreamed,
and behold I saw a man clothed in rags standing in a certain place,
with his face from his own house, a book in his hand, and a great
burden upon his back.  I looked and saw him open the book and read
therein; and as he read he wept and trembled; and not being able
longer to contain he broke out with a lamentable cry, saying, What
shall I do?"  We hear a great deal in these advertising days, and
not one word too much, about the books that have influenced and
gone largely to the making of our great men; but Graceless, like
John Bunyan, his biographer, was a man of but one book.  But, then,
that book was the most influential of all books; it was the Book of
books; it was God's very own and peculiar Book.  And those of us
who, like this man, have passed out of a graceless into a gracious
state will for ever remember how that same Book at that time
influenced us till it made us what we are and shall yet be.  We
read many other good books at that epoch in our life, but it was
the pure Bible that we read and prayed over out of sight the most.
We needed no commentators or exegetes on our simple Bible in those
days.  The great texts stood out to our eyes in those days as if
they had been written with a sunbeam; while all other books (and we
read nothing but the best books in those days) looked like twilight
and rushlight beside our Bible.  In those immediate, direct, and
intense days we would have satisfied Wordsworth and Matthew Arnold
themselves in the way we read our Bible with our eye never off the
object.  The Four Last Things were ever before us--death and
judgment, heaven and hell.  "O my dear wife," said Graceless, "and
you the children of my bowels, I your dear friend am in myself
undone by reason of a burden that lieth hard upon me; moreover, I
am for certain informed that this our city will be burned with fire
from heaven, in which fearful overthrow both myself, with thee my
wife, and you my sweet babes, shall miserably come to ruin, except
(the which yet I see not) some way of escape can be found whereby
we may be delivered."  He would walk also solitarily in the fields,
sometimes reading and sometimes praying; and thus for some days he
spent his time.  Graceless at that time and at that stage would
have satisfied the exigent author of the Practical Treatise upon
Christian Perfection where he says that "we are too apt also to
think that we have sufficiently read a book when we have so read it
as to know what it contains.  This reading may be quite sufficient
as to many books; but as to the Bible we are not to think that we
have read it enough because we have often read and heard what it
teaches.  We must read our Bible, not to know what it contains, but
to fill our hearts with the spirit of it."  And, again, and on this
same point, "There is this unerring key to the right use of the
Bible.  The Bible has only one intent, and that is to make a man
know, resist, and abhor the working of his fallen earthly nature,
and to turn the faith, hope, and longing desire of his heart to
God; and therefore we are only to read our Bibles with this view
and to learn this one lesson from it . . . The critic looks into
his books to see how Latin and Greek authors have used the words
"stranger" and "pilgrim," but the Christian, who knows that man
lives in labour and toil, in sickness and pain, in hunger and
thirst, in heat and cold among the beasts of the field, where evil
spirits like roaring lions seek to devour him--he only knows in
what truth and reality man is a poor stranger and a distressed
pilgrim upon the earth."  John Bunyan read neither Plato nor
Aristotle, but he read David and Paul till he was the chief of
sinners, and till he was first the Graceless and then the Christian
of his own next-to-the-Bible book.

2.  In the second place, and as to his burden.  We are supplied
with no particulars as to the first beginnings, the gradual make-
up, and at last the terrible size of Christian's burden.  What this
pilgrim's youthful life must have been in such a city as his native
city was, and while he was still a young man of such a name and
such a character in such a city, we are left to ourselves to think
and consider.  Graceless was his name by nature, and his life was
as his name and his nature were.  Still, as I have said, we have no
detailed and particular account of his early life when his burden
was still day and night in the making up.  How long into your life
were you graceless, my brother?  And what kind of life did you lead
day and night before you were persuaded or alarmed, as the case may
have been with you, into being a Christian?  What burdens do you
carry on your broken back to this day that were made up in the
daylight or in the darkness by your own hands in your early days?
Were you early or were you too late in your conversion?  Or are you
truly converted to God and to salvation even yet?  And are you at
this moment still binding a burden on your back that you shall
never lay down on this side your grave--it may be, not on this side
your burning bed in hell?  Ask yourselves all that before God and
before your own conscience, and make yourselves absolutely sure
that God at any rate is not mocked; and, therefore that you, too,
shall in the end reap exactly as you from the beginning have sown.
"How camest thou by thy burden at first?" asked Mr. Worldly-Wiseman
at the trembling pilgrim.  "By reading this book in my hand," he
answered.  And, in the long run, it is always the Bible that best
creates a sinner's burden, binds it on his back, and makes it so
terribly heavy to bear.  Fear of death and judgment will sometimes
make up and bind on a sinner's burden; and sometimes the fear of
man's judgment on this side of death will do it.  Fear of being
found out in some cases will make a man's secret sin far too heavy
for him to bear.  The throne of public opinion is not a very white
throne; at the same time, it is a coarse forecast and a rough
foretaste of the last judgment; and the fear of it not seldom makes
a man's burden simply intolerable to him.  Sometimes a great
sinner's burden leads him to flight and outlawry; sometimes to
madness and self-murder; and sometimes, by the timeous and
sufficient grace of God, to the way of escape that our pilgrim
took.  Tenderness of conscience, also, simple softness of heart and
conscience, will sometimes make a terrible burden out of what other
men would call a very light matter.  Bind a burden on that iron
pillar standing there, and it will feel nothing and say nothing.
But, bind the same burden on that man in whose seat that dead
pillar takes up a sitter's room, and he will make all that are in
the house hear his sighs and his groans.  And lay an act of sin--an
evil word or evil work or evil thought--on one man among us, and he
will walk about the streets with as erect a head and as smiling a
countenance and as light a step as if he were an innocent child;
while, lay half as much on his neighbour, and it will so bruise him
to the earth that all men will take knowledge of him that he is a
miserable man.  Our Lord could no doubt have carried His cross from
the hall of judgment to the hill-top without help had His back not
been wet with blood.  What with a whole and an unwealed body, a
well-rested and well-nourished body, He could easily have carried,
with His broken body and broken heart He quite sank under.  And so
it is with His people.  One of His heart-broken, heart-bleeding
people will sink down to death and hell under a burden of sin and
corruption that another of them will scarcely feel or know or
believe that it is there.  Some sins again in themselves, and by
reason of several aggravations, are far more heavy to bear than
others, and by some sinners than others.  I was reading Bishop
Andrewes to myself last night and came upon this pertinent passage.
"Sin:  its measure, its harm, its scandal.  Its quality:  how
often--how long.  The person by whom:  his age, condition, state,
enlightenment.  Its manner, motive, time, and place.  The folly of
it, the ingratitude of it, the hardness of it, the presumptuousness
of it.  By heart, by mouth, by deed.  Against God, my neighbours,
my own body.  By knowledge, by ignorance.  Willingly and
unwillingly.  Of old and of late.  In boyhood and youth, in mature
and old age.  Things done once, repeated often, hidden and open.
Things done in anger, and from the lust of the flesh and of the
world.  Before and after my call.  Asleep by night and awake by
day.  Things remembered and things forgotten.  Through the fiery
darts of the enemy, through the unclean desires of the flesh--I
have sinned against Thee.  Have mercy on me, O God, and forgive
me!"  That is the way some men's burdens are made up to such
gigantic proportions and then bound on by such acute cords.  That
is the way that Lancelot Andrewes and John Bunyan walked solitarily
in the fields, sometimes reading and sometimes praying, till the
one of them put himself into his immortal Devotions, and the other
into his immortal Grace Abounding and Pilgrim's Progress.

"Then I saw in my dream that Christian asked the Gate-keeper
further if he could not help him off with his burden that was upon
his back, for as yet he had not got rid of it, nor could he by any
means get it off without help.  He told him, "As to thy burden, be
content to bear it until thou comest to the place of deliverance,
for there it will fall from off thy back itself."  Now I saw in my
dream that the highway up which Christian was to go was fenced on
either side with a wall, and that wall is Salvation.  Up this way,
therefore, did burdened Christian run, but not without great
difficulty, because of the load on his back.  He ran thus till he
came to a place somewhat ascending, and upon that place stood a
cross, and a little below in the bottom a sepulchre.  So I saw in
my dream that just as Christian came up with the cross his burden
loosed from off his back, and began to tumble and so continued to
do till it came to the mouth of the sepulchre, where it fell in and
I saw it no more.  Then was Christian glad and lightsome, and said
with a merry heart, "He hath given me rest by His sorrow, and life
by His death!"


"Blest Cross! blest Sepulchre!  Blest rather be
The Man that there was put to shame for me."


But, then, how it could be that this so happy man was scarcely a
stone-cast past the cross when he had begun again to burden himself
with fresh sin, and thus to disinter all his former sin?  How a
true pilgrim comes to have so many burdens to bear, and that till
he ceases to be any longer a pilgrim,--a burden of guilt, a burden
of corruption, and a burden of bare creaturehood,--I must leave all
that, and all the questions connected with all that, for you all to
think out and work out for yourselves; and you will not say any
morning on this earth, like Mrs. Timorous, that you have little to
do.

3.  The third of the three Shining Ones who saluted Christian at
the cross set a mark on his forehead, and put a roll with a seal
set upon it into his hand.  A roll and a seal which he bid him look
on as he ran, and that he should give that roll in at the Celestial
Gate.  Bunyan does not in all places come up to his usual clearness
in what he says about the sealed roll.  We must believe that he
understood his own meaning and intention in all that he says, first
and last, about the roll, but he has not always made his meaning
clear, at least to one of his readers.  Theological students, and,
indeed, all thoughtful Christian men, are invited to read Dr.
Cunningham's powerful paper on Assurance in his Reformers.  The
whole literature of Assurance is there taken up and weighed and
sifted with all that great writer's incomparable learning and power
and judgment.  Our Larger Catechism, also, is excellent on this
subject; and this subject is a favourite commonplace with all our
best Calvinistic, Puritan, and Evangelical authors.  Let us take
two or three passages out of those authors just as a specimen, and
so close.

"Can true believers"--Larger Catechism, Question 80--"Can true
believers be infallibly assured that they are in an estate of
grace, and that they shall persevere therein to the end?  Answer:
Such as truly believe in Christ, and endeavour to walk in all good
conscience before Him may, without extraordinary revelation, by
faith grounded upon the truth of God's promise, and by the Spirit
enabling them to discern in themselves those graces to which the
promises of eternal life are made, and bearing witness with their
spirits that they are the children of God, they may be infallibly
assured that they are in the estate of grace, and shall persevere
therein unto salvation."  Question 81:  "Are all true believers at
all times assured of their present being in a state of grace, and
that they shall be saved?  Answer:  Assurance of grace and
salvation not being of the essence of faith, true believers may
wait long before they obtain it, and, after the enjoyment thereof,
may have it weakened and intermitted through manifold distempers,
sins, temptations, and desertions; yet are they never left without
such a presence and support of the Spirit of God as keeps them from
sinking into utter despair."  "A Christian's assurance," says
Fraser of Brea, "though it does not firstly flow from his holiness,
yet is ever after proportionable to his holy walking.  Faith is
kept in a pure conscience.  Sin is like a blot of ink fallen upon
our evidence.  This I found to be a truth."  "It was the speech of
one to me," says Thomas Shepard of New England, "next to the
donation of Christ, no mercy like this, to deny assurance long; and
why?  For if the Lord had not, I should have given way to a loose
heart and life.  And this is a rule I have long held--long denial
of assurance is like fire to burn out some sin and then the Lord
will speak peace."  "Serve your God day and night faithfully," says
Dr. Goodwin.  "Walk humbly; and there is a promise of the Holy
Ghost to come and fill your hearts with joy unspeakable and
glorious to rear you up to the day of redemption.  Sue this promise
out, wait for it, rest not in believing only, rest not in assurance
by graces only; there is a further assurance to be had."  "I would
not give a straw for that assurance," says John Newton, "which sin
will not damp.  If David had come from his adultery and still have
talked of his assurance, I should have despised his speech."  "When
we want the faith of assurance," says Matthew Henry, "let us live
by the faith of adherence."  And then the whole truth is in a
nutshell in Isaiah and in John:  "The effect of righteousness shall
be quietness and assurance for ever," and "My little children, let
us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth.
And hereby we shall know that we are of the truth, and so shall
assure our hearts before Him."



CHRISTIANA



"Honour widows that are widows indeed."--Paul.

We know next to nothing of Christiana till after she is a widow
indeed.  The names of her parents, and what kind of parents they
were, the schools and the boarding-schools to which they sent their
daughter, her school companions, the books she read, if she ever
read any books at all, the amusements she was indulged in and
indulged herself in--on all that her otherwise full and minute
biographer is wholly silent.  He does not go back beyond her
married life; he does not even go back to the beginning of that.
The only thing we are sure of about Christiana's early days is that
she was an utterly ungodly woman and that she married an utterly
ungodly man.  "Have you a family?  Are you a married man?" asked
Charity of Christian in the House Beautiful.  "I have a wife and
four small children," he replied.  "And why did you not bring them
along with you?"  Then Christian wept, and said:  "Oh, how
willingly would I have done it; but they were all utterly averse to
my going on pilgrimage."  "But you should have talked to them,"
said Charity, "and have endeavoured to have shown them the danger
of being behind."  "So I did," answered Christian.  "And did you
pray to God that He would bless your counsel to them?"  "Yes, and
with much affection; for you must think that my wife and poor
children were very dear unto me."  "But what could they say for
themselves why they came not?"  "Why, my wife was afraid of losing
the world, and my children were given over to the foolish delights
of youth; so what with one thing and what with another, they left
me to wander in this manner alone."

But what her husband's conversion, good example, and most earnest
entreaties could not all do for his worldly wife, that his sudden
death speedily did.  And thus it is that both Christiana's best
life, all our interest in her, and all our information about her,
dates, sad to say, not from her espousal, nor from her marriage
day, nor from any part of her married life, but from her husband's
death.  Her maidenhood has no interest for us; all our interest is
fixed on her widowhood.  This work of fiction now in our hands
begins where all other works of fiction end; for in the life of
religion, you must know, our best is always before us.  Well,
scarcely was her husband dead when Christiana began to accuse
herself of having killed him.  To take her own bitter words for it,
the most agonising and remorseful thoughts about her conduct to her
husband stung her heart like so many wasps.  Ah yes!  A wasp's
sting is but a blade of innocent grass compared with the thoughts
that have stung us all as we recalled what we said and did to those
who are now no more.  There are graves in the churchyard we dare
not go near.  "I have sinned away your father!" she cried, as she
threw herself on the earth at the feet of her astounded children.
"I have sinned away your father and he is gone!"  And yet there was
no mark of a bullet and no gash of a knife on his dead body, and no
chemistry could have extracted one grain of arsenic or of
strychnine out of his blood.  But there are many ways of taking a
man's life besides those of poison or a knife or a gunshot.
Constant fault-finding, constant correction and studied contempt
before strangers, total want of sympathy and encouragement, gloomy
looks, rough remarks, all blame and never a word of praise, things
like these between man and wife will kill as silently and as surely
as poison or suffocation.  Look at home, my brethren, and ask
yourselves what you will think of much of your present conduct when
it has borne its proper fruit.  "Upon this came into her mind by
swarms all her unkind, unnatural, and ungodly carriages to her dear
friend, which also clogged her conscience and did load her with
guilt.  It all returned upon her like a flash of lightning, and
rent the caul of her heart asunder."  "That which troubleth me
most," she would cry out, "is my churlish carriages to him when he
was under distress.  I am that woman," she would cry out and would
not be appeased--"I am that woman that was so hardhearted as to
slight my husband's troubles, and that left him to go on his
journey alone.  How like a churl I carried myself to him in all
that!  And so guilt took hold of my mind," she said to the
Interpreter, "and would have drawn me to the pond!"

A minister's widow once told me that she had gone home after
hearing a sermon of mine on the text, "What profit is there in my
blood?" and had destroyed a paper of poison she had purchased in
her despair on the previous Saturday night.  It was not a sermon
from her unconscious minister, but it was far better; it was a
conversation that Christiana held with her four boys that fairly
and for ever put all thought of the pond out of their mother's
remorseful mind.  "So Christiana," as we read in the opening of her
history--"so Christiana called her sons together and began thus to
address herself unto them:  My sons, I have, as you may perceive,
been of late under much exercise in my soul about the death of your
father.  My carriages to your father in his distress are a great
load on my conscience.  Come, my children, let us pack up and be
gone to the gate, that we may see your father and be with him,
according to the laws of that land."  I like that passage, I think,
the best in all Christiana's delightful history--that passage which
begins with these words:  "So she called her children together."
For when she called her children together she opened to them both
her heart and her conscience; and from that day there was but one
heart and one conscience in all that happy house.  I was walking
alone on a country road the other day, and as I was walking I was
thinking about my pastoral work and about my people and their
children, when all at once I met one of my people.  My second
sentence to him was:  "This very moment I was thinking about your
sons.  How are they getting on?"  He quite well understood me.  He
knew that I was not indifferent as to how they were getting on in
business, but he knew that I was alluding more to the life of
godliness and virtue in their hearts and in their characters.  "O
sir," he said, "you may give your sons the skin off your back, but
they will not give you their confidence!"  So had it been with
Christian and his sons.  He had never managed, even in his
religion, to get into the confidence of his sons; but when their
mother took them into her agonised confidence, from that day she
was in all their confidences, good and bad.  You who are in your
children's confidences will pray in secret for my lonely friend
with the skin off his back, will you not? that he may soon be able
to call his sons together so as to start together on a new life of
family love, and family trust, and family religion.  That was a
fine sight.  Who will make a picture of it?  This widow indeed at
the head of her family council-table, and Matthew at the foot, and
James and Joseph and Samuel all in their places.  "Come, my
children, let us pack up that we may see your father!"  Then did
her children burst into tears for joy that the heart of their
mother was so inclined.

From that first family council let us pass on to Christiana's last
interview with her family and her other friends.  Her biographer
introduces her triumphant translation with this happy comment on
the margin:  "How welcome is death to them that have nothing to do
but die!"  Well, that was exactly Christiana's case.  She had so
packed up at the beginning of her journey; she had so got and had
so kept the confidences of all her sons; she had seen them all so
married in the Lord, and thus so settled in a life of godliness and
virtue; she had, in short, lived the life of a widow indeed, till,
when the post came for her, she had nothing left to do but just to
rise up and follow him.  His token to her was an arrow with a point
sharpened with love, let easily into her heart, which by degrees
wrought so effectually with her that at the time appointed she must
be gone.  We have read of arrows of death sharpened sometimes with
steel and sometimes with poison; but this arrow, shot from heaven,
was sharpened to a point with love.  Indeed, that arrow, or the
very fellow of it, had been shot into Christiana's heart long ago
when she stood at that spot somewhat ascending where was a cross
and a sepulchre; and, especially, ever since the close of
Greatheart's great discourse on pardon by deed.  For the hearing of
that famous discourse had made her exclaim:  "Oh!  Thou loving One,
it makes my heart bleed to think that Thou shouldest bleed for me!
Oh!  Thou blessed One, Thou deservest to have me, for Thou hast
bought me!  Thou deservest to have me all, for Thou hast paid for
me ten thousand times more than I am worth!"  Now it was with all
that love working effectually in her heart that Christiana called
for her children to give them her blessing.  And what a comfort it
was to her to see them all around her with the mark of the kingdom
on their foreheads, and with their garments white.  "My sons and my
daughters," she said, "be you all ready against the time His post
calls for you."  Then she called for Mr. Valiant-for-truth, and
entreated him to have an eye on her children, and to speak
comfortably to them if at any time he saw them faint.  And then she
gave Mr. Standfast her ring.  "Behold," she said, as Mr. Honest
came in--"Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!"  Then
Mr. Ready-to-halt came in, and then Mr. Despondency and his
daughter Much-afraid, and then Mr. Feeble-mind.  Now the day drew
on that Christiana must be gone.  So the road was full of people to
see her take her journey.  But, behold! all the banks beyond the
river were full of horses and chariots which were come down from
above to accompany her to the City gates, so she came forth and
entered the river with a beckon of farewell to those that followed
her to the riverside.  The last word she was heard to say here was,
"I come, Lord, to be with Thee, and to bless Thee."

But with all this, you must not suppose that this good woman, this
mother in Israel, had forgotten her grandchildren.  She would
sooner have forgotten her own children.  But she was too good a
woman to forget either.  For long ago, away back at the river on
this side the Delectable Mountains, she had said to her four
daughters--I must tell you exactly what she has said:  "Here," she
said, "in this meadow there are cotes and folds for sheep, and an
house is built here also for the nourishing and bringing up of
those lambs, even the babes of those women that go on pilgrimage.
Also there is One here who can have compassion and that can gather
these lambs with His arm and carry them in His bosom.  This Man,
she said, will house and harbour and succour the little ones, so
that none of them shall be lacking in time to come.  This Man, if
any of them go astray or be lost, He will bring them again, He will
bind up that which was broken, and will strengthen them that are
sick.  So they were content to commit their little ones to that
Man, and all this was to be at the charge of the King, and so it
was as a hospital to young children and orphans."

And now I shall sum up my chief impressions of Christiana under the
three heads of her mind, her heart, and her widowhood indeed.

1.  The mother of Christian's four sons was a woman of real mind,
as so many of the maidens, and wives, and widows of Puritan England
and Covenanting Scotland were.  You gradually gather that
impression just from being beside her as the journey goes on.  She
does not speak much; but, then, there is always something
individual, remarkable, and memorable in what she says.  I have a
notion of my own that Christiana must have been a reader of that
princely Puritan, John Milton.  And if that was so, that of itself
would be certificate enough as to her possession of mind.  There is
always a dignity and a strength about her utterances that make us
feel sure that she had always had a mind far above her neighbours,
Mrs. Bat's-eyes, Mrs. Light-mind, and Mrs. Know-nothing.  The first
time she opens her mouth in our hearing she lets fall an expression
that Milton had just made famous in his Samson -


"Ease to the body some, none to the mind
From restless thoughts, that like a deadly swarm
Of hornets armed no sooner found alone,
But rush upon me thronging, and present
Times past, what once I was, and what am now."


Nor can I leave this point without asserting it to you that no
church and no school of theology has ever developed the mind as
well as sanctified the heart of the common people like the
preaching of the Puritan pulpit.  Matthew Arnold was not likely to
over-estimate the good that Puritanism had done to England.
Indeed, in his earlier writings he sometimes went out of his way to
lament the hurt that the Puritan spirit had done to liberality of
life and mind in his native land.  But in his riper years we find
him saying:  "Certainly," he says, "I am not blind to the faults of
the Puritan discipline, but it has been an invaluable discipline
for that poor, inattentive, and immoral creature, man.  And the
more I read history and the more I see of mankind, the more I
recognise the value of the Puritan discipline."  And in that same
Address he "founded his best hopes for that so enviable and
unbounded country in which he was speaking, America, on the fact
that so many of its millions had passed through the Puritan
discipline."  John Milton was a product of that discipline on the
one hand, as John Bunyan was on the other.  Christiana was another
of its products in the sphere of the family, just as Matthew Arnold
himself had some of his best qualities out of the same fruitful
school.

2.  Her heart, her deep, strong, tender heart, is present on every
page of Christiana's noble history.  Her heart keeps her often
silent when the water in her eyes becomes all the more eloquent.
When she does let her heart utter itself in words, her words are
fine and memorable.  As, for one instance, after Greatheart's
discourse on redemption.  "O Mercy, that thy father and mother were
here; yea, and Mrs. Timorous also.  Nay, I wish with all my heart
now that here was Madam Wanton, too.  Surely, surely, their hearts
would be affected, nor could the fear of the one, nor the powerful
lusts of the other, prevail with them to go home again, and to
refuse to become good pilgrims."  But it was not so much what she
said herself that brought out the depth and tenderness of
Christiana's heart, it was rather the way her heart loosened other
people's tongues.  You must all have felt how some people's
presence straitens your heart and sews up your mouth.  While there
are other people, again, whose simple presence unseals your heart
and makes you eloquent.  We ministers keenly feel that both in our
public and in our private ministrations.  There are people in whose
hard and chilling presence we cannot even say grace as we should
say it.  Whereas, we all know other people, people of a heart, that
is, whose presence somehow so touches our lips that we always when
near them rise far above ourselves.  Christiana did not speak much
to her guides and instructors and companions, but they always spoke
their best to her, and it was her heart that did it.

3.  And then a widow indeed is just a true and genuine widow; a
widow not in her name and in her weeds only, but still more in her
deep heart, in her whole life, and in her garnered experience.
"Honour widows that are widows indeed.  Now, she that is a widow
indeed and desolate, trusteth in God, and continueth in
supplications and in prayers night and day.  Well reported of for
good works; if she have brought up children, if she have lodged
strangers, if she have washed the saints' feet, if she have
relieved the afflicted, if she have diligently followed every good
work."  These are the true marks and seals and occupations of a
widow indeed.  And if she has had unparalleled trials and
irreparable losses, she has her corresponding consolations and
compensations.  For she has a freedom to go about and do good, a
liberty and an experience that neither the unmarried maiden nor the
married wife can possibly have.  She can do multitudes of things
that in the nature of things neither of them can attempt to do.
Things that would be both unseemly and impossible for other women
to say or to do are both perfectly seemly and wholly open for her
to say and to do.  Her widowhood is a sacred shield to her.  Her
sorrow is a crown of honour and a sceptre of authority to her.  She
is consulted by the young and the inexperienced, by the forsaken
and by the forlorn, as no other human being ever is.  She has come
through this life, and by a long experience she knows this world
and the hearts that fill it and make it what it is.  A widow indeed
can show a sympathy, and give a counsel, and speak with a weight of
wisdom that one's own mother cannot always do.  All you who by
God's sad dispensation are now clothed in the "white and wimpled
folds" of widowhood, let your prayer and your endeavour day and
night be that God would guide and enable you to be widows indeed.
And, if you do, you shall want neither your occupation nor your
honour.



THE ENCHANTED GROUND



"Surely there is no enchantment against Jacob, neither is there any
divination against Israel."--Balaam.

"I saw then in my dream that they went till they came into a
certain country whose air naturally tended to make one drowsy if he
came a stranger to it.  And here Hopeful began to be very dull and
heavy of sleep, wherefore he said unto Christian, I do now begin to
grow so drowsy that I can scarcely hold up mine eyes; let us lie
down here and take one nap."  And then when we turn to the same
place in the Second Part we read thus:  "By this time they were got
to the Enchanted Ground, where the air naturally tended to make one
drowsy.  And that place was all grown over with briars and thorns,
excepting here and there, where was an enchanted arbour, upon
which, if a man sits, or in which if a man sleeps, 'tis a question,
say some, whether they shall ever rise or wake again in this world.
Now, they had not gone far, but a great mist and darkness fell upon
them all, so that they could scarce, for a great while, see the one
the other.  Wherefore they were forced for some time to feel for
one another by words, for they walked not by sight.  Nor was there
on all this ground so much as one inn or victualling-house wherein
to refresh the feebler sort.  Then they came to an arbour, warm,
and promising much refreshing to the pilgrims, for it was finely
wrought above head, beautified with greens, and furnished with
couches and settles.  It also had a soft couch on which the weary
might lean.  This arbour was called The Slothful Man's Friend, on
purpose to allure, if it might be, some of the pilgrims there to
take up their rest when weary.  This, you must think, all things
considered, was tempting.  I saw in my dream also that they went on
in this their solitary way till they came to a place at which a man
is very apt to lose his way.  Now, though when it was light, their
guide could well enough tell how to miss those ways that led wrong,
yet in the dark he was put to a stand.  But he had in his pocket a
map of all ways leading to or from the Celestial City, wherefore he
struck a light (for he never goes also without his tinder-box), and
takes a view of his book or map, which bids him be careful in that
place to turn to the right-hand way.  Then I thought with myself,
who that goeth on pilgrimage but would have one of those maps about
him, that he may look when he is at a stand, which is the way to
take?"

1.  "But what is the meaning of all this?" asked Christiana of the
guide.  "This Enchanted Ground,"--her able and experienced friend
answered her, "this is one of the last refuges that the enemy to
pilgrims has; wherefore it is, as you see, placed almost at the end
of the way, and so it standeth against us with the more advantage.
For when, thinks the enemy, will these fools be so desirous to sit
down as when they are weary, and when so like to be weary as when
almost at their journey's end?  Therefore it is, I say, that the
Enchanted Ground is placed so nigh to the land Beulah and so near
the end of their race; wherefore let pilgrims look to themselves
lest they fall asleep till none can waken them."  "That masterpiece
of Bunyan's insight into life, the Enchanted Ground," says Mr.
Louis Stevenson, "where his allegory cuts so deep to people looking
seriously on life."  Yes, indeed, Bunyan's insight into life!  And
his allegory that cuts so deep!  For a neophyte, and one with
little insight into life, or into himself, would go to look for
this land of darkness and thorns and pitfalls, alternated with
arbours and settles and soft couches--one new to life and to
himself, I say, would naturally expect to see all that confined to
the region between the City of Destruction and the Slough of
Despond; or, at the worst, long before, and never after, the House
Beautiful.  But Bunyan looked too straight at life and too
unflinchingly into his own heart to lay down his sub-Celestial
lands in that way; and when we begin to look with a like
seriousness on the religious life, and especially when we begin to
look bold enough and deep enough into our own heart, then we too
shall freely acknowledge the splendid master-stroke of Bunyan in
the Enchanted Ground.  That this so terrible experience is laid
down almost at the end of the Celestial way--the blaze of light
that pours upon our heads fairly startles us, while at the same
time it comforts us and assures us.  That this Enchanted Ground,
which has proved so fatal to so many false pilgrims, and so all but
fatal to so many true pilgrims, should lie around the very borders
of Beulah, and should be within all but eye-shot of the Celestial
City itself,--that is something to be thankful for, and something
to lay up in the deepest and the most secret place in our heart.
That these pilgrims, after all their feastings and entertainments--
after the Delectable Mountains and the House Beautiful--should all
be plunged upon a land where there was not so much as a roadside
inn, where the ways were so dark and so long that the pilgrims had
to shout aloud in order to keep together, where, instead of moon or
stars, they had to walk in the spark of a small tinder-box--what an
encouragement and assurance to us is all that!  That is no strange
thing, then, that is now happening to us, when, after our fine
communion season, we have suddenly fallen back into this deep
darkness, and are cast into these terrible temptations, and feel as
if all our past experiences and attainments and enjoyments had been
but a self-delusion and a snare.  That we should all but have
fallen fast asleep, and all but have ceased both from watching
against sin and from waiting upon God--well, that is nothing more
than Hopeful himself would have done had he not had a wary old
companion to watch over him, and to hold his eyes open.  Let all
God's people present who feel that they are nothing better of all
they have enjoyed of Scriptures and sacraments, but rather worse;
let all those who feel sure that they have wandered into a castaway
land, so dark, so thorny, so miry, and so lonely is their life--let
them read this masterpiece of John Bunyan again and again and take
heart of hope.


"When Saints do sleepy grow, let them come hither
And hear how these two pilgrims talk together;
Yea, let them hear of them, in any wise,
Thus to keep ope their drowsy slumb'ring eyes;
Saints' fellowship, if it be managed well,
Keeps them awake, and that in spite of hell."


2.  But far worse than all its briars and thorns, far more fatal
than all its ditches and pitfalls, were the enchanted arbours they
came on here and there planted up and down that evil land.  For
those arbours are all of this fatal nature, that if a man falls
asleep in any of them it arises a question whether he shall ever
come to himself again in this world.  Now, where there are no inns
nor victualling-houses, no Gaius and no Mr. Mnason, what a danger
all those ill-intended arbours scattered all up and down that
country become!  Well, then, the first enchanted arbour that the
pilgrims came to was built just inside the borders of the land, and
it was called The Stranger's Arbour--so many new-comers had lain
down in it never to rise again.  The young and the inexperienced,
with those who were naturally of a believing, buoyant, easy mind,
lay down in hundreds here.  Hopeful's mind was naturally a mind of
a soft and easy and self-indulgent cast; and had he been alone that
day, or had he had for a companion a man of a less wary, less
anxious, and less urgent mind than Christian was, Hopeful had taken
a nap, as he so confidingly called it--a fatal nap in that arbour
built by the enemy of pilgrims, just on purpose for the young and
the ignorant, the inexperienced and the self-indulgent.

3.  The Slothful Man's Arbour has been already described.  It was a
warm arbour, and it promised much refreshing to the pilgrims.  It
also had in it a soft couch on which the weary might lean.  "Let us
lie down here and take just one nap; we shall be refreshed if we
take a nap!"  "Do you not remember," said the other, "that one of
the shepherds bid us beware of the Enchanted Ground?  And he meant
by that that we should beware of sleeping; wherefore let us not
sleep as do others, but let us watch and be sober."  Now, what is a
nap?  And what is it to take a nap in our religion?  The New
Testament is full of warnings to those who read it and go by it--
most solemn and most fearful warnings--against SLEEP.  Now, have
you any clear idea in your minds as to what this divinely denounced
sleep is?  Sleep is good and necessary in our bodily life.  We
would not live long if we did not sleep; we would soon go out of
our mind; we would soon lose our senses if we did not sleep.
Insomnia is one of the worst symptoms of our eager, restless, over-
worked age.  "He giveth His beloved sleep"; and while they sleep
their corn grows they know not how.  But sleep in the great
exhortation-passages of the Holy Scriptures does not mean rest and
restoration; it means in all those passages insensibility,
stupidity, danger, and death.  In our nightly sleep, and in the
measure of its soundness, we are utterly dead to the world around
us.  Men may come into our house and rob us of our most precious
possessions; they may even come up to our bed and murder us; our
whole house may be in a blaze about us; we may only awaken to leap
out of sleep into eternity.  Now, we are all in a sleep like that
in our souls.  There is above us, and around us, and beneath us,
and within us the eternal world, and we are all sound asleep; we
are all stone-dead in the midst of it.  Devils and wicked men are
stealing our treasures for eternity, and we are sound asleep; hell
is already kindling our bed beneath us, but we smell not its
flames, or we only catch the first gasp of them before we make our
everlasting bed among them.  Therefore let us not sleep as do
others, but let us watch and be sober.  What meanest thou, O
sleeper? arise and call upon thy God!  When the guide shook
Heedless and Too-bold off their settles in that slothful arbour,
the one of them said with his eyes still shut, "I will pay you when
I take my money," and the other said, "I will fight so long as I
can hold my sword in my hand."  At that one of the children
laughed.  "What is the meaning of that?" asked Christiana.  The
guide said:  "They talk in their sleep."  So they did, and so do
all men.  For this whole world is full of settles on which men
sleep and talk in their sleep.  The newspapers to-morrow morning
will all be full to overflowing of what men have said and written
to-day and yesterday in their sleep.  The shops and the banks and
the exchanges will all be full of men making promises and settling
accounts in their sleep.  They will finger their purses, and grasp
their swords, and all in their sleep.  And not children but devils
will laugh as they hear the folly that falls from men's lips who
are besotted with spiritual sleep and drugged with spiritual and
fleshly sin.  A dream cometh through the multitude of business.  I
had just got this length in this lecture the other night when I
went to sleep.  And in my sleep one of my people came to me and
asked me if I could make it quite clear and plain to him what it
would be for a man like him after a communion-time to begin to walk
with God.  And I just wish I could make the things of the Enchanted
Ground as plain to myself and to you to-night as I was able to make
a walk with God plain to myself and to my visitor that night in my
ministerial dream.  I often wish that my business mind worked as
well in my study chair and in my pulpit as it sometimes does in my
bed and in my sleep.  "Now, I beheld in my dream that they talked
more in their sleep at this time than ever they did in all their
journey.  And being in a muse thereabout, the gardener said even to
me:  Wherefore musest thou at the matter?  It is the nature of the
fruit of the grapes of those vineyards to go down so sweetly as to
cause the lips of them that are asleep to speak."  The reason my
poor lips spake so sweetly about a walk with God that night most
have been because I spent all the summer evening before walking
with God and with you in the vineyards of Beulah.

4.  Listen to Samson, shorn of his locks, as he shakes himself off
a soft and sweetly-worked couch in The Sensual Man's Arbour:


"No, no;
It fits not; thou and I long since are twain;
Nor think me so unwary or accurst
To bring my feet again into the snare
Where once I have been caught; I know thy trains,
Though dearly to my cost, thy gins, and toils;
Thy fair enchanted cup and warbling charms
No more on me have power, their force is null'd;
So much of adder's wisdom have I learnt
To fence my ear against thy sorceries.
If in my flower of youth and strength, when all men
Loved, honour'd, fear'd me, thou alone couldst hate me,
Thy husband, slight me, sell me, and forego me;
How wouldst thou use me now, blind, and thereby
Deceivable, in most things as a child,
Helpless, thence easily contemn'd, and scorn'd,
And last neglected?  How wouldst thou insult,
When I must live uxorious to thy will
In perfect thraldom!  How again betray me,
Bearing my words and doings to the lords
To gloss upon, and censuring, frown or smile!
This jail I count the house of liberty
To thine, whose doors my feet shall never enter."


5.  The love of money to some men is the root of all evil.  There
came once a youth to St. Philip Neri and, flushed with joy, told
him that his parents after much entreaty had at length allowed him
to study law.  St. Philip was not a man of many words.  "What
then?" the saint simply asked the shining youth.  "Then I shall
become a lawyer!"  "And then?" pursued Philip.  "Then," said the
young man, "I shall earn a nice sum of money, and I shall purchase
a fine country house, procure a carriage and horses, marry a
handsome and rich wife, and lead a delightful life!"  "And then?"
"Then,"--the youth reflected as death and eternity arose before his
eyes, and from that day he began to take care of his immortal soul.
Philip with one word snatched that young man's soul off The Rich
Man's Settle.

6.  The Vain Man's Settle draws down many men to shame and
everlasting contempt.  Praise a vain man or a vain woman aright and
enough and you will get them to do anything you like.  Give a vain
man sufficient publicity in your paper or on your platform and he
will become a spy, a traitor, and cut-throat in your service.  The
sorcerer's cup of praise--keep it full enough in a vain man's hand,
and he will sleep in the arbour of vanity till he wakens in hell.
Madam Bubble, the arch-enchantress, knows her own, and she has,
with her purse, her promotion, and her praise, bought off many a
promising pilgrim.

7.  And then she, by virtue of whose sorceries this whole land is
drugged and enchanted, is such a bold slut that she will build a
Sacred Arbour even, and will fill it full of religious enchantment
for you rather than lose hold of you.  She will consecrate places
and persons and periods for you if your taste lies that way; she
will build costly and stately churches for you; she will weave rich
vestments and carve rich vessels; she will employ all the arts; she
will even sanctify and set apart and seat aloft her holy men--what
will she not do to please you, to take you, to intoxicate and
enchant you?  She will juggle for your soul equally well whether
you are a country clown in a feeing-market or a fine lady of
aesthetic tastes and religious sensibilities in the capital and the
court.  But I shall let Father Faber speak, who can speak on this
subject both with authority and with attraction.  "She can open
churches, and light candles on the altar, and intone Te Deums to
the Majesty on high.  She can pass into the beauty of art, into the
splendour of dress, and into the magnificence of furniture.  She
can sit with high principles on her lips discussing a religious
vocation and praising God and sanctity.  On the benches of bishops
and in the pages of good books you will find her, and yet she is
all the while the same huge evil creature."  Yes; she is all the
time the same Madam Bubble who offered to Standfast her body, her
purse, and her bed.

Now, would you know for yourself, like the communicant who came to
me in my sleep, how you are ever to get past all those arbours, and
settles, and seats, and couches, with all their sweet sorceries and
intoxicating enchantments--would you in earnest know that?  Then
study well the case of one Standfast.  Especially the time when she
who enchants this whole ground hereabouts set so upon that pilgrim.
In one word, it was this:  he remembered his Lord; and, like his
Lord, he fell on his face; and as his Lord would have it, His
servant's lips as they touched the ground touched also the healing
plant harmony and he was saved.


"A small unsightly root,
But of divine effect.
Unknown, and like esteem'd, and the dull swain
Treads on it daily with his clouted shoon;
And yet more med'cinal is it than that moly
That Hermes once to wise Ulysses gave;
He call'd it haemony, and gave it me,
And bade me keep it as of sovran use
'Gainst all enchantments, mildew, blast, or damp,
Or ghastly furies' apparition.
And now I find it true; for by this means
I knew the foul enchantress, though disguised,
Enter'd the very lime-twigs of her spells,
And yet came off.  If you have this about you
(As I will give you when you go) you may
Boldly assault the necromancer's hall:
Where if she be, with dauntless hardihood,
And brandished blade, rush on her, break her glass,
And shed her luscious liquor on the ground,
And seize her wand."


Prayer, my sin-beset brethren, standfast prayer, is the otherwise
unidentified haemony whose best habitat was the Garden of
Gethsemane; and with that holy root in your heart and in your
mouth, there is "no enchantment against Jacob, neither is there any
divination against Israel."



THE LAND OF BEULAH



"Thou shalt be called Hephzibah, and thy land Beulah."--Isaiah.

The first thing that John Bunyan tells us about the land of Beulah
is this--that the shortest and the best way to the Celestial City
lies directly through that land.  The land of Beulah has its own
indigenous inhabitants indeed.  Old men dwell in the streets of
Beulah, and every man with his staff in his hand for very age.  The
streets of the city also are full of boys and girls playing in the
streets thereof.  The land of Beulah has its frequent visitors
also, and its welcome guests from the regions above.  Some of the
shining ones come down from time to time and make a short sojourn
in Beulah.  The angels in heaven have such a desire to see the
lands from which God's saints come up that at certain seasons all
the suburbs of the Celestial City are full of those shining
servants of God and of the Lamb.

But what made the dreamer to smile and to talk so in his sleep was
when he saw that all the upward ways to the Celestial City ran
through the land of Beulah.  He saw also in his dream how all the
pilgrims blamed themselves so bitterly now because they had
misspent so much of their time and strength in the ways below, and
so had not come sooner to see and to taste this blessed land.  But,
at the same time, as it was, they all rejoiced with a great joy
because that, after all their delays and all their wanderings,
their way still led them through the borders of Beulah.  Now, my
dear fellow-communicants, how shall we find our way at once, and
without any more wanderings, into that so desirable land?  How
shall we attain to walk its streets all the rest of our days with
our staff in our hand?  How shall we hope to see our boys and our
girls playing in the streets of Beulah, and eating all their days
of its sweet and its healing fruits?  How shall we and our children
with us henceforth escape the Slough of Despond, and Giant
Despair's dungeon, and the Valley of the Shadow of Death?  The
word, my brethren, the answer to all that, is nigh unto us, even in
our mouth and in our heart.  For faith, simple faith, will do all
that both for us and for our children beside us.  A heart-feeding
faith in God, in the word of God, and in the Son of God, will do
it.  Faith, and then obedience.  For obedience, my brethren, is
Beulah.  All obedience is already Beulah.  Holy obedience will
bring the whole of Beulah into your heart and into mine at any
moment.  It is disobedience that makes so many of those who
otherwise are true pilgrims to miss so much of the land of Beulah.
Ask any affable old man with his staff in his hand for very age,
and he will tell you that it was his disobedience that kept him so
long out of the land of Beulah.  While, let any man, and above all,
let any young man, begin early to live a life of believing
obedience, and he will grow up and grow old and see his children's
children playing around his staff in the streets of Beulah.  Let
any young man make the experiment for himself upon obedience and
upon Beulah.  Let him not too easily believe any dreamer or even
any seer about obedience and about the land of Beulah.  It is his
own matter and not theirs; and let him make experiment upon it all
for his own satisfaction and assurance.  Let any young man, then,
try prayer as his first step into obedience, and especially secret
prayer.  Let him shut his door to-night, and let him see if he is
not already inside one of the gates of Beulah.  Let him deny
himself every day also, if it is only in a very little thing.  Let
him say sternly to his own heart every hour of temptation, No!
never! and on the spot a sweet waft of Beulah's finest spices will
fall upon his face.  "The ineffable joy of renouncing joy" will
every day make the lonely wilderness of this world a constant
Beulah to such a man.  For, to live at all times, in all places,
and in all things for other men, and never and in nothing for
yourself--that is the deepest secret of Beulah.  To say it, if need
be, three times to-night on your face and in a sweat of blood, "Not
my will, but Thine be done!"--that will to-night turn the garden of
Gethsemane itself into the very garden of Glory.  Do you doubt it?
Are you not yet able to believe it?  Then hear about it from One
who has Himself come through it.  Hear His word upon the whole
matter who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  "Come unto Me,"
says the King of Beulah, "all ye that labour and are heavy laden,
and I will give you rest.  Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me,
for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your
souls.  For My yoke is easy and My burden is light."  So after He
had washed their feet, and had taken His garments and was set down
again, He said unto them, "Know ye what I have done to you?  For I
have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you.
If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them.  If ye love
Me, keep My commandments.  And I will pray the Father, and He shall
give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you for ever.
If a man love Me, he will keep My words; and My Father will love
him, and We will come unto him and will make Our abode with him.
Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you:  not as the world
giveth, give I unto you.  These things have I spoken unto you that
My joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.
Hitherto ye have asked nothing in My name; ask, and ye shall
receive, that your joy may be full.  Father, I will that they also,
whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am."  And thus I saw in
my dream that their way lay right through the land of Beulah, in
which land they solaced themselves for a season.

2.  "They solaced themselves."  Now, solace is just the Latin
solatium, which, again, is just a soothing, an assuaging, a
compensation, an indemnification.  Well, that land into which the
pilgrims had now come was very soothing to their ruffled spirits
and to their weary hearts.  It assuaged their many and sore griefs
also.  It more than compensated them for all their labours and all
their afflictions.  And it was a full indemnification to them for
all that they had forsaken and lost both in beginning to be
pilgrims and in enduring to the end.  The children of Israel had
their first solace in their pilgrimage at Elim, where there were
twelve wells of water and threescore and ten palm-trees; and they
encamped there by the waters.  And then they had their last and
crowning solace when the spies came back from Eshcol with a cluster
of grapes that they bare between two upon a staff, with
pomegranates and figs.  And Moses kept solacing his charge all the
way through the weary wilderness with such strong consolations as
these:  "For the Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a
land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of
valleys and hills; a land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig-
trees; a land of oil-olive and honey; a land wherein thou shalt eat
bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack anything in it; a
land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig
brass."  Our Lord spake solace to His doubting and fainting
disciples also in many such words as these:  "Verily, I say unto
you, there is no man that hath left house, or parents, or brethren,
or wife, or children for the kingdom of God's sake, who shall not
receive manifold more in this present time, and in the world to
come life everlasting."  The Mount of Transfiguration also was His
own Beulah-solace; and the Last Supper and the prayer with which it
wound up were given to our Lord and to His disciples as a very
Eshcol-cluster from the Paradise above.  Now, I saw in my dream
that they solaced themselves in the land of Beulah for a season.
Yea, here they heard continually the singing of birds.  (The Latin
poets called the birds solatia ruris, because they refreshed and
cheered the rustic labourers with their sweet singing.)  And every
day the flowers appeared in the earth, and the voice of the turtle
was heard in the land.  In this country the sun shineth night and
day, for there is no night there.

3.  "In this country the sun shineth night and day."  How much
Standfast must have enjoyed that land of light you may guess when
you recollect that he came from Darkland, which lies in the
hemisphere right opposite to the land of Beulah.  In Darkland the
sun never shines to be called sunshine at all.  All the days of his
youth, Standfast told his companions, he had sat beside his father
and his mother in that obscure land where to his sorrow his father
and his mother still sat.  But in Beulah "the rose of evening
becomes silently and suddenly the rose of dawn."  This land lies
beyond the Valley of the Shadow of Death, neither could they from
this place so much as see Doubting Castle.  Now, Doubting Castle is
a dismal place for any soul of man to be shut up into.  And in that
dark hold there are dungeons dug for all kinds of doubting souls.
There are dungeons dug for the souls of men whose doubts are in
their intellects, as well as for those also whose doubts arise out
of their hearts.  Some men read themselves into Doubting Castle,
and some men sin and sell themselves to its giant.  God casts some
of His own children all their days into those dungeons as a
punishment for their life of disobedience; He casts others down
into chains of darkness because of their idleness and
unfruitfulness.  But Beulah is far away from Doubting Castle.
Beulah is a splendid spot for a studious man to lodge in.  For what
a clear light shines night and day in Beulah!  To what far horizons
a man's eye will carry him in Beulah!  What large speculations rise
before him who walks abroad in Beulah!  How clear the air is in
Beulah, how clean the heart and how unclouded the eye of its
inhabitants!  The King's walks are in Beulah, and the arbours where
He delighteth to be.  Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall
be admitted to see God in the land of Beulah.  In the land of
Beulah the sun shall no more be thy light by day, neither for
brightness shall the moon give light unto thee; but the Lord shall
be thine everlasting light, and thy God thy glory!

4.  "In this land also the contract between the bride and the
bridegroom is renewed."  Now, there is no other day so bitter in
any man's life as that day is on which his bridal contract is
broken off.  And it is the very perfection and last extremity of
bitterness when his contract is broken off because of his own past
life.  Let all those, then, who would fain enter into that sweet
contract think well about it beforehand.  Let them look back into
all their past life.  For all their past life will be sure to find
them out on the day of their espousals.  If they have their
enemies--as all espoused men have--this is the hour and the power
of their enemies.  The day on which any man's espousals are
published is a small and local judgment-day to him.  For all the
men, and, especially, all the women, who have ever been injured by
him, or who have injured themselves upon him; all the men and all
the women who for any reason, and for no reason, hate both him and
his happiness,--their tongues and their pens will take no sleep
till they have got his contract if they can, broken off.  And even
when the bridegroom is too innocent, or the bride too true, or God
too good to let the contract continue long to be broken off, that
great goodness of God and that great trust of his contracted bride
will only make the bridegroom walk henceforth more softly and
rejoice with more trembling.  And that is a most excellent mind.  I
know no better mind in which any man, guilty or innocent, can enter
on a married life.  I sometimes tell the bridegrooms that I can
take a liberty with to keep saying to themselves all the way up to
the marriage altar the tenth verse of the 103rd psalm; as well as
when they come up afterwards to the baptismal font:  "He hath not
dealt with us after our sins nor rewarded us after our iniquities."
And it is surely Beulah itself, at its very best, it is surely
Beulah above itself, when a happy bridegroom is full of that humble
and happy mind, and when he is in one and the same moment
reconciled both to his bride on earth and to his God and Father in
heaven.  In this land, therefore, in the land of Beulah, the
contract between the bride and the bridegroom is renewed; yea, as
the bridegroom rejoiceth over his bride, so shall thy God rejoice
over thee.

5.  The salaams and salutations also that they were met with as
often as they went out to walk in the streets thereof were a
constant surprise, satisfaction, and sweetness to the fearful
pilgrims.  No passer-by ever once frowned or scowled upon them
because their faces were Zionward, as they do in our cities.  No
one ever treated them with scorn or contempt because they were poor
or unlettered.  No man's face either turned dark at them or was
turned away from them as they passed up the street.  They never,
all the time they abode in Beulah, took to the lanes of the city to
escape the unkind looks of any of its citizens.  Greatheart's hand
was never away from his helmet.  His helmet was never well on his
head.  His always bare and unhelmeted head said to all the men of
Beulah, I love and honour and trust you.  You would not hurt a hair
of my head.  And so on, till all the streets of Beulah were one
buzz of salutation, congratulation, and benediction.  Here they
heard voices from out of the city, loud voices, saying, Say ye to
the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy salvation cometh; behold, his
reward is with him.  Here all the inhabitants of the country called
them the holy people, the redeemed of the Lord, sought out, a city
not forsaken.

6.  Now, as they walked in this land they had more rejoicing than
in parts more remote from the kingdom to which they were bound.
And still drawing nigh to that city they had yet a more perfect
view thereof.  It was builded of pearls and precious stones, also
the street thereof was paved with gold, so that by reason of the
natural glory of the city and the reflection of the sunbeams upon
it, Christian with desire fell sick.  Hopeful also had a fit or two
of the same disease.  Wherefore here they lay by it awhile, crying
out because of their pangs, If you see my beloved, tell him that I
am sick of love.  There are in all good cases of recovery three
successive stages of soul-sickness.  True, soul-sickness always
runs its own course, and it always runs its own course in its own
order.  This special sickness first shows itself when the soul
becomes sick with sin.  We have that sickness set forth in many a
psalm, notably in the thirty-eighth psalm; and in a multitude of
other scriptures, both old and new, this evil disease is dealt with
if we had only the eyes and the heart to read such scriptures.  The
second stage of this sickness is when a sinner is not so much sick
with the sin that dwelleth in him as sick of himself.  Sinfulness
in its second stage becomes so incorporate with the sinner's whole
life--sin so becomes the sinner's very nature, and, indeed,
himself,--that all his former loathing of sin passes over
henceforth into loathing of himself.  This is the most desperate
stage in any man's sickness; but, bad as it is, incurable as it is,
it must be passed into before the third stage of the healing
process can either be experienced or understood.  In the case in
hand, by the time the pilgrims had come to Beulah they had all had
their full share of sin and of themselves till they here entered on
an altogether new experience.  "Christian with desire fell sick,"
we read, "and Hopeful also had a fit or two of the same disease.
Wherefore here they lay by it a while, crying out because of their
pangs, If you see my beloved, tell him that I am sick of love."
David, Paul, Bernard, Bunyan himself, Rutherford, Brainerd,
M'Cheyne, and many others crowd in upon the mind.  I shall but
instance John Flavel and Mrs. Jonathan Edwards, and so close.  John
Flavel being once on a journey set himself to improve the time by
meditation, when his mind grew intent, till at length he had such
ravishing tastes of heavenly joys, and such a full assurance of his
interest therein, that he utterly lost the sight and sense of this
world and all its concerns, so that for hours he knew not where he
was.  At last, perceiving himself to be faint, he sat down at a
spring, where he refreshed himself, earnestly desiring, if it were
the will of God, that he might there leave the world.  His spirit
reviving, he finished his journey in the same delightful frame, and
all that night the joy of the Lord still overflowed him so that he
seemed an inhabitant of the other world.  The only other case of
love-sickness I shall touch on to-night I take from under the pen
of a sin-sick and love-sick author, who has been truthfully
described as "one of the first, if not the very first, of the
masters of human reason," and, again, as "one of the greatest of
the sons of men."  "There is a young lady in New-haven," says
Edwards, "who is so loved of that Great Being who made and rules
the world, that there are certain seasons in which this Great Being
in some way or other invisible comes to her and fills her mind with
exceeding sweet delight, so that she hardly cares for anything but
to meditate upon Him.  She looks soon to dwell wholly with Him, and
to be ravished with His love and delight for ever.  Therefore, if
you present all this world before her, with the richest of its
treasures, she disregards it and cares not for it, and is unmindful
of any pain or affliction.  She has a strange sweetness in her
mind, and a singular piety in her affections; is most just and
conscientious in all her conduct; and you could not persuade her to
do anything wrong or sinful, if you would give her the whole world.
She loves to be alone, walking in the fields and groves, and seems
to have some one invisible always communing with her."  And so on,
all through her seraphic history.  "Now, if such things are too
enthusiastic," says the author of A Careful and a Strict Enquiry
into the Freedom of the Will, "if such things are the offspring of
a distempered brain, let my brain be possessed evermore of that
blessed distemper!  If this be distraction, I pray God that the
whole world of mankind may all be seized with this benign, meek,
beneficent, beatific, glorious distraction!  The peace of God that
passeth all understanding; rejoicing with joy unspeakable and full
of glory; God shining in our hearts, to give the light of the
knowledge of God in the face of Jesus Christ; with open face
beholding as in a glass the glory of God, and being changed into
the same image from glory to glory, even as by the spirit of the
Lord; being called out of darkness into marvellous light, and
having the day-star arise in our hearts!  What a sweet distraction
is that!  And out of what a heavenly distemper and out of what a
sane enthusiasm has all that come to us!"


"More I would speak:  but all my words are faint;
Celestial Love, what eloquence can paint?
No more, by mortal words, can be expressed,
But all Eternity shall tell the rest."



THE SWELLING OF JORDAN



"The swelling of Jordan."--Jeremiah.

"Fore-fancy your deathbed," says Samuel Rutherford.  "Take an
essay," he says in his greatest book, that perfect mine of gold and
jewels, Christ Dying and Drawing Sinners to Himself--"Take an essay
and a lift at your death, and look at it before it actually comes
to your door."  And so we shall.  Since it is appointed to all men
once to die, and after death the judgment; and since our death and
our judgment are the only two things that we are absolutely sure
about in our whole future, we shall henceforth fore-fancy those two
events much more than we have done in the past.  And to assist us
in that; to quicken our fancy, to kindle it, to captivate it, and
to turn our fancy wholly to our salvation, we have all the
entrancing river-scenes in the Pilgrim's Progress set before us; a
succession of scenes in which Bunyan positively revels in his
exquisite fancies, clothing them as he does, all the time, in
language of the utmost beauty, tenderness, pathos, power, and
dignity.  Let us take our stand, then, on the bank of the river and
watch how pilgrim after pilgrim behaves himself in those terrible
waters.  We are all voluntary spectators to-night, but we shall all
be compulsory performers before we know where we are.

1.  On entering the river even Christian suddenly began to sink.
Fore-fancy that.  All the words he spake still tended to discover
that he had great horror of mind and hearty fears that he would die
in that river; here also he was much in the troublesome thoughts of
the sins he had committed both since and before he began to be a
pilgrim.  Fore-fancy that also, all you converted young men.
Hopeful, therefore, had much to do to keep his brother's head above
water; yea, sometimes he would be quite gone down, and then in a
while he would rise up again half-dead.  Then I saw in my dream
that Christian was in a muse a while; to whom also Hopeful added
this word, "Be of good cheer; Jesus Christ maketh thee whole."  And
with that Christian broke out with a loud voice, "When thou passest
through the waters I will be with thee, and through the rivers they
shall not overflow thee."  Then they both took courage and the
enemy was after that as still as a stone till they were gone over.
Fore-fancy that also.  There is one other thing out of that
crossing that I hope I shall remember when I am in the river:  "Be
of good cheer," said Hopeful to his sinking fellow--"Be of good
cheer, my brother, I feel the bottom, and it is good."  "Hold His
hand fast," wrote Samuel Rutherford to Lady Kenmure.  "He knows all
the fords.  You may be ducked in His company but never drowned.
Put in your foot, then, and wade after Him.  And be sure you set
your feet always upon the stepping-stones."  Yes; fore-fancy those
stepping-stones, and often practise your feet upon them before the
time.

2.  "Good woman," said the post to Christiana, the wife of
Christian the pilgrim; "Hail, good woman, I bring thee tidings that
the Master calleth for thee, and expecteth thee to stand in His
presence in clothes of immortality within this ten days."  Fore-
fancy that also.  Now the day was come that she must be gone.  And
so the road was full of people to see her take her journey.  But,
behold, all the banks beyond the river were full of horses and
chariots which were come down from above to accompany her to the
city gate.  So she came forth and entered the river with a beckon
of farewell to those that followed her to the river-side.  And thus
she went and entered in at the gate with all the ceremonies of joy
that her husband had done before her.  Fore-fancy, if you can, some
of those ceremonies of joy.

3.  When Mr. Fearing came to the river where was no bridge, there
again he was in a heavy case.  Now, he said, he should be drowned
for ever and never see that Face with comfort he had come so many
miles to behold.  And here also I took notice of what was very
remarkable; the water of that river was lower at this time than
ever I saw it in all my life.  So he went over at last not much
above wet-shod.  Fore-fancy and fore-arrange, if it be possible,
for a passage like that.  When he was going tip to the gate Mr.
Greatheart began to take his leave of him, and to wish him a good
reception above.  "I shall," he said, "I shall."  Be fore-assured,
also, of a reception like that.

4.  In process of time there came a post to the town again, and his
business was this time with Mr. Ready-to-halt.  So he inquired him
out and said to him, "I am come to thee in the name of Him whom
thou hast loved and followed, though upon crutches.  And my message
is to tell thee that He expects thee at His table to sup with Him
in His kingdom the next day after Easter."  After this Mr. Ready-
to-halt called for his fellow-pilgrims and told them, saying, "I am
sent for, and God shall surely visit you also.  These crutches," he
said, "I bequeath to my son that he may tread in my steps, with a
hundred warm wishes that he may prove better than I have done."
When he came to the brink of the river, he said, "Now I shall have
no more need of these crutches, since yonder are horses and
chariots for me to ride on."  The last words he was heard to say
were, "Welcome life!"  Let all ready-to-halt hearts fore-fancy all
that.

5.  Then Mr. Feeble-mind called for his friends and told them what
errand had been brought to him, and what token he had received of
the truth of the message.  "As for my feeble mind," he said, "that
I shall leave behind me, for I shall have no need of that in the
place whither I go.  When I am gone, Mr. Valiant, I desire that you
would bury it in a dunghill."  This done, and the day being come in
which he was to depart, he entered the river as the rest.  His last
words were, "Hold out faith and patience."  Fore-fancy such an end
as that to your feeble mind also.

6.  Did you ever know a family, or, rather, the relics of a family,
where there was just a decrepit old father and a lone daughter left
to nurse him through his second childhood?  All his other children
are either married or dead; but both marriage and death have spared
Miss Much-afraid to watch over the dotage-days of Mr. Despondency;
till one summer afternoon the old man fell asleep in his chair to
waken where old men are for ever young.  And in a day or two there
were two new graves side by side in the old churchyard.  Even death
could not divide this old father and his trusty child.  And so when
the time was come for them to depart, they went down together to
the brink of the river.  The last words of Mr. Despondency were,
"Farewell night and welcome day."  His daughter went through the
river singing, but none could understand what it was she said.
Fore-fancy that, all you godly old men, with a daughter who has
made a husband and children to herself of her old father.

7.  As I hear Old Honest shouting "Grace reigns!" I always remember
what a lady told me about a saying of her poor Irish scullery-girl.
The mistress and the servant were reading George Eliot's Life
together in the kitchen, and when they came to her deathbed, on the
pillow of which Thomas A'Kempis lay open, "Mem," said the girl, "I
used to read that old book in the convent; but it is a better book
to live upon than to die upon."  Now, that was exactly Old Honest's
mind.  He lived upon one book, and then he died upon another.  He
lived according to the commandments of God, but he died according
to the comforts of the Gospel.  Now, we read in his history how
that the river at that time overflowed its banks in some places.
But Mr. Honest had in his lifetime spoken to one Good-conscience to
meet him at the river, the which he also did, and lent him his
hand, and so helped him over.  All the same, the last words of Mr.
Honest still were, "Grace reigns!"  And so he left the world.
Fore-fancy whether or no you are making, as one has said, "an
assignation with terror" at that same river-side.

8.  Standfast was the last of the pilgrims to go over the river.
Standfast was left longest on this side the river because his
Master could best trust him here.  His Master had to take away many
of His other servants from the evil to come, but He could trust
Standfast.  You can safely trust a man who takes to his knees in
every hour of temptation, as Standfast was wont to do.  "This
river," he said, "has been a terror to many.  Yea, the thoughts of
it have often frighted me also.  The waters, indeed, are to the
palate bitter, and to the stomach cold; yet the thoughts of what I
am going to, and of the conduct that awaits me on the other side,
doth lie as a glowing coal at my heart.  I see myself now at the
end of my journey, and my toilsome days are all ended.  I am going
now to see that head that was crowned with thorns, and that face
that was spit upon for me.  His name has been to me as a civet-box,
yea, sweeter than all perfumes.  His word I did use to gather for
my food, and for antidotes against my faintings.  He has held me
up, and I have kept myself from mine iniquities.  Yea, my steps
hath He strengthened in the way."  Now, while he was thus in
discourse his countenance changed, his strong man bowed down under
him, and after he had said, "Take me, for I come to Thee," he
ceased to be seen of them.  Fore-fancy, if you have the face, an
end like that for yourself.

This, then, is how Christian and Hopeful and Christiana and Old
Honest and all the rest did in the swelling river.  But the
important point is, HOW WILL YOU DO?  Have you ever fore-fancied
how you will do?  Have you ever, among all your many imaginings,
imagined yourself on your death-bed?  Have you ever thought you
heard the doctor whisper, "To-night"?  Have you ever lain low in
your bed and listened to the death-rattle in your own throat?  And
have you still listened to the awful silence in the house after all
was over?  Have you ever shot in imagination the dreadful gulf that
stands fixed between life and death, and between time and eternity?
Have you ever tried to get a glimpse beforehand of your own place
where you will be an hour after your death, when they are putting
the grave-clothes on your still warm body, and when they are
measuring your corpse for your coffin?  Where will you be by that
time?  Have you any idea?  Can you fancy it?  Did you ever try?
And if not, why not?  "My lord," wrote Jeremy Taylor to the Earl of
Carbery, when sending him the first copy of the Holy Dying,--"My
lord, it is a great art to die well, and that art is to be learnt
by men in health; for he that prepares not for death before his
last sickness is like him that begins to study philosophy when he
is going to dispute publicly in the faculty.  The precepts of dying
well must be part of the studies of them that live in health,
because in other notices an imperfect study may be supplied by a
frequent exercise and a renewed experience; but here, if we
practise imperfectly once, we shall never recover the error, for we
die but once; and therefore it is necessary that our skill be more
exact since it cannot be mended by another trial."  How wise, then,
how far-seeing, how practical, and how urgent is the prophet's
challenge and demand.  "How wilt thou do in the swelling of
Jordan?"

1.  Well, then, let us be practical before we close, and let us
descend to particulars.  Let us take the prophet's question and run
it through some parts and some practices of our daily life as
already dying men.  And, to begin with, I have such a great faith
in good books, whether we are to live or die, that I am impelled to
ask you all at this point, and under shelter of this plain-spoken
prophet, What books have you laid in for your deathbed, and for the
weeks and months and even years before your death bed?  What do you
look forward to be reading when Jordan is beginning to swell and
roll for you and to leap up toward your doorstep?  If you get good
from good books--everybody does not--but supposing you are one of
those who do, what books can you absolutely count upon, without
fail, to put you in the best possible frame for the river, and for
the convoy across, and for the ceremonies of joy on the other side?
What special Scriptures will you have read every day to you?
"Read," said John Knox to his weeping wife, "read where I first
cast my anchor."  An old lady I once knew used to say to me at
every visit, "The Fifty-first Psalm."  She was the daughter of a
Highland minister, and the wife of a Highland minister, and the
mother of a Highland minister, and of an elder to boot.  "The
Fifty-first Psalm," she said, and sometimes, "One of Hart's hymns
also."  What is your favourite psalm and hymn?  Mr. James Taylor of
Castle Street has several large-type libraries in his catalogue.
Mr. Taylor might start a much worse paying speculation than a
large-type library for the river-side; or, some select booklets for
deathbeds.  The series might well open with "The Ninetieth Psalm"
in letters an inch deep.  Scholars die as well as illiterates, and
there might be provided for them, among other things, The Phaedo in
two languages, Plato's and Jowett's.  Then The Seven Sayings from
the Cross.  Bellarmine's Art of Dying Well would stand well beside
John Bunyan's Dying Sayings.  And, were I the editor, I would put
in Bishop Andrewes' Private Devotions, if only for my own last use.
Then Richard Baxter's Saint's Rest, and John Howe's Platonico-
Puritan book, Blessedness of the Righteous.  Then Bernard's "New
Jerusalem," "The Sands of Time are sinking," "Rock of Ages," and
such like.  These are some of the little books I have within reach
of my bed against the hour when the post blows his first horn for
me.  You might tell me some of your deathbed favourites.

2.  Who will be your most welcome minister during your last days on
earth?  For whom would you send to-night if the post were suddenly
to sound his horn at your side on your way home from church?  I can
well believe it would not be your own minister.  I have known
fathers and mothers in this congregation to send for other
ministers than their own minister when terrible trouble came upon
them, and both my conscience and my common sense absolutely
approved of the step they took.  Five students were once sitting
and talking together in a city in which there was to be an
execution to-morrow morning.  They were talking about the murderer
who was to be executed in the morning, and about the minister he
had sent for to come to see him.  And, like students, they began to
put it to one another--Suppose you were to be executed to-morrow,
for what minister in the city, or even in the whole land, would you
send?  And, like students again, they said--Let each one write down
on a piece of paper the name of the minister he would choose to be
beside him at the last, and we shall see each man's last choice.
They did so, when to their astonishment it was discovered that they
had all written the same minister's name!  I do not know that they
all went to his church every Sabbath while they were young and,
well, and not yet under sentence of death.  I do not think they
did.  For when I was in his church there was only a handful of old
and decayed-looking people in it.  The chief part of the
congregation seemed to me to be a charity school.  And I gathered
from all that a lesson--several lessons, and this among the rest--
that crowded passages do not always wait upon the best pastors; and
this also, that a waft of death soon discovers to us a true
minister from an incompetent and a counterfeit minister.

3.  Writing to one of his correspondents about his correspondent's
long-drawn-out deathbed, Samuel Rutherford said to him, "It is
long-drawn-out that you may have ample time to go over all your old
letters and all your still unsettled accounts before you take
ship."  Have you any such old letters lying still unanswered?  Have
you any such old accounts lying still unsettled?  Have you made
full reparation and restitution for all that you and yours have
done amiss?  Fore-fancy that you will soon be summoned into His
presence who has said:  Therefore, if thou bring thy gift before
the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught
against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy
way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer
thy gift.  Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in
the way with him."  You know all about Zacchaeus.  I need not tell
his story over again.  But as I write these lines I take up a
London newspaper and my eyes light on these lines:  "William Avary
was a man of remarkable gifts, both of mind and character.  He
dedicated the residue of his strength wholly to works of piety.  In
middle age he failed in business, and in his old age, when better
days came, he looked up such of his old creditors as could be found
and divided among them a sum of several thousand pounds."  Look up
such of your old creditors as you can find, and that not in matters
of money alone.  And, be sure you begin to do it now, before the
horn blows.  For, as sure as you take your keys and open your old
repositories, you will come on things you had completely forgotten
that will take more time and more strength, ay, and more resources,
than will then be at your disposal.  Even after you have begun at
once and done all that you can do, you will have to do at last as
Samuel Rutherford told George Gillespie to do:  "Hand over all your
bills, paid and unpaid, to your Surety.  Give Him the keys of the
drawer, and let Him clear it out for Himself after you are gone."

4.  And then, pray often to God for a clear mind between Him and
you, and for a quick, warm, and heaven-hungry heart at the last.
And take a promise from those who watch beside your bed that they
will not drug and stupefy you even though you should ask for it.
Whatever your pain, and it is all in God's hand, make up your mind,
if it be possible, to bear it.  It cannot be greater than the pain
of the cross, and your Saviour would not touch their drugs, however
well-intended.  He determined to face the swelling of Jordan and to
enter His Father's house with an unclouded mind.  Try your very
uttermost to do the same.  I cannot believe that the thief even
would have let the gall so much as touch his lips after Christ had
said to him, "Today thou shalt be with Me in Paradise!"  Well, if
your mind was ever clear and keen, let it be at its clearest and
its keenest at the last.  Let your mind and your heart be full of
repentance, and faith, and love, and hope, and all such saying
graces, and let them all be at their fullest and brightest
exercise, at that moment.  Be on the very tip-toe of expectation as
the end draws near.  Another pang, another gasp, one more
unutterable sinking of heart and flesh as if you were going down
into the dreadful pit--and then the abundant entrance, and the
beatific vision!  What wilt thou do then?  What wilt thou say then?
Hast thou thy salutation and thy song ready?  And what will it be?



Footnotes:

{1}  Delivered November 27th, 1892.

{2}  January 1st, 1893.