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Bunyan Characters (2nd Series)

by Alexander Whyte · English · Gutenberg #1886 · 486,871 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Bunyan Characters (2nd Series)

Author: Alexander Whyte


        
Release date: September 1, 1999 [eBook #1886]
                Most recently updated: December 31, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1886

Credits: Transcribed from the 1894 Oliphant Anderson and Ferrier edition by David Price


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BUNYAN CHARACTERS (2ND SERIES) ***






Transcribed from the 1894 Oliphant Anderson and Ferrier edition by David
Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk





BUNYAN CHARACTERS--SECOND SERIES
Lectures delivered in St. George's Free Church Edinburgh
By Alexander Whyte, D.D.


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 to-night 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 goodwill 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,
commonplace, 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 to-night, 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 

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