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+Project Gutenberg Etext Bunyan Characters (2nd Series), by Whyte
+#2 in our series by Alexander Whyte
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+Bunyan Characters (Second Series)
+
+by Alexander Whyte D.D.
+
+September, 1999  [Etext #1886]
+
+
+Project Gutenberg Etext Bunyan Characters (2nd Series), by Whyte
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+from the 1894 Oliphant Anderson and Ferrier edition.
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+This etext was prepared by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+from the 1894 Oliphant Anderson and Ferrier edition.
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+
+BUNYAN CHARACTERS (Second Series)
+Lectures delivered in St. George's Free Church Edinburgh
+
+
+
+
+IGNORANCE
+
+
+
+"I was alive without the law once."--Paul.
+
+"I was now a brisk talker also myself in the matter of religion."--
+Bunyan.
+
+This is a new kind of pilgrim.  There are not many pilgrims like
+this bright brisk youth.  A few more young gentlemen like this, and
+the pilgrimage way would positively soon become fashionable and
+popular, and be the thing to do.  Had you met with this young
+gentleman in society, had you noticed him beginning to come about
+your church, you would have lost no time in finding out who he was.
+I can well believe it, you would have replied.  Indeed, I felt sure
+of it.  I must ask him to the house.  I was quite struck with his
+appearance and his manners.  Yes; ask him at once to your house;
+show him some pointed attentions and you will never regret it.  For
+if he goes to the bar and works even decently at his cases, he will
+be first a sheriff and then a judge in no time.  If he should take
+to politics, he will be an under-secretary before his first
+parliament is out.  And if he takes to the church, which is not at
+all unlikely, our West-end congregations will all be competing for
+him as their junior colleague; and, if he elects either of our
+Established churches to exercise his profession in it, he will have
+dined with Her Majesty while half of his class-fellows are still
+half-starved probationers.  Society fathers will point him out with
+anger to their unsuccessful sons, and society mothers will smile
+under their eyelids as they see him hanging over their daughters.
+
+Well, as this handsome and well-appointed youth stepped out of his
+own neat little lane into the rough road on which our two pilgrims
+were staggering upward, he felt somewhat ashamed to be seen in
+their company.  And I do not wonder.  For a greater contrast you
+would not have seen on any road in all that country that day.  He
+was at your very first sight of him a gentleman and the son of a
+gentleman.  A little over-dressed perhaps; as, also, a little lofty
+to the two rather battered but otherwise decent enough men who,
+being so much older than he, took the liberty of first accosting
+him.  "Brisk" is his biographer's description of him.  Feather-
+headed, flippant, and almost impudent, you might have been tempted
+to say of him had you joined the little party at that moment.  But
+those two tumbled, broken-winded, and, indeed, broken-hearted old
+men had been, as an old author says, so emptied from vessel to
+vessel--they had had a life of such sloughs and stiff climbs--they
+had been in hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness so often--that
+it was no wonder that their dandiacal companion walked on a little
+ahead of them.  'Gentlemen,' his fine clothes and his cane and his
+head in the air all said to his two somewhat disreputable-looking
+fellow-travellers,--"Gentlemen, you be utter strangers to me:  I
+know you not.  And, besides, I take my pleasure in walking alone,
+even more a great deal than in company, unless I like it better."
+But all his society manners, and all his costly and well-kept
+clothes, and all his easy and self-confident airs did not impose
+upon the two wary old pilgrims.  They had seen too much of the
+world, and had been too long mixing among all kinds of pilgrims,
+young and old, true and false, to be easily imposed upon.  Besides,
+as one could see from their weather-beaten faces, and their
+threadbare garments, they had found the upward way so dreadfully
+difficult that they both felt a real apprehension as to the future
+of this light-hearted and light-headed youth.  "You may find some
+difficulty at the gate," somewhat bluntly broke in the oldest of
+the two pilgrims on their young comrade.  "I shall, no doubt, do at
+the gate as other good people do," replied the young gentleman
+briskly.  "But what have you to show at the gate that may cause
+that the gate be opened to you?"  "Why, I know my Lord's will, and
+I have been a good liver all my days, and I pay every man his own.
+I pray, moreover, and I fast.  I pay tithes, and give alms, and
+have left my country for whither I am going."  Now, before we go
+further:  Do all you young gentlemen do as much as that?  Have you
+always been good livers?  Have you paid every man and woman their
+due?  Do you pray to be called prayer?  And, if so, when, and
+where, and what for, and how long at a time?  I do not ask if your
+private prayer-book is like Bishop Andrewes' Devotions, which was
+so reduced to pulp with tears and sweat and the clenching of his
+agonising hands that his literary executors were with difficulty
+able to decipher it.  Clito in the Christian Perfection was so
+expeditious with his prayers that he used to boast that he could
+both dress and do his devotions in a quarter of an hour.  What was
+the longest time you ever took to dress or undress and say your
+prayers?  Then, again, there is another Anglican young gentleman in
+the same High Church book who always fasts on Good Friday and the
+Thirtieth of January.  Did you ever deny yourself a glass of wine
+or a cigar or an opera ticket for the church or the poor?  Could
+you honestly say that you know what tithes are?  And is there a
+poor man or woman or child in this whole city who will by any
+chance put your name into their prayers and praises at bedtime to-
+night?  I am afraid there are not many young gentlemen in this
+house tonight who could cast a stone at that brisk lad Ignorance,
+Vain-Hope, door in the side of the hill, and all.  He was not far
+from the kingdom of heaven; indeed, he got up to the very gate of
+it.  How many of you will get half as far?
+
+Now (what think you?), was it not a very bold thing in John Bunyan,
+whose own descent was of such a low and inconsiderable generation,
+his father's house being of that rank that is meanest and most
+despised of all the families in the land--was it not almost too
+bold in such a clown to take such a gentleman-scholar as Saul of
+Tarsus, the future Apostle of the Lord, and put him into the
+Pilgrim's Progress, and there go on to describe him as a very brisk
+lad and nickname him with the nickname of Ignorance?  For, in
+knowledge of all kinds to be called knowledge, Gamaliel's gold
+medallist could have bought the unlettered tinker of Elstow in one
+end of the market and sold him in the other.  And nobody knew that
+better than Bunyan did.  And yet such a lion was he for the truth,
+such a disciple of Luther was he, and such a defender and preacher
+of the one doctrine of a standing or falling church, that he fills
+page after page with the crass ignorance of the otherwise most
+learned of all the New Testament men.  Bunyan does not accuse the
+rising hope of the Pharisees of school or of synagogue ignorance.
+That young Hebrew Rabbi knew every jot and tittle of the law of
+Moses, and all the accumulated traditions of the fathers to boot.
+But Bunyan has Paul himself with him when he accuses and convicts
+Saul of an absolutely brutish ignorance of his own heart and hidden
+nature.  That so very brisk lad was always boasting in himself of
+the day on which he was circumcised, and of the old stock of which
+he had come; of his tribe, of his zeal, of his blamelessness, and
+of the profit he had made of his educational and ecclesiastical
+opportunities.  Whereas Bunyan is fain to say of himself in his
+Grace Abounding that he is "not able to boast of noble blood or of
+a high-born state according to the flesh.  Though, all things
+considered, I magnify the Heavenly Majesty for that by this door He
+brought me into this world to partake of the grace and life that is
+in Christ by the Gospel."
+
+As we listen to the conversation that goes on between the two old
+pilgrims and this smartly appointed youth, we find them striving
+hard, but without any sign of success, to convince him of some of
+the things from which he gets his somewhat severe name.  For one
+thing, they at last bluntly told him that he evidently did not know
+the very A B C about himself.  Till, when too hard pressed by the
+more ruthless of the two old men, the exasperated youth at last
+frankly burst out:  "I will never believe that my heart is thus
+bad!"  There is a warm touch of Bunyan's own experience here, mixed
+up with his so dramatic development of Paul's morsels of
+autobiography that he lets drop in his Epistles to the Philippians
+and to the Galatians.  "Now was I become godly; now I was become a
+right honest man.  Though as yet I was nothing but a poor painted
+hypocrite, yet I was proud of my godliness.  I read my Bible, but
+as for Paul's Epistles, and such like Scriptures, I could not away
+with them; being, as yet, but ignorant both of the corruptions of
+my nature and of the want and worth of Jesus Christ to save me.
+The new birth did never enter my mind, neither knew I the
+deceitfulness and treachery of my own wicked heart.  And as for
+secret thoughts, I took no notice of them."  My brethren, old and
+young, what do you think of all that?  What have you to say to all
+that?  Does all that not open a window and let a flood of daylight
+into your own breast?  I am sure it does.  That is the best
+portrait of you that ever was painted.  Do you not see yourself
+there as in a glass?  And do you not turn with disgust and loathing
+from the stupid and foolish face?  You complain and tell stories
+about how impostors and cheats and liars have come to your door and
+have impudently thrust themselves into your innermost rooms; but
+your own heart, if you only knew it, is deceitful far above them
+all.  Not the human heart as it stands in confessions, and in
+catechisms, and in deep religious books, but your own heart that
+beats out its blood-poison of self-deceit, and darkness, and death
+day and night continually.  "My heart is a good heart," said that
+poor ill-brought-up boy, who was already destroyed by his father
+and his mother for lack of self-knowledge.  I entirely grant you
+that those two old sinners by this time were taking very
+pessimistic and very melancholy views of human nature, and,
+therefore, of every human being, young and old.  They knew that no
+language had ever been coined in any scripture, or creed, or
+catechism, or secret diary of the deepest penitent, that even half
+uttered their own evil hearts; and they had lived long enough to
+see that we are all cut out of one web, are all dyed in one vat,
+and are all corrupted beyond all accusation or confession in Adam's
+corruption.  But how was that poor, mishandled lad to know or
+believe all that?  He could not.  It was impossible.  "You go so
+fast, gentlemen, that I cannot keep pace with you.  Go you on
+before and I will stay a while behind.  Then said Christian to his
+companion:  "It pities me much for this poor lad, for it will
+certainly go ill with him at last."  "Alas!" said Hopeful, "there
+are abundance in our town in his condition:  whole families, yea,
+whole streets, and that of pilgrims too."  Is your family such a
+family as this?  And are you yourself just such a pilgrim as
+Ignorance was, and are you hastening on to just such an end?
+
+And then, as a consequence, being wholly ignorant of his own
+corruption and condemnation in the sight of God, this miserable man
+must remain ignorant and outside of all that God has done in Christ
+for corrupt and condemned men.  "I believe that Christ died for
+sinners and that I shall be justified before God from the curse
+through His gracious acceptance of my obedience to His law.  Or,
+then, to take it this way, Christ makes my duties that are
+religious acceptable to His Father by virtue of His merits, and so
+shall I be justified."  Now, I verify believe that nine out of ten
+of the young men who are here to-night would subscribe that
+statement and never suspect there was anything wrong with it or
+with themselves.  And yet, what does Christian, who, in this
+matter, is just John Bunyan, who again is just the word of God--
+what does the old pilgrim say to this confession of this young
+pilgrim's faith?  "Ignorance is thy name," he says, "and as thy
+name is, so art thou:  even this thy answer demonstrateth what I
+say.  Ignorant thou art of what justifying righteousness is, and as
+ignorant how to secure thy soul through the faith of it from the
+heavy wrath of God.  Yea, thou also art ignorant of the true effect
+of saving faith in this righteousness of Christ's, which is to bow
+and win over the heart to God in Christ, to love His name, His
+word, His ways, and His people."  Paul sums up all his own early
+life in this one word, "ignorant of God's righteousness."  "Going
+about," he says also, "to establish our own righteousness, not
+submitting ourselves to be justified by the righteousness that God
+has provided with such wisdom and grace, and at such a cost in His
+Son Jesus Christ."  Now, young men, I defy you to be better born,
+better brought up, or to have better prospects than Saul of Tarsus
+had.  I defy you to have profited more by all your opportunities
+and advantages than he had done.  I defy you to be more blameless
+in your opening manhood than he was.  And yet it all went like
+smoke when he got a true sight of himself, and, with that, a true
+sight of Christ and His justifying righteousness.  Read at home to-
+night, and read when alone, what that great man of God says about
+all that in his classical epistle to the Philippians, and refuse to
+sleep till you have made the same submission.  And, to-night, and
+all your days, let SUBMISSION, Paul's splendid submission, be the
+soul and spirit of all your religious life.  Submission to be
+searched by God's holy law as by a lighted candle:  submission to
+be justified from all that that candle discovers:  submission to
+take Christ as your life and righteousness, sanctification and
+redemption:  and submission of your mind and your will and your
+heart to Him at all times and in all things.  Nay, stay still, and
+say where you sit, Lord, I submit.  I submit on the spot to be
+pardoned.  I submit now to be saved.  I submit in all things from
+this very hour and house of God not any longer to be mine own, but
+to be Thine, O God, Thine, Thine, for ever, in Jesus Christ Thy Son
+and my Saviour!
+
+"But, one day, as I was passing in the field, and that, too, with
+some dashes in my conscience, fearing lest all was not right,
+suddenly this sentence fell upon my soul, Thy Righteousness is in
+heaven!  And, methought, I saw with the eyes of my soul Jesus
+Christ at God's right hand.  There, I saw, was my Righteousness.  I
+also saw, moreover, that it was not my good frame of heart that
+made my Righteousness better, nor my bad frame of heart that made
+my Righteousness worse:  for my Righteousness was Jesus Christ
+Himself, the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.  'Twas
+glorious to me to see His exaltation, and the worth and prevalency
+of His benefits.  And that because I could now look from myself to
+Him and should reckon that all those graces of God that were now
+green in me were yet but like those crack-groats and four-pence
+halfpennies that rich men carry in their purses when their gold is
+in their trunks at home!  Oh, I saw that day that my gold was all
+in my trunk at home!  Even in Christ, my Lord and Saviour!  Now,
+Christ was all to me:  all my wisdom, all my righteousness, all my
+sanctification and all my redemption."
+
+
+"Methinks in this God speaks,
+No tinker hath such power."
+
+
+
+LITTLE-FAITH
+
+
+
+"O thou of little faith."--Our Lord.
+
+Little-Faith, let it never be forgotten, was, all the time, a good
+man.  With all his mistakes about himself, with his sad
+misadventure, with all his loss of blood and of money, and with his
+whole after-lifetime of doleful and bitter complaints,--all the
+time, Little-Faith was all through, in a way, a good man.  To keep
+us right on this all-important point, and to prevent our being
+prematurely prejudiced against this pilgrim because of his somewhat
+prejudicial name--because give a dog a bad name, you know, and you
+had better hang him out of hand at once--because, I say, of this
+pilgrim's somewhat suspicious name, his scrupulously just, and,
+indeed, kindly affected biographer says of him, and says it of him
+not once nor twice, but over and over and over again, that this
+Little-Faith was really all the time a truly good man.  And, more
+than that, this good man's goodness was not a new thing with him it
+was not a thing of yesterday.  This man had, happily to begin with,
+a good father and a good mother.  And if there was a good town in
+all those parts for a boy to be born and brought up in it was
+surely the town of Sincere.  "Train up a child in the way he should
+go, and when he is old he will not depart from it."  Well, Little-
+Faith had been so trained up both by his father and his mother and
+his schoolmaster and his minister, and he never cost either of them
+a sore heart or even an hour's sleep.  One who knew him well, as
+well, indeed, as only one young man knows another, has been fain to
+testify, when suspicions have been cast on the purity and integrity
+of his youth, that nothing will describe this pilgrim so well in
+the days of his youth as just those beautiful words out of the New
+Testament--"an example to all young men in word, in conversation,
+in charity, in spirit, in faith even, and in purity"--and that, if
+there was one young man in all that town of Sincere who kept his
+garments unspotted it was just our pilgrim of to-night.  Yes, said
+one who had known him all his days, if the child is the father of
+the man, then Little-Faith, as you so unaccountably to me call him,
+must have been all along a good man.
+
+It was said long ago in Vanity Fair about our present Premier that
+if he were a worse man he would be a better statesman.  Now, I do
+not repeat that in this place because I agree with it, but because
+it helps to illustrate, as sometimes a violent paradox will help to
+illustrate, a truth that does not lie all at once on the surface.
+But it is no paradox or extravagance or anything but the simple
+truth to say that if Little-Faith had had more and earlier
+discoveries made to him of the innate evil of his own heart, even
+if it had been by that innate evil bursting out of his heart and
+laying waste his good life, he would either have been driven out of
+his little faith altogether or driven into a far deeper faith.  Had
+the commandment come to him in the manner it came to Paul; had it
+come so as that the sinfulness of his inward nature had revived, as
+Paul says, under its entrance; then, either his great goodness or
+his little faith must have there and then died.  God's truth and
+man's goodness cannot dwell together in the same heart.  Either the
+truth will kill the goodness, or the goodness will kill the truth.
+Little-Faith, in short, was such a good man, and had always been
+such a good man, and had led such an easy life in consequence, that
+his faith had not been much exercised, and therefore had not grown,
+as it must have been exercised and must have grown, had he not been
+such a good man.  In short, and to put it bluntly, had Little-Faith
+been a worse sinner, he would have been a better saint.  "O felix
+culpa!" exclaimed a church father; "O happy fault, which found for
+us sinners such a Redeemer."  An apostrophe which Bishop Ken has
+put into these four bold lines -
+
+
+"What Adam did amiss,
+Turned to our endless bliss;
+O happy sin, which to atone,
+Drew Filial God to leave His throne."
+
+
+And John Calvin, the soberest of men, supports Augustine, the most
+impulsive of men, in saying the same thing.  All things which
+happen to the saints are so overruled by God that what the world
+regards as evil the issue shows to be good.  For what Augustine
+says is true, that even the sins of saints are, through the guiding
+providence of God, so far from doing harm to them, that, on the
+contrary, they serve to advance their salvation.  And Richard
+Hooker, a theologian, if possible, still more judicious than even
+John Calvin, says on this same subject and in support of the same
+great father, "I am not afraid to affirm it boldly with St.
+Augustine that men puffed up through a proud opinion of their own
+sanctity and holiness receive a benefit at the hands of God, and
+are assisted with His grace, when with His grace they are not
+assisted, but permitted, and that grievously, to transgress.  Ask
+the very soul of Peter, and it shall undoubtedly make you itself
+this answer:  My eager protestations, made in the glory of my
+ghostly strength, I am ashamed of; but those crystal tears,
+wherewith my sin and weakness were bewailed, have procured my
+endless joy:  my strength hath been my ruin, and my fall my stay."
+And our own Samuel Rutherford is not likely to be left far behind
+by the best of them when the grace of God is to be magnified.  "Had
+sin never been we should have wanted the mysterious Emmanuel, the
+Beloved, the Chief among ten thousand, Christ, God-man, the Saviour
+of sinners.  For, no sick sinners, no soul-physician of sinners; no
+captive, no Redeemer; no slave of hell, no lovely ransom-payer of
+heaven.  Mary Magdalene with her seven devils, Paul with his hands
+smoking with the blood of the saints, and with his heart sick with
+malice and blasphemy against Christ and His Church, and all the
+rest of the washen ones whose robes are made fair in the blood of
+the Lamb, and all the multitude that no man can number in that best
+of lands, are all but bits of free grace.  O what a depth of
+unsearchable wisdom to contrive that lovely plot of free grace.
+Come, all intellectual capacities, and warm your hearts at this
+fire.  Come, all ye created faculties, and smell the precious
+ointment of Christ.  Oh come, sit down under His shadow and eat the
+apples of life.  Oh that angels would come, and generations of men,
+and wonder, and admire, and fall down before the unsearchable
+wisdom of this gospel-art of the unsearchable riches of Christ!"
+And always pungent Thomas Shepard of New England:  "You shall find
+this, that there is not any carriage or passage of the Lord's
+providence toward thee but He will get a name to Himself, first and
+last, by it.  Hence you shall find that those very sins that
+dishonour His name He will even by them get Himself a better name;
+for so far will they be from casting you out of His love that He
+will actually do thee good by them.  Look and see if it is not so
+with thee?  Doth not thy weakness strengthen thee like Paul?  Doth
+not thy blindness make thee cry for light?  And hath not God out of
+darkness oftentimes brought light?  Thou hast felt venom against
+Christ and thy brother, and thou hast on that account loathed
+thyself the more.  Thy falls into sin make thee weary of it,
+watchful against it, long to be rid of it.  And thus He makes thy
+poison thy food, thy death thy life, thy damnation thy salvation,
+and thy very greatest enemies thy very best friends.  And hence Mr.
+Fox said that he thanked God more for his sins than for his good
+works.  And the reason is, God will have His name."  And, last, but
+not least, listen to our old acquaintance, James Fraser of Brea:
+"I find advantages by my sins:  'Peccare nocet, peccavisse vero
+juvat.'  I may say, as Mr. Fox said, my sins have, in a manner,
+done me more good than my graces.  Grace and mercy have more
+abounded where sin had much abounded.  I am by my sins made much
+more humble, watchful, revengeful against myself.  I am made to see
+a greater need to depend more upon Him and to love Him the more.  I
+find that true which Shepard says, 'sin loses strength by every new
+fall.'"  Have you followed all that, my brethren?  Or have you
+stumbled at it?  Do you not understand it?  Does your superficial
+gin-horse mind incline to shake its empty head over all this?  I
+know that great names, and especially the great names of your own
+party, go much farther with you than the truth goes, and therefore
+I have sheltered this deep truth under a shield of great names.
+For their sakes let this sure truth of God's best saints lie in
+peace and undisputed beside you till you arrive to understand it.
+
+But, to proceed,--the thing was this.  At this passage there comes
+down from Broadway-gate a lane called Dead-Man's-lane, so called
+because of the murders that are commonly done there.  And this
+Little-Faith going on pilgrimage, as we now do, chanced to sit down
+there and fell fast asleep.  Yes; the thing was this:  This good
+man had never been what one would call really awake.  He was not a
+bad man, as men went in the town of Sincere, but he always had a
+half-slept half-awakened look about his eyes, till now, at this
+most unfortunate spot, he fell stone-dead asleep.  You all know, I
+shall suppose, what the apostle Paul and John Bunyan mean by sleep,
+do you not?  You all know, at any rate, to begin with, what sleep
+means in the accident column of the morning papers.  You all know
+what sleep meant and what it involved and cost in the Thirsk
+signal-box the other night. {1}  When a man is asleep, he is as
+good as dead, and other people are as good as dead to him.  He is
+dead to duty, to danger, to other people's lives, as well as to his
+own.  He may be having pleasant dreams, and may even be laughing
+aloud in his sleep, but that may only make his awaking all the more
+hideous.  He may awake just in time, or he may awake just too late.
+Only, he is asleep and he neither knows nor cares.  Now, there is a
+sleep of the soul as well as of the body.  And as the soul is in
+worth, as the soul is in its life and in its death to the body, so
+is its sleep.  Many of you sitting there are quite as dead to
+heaven and hell, to death and judgment, and to what a stake other
+people as well as yourselves have in your sleep as that poor
+sleeper in the signal-box was dead to what was coming rushing on
+him through the black night.  And as all his gnashing of teeth at
+himself, and all his sobs before his judge and before the laid-out
+dead, and before distracted widows and half-mad husbands did not
+bring back that fatal moment when he fell asleep so sweetly, so
+will it be with you.  Lazarus! come forth!  Wise and foolish
+virgins both:  Behold the Bridegroom cometh!  Awake, thou that
+sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee
+light!
+
+And, with that, Guilt with a great club that was in his hand struck
+Little-Faith on the head, and with that blow felled him to the
+earth, where he lay bleeding as one that would soon bleed to death.
+Yes, yes, all true to the very life.  A man may be the boast and
+the example of all the town, and yet, unknown to them all, and all
+but unknown to himself till he is struck down, he may have had
+guilt enough on his track all the time to lay him half dead at the
+mouth of Dead-Man's-lane.  Good as was the certificate that all men
+in their honesty gave to Little-Faith, yet even he had some bad
+enough memories behind him and within him had he only kept them
+ever present with him.  But, then, it was just this that all along
+was the matter with Little-Faith.  Till, somehow, after that sad
+and yet not wholly evil sleep, all his past sins leapt out into the
+light and suddenly became and remained all the rest of his life
+like scarlet.  So loaded, indeed, was the club of Guilt with the
+nails and studs and clamps of secret aggravation, that every nail
+and stud left its own bleeding bruise in the prostrate man's head.
+I have myself, says the narrator of Little-Faith's story, I have
+myself been engaged as he was, and I found it to be a terrible
+thing.  I would, as the saying is, have sold my life at that moment
+for a penny; but that, as God would have it, I was clothed with
+armour of proof:  ay, and yet though I was thus harnessed, I found
+it hard work to quit myself like a man.  No man can tell what in
+that combat attends us but he that hath been in the battle himself.
+Great-Grace himself,--whoso looks well upon his face shall see
+those cuts and scars that shall easily give demonstration of what I
+say.
+
+Most unfortunately there was no good Samaritan with his beast on
+the road that day to take the half-dead man to an inn.  And thus it
+was that Little-Faith was left to lie in his blood till there was
+almost no more blood left in him.  Till at last, coming a little to
+himself, he made a shift to scrabble on his way.  When he was able
+to look a little to himself, besides all his wounds and loss of
+blood, he found that all his spending money was gone, and what was
+he to do, a stranger in such a plight on a strange road?  There was
+nothing for it but he must just beg his way with many a hungry
+belly for the remainder of his way.  You all understand the parable
+at this point?  Our knowledge of gospel truth; our personal
+experience of the life of God in our own soul; our sensible
+attainments in this grace of the Spirit and in that; in secret
+prayer, in love to God, in forgiveness of injuries, in good-will to
+all men, and in self-denial that no one knows of,--in things like
+these we possess what may be called the pocket-money of the
+spiritual life.  All these things, at their best, are not the true
+jewel that no thief can break through nor steal; but though they
+are not our best and truest riches, yet they have their place and
+play their part in sending us up the pilgrim way.  By our long and
+close study of the word of God, if that is indeed our case; by
+divine truth dwelling richly and experimentally in our hearts; and
+by a hidden life that is its own witness, and which always has the
+Holy Spirit's seal set upon it that we are the children of God,--
+all that keeps, and is designed by God to keep our hearts up amid
+the labours and the faintings, the hopes and the fears of the
+spiritual life.  All that keeps us at the least and the worst above
+famine and beggary.  Now, the whole pity with Little-Faith was,
+that though he was not a bad man, yet he never, even at his best
+days, had much of those things that make a good and well-furnished
+pilgrim; and what little he had he had now clean lost.  He had
+never been much a reader of his Bible; he had never sat over it as
+other men sat over their news-letters and their romances.  He had
+never had much taste or talent for spiritual books of any kind.  He
+was a good sort of man, but he was not exactly the manner of man on
+whose broken heart the Holy Ghost sets the broad seal of heaven.
+But for his dreadful misadventure, he might have plodded on, a
+decent, humdrum, commonplace, everyday kind of pilgrim; but when
+that catastrophe fell on him he had nothing to fall back upon.  The
+secret ways of faith and love and hope were wholly unknown to him.
+He had no practice in importunate prayer.  He had never prayed a
+whole night all his life.  He had never needed to do so.  For were
+we not told when we first met him what a blameless and pure and
+true and good man he had always been?  He did not know how to find
+his way about in his Bible; and as for the maps and guide-books
+that some pilgrims never let out of their hand, even when he had
+some spending money about him, he never laid it out that way.  And
+a more helpless pilgrim than Little-Faith was all the rest of the
+way you never saw.  He was forced to beg as he went, says his
+historian.  That is to say, he had to lean upon and look to wiser
+and better-furnished men than himself.  He had to share their
+meals, look to them to pay his bills, keep close to their company,
+walk in their foot-prints, and at night borrow their oil, and it
+was only in this poor dependent way that Little-Faith managed to
+struggle on to the end of his dim and joyless journey.
+
+It would have been far more becoming and far more profitable if
+Christian and Hopeful, instead of falling out of temper and calling
+one another bad names over the sad case of Little-Faith, had tried
+to tell one another why that unhappy pilgrim's faith was so small,
+and how both their own faith and his might from that day have been
+made more.  Hopeful, for some reason or other, was in a rude and
+boastful mood of mind that day, and Christian was more tart and
+snappish than we have ever before seen him; and, altogether, the
+opportunity of learning something useful out of Little-Faith's
+story has been all but lost to us.  But, now, since there are so
+many of Little-Faith's kindred among ourselves--so many good men
+who are either half asleep in their religious life or are begging
+their way from door to door--let them be told, in closing, one or
+two out of many other ways in which their too little faith may
+possibly be made stronger and more fruitful.
+
+Well, then, faith, like everything else, once we have it, grows
+greater by our continual exercise of it.  Exercise, then,
+intentionally and seriously and on system your faith every day.
+And exercise it habitually and increasingly on your Bible, on
+heaven, and on Jesus Christ.  And let your faith on all these
+things, and places, and persons, work by love,--by love and by
+imagination.  Our love is cold and our faith is small and weak for
+lack of imagination.  Read your Psalm, your Gospel, your Epistle
+every morning and every night with your eye upon the object.  Think
+you see the Psalmist amid all his deep and divine experiences.
+Think you see Jesus Christ speaking His parables, saying His
+prayers, and doing His good works.  Walk up and down with Him,
+observing His manner, His look, His gait, His divinity in your
+humanity, till Galilee and Jerusalem become Scotland and Edinburgh;
+that is, till He is as much with you, and more, than He was with
+Peter and James and John.  Never close your eye a single night till
+you have again laid your hand on the very head of the Lamb of God,
+and till you feel that your sin and guilt have all passed off your
+hand and on upon His head.  And never rise without, like William
+Law, saluting the rising sun in the name of God, as if he had just
+been created and sent up into your sky to let you see to serve God
+and your neighbour for another day.  And be often out of this world
+and up in heaven.  Beat all about you at building castles in the
+air; you have more material and more reason.  For is not faith the
+substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen?
+Walk often in heaven's friendly streets.  Pass often into heaven's
+many mansions filled with happy families.  Imagine this unhappy
+life at an end, and imagine yourself sent back to this probationary
+world to play the man for a few short years before heaven finally
+calls you home.  Little-Faith was a good man, but there was no
+speculation in his eyes and no secrets of love in his heart.  And
+if your faith also is little, and your spending money also is run
+low, try this way of love and imagination.  If you have a better
+way, then go on with it and be happy yourself and helpful to
+others; but if your faith is at a standstill and is stricken with
+barrenness, try my counsel of putting more heart and more inward
+eye, more holy love and more heavenly joy, into your frigid and
+sterile religion.
+
+
+
+THE FLATTERER
+
+
+
+"A man that flattereth his neighbour spreadeth a net for his
+feet."--The Wise Man.
+
+Both Ignorance and Little-Faith would have had their revenge and
+satisfaction upon Christian and Hopeful had they seen those two so
+Pharisaical old men taken in the Flatterer's net.  For it was
+nothing else but the swaggering pride of Hopeful over the pitiful
+case of Little-Faith, taken along with the hard and hasty ways of
+Christian with that unhappy youth Ignorance, that so soon laid them
+both down under the small cords of the Shining One.  This word of
+the wise man, that pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty
+spirit before a fall, was fulfilled to the very letter in Christian
+and Hopeful that high-minded day.  At the same time, it must be
+admitted that Christian and Hopeful would have been more than human
+if they had not both felt and let fall some superiority, some
+scorn, and some impatience in the presence of such a silly and
+upsetting stripling as Ignorance was; as, also, over the story of
+such a poor-spirited and spunging creature as Little-Faith was.
+Christian and Hopeful had just come down from their delightful time
+among the Delectable Mountains, and they were as full as they could
+hold of all kinds of knowledge, and faith, and hope, and assurance;
+when, most unfortunately, as it turned out, they first came across
+Ignorance, and then, after quarrelling with him, they fell out
+between themselves over the case of Little-Faith.  Their superior
+knowledge of the truth, and their superior strength of faith, ought
+to have made them more able to bear with the infirmities of the
+weak, and with the passing moods, however provoking, of one
+another.  But no.  And their impatience and contempt and bad temper
+all came at this crisis to such a head with them that they could
+only be cured by the small cords and the stinging words of the
+Shining One.  The true key to this so painful part of the parable
+hangs at our own girdle.  We who have been born and brought up in
+an evangelical church are thrown from time to time into the company
+of men--ministers and people--who have not had our advantages and
+opportunities.  They have been born, baptized, and brought up in
+communities and churches the clean opposite of ours; and they are
+as ignorant of all New Testament religion as Ignorance himself was;
+or, on the other hand, they are as full of superstition and terror
+and spiritual starvation as Little-Faith was.  And then, instead of
+recollecting and laying to heart Who made us to differ from such
+ignorance and such unbelief, and thus putting on love and humility
+and patience toward our neighbours, we speak scornfully and roughly
+to them, and boast ourselves over them, and as good as say to them,
+Stand by thyself, come not near to me, for I am wiser, wider-
+minded, stronger, and better every way than thou.  And then, ere
+ever we are aware of what we are doing, we have let the arch-
+flatterer of religious superiority and of spiritual pride seduce us
+aside out of the lowly and heavenly way of love and humility till
+we are again brought back to it with rebukes of conscience and with
+other chastisements.  You all understand, my brethren, that the man
+black of flesh but covered with a white robe was no wayside seducer
+who met Christian and Hopeful at that dangerous part of the road
+only and only on that high-minded day.  You know from yourselves
+surely that both Christian and Hopeful carried that black but
+smooth-spoken man within themselves.  The Flatterer who led the two
+pilgrims so fatally wrong that day was just their own heart taken
+out of their own bosom and personified and dramatised by Bunyan's
+dramatic genius, and so made to walk and talk and flatter and puff
+up outside of themselves till they came again to see who in reality
+he was and whence he came,--that is to say, till they were brought
+to see what they themselves still were, and would always be, when
+they were left to themselves.  "Where did you lie last night? asked
+the Shining One with the whip.  With the Shepherds on the
+Delectable Mountains, they answered.  He asked them then if they
+had not of those shepherds a note of direction for the way?  They
+answered, Yes.  But did you not, said he, when you were at a stand
+pluck out and read your note?  They answered, No.  He asked them
+why?  They said they forgot.  He asked, moreover if the shepherds
+did not bid them beware of the Flatterer?  They answered, Yes; but
+we did not imagine, said they, that this fine-spoken man had been
+he."
+
+All good literature, both sacred and profane, both ancient and
+modern, is full of the Flatterer.  Let me not, protests Elihu in
+his powerful speech in the book of Job, let me not accept any man's
+person; neither let me give flattering titles unto man, lest in so
+doing my Maker should soon take me away.  And the Psalmist in his
+powerful description of the wicked men of his day:  There is no
+faithfulness in their mouth; their inward part is very wickedness;
+their throat is an open sepulchre; they flatter with their tongue.
+And again:  They speak with flattering lips, and with a double
+heart do they speak.  But the Lord shall cut off all flattering
+lips, and the tongue that speaketh proud things.  "The perpetual
+hyperbole" of pure love becomes in the lips of impure love the
+impure bait that leads the simple ones astray on the streets of the
+city as seen and heard by the wise man out of his casement.  My
+son, say unto wisdom, Thou art my sister, and call understanding
+thy kinswoman; that they may keep thee from the strange woman, from
+the stranger which flattereth thee with her words, which forsaketh
+the guide of her youth, and forgetteth the covenant of her God.
+And then in the same book of Hebrew aphorisms we find this text
+which Bunyan puts on the margin of the page:  "A man that
+flattereth his neighbour spreadeth a net for his feet."  And now,
+before we leave the ancient world, if you would not think it
+beneath the dignity of the place we are in, I would like to read to
+you a passage out of a round-about paper written by a satirist of
+Greece about the time of Ezra and Nehemiah in Jerusalem.  You will
+easily remark the difference of tone between the seriousness and
+pathos of the Hebrew prophet and the light and chaffing touch of
+Theophrastus.  "The Flatterer is a person," says that satirist of
+Greek society, "who will say to you as he walks with you, 'Do you
+observe how people are looking at you?  This happens to no man in
+Athens but to you.  A fine compliment was paid you yesterday in the
+Porch.  More than thirty persons were sitting there when the
+question was started, Who is our foremost man?  Every one mentioned
+you first, and ended by coming back to your name."  The Flatterer
+will laugh also at your stalest joke, and will stuff his cloak into
+his mouth as if he could not repress his amusement when you again
+tell it.  He will buy apples and pears and will give to your
+children when you are by, and will kiss them all and will say,
+'Chicks of a good father.'  Also, when he assists at the purchase
+of slippers he will declare that the foot is more shapely than the
+shoe.  He is the first of the guests to praise the wine and to say
+as he reclines next the host, 'How delicate your fare always is';
+and taking up something from the table, 'Now, how excellent that
+is!'"  And so on.  Yes, we have heard it all over and over again in
+Modern Athens also.  The Greek fable also of the fox and the crow
+and the piece of cheese is only another illustration of the truth
+that the God of truth and integrity never left Himself without a
+witness.  Our own literature also is scattered full of the
+Flatterer and his too willing dupes.  "Of praise a mere glutton,"
+says Goldsmith of David Garrick, "he swallowed what came.  The puff
+of a dunce he mistook it for fame."  "Delicious essence," exclaims
+Sterne, "how refreshing thou art to poor human nature!  How sweetly
+dost thou mix with the blood, and help it through the most
+difficult and tortuous passages to the heart."  "He that slanders
+me," says Cowper, "paints me blacker than I am, and he that
+flatters me whiter.  They both daub me, and when I look in the
+glass of conscience, I see myself disguised by both."  And then he
+sings:
+
+
+"The worth of these three kingdoms I defy
+To lure me to the baseness of a lie;
+And of all lies (be that one poet's boast),
+The lie that flatters I abhor the most."
+
+
+Now, praise, which is one of the best and sweetest things in human
+life, so soon passes over into flattery, which is one of the worst
+things, that something must here be said and laid to heart about
+praise also.  But, to begin with, praise itself must first be
+praised.  There is nothing nobler than true praise in him who
+speaks it, and there is nothing dearer and sweeter to him who hears
+it.  God Himself inhabits the praises of Israel.  All God's works
+praise Him.  Whoso offereth praise glorifieth Me.  Praise waiteth
+for Thee, O God, in Zion.  Enter into His gates with thanksgiving,
+and into His courts with praise.  Violence shall no more be heard
+in thy land, wasting nor destruction within thy borders; but thou
+shalt call thy walls Salvation, and thy gates Praise.  And such
+also is all true praise between man and man.  How deliciously sweet
+is praise!  How we labour after it! how we look for it and wait for
+it! and how we languish and die if we do not get it!  Again, when
+it comes to us, how it cheers us up and makes our face to shine!
+For a long time after it our step is so swift on the street and our
+face beams so that all men can quite well see what has come to us.
+Praise is like wine in our blood; it is new life to our fainting
+heart.  So much is this the case that a salutation of praise is to
+be our first taste of heaven itself.  It will wipe all tears off
+our eyes when we hear our Lord saying to us, "Well done!" when all
+our good works that we have done in the body shall be found unto
+praise and honour and glory in the great day of Jesus Christ.
+
+At the same time, this same love of praise is one of our most
+besetting and fatal temptations as long as we are in this false and
+double and deceptive world.  Sin, God curse it! has corrupted and
+poisoned everything, the very best things of this life, and when
+the best things are corrupted and poisoned they become the worst
+things.  And praise does not escape this universal and fatal law.
+Weak, evil, and self-seeking men are near us, and we lean upon
+them, look to them, and listen to them.  We make them our strength
+and support, and seek repose and refreshment from them.  They
+cannot be all or any of these things to us; but we are far on in
+life, we are done with life, before we have discovered that and
+will admit that.  Most men never discover and admit that till they
+are out of this life altogether.  Christ's praise and the applause
+of His saints and angels are so future and so far away from us, and
+man's praise and the applause of this world, hollow and false as it
+is, is so near us, that we feed our souls on offal and garbage,
+when, already, in the witness of a good conscience, we might be
+feasting our souls on the finest of the wheat, and satisfying them
+with honey out of the rock.  And, then, this insatiable appetite of
+our hearts, being so degraded and perverted, like all degraded and
+perverted appetites, becomes an iron-fast slave to what it feeds
+upon.  What miserable slaves we all are to the approval and the
+praise of men!  How they hold us in their bondage!  How we lick
+their hands and sit up on our haunches and go through our postures
+for a crumb!  How we crawl on our belly and lick their feet for a
+stroke and a smile!  What a hound's life does that man lead who
+lives upon the approval and the praise and the patronage of men!
+What meanness fills his mind; what baseness fills his heart!  What
+a shameful leash he is led about the world in!  How kicked about
+and spat upon he is; while not half so much as he knows all the
+time that he deserves to be!  Better far be a dog at once and bay
+the moon than be a man and fawn upon the praises of men.
+
+If you would be a man at all, not to speak of a Christian man,
+starve this appetite till you have quite extirpated it.  You will
+never be safe from it as long as it stirs within you.  Extirpate
+it!  Extirpate it!  You will never know true self-respect and you
+will never deserve to know it, till you have wholly extirpated your
+appetite for praise.  Put your foot upon it, put it out of your
+heart.  Stop fishing for it, and when you see it coming, turn away
+and stop your ears against it.  And should it still insinuate
+itself, at any rate do not repeat to others what has already so
+flattered and humbled and weakened you.  Telling it to others will
+only humble and weaken you more.  By repeating the praise that you
+have heard or read about yourself you only expose yourself and
+purchase well-deserved contempt for yourself.  And, more than that,
+by fishing for praise you lay yourself open to all sorts of
+flatterers.  Honest men, men who truly respect and admire you, will
+show you their dignified regard and appreciation of you and your
+work by their silence; while your leaky slaves will crowd around
+you with floods of praise that they know well will please and
+purchase you.  And when you cannot with all your arts squeeze a
+drop out of those who love and honour you, gallons will be poured
+upon you by those who have respect neither for themselves nor for
+you.  Faugh!  Flee from flatterers, and take up only with sternly
+true and faithful men.  "I am much less regardful," says Richard
+Baxter, "of the approbation of men, and set much lighter store by
+their praise and their blame, than I once did.  All worldly things
+appear most vain and unsatisfying to those who have tried them
+most.  But while I feel that this has had some hand in my distaste
+for man's praise, yet it is the increasing impression on my heart
+of man's nothingness and God's transcendent greatness; it is the
+brevity and vanity of all earthly things, taken along with the
+nearness of eternity;--it is all this that has at last lifted me
+above the blame and the praise of men."
+
+To conclude; let us make up our mind and determine to pass on to
+God on the spot every syllable of praise that ever comes to our
+eyes or our ears--if, in this cold, selfish, envious, and grudging
+world, any syllable of praise ever should come to us.  Even if pure
+and generous and well-deserved praise should at any time come to
+us, all that does not make it ours.  The best earned usury is not
+the steward's own money to do with it what he likes.  The principal
+and the interest, and the trader too, are all his master's.  And,
+more than that, after the wisest and the best trader has done his
+best, he will remain, to himself at least, a most unprofitable
+servant.  Pass on then immediately, dutifully, and to its very last
+syllable, to God all the praise that comes to you.  Wash your hands
+of it and say, Not unto us, O God, not unto us, but unto Thy name.
+And then, to take the most selfish and hungry-hearted view of this
+whole matter, what you thus pass on to God as not your own but His,
+He will soon, and in a better and safer world, return again to the
+full with usury to you, and you again to God, and He again to you,
+and so on, all down the pure and true and sweet and blessed life of
+heaven.
+
+
+
+ATHEIST
+
+
+
+" . . . without God [literally, atheists] in the world."--Paul.
+
+"Yonder is a man with his back toward Zion, and he is coming to
+meet us.  So he drew nearer and nearer, and at last came up to
+them.  His name was Atheist, and he asked them whither they were
+going?  We are going to the Mount Zion, they answered.  Then
+Atheist fell into a very great laughter.  What is the meaning of
+your laughter? they asked.  I laugh to see what ignorant persons
+you are to take upon you so tedious a journey, and yet are like to
+have nothing but your travel for your pains.  Why, man?  Do you
+think we shall not be received? they said.  Received!  There is no
+such place as you dream of in all this world.  But there is in the
+world to come, replied Christian.  When I was at home, Atheist went
+on, in mine own country I heard as you now affirm, and, from that
+hearing, I went out to see, and have been seeking this city you
+speak of this twenty years, but find no more of it than I did the
+first day I set out.  And, still laughing, he went his way."
+
+Having begun to tell us about Atheist, why did Bunyan not tell us
+more?  We would have thanked him warmly to-night for a little more
+about this unhappy man.  Why did the dreamer not take another eight
+or ten pages in order to tell us, as only he could have told us,
+how this man that is now Atheist had spent his past twenty years
+seeking Mount Zion?  Those precious unwritten pages are now buried
+in John Strudwick's vault in Bunhill Fields, and no other man has
+arisen able to handle Bunyan's biographic pen.  Had Bunyan but put
+off the entrance of Christian and Hopeful into the city till he had
+told us something more about the twenty years it had taken this
+once earnest pilgrim to become an atheist, how valuable an
+interpolation that would have been!  What was it that made this man
+to set out so long ago for the Celestial City?  What was it that so
+stoutly determined him to leave off all his old companions and turn
+his back on the sweet refreshments of his youth?  How did he do at
+the Slough of Despond?  Did he come that way?  What about the
+Wicket Gate, and the House Beautiful, and the Interpreter's House,
+and the Delectable Mountains?  What men, and especially what women,
+did he meet and converse with on his way?  What were his fortunes,
+and what his misfortunes?  How much did he lay out at Vanity Fair,
+and on what?  At what point of his twenty years' way did his
+youthful faith begin to shake, and his youthful love begin to
+become lukewarm?  And what was it that at last made him quite turn
+round his back on Zion and his face to his own country?  I cannot
+forgive Bunyan to-night for not telling us the story of Atheist's
+conversion, his pilgrimage, and his apostasy in full.
+
+At the same time, though it cannot be denied that Bunyan has lost
+at this point a great opportunity for his genius and for our
+advantage,--at the same time, he undoubtedly did a very courageous
+thing in introducing Atheist at all; and, especially, in
+introducing him to us and making him laugh so loudly at us when we
+are on the very borders of the land of Beulah.  A less courageous
+writer, and a writer less sure of his ground, would have left out
+Atheist altogether; or, if he had felt constrained to introduce
+him, would have introduced him at any other period of our history
+rather than at this period.  Under other hands than Bunyan's we
+would have met with this mocking reprobate just outside the City of
+Destruction; or, perhaps, among the booths of Vanity Fair; or,
+indeed, anywhere but where we now meet him.  And, that our greater-
+minded author does not let loose the laughter of Atheist upon us
+till we are almost out of the body is a stroke of skill and truth
+and boldness that makes us glad indeed that we possess such a
+sketch at Bunyan's hand at all, all too abrupt and all too short as
+that sketch is.  In the absence, then, of a full-length and
+finished portrait of Atheist, we must be content to fall back on
+some of the reflections and lessons that the mere mention of his
+name, the spot he passes us on, and the ridicule of his laughter,
+all taken together, awaken in our minds.  One rapid stroke of such
+a brush as that of John Bunyan conveys more to us than a full-
+length likeness, with all the strongest colours, of any other
+artist would be able to do.
+
+1.  One thing the life-long admiration of John Bunyan's books has
+helped to kindle and burn into my mind and my imagination is this:
+What a universe of things is the heart of man!  Were there nothing
+else in the heart of man but all the places and all the persons and
+all the adventures that John Bunyan saw in his sleep, what a world
+that would open up in all our bosoms!  All the pilgrims, good and
+bad--they, or the seed and possibility of them all, are all in your
+heart and in mine.  All the cities, all the roads that lead from
+one city to another, with all the paths and all the by-paths,--all
+the adventures, experiences, endurances, conflicts, overthrows,
+victories,--all are within us and never are to be seen anywhere
+else.  Heaven and hell, God and the devil, life and death,
+salvation and damnation, time and eternity, all are within us.
+"There is no Mount Zion in all this world," bellowed out this
+blinded fool.  "No; I know that quite well," quickly responded
+Christian; "but there is in the world to come."  He would have said
+the whole truth, and he would have been entirely right, had he
+taken time to add, "and in the world within."  "And more," he
+should have said to Atheist, "much more in the world within than in
+any possible world to come."  The Celestial City, every Sabbath-
+school child begins gradually to understand, is not up among the
+stars; till, as he grows older, he takes in the whole of the New
+Testament truth that the kingdom of heaven is wholly within him.
+You all understand, my brethren, that were we swept in a moment up
+to the furthest star, by all that infinite flight we would not be
+one hair's-breadth nearer the heavenly city.  That is not the right
+direction to that city.  The city whose builder and maker is God
+lies in quite a different direction from that altogether; not by
+ascending up beyond sun and moon and stars to all eternity would we
+ever get one hand's-breadth nearer God.  But if you deny yourself
+sleep to-night till you have read His book and bowed your knees in
+His closet; if, for His sake, you deny yourself to-morrow when you
+are eating and drinking; as often as you say, "Not my will, but
+Thine be done"; as often as you humble yourself when others exalt
+themselves; as often as you refuse praise and despise blame for His
+sake; as often as you forgive before God your enemy, and rejoice
+with your friend,--Behold! the kingdom of heaven, with its King and
+all His shining court of angels and saints is around you;--is,
+indeed, within you.  No; there is no such place.  Heaven is not in
+any place:  heaven is in a person where it is at all; and you are
+that person as often as you put off an earthly and put on a
+heavenly mind.  That mocking reprobate, with his secret heart all
+through those twenty years hungering after the lusts of his youth,-
+-he was wholly right in what he so unintentionally said; there is
+no such place in all this world.  And, even if there were, it would
+spue him and all who are like him out of its mouth.
+
+2.  And, then, in all that universe of things that fills that
+bottomless pit and shoreless sea the human heart, there is nothing
+deeper down in it than just its deep and unsearchable atheism.  The
+very deepest thing, and the most absolutely inexpugnable thing, in
+every human heart is its theism; its original and inextinguishable
+convictions about itself and about God.  But, all but as deep as
+that--for all around that, and all over that, and soaking all
+through that--there lies a superincumbent mass of sullen, brutish,
+malignant atheism.  Nay, so deep down is the atheism of all our
+hearts, that it is only one here and another there of the holiest
+and the ripest of God's saints who ever get down to it, or even get
+at their deepest within sight of it.  Robert Fleming tells us about
+Robert Bruce, that he was a man that had much inward exercise about
+his own personal case, and had been often assaulted anent that
+great foundation truth, if there was a God.  And often, when he had
+come up to the pulpit, after being some time silent, which was his
+usual way, he would say, "I think it is a great matter to believe
+there is a God"; telling the people that it was another thing to
+believe that than they judged.  But it was also known to his
+friends what extraordinary confirmations he had from the Lord
+therein, and what near familiarity he did attain to in his heart-
+converse with God:  Yea, truly, adds Fleming, some things I have
+had thereanent that seem so strange and marvellous that I forbear
+to set them down.  And in Halyburton's priceless Memoirs we read:
+"Hereby I was brought into a doubt about the truths of religion,
+the being of God, and things eternal.  Whenever I was in dangers or
+straits and would build upon these things, a suspicion secretly
+haunted me, what if the things are not?  This perplexity was
+somewhat eased while one day I was reading how Robert Bruce was
+shaken about the being of God, and how at length he came to the
+fullest satisfaction."  And in another place:  "Some days ago
+reading Ex. ix. and x., and finding this, "That ye may know that I
+am God" frequently repeated, and elsewhere in passages innumerable,
+as the end of God's manifesting Himself in His word and works; I
+observe from it that atheism is deeply rooted even in the Lord's
+people, seeing they need to be taught this so much.  The great
+difficulty that the whole of revelation has to grapple with is
+atheism; its whole struggle is to recover man to his first
+impressions of a God.  This one point comprehends the whole of
+man's recovery, just as atheism is the whole of man's apostasy."
+And, again, in another part of the same great book, Halyburton
+says:  "I must observe, also, the wise providence of God, that the
+greatest difficulties that lie against religion are hid from
+atheists.  All the objections I meet with in their writings are not
+nearly so subtle as those which are often suggested to myself.  The
+reason of this is obvious from the very nature of the thing--such
+persons take not a near-hand view of religion, and while persons
+stand at a distance neither are the advantages nor the difficulties
+of religion discerned."  And now listen to Bunyan, that arch-
+atheist:  "Whole floods of blasphemies both against God, Christ,
+and the Scriptures were poured upon my spirit, to my great
+confusion and astonishment.  Against the very being of God and of
+His only beloved Son; or, whether there were, in truth, a God and a
+Christ, or no.  Of all the temptations that ever I met with in my
+life, to question the being of God and the truth of the Gospel is
+the worst, and the worst to be borne.  When this temptation comes
+it takes away my girdle from me, and removeth the foundation from
+under me."
+
+
+"Fool, said my Muse to me, look in thy heart and write."
+
+
+And John Bunyan looked into his own deep and holy heart, and out of
+it he composed this incident of Atheist.
+
+3.  It may not be out of place at this point to look for a moment
+at some of the things that agitate, stir up, and make the secret
+atheism of our hearts to fluctuate and overflow.  Butler has a fine
+passage in which he points out that it is only the higher class of
+minds that are tempted with speculative difficulties such as those
+were that assaulted Christian and Hopeful after they were so near
+the end of their journey.  Coarse, common-place, and mean-minded
+men have their probation appointed them among coarse, mean, and
+commonplace things; whereas enlightened, enlarged, and elevated men
+are exercised after the manner of Robert Bruce, Thomas Halyburton,
+John Bunyan, and Butler himself.  "The chief temptations of the
+generality of the world are the ordinary motives to injustice or
+unrestrained pleasure; but there are other persons without this
+shallowness of temper; persons of a deeper sense as to what is
+invisible and future.  Now, these persons have their moral
+discipline set them in that high region."  The profound bishop
+means that while their appetites and their tempers are the
+stumbling-stones of the most of men, the difficult problems of
+natural and revealed and experimental religion are the test and the
+triumph of other men.  As we have just seen in the men mentioned
+above.  Students, whose temptations lie fully as much in their
+intellects as in their senses, should buy (for a few pence)
+Halyburton's Memoirs.  "With Halyburton," says Dr. John Duncan, "I
+feel great intellectual congruity.  Halyburton was naturally a
+sceptic, but God gave that sceptic great faith."
+
+Then again, what Atheist calls the "tediousness" of the journey has
+undoubtedly a great hand in making some half-in-earnest men
+sceptics, if not scoffers.  Many of us here to-night who can never
+now take this miserable man's way out of the tedium of the
+Christian life, yet most bitterly feel it.  Whether that tedium is
+inherent in that life, and inevitable to such men as we are who are
+attempting that life; how far that feature belongs to the very
+essence of the pilgrim life, and how far we import our own tedium
+into the pilgrimage; the fact remains as Atheist puts it.  As
+Atheist in this book says, so the Atheist who is in our hearts
+often says:  We are like to have nothing for all our pains but a
+lifetime of tedious travel.  Yes, wherever the blame lies, there
+can be no doubt about it, that what this hilarious scoffer calls
+the tediousness of the way is but a too common experience among
+many of those who, tediousness and all, will still cleave fast to
+it and will never leave it.
+
+Then, again, great trials in life, great straits, dark and too-
+long-continued providences, prayer unanswered, or not yet answered
+in the way we dictate, bad men and bad causes growing like a green
+bay tree, and good men and good work languishing and dying; these
+things, and many more things such as these, of which this world of
+faith and patience is full, prove quite too much for some men till
+they give themselves up to a state of mind that is nothing better
+than atheism.  "My evidences and my certainty," says Halyburton,
+"were not answerable to the weight I was compelled to lay upon
+them."  A figure which Goodwin in his own tender and graphic way
+takes up thus:  "Set pins in a wall and fix them in ever so
+loosely, yet, if you hang nothing upon them they will seem to stand
+firm; but hang a heavy weight upon them, or even give them the
+least jog as you pass, and the whole thing will suddenly come down.
+The wall is God's word, the slack pin is our faith, and the weight
+and the jog are the heavy burdens and the sudden shocks of life,
+and down our hearts go, wall and pin and suspended vessel and all.
+
+When the church and her ministers, when the Scriptures and their
+anomalies, and when the faults and failings of Christian men are
+made the subject of mockery and laughter, the reverence, the fear,
+the awe, the respect that all enter so largely into religion, and
+especially into the religion of young people, is too easily
+destroyed; and not seldom the first seeds of practical and
+sometimes of speculative atheism are thus sown.  The mischief that
+has been done by mockery and laughter to the souls, especially of
+the young and the inexperienced, only the great day will fully
+disclose.
+
+And then, two men of great weight and authority with us, tell us
+what we who are ministers would have found out without them:  this,
+namely, that the greatest atheists are they who are ever handling
+holy things without feeling them.
+
+"Is it true," said Christian to Hopeful, his fellow, "is it true
+what this man hath said?"  "Take heed," said Hopeful, "remember
+what it hath cost us already for hearkening to such kind of
+fellows.  What!  No Mount Zion!  Did we not see from the Delectable
+Mountains the gate of the City?  And, besides, are we not to walk
+by faith?  Let us go on lest the man with the whip overtakes us
+again."  Christian:  "My brother, I said that but to prove thee,
+and to fetch from thee a fruit of the honesty of thy heart."  Many
+a deep and powerful passage has Butler composed on that thesis
+which Hopeful here supplies him with; and many a brilliant sermon
+has Newman preached on that same text till he has made our
+"predispositions to faith" a fruitful and an ever fresh commonplace
+to hundreds of preachers.  Yes; the best bulwark of faith is a good
+and honest heart.  To such a happy heart the truth is its own
+unshaken evidence.  To whom can we go but to Thee?--they who have
+such a heart protest.  The whole bent of such men's minds is toward
+the truth of the gospel.  Their instincts keep them on the right
+way even when their reason and their observation are both
+confounded.  As Newman keeps on saying, they are "easy of belief."
+They cannot keep away from Christ and His church.  They cannot turn
+back.  They must go on.  Though He slay them they will die yearning
+after Him.  They often fall into great error and into great guilt,
+but their seed remaineth in them, and they cannot continue in error
+or in guilt, because they are born of God.  They are they in whom
+
+
+"Persuasion and belief
+Have ripened into faith; and faith become
+A passionate intuition."
+
+
+
+HOPEFUL
+
+
+
+"We are saved by hope."--Paul
+
+Up till the time when Christian and Faithful passed through Vanity
+Fair on their way to the Celestial City, Hopeful was one of the
+most light-minded men in all that light-minded town.  By his birth,
+and both on his father's and his mother's side, Hopeful was, to
+begin with, a youth of an unusually shallow and silly mind.  In the
+jargon of our day he was a man of a peculiarly optimistic
+temperament.  No one ever blamed him for being too subjective and
+introspective.  It took many sharp trials and many bitter
+disappointments to take the inborn frivolity and superficiality out
+of this young man's heart.  He was far on in his life, he was far
+on even in his religious life, before you would have ever thought
+of calling him a serious-minded man.  Hopeful had been born and
+brought up to early manhood in the town of Vanity, and he knew
+nothing better and desired nothing better than to lay out his whole
+life and to rest all his hopes on the things of the fair; on such
+things, that is, as houses, lands, places, honours, preferments,
+titles, pleasures, and delights of all sorts.  And that vain and
+empty life went on with him, till, as he told his companion
+afterwards, it had all ended with him in revelling, and drinking,
+and uncleanness, and Sabbath-breaking, and all such things as
+destroyed his soul.  But in Hopeful's happy case also the blood of
+the martyrs became the seed of the church.  Hopeful, as he was
+afterwards called, had suffered so many bitter disappointments and
+shipwrecks of expectation from the things of the fair, that is to
+say, from the houses, the places, the preferments, the pleasures
+and what not, of the fair, that even his heart was ripe for
+something better than any of those things, when, as God would have
+it, Christian and Faithful came to the town.  Hopeful was still
+hanging about the booths of the fair; he was just fingering his
+last sixpence over a commodity that he knew quite well would be
+like gall in his belly as soon as he had bought it; when,--what is
+that hubbub that rolls down the street?  Hopeful was always the
+first to see and to hear every new thing that came to the town, and
+thus it was that he was soon in the thick of the tumult that rose
+around Christian and Faithful.  Had those two pilgrims come to the
+town at any former time, Hopeful would have been among the foremost
+to mock at and smite the two men; but, to-day, Hopeful's heart is
+so empty, and his purse also, that he is already won to their side
+by the loving looks and the wise and sweet words of the two ill-
+used men.  Some of the men of the town said that the two pilgrims
+were outlandish and bedlamite men, but Hopeful took courage to
+reprove some of the foremost of the mob.  Till, at last, when
+Faithful was at the stake, it was all that his companions could do
+to keep back Hopeful from leaping up on the burning pile and
+embracing the expiring man.  And then, when He who overrules all
+things so brought it about that Christian escaped out of their
+hands, who should come forth and join him at the upward gate of the
+city but just Hopeful, who not only joined himself to the lonely
+pilgrim, but told him also that there were many more of the men of
+the city who would take their time and follow after.  And thus,
+adds his biographer, when one died to make his testimony to the
+truth, another rose up out of his ashes to be a companion to
+Christian.
+
+When Madame Krudener was getting her foot measured by a pietist
+shoemaker, she was so struck with the repose and the sweetness and
+the heavenly joy of the poor man's look and manner that she could
+not help but ask him what had happened to him that he had such a
+look on his countenance and such a light in his eye.  She was
+miserable, though she had all that heart could wish.  She had all
+that made her one of the most envied women in Europe; she had
+birth, talents, riches, rank, and the friendship of princes and
+princesses, and yet she was of all women the most miserable.  And
+here was a poor chance shoemaker whose whole heart was running over
+with a joy such that all her wealth could not purchase to her heart
+one single drop of it.  The simple soul soon told her his secret;
+it was no secret:  it was just Jesus Christ who had done it all.
+And thus her poor shoemaker's happy face was the means of this
+great lady's conversion.  And, in like manner, it was the beholding
+of Christian and Faithful in their words and in their behaviour at
+the fair that decided Hopeful to join himself to Christian and
+henceforth to be his companion.
+
+What were the things, asked Christian of his young companion, that
+first led you to leave off the vanities of the fair and to think to
+be a pilgrim?  Many things, replied Hopeful.  Sometimes if I did
+but meet a good man in the street.  Or if mine head began
+unaccountably, or mine heart, to ache.  Or if some one of my
+companions became suddenly sick.  Or if I heard the bell toll that
+some one was dead.  But, especially, when I thought of myself that
+I must quickly come to judgment.  And then it is told in the best
+style of the book how peace and rest and the beginning of true
+satisfaction came to poor Hopeful's heart at last.  But you must
+promise me to read the passage for yourselves before you sleep to-
+night; and to read it again and again till, like Hopeful's, your
+heart also is full of joy, and your eyes full of tears, and your
+affections running over with love to the name and to the people and
+to all the ways of Jesus Christ.
+
+And then, it is very encouraging and reassuring to us to see how
+Hopeful's true conversion so deepened and sobered and strengthened
+his whole character.  He remained to the end in his mental
+constitution and whole temperament, as we say, the same man he had
+always been; but, while remaining the same man, at the same time a
+most wonderful change gradually began to come over him, till, by
+slow but sure degrees, he became the Hopeful we know and look to
+and lean upon.  To use his own autobiographic words about himself,
+it was "by hearing and considering of things that are Divine" that
+his natural levity was so completely whipped out of his soul till
+he was made at last an indispensable companion to Christian,
+strong-minded and serious-minded man as he was.  "Conversion to
+God," says William Law, "is often very sudden and instantaneous,
+unexpectedly raised from variety of occasions.  Thus, one by seeing
+only a withered tree, another by reading the lives and deaths of
+the antediluvian fathers, one by hearing of heaven, another of
+hell, one by reading of the love or wrath of God, another of the
+sufferings of Christ, may find himself, as it were, melted into
+penitence all of a sudden.  It may be granted also that the
+greatest sinner may in a moment be converted to God, and may feel
+himself wounded in such a degree as perhaps those never were who
+have been turning to God all their lives.  But, then, it is to be
+observed that this suddenness of change or flash of conviction is
+by no means of the essence of true conversion.  This stroke of
+conversion is not to be considered as signifying our high state of
+a new birth in Christ, or a proof that we are on a sudden made new
+creatures, but that we are thus suddenly called upon and stirred up
+to look after a newness of nature.  The renewal of our first birth
+and state is something entirely distinct from our first sudden
+conversion and call to repentance.  That is not a thing done in an
+instant, but is a certain process, a gradual release from our
+captivity and disorder, consisting of several stages and degrees,
+both of life and death, which the soul must go through before it
+can have thoroughly put off the old man.  It is well worth
+observing that our Saviour's greatest trials were near the end of
+His life.  This might sufficiently show us that our first
+awakenings have carried us but a little way; that we should not
+then begin to be self-assured of our own salvation, but should
+remember that we stand at a great distance from, and are in great
+ignorance of, our severest trials."  Such was the way that
+Christian in his experience and in his wisdom talked to his young
+companion till his outward trials and the consequent discoveries he
+made of his own weakness and corruption made even Hopeful himself a
+sober-minded and a thoughtful man.  "Where pain ends, gain ends
+too."
+
+Then, again, no one can read Hopeful's remarkable history without
+discovering this about him, that he showed best in adversity and
+distress, just as he showed worst in deliverance and prosperity.
+It is a fine lesson in Christian hope to descend into Giant
+Despair's dungeon and hear the older pilgrim groaning and the
+younger pilgrim consoling him, and, again, to stand on the bank of
+the last river and hear Hopeful holding up Christian's drowning
+head.  "Be of good cheer, my brother, for I feel the bottom, and it
+is good!"  Bless Hopeful for that, all you whose deathbeds are
+still before you.  For never was more true and fit word spoken for
+a dying hour than that.  Read, till you have it by heart and in the
+dark, Hopeful's whole history, but especially his triumphant end.
+And have some one bespoken beforehand to read Hopeful in the River
+to you when you have in a great measure lost your senses, and when
+a great horror has taken hold of your mind.  "I sink in deep
+waters," cried Christian, as his sins came to his mind, even the
+sins which he had committed both since and before he came to be a
+pilgrim.  "But I see the gate," said Hopeful, "and men standing at
+it ready to receive us."  "Read to me where I first cast my
+anchor," said John Knox to his weeping wife.
+
+The Enchanted Ground, on the other hand, threatened to throw
+Hopeful back again into his former light-minded state.  And there
+is no saying what shipwreck he might have made there had the older
+man not been with him to steady and reprove and instruct him.  As
+it was, a touch now and then of his old vain temper returned to him
+till it took all his companion's watchfulness and wariness to carry
+them both out of that second Vanity Fair.  "I acknowledge myself in
+a fault," said Hopeful to Christian, "and had I been here alone I
+had run in danger of death.  Hitherto, thy company hath been my
+mercy, and thou shalt have a good reward for all thy labour."
+
+Now, my brethren, in my opinion we owe a great debt of gratitude to
+John Bunyan for the large and the displayed place he has given to
+Hopeful in the Pilgrim's Progress.  The fulness and balance and
+proportion of the Pilgrim's Progress are features of that wonderful
+book far too much overlooked.  So far as my reading goes I do not
+know any other author who has at all done the justice to the saving
+grace of hope that John Bunyan has done both in his doctrinal and
+in his allegorical works.  Bunyan stands alone and supreme not only
+for the insight, and the power with which he has constructed the
+character and the career of Hopeful, but even for having given him
+the space at all adequate to his merits and his services.  In those
+eighty-seven so suggestive pages that form the index to Dr. Thomas
+Goodwin's works I find some hundred and twenty-four references to
+"faith," while there are only two references to "hope."  And that
+same oversight and neglect runs through all our religious
+literature, and I suppose, as a consequence, through all our
+preaching too.  Now that is not the treatment the Bible gives to
+this so essential Christian grace, as any one may see at a glance
+who takes the trouble to turn up his Cruden.  Hope has a great
+place alongside of faith and love in the Holy Scriptures, and it
+has a correspondingly large and eloquent place in Bunyan.  Now,
+that being so, why is it that this so great and so blessed grace
+has so fallen out of our sermons and out of our hearts?  May God
+grant that our reading of Hopeful's autobiography and his
+subsequent history to-night may do something to restore the blessed
+grace of hope to its proper place both in our pulpit and in all our
+hearts.
+
+To kindle then, to quicken, and to anchor your hope, my brethren,
+may I have God's help to speak for a little longer to your hearts
+concerning this neglected grace!  For, what is hope?  Hope is a
+passion of the soul, wise or foolish, to be ashamed of or to be
+proud of, just according to the thing hoped for, and just according
+to the grounds of the hope.  Hope is made up of these two
+ingredients--desire and expectation.  What we greatly desire we
+take no rest till we find good grounds on which to build up our
+expectations of it; and when we have found good grounds for our
+expectations, then a glad hope takes possession of our hearts.
+Now, to begin with, how is it with your desires?  You are afraid to
+say much about your expectations and your hopes.  Well; let us come
+to your hearts' desires.--Men of God, I will enter into your hearts
+and I will tell you your hearts' desires better than you know them
+yourselves; for the heart is deceitful above all things.  The time
+was, when, like this young pilgrim before he became a pilgrim, your
+desires were all set on houses, and lands, and places, and honours,
+and preferments, and wives, and children, and silver, and gold, and
+what not.  These things at one time were the utmost limit of your
+desires.  But that has all been changed.  For now you have begun to
+desire a better city, that is, an heavenly.  What is your chief
+desire for this New Year? {2}   Is it not a new heart?  Is it not a
+clean heart?  Is it not a holy heart?  Is it not that the Holy
+Ghost would write the golden rule on the tables of your heart?
+Does not God know that it is the deepest desire of your heart to be
+able to love your neighbour as yourself?  To be able to rejoice
+with him in his joy as well as to weep with him in his sorrow?
+What would you not give never again to feel envy in your heart at
+your brother, or straitness and pining at his prosperity?  One
+thing do I desire, said the Psalmist, that mine ear may be nailed
+to the doorpost of my God:  that I may always be His servant, and
+may never wander from His service.  Now, that is your desire too.
+I am sure it is.  You would not say it of yourself, but I defy you
+to deny it when it is said about you.  Well, then, such things
+being found among your desires, what grounds have you for expecting
+the fulfilment of such desires?  What grounds?  The best of grounds
+and every ground.  For you have the sure ground of God's word.  And
+you have more than His word:  you have His very nature, and the
+very nature of things.  For shall God create such desires in any
+man's heart only to starve and torture that man?  Impossible!  It
+were blasphemy to suspect it.  No.  Where God has made any man to
+be so far a partaker of the Divine nature as to change all that
+man's deepest desires, and to turn them from vanity to wisdom, from
+earth to heaven, and from the creature to the Creator, doubt not,
+wherever He has begun such a work, that He will hasten to finish
+it.  Yes; lift up your heavy hearts, all ye who desire such things,
+for God hath sent His Son to say to you, Blessed are ye that hunger
+and thirst after righteousness, for ye shall be filled.  Only, keep
+desiring.  Desire every day with a stronger and a more inconsolable
+desire.  Desire, and ground your desire on God's word, and then
+heave your hope like an anchor within the veil whither the
+Forerunner is for you entered.  May I so hope? you say.  May I
+venture to hope?  Yes; not only may you hope, but you must hope.
+You are commanded to hope.  It is as much your bounden duty to hope
+always, and to hope for the greatest and best things, as it is to
+repent of your sins, to love God and your neighbour, to keep
+yourself pure, and to set a watch on the door of your lips.  You
+have been destroyed, I confess and lament it, for lack of knowledge
+about the nature, the grounds, and the duty of hope.  But make up
+now for past neglect.  Hope steadfastly, hope constantly, hope
+boldly; hope for the best things, the greatest things, the most
+divine and the most blessed things.  If you forget to-night all
+else you have heard to-day, I implore you not any longer to forget
+and neglect this, that hope is your immediate, constant, imperative
+duty.  No sin, no depth of corruption in your heart, no assault on
+your heart from your conscience, can justify you in ceasing to
+hope.  Even when trouble "comes tumbling over the neck of all your
+reformations" as it came tumbling on Hopeful, let that only drive
+you the more deeply down into the true grounds of hope; even
+against hope rejoice in hope.  Remember the Psalmist in the
+hundred-and-thirtieth Psalm,--down in the deeps, if ever a fallen
+sinner was.  Yet hear him when you cannot see him saying:  I hope
+in Thy word!  And--for it is worthy to stand beside even that
+splendid psalm,--I beseech you to read and lay to heart what
+Hopeful says about himself in his conversion despair.
+
+And then, as if to justify that hope, there always come with it
+such sanctifying influences and such sure results.  The hope that
+you are one day to awaken in the Divine likeness will make you lie
+down on your bed every night in self-examination, repentance,
+prayer, and praise.  The hope that your eyes are one day to see
+Christ as He is will make you purify yourself as nothing else will.
+The hope that you are to walk with Christ in white will make you
+keep your garments clean; it will make you wash them many times
+every day in the blood of the Lamb.  The hope that you are to cast
+your crown at His feet will make you watch that no man takes your
+crown from you.  The hope that you are to drink wine with Him in
+His Father's kingdom will reconcile you meanwhile to water, lest
+with your wine you stumble any of His little ones.  The hope of
+hearing Him say, Well done!--how that will make you labour and
+endure and not faint!  And the hope that you shall one day enter in
+through the gates into the city, and have a right to the tree of
+life,--how scrupulous that will make you to keep all His
+commandments!  And this is one of His commandments, that you gird
+up the loins of your mind, and hope to the end for the grace that
+is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
+
+
+
+TEMPORARY
+
+
+
+"They are they, which, when they hear, receive the word with joy;
+and have no root, which for a while believe, and in time of
+temptation fall away."--Our Lord.
+
+"Well, then, did you not know about ten years ago one Temporary in
+your parts who was a forward man in religion?  Know him! replied
+the other.  Yes.  For my house not being above three miles from his
+house he would ofttimes come to me, and that with many tears.
+Truly I pitied the man, and was not altogether without hope of him;
+but one may see that it is not every one who cries Lord, Lord.  And
+now, since we are talking about him, let us a little inquire into
+the reason of the sudden backsliding of him and such others.  It
+may be very profitable, said Christian, but do you begin.  Well,
+then, there are in my judgment several reasons for it."  And then,
+with the older man's entire approval, Hopeful sets forth several
+reasons, taken from his own observation of backsliders, why so many
+men's religion is such a temporary thing; why so many run well for
+a time, and then stand still, and then turn back.
+
+1.  The fear of man bringeth a snare, said Hopeful, moralising over
+his old acquaintance Temporary.  And how true that observation is
+every evangelical minister knows to his deep disappointment.  A
+young man comes to his minister at some time of distress in his
+life, or at some time of revival of religion in the community, or
+at an ordinary communion season, and gives every sign that he is
+early and fairly embarked on an honourable Christian life.  He
+takes his place in the Church of Christ, and he puts out his hand
+to her work, till we begin to look forward with boastfulness to a
+life of great stability and great attainment for that man.  Our
+Lord, as we see from so many of His parables, must have had many
+such cases among His first followers.  Our Lord might be speaking
+prophetically, as well as out of His own experience, so well do His
+regretful and lamenting words fit into so many of our own cases to-
+day.  For, look at that young business man.  He has been born and
+brought up in the Church of Christ.  He has gladdened more hearts
+than he knows by the noble promise of his early days.  Many
+admiring and loving eyes have been turned on him as he took so
+hopefully the upward way.  But a sifting-time soon comes.  A time
+of temptation comes.  A time comes when sides must be taken in some
+moral, religious, ecclesiastical controversy.  This young man is at
+that moment a candidate for a post that will bring distinction,
+wealth, and social influence to him who holds it.  And the
+candidate we are so much interested in is admittedly a man of such
+outstanding talents that he would at once get the post were it not
+that the holder of that post must not have his name so much
+associated with such and such a church, such and such political and
+religious opinions, and such and such public men.  He is told that.
+Indeed, he is not so dull as to need to be told that.  He has seen
+that all along.  And at first it is a dreadful wrench to him.  He
+feels how far he is falling from his high ideals in life; and, at
+first, and for a long time, it is a dreadful humiliation to him.
+But, then, there are splendid compensations.  And, better than
+that, there are some good, and indeed compelling, reasons that
+begin to rise up in our minds when we need them and begin to look
+for them, till what at first seemed so mean and so contemptible,
+and so ungrateful, and so dishonourable, as well as so spiritually
+perilous, comes to be faced and gone through with positively on a
+ground of high principle, and, indeed, of stern moral necessity.
+So deceitful is the human heart that you could not believe what
+compelling reasons such a mean-spirited man will face you with as
+to why he should leave all the ways he once so delighted in for a
+piece of bread, and for the smile of the open enemies of his
+church, and his faith, not to say his Saviour.  You will meet with
+several such men any afternoon coming home from their business.
+Sometimes they have still some honest shame on their faces when
+they meet you; but still oftener they pass you with a sullen hatred
+and a fierce defiance.  This is he who heard the word, and anon
+with joy received it.  Yet had he not root in himself, but dured
+for a while; for when tribulation or persecution arose because of
+the word by and by he was offended.  They went out from us, says
+John, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us they
+would no doubt have continued with us; but they went out that they
+might be made manifest that they were not all of us.
+
+2.  Guilt, again, Hopeful went on, and to meditate terror, are so
+grievous to most men, that they rather choose such ways as will but
+harden their hearts still more and more.  You all know what it is
+to meditate terror?  "Thine heart shall meditate terror," says the
+prophet, "when thou sayest to thyself, who among us shall dwell
+with the devouring fire? who among us shall dwell with everlasting
+burnings?"  The fifty-first Psalm is perhaps the best meditation
+both of guilt and of terror that we have in the whole Bible.  But
+there are many other psalms and passages of psalms only second to
+the fifty-first Psalm, such as the twenty-second, the thirty-
+eighth, the sixty-ninth, and the hundred-and-thirtieth.  Our Lord
+Himself also was meditating terror in the garden of Gethsemane, and
+Paul both guilt and terror when he imagined himself both an
+apostate preacher and a castaway soul.  And John's meditations of
+terror in the Revelation rose into those magnificent pictures of
+the Last Judgment with which he has to all time covered the walls
+of the Seven Churches.  In his own Grace Abounding there are
+meditations of terror quite worthy to stand beside the most
+terrible things of that kind that ever were written, as also in
+many others of our author's dramatical and homiletical books.  I
+read to you the other Sabbath morning a meditation of terror that
+was found among Bishop Andrewes' private papers after his death.
+You will not all have forgotten that meditation, but I will read it
+to you to-night again.  "How fearful," says Andrewes, in his
+terror, "will Thy judgment be, O Lord, when the thrones are set,
+and the angels stand around, and men are brought in, and the books
+are opened, and all our works are inquired into, and all our
+thoughts are examined, and all the hidden things of darkness!
+What, O God, shall Thy judgment that day be upon me?  Who shall
+quench my flame, who shall lighten my darkness, if Thou pity me
+not?  Lord, as Thou art loving, give me tears, give me floods of
+tears, and give me all that this day, before it be too late.  For
+then will be the incorruptible Judge, the horrible judgment-seat,
+the answer without excuse, the inevitable charge, the shameful
+punishment, the endless Gehenna, the pitiless angels, the yawning
+hell, the roaring stream of fire, the unquenchable flame, the dark
+prison, the rayless darkness, the bed of live coals, the unwearied
+worm, the indissoluble chains, the bottomless chaos, the impassable
+wall, the inconsolable cry.  And none to stand by me; none to plead
+for me; none to snatch me out."  Now, no Temporary ever possessed
+anything like that in his own handwriting among his private papers.
+A meditation like that, written out with his own hand, and hidden
+away under lock and key, will secure any man from it, even if he
+had been appointed to backsliding and reprobation.  Bishop
+Andrewes, as any one will see who reads his Private Devotions, was
+the chief of sinners; but his discovered and deciphered papers will
+all speak for him when they are spread out before the great white
+throne, "glorious in their deformity, being slubbered," as his
+editors say, "with his pious hands, and watered with his
+penitential tears."
+
+Thomas Shepard's Ten Virgins is the most terrible book upon
+Temporaries that ever was written.  Temporaries never once saw
+their true vileness, he keeps on saying.  Temporaries are, no
+doubt, wounded for sin sometimes, but never in the right place nor
+to the right depth.  And again, sin, and especially heart-sin, is
+never really bitter to Temporaries.  In an "exhortation to all new
+beginners, and so to all others," "Be sure," Shepard says, "your
+wound for sin at first is deep enough.  For all the error in a
+man's faith and sanctification springs from his first error in his
+humiliation.  If a man's humiliation be false, or even weak or
+little, then his faith and his hold of Christ are weak and little,
+and his sanctification counterfeit.  But if a man's wound be right,
+and his humiliation deep enough, that man's faith will be right and
+his sanctification will be glorious.  The esteem of Christ is
+always little where sin lies light."  And Hopeful himself says a
+thing at this point that is quite worthy of Shepard himself, such
+is its depth and insight.  He speaks of the righteous actually
+LOVING the sight of their misery.  He does not explain what he
+means by that startling language because he is talking all the
+time, as he knows quite well, to one who understood all that before
+he was born.  Nor will I attempt to explain or to vindicate what he
+says.  Those of you who love the sight of your own misery as
+sinners will understand what Hopeful says without any explanation;
+while those who do not understand him would only be the more
+stumbled by any explanation of him.  The love of the sight of their
+misery, and the unearthly sweetness of their sorrow for sin, are
+only another two of those provoking paradoxes of which the lives of
+God's true saints are full--paradoxes and impossibilities and
+incoherencies that make the literature of experimental religion to
+be positively hateful and unbearable to Temporary and to all his
+self-seeking and apostate kindred.
+
+3.  But even where the consciences of such men are occasionally
+awakened, proceeds Hopeful, in his so searching discovery of
+Temporaries, yet their minds are not changed.  There you are pretty
+near the business, replied his fellow; for the bottom of all is,
+for want of a change of their mind and will.  Now, one would have
+been afraid and ashamed for one moment to suspect that Temporary's
+mind was not completely changed, so "forward" was he at first in
+his religion.  But, no:  forward before all his neighbours as
+Temporary was, to begin with, yet all the time his mind was not
+really changed.  His forwardness did not properly spring out of his
+true mind at all, but only out of his momentarily awakened
+conscience and his momentarily excited heart.  A sinner with a
+truly changed mind is never forward.  His mind is so changed that
+forwardness in anything is utterly alien to it, and especially all
+forwardness in the profession of religion.  The change that had
+taken place in Temporary, whatever was the seat of it, only led him
+to bully men like Christian and Hopeful, who would not go fast
+enough for him.  "Come," said Pliable, in the beginning of the
+book, "come on and let us mend our pace."  "I cannot go so fast as
+I would," humbly replied Christian, "because of this burden on my
+back."  It is a common observation among mountaineers that he who
+takes the hill at the greatest spurt is the last climber to come to
+the top, and that many who so ostentatiously make spurts at the
+bottom of the hill never come within sight of the top at all.  And
+this is one of the constant dangers that wait on all revivals,
+religious retreats, conferences, and even communion seasons.  Our
+hot fits, the hotter they are, are only the more likely, unless we
+take the greatest care, to cast us down into all the more deadly a
+chill.  It is this danger that our Lord points out so plainly in
+His parable of apostasy.  The same is he, says our Lord, that
+heareth the word, and anon with joy receiveth it; yet hath he not
+root in himself, but dureth for a while.  In Hopeful's words, his
+mind and will were never changed with all his joy, only his passing
+moods and his momentary emotions.
+
+Multitudes of men who are as forward at first as Pliable and
+Temporary were turn out at last to have no root in themselves; but
+here and there you will discover a man who is all root together.
+There are some men whose whole mind and heart and will, whose whole
+inward man, has gone to root.  All the strength and all the fatness
+of their religious life retreat into its root.  They have no leaves
+at all, and they have too little fruit as yet; but you should see
+their roots.  Only, no eye but the eye of God can see sorrow for
+sin--secret and sore humiliation on account of secret sin--the
+incessant agony that goes on within between the flesh and the
+spirit, between sin and grace, between very hell and heaven itself.
+To know your own evil hearts, my brethren, say to you on that
+subject what any Temporary will, is the very root of the whole
+matter to you.  Whatever Dr. Newman's mistakes as to outward
+churches may have been, he was a master of the human heart, the
+most difficult of all matters to master.  Listen, then, to what he
+says on the matter now in hand.  "Now, unless we have some just
+idea of our hearts and of sin, we can have no right idea of a Moral
+Governor, a Saviour, or a Sanctifier; that is, in professing to
+believe in them we shall be using words without attaching any
+distinct meaning to them.  Thus self-knowledge is at the root of
+all real religious knowledge; and it is vain,--it is worse than
+vain,--it is a deceit and a mischief, to think to understand the
+Christian doctrines as a matter of course, merely by being taught
+by books, or by attending sermons, or by any outward means, however
+excellent, taken by themselves.  For it is in proportion as we
+search our hearts and understand our own nature that we understand
+what is meant by an Infinite Governor and Judge; it is in
+proportion as we comprehend the nature of disobedience and our
+actual sinfulness that we feel what is the blessing of the removal
+of sin, redemption, pardon, sanctification, which otherwise are
+mere words.  God speaks to us primarily in our hearts.  Self-
+knowledge is the key to the precepts and doctrines of Scripture.
+The very utmost that any outward notices of religion can do is to
+startle us and make us turn inward and search our hearts; and then,
+when we have experienced what it is to read ourselves, we shall
+profit by the doctrine of the Church and the Bible."  My brethren,
+the temper in which you receive that passage, and receive it from
+its author, may be safely taken by you as a sure presage whether
+you are to turn out a Temporary and a Castaway or no.
+
+Now, to conclude with a word of admission, and, bound up with it, a
+word of encouragement.  After all that has been said, I fully admit
+that we are all Temporaries to begin with.  We all cool down from
+our first heat in religion.  We all halt from our first spurt.  We
+all turn back from faith and from duty and from privilege through
+our fear of men, or through our corrupt love of ourselves, or
+through our coarse-minded love of this present world.  Only, those
+who are appointed to perseverance, and through that to eternal
+life, always kindle again; they are kindled again, and they love
+the return of their lost warmth.  They recover themselves and
+address themselves again and again to the race that is still set
+before them.  They prove themselves not to be of those who draw
+back unto perdition, but of those that believe to the saving of the
+soul.  Now, if you have only too good ground to suspect that you
+are but a temporary believer, what are you to do to make your sure
+escape out of that perilous state?  What, but to keep on believing?
+You must cry constantly, Lord, I believe, help Thou mine unbelief!
+When at any time you are under any temptation or corruption, and
+you feel that your faith and your love are letting slip their hold
+of Christ and of eternal life, then knot your weak heart all the
+faster to the throne of grace, to the cross of Christ, and to the
+gate of heaven.  Give up all your mind and heart, and all that is
+within you, to the one thing needful.  Labour night and day in your
+own heart at believing on Christ, at loving your neighbour, and at
+discovering, denying, and crucifying yourself.  It will all pay you
+in the long run.  For if you do all these things, and persistently
+do them, then, though you are at this moment all but dead to all
+divine things, and all but a reprobate, it will be found at last
+that all the time your name was written among the elect in heaven.
+
+The perseverance of the saints, the "five points" notwithstanding,
+is not a foregone conclusion.  The final perseverance of the ripest
+and surest saint is all made up of ever-new beginnings in
+repentance, in faith, in love, and in obedience.  Begin, then,
+every new day to repent anew, to return anew, to believe and to
+love anew.  And if all your New-Year repentances and returnings and
+reformations are all already proved to be but temporary--even if
+they lie all around you already a bitter mockery of all your
+professions--still, begin again.  Begin to-night, and begin again
+to-morrow morning.  Spend all the remainder of your days on earth
+beginning.  And, ere ever you are aware, the final perseverance of
+another predestinated saint will be found accomplished in you.
+
+
+
+SECRET
+
+
+
+"The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him."--David.
+
+A truly religious life is always a secret life:  it is a life hid,
+as Paul has it, with Christ in God.  The secret of the Lord, says
+the Psalmist, is with them that fear Him.  And thus it is that when
+men begin to fear God, both their hearts and their lives are
+henceforth full of all kinds of secrets that are known to
+themselves and to God only.  It was when Christiana's fearful
+thoughts began to work in her mind about her husband whom she had
+lost--it was when all her unkind, unnatural, and ungodly carriages
+to her dear friend came into her mind in swarms, clogged her
+conscience, and loaded her with guilt--it was then that Secret
+knocked at her door.  "Next morning," so her opening history runs,
+"when she was up, and had prayed to God, and talked with her
+children awhile, one knocked hard at the door to whom she spake
+out, saying, If thou comest in God's name, come in.  So he who was
+at the door said, Amen, and opened the door, and saluted her with,
+Peace be to this house.  The which when he had done, he said,
+Christiana, knowest thou wherefore I am come?  Then she blushed and
+trembled, also her heart began to wax warm with desires to know
+whence he came, and what was his errand to her.  So he said unto
+her, My name is Secret, I dwell with those that are high.  It is
+talked of where I dwell as if thou hadst a desire to go thither;
+also, there is a report that thou art aware now of the evil thou
+formerly didst to thy husband in hardening of thy heart against his
+way, and in keeping of thy babes in their ignorance.  Christiana,
+the Merciful One has sent me to tell thee that He is a God ready to
+forgive, and that He taketh delight to multiply to pardon offences.
+He would also have thee know that He inviteth thee to come into His
+presence, even to His table, and that He will there feed thee with
+the fat of His house, and with the heritage of Jacob thy father.
+Christiana at all this was greatly abashed in herself, and she
+bowed her head to the ground, while her visitor proceeded and said,
+Christiana, here is a letter for thee which I have brought from thy
+husband's King.  So she took it and opened it, and, as she opened
+it, it smelt after the manner of the best perfume; also it was
+written in lettering of gold.  The contents of the letter was to
+this effect, that the King would have her do as did Christian her
+husband, for that was the way to come to the city and to dwell in
+His presence with joy for ever.  At this the good woman was
+completely overcome.  So she said to her visitor, Sir, will you
+carry me and my children with you that we may go and worship this
+King?  Then said the heavenly visitor, Christiana, the bitter is
+before the sweet.  Thou must through troubles, as did he that went
+before thee, enter this celestial city."  And so on.
+
+1.  Now, to begin with, you will have noticed the way in which
+Christiana was prepared for the entrance of Secret into her house.
+She was a widow.  She sat alone in that loneliness which only
+widows know and understand.  More than lonely, she was very
+miserable.  "Mark this," says the author on the margin, "you that
+are churls to your godly relations."  For this widow felt sure that
+her husband had been taken from her because of her cruel behaviour
+to him.  Her past unnatural carriages toward her husband now rent
+the very caul of her heart in sunder.  And, again and again, about
+that same time strange dreams would sometimes visit her.  Dreams
+such as this.  She would see her husband in a place of bliss with a
+harp in his hand, standing and playing upon it before One that sat
+on a throne with a rainbow round His head.  She saw also as if he
+bowed his head with his face to the paved work that was under the
+Prince's feet, saying, I heartily thank my Lord and King for
+bringing me to this place.  You will easily see how ready this lone
+woman was with all that for his entrance who knocked and said,
+Peace be to this house, and handed her a letter of perfume from her
+husband's King.  Then you will have remarked also some of the
+things this visitor from on high said to her of the place whence he
+had come.  He told her, to begin with, how they sometimes talked
+about her in his country.  She thought that she was a lonely and
+forgotten widow, and that no one cared what became of her.  But her
+visitor assured her she was quite wrong in thinking that.  He had
+often himself heard her name mentioned in conversation above; and
+the most hopeful reports, he told her, were circulated from door to
+door that she was actually all but started on the upward way.  Yes,
+he said, and we have a place prepared for you on the strength of
+these reports, a place among the immortals close beside your
+husband.  And all that, as you will not wonder, was the beginning
+of Christiana's secret life.  After that morning she never again
+felt alone or forgotten.  I am not alone, she would after that say,
+when any of her old neighbours knocked at her door.  No, I am not
+alone, but if thou comest in God's name, come in.
+
+2.  And from that day a long succession of secret providences began
+to enter Christiana's life, till, as time went on, her whole life
+was filled full of secret providences.  And not her present life
+only, but her discoveries of God's secret providences towards her
+and hers became retrospective also, till both her own parentage and
+birth, her husband's parentage and birth also, the day she first
+saw him, the day of their espousals, the day of their marriage, and
+the day of his death, all shone out now as so many secret and
+special providences of God toward her.  Bishop Martensen has a fine
+passage on the fragmentariness of our knowledge, not only of divine
+providence as a whole, but even of those divine providences that
+fill up our own lives.  And he warns us that, till we have heard
+the "Prologue in Heaven," many a riddle in our lives must of
+necessity remain unsolved.  Christiana could not have told her
+inquiring children what a prologue was, nor an epilogue either, but
+many were the wise and winning discourses she held with her boys
+about their father now in heaven, about her happiness in having had
+such a father for her children, and about their happiness that the
+road was open before them to go to where he now is.  And there are
+many poor widows among ourselves who are wiser than all their
+teachers, because they are in that school of experience into which
+God takes His afflicted people and opens to them His deepest
+secrets.  They remember, with Job, when the secret of the Lord was
+first upon their tabernacle.  Their widowed hearts are full of holy
+household memories.  They remember the days when the candle of the
+Lord shone upon their head when they washed their steps with
+butter, and the rock poured them out rivers of oil.  And still,
+when, like Job also, they sit solitary among the ashes, the secret
+of the Lord is only the more secretly and intimately with them.
+John Bunyan was well fitted to be Christiana's biographer, because
+his own life was as full as it could hold of these same secret and
+special providences.  One day he was walking--so he tells us--in a
+good man's shop, bemoaning himself of his sad and doleful state--
+when a mighty rushing wind came in through the window and seemed to
+carry words of Scripture on its wings to Bunyan's disconsolate
+soul.  He candidly tells us that he does not know, after twenty
+years' reflection, what to make of that strange dispensation.  That
+it took place, and that it left the most blessed results behind it,
+he is sure; but as to how God did it, by what means, by what
+instruments, both the rushing wind itself and the salutation that
+accompanied it, he is fain to let lie till the day of judgment.
+And many of ourselves have had strange dispensations too that we
+must leave alone, and seek no other explanation of them for the
+present but the blessed results of them.  We have had divine
+descents into our lives that we can never attempt to describe.
+Interpositions as plain to us as if we had both seen and spoken
+with the angel who executed them.  Miraculous deliverances that
+throw many Old and New Testament miracles into the shade.
+Providential adaptations and readjustments also, as if all things
+were actually and openly and without a veil being made to work
+together for our good.  Extrications also; nets broken, snares
+snapped, and such pavilions of safety and solace opened to us that
+we can find no psalm secret and special enough in which to utter
+our life-long astonishment.  Importunate prayers anticipated,
+postponed, denied, translated, transmuted, and then answered till
+our cup was too full; sweet changed to bitter, and bitter changed
+to sweet, so wonderfully, so graciously, and so often, that words
+fail us, and we can only now laugh and now weep over it all.  Poor
+Cowper knew something about it -
+
+
+"God moves in a mysterious way
+His wonders to perform;
+He plants His footsteps in the sea,
+And rides upon the storm.
+
+Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take,
+The clouds ye so much dread
+Are big with mercy, and shall break
+In blessings on your head.
+
+"Blind unbelief is sure to err,
+And scan his work in vain;
+God is His own interpreter,
+And He will make it plain.
+
+
+3.  Secret scriptures also--from that enlightening day Christiana's
+Bible became full of them.  Peter says that no prophecy is of any
+private interpretation; and, whatever he means by that, what he
+says must be true.  But Christiana would have understood the
+apostle better if he had said the exact opposite of that,--if not
+about the prophecies, at least about the psalms.  Leave the
+prophecies in this connection alone; but of the psalms it may
+safely be said that it is neither the literal nor the historical
+nor the mystical interpretation that gets at the heart of those
+supreme scriptures.  It is the private, personal, and, indeed,
+secret interpretation that gets best at the deepest heart of the
+psalms.  An old Bible came into my hands the other day--a Bible
+that had seen service--and it opened of its own accord at the Book
+of Psalms.  On turning over the yellow leaves I found a date and a
+deep indentation opposite these words:  "Commit thy way unto the
+Lord:  trust also in Him:  and He will bring it to pass."  And as I
+looked at the figures on the margin, and at the underscored text, I
+felt as if I were on the brink of an old-world secret.  "Create in
+me a clean heart" had a significant initial also; as had this:
+"The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit."  The whole of the
+hundred-and-third psalm was bracketed off from all public
+interpretation; while the tenth, the cardinal verse of that secret
+psalm, had a special seal set upon it.  Judging from its stains and
+scars and other accidents, the whole of the hundred-and-nineteenth
+psalm had been a special favourite; while the hundred-and-forty-
+third also was all broidered round with shorthand symbols.  But the
+secret key of all those symbols and dates and enigmatical marks was
+no longer to be found; it had been carried away in the owner's own
+heart.  But, my head being full of Christiana at the time, I felt
+as if I held her own old Bible in my hand as I turned over those
+ancient leaves.
+
+4.  Our Lord so practised secrecy Himself in His fasting, in His
+praying, and in His almsgiving, and He makes so much of that same
+secrecy in all His teaching, as almost to make the essence of all
+true religion to stand in its secrecy.  "When thou prayest," says
+our Lord, "shut thy door and pray in secret."  As much as to say
+that we are scarcely praying at all when we are praying in public.
+Praying in public is so difficult that new beginners, like His
+disciples, have to practise that so difficult art for a long time
+in secret.  Public prayer has so many besetting sins, it is open to
+so many temptations, distractions, and corruptions, that it is
+almost impossible to preserve the real essence of prayer in public
+prayer.  But in secret all those temptations and distractions are
+happily absent.  We have no temptation to be too long in secret
+prayer, or too loud, or too eloquent.  Stately old English goes for
+nothing in secret prayer.  We never need to go to our knees in
+secret trembling, lest we lose the thread of our prayer, or forget
+that so fit and so fine expression.  The longer we are the better
+in secret prayer.  Much speaking is really a virtue in secret
+prayer; much speaking and many repetitions.  Also, we can put
+things into our secret prayers that we dare not come within a
+thousand miles of in the pulpit, or the prayer-meeting, or the
+family.  We can enter into the most plain-spoken particulars about
+ourselves in secret.  We can put our proper name upon ourselves,
+and upon our actions, and especially upon our thoughts when our
+door is shut.  Then, again, we can pray for other people by name in
+secret; we can enter, so far as we know them, into all their
+circumstances in a way it is impossible to do anywhere but in the
+utmost secrecy.  We can, in short, be ourselves in secret; and,
+unless it is to please or to impress men, we had better not pray at
+all unless we are ourselves when we are engaged in it.  You can be
+yourself, your very worst self; nay, you must be, else you will not
+long pray in secret, and even if you did you would not be heard.  I
+do not remember that very much is said in so many words in her
+after-history about Christiana's habits of closet-prayer.  But that
+Secret taught her the way, and waited till she had tasted the
+sweetness and the strength of being a good while on her knees
+alone, I am safe to say; indeed, I read it between the lines in all
+her after-life.  She was rewarded openly in a way that testifies to
+much secret prayer; that is to say, in the early conversion of her
+children, in the way they settled in life, and such like things.
+Pray much for those things in secret that you wish to possess
+openly.
+
+5.  But perhaps the best and most infallible evidence we can have
+of the truth of our religion in this life is in the steady increase
+of our secret sinfulness.  Christiana had no trouble with her own
+wicked heart so long as she was a woman of a wicked life.  But
+directly she became a new creature, her heart began to swarm, such
+is her own expression, with sinful memories, sinful thoughts, and
+sinful feelings; till she had need of some one ever near her, like
+Greatheart, constantly to assure her that those cruel and deadly
+swarms, instead of being a bad sign of her salvation, were the very
+best signs possible of her good estate.  Humility is the foundation
+of all our graces, and there is no humility so deep and so ever-
+deepening as that evangelical humility which in its turn rises out
+of and rests upon secret sinfulness.  Not upon acts of secret sin.
+Do not mistake me.  Acts of secret sin harden the heart and debauch
+the conscience.  But I speak of that secret, original, unexplored,
+and inexpugnable sinfulness out of which all a sinner's actual
+sins, both open sins and secret, spring; and out of which a like
+life of open and actual sins would spring in God's very best
+saints, if only both He and they did not watch night and day
+against them.  Sensibility to sin, or rather to sinfulness, is far
+and away the best evidence of sanctification that is possible to us
+in this life.  It is this keen and bitter sensibility that secures,
+amid all oppositions and obstructions, the true saint's onward and
+upward progress.  Were it not for the misery of their own hearts,
+God's best saints would fall asleep and go back like other men.  A
+sinful heart is the misery of all miseries.  It is the deepest and
+darkest of all dungeons.  It is the most painful and the most
+loathsome of all diseases.  And the secrecy of it all adds to the
+bitterness and the gall of it all.  We may know that other men's
+hearts are as sinful as our own, but we do not feel their
+sinfulness.  We cannot sensibly feel humiliation, bondage,
+sickness, and self-loathing on account of another man's envy, or
+ill-will, or resentment, or cruelty, or falsehood, or impurity.
+All these things must be our own before we can enter into the pain
+and the shame of them; but, when we do, then we taste what death
+and hell are indeed.  As I write these feeble words about it, a
+devil's shaft of envy that was shot all against my will into my
+heart this morning, still, after a whole day, rankles and festers
+there.  I have been on my knees with it again and again; I have
+stood and looked into an open grave to-day; but there it is sucking
+at my heart's blood still, like a leech of hell.  Who can
+understand his errors?  Cleanse Thou me from secret faults.  Create
+in me a clean heart, O God, O wretched man that I am!  "Let a man,"
+says William Law when he is enforcing humility, "but consider that
+if the world knew all that of him which he knows of himself:  if
+they saw what vanity and what passions govern his inside, and what
+secret tempers sully and corrupt his best actions, he would have no
+more pretence to be honoured and admired for his goodness and
+wisdom than a rotten and distempered body to be loved and admired
+for its beauty and comeliness.  This is so true, and so known to
+the hearts of almost all people, that nothing would appear more
+dreadful to them than to have their hearts fully discovered to the
+eyes of all beholders.  And, perhaps, there are very few people in
+the world who would not rather choose to die than to have all their
+secret follies, the errors of their judgments, the vanity of their
+minds, the falseness of their pretences, the frequency of their
+vain and disorderly passions, their uneasinesses, hatreds, envies,
+and vexations made known to all the world."  Where did William Law
+get that terrible passage?  Where could he get it but in the secret
+heart of the miserable author of the Serious Call?
+
+6.  The half cannot be told of the guilt and the corruption, the
+pain and the shame and the manifold misery of secret sin; but all
+that will be told, believed, and understood by all men long before
+the full magnificence of their sanctification, and the superb
+transcendence of their blessedness, will even begin to be described
+to God's secret saints.  For, all that sleepless, cruel, and soul-
+killing pain, and all that shameful and humbling corruption,--all
+that means, all that is, so much holiness, so much heaven, working
+itself out in the soul.  All that is so much immortal life,
+spotless beauty, and incorruptible joy already begun in the soul.
+Every such pang in a holy heart is a death-pang of another sin and
+a birth-pang of another grace.  Brotherly love is at last being
+born never to die in that heart where envy and malice and
+resentment and revenge are causing inward agony.  And humility and
+meekness and the whole mind of Christ are there where pride and
+anger and ill-will are felt to be very hell itself.  And holiness,
+even as God is holy, will soon be there for ever where the
+sinfulness of sin is a sinner's acutest sorrow.  "As for me," said
+one whose sin was ever before him, "I will behold Thy face in
+righteousness; I shall be satisfied when I wake with Thy likeness."
+
+
+
+MRS. TIMOROUS
+
+
+
+"But the fearful [literally, the timid and the cowardly] shall have
+their part in the second death."--Revelation xxi.
+
+No sooner had Secret bidden Christiana farewell than she began with
+all her might to make ready for her great journey.  "Come, my
+children, let us pack up and begone to the gate that leads to the
+Celestial City, that we may see your father and be with him, and
+with his companions, in peace, according to the laws of that land."
+And then:  "Come in, if you come in God's name!" Christiana called
+out, as two of her neighbours knocked at her door.  "Having little
+to do at home this morning," said the elder of the two women, "I
+have come across to kill a little time with you.  I spent last
+night with Mrs. Light-mind, and I have some good news for you this
+morning."  "I am just preparing for a journey this morning," said
+Christiana, packing up all the time, "and I have not so much as one
+moment to spare."  You know yourselves what Christiana's
+nervousness and almost impatience were.  You know how it upsets
+your good temper and all your civility when you are packing up for
+a long absence from home, and some one comes in, and will talk, and
+will not see how behindhand and how busy you are.  "For what
+journey, I pray you?" asked Mrs. Timorous, for that was her
+visitor's name.  "Even to go after my good husband," the busy woman
+said, and with that she fell a-weeping.  But you must read the
+whole account of that eventful morning in Christiana's memoirs for
+yourselves till you have it, as Secret said, by root-of-heart.  On
+the understanding that you are not total strangers to that so
+excellently-written passage I shall now venture a few observations
+upon it.
+
+1.  Well, to begin with, Mrs. Timorous was not a bad woman, as
+women went in that town and in that day.  Her companions,--her
+gossips, as she would have called them,--were far worse women than
+she was; and, had it not been for her family infirmity, had it not
+been for that timid, hesitating, lukewarm, and half-and-half habit
+of mind which she had inherited from her father, there is no saying
+what part she might have played in the famous expedition of
+Christiana and Mercy and the boys.  Her father had been a pilgrim
+himself at one time; but he had now for a long time been known in
+the town as a turncoat and a temporary, and all his children had
+unhappily taken after their father in that.  Had her father held on
+as he at one time had begun--had he held on in the face of all fear
+and all danger as Christiana's noble husband had done--to a
+certainty his daughter would have started that morning with
+Christiana and her company, and would have been, if a timid, easily
+scared, and troublesome pilgrim, yet as true a pilgrim, and made as
+welcome at last, as, say, Miss Much-afraid, Mr. Fearing, and Mr.
+Ready-to-halt were made.  But her father's superficiality and
+shakiness, and at bottom his warm love of this world and his
+lukewarm love of the world to come, had unfortunately all descended
+to his daughter, till we find her actually reviling Christiana on
+that decisive morning, and returning to her dish of tea and tittle-
+tattle with Mrs. Bats-eyes, Mrs. Inconsiderate, Mrs. Light-mind,
+and Mrs. Know-nothing.
+
+2.  The thing that positively terrified Mrs. Timorous at the very
+thought of setting out with Christiana that morning was that
+intolerable way in which Christiana had begun to go back upon her
+past life as a wife and a mother.  Christiana could not hide her
+deep distress, and, indeed, she did not much try.  Such were the
+swarms of painful memories that her husband's late death, the visit
+of Secret, and one thing and another had let loose upon
+Christiana's mind, that she could take pleasure in nothing but in
+how she was to escape away from her past life, and how she could in
+any way mend it and make up for it where she could not escape from
+it.  "You may judge yourself," said Mrs. Timorous to Mrs. Light-
+mind, "whether I was likely to find much entertainment with a woman
+like that!"  For, Mrs. Timorous too, you must know, had a past life
+of her own; and it was that past life of hers all brought back by
+Christiana's words that morning that made Mrs. Timorous so revile
+her old friend and return to the society we so soon see her with.
+Now, is not this the case, that we all have swarms of evil memories
+that we dare not face?  There is no single relationship in life
+that we can boldly look back upon and fully face.  As son or as
+daughter, as brother or as sister, as friend or as lover, as
+husband or as wife, as minister or as member, as master or as
+servant--what swarms of hornet-memories darken our hearts as we so
+look back!  Let any grown-up man, with some imagination, tenderness
+of heart, and integrity of conscience, go back step by step, taking
+some time to it,--at a new year, say, or a birthday, or on some
+such suitable occasion:  let him go over his past life back to his
+youth and childhood--and what an intolerable burden will be laid on
+his heart before he is done!  What a panorama of scarlet pictures
+will pass before his inward eye!  What a forest of accusing fingers
+will be pointed at him!  What hissing curses will be spat at him
+both by the lips of the living and the dead!  What untold pains he
+will see that he has caused to the innocent and the helpless!  What
+desolating disappointments, what shipwrecks of hope to this man and
+to that woman!  What a stone of stumbling he has been to many who
+on that stone have been for ever broken and lost!  What a rock of
+offence even his mere innocent existence, all unknown to himself
+till afterwards, has been!  Swarms, said Christiana.  Swarms of
+hornets armed, said Samson.  And many of us understand what that
+bitter word means better than any commentator on Bunyan or on
+Milton can tell us.  One of the holiest men the Church of England
+ever produced, and one of her best devotional writers, used to shut
+his door on the night of every first day of the week, and on his
+knees spread out a prayer which always contained this passage:  "I
+worship Thee, O God, on my face.  I smite my breast and say with
+the publican, God be merciful to me a sinner; the chief of sinners;
+a sinner far above the publican.  Despise me not--an unclean worm,
+a dead dog, a putrid corpse.  Despise me not, despise me not, O
+Lord.  But look upon me with those eyes with which Thou didst look
+upon Magdalene at the feast, Peter in the hall, and the thief on
+the cross.  O that mine eyes were a fountain of tears that I might
+weep night and day before Thee!  I despise and bruise myself that
+my penitence is not deeper, is not fuller.  Help Thou mine
+impenitence, and more and more pierce, rend, and crush my heart.
+My sins are more in number than the sand.  My iniquities are
+multiplied, and I have no relief."  Perish your Puritanism, and
+your prayer-books too!  I hear some high-minded and indignant man
+saying.  Perish your Celestial City and all my desire after it,
+before I say the like of that about myself!  Brave words, my
+brother; brave words!  But there have been men as blameless as you
+are, and as brave-hearted over it, who, when the scales fell off
+their eyes, were heard crying out ever after:  O wretched man that
+I am!  And:  Have mercy on me, the chief of sinners!  And so, if it
+so please God, will it yet be with you.
+
+3.  "Having had little to do this morning," said Mrs. Timorous to
+Mrs. Light-mind, "I went to give Christiana a visit."  "Law," I
+read in his most impressive Life, "by this time was well turned
+fifty, but he rose as early and was as soon at his desk as when he
+was still a new, enthusiastic, and scrupulously methodical student
+at Cambridge."  Summer and winter Law rose to his devotions and his
+studies at five o'clock, not because he had imperative sermons to
+prepare, but because, in his own words, it is more reasonable to
+suppose a person up early because he is a Christian than because he
+is a labourer or a tradesman or a servant.  I have a great deal of
+business to do, he would say.  I have a hardened heart to change; I
+have still the whole spirit of religion to get.  When Law at any
+time felt a temptation to relax his rule of early devotion, he
+again reminded himself how fast he was becoming an old man, and how
+far back his sanctification still was, till he flung himself out of
+bed and began to make himself a new heart before the servants had
+lighted their fires or the farmers had yoked their horses.  Shame
+on you, he said to himself, to lie folded up in a bed when you
+might be pouring out your heart in prayer and in praise, and thus
+be preparing yourself for a place among those blessed beings who
+rest not day and night saying, Holy, Holy, Holy.  "I have little to
+do this morning," said Mrs. Timorous.  "But I am preparing for a
+journey," said Christiana.  "I have now a price put into my hand to
+get gain, and I should be a fool of the greatest size if I should
+have no heart to strike in with the opportunity."
+
+4.  Another thing that completely threw out Christiana's idle
+visitor and made her downright angry was the way she would finger
+and kiss and read pieces out of the fragrant letter she held in her
+hand.  You will remember how Christiana came by that letter she was
+now so fond of.  "Here," said Secret, "is a letter I have brought
+thee from thy husband's King."  So she took it and opened it, and
+it smelt after the manner of the best perfume; also it was written
+in letters of gold.  " I advise thee," said Secret, "that thou put
+this letter in thy bosom, that thou read therein to thy children
+until you have all got it by root-of-heart."  "His messenger was
+here," said Christiana to Mrs. Timorous, "and has brought me a
+letter which invites me to come."  And with that she plucked out
+the letter and read to her out of it, and said:  "What now do you
+say to all that?"  That, again, is so true to our own life.  For
+there is nothing that more distastes and disrelishes many people
+among us than just that we should name to them our favourite books,
+and read a passage out of them, and ask them to say what they think
+of such wonderful words.  Samuel Rutherford's Letters, for
+instance; a book that smells to some nostrils with the same
+heavenly perfume as Secret's own letter did.  A book, moreover,
+that is written in the same ink of gold.  Ask at afternoon tea to-
+morrow, even in so-called Christian homes, when any of the ladies
+round the table last read, and how often they have read, Grace
+Abounding, The Saint's Rest, The Religious Affections, Jeremy
+Taylor, Law, a Kempis, Fenelon, or such like, and they will smile
+to one another and remark after you are gone on your strange taste
+for old-fashioned and long-winded and introspective books.  "Julia
+has buried her husband and married her daughters, and since that
+she spends her time in reading.  She is always reading foolish and
+unedifying books.  She tells you every time she sees you that she
+is almost at the end of the silliest book that ever she read in her
+life.  But the best of it is that it serves to dispose of a good
+deal of her spare time.  She tells you all romances are sad stuff,
+yet she is very impatient till she can get all she can hear of.
+Histories of intrigue and scandal are the books that Julia thinks
+are always too short.  The truth is, she lives upon folly and
+scandal and impertinence.  These things are the support of her dull
+hours.  And yet she does not see that in all this she is plainly
+telling you that she is in a miserable, disordered, reprobate state
+of mind.  Now, whether you read her books or no, you perhaps think
+with her that it is a dull task to read only religious and
+especially spiritual books.  But when you have the spirit of true
+religion, when you can think of God as your only happiness, when
+you are not afraid of the joys of eternity, you will think it a
+dull task to read any other books.  When it is the care of your
+soul to be humble, holy, pure, and heavenly-minded; when you know
+anything of the guilt and misery of sin, or feel a real need of
+salvation, then you will find religious and truly spiritual books
+to be the greatest feast and joy of your mind and heart."  Yes.
+And then we shall thank God every day we live that He raised us up
+such helpers in our salvation as the gifted and gracious authors we
+have been speaking of.
+
+5.  "The further I go the more danger I meet with," said old
+Timorous, the father, to Christian, when Christian asked him on the
+Hill Difficulty why he was running the wrong way.  "I, too, was
+going to the City of Zion," he said; "but the further on I go the
+more danger I meet with."  And, in saying that, the old runaway
+gave our persevering pilgrim something to think about for all his
+days.  For, again and again, and times without number, Christian
+would have gone back too if only he had known where to go.  Go on,
+therefore, he must.  To go back to him was simply impossible.
+Every day he lived he felt the bitter truth of what that old
+apostate had so unwittingly said.  But, with all that he kept
+himself in his onward way till, dangers and difficulties, death and
+hell and all, he came to the blessed end of it.  And that same has
+been the universal experience of all the true and out-and-out
+saints of God in all time.  If poor old Timorous had only known it,
+if he had only had some one beside him to remind him of it, the
+very thing that so fatally turned him back was the best proof
+possible that he was on the right and the only right way; ay, and
+fast coming, poor old castaway, to the very city he had at one time
+set out to seek.  Now, it is only too likely that there are some of
+my hearers at this with it tonight, that they are on the point of
+giving up the life of faith, and hope, and love, and holy living;
+because the deeper they carry that life into their own hearts the
+more impossible they find it to live that life there.  The more
+they aim their hearts at God's law the more they despair of ever
+coming within sight of it.  My supremely miserable brother! if this
+is any consolation to you, if you can take any crumb of consolation
+out of it, let this be told you, that, as a matter of fact, all
+truly holy men have in their heart of hearts had your very
+experience.  That is no strange and unheard-of thing which is
+passing within you.  And, indeed, if you could but believe it, that
+is one of the surest signs and seals of a true and genuine child of
+God.  Dante, one of the bravest, but hardest bestead of God's
+saints, was, just like you, well-nigh giving up the mountain
+altogether when his Greatheart, who was always at his side,
+divining what was going on within him, said to him -
+
+
+"Those scars
+That when they pain thee most then kindliest heal."
+
+
+"The more I do," complained one of Thomas Shepard's best friends to
+him, "the worse I am."  "The best saints are the most sensible of
+sin," wrote Samuel Rutherford.  And, again he wrote, "Sin rages far
+more in the godly than ever it does in the ungodly."  And you dare
+not deny but that Samuel Rutherford was one of the holiest men that
+ever lived, or that in saying all that he was speaking of himself.
+And Newman:  "Every one who tries to do God's will"--and that also
+is Newman himself--"will feel himself to be full of all
+imperfection and sin; and the more he succeeds in regulating his
+heart, the more will he discern its original bitterness and guilt."
+As our own hymn has it:
+
+"They who fain would serve Thee best
+Are conscious most of wrong within."
+
+
+Without knowing it, Mrs. Timorous's runaway father was speaking the
+same language as the chief of the saints.  Only he said, "Therefore
+I have turned back," whereas, first Christian, and then Christiana
+his widow, said, "Yet I must venture!"
+
+And so say you.  Say, I must and I will venture!  Say it; clench
+your teeth and your hands and say it.  Say that you are determined
+to go on towards heaven where the holy are--absolutely determined,
+though you are quite well aware that you are carrying up with you
+the blackest, the wickedest, the most corrupt, and the most
+abominable heart either out of hell or in it.  Say that, say all
+that, and still venture.  Say all that and all the more venture.
+Venture upon God of whom such reassuring things are said.  Venture
+upon the Son of God of whom His Father is represented as saying
+such inviting things.  Venture upon the cross.  Survey the wondrous
+cross and then make a bold venture upon it.  Think who that is who
+is bleeding to death upon the cross, and why?  Look at Him till you
+never afterwards can see anything else.  Look at God's Eternal,
+Divine, Well-pleasing Son with all the wages of sin dealt out to
+Him, body and soul, on that tree to the uttermost farthing.  And,
+devil incarnate though you indeed are, yet, say, if that spectacle
+does not satisfy you, and encourage you, and carry your cowardice
+captive.  Venture! I say, venture!  And if you find at last that
+you have ventured too far--if you have sinned and corrupted
+yourself beyond redemption--then it will be some consolation and
+distinction to you in hell that you had out-sinned the infinite
+grace of God, and had seen the end of the unsearchable riches of
+Christ.  Timid sinner, I but mock thee, therefore venture!  Fearful
+sinner, venture!  Cowardly sinner, venture.  Venture thyself upon
+thy God, upon Christ thy Saviour, and upon His cross.  Venture all
+thy guilt and all thy corruption taken together upon Christ hanging
+upon His cross, and make that tremendous venture now!
+
+
+
+MERCY
+
+
+
+"Blessed are the merciful:  for they shall obtain mercy."--Our
+Lord.
+
+The first time that we see Mercy she is standing one sunshine
+morning knocking along with another at Christiana's door.  And all
+that we afterwards hear of Mercy might be described as, A morning
+call and all that came of it; or, How a godly matron led on a poor
+maid to fall in love with her own salvation.  John Bunyan, her
+biographer, in all his devotion to Mercy, does not make it at all
+clear to us why such a sweet and good girl as Mercy was could be on
+such intimate terms with Mrs. Timorous and all her so questionable
+circle.  Could it be that Mercy's mother was one of that unhappy
+set?  And had this dear little woman-child been brought up so as to
+know no better than to figure in their assemblies, and go out on
+their morning rounds with Mrs. Light-mind and Mrs. Know-nothing?
+Or, was poor Mercy an orphan with no one to watch over her, and had
+her sweet face, her handsome figure, and her winning manners made
+her one of the attractions of old Madam Wanton's midnight routs?
+However it came about, there was Mercy out on a series of morning
+calls with a woman twice her age, but a woman whose many years had
+taught her neither womanliness nor wisdom.  "If you come in God's
+name, come in," a voice from the inside answered the knocking of
+Mrs. Timorous and Mercy, her companion, at Christiana's door.  In
+all their rounds that morning the two women had not been met with
+another salutation like that; and that strange salutation so
+disconcerted and so confounded them that they did not know whether
+to lift the latch and go in, or to run away and leave those to go
+in who could take their delight in such outlandish language.  "If
+you come in God's name, come in."  At this the women were stunned,
+for this kind of language they used not to hear or to perceive to
+drop from the lips of Christiana.  Yet they came in; but, behold,
+they found the good woman preparing to be gone from her house.  The
+conversation that ensued was all carried on by the two elder women.
+For it was often remarked about Mercy all her after-days that her
+voice was ever soft, and low, and, especially, seldom heard.  But
+her ears were not idle.  For all the time the debate went on--
+because by this time the conversation had risen to be a debate--
+Mercy was taking silent sides with Christiana and her distress and
+her intended enterprise, till, when Mrs. Timorous reviled
+Christiana and said, "Come away, Mercy, and leave her in her own
+hands," Mercy by that time was brought to a standstill.  For, like
+a rose among thorns, Mercy was thoughtful and wise and womanly far
+beyond her years.  So much so, that already she had made up her
+mind to offer herself as a maidservant to help the widow with her
+work and to see her so far on her way, and, indeed, though she kept
+that to herself, to go all the way with her, if the way should
+prove open to her.  First, her heart yearned over Christiana; so
+she said within herself, If my neighbour will needs be gone, I will
+go a little way with her to help her.  Secondly, her heart yearned
+over her own soul's salvation, for what Christiana had said had
+taken some hold upon Mercy's mind.  Wherefore she said within
+herself, I will yet have more talk with this Christiana, and if I
+find truth and life in what she shall say, myself with all my heart
+shall also go with her.  "Neighbour," spoke out Mercy to Mrs.
+Timorous, "I did indeed come with you to see Christiana this
+morning, and since she is, as you see, a-taking of her last
+farewell of her country, I think to walk this sunshine morning a
+little way with her to help her on the way."  But she told her not
+of her second reason, but kept that to herself.  I would fain go on
+with Mercy's memoirs all night.  But you will take up that inviting
+thread for yourselves.  And meantime I shall stop here and gather
+up under two or three heads some of the more memorable results and
+lessons of that sunshine-morning call.
+
+1.  Well, then, to begin with, there was something quite queen-
+like, something absolutely commanding, about Christiana's look and
+manner, as well as about all she said and did that morning.
+Mercy's morning companion had all the advantages that dress and
+equipage could give her; while Christiana stood in the middle of
+the floor in her housewife's clothes, covered with dust and
+surrounded with all her dismantled house; but, with all that, there
+was something about Christiana that took Mercy's heart completely
+captive.  All that Christiana had by this time come through had
+blanched her cheek and whitened her hair:  but all that only the
+more commanded Mercy's sensitive and noble soul.  To be open to
+impressions of that kind is one of the finest endowments of a
+finely endowed nature; and, all through, the attentive reader of
+her history will be sure to remark and imitate Mercy's exquisite
+and tenacious sensibility to all that is true and good, upright and
+honourable and noble.  And then, what a blessing it is to a girl of
+Mercy's mould to meet at opening womanhood with another woman, be
+it a mother, a mistress, or a neighbour, whose character then, and
+as life goes on, can supply the part of the supporting and
+sheltering oak to the springing and clinging vine.  Christiana
+being now the new woman she was, as well as a woman of great
+natural wisdom, dignity, and stability of character, the safety,
+the salvation of poor motherless Mercy was as good as sure.
+Indeed, all Mercy's subsequent history is only one long and growing
+tribute to the worth, the constant love, and the sleepless
+solicitude of this true mother in Israel.
+
+2.  Now, it was so, that, wholly unknown to all her companions,
+young and old, in her own very remarkable words, Mercy had for a
+long time been hungering with all her heart to meet with some
+genuinely good people,--with some people, as she said herself,--"of
+truth and of life."  These are remarkable words to hear drop from
+the lips of a young girl, and especially a girl of Mercy's
+environment.  Now, had there been anything hollow, had there been
+one atom of insincerity or exaggeration about Christiana that
+morning, had she talked too much, had all her actions not far more
+than borne out all her words, had there not been in the broken-
+hearted woman a depth of mind and a warmth of heart far beyond all
+her words, Mercy would never have become a pilgrim.  But the
+natural dignity of Christiana's character; her capable, commanding,
+resolute ways; the reality, even to agony, of her sorrow for her
+past life--all taken together with her iron-fast determination to
+enter at once on a new life--all that carried Mercy's heart
+completely captive.  Mercy felt that there was a solemnity, an
+awesomeness, and a mystery about her new friend's experiences and
+memories that it was not for a child like herself to attempt to
+intrude into.  But, all the more because of that, a spell of love
+and fear and reverence lay on Mercy's heart and mind all her after-
+days from that so solemn and so eventful morning when she first saw
+Christiana's haggard countenance and heard her remorseful cries.
+My so churlish carriages to him!  Now, such carriages between man
+and wife had often pained and made ashamed Mercy's maidenly heart
+beyond all expression.  Till she had sometimes said to herself,
+blushing with shame before herself as she said it, that if ever she
+was a wife--may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth before I
+say one churlish word to him who is my husband!  And thus it was
+that nothing that Christiana said that morning in the uprush of her
+remorse moved Mercy more with pity and with love than just what
+Christiana beat her breast about as concerning her lost husband.
+Mercy used to say that she saw truth and life enough in one hour
+that morning to sober and to solemnise and to warn her to set a
+watch on the door of her lips for all her after-days.
+
+3.  Before Mrs. Timorous was well out of the door, Mercy had
+already plucked off her gloves, and hung up her morning bonnet on a
+nail in the wall, so much did her heart heave to help the cumbered
+widow and her fatherless children.  "If thou wilt, I will hire
+thee," said Christiana, "and thou shalt go with me as my servant.
+Yet we will have all things common betwixt thee and me; only, now
+thou art here, go along with me."  At this Mercy fell on
+Christiana's neck and kissed her mother; for after that morning
+Christiana had always a daughter of her own, and Mercy a mother.
+And you may be sure, with two such women working with all their
+might, all things were soon ready for their happy departure.
+
+Mr. Kerr Bain invites his readers to compare John Bunyan's Mercy at
+this point with William Law's Miranda.  I shall not tarry to draw
+out the full comparison here, but shall content myself with simply
+repeating Mr. Bain's happy reference.  Only, I shall not content
+myself till all to whom my voice can reach, and who are able to
+enjoy only a first-rate book, have Mr. Bain's book beside their
+Pilgrim's Progress.  That morning, then, on which Mrs. Timorous,
+having nothing to do at home, set out with Mercy on a round of
+calls--that was Mercy's last idle morning for all her days.  For
+her mind was, ever after that, to be always busying of herself in
+doing, for when she had nothing to do for herself she would be
+making of hosen and garments for others, and would bestow them upon
+those that had need.  I will warrant her a good housewife, quoth
+Mr. Brisk to himself.  So much so that at any place they stopped on
+the way, even for a day and a night to rest and refresh themselves,
+Mercy would seek out all the poor and all the old people, and ere
+ever she was aware what she was doing, already a good report had
+spread abroad concerning the pilgrims and their pilgrimage.  At the
+same time, it must be told that poor Mercy's heart was more heavy
+for the souls of the poor people than for their naked bodies and
+hungry bellies.  So much was this so that when the shepherds,
+Knowledge, Experience, Watchful, and Sincere, took her to a place
+where she saw one Fool and one Want-wit washing of an Ethiopian
+with intention to make him white, but the more they washed him the
+blacker he was, Mercy blushed and felt guilty before the
+shepherds,--she so took home to her charitable heart the bootless
+work of Fool and Want-wit.  Mercy put on the Salvationist bonnet at
+her first outset to the Celestial City, and she never put it off
+till she came to that land where there are no more poor to make
+hosen and hats for, and no more Ethiopians to take to the fountain.
+
+4.  There are not a few young communicants here to-night, as well
+as not a few who are afraid as yet to offer themselves for the
+Lord's table; and, as it so falls out to-night, Mercy's case
+contains both an encouragement and an example to all such.  For
+never surely had a young communicant less to go upon than Mercy had
+that best morning of all her life.  For she had nothing to go upon
+but a great desire to help Christiana with her work; some desire
+for truth and for life; and some first and feeble yearnings over
+her own soul,--yearnings, however, that she kept entirely to
+herself.  That was all.  She had no remorses like those which had
+ploughed up Christiana's cheeks into such channels of tears.  She
+had no dark past out of which swarms of hornets stung her guilty
+conscience.  Nor on the other hand, had she any such sweet dreams
+and inviting visions as those that were sent to cheer and encourage
+the disconsolate widow.  She will have her own sweet dreams yet,
+that will make her laugh loud out in her sleep.  But that will be
+long after this, when she has discovered how hard her heart is and
+how great God's grace is.  "How shall I be ascertained," she put it
+to Christiana, "that I also shall be entertained?  Had I but this
+hope, from one that can tell, I would make no stick at all, but
+would go, being helped by Him that can help, though the way was
+never so tedious.  Had I as good hope for a loving reception as you
+have, I think no Slough of Despond would discourage me."  "Well,"
+said the other, "you know your sore, and I know mine; and, good
+friend, we shall all have enough evil before we come to our
+journey's end."  And soon after that, of all places on the upward
+way, Mercy's evil began at the Wicket Gate.  "I have a companion,"
+said Christiana, "that stands without.  One that is much dejected
+in her mind, for that she comes, as she thinks, without sending
+for; whereas I was sent to by my husband's King."  So the porter
+opened the gate and looked out; but Mercy was fallen down in a
+swoon, for she fainted and was afraid that the gate would not be
+opened to her.  "O sir," she said, "I am faint; there is scarce
+life left in me."  But he answered her that one once said, "When my
+soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came
+in into Thee, into Thy holy temple.  Fear not, but stand up upon
+thy feet, and tell me wherefore thou art come."  "I am come, sir,
+into that for which I never was invited, as my friend Christiana
+was.  Her invitation was from the Lord, and mine was but from her.
+Wherefore, I fear that I presume."  Then said he to those that
+stood by, "Fetch something and give it to Mercy to smell on,
+thereby to stay her fainting."  So they fetched her a bundle of
+myrrh, and a while after she revived.--Let young communicants be
+content with Mercy's invitation.  She started for the City just
+because she liked to be beside a good woman who was starting
+thither.  She wished to help a good woman who was going thither;
+and just a little desire began at first to awaken in her heart to
+go to the city too.  Till, having once set her face to go up, one
+thing after another worked together to lead her up till she, too,
+had her life full of those invitations and experiences and
+interests and occupations and enjoyments that make Mercy's name so
+memorable, and her happy case such an example and such an
+inspiration, to all God-fearing young women especially.
+
+5.  John Bunyan must be held responsible for the strong dash of
+romance that he so boldly throws into Mercy's memoirs.  But I shall
+postpone Mr. Brisk and his love-making and his answer to another
+lecture.  I shall not enter on Mercy's love matters here at all,
+but shall leave them to be read at home by those who like to read
+romances.  Only, since we have seen so much of Mercy as a maiden,
+one longs to see how she turned out as a wife.  I can only imagine
+how Mercy turned out as a wife; but there is a picture of a
+Scottish Covenanting girl as a married wife which always rises up
+before my mind when I think of Mercy's matronly days.  That picture
+might hang in Bunyan's own peculiar gallery, so beautiful is the
+drawing, and so warm and so eloquent the colouring.  Take, then,
+this portrait of one of the daughters of the Scottish Covenant.
+"She was a woman of great worth, whom I therefore passionately
+loved and inwardly honoured.  A stately, beautiful, and comely
+personage; truly pious and fearing the Lord.  Of an evenly temper,
+patient in our common tribulations and under her personal
+distresses.  A woman of bright natural parts, and of an uncommon
+stock of prudence; of a quick and lively apprehension in things she
+applied herself to, and of great presence of mind in surprising
+incidents.  Sagacious and acute in discerning the qualities of
+persons, and therefore not easily imposed upon.  [See Mr. Brisk's
+interviews with Mercy.]  Modest and grave in her deportment, but
+naturally cheerful; wise and affable in conversation, also having a
+good faculty at speaking and expressing herself with assurance.
+Being a pattern of frugality and wise management in household
+affairs, all such were therefore entirely committed to her; well
+fitted for and careful of the virtuous education of her children;
+remarkably useful in the countryside, both in the Merse and in the
+Forest, through her skill in physic and surgery, which in many
+instances a peculiar blessing appeared to be commanded upon from
+heaven.  And, finally, a crown to me in my public station and
+pulpit appearances.  During the time we have lived together we have
+passed through a sea of trouble, as yet not seeing the shore but
+afar off."
+
+"The words of King Lemuel, the prophecy that his mother taught him.
+What, my son? and what, the son of my womb? and what, the son of my
+vows?  Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above
+rubies.  Her children arise up and call her blessed; her husband
+also, and he praiseth her.  Favour is deceitful, and beauty is
+vain; but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised."
+
+
+
+MR. BRISK
+
+
+
+"Be ye not unequally yoked."--Paul.
+
+There were some severe precisians in John Bunyan's day who took the
+objection to the author of the Pilgrim's Progress that he sometimes
+laughed too loud.
+
+
+"One may (I think) say, both he laughs and cries,
+May well be guessed at by his watery eyes.
+Some things are of that nature as to make
+One's fancy chuckle while his heart doth ake.
+When Jacob saw his Rachel with the sheep,
+At the same time he did both laugh and weep."
+
+
+And even Dr. Cheever, in his excellent lectures on the Pilgrim's
+Progress, confesses that though the Second Part never ceases for a
+moment to tell the serious story of the Pilgrimage, at the same
+time, it sometimes becomes so merry as almost to pass over into
+absolute comedy.  "There is one passage," says Cheever, "which for
+exquisite humour, quiet satire, and naturalness in the development
+of character is scarcely surpassed in the language.  It is the
+account of the courtship between Mr. Brisk and Mercy which took
+place at the House Beautiful."
+
+Now, the insertion of such an episode as that of Mr. Brisk into
+such a book as the Pilgrim's Progress is only yet another proof of
+the health, the strength, and the truth to nature of John Bunyan's
+mind.  His was eminently an honest, straightforward, manly, English
+understanding.  A smaller man would not have ventured on Mr. Brisk
+in such a book as the Pilgrim's Progress.  But there is no
+affectation, there is no prudery, there is no superiority to nature
+in John Bunyan.  He knew quite well that of the thousands of men
+and women who were reading his Pilgrim there was no subject, not
+even religion itself, that was taking up half so much of their
+thoughts as just love-making and marriage.  And, like the wise man
+and the true teacher he was, he here points out to all his readers
+how well true religion and the fullest satisfaction of the warmest
+and the most universal of human affections can be both harmonised
+and made mutually helpful.  In Bunyan's day love was too much left
+to the playwrights, just as in our day it is too much left to the
+poets and the novelists.  And thus it is that in too many instances
+affection and passion have taken full possession of the hearts and
+the lives of our young people before any moral or religious lesson
+on these all-important subjects has been given to them:  any lesson
+such as John Bunyan so winningly and so beautifully gives here.
+"This incident," says Thomas Scott, "is very properly introduced,
+and it is replete with instruction."
+
+Now, Mr. Brisk, to begin with, was, so we are told, a young man of
+some breeding,--that is to say, he was a young man of some social
+position, some education, and of a certain good manner, at least on
+the surface.  In David Scott's Illustrations Mr. Brisk stands
+before us a handsome and well-dressed young man of the period, with
+his well-belted doublet, his voluminous ruffles, his heavily-
+studded cuffs, his small cane, his divided hair, and his delicate
+hand,--altogether answering excellently to his name, were it not
+for the dashed look of surprise with which he gets his answer, and,
+with what jauntiness he can at the moment command, takes his
+departure.  "Mr. Brisk was a man of some breeding," says Bunyan,
+"and that pretended to religion; but a man that stuck very close to
+the world."  That Mr. Brisk made any pretence to religion at any
+other time and in any other place is not said; only that he put on
+that pretence with his best clothes when he came once or twice or
+more to Mercy and offered love to her at the House Beautiful.  The
+man with the least religion at other times, even the man with no
+pretence to religion at other times at all, will pretend to some
+religion when he is in love with a young woman of Mercy's mind.
+And yet it would not be fair to say that it is all pretence even in
+such a man at such a time.  Grant that a man is really in love;
+then, since all love is of the nature of religion, for the time,
+the true lover is really on the borders of a truly religious life.
+It may with perfect truth be said of all men when they first fall
+in love that they are, for the time, not very far away from the
+kingdom of heaven.  For all love is good, so far as it goes.  God
+is Love; and all love, in the long-run, has a touch of the divine
+nature in it.  And for once, if never again, every man who is
+deeply in love has a far-off glimpse of the beauty of holiness, and
+a far-off taste of that ineffable sweetness of which the satisfied
+saints of God sing so ecstatically.  But, in too many instances, a
+young man's love having been kindled only by the creature, and,
+never rising from her to his and her Creator, as a rule, it sooner
+or later burns low and at last burns out, and leaves nothing but
+embers and ashes in his once so ardent heart.  Mr. Brisk's love-
+making might have ended in his becoming a pilgrim but for this
+fatal flaw in his heart, that even in his love-making he stuck so
+fast to the world.  It is almost incredible:  you may well refuse
+to believe it--that any young man in love, and especially a young
+gentleman of Mr. Brisk's breeding, would approach his mistress with
+the question how much she could earn a day.  As Mr. Brisk looks at
+Mercy's lap so full of hats and hosen and says it, I can see his
+natty cane beginning to lengthen itself out in his soft-skinned
+hand and to send out teeth like a muck-rake.  Give Mr. Brisk
+another thirty years or so and he will be an ancient churl, raking
+to himself the sticks and the straws and the dust of the earth,
+neither looking up to nor regarding the celestial crown that is
+still offered to him in exchange for his instrument.
+
+"Now, Mercy was of a fair countenance, and, therefore, all the more
+alluring."  But her fair countenance was really no temptation to
+her.  "Sit still, my daughter," said Naomi to Ruth in the Old
+Testament.  And it was entirely Mercy's maidenly nature to sit
+still.  Even before she had come to her full womanhood under
+Christiana's motherly care she would have been an example to Ruth.
+Long ago, while Mercy was still a mere girl, when Mrs. Light-mind
+said something to her one day that made her blush, Mercy at last
+looked up in real anger and said, We women should be wooed; we were
+not made to woo.  And thus it was that all their time at the House
+Beautiful Mercy stayed close at home and worked with her needle and
+thread just as if she had been the plainest girl in all the town.
+"I might have had husbands afore now," she said, with a cast of her
+head over the coat that lay on her lap, "though I spake not of it
+to any.  But they were such as did not like my conditions, though
+never did any of them find fault with my person.  So they and I
+could not agree."  Once Mercy's mouth was opened on the subject of
+possible husbands it is a miracle that she did not go on in
+confidence to name some of the husbands she might have had.  Mercy
+was too truthful and too honourable a maiden to have said even on
+that subject what she did say if it had not been true.  No doubt
+she believed it true.  And the belief so long as she mentioned no
+names, did not break any man's bones and did not spoil any man's
+market.  Don't set up too prudishly and say that it is a pity that
+Mercy so far forgot herself as to make her little confidential
+boast.  We would not have had her without that little boast.  Keep-
+at-home, sit-still, hats and hosen and all--her little boast only
+proves Mercy to have been at heart a true daughter of Eve after
+all.
+
+There is an old-fashioned word that comes up again and again in the
+account of Mr. Brisk's courtship,--a word that contains far more
+interest and instruction for us than might on the surface appear.
+When Mr. Brisk was rallied upon his ill-success with Mercy, he was
+wont to say that undoubtedly Mistress Mercy was a very pretty lass,
+only she was troubled with ill conditions.  And then, when Mercy
+was confiding to Prudence all about her possible husbands, she said
+that they were all such as did not like her conditions.  To which
+Prudence, keeping her countenance, replied, that the men were but
+few in their day that could abide the practice that was set forth
+by such conditions as those of Mercy.  Well, tossed out Mercy, if
+nobody will have me I will die a maid, or my conditions shall be to
+me as a husband!  As I came again and again across that old
+seventeenth-century word "conditions," I said to myself, I feel
+sure that Dr. Murray of the Oxford Scriptorium will have noted this
+striking passage.  And on turning up the Sixth Part of the New
+English Dictionary, there, to be sure, was the old word standing in
+this present setting.  Five long, rich, closely packed columns
+stood under the head of "Condition"; and amid a thousand
+illustrations of its use, the text:  "1684, Bunyan, Pilgr., ii. 84.
+He said that Mercy was a pretty lass, but troubled with ill
+conditions."  Poor illiterate John Bunyan stood in the centre of a
+group of learned and famous men, composed of Chaucer, Wyclif,
+Skelton, Palsgrave, Raleigh, Featly, Richard Steel, and Walter
+Scott--all agreeing in their use of our word, and all supplying
+examples of its use in the best English books.  By Mercy's
+conditions, then, is just meant her cast of mind, her moral nature,
+her temper and her temperament, her dispositions and her
+inclinations, her habits of thought, habits of heart, habits of
+life, and so on.
+
+"Well," said Mercy proudly, "if nobody will have me, I will die a
+maid, or my conditions shall be to me as a husband.  For I cannot
+change my nature, and to have one that lies cross to me in this,--
+that I purpose never to admit of as long as I live."  By this time,
+though she is still little more than a girl, Mercy had her habits
+formed, her character cast, and, more than all, her whole heart
+irrevocably set on her soul's salvation.  And everything--husband
+and children and all--must condition themselves to that, else she
+will have none of them.  She had sought first the kingdom of God
+and His righteousness, and she will seek nothing, she will accept
+nothing--no, not even a husband--who crosses her choice in that.
+She has chosen her life, and her husband with it.  Not the man as
+yet, but the whole manner of the man.  The conditions of the man,
+as she said about herself; else she will boldly and bravely die a
+maid.  And there are multitudes of married women who, when they
+read this page about Mercy, will gnash their teeth at the madness
+of their youth, and will wildly wish that they only were maids
+again; and, then, like Mercy, they would take good care to make for
+themselves husbands of their own conditions too--of their own
+means, their own dispositions, inclinations, tastes, and pursuits.
+For, according as our conditions to one another are or are not in
+our marriages,
+
+
+"They locally contain or heaven or hell;
+There is no third place in them."
+
+
+What untold good, then, may all our young women not get out of the
+loving study of Mercy's sweet, steadfast, noble character!  And
+what untold misery may they not escape!  From first to last--and we
+are not yet come to her last--I most affectionately recommend Mercy
+to the hearts and minds of all young women here.  Single and
+married; setting out on pilgrimage and steadfastly persevering in
+it; sitting still till the husband with the right conditions comes,
+and then rising up with her warm, well-kept heart to meet him--if
+any maiden here has no mother, or no elder sister, or no wise and
+prudent friend like Prudence or Christiana to take counsel of--and
+even if she has--let Mercy be her meditation and her model through
+all her maidenly days.
+
+"Nay, then," said Mercy, "I will look no more on him, for I purpose
+never to have a clog to my soul."  A pungent resolve for every
+husband to read and to think to himself about, who has married a
+wife with a soul.  Let all husbands who have such wives halt here
+and ask themselves with some imagination as to what may sometimes
+go on, at communion times, say, in the souls of their wives.  It is
+not every wife, it is true, who has a soul to clog; but some of our
+wives have.  Well, now, let us ask ourselves:  How do we stand
+related to their souls?  Do our wives, when examining the state of
+their souls since they married us, have to say that at one time
+they had hoped to be further on in the life of the soul than they
+yet are?  And are they compelled before God to admit that the
+marriage they have made, and would make, has terribly hindered
+them?  Would they have been better women, would they have been
+living a better life, and doing far more good in the world, if they
+had taken their maidenly ideals, like Mercy, for a husband?  Let us
+sometimes imagine ourselves into the secrets of our wives' souls,
+and ask if they ever feel that they are unequally and injuriously
+yoked in their deepest and best life.  Do we ever see a tear
+falling in secret, or hear a stolen sigh heaved, or stumble on them
+at a stealthy prayer?  A Roman lady on being asked why she
+sometimes let a sob escape her and a tear fall, when she had such a
+gentleman of breeding and rank and riches to her husband, touched
+her slipper with her finger and said:  "Is not that a well-made, a
+neat, and a costly shoe?  And yet you would not believe how it
+pinches and pains me sometimes."
+
+But some every whit as good women as Mercy was have purposed as
+nobly and as firmly as Mercy did, and yet have wakened up, when it
+was too late, to find that, with all their high ideals, and with
+all their prudence, their husband is not in himself, and is not to
+them, what they at one time felt sure he would be.  Mercy had a
+sister named Bountiful, who made that mistake and that dreadful
+discovery; and what Mercy had seen of married life in her sister's
+house almost absolutely turned her against marriage altogether.
+"The one thing certain," says Thomas Mozley in his chapter on Ideal
+Wife and Husband, "is that both wife and husband are different in
+the result from the expectation.  Age, illness, an increasing
+family, no family at all, household cares, want of means,
+isolation, incompatible prejudices, quarrels, social difficulties,
+and such like, all tell on married people, and make them far other
+than they once promised to be."  When that awakening comes there is
+only one solace, and women take to that supreme solace much more
+often than men.  And that solace, as you all know, is true, if too
+late, religion.  And even where true religion has already been,
+there is still a deeper and a more inward religion suited to the
+new experiences and the new needs of life.  And if both husband and
+wife in such a crisis truly betake themselves to Him who gathereth
+the solitary into families, the result will be such a remarriage of
+depth and tenderness, loyalty and mutual help, as their early
+dreams never came within sight of.  Not early love, not children,
+not plenty of means, not all the best amenities of married life
+taken together, will repair a marriage and keep a marriage in
+repair for one moment like a living and an intense faith in God; a
+living and an intense love to God; and then that faith in and love
+for one another that spring out of God and out of His love alone.
+
+
+"The tree
+Sucks kindlier nurture from a soil enriched
+By its own fallen leaves; and man is made,
+In heart and spirit, from deciduous hopes
+And things that seem to perish."
+
+
+
+MR. SKILL
+
+
+
+"The vine of Sodom."--Moses.
+
+With infinite delicacy John Bunyan here tells us the sad story of
+Matthew's sore sickness at the House Beautiful.  The cause of the
+sore sickness, its symptoms, its serious nature, and its complete
+cures are all told with the utmost plainness; but, at the same
+time, with the most exquisite delicacy.  Bunyan calls the ancient
+physician who is summoned in and who effects the cure, Mr. Skill,
+but you must believe that Bunyan himself is Mr. Skill; and I
+question if this skilful writer ever wrote a more skilful page than
+just this page that now lies open before him who has the eyes to
+read it.
+
+Matthew, it must always be remembered, was by this time a young
+man.  He was the eldest son of Christiana his mother, and for some
+time now she had been a sorely burdened widow.  Matthew's father
+was no longer near his son to watch over him and to warn him
+against the temptations and the dangers that wait on opening
+manhood.  And thus his mother, with all her other cares, had to be
+both father and mother to her eldest son; and, with all her good
+sense and all her long and close acquaintance with the world, she
+was too fond a mother to suspect any evil of her eldest son.  And
+thus it was that Christiana had nearly lost her eldest son before
+her eyes were open to the terrible dangers he had for a long time
+been running.  For it was so, that the upward way that this
+household without a head had to travel lay through a land full of
+all kinds of dangers both to the bodies and to the souls of such
+travellers as they were.  And what well-nigh proved a fatal danger
+to Matthew lay right in his way.  It was Beelzebub's orchard.  Not
+that this young man's way lay through that orchard exactly; yet,
+walled up as was that orchard with all its forbidden fruit, that
+evil fruit would hang over the wall so that if any lusty youth
+wished to taste it, he had only to reach up to the over-hanging
+branches and plash down on himself some of the forbidden bunches.
+Now, that was just what Matthew had done.  Till we have him lying
+at the House Beautiful, not only not able to enjoy the delights of
+the House and of the season, but so pained in his bowels and so
+pulled together with inward pains, that he sometimes cried out as
+if he were being torn to pieces.  At that moment Mr. Skill, the
+ancient physician, entered the sick-room, when, having a little
+observed Matthew's intense agony, with a certain mixture of
+goodness and severity he recited these professional verses over the
+trembling bed:
+
+
+"O conscience, who can stand against thy power?
+Endure thy gripes and agonies one hour?
+Stone, gout, strappado, racks, whatever is
+Dreadful to sense, are only toys to this -
+No pleasures, riches, honours, friends can tell
+How to give ease to this, 'tis like to hell."
+
+
+And then, turning to the sick man's mother, who stood at the bed's
+head wringing her hands, the ancient leech said to her:  "This boy
+of yours has been tampering with the forbidden fruit!"  At which
+the angry mother turned on the well-approved physician as if he had
+caused all the trouble that he had come to cure.  But the ancient
+man knew both the son and the mother too, and therefore he
+addressed her with some asperity:  "I tell you both that strong
+measures must be taken instantly, else he will die."  When Mr.
+Skill had seen that the first purge was too weak, he made him one
+to the purpose; and it was made, as he so learnedly said, ex carne
+et sanguine Christi.  The pills were to be taken three at a time,
+fasting, in half a quarter of a pint of the tears of repentance.
+After some coaxing, such as mothers know best how to use, Matthew
+took the medicine and was soon walking about again with a staff,
+and was able to go from room to room of the hospitable and happy
+house.  Understandest thou what thou readest? said Philip the
+deacon to Queen Candace's treasurer as he sat down beside him in
+the chariot and opened up to him the fifty-third of the prophet
+Isaiah.  And, understandest thou what thou here readest in Matthew
+and Mr. Skill?
+
+1.  Now, on this almost too closely veiled case I shall venture to
+remark, in the first place, that multitudes of boys grow up into
+young men, and go out of our most godly homes and into a whole
+world of temptation without due warning being given them as to
+where they are going.  "I do marvel that none did warn him of it,"
+said Mr. Skill, with some anger.  What Matthew's father might have
+done in this matter had he been still in this world when his son
+became a man in it we can only guess.  As it was, it never entered
+his mother's too fond mind to take her fatherless boy by himself
+when she saw Beelzebub's orchard before him, and tell him what
+Solomon told his son, and to point out to him the prophecy that
+King Lemuel's mother prophesied to her son.  Poor Matthew was a
+young man before his mother was aware of it.  And, poor woman, she
+only found that out when Mr. Skill was in the sick-room and was
+looking at her with eyes that seemed to say to her that she had
+murdered her child.  She had loved too long to look on her first-
+born as still a child.  When he went at any time for a season out
+of her sight, she had never followed him with her knowledge of the
+world; she had never prevented him with an awakened and an anxious
+imagination; till now she had got him home with no rest in his
+bones because of his sin.  And then she began to cry too late, O
+naughty boy, and, O careless mother, what shall I do for my son!
+
+2.  "That food, to wit, that fruit," said Mr. Skill, "is even the
+most hurtful of all.  It is the fruit of Beelzebub's orchard."  So
+it is.  There is no fruit that hurts at all like that fruit.  How
+it hurts at the time, we see in Matthew's sick-room; and how it
+hurts all a man's after days we see in Jacob, and in Job, and in
+David, and in a thousand sin-sick souls of whose psalms of remorse
+and repentance the world cannot contain all the books that should
+be written.  "And yet I marvel," said the indignant physician,
+"that none did warn him of it; many have died thereof."  Oh if I
+could but get the ears of all the sons of godly fathers and mothers
+who are beginning to tamper with Beelzebub's orchard-trees, I feel
+as if I could warn them to-night, and out of this text, of what
+they are doing!  I have known so many who have died thereof.  Oh if
+I could but save them in time from those gripes of conscience that
+will pull them to pieces on the softest and the most fragrant bed
+that shall ever be made for them on earth!  It will be well with
+them if they do not lie down torn to pieces on their bed in hell,
+and curse the day they first plashed down into their youthful hands
+the vine of Sodom.  Both the way to hell and the way to heaven are
+full of many kinds of hurtful fruits; but that species of fruit
+that poor misguided Matthew plucked and ate after he had well
+passed the gate that is at the head of the way is, by all men's
+testimony, by far the most hurtful of all forbidden fruits.
+
+3.  The whole scene in Matthew's sick-room reads, after all, less
+like a skilful invention than a real occurrence.  Inventive and
+realistic as John Bunyan is, there is surely something here that
+goes beyond even his genius.  After making all allowance for
+Bunyan's unparalleled powers of creation and narration, I am
+inclined to think, the oftener I read it, that, after all, we have
+not so much John Bunyan here as very Nature herself.  Yes; John
+Gifford surely was Mr. Skill.  Sister Bosworth surely was Matthew's
+mother.  And Matthew himself was Sister Bosworth's eldest son,
+while one John Bunyan, a travelling tinker, was busy with his
+furnaces and his soldering-irons in Dame Bosworth's kitchen.  Young
+Bunyan, with all his blackguardism, had never plashed down
+Beelzebub's orchard.  He swears he never did, and we are bound to
+believe him.  But young Bosworth had been tampering with the
+forbidden fruit, and Gifford saw at a glance what was wrong.  John
+Gifford was first an officer in the Royalist army, then a doctor in
+Bedford, and now a Baptist Puritan pastor; and the young tinker
+looked up to Gifford as the most wonderful man for learning in
+books and in bodies and souls of men in all the world.  And when
+Gifford talked over young Bosworth's bed half to himself and half
+to them about a medicine made ex carne et sanguine Christi, the
+future author of the Pilgrim's Progress never forgot the phrase.
+At a glance Gifford saw what was the whole matter with the sick
+man.  And painful as the truth was to the sick man's mother, and
+humiliating with a life-long humiliation to the sick man himself,
+Gifford was not the man or the minister to beat about the bush at
+such a solemn moment.  "This boy has been tampering with that which
+will kill him unless he gets it taken off his conscience and out of
+his heart immediately."  Now, this same divination into our
+pastoral cases is by far and away the most difficult part of a
+minister's work.  It is easy and pleasant with a fluent tongue to
+get through our pulpit work; but to descend the pulpit stairs and
+deal with life, and with this and that sin in the lives of our
+people,--that is another matter.  "We must labour," says Richard
+Baxter in his Reformed Pastor, "to be acquainted with the state of
+all our people as fully as we can; both to know the persons and
+their inclinations and conversation; to know what sins they are
+most in danger of, what duties they neglect, and what temptations
+they are most liable to.  For, if we know not their temperament or
+their disease, we are likely to prove but unsuccessful physicians."
+But when we begin to reform our pastorate to that pattern, we are
+soon compelled to set down such entries in our secret diary as that
+of Thomas Shepard of Harvard University:  "Sabbath, 5th April 1641.
+Nothing I do, nay, none under my shadow prosper.  I so want wisdom
+for my place, and to guide others."  Yes; for what wisdom is needed
+for the place of a minister like John Gifford, John Bunyan, Richard
+Baxter, and Thomas Shepard!  What wisdom, what divine genius, to
+dive into and divine the secret history of a soul from a twinge of
+conscience, even from a drop of the eye, a tone of the voice, or a
+gesture of the hand or of the head!  And yet, with some natural
+taste for the holy work, with study, with experience, and with
+life-long expert reading, even a plain minister with no genius, but
+with some grace and truth, may come to great eminence in the
+matters of the soul.  And then, with what an interest, solemn and
+awful, with what a sleepless interest such a pastor goes about
+among his diseased, sin-torn, and scattered flock!  All their souls
+are naked and open under his divining eye.  They need not to tell
+him where they ail, and of what sickness they are nigh unto death.
+That food, he says, with some sternness over their sick-bed, I
+warned you of it; I told you with all plainness that many have died
+of eating that fruit!  "We must be ready," Baxter continues, "to
+give advice to those that come to us with cases of conscience.  A
+minister is not only for public preaching, but to be a known
+counsellor for his people's souls as the lawyer is for their
+estates, and the physician is for their bodies.  And because the
+people are grown unacquainted with this office of the ministry, and
+their own necessity and duty herein, it belongeth to us to acquaint
+them herewith, and to press them publicly to come to us for advice
+concerning their souls.  We must not only be willing of the
+trouble, but draw it upon ourselves by inviting them hereto.  To
+this end it is very necessary to be acquainted with practical cases
+and able to assist them in trying their states.  One word of
+seasonable and prudent advice hath done that good that many sermons
+would not have done."
+
+4.  As he went on pounding and preparing his well-approved pill,
+the (at the bottom of his heart) kind old leech talked
+encouragingly to the mother and to her sick son, and said:  "Come,
+come; after all, do not he too much cast down.  Had we lived in the
+days of the old medicine, I would have been compounding a purge out
+of the blood of a goat, and the ashes of an heifer, and the juice
+of hyssop.  But I have a far better medicine under my hands here.
+This moment I will make you a purge to the purpose."  And then the
+learned man, half-doctor, half-divine, chanted again the sacred
+incantation as he bent over his pestle and mortar, saying:  Ex
+carne et sanguine Christi!  Those shrewd old eyes soon saw that, in
+spite of all their defences and all their denials, damage had been
+done to the conscience and the heart that nothing would set right
+but a frank admission of the evil that had been done, and a prompt
+submission to the regimen appointed and the medicine prepared.  And
+how often we ministers puddle and peddle with goat's blood and
+heifer's ashes and hyssop juice when we should instantly prescribe
+stern fasting and secret prayer and long spaces of repentance, and
+then the body and the blood of Christ.  How often our people cheat
+us into healing their hurt slightly!  How often they succeed in
+putting us off, after we are called in, with their own account of
+their cases, and set us out on a wild-goose chase!  I myself have
+more than once presented young men in their trouble with apologetic
+books, University sermons, and watered-down explanations of the
+Confession and the Catechism, when, had I known all I came
+afterwards to know, I would have sent them Bunyan's Sighs from
+Hell.  I have sent soul-sick women also The Bruised Reed, and The
+Mission of the Comforter with sympathising inscriptions, and sweet
+scriptures written inside, when, had I had Mr. Skill's keen eyes in
+my stupid head, I would have gone to them with the total abstinence
+pledge in my one hand, and Jeremy Taylor's Holy Living and Dying in
+my other.  "No diet but that which is wholesome!" almost in anger
+answered the sick man's mother.  "I tell you," the honest leech
+replied, in more anger, "this boy has been tampering with
+Beelzebub's orchard.  And many have died of it!"
+
+5.  It was while all the rest of the House Beautiful were supping
+on lamb and wine, and while there was such music in the House that
+made Mercy exclaim over it with wonder--it was at the smell of the
+supper and at the sound of the psalmody that Matthew's gripes
+seized upon him worse than ever.  All the time the others sat late
+into the night Matthew lay on the rack pulled to pieces.  After
+William Law's death at King's Cliffe, his executors found among his
+most secret papers a prayer he had composed for his own alone use
+on a certain communion day when he was self-debarred from the
+Lord's table.  I do not know for certain just what fruit the young
+non-juror had stolen out of Beelzebub's orchard before that
+communion season; but I can see that he was in poor Matthew's exact
+experience that communion night,--literally torn to pieces with
+agonies of conscience while all his fellow-worshippers were at the
+table of the Lord.  While the psalms and hymns are being sung at
+the supper-table, lay your ear to Law's closet door.  "Whilst all
+Thy faithful servants are on this day offering to Thee the
+comfortable sacrifice of the body and the blood of Christ, and
+feasting at that holy table which Thou hast ordained for the
+refreshment, joy, and comfort of their souls, I, unhappy wretch,
+full of guilt, am justly denied any share of these comforts that
+are common to the Christian world.  O my God, I am an unclean worm,
+a dead dog, a stinking carcass, justly removed from that society of
+saints who this day kneel about Thine altar.  But, oh! suffer me to
+look toward Thy holy Sanctuary; suffer my soul again to be in the
+place where Thine honour dwelleth.  Reject not the sacrifice of a
+broken heart, and do Thou be with me in secret, though I am not fit
+to appear in Thy public worship.  Lord, if Thou wilt Thou canst
+make me clean.  Lord, speak but the word, and Thy servant shall be
+healed."  It is the fruit of Beelzebub's orchard.  Many have died
+thereof.
+
+6.  "Pray, sir, make me up twelve boxes of them; for if I can get
+these, I will never take other physic."  "These same pills," he
+replied, "are good also to prevent diseases as well as to cure when
+one is sick.  But, good woman, thou must take these pills no other
+way but as I have prescribed; for if you do, they will do no good."
+I have taken one illustration from William Law's life; I shall take
+another from that world of such illustrations and so close.  "O
+God, let me never see such another day as this.  Let the dreadful
+punishment of this day never be out of my mind."  And it never was.
+For, after that day in hell, Law never laid down his head on his
+pillow that he did not seem to remember that dreadful day.  William
+Law would have satisfied Dr. Skill for a convalescent.  For he
+never felt that he had any right to touch the body and blood of
+Christ, either at communion times, or a thousand times every day,
+till he had again got ready his heart of true repentance.  My
+brethren, self-destroyed out of Beelzebub's orchard, and all my
+brethren, live a life henceforth of true repentance.  Not out of
+the sins of your youth only, but out of the best, the most
+watchful, and the most blameless day you ever live, distil your
+half-pint of repentance every night before you sleep.  For, as dear
+old Skill said, unless you do, neither flesh nor blood of Christ,
+nor anything else, will do you any genuine good.
+
+
+
+THE SHEPHERD BOY
+
+
+
+"He humbled Himself."--Paul.
+
+Now as they were going along and talking, they espied a boy feeding
+his father's sheep.  The boy was in very mean clothes, but of a
+very fresh and well-favoured countenance, and as he sat by himself
+he sang.  Hark, said Mr. Greatheart, to what the shepherd boy
+saith.  So they hearkened and he said:
+
+
+He that is down, needs fear no fall;
+He that is low no pride:
+He that is humble, ever shall
+Have God to be his guide.
+I am content with what I have,
+Little be it or much:
+And, Lord, contentment still I crave,
+Because thou savest such.
+Fulness to such a burden is
+That go on pilgrimage:
+Here little, and hereafter bliss,
+Is best from age to age.
+
+
+Then said their guide, Do you hear him?  I will dare say that this
+boy lives a merrier life and wears more of that herb called
+Heart's-ease in his bosom than he that is clad in silk and velvet."
+
+Now, notwithstanding all that, nobody knew better than John Bunyan
+knew, that no shepherd boy that ever lived on the face of the earth
+ever sang that song; only one Boy ever sang that song, and He was
+not the son of a shepherd at all, but the son of a carpenter.  And,
+saying that leads me on to say this before I begin, that I look for
+a man of John Bunyan's inventive and sanctified genius to arise
+some day, and armed also to boot with all our latest and best New
+Testament studies.  When that sorely-needed man so arises he will
+take us back to Nazareth where that carpenter's Boy was brought up,
+and he will let us see Him with our own eyes being brought up.  He
+will lead us into Mary's house on Sabbath days, and into Joseph's
+workshop on week days, and he will show us the child Jesus, not so
+much learning His letters and then putting on His carpenter's
+clothes, as learning obedience by the things that He every day
+suffered.  That choice author will show us our Lord, both before He
+had discovered Himself to be our Lord, as well as after He had made
+that great discovery, always clothing Himself with humility as with
+a garment; taking up His yoke of meekness and lowly-mindedness
+every day, and never for one moment laying it down.  When some
+writer with as holy an imagination as that of John Bunyan, and with
+as sweet an English style, and with a New Testament scholarship of
+the first order so arises, and so addresses himself to the inward
+life of our Lord, what a blessing to our children that writer will
+be!  For he will make them see and feel just what all that was in
+which our Lord's perfect humility consisted, and how His perfect
+humility fulfilled itself in Him from day to day; up through all
+His childhood days, school and synagogue days, workshop and holy
+days, early manhood and mature manhood days; till He was so meek in
+all His heart and so humble in all His mind that all men were sent
+to Him to learn their meekness and their humility of Him.  I envy
+that gifted man the deep delight he will have in his work, and the
+splendid reward he will have in the love and the debt of all coming
+generations.  Only, may he be really sent to us, and that soon!
+Theodor Keim comes nearest a far-off glimpse of that eminent
+service of any New Testament scholar I know.  Jeremy Taylor and
+Thomas Goodwin also, in their own time and in their own way, had
+occasional inspirations toward this still-waiting treatment of the
+master-subject of all learning and all genius--the inward
+sanctification, the growth in grace, and then the self-discovery of
+the incarnate Son of God.  But, so let it please God, some
+contemporary scholar will arise some day soon, combining in himself
+Goodwin's incomparable Christology, and Taylor's incomparable
+eloquence, and Keim's incomparably digested learning, with John
+Bunyan's incomparable imagination and incomparable English style,
+and the waiting work will be done, and theology for this life will
+take on its copestone.  In his absence, and till he comes, let us
+attempt a few annotations to-night on this so-called shepherd boy's
+song in the Valley of Humiliation.
+
+
+He that is down, needs fear no fall.
+
+
+The whole scenery of the surrounding valley is set before us in
+that single eloquent stanza.  The sweet-voiced boy sits well off
+the wayside as he sings his song to himself.  He looks up to the
+hill-tops that hang over his valley, and every shining tooth of
+those many hill-tops has for him its own evil legend.  "He thinks
+he sees a little heap of bleaching bones just under where that
+eagle hangs and wheels and screams.  Not one traveller through
+these perilous parts in a thousand gets down those cruel rocks
+unhurt; and many travellers have been irrecoverably lost among
+those deadly rocks, and have never received Christian burial.  All
+the shepherds' cottages and all the hostel supper-tables for many
+miles round are full of terrible stories of the Hill Difficulty and
+the Descent Dangerous.  And thus it is that this shepherd boy looks
+up with such fear at those sharp peaks and shining precipices, and
+lifts his fresh and well-favoured countenance to heaven and sings
+again:  "He that is down, needs fear no fall."  Down in his own
+esteem, that is.  For this is a song of the heart rather than of
+the highway.  Down--safe, that is, from the steep and slippery
+places of self-estimation, self-exaltation, self-satisfaction.
+Down--so as to be delivered from all ambition and emulation and
+envy.  Down, and safe, thank God, from all pride, all high-
+mindedness, and all stout-heartedness.  Down from the hard and
+cruel hills, and buried deep out of sight among those meadows where
+that herb grows which is called Heart's-ease.  Down, where the
+green pastures grow and the quiet waters flow.  No, indeed; he that
+is down into this sweet bottom needs fear no fall.  For there is
+nowhere here for a man to fall from.  And, even if he did fall, he
+would only fall upon a fragrance-breathing bed of lilies.  The very
+herbs and flowers here would conspire to hold him up.  Many a day,
+as He grew up, the carpenter's son sat in that same valley and sang
+that same song to His own humble and happy heart.  He loved much to
+be here.  He loved also to walk these meadows, for He found the air
+was pleasant.  Methinks, He often said with Mercy, I am as well in
+this valley as I have been anywhere else in My journey.  The place,
+methinks, suits with My spirit.  I love to be in such places where
+there is no rattling with coaches nor rumbling with wheels.
+Methinks, also, here one may without much molestation be thinking
+what he is, whence he came, and to what his King has called him.
+
+
+He that is low, no pride.
+
+
+Low in his own eyes, that is.  For pride goeth before destruction,
+and a haughty spirit before a fall.  Yes; but he who is low enough
+already--none of the sure destructions that pride always works
+shall ever come near to him.  "The proud man," says Sir Henry
+Taylor, "is of all men the most vulnerable.  "Who calls?" asks the
+old shepherd in As You Like It.  "Your betters," is the insolent
+answer.  And what is the shepherd's rejoinder?  "Else are they very
+wretched."  By what retort, reprisal, or repartee could it have
+been made half so manifest that the insult had lighted upon armour
+of proof?  Such is the invincible independence and invulnerability
+of humility."
+
+
+He that is humble ever shall
+Have God to be his guide.
+
+
+For thus saith the high and holy One that inhabiteth eternity,
+whose name is Holy:  I dwell in the high and holy place, with him
+also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the heart
+of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones . . .
+All those things hath Mine hand made, but to this man will I look,
+saith the Lord, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit,
+and who trembleth at My word . . . Though the Lord be high, yet
+hath He respect unto the lowly; but the proud He knoweth afar off .
+. . Likewise, ye younger, submit yourselves unto the elder.  Yea,
+all of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility;
+for God resisteth the proud and giveth grace to the humble . . .
+Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty, neither do I
+exercise myself in great matters, or in things too high for me.
+Surely I have behaved and quieted myself, as a child that is weaned
+of his mother:  my soul is even as a weaned child . . . Take My
+yoke upon you and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart,
+and ye shall find rest unto your souls.  For My yoke is easy and My
+burden is light.
+
+
+I am content with what I have,
+Little be it, or much:
+And, Lord, contentment still I crave,
+Because thou savest such.
+
+
+The only thing this sweet singer is discontented with is his own
+contentment.  He will not be content as long as he has a shadow of
+discontent left in his heart.  And how blessed is such holy
+discontent!  For, would you know, asks Law, who is the greatest
+saint in all the world?  Well, it is not he who prays most or fasts
+most; it is not he who gives most alms or is most eminent for
+temperance, chastity, or justice.  But it is he who is always
+thankful to God, who wills everything that God willeth, who
+receives everything as an instance of God's goodness, and has a
+heart always ready to praise God for it.  "Perhaps the shepherd's
+boy," says Thomas Scott, "may refer to the obscure and quiet
+stations of some pastors over small congregations, who live almost
+unknown to their brethren, but are in a measure useful and very
+comfortable."  Perhaps he does.  And, whether he does or no, at any
+rate such a song will suit some of our brethren very well as they
+go about among their few and far-off flocks.  They are not church
+leaders or popular preachers.  There is not much rattling with
+coaches or rumbling with wheels at their church door.  But, then,
+methinks, they have their compensation.  They are without much
+molestation.  They can be all the more thinking what they are,
+whence they came, and to what their King has called them.  Let them
+be happy in their shut-in valleys.  For I will dare to say that
+they wear more of that herb called Heart's-ease in their bosom than
+those ministers do they are sometimes tempted to emulate.  I will
+add in this place that to the men who live and trace these grounds
+the Lord hath left a yearly revenue to be faithfully paid them at
+certain seasons for their maintenance by the way, and for their
+further encouragement to go on in their pilgrimage.
+
+
+Here little, and hereafter bliss,
+Is best from age to age.
+
+
+But, now, from the shepherd boy and from his valley and his song,
+let us go on without any more poetry or parable to look our own
+selves full in the face and to ask our own hearts whether they are
+the hearts of really humble-minded and New Testament men or no.
+Dr. Newman, "that subtle, devout man," as Dr. Duncan calls him,
+says that "humility is one of the most difficult of virtues both to
+attain and to ascertain.  It lies," he says, "close upon the heart
+itself, and its tests are exceedingly delicate and subtle.  Its
+counterfeits abound."  Most true.  And yet humility is not intended
+for experts in morals only, or for men of a rare religious genius
+only.  The plainest of men, the least skilled and the most
+unlettered of men, may not only excel in humility, but may also be
+permitted to know that they are indeed planted, and are growing
+slowly but surely in that grace of all graces.  No doubt our Lord
+had, so to describe it, the most delicate and the most subtle of
+human minds; and, no doubt whatever, He had the most practised
+skill in reading off what lay closest to His own heart.  And, then,
+it was just His attainment of the most perfect humility, and then
+His absolute ascertainment of the same, that enabled Him to say:
+Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me.  At the same time, divine as
+the grace is, and divine as the insight is that is able to trace it
+out in all its exquisite refinements of thought and feeling in the
+sanctified soul, yet humility is a human virtue after all, and it
+is open to all men to attain to it and intelligently and lovingly
+to exercise it.  The simplest and the least philosophical soul now
+in this house may apply to himself some of the subtlest and most
+sensitive tests of humility, as much as if he were Dr. Duncan or
+Dr. Newman themselves; and may thus with all assurance of hope know
+whether he is a counterfeit and a castaway or no.
+
+Take this test for one, then.  Explain this text to me:  Phil. ii.
+3--"In lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than
+himself."  Explain and illustrate that.  Not from a commentary, but
+straight out from your own heart.  What does your heart make of
+that scripture?  Does your heart turn away from that scripture
+almost in anger at it?  Do you say you are certain that there must
+be some other explanation of it than that?  Do you hold that this
+is just another of Paul's perpetual hyperboles, and that the New
+Testament is the last book in the world to be taken as it reads?
+Yes; both bold and subtle father that he is:  counterfeits abound!
+
+Another much blunter test, but, perhaps, a sufficiently sharp test,
+is this:  How do you receive correction and instruction?  Does your
+heart meekly and spontaneously and naturally take to correction and
+instruction as the most natural and proper thing possible to you?
+And do you immediately, and before all men, show forth and exhibit
+the correction and the instruction?  Or, does this rather take
+place?  Does your heart beat, and swell, and boil, and boil over at
+him who dares to correct or counsel you?  If this is a fair test to
+put our humility to, how little humility there is among us!  How
+few men any of us could name among our friends to whom we would
+risk telling all the things that behind their backs we point out
+continually to others?  We are terrified to face their pride.  We
+once did it, and we are not to do it again, if we can help it!  Let
+a man not have too many irons in the fire; let him examine himself
+just by these two tests for the time--what he thinks of himself,
+and what he thinks of those who attempt, and especially before
+other people, to set him right.  And after these two tests have
+been satisfied, others will no doubt be supplied till that so
+humble man is made very humility itself.
+
+And now, in the hope that there may be one or two men here who are
+really and not counterfeitly in earnest to clothe themselves with
+humility before God and man, let them take these two looms to
+themselves out of which whole webs of such garments will be
+delivered to them every day--their past life, and their present
+heart.  With a past life like ours, my brethren--and everyman knows
+his own--pride is surely the maddest state of mind that any of us
+can allow ourselves in.  The first king of Bohemia kept his clouted
+old shoes ever in his sight, that he might never forget that he had
+once been a ploughman.  And another wise king used to drink out of
+a coarse cup at table, and excused himself to his guests that he
+had made the rude thing in his rude potter days.  Look with
+Primislaus and Agathocles at the hole of the pit out of which you
+also have been dug; look often enough, deep enough, and long
+enough, and you will be found passing up through the Valley of
+Humiliation singing:
+
+
+"With us He dealt not as we sinn'd,
+Nor did requite our ill!"
+
+
+Another excellent use of the past is, if you are equal to it, to
+call yourself aloud sometimes, or in writing, some of the names
+that other people who know your past are certainly calling you.  It
+is a terrible discipline, but it is the terror of the Lord, and He
+will not let it hurt you too much.  I was before a blasphemer, and
+a persecutor, and injurious, says Paul.  And, to show Titus, his
+gospel-son, the way, he said to him:  We ourselves were sometimes
+foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures,
+living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another.  And
+John Bunyan calls himself a blackguard, and many other worse names;
+only he swears that neither with his soldiering nor with his
+tinkering hands did he ever plash down Beelzebub's orchard.  But if
+you have done that, or anything like that, call yourself aloud by
+your true name on your knees to-night.  William Law testifies,
+after five-and-twenty years' experience of it, that he never heard
+of any harm that he had done to any in his house by his habit of
+singing his secret psalms aloud, and sometimes, ere ever he was
+aware, bursting out in his penitential prayers.
+
+And, then, how any man with a man's heart in his bosom for a single
+day can escape being the chief of sinners, and consequently the
+humblest of men for all the rest of his life on earth, passes my
+comprehension!  How a spark of pride can live in such a hell as
+every human heart is would be past belief, did we not know that God
+avenges sin by more sin; avenges Himself on a wicked and a false
+heart by more wickedness and more falsehood, all ending in Satanic
+pride.
+
+Too long as I have kept you in this valley to-night, I dare not let
+you out of it till I have shared with you a few sentences on
+evangelical humiliation out of that other so subtle and devout man,
+Jonathan Edwards.  But what special kind of humiliation is
+evangelical humiliation? you will ask.  Hear, then, what this
+master in Israel says.  "Evangelical humiliation is the sense that
+a Christian man has of his own utter insufficiency, utter
+despicableness, and utter odiousness; with an always answerable
+frame of heart.  This humiliation is peculiar to the true saints.
+It arises from the special influence of the Spirit of God
+implanting and exercising supernatural and divine principles; and
+it is accompanied with a sense of the transcendent beauty of divine
+things.  And, thus, God's true saints all more or less see their
+own odiousness on account of sin, and the exceedingly hateful
+nature of all sin.  The very essence of evangelical humiliation
+consists in such humility as becomes a man in himself exceeding
+sinful but now under a dispensation of grace.  It consists in a
+mean esteem of himself, as in himself nothing, and altogether
+contemptible and odious.  This, indeed, is the greatest and the
+most essential thing in true religion."  And so on through a whole
+chapter of beaten gold.  To which noble chapter I shall only add
+that such teaching is as sweet, as strengthening, and as reassuring
+to the truly Christian heart as it is bitter and hateful to the
+counterfeit heart.
+
+
+
+OLD HONEST
+
+
+
+"An honest heart."--Our Lord.
+
+Next tell them of Old Honest, who you found
+With his white hairs treading the pilgrim's ground;
+Yea, tell them how plain-hearted this man was,
+How after his good Lord he bare his cross:
+Perhaps with some grey head this may prevail,
+With Christ to fall in love, and sin bewail.
+
+You would have said that no pilgrim to the Celestial City could
+possibly have come from a worse place, or a more unlikely place,
+than was that place from which Christian and Christiana and Matthew
+and Mercy had come.  And yet so it was.  For Old Honest, this most
+excellent and every way most delightful old saint, hailed from a
+far less likely place than even the City of Destruction.  For he
+came, this rare old soul, of all places in the world, from the Town
+of Stupidity.  So he tells us himself.  And, partly to explain to
+us the humiliating name of his native town, and partly to exhibit
+himself as a wonder to many, the frank old gentleman goes on to
+tell us that his birthplace actually lies four degrees further away
+from the sun than does the far-enough away City of Destruction
+itself.  So that you see this grey-haired saint is all that he
+always said he was--a living witness to the fact that his Lord is
+able to save to the uttermost, and to gather in His Father's elect
+from the utmost corner of the land.  Men are mountains of ice in my
+country, said Old Honest.  I was one of the biggest of those
+icebergs myself, he said.  No man was ever more cold and senseless
+to divine things than I was, and still sometimes am.  It takes the
+Sun of Righteousness all His might to melt the men of my country.
+But that He can do it when He rises to do it, and when He puts out
+His full strength to do it--Look at me! said the genial old soul.
+
+We have to construct this pilgrim's birth and boyhood and youth
+from his after-character and conversation; and we have no
+difficulty at all in doing that.  For, if the child is the father
+of the man, then the man must be the outcome of the child, and we
+can have no hesitation in picturing to ourselves what kind of child
+and boy and young man dear Old Honest must always have been.  He
+never was a bright child, bright and beaming old man as he is.  He
+was always slow and heavy at his lessons; indeed, I would not like
+to repeat to you all the bad names that his schoolmasters sometimes
+in their impatience called the stupid child.  Only, this was to be
+said of him, that dulness of uptake and disappointment of his
+teachers were the worst things about this poor boy; he was not so
+ill-behaved as many were who were made more of.  When his wits
+began to waken up after he had come some length he had no little
+leeway to make up in his learning; but that was the chief drawback
+to Old Honest's pilgrimage.  For one thing, no young man had a
+cleaner record behind him than our Honest had; his youthful
+garments were as unspotted as ever any pilgrim's garments were.
+Even as a young man he had had the good sense to keep company with
+one Good-conscience; and that friend of his youth kept true to Old
+Honest all his days, and even lent him his hand and helped him over
+the river at last.  In his own manly, hearty, blunt, breezy,
+cheery, and genial way Old Honest is a pilgrim we could ill have
+spared.  Old Honest has a warm place all for himself in every good
+and honest heart.
+
+"Now, a little before the pilgrims stood an oak, and under it when
+they came up to it they found an old pilgrim fast asleep; they knew
+that he was a pilgrim by his clothes and his staff and his girdle.
+So the guide, Mr. Greatheart, awaked him, and the old gentleman, as
+he lifted up his eyes, cried out:  What's the matter?  Who are you?
+And what is your business here?  Come, man, said the guide, be not
+so hot; here is none but friends!  Yet the old man gets up and
+stands upon his guard, and will know of them what they are."  That
+weather-beaten oak-tree under which we first meet with Old Honest
+is an excellent emblem of the man.  When he sat down to rest his
+old bones that day he did not look out for a bank of soft moss or
+for a bed of fragrant roses; that knotted oak-tree alone had power
+to draw down under its sturdy trunk this heart of human oak.  It
+was a sight to see those thin grey haffets making a soft pillow of
+that jutting knee of gnarled and knotty oak, and with his well-worn
+quarterstaff held close in a hand all wrinkled skin and scraggy
+bone.  And from that day till he waved his quarterstaff when half
+over the river and shouted, Grace reigns! there is no pilgrim of
+them all that affords us half the good humour, sagacity, continual
+entertainment, and brave encouragement we enjoy through this same
+old Christian gentleman.
+
+1.  Now, let us try to learn two or three lessons to-night from Old
+Honest, his history, his character, and his conversation.  And, to
+begin with, let all those attend to Old Honest who are slow in the
+uptake in the things of religion.  O fools and slow of heart!
+exclaimed our Lord at the two travellers to Emmaus.  And this was
+Old Honest to the letter when he first entered on the pilgrimage
+life; he was slow as sloth itself in the things of the soul.  I
+have often wondered, said Greatheart, that any should come from
+your place; for your town is worse than is the City of Destruction
+itself.  Yes, answered Honest, we lie more off from the sun, and so
+are more cold and senseless.  And his biographer here annotates on
+the margin this reflection:  "Stupefied ones are worse than merely
+carnal."  So they are; though it takes some insight to see that,
+and some courage to carry that through.  Now, to be downright
+stupid in a man's natural intellects is sad enough, but to be
+stupid in the intellects of the soul and of the spirit is far more
+sad.  You will often see this if you have any eyes in your head,
+and are not one of the stupid people yourself.  You will see very
+clever people in the intellects of the head who are yet as stupid
+as the beasts in the stall in the far nobler intellects of the
+heart.  You will meet every day with men and women who have
+received the best college education this city can give them, who
+are yet stark stupid in everything that belongs to true religion.
+They are quick to find out the inefficiency of a university chair,
+or a schoolmaster's desk, but they know no more of what a New
+Testament pulpit has been set up for than the stupidest sot in the
+city.  The Divine Nature, human nature, sin, grace, redemption,
+salvation, holiness, heart-corruption, spiritual life, prayer,
+communion with God, a conversation and a treasure in heaven,--to
+all these noblest of studies and divinest of exercises they are as
+a beast before God.  When you come upon a man who is a sot in his
+senses and in his understanding, you expect him to be the same in
+his spiritual life.  But to meet with an expert in science, a
+classical scholar, an author or a critic in letters, a leader in
+political or ecclesiastical or municipal life, and yet to discover
+that he is as stupid as any sot in the things of his own soul, is
+one of the saddest and most disheartening sights you can see.  Much
+sadder and much more disheartening than to see stairs and streets
+of people who can neither read nor write.  And yet our city is full
+of such stupid people.  You will find as utter spiritual stupidity
+among the rich and the lettered and the refined of this city as you
+will find among the ignorant and the vicious and the criminal
+classes.  Is stupidity a sin? asks Thomas in his Forty-Sixth
+Question.  And the great schoolman answers himself, "Stupidity may
+come of natural incapacity, in which case it is not a sin.  But it
+may come, on the other hand, of a man immersing his soul in the
+things of this world so as to shut out all the things of God and of
+the world to come, in which case stupidity is a deadly sin."  Now,
+from all that, you must already see what you are to do in order to
+escape from your inborn and superinduced stupidity.  You are, like
+Old Honest, to open your gross, cold, senseless heart to the Sun of
+Righteousness, and you are to take care every day to walk abroad
+under His beams.  You are to emigrate south for your life, as our
+well-to-do invalids do, to where the sun shines in his strength all
+the day.  You are to choose such a minister, buy and read such a
+literature, cultivate such an acquaintanceship, and follow out such
+a new life of habits and practices as shall bring you into the full
+sunshine, till your heart of ice is melted, and your stupefied soul
+is filled with spiritual sensibility.  For, were a man a mountain
+of ice," said Old Honest, "yet if the Sun of Righteousness will
+arise upon him his frozen heart shall feel a thaw; and thus hath it
+been with me."  Your poets and your philosophers have no resource
+against the stupidity that opposes them.  "Even the gods," they
+complain, "fight unvictorious against stupidity."  But your divines
+and your preachers have hope beside the dullest and the stupidest
+and even the most imbruted.  They point themselves and their
+slowest and dullest-witted hearers to Old Honest, this rare old
+saint; and they set up their pulpit with hope and boldness on the
+very causeway of the town of Stupidity itself.
+
+2.  In the second place,--on this fine old pilgrim's birth and
+boyhood and youth.  The apostle says that there is no real
+difference between one of us and another; and what he says on that
+subject must be true.  No; there is really no difference compared
+with the Celestial City whether a pilgrim is born in Stupidity, in
+Destruction, in Vanity, or in Darkland.  At the same time, nature,
+as well as grace, is of God, and He maketh, when it pleaseth Him,
+one man to differ in some most important respects from another.
+You see such differences every day.  Some children are naturally,
+and from their very infancy, false and cruel, mean and greedy;
+while their brothers and sisters are open and frank and generous.
+One son in a house is born a vulgar snob, and one daughter a
+shallow-hearted and shameless little flirt; while another brother
+is a born gentleman, and another sister a born saint.  Some
+children are tender-hearted, easily melted, and easily moulded;
+while others in the same family are hard as stone and cold as ice.
+Sometimes a noble and a truly Christian father will have all his
+days to weep and pray over a son who is his shame; and then, in the
+next generation, a grandson will be born to him who will more than
+recover the lost image of his father's father.  And so is it
+sometimes with father Adam's family.  Here and there, in Darkland,
+in Destruction, and in Stupidity, a child will be born with a
+surprising likeness to the first Adam in his first estate.  That
+happy child at his best is but the relics and ruins of his first
+father; at the same time, in him the relics are more abundant and
+the ruins more easy to trace out.  And little Honest was such a
+well-born child.  For, Stupidity and all, there was a real inborn
+and inbred integrity, uprightness, straightforwardness, and
+nobleness about this little and not over-clever man-child.  And, on
+the principle of "to him that hath shall be given," there was
+something like a special providence that hedged this boy about from
+the beginning.  "I girded thee though thou hast not known Me" was
+never out of Old Honest's mouth as often as he remembered the days
+of his own youth and heard other pilgrims mourning over theirs.  "I
+have surnamed thee though thou hast not known Me," he would say to
+himself in his sleep.  Slow-witted as he was, no one had been able
+to cheat young Honest out of his youthful integrity.  He had not
+been led, and he had led no one else, into the paths of the
+destroyer.  He could say about himself all that John Bunyan so
+boldly and so bluntly said about himself when his enemies charged
+him with youthful immorality.  He left the town in nobody's debt.
+He left the print of his heels on no man or woman or child when he
+took his staff in his hand to be a pilgrim.  The upward walk of too
+many pilgrims is less a walk than an escape and a flight.  The
+avenger of men's blood and women's honour has hunted many men deep
+into heaven's innermost gate.  But Old Honest took his time.  He
+walked, if ever pilgrim walked, all the way with an easy mind.  He
+lay down to sleep under the oaks on the wayside, and smiled like a
+child in his sleep.  And, when he was suddenly awaked, instead of
+crying out for mercy and starting to his heels, he grasped his
+staff and demanded even of an armed man what business he had to
+break in on an honest pilgrim's mid-day repose!  The King of the
+Celestial City had a few names even in Stupidity which had not
+defiled their garments, and Old Honest was one of them.  And all
+his days his strength was as the strength of ten, because his heart
+was pure.
+
+3.  At the same time, honesty is not holiness; and no one knew that
+better than did this honest old saint.  When any one spoke to Old
+Honest about his blameless youth, the look in his eye made them
+keep at arm's-length as he growled out that without holiness no man
+shall see God!  Writing from Aberdeen to John Bell of Hentoun,
+Samuel Rutherford says:  "I beseech you, in the Lord Jesus, to mind
+your country above; and now, when old age is come upon you, advise
+with Christ before you put your foot into the last ship and turn
+your back on this life.  Many are beguiled with this that they are
+free of scandalous sins.  But common honesty will not take men to
+heaven.  Alas! that men should think that ever they met with Christ
+who had never a sick night or a sore heart for sin.  I have known a
+man turn a key in a door and lock it by."  "I can," says John Owen,
+"and I do, commend moral virtues and honesty as much as any man
+ought to do, and I am sure there is no grace where they are not.
+Yet to make anything to be our holiness that is not derived from
+Jesus Christ,--I know not what I do more abhor."  "Are morally
+honest and sober men qualified for the Lord's Supper?" asks John
+Flavel.  "No; civility and morality do not make a man a worthy
+communicant.  They are not the wedding garment; but regenerating
+grace and faith in the smallest measure are."  "My outside may be
+honest," said this honest old pilgrim, "while all the time my heart
+is most unholy.  My life is open to all men, but I must hide my
+heart with Christ in God."
+
+4.  And then this racy-hearted old bachelor was as full of delight
+in children, and in children's parties, with all their sweetmeats
+and nuts and games and riddles,--quite as much so--as if he had
+been their very grandfather himself.  Nay, this rosy-hearted old
+rogue was as inveterate a matchmaker as if he had been a mother of
+the world with a houseful of daughters on her hands and with the
+sons of the nobility dangling around.  It would make you wish you
+could kiss the two dear old souls, Gaius the innkeeper and Old
+Honest his guest, if you would only read how they laid their grey
+heads together to help forward the love-making of Matthew and
+Mercy.  Yes, it would be a great pity, said Old Honest,--thinking
+with a sigh of his own childless old age,--it would be a great pity
+if this excellent family of our sainted brother should fail for
+want of children, and die out like mine.  And the two old plotters
+went together to the mother of the bridegroom, and told her with an
+aspect of authority that she must put no obstacle in her son's way,
+but take Mercy as soon as convenient into a closer relation to
+herself.  And Gaius said that he for his part would give the
+marriage supper.  And I shall make no will, said Honest, but hand
+all I have over to Matthew my son.  This is the way, said Old
+Honest; and he skipped and smiled and kissed the cheek of the aged
+mother and said, Then thy two children shall preserve thee and thy
+husband a posterity in the earth!  Then he turned to the boys and
+he said, Matthew, be thou like Matthew the publican, not in vice,
+but in virtue.  Samuel, he said, be thou like Samuel the prophet, a
+man of faith and of prayer.  Joseph, said he, be thou like Joseph
+in Potiphar's house, chaste, and one that flees from temptation.
+And James, be thou like James the Just, and like James the brother
+of our Lord.  Mercy, he said, is thy name, and by mercy shalt thou
+be sustained and carried through all thy difficulties that shall
+assault thee in the way, till thou shalt come thither where thou
+shalt look the Fountain of Mercy in the face with comfort.  And all
+this while the guide, Mr. Greatheart, was very much pleased, and
+smiled upon the nimble old gentleman.
+
+5.  "Then it came to pass a while after that there was a post in
+the town that inquired for Mr. Honest.  So he came to his house
+where he was, and delivered to his hands these lines, Thou art
+commanded to be ready against this day seven night, to present
+thyself before thy Lord at His Father's house.  And for a token
+that my message is true, all thy daughters of music shall be
+brought low.  Then Mr. Honest called for his friends and said unto
+them, I die, but shall make no will.  As for my honesty, it shall
+go with me:  let him that comes after me be told of this.  When the
+day that he was to be gone was come he addressed himself to go over
+the river.  Now, the river at that time overflowed the banks at
+some places.  But Mr. Honest in his lifetime had spoken to one
+Good-conscience to meet him there, the which he also did, and lent
+him his hand, and so helped him over.  The last words of Mr. Honest
+were, Grace reigns!  So he left the world."  Look at that picture
+and now look at this:  "They then addressed themselves to the
+water, and, entering, Christian began to sink, and crying out to
+his good friend Hopeful, he said, I sink in deep waves, the billows
+go over my head, all His waters go over me.  Then said the other,
+Be of good cheer, my brother, I feel the bottom, and it is good.
+Then said Christian, Ah, my friend, the sorrows of death have
+compassed me about; I shall not see the land that flows with milk
+and honey.  And with that a great horror and darkness fell upon
+Christian, so that he could not see before him; and all the words
+that he spoke still tended to discover that he had horror of mind
+lest he should die in that river and never obtain entrance in at
+the gate.  Here also, as they that stood by perceived, he was much
+in the troublesome thoughts of the sins that he had committed, both
+since and before he began to be a pilgrim.  'Twas also observed
+that he was troubled with apparitions of hobgoblins and evil
+spirits.  Hopeful, therefore, had much ado to keep his brother's
+head above water.  Yea, sometimes he would be quite gone down, and
+then ere a while he would rise up again half dead."  My brethren,
+all my brethren, be not deceived; God is not mocked; for whatsoever
+a man soweth that shall he also reap.  Whom the Lord loveth He
+chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth.  Thou, O
+God, wast a God that forgavest them, but Thou tookest vengeance on
+their inventions.
+
+
+
+MR. FEARING
+
+
+
+"Happy is the man that feareth alway."--Solomon
+
+For humour, for pathos, for tenderness, for acute and sympathetic
+insight at once into nature and grace, for absolutely artless
+literary skill, and for the sweetest, most musical, and most
+exquisite English, show me another passage in our whole literature
+to compare with John Bunyan's portrait of Mr. Fearing.  You cannot
+do it.  I defy you to do it.  Spenser, who, like John Bunyan, wrote
+an elaborate allegory, says:  It is not in me.  Take all Mr.
+Fearing's features together, and even Shakespeare himself has no
+such heart-touching and heart-comforting character.  Addison may
+have some of the humour and Lamb some of the tenderness; but, then,
+they have not the religion.  Scott has the insight into nature, but
+he has no eye at all for grace; while Thackeray, who, in some
+respects, comes nearest to John Bunyan of them all, would be the
+foremost to confess that he is not worthy to touch the shoe-latchet
+of the Bedford tinker.  As Dr. Duncan said in his class one day
+when telling us to read Augustine's Autobiography and
+Halyburton's:- "But," he said, "be prepared for this, that the
+tinker beats them all!"  "Methinks," says Browning, "in this God
+speaks, no tinker hath such powers."
+
+Now, as they walked along together, the guide asked the old
+gentleman if he knew one Mr. Fearing that came on pilgrimage out of
+his parts.  "Yes," said Mr. Honest, "very well.  He was a man that
+had the root of the matter in him; but he was one of the most
+troublesome pilgrims that ever I met with in all my days."  "I
+perceive you knew him," said the guide, "for you have given a very
+right character of him."  "Knew him!" exclaimed Honest, "I was a
+great companion of his; I was with him most an end.  When he first
+began to think of what would come upon us hereafter, I was with
+him."  "And I was his guide," said Greatheart, "from my Master's
+house to the gates of the Celestial City."  "Then," said Mr.
+Honest, "it seems he was well at last."  "Yes, yes," answered the
+guide, "I never had any doubt about him; he was a man of a choice
+spirit, only he was always kept very low, and that made his life so
+burdensome to himself and so troublesome to others.  He was, above
+many, tender of sin; he was so afraid of doing injuries to others
+that he would often deny himself of that which was lawful because
+he would not offend."  "But what," asked Honest, "should be the
+reason that such a good man should be all his days so much in the
+dark?"  "There are two sorts of reasons for it," said the guide;
+"one is, the wise God will have it so:  some must pipe and some
+must weep.  Now, Mr. Fearing was one that played upon this base.
+He and his fellows sound the sackbut, whose notes are more doleful
+than the notes of other music are.  Though, indeed, some say that
+the base is the ground of music.  And, for my part, I care not at
+all for that profession that begins not with heaviness of mind.
+The first string that the musician usually touches is the base when
+he intends to put all in tune.  God also plays upon this string
+first when He sets the soul in tune for Himself.  Only, here was
+the imperfection of Mr. Fearing, that he could play upon no other
+music but this till toward his latter end."
+
+1.  Take Mr. Fearing, then, to begin with, at the Slough of
+Despond.  Christian and Pliable, they being heedless, did both fall
+into that bog.  But Mr. Fearing, whatever faults you may think he
+had--and faults, too, that you think you could mend in him--at any
+rate, he was never heedless.  Everybody has his fault to find with
+poor Mr. Fearing.  Everybody blames poor Mr. Fearing.  Everybody
+can improve upon poor Mr. Fearing.  But I will say again for Mr.
+Fearing that he was never heedless.  Had Peter been on the road at
+that period he would have stood up for Mr. Fearing, and would have
+taken his judges and would have said to them, with some scorn--Go
+to, and pass the time of your sojourning here with something of the
+same silence and the same fear!  Christian's excuse for falling
+into the Slough was that fear so followed him that he fled the next
+way, and so fell in.  But Mr. Fearing had no such fear behind him
+in his city as Christian had in his.  All Mr. Fearing's fears were
+within himself.  If you can take up the distinction between actual
+and indwelling sin, between guilt and corruption, you have already
+in that the whole key to Mr. Fearing.  He was blamed and counselled
+and corrected and pitied and patronised by every morning-cloud and
+early-dew neophyte, while all the time he lived far down from the
+strife of tongues where the root of the matter strikes its deep
+roots still deeper every day.  "It took him a whole month," tells
+Greatheart, "to face the Slough.  But he would not go back neither.
+Till, one sunshiny morning, nobody ever knew how, he ventured, and
+so got over.  But the fact of the matter is," said the shrewd-
+headed guide, "Mr. Fearing had, I think, a slough of despond in his
+own mind; and a slough that he carried everywhere with him."  Yes,
+that was it.  Greatheart in that has hit the nail on the head.
+With one happy stroke he has given us the whole secret of poor Mr.
+Fearing's life-long trouble.  Just so; it was the slough in himself
+that so kept poor Mr. Fearing back.  This poor pilgrim, who had so
+little to fear in his past life, had yet so much scum and filth,
+spume and mire in his present heart, that how to get on the other
+side of that cost him not a month's roaring only, but all the
+months and all the years till he went over the River not much above
+wet-shod.  And, till then, not twenty million cart-loads of
+wholesome instructions, nor any number of good and substantial
+steps, would lift poor Mr. Fearing over the ditch that ran so deep
+and so foul continually within himself.  "Yes, he had, I think, a
+slough of despond in his mind, a slough that he carried everywhere
+with him, or else he never could have been the man he was."  I, for
+one, thank the great-hearted guide for that fine sentence.
+
+2.  It was a sight to see poor Mr. Fearing at the wicket gate.
+"Knock, and it shall be opened unto you."  He read the inscription
+over the gate a thousand times, but every time he read it his
+slough-filled heart said to him, Yes, but that is not for such as
+you.  Pilgrim after pilgrim came up the way, read the writing,
+knocked, and was taken in; but still Mr. Fearing stood back,
+shaking and shrinking.  At last he ventured to take hold of the
+hammer that hung on the gate and gave with it a small rap such as a
+mouse might make.  But small as the sound was, the Gatekeeper had
+had his eye on his man all the time out of his watch-window; and
+before Mr. Fearing had time to turn and run, Goodwill had him by
+the collar.  But that sudden assault only made Mr. Fearing sink to
+the earth, faint and half-dead.  "Peace be to thee, O trembling
+man!" said Goodwill.  "Come in, and welcome!"  When he did venture
+in, Mr. Fearing's face was as white as a sheet.  You would have
+said that an officer had caught a thief if you had seen poor Mr.
+Fearing hiding his face, and the Gatekeeper hauling him in.  And
+not all the entertainment for which the Gate was famous, nor all
+the encouragement that Goodwill was able to speak, could make
+terrified Mr. Fearing for once to smile.  A more hard-to-entertain
+pilgrim, all the Gate declared when he had gone, they had never had
+in their hospitable house.
+
+3.  "So he came," said the guide, "till he came to our House; but
+as he behaved himself at the Gate, so he did at my Master the
+Interpreter's door.  He lay about in the cold a good while before
+he would adventure to call.  Yet he would not go back neither.  And
+the nights were cold and long then.  At last I think I looked out
+of the window, and perceiving a man to be up and down about the
+door, I went out to him, and asked what he was; but, poor man, the
+water stood in his eyes.  So I perceived what he wanted.  I went
+in, therefore, and told it in the house, and we showed the thing to
+our Lord.  So He sent me out again to entreat him to come in, but I
+dare say I had hard work to do it.  At last he came in, and I will
+say that for my Lord, He carried it wonderful lovingly to Mr.
+Fearing.  There were but a few good bits at the table, but some of
+it was laid upon his trencher."  In this way the guide tells us his
+first introduction to Mr. Fearing, and how Mr. Fearing behaved
+himself in the Interpreter's House.  For instance, in the parlour
+full of dust, when the Interpreter said that the dust is original
+sin and inward corruption, you would have thought that the
+Interpreter had stabbed poor Mr. Fearing to the heart, so did he
+break out and weep.  Before the damsel could come with the pitcher,
+Mr. Fearing's eyes alone would have laid the dust, they were such a
+fountain of tears.  When he saw Passion and Patience, each one in
+his chair--"I am that child in rags," said Mr. Fearing; "I have
+already received all my good things!"  Also, at the wall where the
+fire burned because oil was poured into it from the other side, he
+perversely turned that fire also against himself.  And when they
+came to the man in the iron cage, you could not have told whether
+the miserable man inside the cage or the miserable man outside of
+it sighed the loudest.  And so on, through all the significant
+rooms.  The spider-room overwhelmed him altogether, till his sobs
+and the beating of his breast were heard all over the house.  The
+robin also when gobbling up spiders he made an emblem of himself,
+and the tree that was rotten at the heart,--till the Interpreter's
+patience with this so perverse pilgrim was fairly worn out.  So the
+Interpreter shut up his significant rooms, and had this so
+troublesome pilgrim into his own chamber, and there carried it so
+tenderly to Mr. Fearing that at last he did seem to have taken some
+little heart of grace.  "And then we," said Greatheart, "set
+forward, and I went before him; but the man was of few words, only
+he would often sigh aloud."
+
+4.  "Dumpish at the House Beautiful" is his biographer's not very
+respectful comment on the margin of the history.  There were too
+many merry-hearted damsels running up and down that house for Mr.
+Fearing.  He could not lift his eyes but one of those too-tripping
+maidens was looking at him.  He could not stir a foot but he
+suddenly ran against a talking and laughing bevy of them.  There
+was one thing he loved above everything, and that was to overhear
+the talk that went on at that season in that house about the City
+above, and about the King of that City, and about His wonderful
+ways with pilgrims, and the entertainment they all got who entered
+that City.  But to get a word out of Mr. Fearing upon any of these
+subjects,--all the king's horses could not have dragged it out of
+him.  Only, the screen was always seen to move during such
+conversations, till it soon came to be known to all the house who
+was behind the screen.  And the talkers only talked a little louder
+as the screen moved, and took up, with a smile to one another,
+another and a yet more comforting topic.
+
+The Rarity Rooms also were more to Mr. Fearing than his necessary
+food.  He would be up in the morning and waiting at the doors of
+those rooms before the keepers had come with their keys.  And they
+had to tell him that the candles were to be put out at night before
+he would go away.  He was always reading, as if he had never read
+it before, the pedigree of the Lord of the Hill.  Moses' rod,
+Shamgar's goad, David's sling and stone, and what not--he laughed
+and danced and sang like a child around these ancient tables.  The
+armoury-room also held him, where were the swords, and shields, and
+helmets, and breast-plates, and shoes that would not wear out.  You
+would have thought you had your man all right as long as you had
+him alone among these old relics; but, let supper be ready, and the
+house gathered, and Mr. Fearing was as dumpish as ever.  Eat he
+would not, drink he would not, nor would he sit at the same table
+with those who ate and drank with such gladness.  I remembered Mr.
+Fearing at the House Beautiful when I was present at a communion
+season some time back in Ross-shire.  The church was half full of
+Mr. Fearing's close kindred that communion morning.  For, all that
+the minister himself could do, and all that the assisting minister
+could do--no! to the table those self-examined, self-condemned,
+fear-filled souls would not come.  The two ministers, like Mr.
+Greatheart's Master, carried it wonderful lovingly with those poor
+saints that day; but those who are in deed, and not in name only,
+passing the time of their sojourning here in fear--they cannot all
+at once be lifted above all their fears, even by the ablest action
+sermons, or by the most wise and tender table-addresses.  And,
+truth to tell, though you will rebuke me all the way home to-night
+for saying it, my heart sat somewhat nearer to those old people who
+were perhaps a little too dumpish in their repentance and their
+faith and their hope that morning, than it did to those who took to
+the table with a light heart.  I know all your flippant cant about
+gospel liberty and against Highland introspection, as you call it--
+as well as all your habitual neglect of a close and deep self-
+examination, as Paul called it; but I tell you all to-night that it
+would be the salvation of your soul if you too worked your way up
+to every returning Lord's table with much more fear and much more
+trembling.  Let a man examine himself, Saxon as well as Celt, in
+Edinburgh as well as in Ross-shire, and so let him eat of that
+flesh and drink of that blood.  "These pills," said Mr. Skill, "are
+to be taken three at a time fasting in half a quarter of a pint of
+the tears of repentance; these pills are good to prevent diseases,
+as well as to cure when one is sick.  Yea, I dare say it, and stand
+to it, that if a man will but use this physic as he should, it will
+make him live for ever.  But thou must give these pills no other
+way but as I have prescribed; for, if you do, they will do no
+good."  "Then he and I set forward," said the guide, "and I went
+before; but my man was of but few words, only he would often sigh
+aloud."
+
+5.  As to the Hill Difficulty, that was no stick at all to Mr.
+Fearing; and as for the lions, he pulled their whiskers and snapped
+his fingers in their dumfoundered faces.  For you must know that
+Mr. Fearing's trouble was not about such things as these at all;
+his only fear was about his acceptance at last.  He beat Mr.
+Greatheart himself at getting down into the Valley of Humiliation,
+till the guide was fain to confess that he went down as well as he
+ever saw man go down in all his life.  This pilgrim cared not how
+mean he was, so he might be but happy at last.  That is the reason
+why so many of God's best saints take so kindly and so quietly to
+things that drive other men mad.  You wonder sometimes when you see
+an innocent man sit down quietly under accusations and insults and
+injuries that you spend all the rest of your life resenting and
+repaying.  And that is the reason also that so many of God's best
+saints in other ages and other communions used to pursue
+evangelical humility and ascetic poverty and seclusion till they
+obliterated themselves out of all human remembrance, and buried
+themselves in retreats of silence and of prayer.  Yes, you are
+quite right.  A garment of sackcloth may cover an unsanctified
+heart; and the fathers of the desert did not all escape the depths
+of Satan and the plague of their own heart.  Quite true.  A
+contrite heart may be carried about an applauding city in a coach
+and six; and a crucified heart may be clothed in purple and fine
+linen, and may fare sumptuously every day.  A saint of God will
+sometimes sit on a throne with a more weaned mind than that with
+which Elijah or the Baptist will macerate themselves in the
+wilderness.  Every man who is really set on heaven must find his
+own way thither; and he who is really intent on his own way thither
+will neither have the time nor the heart to throw stones at his
+brother who thinks he has discovered his own best way.  All the
+pilgrims who got to the City at last did not get down Difficulty
+and through Humiliation so well as Mr. Fearing did; nor was it
+absolutely necessary that they should.  It was not to lay down an
+iron-fast rule for others, but it was only to amuse the way with
+his account of Mr. Fearing, that the guide went on to say:  "Yes, I
+think there was a kind of sympathy betwixt that valley and my man.
+For I never saw him better in all his pilgrimage than when he was
+in that valley.  For here he would lie down, embrace the ground,
+and kiss the very flowers that grew in this valley.  He would now
+be up every morning by break of day, tracing and walking to and fro
+in that valley."
+
+6.  Now, do you think you could guess how Mr. Fearing conducted
+himself in Vanity Fair?  Your guess is important to us and to you
+to-night; for it will show whether or no John Bunyan and Mr.
+Greatheart have spent their strength for nought and in vain on you.
+It will show whether or no you have got inside of Mr. Fearing with
+all that has been said; and thus, inside of yourself.  Guess, then.
+How did Mr. Fearing do in Vanity Fair, do you think?  To give you a
+clue, recollect that he was the timidest of souls.  And remember
+how you have often been afraid to look at things in a shop window
+lest the shopkeeper should come out and hold you to the thing you
+were looking at.  Remember also that you are the lifelong owners of
+some things just because they were thrown at your head.  Remember
+how you sauntered into a sale on one occasion, and, out of sheer
+idleness and pure fun, made a bid, and to your consternation the
+encumbrance was knocked down to your name; and it fills up your
+house to-day till you would give ten times its value to some one to
+take it away for ever out of your sight.  Well, what was it that
+those who were so shamelessly and so pesteringly cadging about
+places, and titles, and preferments, and wives, and gold, and
+silver, and such like--what was it they prevailed on this poor
+stupid countryman to cheapen and buy?  Do you guess, or do you give
+it up?  Well, Greatheart himself was again and again almost taken
+in; and would have been had not Mr. Fearing been beside him.  But
+Mr. Fearing looked at all the jugglers, and cheats, and knaves, and
+apes, and fools as if he would have bitten a firebrand.  "I thought
+he would have fought with all the men of the fair; I feared there
+we should have both been knock'd o' th' head, so hot was he against
+their fooleries."  And then--for Greatheart was a bit of a
+philosopher, and liked to entertain and while the away with tracing
+things up to their causes--"it was all," he said, "because Mr.
+Fearing was so tender of sin.  He was above many tender of sin.  He
+was so afraid, not for himself only, but of doing injury to others,
+that he would deny himself the purchase and possession and
+enjoyment even of that which was lawful, because he would not
+offend."  "All this while," says Bunyan himself, in the eighty-
+second paragraph of Grace Abounding, "as to the act of sinning I
+was never more tender than now.  I durst not take a pin or a stick,
+though but so big as a straw, for my conscience now was sore and
+would smart at every touch.  I could not now tell how to speak my
+words for fear I should misplace them."  "The highest flames," says
+Jeremy Taylor in his Life of Christ, "are the most tremulous."
+
+7.  "But when he was come at the river where was no bridge, there,
+again, Mr. Fearing was in a heavy case.  Now, he said, he should be
+drowned for ever, and so never see that Face with comfort that he
+had come so many miles to behold.  And here also I took notice of
+what was very remarkable; the water of that river was lower at this
+time than ever I saw it in all my life, so he went over at last not
+much above wet-shod."  Then said Christiana, "This relation of Mr.
+Fearing has done me good.  I thought nobody had been like me, but I
+see there was some semblance betwixt this good man and I, only we
+differed in two things.  His troubles were so great that they broke
+out, but mine I kept within.  His also lay so hard upon him that he
+could not knock at the houses provided for entertainment, but my
+trouble was always such that it made me knock the louder."  "If I
+might also speak my heart," said Mercy, "I must say that something
+of him has also dwelt in me.  For I have ever been more afraid of
+the lake, and the loss of a place in Paradise, than I have been of
+the loss of other things.  Oh! thought I, may I have the happiness
+to have a habitation there:  'tis enough though I part with all the
+world to win it."  Then said Matthew, "Fear was one thing that made
+me think that I was far from having that within me that accompanies
+salvation; but if it was so with such a good man as he, why may it
+not also go well with me?"  "No fears, no grace," said James.
+"Though there is not always grace where there is fear of hell; yet,
+to be sure, there is no grace where there is no fear of God."
+"Well said, James," said Greatheart; "thou hast hit the mark, for
+the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom; and, to be sure, they
+that want the beginning have neither middle nor end."  But we shall
+here conclude our discourse of Mr. Fearing after we have sent after
+him this farewell:-
+
+
+"It is because
+Then thou didst fear, that now thou dost not fear.
+Thou hast forestalled the agony, and so
+For thee the bitterness of death is past.
+Also, because already in thy soul
+The judgment is begun.  That day of doom,
+One and the same for this collected world -
+That solemn consummation for all flesh,
+Is, in the case of each, anticipate
+Upon his death; and, as the last great day
+In the particular judgment is rehearsed,
+So now, too, ere thou comest to the Throne,
+A presage falls upon thee, as a ray
+Straight from the Judge, expressive of thy lot.
+That calm and joy uprising in thy soul
+Is first-fruit to thy recompense,
+And heaven begun."
+
+
+
+FEEBLE-MIND
+
+
+
+"Comfort the feeble-minded."--Paul.
+
+Feeble-mind shall first tell you his own story in his own words,
+and then I shall perhaps venture a few observations upon his
+history and his character.
+
+"I am but a sickly man, as you see," said Feeble-mind to
+Greatheart, "and because Death did usually knock once a day at my
+door, I thought I should never be well at home.  So I betook myself
+to a pilgrim's life, and have travelled hither from the town of
+Uncertain, where I and my father were born.  I am a man of no
+strength at all of body, nor yet of mind; but would, if I could,
+though I can but crawl, spend my life in the pilgrim's way.  When I
+came at the gate that is at the head of the way, the Lord of that
+place did entertain me freely.  Neither objected he against my
+weakly looks, nor against my feeble mind; but gave me such things
+as were necessary for my journey, and bade me hope to the end.
+When I came to the house of the Interpreter I received much
+kindness there; and, because the Hill Difficulty was judged too
+hard for me, I was carried up that hill by one of his servants.
+Indeed I have found much relief from pilgrims, though none were
+willing to go so softly as I am forced to do.  Yet, still, as they
+came on, they bid me be of good cheer, and said that it was the
+will of their Lord that comfort should be given to the feeble-
+minded, and so went on their own pace.  I look for brunts by the
+way; but this I have resolved on, to wit, to run when I can, to go
+when I cannot run, and to creep when I cannot go.  As to the main,
+I thank Him that loves me, I am fixed.  My way is before me, my
+mind is beyond the river that has no bridge, though I am, as you
+see, but of a feeble mind."
+
+Then said old Mr. Honest, "Have you not some time ago been
+acquainted with one Mr. Fearing, a pilgrim?"  "Acquainted with him!
+yes.  He came from the town of Stupidity, which lies four degrees
+to the northward of the City of Destruction, and as many off where
+I was born.  Yet we were well acquainted; for, indeed, he was mine
+uncle, my father's brother.  He and I have been much of a temper;
+he was a little shorter than I, but yet we were much of a
+complexion."  "I perceive that you know him," said Mr. Honest, "and
+I am apt to believe also that you were related one to another; for
+you have his whitely look, a cast like his with your eye, and your
+speech is much alike."
+
+"Alas!" Feeble-mind went on, "I want a suitable companion.  You are
+all lusty and strong, but I, as you see, am weak.  I choose
+therefore rather to come behind, lest, by reason of my many
+infirmities, I should be both a burden to myself and to you.  I am,
+as I said, a man of a weak and feeble mind, and shall be offended
+and made weak at that which others can bear.  I shall like no
+laughing; I shall like no gay attire; I shall like no unprofitable
+questions.  Nay, I am so weak a man as to be offended with what
+others have a liberty to do.  I do not yet know all the truth.  I
+am a very ignorant Christian man.  Sometimes, if I hear some
+rejoice in the Lord, it troubles me because I cannot do so too.  It
+is with me as with a weak man among the strong, or as with a sickly
+man among the healthy, or as a lamp despised."  "But, brother,"
+said Greatheart, "I have it in commission to comfort the feeble-
+minded and to support the weak."  Thus therefore, they went on--Mr.
+Greatheart and Mr. Honest went before; Christiana and her children
+went next; and Mr. Feeble-mind and Mr. Ready-to-halt came behind
+with his crutches.
+
+1.  In the first place, a single word as to Feeble-mind's family
+tree.
+
+Thackeray says that The Peerage is the Family Bible of every true-
+born Englishman.  Every genuine Englishman, he tells us, teaches
+that sacred book diligently to his children.  He talks out of it to
+them when he sits in the house and when he walks by the way.  He
+binds it upon his children's hands, and it is as a frontlet between
+their eyes.  He writes its names upon the door-posts of his house,
+and makes pictures out of it upon his gates.  Now, John Bunyan was
+a born Englishman in his liking for a family tree.  He had no such
+tree himself--scarcely so much as a bramble bush; but, all the
+same, let the tinker take his pen in hand, and the pedigrees and
+genealogies of all his pilgrims are sure to be set forth as much as
+if they were to form the certificates that those pilgrims were to
+hand in at the gate.
+
+Feeble-mind, then, was of an old, a well-rooted and a wide-spread
+race.  The county of Indecision was full of that ancient stock.
+They had intermarried in-and-in also till their small stature,
+their whitely look, the droop of their eye, and their weak leaky
+speech all made them to be easily recognised wherever they went.
+It was Feeble-mind's salvation that Death had knocked at his door
+every day from his youth up.  He was feeble in body as well as in
+mind; only the feebleness of his body had put a certain strength
+into his mind; the only strength he ever showed, indeed, was the
+strength that had its roots in a weak constitution at which
+sickness and death struck their dissolving blows every day.  To
+escape death, both the first and the second death, any man with a
+particle of strength left would run with all his might; and Feeble-
+mind had strength enough somewhere among his weak joints to make
+him say, "But this I have resolved on, to wit, to run when I can,
+to go when I cannot run, and to creep when I cannot go.  As to the
+main, I am fixed!"
+
+2.  At the Wicket Gate pilgrim Feeble-mind met with nothing but the
+kindest and the most condescending entertainment.  It was the
+gatekeepers way to become all things to all men.  The gatekeeper's
+nature was all in his name; for he was all Goodwill together.  No
+kind of pilgrim ever came wrong to Goodwill.  He never found fault
+with any.  Only let them knock and come in and he will see to all
+the rest.  The way is full of all the gatekeeper's kind words and
+still kinder actions.  Every several pilgrim has his wager with all
+the rest that no one ever got such kindness at the gate as he got.
+And even Feeble-mind gave the gatekeeper this praise--"The Lord of
+the place," he said, "did entertain me freely.  Neither objected he
+against my weakly looks nor against my feeble mind.  But he gave me
+such things as were necessary for my journey, and bade me hope to
+the end."  All things considered, that is perhaps the best praise
+that Goodwill and his house ever earned.  For, to receive and to
+secure Feeble-mind as a pilgrim--to make it impossible for Feeble-
+mind to entertain a scruple or a suspicion that was not removed
+beforehand--to make it impossible for Feeble-mind to find in all
+the house and in all its grounds so much as a straw over which he
+could stumble--that was extraordinary attention, kindness, and
+condescension in Goodwill and all his good-willed house.  "Go on,
+go on, dear Mr. Feeble mind," said Goodwill giving his hand to Mr.
+Fearing's nephew, "go on:  keep your feeble mind open to the truth,
+and still hope to the end!"
+
+3.  "As to the Interpreter's House, I received much kindness
+there."  That is all.  But in that short speech I think there must
+he hid no little shame and remorse.  No words could possibly be a
+severer condemnation of Feeble-mind than his own two or three so
+irrelevant words about the Interpreter's house.  No doubt at all,
+Feeble-mind received kindness there; but that is not the point.
+That noble house was not built at such cost, and fitted up, and
+kept open all the year round, and filled with fresh furniture from
+year to year, merely that those who passed through its significant
+rooms might report that they had received no rudeness at the hands
+of the Interpreter.   "Come," said the Interpreter to Feeble-mind,
+"and I will show thee what will be profitable to thee."  So he
+commanded his man to light the candle and bid Feeble-mind follow
+him.  But it was all to no use.  Feeble-mind had neither the taste
+nor the capacity for the significant rooms.  Nay, as one after
+another of those rich rooms was opened to him, Feeble-mind took a
+positive dislike to them.  Nothing interested him; nothing
+instructed him.  But many things stumbled and angered him.  The
+parlour full of dust, and how the dust was raised and laid; Passion
+and Patience; the man in the iron cage; the spider-room; the muck-
+rake room; the robin with its red breast and its pretty note, and
+yet with its coarse food; the tree, green outside but rotten at the
+heart,--all the thanks the Interpreter took that day for all that
+from Feeble-mind was in such speeches as these:  You make me lose
+my head.  I do not know where I am.  I did not leave the town of
+Uncertain to be confused and perplexed in my mind with sights and
+sounds like these.  Let me out at the door I came in at, and I
+shall go back to the gate.  Goodwill had none of these unhappy
+rooms in his sweet house!"  Nothing could exceed the kindness of
+the Interpreter himself; but his house was full of annoyances and
+offences and obstructions to Mr. Feeble-mind.  He did not like the
+Interpreter's house, and he got out of it as fast as he could, with
+his mind as feeble as when he entered it; and, what was worse, with
+his temper not a little ruffled.
+
+And we see this very same intellectual laziness, this very same
+downright dislike at divine truth, in our own people every day.
+There are in every congregation people who take up their lodgings
+at the gate and refuse to go one step farther on the way.  A visit
+to the Interpreter's House always upsets them.  It turns their
+empty head.  They do not know where they are.  They will not give
+what mind they have to divine truth, all you can do to draw them on
+to it, till they die as feeble-minded, as ignorant, and as
+inexperienced as they were born.  They never read a religious book
+that has any brain or heart in it.  The feeble Lives of feeble-
+minded Christians, written by feeble-minded authors, and published
+by feeble-minded publishers,--we all know the spoon-meat that
+multitudes of our people go down to their second childhood upon.
+Jonathan Edwards--a name they never hear at home, but one of the
+most masculine and seraphic of interpreters--has a noble discourse
+on The Importance and Advantage of a thorough Knowledge of Divine
+Truth.  "Consider yourselves," he says, "as scholars or disciples
+put into the school of Christ, and therefore be diligent to make
+proficiency in Christian knowledge.  Content not yourselves with
+this, that you have been taught your Catechism in your childhood,
+and that you know as much of the principles of religion as is
+necessary to salvation.  Let not your teachers have cause to
+complain that while they spend and are spent to impart knowledge to
+you, you take little pains to learn.  Be assiduous in reading the
+Holy Scriptures.  And when you read, observe what you read.
+Observe how things come in.  Compare one scripture with another.
+Procure and diligently use other books which may help you to grow
+in this knowledge.  There are many excellent books extant which
+might greatly forward you in this knowledge.  There is a great
+defect in many, that through a lothness to be at a little expense,
+they provide themselves with no more helps of this nature."
+Weighty, wise, and lamentably true words.
+
+"Mundanus," says William Law, "is a man of excellent parts, and
+clear apprehension.  He is well advanced in age, and has made a
+great figure in business.  He has aimed at the greatest perfection
+in everything.  The only thing which has not fallen under his
+improvement, nor received any benefit from his judicious mind, is
+his devotion; this is just in the same poor state it was when he
+was six years of age, and the old man prays now in that little form
+of words which his mother used to hear him repeat night and
+morning.  This Mundanus that hardly ever saw the poorest utensil
+without considering how it might be made or used to better
+advantage, has gone on all his life long praying in the same manner
+as when he was a child; without ever considering how much better or
+oftener he might pray; without considering how improvable the
+spirit of devotion is, how many helps a wise and reasonable man may
+call to his assistance, and how necessary it is that our prayers
+should be enlarged, varied, and suited to the particular state and
+condition of our lives.  How poor and pitiable is the conduct of
+this man of sense, who has so much judgment and understanding in
+everything but that which is the whole wisdom of man!"  How true to
+every syllable is that!  How simple-looking, and yet how manly, and
+able, and noble!  We close our young men's session with Law and
+Butler to-night, and I cannot believe that our session with those
+two giants has left one feeble mind in the two classes; they were
+all weeded out after the first fortnight of the session; though,
+after all is done, there are still plenty left both among old and
+young in the congregation.  Even Homer sometimes nods; and I cannot
+but think that John Bunyan has made a slip in saying that Feeble-
+mind enjoyed the Interpreter's House.  At any rate, I wish I could
+say as much about all the feeble minds known to me.
+
+4.  The Hill Difficulty, which might have helped to make a man of
+Feeble-mind, saw a laughable, if it had not been such a lamentable,
+spectacle.  For it saw this poor creature hanging as limp as wet
+linen on the back of one of the Interpreter's sweating servants.
+Your little boy will explain the parable to you.  Shall I do this?
+or, shall I rather do that? asks Feeble-mind at every stop.  Would
+it be right? or, would it be wrong?  Shall I read that book?  Shall
+I go to that ball?  Shall I marry that man?  Tell me what to do.
+Give me your hand.  Take me up upon your back, and carry me over
+this difficult hill.  "I was carried up that," says poor Feeble-
+mind, "by one of his servants."
+
+5.  "The one calamity of Mr. Feeble-mind's history," says our
+ablest commentator on Bunyan, "was the finest mercy of his
+history."  That one calamity was his falling into Giant Slay-good's
+hands, and his finest mercy was his rescue by Greatheart, and his
+consequent companionship with his deliverer, with Mr. Honest, and
+with Christiana and her party till they came to the river.  You
+constantly see the same thing in the life of the Church and of the
+Christian Family.  Some calamity throws a weak, ignorant, and
+immoral creature into close contact with a minister or an elder or
+a Christian visitor, who not only relieves him from his present
+distress, but continues to keep his eye upon his new acquaintance,
+introduces him to wise and good friends, invites him to his house,
+gives him books to read, and keeps him under good influences, till,
+of a weak, feeble, and sometimes vicious character, he is made a
+Christian man, till he is able for himself to say, It was good for
+me to be afflicted; the one calamity of my history has been my best
+mercy!
+
+6.  Feeble-mind, I am ashamed to have to admit, behaved himself in
+a perfectly scandalous manner at the house of Gaius mine host.  He
+went beyond all bounds during those eventful weeks.  Those weeks
+were one long temptation to Feeble-mind--and he went down in a
+pitiful way before his temptation.  Two marriages and two
+honeymoons, with suppers and dances every night, made the old
+hostelry like very Pandemonium itself to poor Feeble-mind.  He
+would have had Matthew's and James's marriages conducted next door
+to a funeral.  Because he would not eat flesh himself, he protested
+against Gaius killing a sheep.  "Man," said old Honest, almost
+laying his quarterstaff over Feeble-mind's shoulders--"Man, dost
+thou think because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes
+and ale?"  "I shall like no laughing," said Feeble-mind; "I shall
+like no gay attire; I shall like no unprofitable questions."  I
+think it took some self-conceit to refuse to sit at table beside
+Christiana because of her gay attire.  And I hope Mercy did not
+give up dressing well, even after she was married, to please that
+weak-minded old churl.  And as to unprofitable questions--we are
+all tempted to think that question unprofitable which our
+incapacity or our ignorance keeps us silent upon at table.  We
+think that topic both ill-timed and impertinent and unsafe to which
+we are not invited to contribute anything.  "I am a very ignorant
+man," he went on to say; and, if that was said in any humility,
+Feeble-mind never said a truer word.  "It is with me as it is with
+a weak man among the strong, or as with a sick man among the
+healthy, or as a lamp despised in the thought of him that is at
+ease."  All which only brought Greatheart out in his very best
+colours.  "But, brother," said the guide, "I have it in commission
+to comfort the feeble-minded, and to support the weak.  You must
+needs go along with us; we will wait for you, we will lend you our
+help, we will deny ourselves of some things, both opinionative and
+practical, for your sake; we will not enter into doubtful
+disputations before you; we will be made all things to you rather
+than that you shall be left behind."
+
+7.  The first thing that did Mr. Feeble-mind any real good was his
+being made military guard over the women and the children while the
+men went out to demolish Doubting Castle.  Quis custodiet? you will
+smile and say when you hear that.  Who shall protect the protector?
+you will say.  But wait a little.  Greatheart knew his business.
+For not only did Feeble-mind rise to the occasion, when he was put
+to it; but, more than that, he was the soul of good company at
+supper-time that night.  "Jocund and merry" are the very words.
+Yes; give your feeble and fault-finding folk something to do.  Send
+them to teach a class.  Send them down into a mission district.
+Lay a sense of responsibility upon them.  Leave them to deal with
+this and that emergency themselves.  Cease carrying them on your
+back, and lay weak and evil and self-willed people on their back.
+Let them feel that they are of some real use.  As Matthew Arnold
+says, Let the critic but try practice, and you will make a new man
+of him.  As Greatheart made of Feeble-mind by making him mount
+guard over the Celestial caravan while the fighting men were all up
+at Doubting Castle.
+
+8.  "Mark this," says Mr. Feeble-mind's biographer on the early
+margin of his history, lest we should be tempted to forget the good
+parts of this troublesome and provoking pilgrim--"Mark this."
+This, namely, which Feeble-mind says to his guide.  "As to the
+main, I thank Him that loves me, I am fixed.  My way is before me,
+my mind is beyond the river that has no bridge, though I am, as you
+see, but of a feeble mind."  And that leads us with returning
+regard and love to turn to the end of his history, where we read:
+"After this Mr. Feeble-mind had tidings brought him that the post
+sounded his horn at his chamber door.  Then he came in and told
+him, saying, I am come to tell thee that thy Master hath need of
+thee, and that in very little time thou must behold His face in
+brightness.  Then Mr. Feeble-mind called for his friends, and told
+them what errand had been brought to him, and what token he had
+received of the truth of the message.  As for my feeble mind he
+said, that I shall leave behind me, for I shall have no need of
+that in the place whither I go.  Nor is it worth bestowing upon the
+poorest pilgrim.  Wherefore, when I am gone, I desire that you
+would bury it in a dung-hill.  This done, and the day being come in
+which he was about to depart, he entered the river as the rest.
+His last words were, Hold out, faith and patience!  So he went over
+to the other side.
+
+
+
+GREAT-HEART
+
+
+
+"--when thou shalt enlarge my heart."--David.
+
+On Sabbath, the 12th December 1886, I heard the late Canon Liddon
+preach a sermon in St. Paul's Cathedral, in which he classed Oliver
+Cromwell with Alexander the Sixth and with Richard the Third.  I
+had taken my estimate of the great Protector's character largely
+from Carlyle's famous book, and you can judge with what feelings I
+heard the canon's comparison.  And, besides, I had been wont to
+think of the Protector as having entered largely into John Bunyan's
+portrait of Greatheart, the pilgrim guide.  And the researches and
+the judgments of Dr. Gardiner have only gone to convince me, the
+eloquent canon notwithstanding, that Bunyan could not have chosen a
+better contemporary groundwork for his Greatheart than just the
+great Puritan soldier.  Cromwell's "mental struggles before his
+conversion," his life-long "searchings of heart," his "utter
+absence of vindictiveness," his unequalled capacity for "seeing
+into the heart of a situation," and his own "all-embracing
+hospitality of heart"--all have gone to reassure me that my first
+guess as to Bunyan's employment of the Protector's matchless
+personality and services had not been so far astray.  And the
+oftener I read the noble history of Greatheart, the better I seem
+to hear, beating behind his fine figure, by far the greatest heart
+that ever ruled over the realm of England.
+
+1.  The first time that we catch a glimpse of Greatheart's weather-
+beaten and sword-seamed face is when he is taking a stolen look out
+of the window at Mr. Fearing, who is conducting himself more like a
+chicken than a man around the Interpreter's door.  And from that
+moment till Mr. Fearing shouted "Grace reigns!" as he cleared the
+last river, never sportsman surely stalked a startled deer so
+patiently and so skilfully and so successfully as Greatheart
+circumvented that chicken-hearted pilgrim.  "At last I looked out
+of the window, and perceiving a man to be up and down about the
+door, I went out to him and asked him what he was; but, poor man,
+the water stood ill his eyes.  So I perceived what he wanted.  I
+went in, therefore, and told it in the house, and we showed the
+thing to our Lord.  So He sent me out again to entreat him to come
+in; but I dare say I had hard work to do it."  Greatheart's whole
+account of Mr. Fearing always brings the water to my eyes also.  It
+is indeed a delicious piece of English prose.  If I were a
+professor of belles lettres instead of what I am, I would compel
+all my students, under pain of rustication, to get those three or
+four classical pages by heart till they could neither perpetrate
+nor tolerate bad English any more.  This camp-fire tale, told by an
+old soldier, about a troublesome young recruit and all his
+adventures, touches, surely, the high-water mark of sweet and
+undefiled English.  Greatheart was not the first soldier who could
+handle both the sword and the pen, and he has not been the last.
+But not Caesar and not Napier themselves ever handled those two
+instruments better.
+
+2.  Greatheart had just returned to his Master's house from having
+seen Mr. Fearing safely through all his troubles and well over the
+river, when, behold, another caravan of pilgrims is ready for his
+convoy.  For Greatheart, you must know, was the Interpreter's armed
+servant.  When at any time Greatheart was off duty, which in those
+days was but seldom, he took up his quarters again in the
+Interpreter's house.  As he says himself, he came back from the
+river-side only to look out of the Interpreter's window to see if
+there was any more work on the way for him to do.  And, as good
+luck would have it, as has been said, the guide was just come back
+from his adventures with Mr. Fearing when a pilgrim party, than
+which he had never seen one more to his mind, was introduced to him
+by his Master, the Interpreter.  "The Interpreter," so we read at
+this point, "then called for a man-servant of his, one Greatheart,
+and bid him take sword, and helmet, and shield, and take these, my
+daughters," said he, "and conduct them to the house called
+Beautiful, at which place they will rest next.  So he took his
+weapons and went before them, and the Interpreter said, God-speed."
+
+3.  Now I saw in my dream that they went on, and Greatheart went
+before them, so they came to the place where Christian's burden
+fell off his back and tumbled into a sepulchre.  Here, then, they
+made a pause, and here also they blessed God.  "Now," said
+Christiana, "it comes to my mind what was said to us at the gate;
+to wit, that we should have pardon by word and by deed.  What it is
+to have pardon by deed, Mr. Greatheart, I suppose you know;
+wherefore, if you please, let us hear your discourse thereof."  "So
+then, to speak to the question," said Greatheart.  You have all
+heard about the "question-day" at Highland communions.  That day is
+so called because questions that have arisen in the minds of "the
+men" in connection with doctrine and with experience are on that
+day set forth, debated out, and solved by much meditation and
+prayer; age, saintliness, doctrinal and experimental reading, and
+personal experience all making their contribution to the solution
+of the question in hand.  Just such a question, then, and handled
+in such a manner, was that question which whiled the way and
+cheated the toil till the pilgrims came to the House Beautiful.
+The great doctrinal and experimental Puritans, with Hooker at their
+head, put forth their full strength and laid out their finest work
+just on this same question that Christiana gave out at the place,
+somewhat ascending, upon which stood a cross, and a little below,
+in the bottom, a sepulchre.  But not the great Comment on The
+Galatians itself, next to the Holy Bible as it is, as most fit for
+a wounded conscience; no, nor that perfect mass of purest gold, The
+Learned Discourse of Justification, nor anything else of that kind
+known to me, is for one moment, to compare in beauty, in
+tenderness, in eloquence, in scriptural depth, and in scriptural
+simplicity with Greatheart's noble resolution of Christiana's
+question which he made on the way from the Interpreter's house to
+the House Beautiful.  "This is brave!" exclaimed that mother in
+Israel, when the guide had come to an end.  "Methinks it makes my
+heart to bleed to think that He should bleed for me.  O Thou loving
+One!  O Thou blessed One!  Thou deservest to have me, for Thou hast
+bought me.  No marvel that this made the water to stand in my
+husband's eyes, and that it made him trudge so nimbly on.  O Mercy,
+that thy father and thy mother were here; yea, and Mrs. Timorous
+too!  Nay, I wish now with all my heart that here was Madam Wanton
+too.  Surely, surely their hearts would be affected here!"  Promise
+me to read at home Greatheart's discourse on the Righteousness of
+Christ, and you will thank me for having exacted the promise.
+
+The incongruity of a soldier handling such questions, and
+especially in such a style, has stumbled some of John Bunyan's
+fault-finding readers.  The same incongruity stumbled "the
+Honourable Colonel Hacker, at Peebles or elsewhere," to whom
+Cromwell sent these from Edinburgh on the 25th December 1650--"But
+indeed I was not satisfied with your last speech to me about
+Empson, that he was a better preacher than fighter or soldier--or
+words to that effect.  Truly, I think that he that prays and
+preaches best will fight best.  I know nothing that will give like
+courage and confidence as the knowledge of God in Christ will; and
+I bless God to see any in this army able and willing to impart the
+knowledge they have for the good of others.  I pray you receive
+Captain Empson lovingly:  I dare assure you he is a good man and a
+good officer; I would we had no worse."
+
+4.  "Will you not go in and stay till morning?" said the porter to
+Greatheart, at the gate of the House Beautiful.  "No," said the
+guide; "I will return to my lord to-night."  "O sir!" cried
+Christiana and Mercy, "we know not how to be willing you should
+leave us in our pilgrimage.  Oh that we might have your company
+till our journey's end."  Then said James, the youngest of the
+boys, "Pray be persuaded to go with us and help us, because we are
+so weak and the way so dangerous as it is."  "I am at my lord's
+commandment," said Greatheart.  "If he shall allow me to be your
+guide quite through, I shall willingly wait upon you.  But here you
+failed at first; for when he bid me come thus far with you, then
+you should have begged me of him to have gone quite through with
+you, and he would have granted your request.  However, at present,
+I must withdraw, and so, good Christiana, Mercy, and my brave
+children, adieu!"  "Help lost for want of asking for," is our
+author's condemnatory comment on the margin at this point in the
+history.  And there is not a single page in my history, or in
+yours, my brethren, on which the same marginal lament is not
+written.  What help we would have had on our Lord's promise if we
+had but taken the trouble to ask for it!  And what help we once
+had, and have now lost, just because when we had it we did not ask
+for a continuance of it!  "No," said Greatheart to the porter, and
+to the two women, and to James--"No.  I will return to my lord to-
+night.  I am at my lord's commandment; only, if he shall still
+allot me I shall willingly wait upon you."
+
+Now, what with the House Beautiful, so full of the most delightful
+company; what with music in the house and music in the heart; what
+with Mr. Brisk's courtship of Mercy, Matthew's illness, Mr. Skill's
+cure of the sick man, and what not--a whole month passed by like a
+day in that so happy house.
+
+But at last Christiana and Mercy signified it to those of the house
+that it was time for them to be up and going.  Then said Joseph to
+his mother, "It is convenient that you send back to the house of
+Mr. Interpreter to pray him to grant that Mr. Greatheart should be
+sent to us that he may be our conductor the rest of our way."
+"Good boy,' said she, "I had almost forgot."  So she drew up a
+petition and prayed Mr. Watchful the porter to send it by some fit
+man to her good friend, Mr. Interpreter; who, when it was come and
+he had seen the contents of the petition, said to the messenger,
+"Go, tell them that I will send him." . . . Now, about this time
+one knocked at the door.  So the porter opened, and, behold, Mr.
+Greatheart was there!  But when he came in, what joy was there!
+Then said Mr. Greatheart to the two women, "My lord has sent each
+of you a bottle of wine, and also some parched corn, together with
+a couple of pomegranates.  He has also sent the boys some figs and
+raisins to refresh you on your way."  "The weak may sometimes call
+the strong to prayers," I read again in the margin opposite the
+mention of Joseph's name.  Not that I am strong, and not that she
+is weak, but one of my people I spent an hour with last afternoon
+whom you would to a certainty have called weak had you seen her and
+her surrounding,--she so called me to prayer that I had to hurry
+home and go straight to it.  And all last night and all this
+morning I have had as many pomegranates as I could eat and as much
+wine as I could drink.  Yes; you attend to what the weakest will
+sometimes say to you, and they will often put you on the way to get
+Greatheart back again with a load of wines and fruits and corn on
+his shoulder to refresh you on your journey.  "Good boy!" said
+Christiana to Joseph her youngest son, "Good boy!  I had almost
+forgot!"
+
+5.  When old Mr. Honest began to nod after the good supper that
+Gaius mine host gave to the pilgrims, "What, sir," cried
+Greatheart, "you begin to be drowsy; come, rub up; now here's a
+riddle for you."  Then said Mr. Honest, "Let's hear it."  Then said
+Mr. Greatheart,
+
+
+"He that will kill, must first be overcome;
+Who live abroad would, first must die at home."
+
+
+"Hah!" said Mr. Honest, "it is a hard one; hard to expound, and
+harder still to practise."  Yes; this after-supper riddle of Mr.
+Greatheart is a hard one in both respects; and for this reason,
+because the learned and much experienced guide--learned with all
+that his lifelong quarters in the Interpreter's House could teach
+him, and experienced with a lifetime's accumulated experience of
+the pilgrim life--has put all his learning and all his life into
+these two mysterious lines.  But old Honest, once he had
+sufficiently rubbed up his eyes and his intellects, gave the
+answer:
+
+
+"He first by grace must conquered be
+That sin would mortify.
+And who, that lives, would convince me,
+Unto himself must die."
+
+
+Exactly; shrewd old Honest; you have hit off both Greatheart and
+his riddle too.  You have dived into the deepest heart of the
+Interpreter's man-servant.  "The magnanimous man" was Aristotle's
+masterpiece.  That great teacher of mind and morals created for the
+Greek world their Greatheart.  But, "thou must understand," says
+Bunyan to his readers, "that I never went to school to Aristotle or
+Plato.  No; but to Paul, who taught Bunyan that what Aristotle
+calls magnanimity is really pride--taught him that, till there is
+far more of the Christian religion in those two doggerel lines at
+Gaius's supper-table than there is in all The Ethics taken
+together.  And it is only from a personal experience of the same
+life as that which the guide puts here into his riddle that any
+man's proud heart will become really humble and thus really great,
+really enlarged, and of an all-embracing hospitality like
+Cromwell's and Greatheart's and John Bunyan's own.  Would you,
+then, become a Greatheart too?  And would you be employed in your
+day as they were employed in their day?  Then expound to yourself,
+and practise, and follow out that deep riddle with which Greatheart
+so woke up old Honest:
+
+
+"He that will kill, must first be overcome;
+Who live abroad would, first must die at home.
+
+
+6.  Greatheart again and again at the riverside, Greatheart sending
+pilgrim after pilgrim over the river with rapture, and he himself
+still summoned to turn his back on the Celestial City, and to
+retrace his steps through the land of Beulah, through the Valley of
+the Shadow of Death, and through the Valley of Humiliation, and
+back to the Interpreter's house to take on another and another and
+another convoy of fresh pilgrims, and his own abundant entrance
+still put off and never to come,--our hearts bleed for poor
+Greatheart.  Back and forward, back and forward, year after year,
+this noble soul uncomplainingly goes.  And, ever as he waves his
+hand to another pilgrim entering with trumpets within the gates, he
+salutes his next pilgrim charge with the brave words:  "Yet what I
+shall choose I wot not.  For I am in a strait betwixt two:  having
+a desire to depart and to be with Christ.  Nevertheless to abide in
+the flesh is more needful for you, for your furtherance and joy of
+faith by my coming to you again."  If Greatheart could not "usher
+himself out of this life" along with Christiana, and Mercy, and Mr.
+Honest, and Standfast, and Valiant-for-truth--if he had still to
+toil back and bleed his way up again at the head of another happy
+band of pilgrims--well, after all is said, what had the Celestial
+City itself to give to Greatheart better than such blessed work?
+"With every such returning journey he got a more and more enlarged,
+detached, hospitable, and Christ-like heart, and the King's palace
+in very glory itself had nothing better in store for this soldier-
+guide than that.  A nobler heaven Greatheart could not taste than
+he had already in himself, as he championed another and another
+pilgrim company from his Master's earthly gate to his Master's
+heavenly gate.  Like Paul, his apostolic prototype, Greatheart
+sometimes vacillated just for a moment when he came a little too
+near heaven, and felt its magnificent and almost dissolving
+attractions full in his soul.  You will see Greatheart's mind
+staggering for a moment between rest and labour, between war and
+peace, between "Christ" on earth and "Christ" in heaven--you will
+see all that set forth with great sympathy and great ability in
+Principal Rainy's new book on Paul's Epistle to the Philippians,
+and in the chapter entitled, The Apostle's Choice between Living
+and Dying.
+
+Then there came a summons for Mr. Standfast.  At which he called to
+him Mr. Greatheart, and said unto him, "Sir, although it was not my
+hap to be much in your good company in the days of my pilgrimage,
+yet, since the time I knew you, you have been profitable to me.
+When I came from home I left behind me a wife and five small
+children.  Let me entreat you, at your return (for I know that you
+will go and return to your master's house in hopes that you may be
+a conductor to more of the holy pilgrims), that you send to my
+family and let them be acquainted with all that hath and shall
+happen to me.  Tell them, moreover, of my happy arrival to this
+place, and of the present late blessed condition I am in, and so on
+for many other messages and charges."  Yes, Mr. Standfast; very
+good.  But I would have liked you on your deathbed much better if
+you had had a word to spare from yourself and your wife and your
+children for poor Greatheart himself, who had neither wife nor
+children, nor near hope of heaven, but only your trust and charge
+and many suchlike trusts and charges to carry out when you are at
+home and free of all trust and all charge and all care.  But yours
+is the way of all the pilgrims--so long, at least, as they are in
+this selfish life.  Let them and their children only be well looked
+after, and they have not many thoughts or many words left for those
+who sweat and bleed to death for them and theirs.  They lean on
+this and that Greatheart all their own way up, and then they leave
+their widows and children to lean on whatever Greatheart is sent to
+meet them; but it is not one pilgrim in ten who takes the thought
+or has the heart to send a message to Mr. Greatheart himself for
+his own consolation and support.  I read that Mr. Ready-to-halt
+alone, good soul, had the good feeling to do it.  He thanked Mr.
+Greatheart for his conduct and for his kindness, and so addressed
+himself to his journey.  All the same, noble Greatheart! go on in
+thy magnanimous work.  Take back all their errands.  Seek out at
+any trouble all their wives and children.  Embark again and again
+on all thy former battles and hardships for the good of other men.
+But be assured that all this thy labour is not in vain in thy Lord.
+Be well assured that not one drop of thy blood or thy sweat or thy
+tears shall fall to the ground on that day when they that be wise
+shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn
+many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.  Go back,
+then, from thy well-earned rest, O brave Greatheart! go back to thy
+waiting task.  Put on again thy whole armour.  Receive again, and
+again fulfil, thy Master's commission, till He has no more
+commissions left for thy brave heart and thy bold hand to execute.
+And, one glorious day, while thou art still returning to thy task,
+it shall suddenly sound in thy dutiful ears:- "Well done! good and
+faithful servant!"  And then thou too
+
+
+"Shalt hang thy trumpet in the hall
+And study war no more."
+
+
+
+MR. READY-TO-HALT
+
+
+
+"For I am ready to halt."--David.
+
+Mr. Ready-to-halt is the Mephibosheth of the pilgrimage.  While
+Mephibosheth was still a child in arms, his nurse let the young
+prince fall, and from that day to the day of his death he was lame
+in both his feet.  Mephibosheth's life-long lameness, and then
+David's extraordinary grace to the disinherited cripple in
+commanding him to eat continually at the king's table; in those two
+points we have all that we know about Mr. Ready-to-halt also.  We
+have no proper portrait, as we say, of Mr. Ready-to-halt.  Mr.
+Ready-to-halt is but a name on John Bunyan's pages--a name set upon
+two crutches; but, then, his simple name is so suggestive and his
+two crutches are so eloquent, that I feel as if we might venture to
+take this life-long lameter and his so serviceable crutches for our
+character-lecture to-night.
+
+John Bunyan, who could so easily and so delightfully have done it,
+has given us no information at all about Mr. Ready-to-halt's early
+days.  For once his English passion for a pedigree has not
+compelled our author's pen.  We would have liked immensely to have
+been told the name, and to have seen displayed the whole family
+tree of young Ready-to-halt's father; and, especially, of his
+mother.  Who was his nurse also?  And did she ever forgive herself
+for the terrible injury she had done her young master?  What were
+his occupations and amusements as a little cripple boy?  Who made
+him his first crutch?  Of what wood was it made?  And at what age,
+and under whose kind and tender directions did he begin to use it?
+And, then, with such an infirmity, what ever put it into Mr. Ready-
+to-halt's head to attempt the pilgrimage?  For the pilgrimage was a
+task and a toil that took all the limbs and all the lungs and all
+the labours and all the endurances that the strongest and the
+bravest of men could bring to bear upon it.  How did this complete
+cripple ever get through the Slough, and first up and then down the
+Hill Difficulty, and past all the lions, and over a thousand other
+obstacles and stumbling-blocks, till he arrived at mine host's so
+hospitable door?  The first surprised sight we get of this so
+handicapped pilgrim is when Greatheart and Feeble-mind are in the
+heat of their discourse at the hostelry door.  At that moment Mr.
+Ready-to-halt came by with his crutches in his hand, and he also
+was going on pilgrimage.  Thus, therefore, they went on.  Mr.
+Greatheart and Mr. Honest went on before, Christiana and her
+children went next, and Mr. Feeble-mind and Mr. Ready-to-halt came
+behind with his crutches.
+
+
+"Put by the curtains, look within my veil,
+Turn up my metaphors, and do not fail,
+There, if thou seekest them, such things to find,
+As will be helpful to an honest mind."
+
+
+1.  Well, then, when we put by the curtains and turn up the
+metaphors, what do we find?  What, but just this, that poor Mr.
+Ready-to-halt was, after all, the greatest and the best believer,
+as the New Testament would have called him, in all the pilgrimage.
+We have not found so great faith as that of Mr. Ready-to-halt, no,
+not in the very best of the pilgrim bands.  Each several pilgrim
+had, no doubt, his own good qualities; but, at pure and downright
+believing--at taking God at His bare and simple word--Mr. Ready-to-
+halt beat them all.  All that flashes in upon us from one shining
+word that stands on the margin of our so metaphorical author.  This
+single word, the "promises," hangs like a key of gold beside the
+first mention of Mr. Ready-to-halt's crutches--a key such that in a
+moment it throws open the whole of Mr. Ready-to-halt's otherwise
+lockfast and secret and inexplicable life.  There it all is, as
+plain as a pike-staff now!  Yes; Mr. Ready-to-halt's crutches are
+just the divine promises.  I wonder I did not see that all the
+time.  Why, I could compose all his past life myself now.  I have
+his father and his mother and his nurse at my finger-ends now.
+This poor pilgrim--unless it would be impertinence to call him poor
+any more--had no limbs to be called limbs.  Such limbs as he had
+were only an encumbrance to this unique pedestrian.  All the limbs
+he had were in his crutches.  He had not one atom of strength to
+lean upon apart from his crutches.  A bone, a muscle, a tendon, a
+sinew, may be ill-nourished, undeveloped, green, and unknit, but,
+at the worst, they are inside of a man and they are his own.  But a
+crutch, of however good wood it may be made, and however good a
+lame man may be at using it--still, a crutch at its best is but an
+outside additament; it is not really and originally a part of a
+man's very self at all.  And yet a lame man is not himself without
+his crutch.  Other men do not need to give a moment's forethought
+when they wish to rise up to walk, or to run, or to leap, or to
+dance.  But the lame man has to wait till his crutches are brought
+to him; and then, after slowly and painfully hoisting himself up
+upon his crutches, with great labour, he at last takes the road.
+Mr. Ready-to-halt, then, is a man of God; but he is one of those
+men of God who have no godliness within themselves.  He has no
+inward graces.  He has no past experiences.  He has no attainments
+that he can for one safe moment take his stand upon, or even partly
+lean upon.  Mr. Ready-to-halt is absolutely and always dependent
+upon the promises.  The promises of God in Holy Scripture are this
+man's very life.  All his religion stands in the promises.  Take
+away the promises, and Mr. Ready-to-halt is a heap of heaving rags
+on the roadside.  He cannot take a single step unless upon a
+promise.  But, at the same time, give Mr. Ready-to-halt a promise
+in his hand and he will wade the Slough upon it, and scale up and
+slide down the Hill Difficulty upon it, and fight a lion, and even
+brain Beelzebub with it, till he will with a grudge and a doubt
+exchange it even for the chariots and the horses that wait him at
+the river.  What a delight our Lord would have taken in Mr. Ready-
+to-halt had He come across him on His way to the passover!  How He
+would have given Mr. Ready-to-halt His arm; how He would have made
+Himself late by walking with him, and would still have waited for
+him!  Nay, had that been a day of chap-books in carpenters' shops
+and on the village stalls, how He would have had Mr. Ready-to-
+halt's story by heart had any brass-worker in Galilee told the
+history!  Our Lord was within an inch of telling that story
+Himself, when He showed Thomas His hands and His side.  And at
+another time and in another place we might well have had Mr. Ready-
+to-halt as one more of our Lord's parables for the common people.
+Only, He left the delight and the reward of drawing out this
+parable to one He already saw and dearly loved in a far-off island
+of the sea, the Puritan tinker of Evangelical England.
+
+2.  And now, after all that, would you think it going too far if I
+were to say that in making Himself like unto all His brethren, our
+Lord made Himself like Mr. Ready-to-halt too?  Indeed He did.  And
+it was because his Lord did this, that Mr. Ready-to-halt so loved
+his Lord as to follow Him upon crutches.  It would not be thought
+seemly, perhaps, to carry the figure too close to our Lord.  But,
+figure apart, it is only orthodox and scriptural to say that our
+Lord accomplished His pilgrimage and finished His work leaning all
+along upon His Father's promises.  Esaias is very bold about this
+also, for he tells his readers again and again that their Messiah,
+when He comes, will have to be held up.  He will have to be
+encouraged, comforted, and carried through by Jehovah.  And in one
+remarkable passage he lets us see Jehovah hooping Messiah's staff
+first with brass, and then with silver, and then with gold.  Let
+Thomas Goodwin's genius set the heavenly scene full before us.
+"You have it dialoguewise set forth," says that great preacher.
+"First Christ shows His commission, telling God how He had called
+Him and fitted Him for the work of redemption, and He would know
+what reward He should receive of Him for so great an undertaking.
+God at first offers low; only the elect of Israel.  Christ thinks
+these too few, and not worth so great a labour and work, because
+few of the Jews would come in; and therefore He says that He would
+labour in vain if this were all His recompense; and yet withal He
+tells God that seeing His heart is so much set on saving sinners,
+to satisfy Him, He will do it even for those few.  Upon this God
+comes off more freely, and openeth His heart more largely to Him,
+as meaning more amply to content Him for His pains in dying.  "It
+is a light thing," says God to Him, "that Thou shouldest be My
+servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob--that is not worth Thy
+dying for.  I value Thy sufferings more than so.  I will give Thee
+for a salvation to the ends of the earth."  Upon this He made a
+promise to Christ, a promise which God, who cannot lie, promised
+before the world began.  God cannot lie, and, most of all, not to
+His Son."
+
+And, then, more even than that.  This same deep divine tells us
+that it is a certain rule in divinity that, whatsoever we receive
+from Christ, that He Himself first receives in Himself for us.  All
+the promises of God's word are made and fulfilled to Christ first,
+and so to us in and after Him.  In other words, our Lord's life was
+so planned for Him in heaven and was so followed out and fulfilled
+by Him on earth, that, to take up the metaphor again, He actually
+tried every crutch and every staff with His own hands and with His
+own armpits; He actually leaned again and again His own whole
+weight upon every several one of them.  Every single promise, the
+most unlikely for Him to lean upon and to plead, yet, be sure of
+it, He somehow made experiment upon them all, and made sure that
+there was sufficient and serviceable grace within and under every
+one of them.  So that, Mr. Ready-to-halt, there is no possible
+staff you can take into your hand that has not already been in the
+hand of your Lord.  Think of that, O Mr. Ready-to-halt!  Reverence,
+then, and almost worship thy staff!  Throw all thy weight upon thy
+staff.  Confide all thy weakness to it.  Talk to it as thou walkest
+with it.  Make it talk to thee.  Worm out of it all its secrets
+about its first Owner.  And let it instruct thee about how He
+walked with it and how He handled it.  The Bible is very bold with
+its Master.  It calls Him by the most startling names sometimes.
+There is no name that a penitent and a returning sinner goes by
+that the Bible does not put somewhere upon the sinner's Saviour.
+And in one place it as good as calls Him Ready-to-halt in as many
+words.  Nay, it lets us see Him halting altogether for a time; ay,
+oftener than once; and only taking the road again, when a still
+stronger staff was put into his trembling hand.  And if John had
+but had room in his crowded gospel he would have given us the very
+identical psalm with which our Lord took to the upward way again,
+strong in His new staff.  "For I am ready to halt," was His psalm
+in the house of His pilgrimage, "and My sorrow is continually
+before Me.  Mine enemies are lively, and they are strong; and they
+that hate Me wrongfully are multiplied.  They also that render evil
+for good are Mine adversaries; because I follow the thing that good
+is.  Forsake Me not, O Lord; O My God, be not far from Me.  Make
+haste to help Me, O Lord My salvation."
+
+3.  Among all the devout and beautiful fables of the "dispensation
+of paganism," there is nothing finer than the fable of blind
+Tiresias and his staff.  By some sad calamity this old prophet had
+lost the sight of his eyes, and to compensate their servant for
+that great loss the gods endowed him with a staff with eyes.  As
+Aaron's rod budded before the testimony and bloomed blossoms and
+yielded almonds, so Tiresias' staff budded eyes, and divine eyes
+too, for the blind prophet's guidance and direction.  Tiresias had
+but to take his heaven-given staff in his hand, when, straightway,
+such a divinity entered into the staff that it both saw for him
+with divine eyes, and heard for him with divine ears, and then led
+him and directed him, and never once in all his after journeys let
+him go off the right way.  All other men about him, prophets and
+priests both, often lost their way, but Tiresias after his
+blindness, never, till Tiresias and his staff became a proverb and
+a parable in the land.  And just such a staff, just such a crutch,
+just such a pair of crutches, were the crutches of our own so
+homely Mr. Ready-to-halt.  With all their lusty limbs, all the
+other pilgrims often stumbled and went out of their way till they
+had to be helped up, led back, and their faces set right again.
+But, last as Mr. Ready-to-halt always came in the procession--
+behind even the women and the children as his crutches always kept
+him--you will seek in vain for the dot of those crutches on any by-
+path or on any wrong road.  No; the fact is, if you wish to go to
+the same city, and are afraid you lose the way; as Evangelist said,
+"Do you see yon shining light?" so I would say to you to-night, "Do
+you see these crutch-marks on the road?"  Well, keep your feet in
+the prints of these crutches, and as sure as you do that they will
+lead you straight to a chariot and horses, which, again, will carry
+you inside the city gates.  For Mr. Ready-to-halt's crutches have
+not only eyes like Tiresias' staff, they have ears also, and hands
+and feet.  A lamp also burns on those crutches; and wine and oil
+distil from their wonderful wood.  Happy blindness that brings such
+a staff!  Happy exchange! eyes full of earth and sin for eyes full
+of heaven and holiness!
+
+4.  "They began to be merry," says our Lord, telling the story of
+the heart-broken father who had got back his younger son from a far
+country.  And even Feeble-mind and Ready-to-halt begin to be merry
+on the green that day after Doubting Castle has fallen to
+Greatheart's arms.  Now, Christiana, if need was, could play upon
+the viol, and her daughter Mercy upon the lute; and, since they
+were so merry disposed, she played them a lesson, and Mr. Ready-to-
+halt would dance.  So he paid a boy a penny to hold one of his
+crutches, and, taking Miss Much-afraid by the hand, to dancing they
+went.  And, I promise you he footed it well; the lame man leaped as
+an hart; also the girl was to be commended, for she answered the
+music handsomely.  In spite of his life-long infirmity, there was
+deep down in Mr. Ready-to-halt an unsuspected fund of good-humour.
+There was no heartier merriment on the green that day than was the
+merriment that Mr. Ready-to-halt knocked out of his nimble crutch.
+"True, he could not dance without one crutch in his hand."  True,
+dear and noble Bunyan, thou canst not write a single page at any
+time or on any subject without thy genius and thy tenderness and
+thy divine grace marking the page as thine own alone!
+
+5.  The next time we see Mr. Ready-to-halt he is coming in on his
+crutches to see Christiana, for she has sent for him to see him.
+So she said to him, "Thy travel hither hath been with difficulty,
+but that will make thy rest the sweeter."  And then in process of
+time there came a post to the town and his business this time was
+with Mr. Ready-to-halt.  "I am come to thee in the name of Him whom
+thou hast loved and followed, though upon crutches.  And my message
+is to tell thee that He expects thee at His table to sup with Him
+in His kingdom the next day after Easter."  "I am sent for," said
+Mr. Ready-to-halt to his fellow-pilgrims, "and God shall surely
+visit you also.  These crutches," he said, "I bequeath to my son
+that shall tread in my steps, with an hundred warm wishes that he
+may prove better than I have done."  Isaac was a child of promise,
+and Mr. Ready-to-halt had an Isaac also on whom his last thoughts
+turned.  Isaac had been born to Abraham by a special and
+extraordinary and supernatural interposition of the grace and the
+power of God; and Mr. Ready-to-halt had always looked on himself as
+a second Abraham in that respect.  A second Abraham, and more.
+True, his son was not yet a pilgrim; perhaps he was too young to be
+so called; but Greatheart will take back the old man's crutches--
+Greatheart was both man-of-war and beast-of-burden to the pilgrims
+and their wives and children--and will in spare hours teach young
+Ready-to-halt the use of the crutch, till the son can use with the
+same effect as his father his father's instrument.  Is your child a
+child of promise?  Is he to you a product of nature, or of grace?
+Did you receive him and his brothers and sisters from God after you
+were as good as dead?  Did you ever steal in when his nurse was at
+supper and say over his young cradle, He hath not dealt with me
+after my sins, nor rewarded me according to my iniquities?  Is it
+in your will laid up with Christ in God about your crutches and
+your son what Mr. Ready-to-halt dictated on his deathbed?  And does
+God know that there is no wish in your old heart a hundred times so
+warm for your son as is this wish,--that he may prove better at
+handling God's promises than you have been?  Then, happy son, who
+has old Mr. Ready-to-halt for his father!
+
+6.  "He whom thou hast loved and followed, though upon crutches,
+expects thee at His table the next day after Easter."  Take
+comfort, cripples!  Had it been said that the King so expects
+Greatheart, or Standfast, or Valiant-for-truth, that would have
+been after the manner of the kings of this world.  But to insist on
+having Mr. Ready-to-halt beside Him by such and such a day; to send
+such a post to a pilgrim who has not a single sound bone in all his
+body; to a sinner without a single trustworthy grace in all his
+heart; to a poor and simple believer who has nothing in his hand
+but one of God's own promises--Who is a king like unto our King?
+Surely King David was never a better type of Christ than when he
+said to Mephibosheth, lame in both his feet from his nurse's arms:
+"Fear not, Mephibosheth, for I will surely show thee kindness, and
+thou shalt eat bread at my table continually."  And Mephibosheth
+shall always be our spokesman when he bows himself and says in
+return:  "What is thy servant, that thou shouldst look upon such a
+dead dog as I am?"
+
+
+
+VALIANT-FOR-TRUTH
+
+
+
+"--They are not valiant for the truth."--Jeremiah
+
+"--Ye should contend earnestly for the faith."--Jude.
+"Forget not Master Valiant-for-the-Truth,
+That man of courage, tho' a very youth.
+Tell every one his spirit was so stout,
+No man could ever make him face about."
+Bunyan.
+
+"I am of Dark-land, for there was I born, and there my father and
+mother are still."  "Dark-land," said the guide; "doth not that lie
+upon the same coast as the City of Destruction?"  "Yes, it doth,"
+replied Valiant-for-truth.  "And had I not found incommodity there,
+I had not forsaken it at all; but finding it altogether unsuitable
+to me, and very unprofitable for me, I forsook it for this way.
+Now, that which caused me to come on pilgrimage was this.  We had
+one Mr. Tell-true came into our parts, and he told it about what
+Christian had done, that went from the City of Destruction.  That
+man so told the story of Christian and his travels that my heart
+fell into a burning haste to be gone after him, nor could my father
+and mother stay me, so I got from them, and am come thus far on my
+way."
+
+1.  A very plain and practical lesson is already read to us all in
+Valiant-for-truth's explanation of his own pilgrimage.  He tells
+the guide that he was made a pilgrim just by having the story of
+The Pilgrim told to him.  All that Tell-true did was just to recite
+the story of the pilgrim, when young Valiant's heart fell into a
+burning haste to be a pilgrim too.  My brethren, could any lesson
+be plainer?  Read the Pilgrim's Progress with your children.  And,
+after a time, read it again till they call it beautiful, and till
+you see the same burning haste in their hearts that young Valiant
+felt in his heart.  Circulate the Pilgrim's Progress.  Make
+opportunities to give the Pilgrim's Progress to the telegraph boys
+and errand boys at your door.  Never go on a holiday without taking
+a dozen cheap and tasteful copies of The Pilgrim to give to boys
+and girls in the country.  Make sure that no one, old or young, of
+your acquaintance, in town or country, is without a good copy of
+The Pilgrim.  And the darker their house is, make all the more sure
+that John Bunyan is in it.
+
+
+"Now may this little book a blessing be,
+To those that love this little book and me
+And may its buyer have no cause to say
+His money is but lost or thrown away."
+
+
+2.  But the great lesson of Valiant's so impressive life lies in
+the tremendous fight he had with three ruffians who all set upon
+him at once and well-nigh made an end of him.  For, when we put by
+the curtains here again, and turn up the metaphors, what do we
+find?  What, but a lesson of first-rate importance for many men
+among ourselves; for many public men, many ministers, and many
+other much-in-earnest men.  For Valiant, as his name tells us, was
+set to contend for the truth.  He had the truth.  The truth was put
+into his keeping, and he was bound to defend it.  He was thrown
+into a life of controversy, and thus into all the terrible
+temptations--worse than the temptations to whoredom or wine--that
+accompany a life of controversy.  The three scoundrels that fell
+upon Valiant at the mouth of the lane were Wildhead, Inconsiderate,
+and Pragmatic.  In other words, the besetting temptations of many
+men who are set as defenders of the truth in religion, as well as
+in other matters, is to be wild-headed, inconsiderate, self-
+conceited, and intolerably arrogant.  The bloody battle that
+Valiant fought, you must know, was not fought at the mouth of any
+dark lane in the midnight city, nor on the side of any lonely road
+in the moonless country.  This terrible fight was fought in
+Valiant's own heart.  For Valiant was none of your calculating and
+cold-blooded friends of the truth.  He did not wait till he saw the
+truth walking in silver slippers.  Let any man lay a finger on the
+truth, or wag a tongue against the truth, and he will have to
+settle it with Valiant.  His love for the truth was a passion.
+There was a fierceness in his love for the truth that frightened
+ordinary men even when they were on his own side.  Valiant would
+have died for the truth without a murmur.  But, with all that,
+Valiant had to learn a hard and a cruel lesson.  He had to learn
+that he, the best friend of truth as he thought he was, was at the
+same time, as a matter of fact, the greatest enemy that the truth
+had.  He had to take home the terrible discovery that no man had
+hurt the truth so much as he had done.  Save me from my friend! the
+truth was heard to say, as often as she saw him taking up his
+weapons in her behalf.  We see all that every day.  We see Wildhead
+at his disservice of the truth every day.  Sometimes above his own
+name, and sometimes with grace enough to be ashamed to give his
+name, in the newspapers.  Sometimes on the platform; sometimes in
+the pulpit; and sometimes at the dinner-table.  But always to the
+detriment of the truth.  In blind fury he rushes at the character
+and the good name of men who were servants of the truth before he
+was born, and whose shield he is not worthy to bear.  How shall
+Wildhead be got to see that he and the like of him are really the
+worst friends the truth can possibly have?  Will he never learn
+that in his wild-bull gorings at men and at movements, he is both
+hurting himself and hurting the truth as no sworn enemy of his and
+of the truth can do?  Will he never see what an insolent fool he is
+to go on imputing bad motives to other men, when he ought to be
+prostrate before God on account of his own?  More than one wild-
+headed student of William Law has told me what a blessing they have
+got from that great man's teaching on the subject of controversy.
+Will the Wildheads here to-night take a line or two out of that
+peace-making author and lay them to heart?  "My dear L-, take
+notice of this, that no truths, however solid and well-grounded,
+will help you to any divine life, but only so far as they are
+taught, nourished, and strengthened by an unction from above; and
+that nothing more dries and extinguishes this heavenly unction than
+a talkative reasoning temper that is always catching at every
+opportunity of hearing or telling some religious matters.  Stop
+your ears and shut your eyes to all religious tales . . . I would
+no more bring a false charge against a deist than I would bear
+false witness against an apostle.  And if I knew how to do the
+deists more justice in debate I would gladly do it . . . And as the
+gospel requires me to be as glad to see piety, equity, strict
+sobriety, and extensive charity in a Jew or a Gentile as in a
+Christian; as it obliges me to look with pleasure upon their
+virtues, and to be thankful to God that such persons have so much
+of true and sound Christianity in them; so it cannot be an
+unchristian spirit to be as glad to see truths in one party of
+Christians as in another, and to look with pleasure upon any good
+doctrines that are held by any sect of Christian people, and to be
+thankful to God that they have so much of the genuine saving truths
+of the gospel among them . . . Selfishness and partiality are very
+inhuman and base qualities even in the things of this world, but in
+the doctrines of religion they are of a far baser nature.  In the
+present divided state of the Church, truth itself is torn and
+divided asunder; and, therefore, he is the only true Catholic who
+has more of truth and less of error than is hedged in by any
+divided part.  To see this will enable us to live in a divided part
+unhurt by its division, and keep us in a true liberty and fitness
+to be edified and assisted by all the good that we hear or see in
+any other part of the Church.  And thus, uniting in heart and
+spirit with all that is holy and good in all Churches, we enter
+into the true communion of saints, and become real members of the
+Holy Catholic Church, though we are confined to the outward worship
+of only one particular part of it.  And thus we will like no truth
+the less because Ignatius Loyola or John Bunyan were very jealous
+for it, nor have the less aversion to any error because Dr. Trapp
+or George Fox had brought it forth."  If Wildhead would take a
+winter of William Law, it would sweeten his temper, and civilise
+his manners, and renew his heart.
+
+3.  Inconsiderate, again, is the shallow creature he is, and does
+the endless mischief that he does, largely for lack of imagination.
+He never thinks--neither before he speaks nor after he has spoken.
+He never put himself in another man's place all his days.  He is
+incapable of doing that.  He has neither the head nor the heart to
+do that.  He never once said, How would I like that said about me?
+or, How would I like that done to me? or, How would that look and
+taste and feel to me if I were in So-and-so's place?  It needs
+genius to change places with other men; it needs a grace beyond all
+genius; and this poor headless and heartless creature does not know
+what genius is.  It needs imagination, the noblest gift of the
+mind, and it needs love, the noblest grace of the heart, to
+consider the case of other people, and to see, as Butler says, that
+we differ as much from other people as they differ from us.  And it
+is by far the noblest use of the imagination, far nobler than
+carving a Laocoon, or painting a Last Judgment, or writing a
+"Paradiso" or a "Paradise Lost," to put ourselves into the places
+of other men so as to see with their eyes, and feel with their
+hearts, and sympathise with their principles, and even with their
+prejudices.  Now, the inconsiderate man has so little imagination
+and so little love that he is sitting here and does not know what I
+am saying; and what suspicion he has of what I am saying is just
+enough to make him dislike both me and what I am saying too.  But
+his dull suspicion and his blind dislike are more than made up for
+by the love and appreciation of those lovers and defenders of the
+truth who painfully feel how wild and inconsiderate, how hot-
+headed, how thoughtless, and how reckless their past service even
+of God's truth has been.
+
+
+"The King is full of grace and fair regard.
+Consideration, like an angel, came
+And whipp'd the offending Adam out of him."
+
+
+4.  And as to Pragmatic, I would not call you a stupid person even
+though you confided to me that you had never heard this footpad's
+name till to-night.  John Bunyan has been borrowing Latin again,
+and not to the improvement of his style, or to the advantage of his
+readers.  It would be insufferably pragmatic in me to begin to set
+John Bunyan right in his English; but I had rather offend the
+shades of a hundred John Bunyans than leave my most unlettered
+hearer without his full and proper Sabbath-night lesson.  The third
+armed thief, then, that fell upon Valiant was, under other names,
+Impertinence, Meddlesomeness, Officiousness, Over-Interference.
+Pragmatic,--by whatever name he calls himself, there is no
+mistaking him.  He is never satisfied.  He is never pleased.  He is
+never thankful.  He is always setting his superiors right.  He is
+like the Psalmist in one thing, he has more understanding than all
+his teachers.  And he enjoys nothing more than in letting them know
+that.  There is nothing he will not correct you in--from cutting
+for the stone to commanding the Channel Fleet.  Now, if all that
+has put any visual image of Pragmatic into your mind, you will see
+at once what an enemy he too is fitted to be to the truth.  For the
+truth does not stand in points, but in principles.  The truth does
+not dwell in the letter but in the spirit.  The truth is not served
+by setting other people right, but by seeing every day and in every
+thing how far wrong we are ourselves.  The truth is like charity in
+this, that it begins at home.  It is like charity in this also,
+that it never behaves itself unseemly.  A pragmatical man, taken
+along with an inconsiderate man, and then a wild-headed man added
+on to them, are three about as fatal hands as any truth could fall
+into.  The worst enemy of the truth must pity the truth, and feel
+his hatred at the truth relenting, when he sees her under the
+championship of Wildhead, Inconsiderate, and Pragmatic.
+
+5.  The first time we see Valiant-for-truth he is standing at the
+mouth of Dead-man's-lane with his sword in his hand and with his
+face all bloody.  "They have left upon me, as you see," said the
+bleeding man, "some of the marks of their valour, and have also
+carried away with them some of mine."  And, in like manner, we see
+Paul with the blood of Barnabas still upon him when he is writing
+the thirteenth of First Corinthians; and John with the blood of the
+Samaritans still upon him down to his old age when he is writing
+his First Epistle; and John Bunyan with the blood of the Quakers
+upon him when he is covertly writing this page of his autobiography
+under the veil of Valiant-for-truth; and William Law with the blood
+of Bishop Hoadly and John Wesley dropping on the paper as he pens
+that golden passage which ends with Dr. Trapp and George Fox.
+Where did you think Paul got that splendid passage about charity?
+Where did you think William Law got that companion passage about
+Church divisions, and about the Church Catholic?  Where are such
+passages ever got by inspired apostles, or by any other men, but
+out of their own bloody battles with their own wild-headedness,
+intolerance, dislike, and resentment?  Where do you suppose I got
+the true key to the veiled metaphor of Valiant-for-truth?  It does
+not exactly hang on the door-post of his history.  Where, then,
+could I get it but off the inside wall of my own place of
+repentance?  Just as you understand what I am now labouring to say,
+not from my success in saying it, but from your own trespasses
+against humility and love, your unadvised speeches, and your wild
+and whirling words.  Without shame and remorse, without self-
+condemnation and self-contempt, none of those great passages of
+Paul, or John, or Bunyan, or Law were ever written; and without a
+like shame, remorse, self-condemnation, and self-contempt they are
+not rightly read.
+
+
+"Oh! who shall dare in this frail scene
+On holiest, happiest thoughts to lean,
+On Friendship, Kindred, or on Love?
+Since not Apostles' hands can clasp
+Each other in so firm a grasp,
+But they shall change and variance prove.
+
+"But sometimes even beneath the moon
+The Saviour gives a gracious boon,
+When reconciled Christians meet,
+And face to face, and heart to heart,
+High thoughts of Holy love impart
+In silence meek, or converse sweet.
+
+"Oh then the glory and the bliss
+When all that pained or seemed amiss
+Shall melt with earth and sin away!
+When saints beneath their Saviour's eye,
+Filled with each other's company,
+Shall spend in love the eternal day!"
+
+
+6.  Then said Greatheart to Mr. Valiant-for-truth, "Thou hast
+worthily behaved thyself; let me see thy sword."  So he showed it
+him.  When he had taken it in his hand and had looked thereon a
+while, the guide said:  "Ha! it is a right Jerusalem blade!"  "It
+is so," replied its owner.  "Let a man have one of these blades
+with a hand to wield it, and skill to use it, and he may venture
+upon an angel with it.  Its edges will never blunt.  It will cut
+flesh, and bones, and soul, and spirit, and all."  Both Damascus
+and Toledo blades were famous in former days for their tenacity and
+flexibility, and for the beauty and the edge of their steel.  But
+even a Damascus blade would be worthless in a weak, cowardly, or
+unskilled hand; while even a poor sword in the hand of a good
+swordsman will do excellent execution.  And much more so when you
+have both a first-rate sword and a first-rate swordsman, such as
+both Valiant and his Jerusalem blade were.  Ha! yes.  This is a
+right wonderful blade we have now in our hand.  For this sword was
+forged in no earthly fire; and it was whetted to its unapproachable
+sharpness on no earthly whetstone.  But, best of all for us, when a
+good soldier of Jesus Christ has this sword girt on his thigh he is
+able then to go forth against himself with it; against his own only
+and worst enemy--that is, against himself.  As here, against his
+own wildness of head and pride of heart.  Against his own want of
+consideration also.  "My people do not consider."  As also against
+himself as a lawless invader of other men's freedom of judgment,
+following of truth, public honour, and good name.  As the Arabian
+warriors see themselves and dress themselves in their swords as in
+a glass, so did Valiant-for-truth see the thoughts and intents, the
+joints and the marrow of his own disordered soul in his Jerusalem
+blade.  In the sheen of it he could see himself even when the
+darkness covered him; and with its two edges all his after-life he
+slew both all real error in other men and all real evil in himself.
+"Thou hast done well," said Greatheart the guide.  "Thou hast
+resisted unto blood, striving against sin.  Thou shalt abide by us,
+come in and go out with us, for we are thy companions."
+
+7.  "Sir," said the widow indeed to Valiant-for-truth, "sir, you
+have in all places shown yourself true-hearted."  The first time
+she ever saw this man that she is now seeing for the last time on
+this side the river, his own mother would not have known him, he
+was so hacked to pieces with the swords of his three assailants.
+But as she washed the blood off the mangled man's head and face and
+hands, she soon saw beneath all his bloody wounds a true, a brave,
+and a generous-hearted soldier of the Cross.  The heart is always
+the man.  And this woman had lived long enough with men to have
+discovered that.  And with all his sears she saw that it was at
+bottom the truth of his heart that had cast him into so many bloody
+encounters.  There were men in that company, and men near the river
+too, with far fewer marks of battle, and even of defeat, upon them,
+who did not get this noble certificate and its accompanying charge
+and trust from this clear-eyed widow.  And, then, she had never
+forgot--how could she?--his exclamation, and almost embrace of her
+as of his own mother, when he burst out with his eyes full of
+blood, "Why, is this Christian's wife?  What! and going on
+pilgrimage too?  It glads my heart!  Good man!  How joyful will he
+be when he shall see her and her children enter after him in at the
+gates into the city!"  He would have been hacked a hundred times
+worse than he was before the widow of Christian, and the mother of
+his children, would have seen anything but the manliest beauty in a
+young soldier who could salute an old woman in that way.  It
+gladdened her heart to hear him, you may be sure, as much as it
+gladdened his heart to see her.  And that was the reason that she
+actually set Greatheart himself aside, and left her children under
+this young man's sword and shield.  "I would also entreat you to
+have an eye to my children," she said.  Young men, has any dying
+mother committed her children, if you at any time see them faint,
+to you?  Have you ever spoken so comfortably to any poor widow
+about her sainted husband that she has passed by some of our
+foremost citizens, and has astonished and offended her lawyers by
+putting a stripling like you into the trusteeship?  Did ever any
+dying mother say to you that she had seen you to be so true-hearted
+at all times that she entreated you to have an eye to her children?
+Speaking at this point for myself, I would rather see my son so
+trusted at such an hour by such a woman than I would see him the
+Chancellor of Her Majesty's Exchequer, or the Governor of the Bank
+of England.  And so to-night would you.
+
+
+
+STANDFAST
+
+
+
+"So stand fast in the Lord, my dearly beloved."--Paul.
+
+In his supplementary picture of Standfast John Bunyan is seen at
+his very best, both as a religious teacher and as an English
+author.  On the Enchanted Ground Standfast is set before us with
+extraordinary insight, sagacity, and wisdom; and then in the
+terrible river he is set before us with an equally extraordinary
+rapture and transport; while, in all that, Bunyan composes in
+English of a strength and a beauty and a music in which he
+positively surpasses himself.  Just before he closes his great book
+John Bunyan rises up and once more puts forth his very fullest
+strength, both as a minister of religion and as a classical writer,
+when he takes Standfast down into that river which that pilgrim
+tells us has been such a terror to so many, and the thought of
+which has so often affrighted himself.
+
+When Greatheart and his charge were almost at the end of the
+Enchanted Ground, so we read, they perceived that a little before
+them was a solemn noise as of one that was much concerned.  So they
+went on and looked before them.  And behold, they saw, as they
+thought, a man upon his knees, with hands and eyes lift up, and
+speaking, as they thought, earnestly to one that was above.  They
+drew nigh, but could not tell what he said; so they went softly
+till he had done.  When he had done, he got up and began to run
+towards the Celestial City.  "So-ho, friend, let us have your
+company," called out the guide.  At that the man stopped, and they
+came up to him.  "I know this man," said Mr. Honest; "his name, I
+know, is Standfast, and he is certainly a right good pilgrim."
+Then follows a conversation between Mr. Honest and Mr. Standfast,
+in which some compliments and courtesies are exchanged, such as are
+worthy of such men, met at such a time and in such a place.  "Well,
+but, brother," said Valiant-for-truth, "tell us, I pray thee, what
+was it that was the cause of thy being upon thy knees even now?
+Was it for that some special mercy laid obligations upon thee, or
+how?"  And then Standfast tells how as he was coming along musing
+with himself, Madam Bubble presented herself to him and offered him
+three things.  "I was both aweary and sleepy and also as poor as a
+howlet, and all that the wicked witch knew.  And still she followed
+me with her enticements.  Then I betook me, as you saw, to my
+knees, and with hands lift up and cries, I prayed to Him who had
+said that He would help.  So just as you came up the gentlewoman
+went her way.  Then I continued to give thanks for my great
+deliverance; for I verify believe she intended me no good, but
+rather sought to make stop of me in my journey.  What a mercy is it
+that I did resist her, for whither might she not have drawn me?"
+And then, after all this discourse, there was a mixture of joy and
+trembling among the pilgrims, but at last they broke out and sang:
+
+
+"What danger is the pilgrim in,
+How many are his foes,
+How many ways there are to sin,
+No living mortal knows!"
+
+
+1.  "Well, as I was coming along I was musing with myself," said
+Standfast.  You understand what it is to come along musing with
+yourself, do you not, my brethren?  "I will muse on the work of Thy
+hands," says the Psalmist.  And again, "While I was musing the fire
+burned."  Well, Standfast was much given to musing, just as David
+was.  Each several pilgrim has his own way of occupying himself on
+the road; but Standfast could never get his fill just of musing.
+Standfast loved solitude.  Standfast liked nothing better than to
+walk long stretches at a time all by himself alone.  Standfast was
+like the apostle when he preferred to take the twenty miles from
+Troas to Assos on foot and alone, rather than to round the cape on
+shipboard in a crowd.  "Minding himself to go afoot," says the
+apostle's companion.  It would have made a precious chapter in the
+Acts of the Apostles had the author of that book been able to give
+his readers some of Paul's musings as he crossed the Troad on foot
+that day.  But in the absence of Paul's musings we have here the
+musings of a man whom Paul would not have shaken off had he
+foregathered with him on that lonely road.  For Standfast was in a
+deep and serious muse mile after mile, when, who should step into
+the middle of his path right before him but Madam Bubble with her
+body and her purse and her bed?  Now, had this hungry howlet of a
+pilgrim been at that moment in any other but a musing mood of mind,
+he had to a certainty sold himself, soul and body, Celestial City
+and all, to that impudent slut.  But, as He would have it who
+overrules Madam Bubble's descents, and all things, Standfast was at
+that moment in one of his most musing moods, and all her smiles and
+all her offers fell flat and poor upon him.  Cultivate Standfast's
+mood of mind, my brethren.  Walk a good deal alone.  Strike across
+country from time to time alone and have good long walks and talks
+with yourself.  And when you know that you are passing places of
+temptation see that your thoughts, and even your imaginations, are
+well occupied with solemn considerations about the certain issue of
+such and such temptations; and then, to you, as to Standfast,
+
+
+"The arrow seen beforehand slacks its flight."
+
+
+2.  But, musing alone, the arrow seen beforehand, and all,
+Standfast would have been a lost man on that lonely road that day
+had he not instantly betaken himself to his knees.  And it was
+while Standfast was still on his knees that the ascending pilgrims
+heard that concerned and solemn noise a little ahead of them.  Did
+you ever suddenly come across a man on his knees?  Did you ever
+surprise a man at prayer as Greatheart and his companions surprised
+Standfast?  I do not ask, Did you ever enter a room and find a
+family around their morning or evening altar?  We have all done
+that.  And it left its own impression upon us.  But did you ever
+spring a surprise upon a man on his knees alone and in broad
+daylight?  I did the other day.  It was between eleven and twelve
+o'clock in the forenoon when I asked a clerk if his master was in.
+Yes, he said, and opened his master's door.  When, before I was
+aware, I had almost fallen over a man on his knees and with his
+face in his hands.  "I pray thee," said Valiant-for-truth, "tell us
+what it was that drew thee to thy knees even now.  Was it that some
+special mercy laid its obligations on thee, or how?"  I did not say
+that exactly to my kneeling friend, though it was on the point of
+my tongue to say it.  My dear friend, I knew, had his own
+difficulties, though he was not exactly as poor as a howlet.  And
+it might have been about some of his investments that had gone out
+of joint that he went that forenoon to Him who had said that He
+would help.  Or, like the author of the Christian Perfection and
+The Spirit of Prayer, it was the sixth hour of the day, and he may
+have gone to his knees for his clerks, or for his boys at school,
+or for himself and for the man in the same business with himself
+right across the street.  I knew that my friend had the charming
+book at home in which such counsels as these occur:  "If masters
+were thus to remember their servants, beseeching God to bless them,
+letting no day pass without a full performance of this devotion,
+the benefit would be as great to themselves as to their servants."
+And perhaps my friend, after setting his clerks their several tasks
+for the day, was now asking grace of God for each one of them that
+they might not be eye-servants and men-pleasers, but the servants
+of Christ doing the will of God from the heart.  Or, again, he may
+have read in that noble book this passage:  "If a father were daily
+to make some particular prayer to God that He would please to
+inspire his children with true piety, great humility, and strict
+temperance, what could be more likely to make the father himself
+become exemplary in these virtues?"  Now, my friend (who can tell?)
+may just that morning have lost his temper with his son; or he may
+last night have indulged himself too much in eating, or in
+drinking, or in debate, or in detraction; and that may have made it
+impossible for him to fix his whole mind on his office work that
+morning.  Or, just to make another guess, when he opened the book I
+had asked him to buy and read, he may have lighted on this heavenly
+passage:  "Lastly, if all people when they feel the first
+approaches of resentment or envy or contempt towards others; or if
+in all little disagreements and misunderstandings whatever they
+should have recourse at such times to a more particular and
+extraordinary intercession with God for such persons as had roused
+their envy, resentment, or discontent--this would be a certain way
+to prevent the growth of all uncharitable tempers."  You may think
+that I am taking a roundabout way of accounting for my friend's so
+concerned attitude at twelve o'clock that business day; but the
+whole thing seemed to me so unusual at such a time and in such a
+place that I was led to such guesses as these to account for it.
+In so guessing I see now that I was intruding myself into matters I
+had no business with; but all that day I could not keep my mind off
+my blushing friend.  For, like Mr. Standfast, my dear friend
+blushed as he stood up and offered me the chair he had been
+kneeling at.  "But, why, did you see me?" said Mr. Standfast.
+"Yes, I did," quoth the other, "and with all my heart I was glad at
+the sight."  "And what did you think?" said Mr. Standfast.
+
+3.  "Was it," asked Valiant-for-truth, in a holy curiosity, "was it
+some special mercy that brought thee to thy knees even now?"  Yes;
+Valiant-for-truth had exactly hit it.  Gracious wits, like great
+wits, jump together.  "Yes," confessed Standfast, "I continue to
+give thanks for my great deliverance."  My brethren, you all pray
+importunately in your time of sore trouble.  Everybody does that.
+But do you feel an obligation, like Standfast, to abide still on
+your knees long after your trouble is past?  Nature herself will
+teach us to pray; but it needs grace, and great grace continually
+renewed, to teach us to praise, and to continue all our days to
+praise.  How we once prayed, ay, as earnestly, and as concernedly,
+and as careless as to who should see or hear us as Standfast
+himself!  How some of us here to-night used to walk across a whole
+country all the time praying!  How we hoodwinked people in order to
+get away from them to pray for twenty miles at a time all by
+ourselves!  Under that bush--it still stands to mark the spot; in
+that wood, long since cut down into ploughed land--we could show
+our children the spot to this day where we prayed, till a miracle
+was wrought in our behalf.  Yes, till God sent from above and took
+us as He never took a psalmist, and set our feet upon a still more
+wonderful rock.  How He, yes, HE, with His own hand cut the cords,
+broke the net, and set us free!  Come, all ye that fear God! we
+then said, and said it with all sincerity too.  And yet, how have
+we forgotten what He did for our soul?  We start like a guilty
+thing surprised when we think how long it is since we had a spell
+of thanksgiving.  Shame on us!  What treacherous hearts we have!
+What short memories we have!  How soon we forgive ourselves, and so
+forget the forgiveness of our God!  Brethren, let us still lay
+plans for praise as we used to do for prayer.  If our friends will
+go out with us, let us at least insist on walking home alone.  Let
+us say with Paul that we get sick at sea; and, besides, that we
+have some calls to make and some small accounts to settle before we
+leave the country.  Tell them not to wait dinner for us.  And then
+let us take plenty of time.  Let us stop at all our old stations
+and call back all our old terrors; let us repeat aloud our old
+psalms--the twenty-fifth, the fifty-first, the hundred and third,
+and the hundred and thirtieth.  We used to terrify people with our
+prayers as Standfast terrified the young pilgrims that day; let us
+surprise and delight them now with our psalms of thanksgiving.
+For, with all our disgraceful ingratitude in the past, if William
+Law is right, we are even yet not far from being great saints, if
+he is not wrong when he asks:  "Would you know who is the greatest
+saint in the world?  It is not he who prays most or fasts most; it
+is not he who gives most alms, or is most eminent for temperance,
+chastity, or justice.  But it is he who is most thankful to God,
+and who has a heart always ready to praise God.  This is the
+perfection of all virtues.  Joy in God and thankfulness to God is
+the highest perfection of a divine and holy life."  Well, then,
+what an endless cause of joy and thankfulness have we!  Let us
+acknowledge it, and henceforth employ it; and we shall, please God,
+even yet be counted as not low down but high up among the saints
+and the servants of God.
+
+4.  Christiana said many kind and wise and beautiful things to all
+the other pilgrims before she entered the river, but it was
+observed that though she sent for Mr. Standfast, she said not one
+word to him when he came; she just gave him her ring.  "The touch
+is human and affecting," says Mr. Louis Stevenson, in his
+delightful paper on Bagster's "Bunyan," in the Magazine of Art.  By
+the way, do you who are lovers of Bunyan literature know that
+remarkable and delicious paper?  The Messrs. Bagster should secure
+that paper and should issue an edition de luxe of their neglected
+"Bunyan," with Mr. Stevenson's paper for a preface and
+introduction.  Bagster's "Illustrated Bunyan," with an introduction
+on the illustrations by Mr. Louis Stevenson, if I am not much
+mistaken, would sell by the thousand.
+
+5.  Lord Rosebery knows books and loves books, and he has called
+attention to the surpassing beauty of the English in the deathbed
+scenes of the Pilgrim's Progress.  And every lover of pure, tender,
+and noble English must, like the Foreign Secretary, have all those
+precious pages by heart.  Were it not that we all have a cowardly
+fear at death ourselves, and think it wicked and cruel even to hint
+at his approaching death even to a fast-dying man, we would never
+let any of our friends lie down on his sick-bed without having a
+reassuring and victorious page of the Pilgrim read to him every
+day.  If the doctors would allow me, I would have these heavenly
+pages reprinted in sick-bed type for all my people.  But I am
+afraid at the doctors.  And thus one after another of my people
+passes away without the fortification and the foretaste that the
+deathbeds of Christian, and Christiana, and Hopeful, and Mr.
+Fearing, and Mr. Feeble-mind, and Mr. Honest, and Mr. Standfast
+would most surely have given to them.  Especially the deathbed, if
+I must so call it, of Mr. Standfast.  But as Christiana said
+nothing that could be heard to Mr. Standfast about his or her
+latter end, but just looked into his eyes and gave him her ring, so
+I may not be able to say all that is in my heart when your doctor
+is standing close by.  But you will understand what I would fain
+say, will you not?  You will remember, and will have this heavenly
+book read to you alternately with your Bible, will you not?  Even
+the most godless doctor will give way to you when you tell him that
+you know as well as he does just how it is with you, and that you
+are to have your own way for the last time.  I know a doctor who
+first forbade her minister and her family to tell his patient that
+she was dying, and at the same time told them to take away from her
+bedside all such alarming books as the Pilgrim's Progress and the
+Saint's Rest, and to read to her a reassuring chapter out of Old
+Mortality and Pickwick.
+
+It will, no doubt, put the best-prepared of us into a deep muse, as
+it put Standfast, when we are first told that we must at once
+prepare ourselves for a change of life.  But I for one would not
+for worlds miss that solemn warning, and that last musing-time.  It
+will all be just as my Master pleases; but if it is within His will
+I shall till then continue to petition Him that I may have a
+passage over the river like the passage of Standfast.  Or, if that
+may not now be, then, at least, a musing-time like his.  The post
+from the Celestial City brought Mr. Standfast's summons "open" in
+his hand.  And thus it was that Standfast's translation did not
+take him by surprise.  Standfast was not plunged suddenly and
+without warning into the terrible river.  He took the open summons
+into big own hand and read it out like a man.  After which he went,
+as his manner was, for a good while into a deep and undisturbed
+muse.  As soon as he came out of his muse he would have Greatheart
+to be sent for.  And then their last conversation together
+proceeded.  And no one interfered with the two brave-hearted men.
+No one interposed, or said that Greatheart would exhaust or alarm
+Standfast, or would injuriously hasten his end.  Not only so, but
+all the way till he was half over the river, Standfast kept up his
+own side of the noble conversation.  And it is his side of that
+half-earthly, whole-heavenly conversation that I would like to have
+put into suitable type and scattered broadcast over all our sick-
+beds.
+
+6.  "Tell me," says Valdes to Julia in his Christian Alphabet,
+"have you ever crossed a deep river by a ford?"  "Yes," says Julia,
+"I have, many times."  "And have you remarked how that by looking
+upon the water it seemed as though your head swam, so that, if you
+had not assisted yourself, either by closing your eyes, or by
+fixing them on the opposite shore, you would have fallen into the
+water in great danger of drowning?"  "Yes, I have noticed that."
+"And have you seen how by keeping always for your object the view
+of the land that lies on the other side, you have not felt that
+swimming of the head, and so have suffered no danger of drowning?"
+"I have noticed that too," replied Julia.  Now, it was exactly this
+same way of looking, not at the black and swirling river, but at
+the angelic conduct waiting for him at the further bank, and then
+at the open gate of the Celestial City,--it was this that kept
+Standfast's head so steady and his heart like a glowing coal while
+he stood and talked in the middle of the giddy stream.  You would
+have thought it was Paul himself talking to himself on the road to
+Assos.  For I defy even the apostle himself to have talked better
+or more boldly to himself even on the solid midday road than
+Standfast talked to himself in the bridgeless river.  "I see
+myself," he said, "at the end of my journey now.  My toilsome days
+are all ended.  I am going now to see that head that was crowned
+with thorns, and that face that was spat upon for me.  I loved to
+hear my Lord spoken of, and wherever I have seen the print of His
+shoe in the earth I have coveted to set my foot also.  His name has
+been to me as a civet-box; yea, sweeter than all perfumes.  His
+word I did use to gather for my food, and for antidotes against my
+faintings.  He has held me, and I have kept me from my iniquities.
+Yea, my steps He has strengthened in my way."  Now, while Standfast
+was thus in discourse his countenance changed, his strong man bowed
+down under him, and after he had said "Take me!" he ceased to be
+seen of them.  But how glorious it was to see how the open region
+was now filled with horses and chariots, with trumpeters and
+pipers, and with singers and players on stringed instruments, all
+to welcome the pilgrims as they went up and followed one another in
+at the beautiful gate of the city!
+
+
+
+MADAM BUBBLE
+
+
+
+"Vanity of vanities, all is vanity."--Solomon.
+
+"I have overcome the world."--Our Lord.
+
+"Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.  For
+all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the
+eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the
+world.  And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof."--John.
+
+"This bubble world."--Quarles.
+
+Madam Bubble's portrait was first painted by the Preacher.  And he
+painted her portrait with extraordinary insight, boldness, and
+truthfulness.  There is that in the Preacher's portrait of Madam
+Bubble which only comes of the artist having mixed his colours, as
+Milman says that Tacitus mixed his ink, with resentment and with
+remorse.  Out of His reading of Solomon and Moses and the Prophets
+on this same subject, as well as out of His own observation and
+experience, conflict and conquest, our Lord added some strong and
+deep and inward touches of His own to that well-known picture, and
+then named it by the New Testament name of the World.  And then,
+after Him, His longest-lived disciple set forth the same mother and
+her three daughters under the three names that still stick to them
+to this day,--the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the
+pride of life.  But it was reserved for John Bunyan to fill up and
+to finish those outlines of Scripture and to pour over the whole
+work his own depth and strength of colour, till, altogether, Madam
+Bubble stands out as yet another masterpiece of our dreamer's
+astonishing genius.  Let us take our stand before this heaving
+canvas, then, till we have taken attentive note of some of John
+Bunyan's inimitable touches and strokes and triumphs of truth and
+art.  "One in very pleasant attire, but old . . . This woman is a
+witch . . . I am the mistress of the world, she said, and men are
+made happy by me . . . A tall, comely dame, something of a swarthy
+complexion."  In the newly discovered portrait of a woman, by
+Albert Durer, one of the marks of its genuineness is the way that
+the great artist's initials A. D. are pencilled in on the
+embroidery of the lady's bodice.  And you will note in this
+gentlewoman's open dress also how J. B. is inextricably woven in.
+"She wears a great purse by her side also, and her hand is often in
+her purse fingering her money.  Yea, this is she that has bought
+off many a man from a pilgrim's life after he had fairly begun it.
+She is a bold and an impudent slut also, for she will talk with any
+man.  If there be one cunning to make money in any place, she will
+speak well of him from house to house . . . She has given it out in
+some places also that she is a goddess, and therefore some do
+actually worship her . . . She has her times and open places of
+cheating, and she will say and avow it that none can show a good
+comparable to hers.  And thus she has brought many to the halter,
+and ten thousand times more to hell.  None can tell of the mischief
+that she does.  She makes variance betwixt rulers and subjects,
+betwixt parents and children, 'twixt neighbour and neighbour,
+'twixt a man and his wife, 'twixt a man and himself, 'twixt the
+flesh and the heart."  And so on in the great original.  "Had she
+stood by all this while," said Standfast, whose eyes were still
+full of her, "you could not have set Madam Bubble more amply before
+me, nor have better described her features."  "He that drew her
+picture was a good limner," said Mr. Honest, "and he that so wrote
+of her said true".
+
+1.  "I am the mistress of this world," says Madam Bubble.  And
+though all the time she is a bold and impudent slut, yet it is the
+simple truth that she does sit as a queen over this world and over
+the men of this world.  For Madam Bubble has a royal family like
+all other sovereigns.  She has a court of her own, too, with its
+ball-room presentations and its birthday honours.  She has a
+cabinet council also, and a bar and a bench with their pleadings
+and their decisions.  Far more than all that, she has a church
+which she has established and of which she is the head; and a faith
+also of which she is the defender.  She has a standing army also
+for the extension and the protection of her dominions.  She levies
+taxes, too, and sends out ambassadors, and makes treaties, and
+forms offensive and defensive alliances.  But what a bubble all
+this World is to him whose eyes have at last been opened to see the
+hollowness and the heartlessness of it all!  For all its pursuits
+and all its possessions, from a child's rattle to a king's sceptre,
+all is one great bubble.  Wealth, fame, place, power; art, science,
+letters; politics, churches, sacraments, and scriptures--all are so
+many bubbles in Madam Bubble's World.  This wicked enchantress, if
+she does not find all these things bubbles already, by one touch of
+her evil wand she makes them so.  She turns gold into dross, God
+into an idle name, and His Word into words only; unless when in her
+malice she turns it into a fruitful ground of debate and
+contention; a ground of malice and hatred and ill-will.  Vanity of
+vanities; all is vanity and vexation of spirit.  Still, she sits a
+queen and a goddess to a great multitude:  to all men, to begin
+with.  And, like a goddess, she sheds abroad her spirit in her
+people's hearts and lifts up upon them for a time the light of her
+countenance.
+
+2.  "I am the mistress of the world," she says, "and men are made
+happy by me."--I would like to see one of them.  I have seen many
+men to whom Madam Bubble had said that if they would be ruled by
+her she would make them great and happy.  But though I have seen
+not a few who have believed her and let themselves be ruled by her,
+I have never yet seen one happy man among them.--The truth is,
+Madam Bubble is not able to make men happy even if she wished to do
+it.  She is not happy herself, and she cannot dispense to others
+what she does not possess.  And, yet, such are her sorceries that,
+while her old dupes die in thousands every day, new dupes are born
+to her every day in still greater numbers.  New dupes who run to
+the same excess of folly with her that their fathers ran; new dupes
+led in the same mad dance after Madam Bubble and her three
+daughters.  But, always, and to all men, what a bubble both the
+mother and all her daughters are!  How they all make promises like
+their lying mother, and how, like her, they all lead men, if not to
+the halter and to hell, as Greatheart said, yet to a life of vanity
+and to a death of disappointment and despair!  What bubbles of
+empty hopes both she and her three children blow up in the brains
+of men!  What pictures of untold happiness they paint in the
+imaginations of men!  What pleasures, what successes in life, what
+honours and what rewards she pledges herself to see bestowed!  "She
+has her times and open places of cheating," said one who knew her
+and all her ways well.  And when men and women are still young and
+inexperienced, that is one of her great cheating times.  At some
+seasons of the year, and in some waters, to the fisherman's
+surprise and confusion, the fish will sometimes take his bare hook;
+a bit of a red rag is a deadly bait.  And Madam Bubble's poorest
+and most perfunctory busking is quite enough for the foolish fish
+she angles for.  And not in our salad days only, when we are still
+green in judgment, but even to grey hairs, this wicked witch
+continues to entrap us to our ruin.  Love, in all its phases and in
+all its mixtures, first deludes the very young; and then place, and
+power, and fame, and money are the bait she busks for the middle-
+aged and the old; and always with the same bubble end.  The whole
+truth is that without God, the living and ever-present God, in all
+ages of it and in all parts and experiences of it, our human life
+is one huge bubble.  A far-shining, high-soaring bubble; but sooner
+or later seen and tasted to be a bubble--a deceit-filled, poison-
+filled bubble.--Happy by her!  All men happy by her!  The impudent
+slut!
+
+3.  Another thing about this slut is this, that "she will talk with
+any man."  She makes up to us and makes eyes at us just as if we
+were free to accept and return her three offers.  And still she
+talks to us and offers us the same things she offered to Standfast
+till, to escape her and her offers, he betook himself to his knees.
+Nay, truth to tell, after she had deceived us and ensnared us till
+we lay in her net cursing both her and ourselves, so bold and so
+impudent and so persistent is this temptress slut, and such fools
+and idiots are we, that we soon lay our eyes on her painted beauty
+again and our heads in her loathsome lap; our heads on that block
+over which the axe hangs by an angry hair.  "She will talk with any
+man."  No doubt; but, then, it takes two to make a talk, and the
+sad thing is that there are few men among us so wise, so steadfast,
+and so experienced in her ways that they will not on occasion let
+Madam Bubble talk her talk to them, and talk back again to her.
+The oldest saint, the oftenest sold and most dearly redeemed
+sinner, needs to suspect himself to the end, till he is clear out
+of Madam Bubble's enchanted ground and for ever over that river of
+deliverance which shall sweep Madam Bubble and all her daughters
+into the dead sea for ever.
+
+
+"The grey-haired saint may fail at last,
+The surest guide a wanderer prove;
+Death only binds us fast
+To the bright shore of love."
+
+
+4.  "She highly commends the rich," the guide goes on about Madam
+Bubble, "and if there be one cunning to get money in any place she
+will speak well of him from house to house."  "The world," says
+Faber, "is not altogether matter, nor yet altogether spirit.  It is
+not man only, nor Satan only, nor is it exactly sin.  It is an
+infection, an inspiration, an atmosphere, a life, a colouring
+matter, a pageantry, a fashion, a taste, a witchery.  None of all
+these names suit it, and all of them suit it.  Meanwhile its power
+over the human creation is terrific, its presence ubiquitous, its
+deceitfulness incredible.  It can find a home under every heart
+beneath the poles.  It is wider than the catholic church, and it is
+masterful, lawless, and intrusive within it.  We are all living in
+it, breathing it, acting under its influence, being cheated by its
+appearances, and unwarily admitting its principles."  Let young
+ministers who wish to preach to their people on the World--after
+studying what the Preacher, and the Saviour, and John, and John
+Bunyan say about the World,--still read Faber's powerful chapter in
+his Creator and Creature.  Yes; Madam Bubble finds a home for
+herself in every heart beneath the poles.  The truth is Madam
+Bubble has no home, as she has no existence, but in human hearts.
+And all that Solomon, and our Saviour, and John, and John Bunyan,
+and Frederick Faber say about the world and about Madam Bubble they
+really say about the heart of man.  It is we, you and I, my
+brethren, who so highly commend the rich.  It is we ourselves here
+who speak well from house to house of him whose father or whose
+self has been cunning to get money.  We either speak well or ill of
+them.  We either are sick with envy at them, or we fawn upon them
+and fall down before them.  How men rise in our esteem in the
+degree that their money increases!  With what reverence and holy
+awe we look up at them as if they were gods and the sons of gods!
+They become more than mortal men to our reverent imaginations.  How
+happy, how all but blessed they must be! we say to ourselves.
+Within those park gates, under those high towers, in that silver-
+mounted carriage, surrounded with all those liveried servants, and
+loved and honoured by all those arriving and leaving guests--what
+happiness that rich man must have!  We are either eaten up of lean-
+eyed envy of this and that rich man, or we positively worship them
+as other men worship God and His saints.  Yes; Madam Bubble is our
+very mother.  She conceived us and she suckled us.  We were brought
+up in her nurture and admonition.  We learned her Catechism, and
+her shrine is in our heart tonight.  Like her, if only a pilgrim is
+poor, we scorn him.  We will not know him.  But if there be any
+one, pilgrim or no, cunning to get money, we honour him, and we
+claim him as our kindred and relation, our acquaintance and our
+friend.  We will speak often of him as such from house to house.
+Just see if we will not.  There is room in our hearts, Madam
+Bubble, there is room in our hearts for thee!
+
+5.  "She loves them most that think best of her."  But, surely,
+surely, the guide goes quite too far in blaming and being hard upon
+poor Madam Bubble for that?  For, to give her fair play, she is not
+at all alone in that.  Is the guide himself wholly above that?  Do
+we not all do that?  Is there one in ten, is there one in a
+thousand, who hates and humiliates himself because his love of men
+and women goes up or down just as they think of him?  Yes;
+Greatheart is true to his great name in his whole portrait of Madam
+Bubble also, and nowhere more true than in this present feature.
+For when any man comes to have any true greatness in his heart--how
+he despises and detests himself as he finds himself out in not only
+claiming kindred and acquaintance with the rich and despising and
+denying the poor; but, still more, in loving or hating other men
+just as they love or hate him!  The world loves her own.  Yes; but
+he who has been taken out of the world, and who has had the world
+taken out of him, he loves--he strives to love, he goes to his
+knees every day he lives to love--those who not only do not think
+well of him, but who both think ill of him and speak ill of him.
+"Humility," says William Law, "does not consist in having a worse
+opinion of ourselves than we deserve, or in abasing ourselves lower
+than we really are.  But as all virtue is founded in truth, so
+humility is founded in a true and just sense of our weakness,
+misery, and sin.  He who rightly feels and lives in this sense of
+his condition lives in humility.  And, it may be added, when our
+hearts are wholly clothed with humility we shall be prompt to
+approve the judgment and to endorse the sentence of those who think
+and speak the least good of us and the most evil.
+
+6.  "'Twas she," so the guide at last wound up, "that set Absalom
+against his father, and Jeroboam against his master.  'Twas she
+that persuaded Judas to sell his Lord, and that prevailed with
+Demas to forsake the godly pilgrim's life.  None can tell all the
+mischief that Madam Bubble does.  She makes variance between rulers
+and subjects, between parents and children, 'twixt neighbour and
+neighbour, 'twixt a man and his wife, 'twixt a man and himself,
+'twixt the flesh and the heart."  Now, I shall leave that last
+indictment and its lessons and its applications to yourselves, my
+brethren.  You will get far more good out of this accumulated count
+against Madam Bubble if you explain it, and open it up, and prove
+it, and illustrate it to yourselves.  Explain, then, in what way
+this sorceress set Absalom against his father and Jeroboam against
+his master.  Point out in what way she makes variance between a
+ruler and his subjects, and give illustrations.  Put your finger on
+a parent and on a child between whom there is variance at this
+moment on her account.  And, if you are that parent or that child,
+what have you done to remove that variance?  Name two neighbours
+that to your knowledge Madam Bubble has come between; and say what
+you have done to be a peacemaker there.  Set down what you would
+say to a man and his wife so as to put them on their guard against
+Madam Bubble ever coming in between them.  And, last and best of
+all, point out to yourself at what times and in what ways this
+wicked witch tries to make variance between God's Holy Spirit
+striving within you and your own evil heart still strong within
+you.  When you are weary and sleepy and hungry as a howlet, and,
+Madam Bubble and her three daughters make a ring round you, what do
+you do?  Do you ever take to your knees?  Really and honestly, do
+you?  When you find yourself out looking with holy fear on a rich
+and lofty relation, and with insufferable contempt on a poor and
+intrusive relation, by what name do you call yourself?  Write it
+down.  And when she would fain put variance between you and those
+who do not think well of you, what steps do you take to foil her?
+Where and how do you get strength at that supreme moment to think
+of others as you would have them think of you?  "Oh," said
+Standfast, "what a mercy it is that I did resist her! for to what
+might she not have drawn me?"
+
+
+
+GAIUS
+
+
+
+"Gaius, mine host."--Paul.
+
+Goodman Gaius was the head of a hostel that stood on the side of
+the highway well on to the Celestial City.  The hostess of the
+hostel was no more, and the old hostel-keeper did all her once
+well-done work and his own proper work into the bargain.  Every day
+he inspected the whole house with his own eyes, down even to the
+kitchen and the scullery.  The good woman had left our host an only
+daughter; but, "Keep her as much out of sight as is possible," she
+said, and so fell asleep.  And Gaius remembered his wife's last
+testament every day, till none of the hostel customers knew that
+there was so much as a young hostess in all the house.  "Yes,
+gentlemen," replied the old innkeeper.  "Yes, come in.  It is late,
+but I take you for true men, for you must know that my house is
+kept open only for such."  So he took the large pilgrim party to
+their several apartments with his own eyes, and then set about a
+supper for those so late arrivals.  Stamping with his foot, he
+brought up the cook with the euphonious and eupeptic name, and that
+quick-witted domestic soon had a supper on the table that would
+have made a full man's mouth water.  "The sight of all this," said
+Matthew, as the under-cook laid the cloth and the trenchers, and
+set the salt and the bread in order--"the sight of this cloth and
+of this forerunner of a supper begetteth in me a greater appetite
+to my food than I thought I had before."  So supper came up; and
+first a heave-shoulder and a wave-breast were set on the table
+before them, in order to show that they must begin their meal with
+prayer and praise to God.  These two dishes were very fresh and
+good, and all the travellers did eat heartily well thereof.  The
+next was a bottle of wine red as blood.  So Gaius said to them,
+"Drink freely; this is the juice of the true vine that makes glad
+the heart of God and man."  And they did drink and were very merry.
+The next was a dish of milk well crumbed.  At the sight of which
+Gaius said, "Let the boys have that, that they may grow thereby."
+And so on, dish after dish, till the nuts came with the recitations
+and the riddles and the saws and the stories over the nuts.  Thus
+the happy party sat talking till the break of day.
+
+1.  Now, it is natural to remark that the first thing about a host
+is his hospitality.  And that, too, whether our host is but the
+head of a hostel like Goodman Gaius, or the head of a well-
+appointed private house like Gaius's neighbour, Mr. Mnason.  The
+first and the last thing about a host is his hospitality.  "Say
+little and do much" is the example and the injunction to all our
+housekeepers that Rabban Shammai draws out of the eighteenth of
+Genesis.  "Be like your father Abraham," he says, "on the plains of
+Mamre, who only promised bread and water, but straightway set Sarah
+to knead three measures of her finest meal, while he ran to the
+herd and fetched a calf tender and good, and stood by the three men
+while they did eat butter and milk under the tree.  Make thy Thorah
+an ordinance:  say little and do much:  and receive every man with
+a pleasant expression of countenance."  Now, this was exactly what
+Gaius our goodman did that night, with one exception, which we
+shall be constrained to attend to afterwards.  "It is late," he
+said, "so we cannot conveniently go out to seek food; but such as
+we have you shall be welcome to, if that will content."  At the
+same time Taste-that-which-is-good soon had a supper sent up to the
+table fit for a prince:  a supper of six courses at that time in
+the morning, so that the sun was already in the sky when Old Honest
+closed his casement.
+
+"Dining in company is a divine institution," says Mr. Edward White,
+in his delightful Minor Moralities of Life.  "Let Soyer's art be
+honoured among all men," he goes on.  "Cookery distinguishes
+mankind from the beasts that perish.  Happy is the woman whose
+daily table is the result of forethought.  Her husband shall rise
+up and call her blessed.  It is piteous when the culinary art is
+neglected in our young women's education.  Let them, as St. Peter
+says, imitate Sarah.  Let them see how that venerable princess went
+quickly to her kneading-trough and oven and prepared an extempore
+collation of cakes and pilau for the angels.  How few ladies,
+whether Gentiles or Jewesses, could do the like in the present
+day!"
+
+2.  The wistful and punctilious attention that Goodman Gaius paid
+to each individual guest of his was a fine feature in his
+munificent hospitality.  He made every one who crossed his
+doorstep, down even to Mr. Fearing, feel at once at home, such was
+his exquisite as well as his munificent hospitality.  "Come, sir,"
+he said, clapping that white-faced and trembling pilgrim on the
+shoulder, "come, sir, be of good cheer, you are welcome to me and
+to my house; and what thou hast a mind to, that call for freely:
+for what thou wouldst have my servants will do for thee, and they
+will do it for thee with a ready mind."  All the same, for a long
+time Mr. Fearing was mortally afraid of the servants.  He would as
+soon have thought of stamping his foot for a duchess to come up as
+for any of Gaius's serving-maids.  He was afraid to make any noise
+in his room lest all the house should hear it.  He was afraid to
+touch anything in the room lest it should fall and be broken.  We
+ourselves, with all our assumed ease and elaborate abandon, are
+often afraid to ring our bell even in an inn.  Mr. Fearing would as
+soon have pulled the tail of a rattlesnake.  But before their
+sojourn was over, the Guide was amazed at Mr. Fearing, for that
+hare-hearted pilgrim would be doing things in the house that he
+himself would scarcely do who had been in the house a thousand
+times.  It was Gaius's exuberant heartiness that had demoralised
+Mr. Fearing and made him almost too forward even for a wayside inn.
+In little things also Gaius, mine host, showed his sensitive and
+solicitous hospitality.  We all know housekeepers, not to say
+innkeepers, and not otherwise ungenerous housekeepers either who
+will grudge us a sixpennyworth of sticks and coals in a cold night,
+and that, too, in a room furnished to overflowing by Morton
+Brothers or the Messrs. Maple.  We take a candlestick and a dozen
+candles with us in the boot of the carriage when we wish to read or
+write late into the night in that great house.  Another
+housekeeper, who would give you her only daughter with her wealthy
+dowry, will sometimes be seen by all in her house to grudge you a
+fresh cup of afternoon tea when you drop in to see her and her
+daughter.  She says to herself that it is to spare the servants the
+stairs; but, all the time, under the stairs, the servants are
+blushing for the sometimes unaccountable stinginess of their
+unusually munificent mistress.  I shall give you "line upon line,
+precept upon precept, here a little and there a little" of
+Aristotle upon munificence in little things till you come up to his
+pagan standard.  "There is a real greatness," he says, "even in the
+way that some men will buy a toy to a child.  Even in the smallest
+matters the munificent man will act munificently!"  As Gaius, mine
+host, munificently did.
+
+3.  Speaking of children, what a night of entertainment good old
+Gaius gave the children of the pilgrim party!  "Let the boys have
+the crumbed milk," he gave orders.  "Butter and honey shall they
+eat," he exclaimed over them as that brimming dish came up.  "This
+was our Lord's dish when He was a child," he said to the mother of
+the boys, "that He might know to refuse the evil and to choose the
+good."  Then they brought up a dish of apples, and they were very
+good-tasted fruit.  Then said Matthew, "May we eat apples, since
+they were such by and with which the serpent beguiled our first
+mother?"  Then said Gaius,
+
+
+"Apples were they by which we were beguiled,
+Yet sin, not apples, hath our souls defiled.
+Apples forbid, if eat, corrupt the blood.
+To eat such, when commanded, does us good.
+Drink of His flagons then, thou Church, His Dove,
+And eat His apples who are sick of love."
+
+
+Then said Matthew, "I make the scruple because I awhile since was
+sick with eating of fruit."  "Forbidden fruit," said the host,
+"will make you sick, but not what our Lord hath tolerated."  While
+they were thus talking they were presented with another dish, and
+it was a dish of nuts.  Then said some at the table, "Nuts spoil
+tender teeth, especially the teeth of children," which when Gaius
+heard, he said,
+
+
+"Hard texts are nuts (I will not call them cheaters)
+Whose shells do keep their kernels from the eaters;
+Ope then the shells and you shall have the meat;
+They here are brought for you to crack and eat."
+
+
+Then Samuel whispered to his mother and said, "Mother, this is a
+very good man's house; let us stay here a good while before we go
+any farther."  The which Gaius the host overhearing, said, "With a
+very good will, my child."
+
+4.  Widower as old Gaius was, and never for a single hour forgot
+that he was, there was a certain sweet and stately gallantry
+awakened in his withered old heart at the sight of Christiana and
+Mercy, and especially at the sight of Matthew and Mercy when they
+were seen together.  He seems to have fallen almost in love with
+that aged matron, as he called her, and the days of his youth came
+back to him as he studied the young damsel, who was to her as a
+daughter.  And this set the loquacious old inn-keeper upon that
+famous oration about women which every man who has a mother, or a
+wife, or a sister, or a daughter has by heart.  And from that he
+went on to discourse on the great advantages of an early marriage.
+He was not the man, nor was he speaking to a mother who was the
+woman, ever to become a vulgar and coarse-minded match-maker; at
+the same time, he liked to see Matthew and Mercy sent out on a
+message together, leaving it to nature and to grace to do the rest.
+The pros and cons of early marriage were often up at his hearty
+table, but he always debated, and Gaius was a great debater, that
+true hospitality largely consisted in throwing open the family
+circle to let young people get well acquainted with one another in
+its peace and sweetness.  And Gaius both practised what he
+preached, and at the same time endorsed his watchful wife's last
+testament, when he gave his daughter Phebe to James, Christiana's
+second son, and thus was left alone, poor old Gaius, when the happy
+honeymoon party started upward from his hostel door.
+
+5.  Their next host was one Mr. Mnason, a Cyprusian by nation, and
+an old disciple.  "How far have you come to-day?" he asked.  "From
+the house of Gaius our friend," they said.  "I promise you," said
+he, "you have gone a good stitch; you may well be weary; sit down."
+So they sat down.  "Our great want a while since," said Old Honest,
+"was harbour and good company, and now I hope we have both."  "For
+harbour," said the host, "you see what it is, but for good company
+that will appear in the trial."  After they were a little rested
+Old Honest again asked his host if there were any store of good
+people in that town; and, "How," he said, "shall we do to see some
+of them?  For the sight of good men to them that are going on
+pilgrimage is like to the appearing of the moon and stars to them
+that are sailing upon the seas."  Then Mr. Mnason stamped with his
+foot and his daughter Grace came up, when he sent her out for five
+of his friends in the town, saying that he had a guest or two in
+his house at present to whom he would like to introduce them.
+
+Now, this is another of the good qualities of a good host, to know
+the best and the most suitable people in the town, and to be on
+such terms with them that on short notice they will step across to
+help to entertain such travellers as had come to Mr. Mnason's
+table.  And it is an excellent thing to be sure that when we are so
+invited we shall not only get a good dinner, but also, as good
+"kitchen" with our dinner, good company and good conversation.  It
+is nothing short of a fine art to gather together and to seat
+suitably beside one another good and suitable people as Mr. and
+Miss Mnason did in their hospitable house that afternoon.  And
+then, as to the talk:  let the host and the hostess introduce the
+guests, and then let the guests introduce their own topics.  And as
+far as possible, in a city and a day like this, let our topics be
+books rather than people.  And let the books be the books that the
+guests have read rather than those that the host and the hostess
+have read.  Books are a fine subject for a talk at table.  Only,
+let great readers order their learned and literary talk so as not
+to lead the less learned into temptation.  There is no finer
+exercise of fine feeling than to be able to carry on a conversation
+about matters that other people present are ignorant of, and at the
+same time to interest them, to set them at ease, and to make them
+forget both you and themselves.  I had a letter the other day from
+an English Church clergyman, in which he tells me that his bishop
+is coming this month to his vicarage for a kind of visitation and
+retreat, and that they are to have William Law's Characters and
+Characteristics read aloud to them when the bishop and the
+assembled clergy are at their meals.  For my part, I would rather
+hear a good all-round talk on that book by the bishop and his
+clergy after they had all read the book over and over again at
+home.  But such readings at assembled meals have all along been a
+feature of the best fraternal life in the Church of England and in
+some of the sister churches.
+
+6.  Now, after dining and supping repeatedly with garrulous old
+Gaius, and with the all-but-silent Mr. Mnason, I have come home
+ruminating again and again on this--that a good host, the best
+host, lets his guests talk while he attends to the table.  If the
+truth may even be whispered to one's-self about a table that one
+has just left, Gaius did his best to spoil his good supper by his
+own over-garrulity.  It was good talk that he entertained his
+waiting guests with, but we may have too much of a good thing.  His
+oration in praise of women was an excellent oration, had it been
+delivered in another house than his own; and, say, when he was
+asked to give the health of Christiana, or of Matthew the
+bridegroom and Mercy the bride, it would then have been perfect;
+but not in his own house, and not when his guests were waiting for
+their supper.  On the other hand, you should have seen that perfect
+gentleman, Mr. Mnason.  For that true old Christian and old English
+gentleman never once opened his mouth after he had set his guests
+a-talking.  He was too busy watching when any man's dish was again
+empty.  He was too much delighted to see that every one of his
+guests was having his punctual share of the supper, and at the same
+time his full share of the talk.  Mr. Fearing's small voice was far
+more pleasant to Mr. Mnason than his own voice was in his own best
+story.  As I opened my own door the other night after supping with
+Mr. and Miss Mnason, I said to myself--One thing I have again seen
+and learned to-night, and that is, that a host, and still more a
+hostess, should talk less at their own table than their most
+silent, most bashful, and most backward guest.  "Make this an
+ordinance for thee," said Rabban Shammai to his sons in the law;
+"receive all thy guests with a pleasant expression of countenance,
+and then say little and do much."
+
+
+
+CHRISTIAN
+
+
+
+"The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch."--Luke.
+
+"Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian."--King Agrippa.
+
+"Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from
+iniquity."--Paul.
+
+All the other personages in the Pilgrim's Progress come and go;
+they all ascend the stage for a longer or shorter time, and then
+pass off the stage and so pass out of our sight; but Christian in
+the First Part, and Christiana in the Second Part, are never for a
+single moment out of our sight.  And, accordingly, we have had
+repeated occasion and opportunity to learn many excellent lessons
+from the chief pilgrim's upward walk and heavenly conversation.
+But so full and so rich are his life and his character, that some
+very important things still remain to be collected before we
+finally close his history.  "Gather up the fragments that nothing
+be lost," said our Lord, after His miraculous meal of multiplied
+loaves and fishes with His disciples.  And in like manner I shall
+now proceed to gather up some of the remaining fragments of
+Christian's life and character and experience.  And I shall collect
+these fragments into the three baskets of his book, his burden, and
+his sealed roll and certificate.
+
+1.  And first, a few things as to his book.  "As I slept I dreamed,
+and behold I saw a man clothed in rags standing in a certain place,
+with his face from his own house, a book in his hand, and a great
+burden upon his back.  I looked and saw him open the book and read
+therein; and as he read he wept and trembled; and not being able
+longer to contain he broke out with a lamentable cry, saying, What
+shall I do?"  We hear a great deal in these advertising days, and
+not one word too much, about the books that have influenced and
+gone largely to the making of our great men; but Graceless, like
+John Bunyan, his biographer, was a man of but one book.  But, then,
+that book was the most influential of all books; it was the Book of
+books; it was God's very own and peculiar Book.  And those of us
+who, like this man, have passed out of a graceless into a gracious
+state will for ever remember how that same Book at that time
+influenced us till it made us what we are and shall yet be.  We
+read many other good books at that epoch in our life, but it was
+the pure Bible that we read and prayed over out of sight the most.
+We needed no commentators or exegetes on our simple Bible in those
+days.  The great texts stood out to our eyes in those days as if
+they had been written with a sunbeam; while all other books (and we
+read nothing but the best books in those days) looked like twilight
+and rushlight beside our Bible.  In those immediate, direct, and
+intense days we would have satisfied Wordsworth and Matthew Arnold
+themselves in the way we read our Bible with our eye never off the
+object.  The Four Last Things were ever before us--death and
+judgment, heaven and hell.  "O my dear wife," said Graceless, "and
+you the children of my bowels, I your dear friend am in myself
+undone by reason of a burden that lieth hard upon me; moreover, I
+am for certain informed that this our city will be burned with fire
+from heaven, in which fearful overthrow both myself, with thee my
+wife, and you my sweet babes, shall miserably come to ruin, except
+(the which yet I see not) some way of escape can be found whereby
+we may be delivered."  He would walk also solitarily in the fields,
+sometimes reading and sometimes praying; and thus for some days he
+spent his time.  Graceless at that time and at that stage would
+have satisfied the exigent author of the Practical Treatise upon
+Christian Perfection where he says that "we are too apt also to
+think that we have sufficiently read a book when we have so read it
+as to know what it contains.  This reading may be quite sufficient
+as to many books; but as to the Bible we are not to think that we
+have read it enough because we have often read and heard what it
+teaches.  We must read our Bible, not to know what it contains, but
+to fill our hearts with the spirit of it."  And, again, and on this
+same point, "There is this unerring key to the right use of the
+Bible.  The Bible has only one intent, and that is to make a man
+know, resist, and abhor the working of his fallen earthly nature,
+and to turn the faith, hope, and longing desire of his heart to
+God; and therefore we are only to read our Bibles with this view
+and to learn this one lesson from it . . . The critic looks into
+his books to see how Latin and Greek authors have used the words
+"stranger" and "pilgrim," but the Christian, who knows that man
+lives in labour and toil, in sickness and pain, in hunger and
+thirst, in heat and cold among the beasts of the field, where evil
+spirits like roaring lions seek to devour him--he only knows in
+what truth and reality man is a poor stranger and a distressed
+pilgrim upon the earth."  John Bunyan read neither Plato nor
+Aristotle, but he read David and Paul till he was the chief of
+sinners, and till he was first the Graceless and then the Christian
+of his own next-to-the-Bible book.
+
+2.  In the second place, and as to his burden.  We are supplied
+with no particulars as to the first beginnings, the gradual make-
+up, and at last the terrible size of Christian's burden.  What this
+pilgrim's youthful life must have been in such a city as his native
+city was, and while he was still a young man of such a name and
+such a character in such a city, we are left to ourselves to think
+and consider.  Graceless was his name by nature, and his life was
+as his name and his nature were.  Still, as I have said, we have no
+detailed and particular account of his early life when his burden
+was still day and night in the making up.  How long into your life
+were you graceless, my brother?  And what kind of life did you lead
+day and night before you were persuaded or alarmed, as the case may
+have been with you, into being a Christian?  What burdens do you
+carry on your broken back to this day that were made up in the
+daylight or in the darkness by your own hands in your early days?
+Were you early or were you too late in your conversion?  Or are you
+truly converted to God and to salvation even yet?  And are you at
+this moment still binding a burden on your back that you shall
+never lay down on this side your grave--it may be, not on this side
+your burning bed in hell?  Ask yourselves all that before God and
+before your own conscience, and make yourselves absolutely sure
+that God at any rate is not mocked; and, therefore that you, too,
+shall in the end reap exactly as you from the beginning have sown.
+"How camest thou by thy burden at first?" asked Mr. Worldly-Wiseman
+at the trembling pilgrim.  "By reading this book in my hand," he
+answered.  And, in the long run, it is always the Bible that best
+creates a sinner's burden, binds it on his back, and makes it so
+terribly heavy to bear.  Fear of death and judgment will sometimes
+make up and bind on a sinner's burden; and sometimes the fear of
+man's judgment on this side of death will do it.  Fear of being
+found out in some cases will make a man's secret sin far too heavy
+for him to bear.  The throne of public opinion is not a very white
+throne; at the same time, it is a coarse forecast and a rough
+foretaste of the last judgment; and the fear of it not seldom makes
+a man's burden simply intolerable to him.  Sometimes a great
+sinner's burden leads him to flight and outlawry; sometimes to
+madness and self-murder; and sometimes, by the timeous and
+sufficient grace of God, to the way of escape that our pilgrim
+took.  Tenderness of conscience, also, simple softness of heart and
+conscience, will sometimes make a terrible burden out of what other
+men would call a very light matter.  Bind a burden on that iron
+pillar standing there, and it will feel nothing and say nothing.
+But, bind the same burden on that man in whose seat that dead
+pillar takes up a sitter's room, and he will make all that are in
+the house hear his sighs and his groans.  And lay an act of sin--an
+evil word or evil work or evil thought--on one man among us, and he
+will walk about the streets with as erect a head and as smiling a
+countenance and as light a step as if he were an innocent child;
+while, lay half as much on his neighbour, and it will so bruise him
+to the earth that all men will take knowledge of him that he is a
+miserable man.  Our Lord could no doubt have carried His cross from
+the hall of judgment to the hill-top without help had His back not
+been wet with blood.  What with a whole and an unwealed body, a
+well-rested and well-nourished body, He could easily have carried,
+with His broken body and broken heart He quite sank under.  And so
+it is with His people.  One of His heart-broken, heart-bleeding
+people will sink down to death and hell under a burden of sin and
+corruption that another of them will scarcely feel or know or
+believe that it is there.  Some sins again in themselves, and by
+reason of several aggravations, are far more heavy to bear than
+others, and by some sinners than others.  I was reading Bishop
+Andrewes to myself last night and came upon this pertinent passage.
+"Sin:  its measure, its harm, its scandal.  Its quality:  how
+often--how long.  The person by whom:  his age, condition, state,
+enlightenment.  Its manner, motive, time, and place.  The folly of
+it, the ingratitude of it, the hardness of it, the presumptuousness
+of it.  By heart, by mouth, by deed.  Against God, my neighbours,
+my own body.  By knowledge, by ignorance.  Willingly and
+unwillingly.  Of old and of late.  In boyhood and youth, in mature
+and old age.  Things done once, repeated often, hidden and open.
+Things done in anger, and from the lust of the flesh and of the
+world.  Before and after my call.  Asleep by night and awake by
+day.  Things remembered and things forgotten.  Through the fiery
+darts of the enemy, through the unclean desires of the flesh--I
+have sinned against Thee.  Have mercy on me, O God, and forgive
+me!"  That is the way some men's burdens are made up to such
+gigantic proportions and then bound on by such acute cords.  That
+is the way that Lancelot Andrewes and John Bunyan walked solitarily
+in the fields, sometimes reading and sometimes praying, till the
+one of them put himself into his immortal Devotions, and the other
+into his immortal Grace Abounding and Pilgrim's Progress.
+
+"Then I saw in my dream that Christian asked the Gate-keeper
+further if he could not help him off with his burden that was upon
+his back, for as yet he had not got rid of it, nor could he by any
+means get it off without help.  He told him, "As to thy burden, be
+content to bear it until thou comest to the place of deliverance,
+for there it will fall from off thy back itself."  Now I saw in my
+dream that the highway up which Christian was to go was fenced on
+either side with a wall, and that wall is Salvation.  Up this way,
+therefore, did burdened Christian run, but not without great
+difficulty, because of the load on his back.  He ran thus till he
+came to a place somewhat ascending, and upon that place stood a
+cross, and a little below in the bottom a sepulchre.  So I saw in
+my dream that just as Christian came up with the cross his burden
+loosed from off his back, and began to tumble and so continued to
+do till it came to the mouth of the sepulchre, where it fell in and
+I saw it no more.  Then was Christian glad and lightsome, and said
+with a merry heart, "He hath given me rest by His sorrow, and life
+by His death!"
+
+
+"Blest Cross! blest Sepulchre!  Blest rather be
+The Man that there was put to shame for me."
+
+
+But, then, how it could be that this so happy man was scarcely a
+stone-cast past the cross when he had begun again to burden himself
+with fresh sin, and thus to disinter all his former sin?  How a
+true pilgrim comes to have so many burdens to bear, and that till
+he ceases to be any longer a pilgrim,--a burden of guilt, a burden
+of corruption, and a burden of bare creaturehood,--I must leave all
+that, and all the questions connected with all that, for you all to
+think out and work out for yourselves; and you will not say any
+morning on this earth, like Mrs. Timorous, that you have little to
+do.
+
+3.  The third of the three Shining Ones who saluted Christian at
+the cross set a mark on his forehead, and put a roll with a seal
+set upon it into his hand.  A roll and a seal which he bid him look
+on as he ran, and that he should give that roll in at the Celestial
+Gate.  Bunyan does not in all places come up to his usual clearness
+in what he says about the sealed roll.  We must believe that he
+understood his own meaning and intention in all that he says, first
+and last, about the roll, but he has not always made his meaning
+clear, at least to one of his readers.  Theological students, and,
+indeed, all thoughtful Christian men, are invited to read Dr.
+Cunningham's powerful paper on Assurance in his Reformers.  The
+whole literature of Assurance is there taken up and weighed and
+sifted with all that great writer's incomparable learning and power
+and judgment.  Our Larger Catechism, also, is excellent on this
+subject; and this subject is a favourite commonplace with all our
+best Calvinistic, Puritan, and Evangelical authors.  Let us take
+two or three passages out of those authors just as a specimen, and
+so close.
+
+"Can true believers"--Larger Catechism, Question 80--"Can true
+believers be infallibly assured that they are in an estate of
+grace, and that they shall persevere therein to the end?  Answer:
+Such as truly believe in Christ, and endeavour to walk in all good
+conscience before Him may, without extraordinary revelation, by
+faith grounded upon the truth of God's promise, and by the Spirit
+enabling them to discern in themselves those graces to which the
+promises of eternal life are made, and bearing witness with their
+spirits that they are the children of God, they may be infallibly
+assured that they are in the estate of grace, and shall persevere
+therein unto salvation."  Question 81:  "Are all true believers at
+all times assured of their present being in a state of grace, and
+that they shall be saved?  Answer:  Assurance of grace and
+salvation not being of the essence of faith, true believers may
+wait long before they obtain it, and, after the enjoyment thereof,
+may have it weakened and intermitted through manifold distempers,
+sins, temptations, and desertions; yet are they never left without
+such a presence and support of the Spirit of God as keeps them from
+sinking into utter despair."  "A Christian's assurance," says
+Fraser of Brea, "though it does not firstly flow from his holiness,
+yet is ever after proportionable to his holy walking.  Faith is
+kept in a pure conscience.  Sin is like a blot of ink fallen upon
+our evidence.  This I found to be a truth."  "It was the speech of
+one to me," says Thomas Shepard of New England, "next to the
+donation of Christ, no mercy like this, to deny assurance long; and
+why?  For if the Lord had not, I should have given way to a loose
+heart and life.  And this is a rule I have long held--long denial
+of assurance is like fire to burn out some sin and then the Lord
+will speak peace."  "Serve your God day and night faithfully," says
+Dr. Goodwin.  "Walk humbly; and there is a promise of the Holy
+Ghost to come and fill your hearts with joy unspeakable and
+glorious to rear you up to the day of redemption.  Sue this promise
+out, wait for it, rest not in believing only, rest not in assurance
+by graces only; there is a further assurance to be had."  "I would
+not give a straw for that assurance," says John Newton, "which sin
+will not damp.  If David had come from his adultery and still have
+talked of his assurance, I should have despised his speech."  "When
+we want the faith of assurance," says Matthew Henry, "let us live
+by the faith of adherence."  And then the whole truth is in a
+nutshell in Isaiah and in John:  "The effect of righteousness shall
+be quietness and assurance for ever," and "My little children, let
+us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth.
+And hereby we shall know that we are of the truth, and so shall
+assure our hearts before Him."
+
+
+
+CHRISTIANA
+
+
+
+"Honour widows that are widows indeed."--Paul.
+
+We know next to nothing of Christiana till after she is a widow
+indeed.  The names of her parents, and what kind of parents they
+were, the schools and the boarding-schools to which they sent their
+daughter, her school companions, the books she read, if she ever
+read any books at all, the amusements she was indulged in and
+indulged herself in--on all that her otherwise full and minute
+biographer is wholly silent.  He does not go back beyond her
+married life; he does not even go back to the beginning of that.
+The only thing we are sure of about Christiana's early days is that
+she was an utterly ungodly woman and that she married an utterly
+ungodly man.  "Have you a family?  Are you a married man?" asked
+Charity of Christian in the House Beautiful.  "I have a wife and
+four small children," he replied.  "And why did you not bring them
+along with you?"  Then Christian wept, and said:  "Oh, how
+willingly would I have done it; but they were all utterly averse to
+my going on pilgrimage."  "But you should have talked to them,"
+said Charity, "and have endeavoured to have shown them the danger
+of being behind."  "So I did," answered Christian.  "And did you
+pray to God that He would bless your counsel to them?"  "Yes, and
+with much affection; for you must think that my wife and poor
+children were very dear unto me."  "But what could they say for
+themselves why they came not?"  "Why, my wife was afraid of losing
+the world, and my children were given over to the foolish delights
+of youth; so what with one thing and what with another, they left
+me to wander in this manner alone."
+
+But what her husband's conversion, good example, and most earnest
+entreaties could not all do for his worldly wife, that his sudden
+death speedily did.  And thus it is that both Christiana's best
+life, all our interest in her, and all our information about her,
+dates, sad to say, not from her espousal, nor from her marriage
+day, nor from any part of her married life, but from her husband's
+death.  Her maidenhood has no interest for us; all our interest is
+fixed on her widowhood.  This work of fiction now in our hands
+begins where all other works of fiction end; for in the life of
+religion, you must know, our best is always before us.  Well,
+scarcely was her husband dead when Christiana began to accuse
+herself of having killed him.  To take her own bitter words for it,
+the most agonising and remorseful thoughts about her conduct to her
+husband stung her heart like so many wasps.  Ah yes!  A wasp's
+sting is but a blade of innocent grass compared with the thoughts
+that have stung us all as we recalled what we said and did to those
+who are now no more.  There are graves in the churchyard we dare
+not go near.  "I have sinned away your father!" she cried, as she
+threw herself on the earth at the feet of her astounded children.
+"I have sinned away your father and he is gone!"  And yet there was
+no mark of a bullet and no gash of a knife on his dead body, and no
+chemistry could have extracted one grain of arsenic or of
+strychnine out of his blood.  But there are many ways of taking a
+man's life besides those of poison or a knife or a gunshot.
+Constant fault-finding, constant correction and studied contempt
+before strangers, total want of sympathy and encouragement, gloomy
+looks, rough remarks, all blame and never a word of praise, things
+like these between man and wife will kill as silently and as surely
+as poison or suffocation.  Look at home, my brethren, and ask
+yourselves what you will think of much of your present conduct when
+it has borne its proper fruit.  "Upon this came into her mind by
+swarms all her unkind, unnatural, and ungodly carriages to her dear
+friend, which also clogged her conscience and did load her with
+guilt.  It all returned upon her like a flash of lightning, and
+rent the caul of her heart asunder."  "That which troubleth me
+most," she would cry out, "is my churlish carriages to him when he
+was under distress.  I am that woman," she would cry out and would
+not be appeased--"I am that woman that was so hardhearted as to
+slight my husband's troubles, and that left him to go on his
+journey alone.  How like a churl I carried myself to him in all
+that!  And so guilt took hold of my mind," she said to the
+Interpreter, "and would have drawn me to the pond!"
+
+A minister's widow once told me that she had gone home after
+hearing a sermon of mine on the text, "What profit is there in my
+blood?" and had destroyed a paper of poison she had purchased in
+her despair on the previous Saturday night.  It was not a sermon
+from her unconscious minister, but it was far better; it was a
+conversation that Christiana held with her four boys that fairly
+and for ever put all thought of the pond out of their mother's
+remorseful mind.  "So Christiana," as we read in the opening of her
+history--"so Christiana called her sons together and began thus to
+address herself unto them:  My sons, I have, as you may perceive,
+been of late under much exercise in my soul about the death of your
+father.  My carriages to your father in his distress are a great
+load on my conscience.  Come, my children, let us pack up and be
+gone to the gate, that we may see your father and be with him,
+according to the laws of that land."  I like that passage, I think,
+the best in all Christiana's delightful history--that passage which
+begins with these words:  "So she called her children together."
+For when she called her children together she opened to them both
+her heart and her conscience; and from that day there was but one
+heart and one conscience in all that happy house.  I was walking
+alone on a country road the other day, and as I was walking I was
+thinking about my pastoral work and about my people and their
+children, when all at once I met one of my people.  My second
+sentence to him was:  "This very moment I was thinking about your
+sons.  How are they getting on?"  He quite well understood me.  He
+knew that I was not indifferent as to how they were getting on in
+business, but he knew that I was alluding more to the life of
+godliness and virtue in their hearts and in their characters.  "O
+sir," he said, "you may give your sons the skin off your back, but
+they will not give you their confidence!"  So had it been with
+Christian and his sons.  He had never managed, even in his
+religion, to get into the confidence of his sons; but when their
+mother took them into her agonised confidence, from that day she
+was in all their confidences, good and bad.  You who are in your
+children's confidences will pray in secret for my lonely friend
+with the skin off his back, will you not? that he may soon be able
+to call his sons together so as to start together on a new life of
+family love, and family trust, and family religion.  That was a
+fine sight.  Who will make a picture of it?  This widow indeed at
+the head of her family council-table, and Matthew at the foot, and
+James and Joseph and Samuel all in their places.  "Come, my
+children, let us pack up that we may see your father!"  Then did
+her children burst into tears for joy that the heart of their
+mother was so inclined.
+
+From that first family council let us pass on to Christiana's last
+interview with her family and her other friends.  Her biographer
+introduces her triumphant translation with this happy comment on
+the margin:  "How welcome is death to them that have nothing to do
+but die!"  Well, that was exactly Christiana's case.  She had so
+packed up at the beginning of her journey; she had so got and had
+so kept the confidences of all her sons; she had seen them all so
+married in the Lord, and thus so settled in a life of godliness and
+virtue; she had, in short, lived the life of a widow indeed, till,
+when the post came for her, she had nothing left to do but just to
+rise up and follow him.  His token to her was an arrow with a point
+sharpened with love, let easily into her heart, which by degrees
+wrought so effectually with her that at the time appointed she must
+be gone.  We have read of arrows of death sharpened sometimes with
+steel and sometimes with poison; but this arrow, shot from heaven,
+was sharpened to a point with love.  Indeed, that arrow, or the
+very fellow of it, had been shot into Christiana's heart long ago
+when she stood at that spot somewhat ascending where was a cross
+and a sepulchre; and, especially, ever since the close of
+Greatheart's great discourse on pardon by deed.  For the hearing of
+that famous discourse had made her exclaim:  "Oh!  Thou loving One,
+it makes my heart bleed to think that Thou shouldest bleed for me!
+Oh!  Thou blessed One, Thou deservest to have me, for Thou hast
+bought me!  Thou deservest to have me all, for Thou hast paid for
+me ten thousand times more than I am worth!"  Now it was with all
+that love working effectually in her heart that Christiana called
+for her children to give them her blessing.  And what a comfort it
+was to her to see them all around her with the mark of the kingdom
+on their foreheads, and with their garments white.  "My sons and my
+daughters," she said, "be you all ready against the time His post
+calls for you."  Then she called for Mr. Valiant-for-truth, and
+entreated him to have an eye on her children, and to speak
+comfortably to them if at any time he saw them faint.  And then she
+gave Mr. Standfast her ring.  "Behold," she said, as Mr. Honest
+came in--"Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!"  Then
+Mr. Ready-to-halt came in, and then Mr. Despondency and his
+daughter Much-afraid, and then Mr. Feeble-mind.  Now the day drew
+on that Christiana must be gone.  So the road was full of people to
+see her take her journey.  But, behold! all the banks beyond the
+river were full of horses and chariots which were come down from
+above to accompany her to the City gates, so she came forth and
+entered the river with a beckon of farewell to those that followed
+her to the riverside.  The last word she was heard to say here was,
+"I come, Lord, to be with Thee, and to bless Thee."
+
+But with all this, you must not suppose that this good woman, this
+mother in Israel, had forgotten her grandchildren.  She would
+sooner have forgotten her own children.  But she was too good a
+woman to forget either.  For long ago, away back at the river on
+this side the Delectable Mountains, she had said to her four
+daughters--I must tell you exactly what she has said:  "Here," she
+said, "in this meadow there are cotes and folds for sheep, and an
+house is built here also for the nourishing and bringing up of
+those lambs, even the babes of those women that go on pilgrimage.
+Also there is One here who can have compassion and that can gather
+these lambs with His arm and carry them in His bosom.  This Man,
+she said, will house and harbour and succour the little ones, so
+that none of them shall be lacking in time to come.  This Man, if
+any of them go astray or be lost, He will bring them again, He will
+bind up that which was broken, and will strengthen them that are
+sick.  So they were content to commit their little ones to that
+Man, and all this was to be at the charge of the King, and so it
+was as a hospital to young children and orphans."
+
+And now I shall sum up my chief impressions of Christiana under the
+three heads of her mind, her heart, and her widowhood indeed.
+
+1.  The mother of Christian's four sons was a woman of real mind,
+as so many of the maidens, and wives, and widows of Puritan England
+and Covenanting Scotland were.  You gradually gather that
+impression just from being beside her as the journey goes on.  She
+does not speak much; but, then, there is always something
+individual, remarkable, and memorable in what she says.  I have a
+notion of my own that Christiana must have been a reader of that
+princely Puritan, John Milton.  And if that was so, that of itself
+would be certificate enough as to her possession of mind.  There is
+always a dignity and a strength about her utterances that make us
+feel sure that she had always had a mind far above her neighbours,
+Mrs. Bat's-eyes, Mrs. Light-mind, and Mrs. Know-nothing.  The first
+time she opens her mouth in our hearing she lets fall an expression
+that Milton had just made famous in his Samson -
+
+
+"Ease to the body some, none to the mind
+From restless thoughts, that like a deadly swarm
+Of hornets armed no sooner found alone,
+But rush upon me thronging, and present
+Times past, what once I was, and what am now."
+
+
+Nor can I leave this point without asserting it to you that no
+church and no school of theology has ever developed the mind as
+well as sanctified the heart of the common people like the
+preaching of the Puritan pulpit.  Matthew Arnold was not likely to
+over-estimate the good that Puritanism had done to England.
+Indeed, in his earlier writings he sometimes went out of his way to
+lament the hurt that the Puritan spirit had done to liberality of
+life and mind in his native land.  But in his riper years we find
+him saying:  "Certainly," he says, "I am not blind to the faults of
+the Puritan discipline, but it has been an invaluable discipline
+for that poor, inattentive, and immoral creature, man.  And the
+more I read history and the more I see of mankind, the more I
+recognise the value of the Puritan discipline."  And in that same
+Address he "founded his best hopes for that so enviable and
+unbounded country in which he was speaking, America, on the fact
+that so many of its millions had passed through the Puritan
+discipline."  John Milton was a product of that discipline on the
+one hand, as John Bunyan was on the other.  Christiana was another
+of its products in the sphere of the family, just as Matthew Arnold
+himself had some of his best qualities out of the same fruitful
+school.
+
+2.  Her heart, her deep, strong, tender heart, is present on every
+page of Christiana's noble history.  Her heart keeps her often
+silent when the water in her eyes becomes all the more eloquent.
+When she does let her heart utter itself in words, her words are
+fine and memorable.  As, for one instance, after Greatheart's
+discourse on redemption.  "O Mercy, that thy father and mother were
+here; yea, and Mrs. Timorous also.  Nay, I wish with all my heart
+now that here was Madam Wanton, too.  Surely, surely, their hearts
+would be affected, nor could the fear of the one, nor the powerful
+lusts of the other, prevail with them to go home again, and to
+refuse to become good pilgrims."  But it was not so much what she
+said herself that brought out the depth and tenderness of
+Christiana's heart, it was rather the way her heart loosened other
+people's tongues.  You must all have felt how some people's
+presence straitens your heart and sews up your mouth.  While there
+are other people, again, whose simple presence unseals your heart
+and makes you eloquent.  We ministers keenly feel that both in our
+public and in our private ministrations.  There are people in whose
+hard and chilling presence we cannot even say grace as we should
+say it.  Whereas, we all know other people, people of a heart, that
+is, whose presence somehow so touches our lips that we always when
+near them rise far above ourselves.  Christiana did not speak much
+to her guides and instructors and companions, but they always spoke
+their best to her, and it was her heart that did it.
+
+3.  And then a widow indeed is just a true and genuine widow; a
+widow not in her name and in her weeds only, but still more in her
+deep heart, in her whole life, and in her garnered experience.
+"Honour widows that are widows indeed.  Now, she that is a widow
+indeed and desolate, trusteth in God, and continueth in
+supplications and in prayers night and day.  Well reported of for
+good works; if she have brought up children, if she have lodged
+strangers, if she have washed the saints' feet, if she have
+relieved the afflicted, if she have diligently followed every good
+work."  These are the true marks and seals and occupations of a
+widow indeed.  And if she has had unparalleled trials and
+irreparable losses, she has her corresponding consolations and
+compensations.  For she has a freedom to go about and do good, a
+liberty and an experience that neither the unmarried maiden nor the
+married wife can possibly have.  She can do multitudes of things
+that in the nature of things neither of them can attempt to do.
+Things that would be both unseemly and impossible for other women
+to say or to do are both perfectly seemly and wholly open for her
+to say and to do.  Her widowhood is a sacred shield to her.  Her
+sorrow is a crown of honour and a sceptre of authority to her.  She
+is consulted by the young and the inexperienced, by the forsaken
+and by the forlorn, as no other human being ever is.  She has come
+through this life, and by a long experience she knows this world
+and the hearts that fill it and make it what it is.  A widow indeed
+can show a sympathy, and give a counsel, and speak with a weight of
+wisdom that one's own mother cannot always do.  All you who by
+God's sad dispensation are now clothed in the "white and wimpled
+folds" of widowhood, let your prayer and your endeavour day and
+night be that God would guide and enable you to be widows indeed.
+And, if you do, you shall want neither your occupation nor your
+honour.
+
+
+
+THE ENCHANTED GROUND
+
+
+
+"Surely there is no enchantment against Jacob, neither is there any
+divination against Israel."--Balaam.
+
+"I saw then in my dream that they went till they came into a
+certain country whose air naturally tended to make one drowsy if he
+came a stranger to it.  And here Hopeful began to be very dull and
+heavy of sleep, wherefore he said unto Christian, I do now begin to
+grow so drowsy that I can scarcely hold up mine eyes; let us lie
+down here and take one nap."  And then when we turn to the same
+place in the Second Part we read thus:  "By this time they were got
+to the Enchanted Ground, where the air naturally tended to make one
+drowsy.  And that place was all grown over with briars and thorns,
+excepting here and there, where was an enchanted arbour, upon
+which, if a man sits, or in which if a man sleeps, 'tis a question,
+say some, whether they shall ever rise or wake again in this world.
+Now, they had not gone far, but a great mist and darkness fell upon
+them all, so that they could scarce, for a great while, see the one
+the other.  Wherefore they were forced for some time to feel for
+one another by words, for they walked not by sight.  Nor was there
+on all this ground so much as one inn or victualling-house wherein
+to refresh the feebler sort.  Then they came to an arbour, warm,
+and promising much refreshing to the pilgrims, for it was finely
+wrought above head, beautified with greens, and furnished with
+couches and settles.  It also had a soft couch on which the weary
+might lean.  This arbour was called The Slothful Man's Friend, on
+purpose to allure, if it might be, some of the pilgrims there to
+take up their rest when weary.  This, you must think, all things
+considered, was tempting.  I saw in my dream also that they went on
+in this their solitary way till they came to a place at which a man
+is very apt to lose his way.  Now, though when it was light, their
+guide could well enough tell how to miss those ways that led wrong,
+yet in the dark he was put to a stand.  But he had in his pocket a
+map of all ways leading to or from the Celestial City, wherefore he
+struck a light (for he never goes also without his tinder-box), and
+takes a view of his book or map, which bids him be careful in that
+place to turn to the right-hand way.  Then I thought with myself,
+who that goeth on pilgrimage but would have one of those maps about
+him, that he may look when he is at a stand, which is the way to
+take?"
+
+1.  "But what is the meaning of all this?" asked Christiana of the
+guide.  "This Enchanted Ground,"--her able and experienced friend
+answered her, "this is one of the last refuges that the enemy to
+pilgrims has; wherefore it is, as you see, placed almost at the end
+of the way, and so it standeth against us with the more advantage.
+For when, thinks the enemy, will these fools be so desirous to sit
+down as when they are weary, and when so like to be weary as when
+almost at their journey's end?  Therefore it is, I say, that the
+Enchanted Ground is placed so nigh to the land Beulah and so near
+the end of their race; wherefore let pilgrims look to themselves
+lest they fall asleep till none can waken them."  "That masterpiece
+of Bunyan's insight into life, the Enchanted Ground," says Mr.
+Louis Stevenson, "where his allegory cuts so deep to people looking
+seriously on life."  Yes, indeed, Bunyan's insight into life!  And
+his allegory that cuts so deep!  For a neophyte, and one with
+little insight into life, or into himself, would go to look for
+this land of darkness and thorns and pitfalls, alternated with
+arbours and settles and soft couches--one new to life and to
+himself, I say, would naturally expect to see all that confined to
+the region between the City of Destruction and the Slough of
+Despond; or, at the worst, long before, and never after, the House
+Beautiful.  But Bunyan looked too straight at life and too
+unflinchingly into his own heart to lay down his sub-Celestial
+lands in that way; and when we begin to look with a like
+seriousness on the religious life, and especially when we begin to
+look bold enough and deep enough into our own heart, then we too
+shall freely acknowledge the splendid master-stroke of Bunyan in
+the Enchanted Ground.  That this so terrible experience is laid
+down almost at the end of the Celestial way--the blaze of light
+that pours upon our heads fairly startles us, while at the same
+time it comforts us and assures us.  That this Enchanted Ground,
+which has proved so fatal to so many false pilgrims, and so all but
+fatal to so many true pilgrims, should lie around the very borders
+of Beulah, and should be within all but eye-shot of the Celestial
+City itself,--that is something to be thankful for, and something
+to lay up in the deepest and the most secret place in our heart.
+That these pilgrims, after all their feastings and entertainments--
+after the Delectable Mountains and the House Beautiful--should all
+be plunged upon a land where there was not so much as a roadside
+inn, where the ways were so dark and so long that the pilgrims had
+to shout aloud in order to keep together, where, instead of moon or
+stars, they had to walk in the spark of a small tinder-box--what an
+encouragement and assurance to us is all that!  That is no strange
+thing, then, that is now happening to us, when, after our fine
+communion season, we have suddenly fallen back into this deep
+darkness, and are cast into these terrible temptations, and feel as
+if all our past experiences and attainments and enjoyments had been
+but a self-delusion and a snare.  That we should all but have
+fallen fast asleep, and all but have ceased both from watching
+against sin and from waiting upon God--well, that is nothing more
+than Hopeful himself would have done had he not had a wary old
+companion to watch over him, and to hold his eyes open.  Let all
+God's people present who feel that they are nothing better of all
+they have enjoyed of Scriptures and sacraments, but rather worse;
+let all those who feel sure that they have wandered into a castaway
+land, so dark, so thorny, so miry, and so lonely is their life--let
+them read this masterpiece of John Bunyan again and again and take
+heart of hope.
+
+
+"When Saints do sleepy grow, let them come hither
+And hear how these two pilgrims talk together;
+Yea, let them hear of them, in any wise,
+Thus to keep ope their drowsy slumb'ring eyes;
+Saints' fellowship, if it be managed well,
+Keeps them awake, and that in spite of hell."
+
+
+2.  But far worse than all its briars and thorns, far more fatal
+than all its ditches and pitfalls, were the enchanted arbours they
+came on here and there planted up and down that evil land.  For
+those arbours are all of this fatal nature, that if a man falls
+asleep in any of them it arises a question whether he shall ever
+come to himself again in this world.  Now, where there are no inns
+nor victualling-houses, no Gaius and no Mr. Mnason, what a danger
+all those ill-intended arbours scattered all up and down that
+country become!  Well, then, the first enchanted arbour that the
+pilgrims came to was built just inside the borders of the land, and
+it was called The Stranger's Arbour--so many new-comers had lain
+down in it never to rise again.  The young and the inexperienced,
+with those who were naturally of a believing, buoyant, easy mind,
+lay down in hundreds here.  Hopeful's mind was naturally a mind of
+a soft and easy and self-indulgent cast; and had he been alone that
+day, or had he had for a companion a man of a less wary, less
+anxious, and less urgent mind than Christian was, Hopeful had taken
+a nap, as he so confidingly called it--a fatal nap in that arbour
+built by the enemy of pilgrims, just on purpose for the young and
+the ignorant, the inexperienced and the self-indulgent.
+
+3.  The Slothful Man's Arbour has been already described.  It was a
+warm arbour, and it promised much refreshing to the pilgrims.  It
+also had in it a soft couch on which the weary might lean.  "Let us
+lie down here and take just one nap; we shall be refreshed if we
+take a nap!"  "Do you not remember," said the other, "that one of
+the shepherds bid us beware of the Enchanted Ground?  And he meant
+by that that we should beware of sleeping; wherefore let us not
+sleep as do others, but let us watch and be sober."  Now, what is a
+nap?  And what is it to take a nap in our religion?  The New
+Testament is full of warnings to those who read it and go by it--
+most solemn and most fearful warnings--against SLEEP.  Now, have
+you any clear idea in your minds as to what this divinely denounced
+sleep is?  Sleep is good and necessary in our bodily life.  We
+would not live long if we did not sleep; we would soon go out of
+our mind; we would soon lose our senses if we did not sleep.
+Insomnia is one of the worst symptoms of our eager, restless, over-
+worked age.  "He giveth His beloved sleep"; and while they sleep
+their corn grows they know not how.  But sleep in the great
+exhortation-passages of the Holy Scriptures does not mean rest and
+restoration; it means in all those passages insensibility,
+stupidity, danger, and death.  In our nightly sleep, and in the
+measure of its soundness, we are utterly dead to the world around
+us.  Men may come into our house and rob us of our most precious
+possessions; they may even come up to our bed and murder us; our
+whole house may be in a blaze about us; we may only awaken to leap
+out of sleep into eternity.  Now, we are all in a sleep like that
+in our souls.  There is above us, and around us, and beneath us,
+and within us the eternal world, and we are all sound asleep; we
+are all stone-dead in the midst of it.  Devils and wicked men are
+stealing our treasures for eternity, and we are sound asleep; hell
+is already kindling our bed beneath us, but we smell not its
+flames, or we only catch the first gasp of them before we make our
+everlasting bed among them.  Therefore let us not sleep as do
+others, but let us watch and be sober.  What meanest thou, O
+sleeper? arise and call upon thy God!  When the guide shook
+Heedless and Too-bold off their settles in that slothful arbour,
+the one of them said with his eyes still shut, "I will pay you when
+I take my money," and the other said, "I will fight so long as I
+can hold my sword in my hand."  At that one of the children
+laughed.  "What is the meaning of that?" asked Christiana.  The
+guide said:  "They talk in their sleep."  So they did, and so do
+all men.  For this whole world is full of settles on which men
+sleep and talk in their sleep.  The newspapers to-morrow morning
+will all be full to overflowing of what men have said and written
+to-day and yesterday in their sleep.  The shops and the banks and
+the exchanges will all be full of men making promises and settling
+accounts in their sleep.  They will finger their purses, and grasp
+their swords, and all in their sleep.  And not children but devils
+will laugh as they hear the folly that falls from men's lips who
+are besotted with spiritual sleep and drugged with spiritual and
+fleshly sin.  A dream cometh through the multitude of business.  I
+had just got this length in this lecture the other night when I
+went to sleep.  And in my sleep one of my people came to me and
+asked me if I could make it quite clear and plain to him what it
+would be for a man like him after a communion-time to begin to walk
+with God.  And I just wish I could make the things of the Enchanted
+Ground as plain to myself and to you to-night as I was able to make
+a walk with God plain to myself and to my visitor that night in my
+ministerial dream.  I often wish that my business mind worked as
+well in my study chair and in my pulpit as it sometimes does in my
+bed and in my sleep.  "Now, I beheld in my dream that they talked
+more in their sleep at this time than ever they did in all their
+journey.  And being in a muse thereabout, the gardener said even to
+me:  Wherefore musest thou at the matter?  It is the nature of the
+fruit of the grapes of those vineyards to go down so sweetly as to
+cause the lips of them that are asleep to speak."  The reason my
+poor lips spake so sweetly about a walk with God that night most
+have been because I spent all the summer evening before walking
+with God and with you in the vineyards of Beulah.
+
+4.  Listen to Samson, shorn of his locks, as he shakes himself off
+a soft and sweetly-worked couch in The Sensual Man's Arbour:
+
+
+"No, no;
+It fits not; thou and I long since are twain;
+Nor think me so unwary or accurst
+To bring my feet again into the snare
+Where once I have been caught; I know thy trains,
+Though dearly to my cost, thy gins, and toils;
+Thy fair enchanted cup and warbling charms
+No more on me have power, their force is null'd;
+So much of adder's wisdom have I learnt
+To fence my ear against thy sorceries.
+If in my flower of youth and strength, when all men
+Loved, honour'd, fear'd me, thou alone couldst hate me,
+Thy husband, slight me, sell me, and forego me;
+How wouldst thou use me now, blind, and thereby
+Deceivable, in most things as a child,
+Helpless, thence easily contemn'd, and scorn'd,
+And last neglected?  How wouldst thou insult,
+When I must live uxorious to thy will
+In perfect thraldom!  How again betray me,
+Bearing my words and doings to the lords
+To gloss upon, and censuring, frown or smile!
+This jail I count the house of liberty
+To thine, whose doors my feet shall never enter."
+
+
+5.  The love of money to some men is the root of all evil.  There
+came once a youth to St. Philip Neri and, flushed with joy, told
+him that his parents after much entreaty had at length allowed him
+to study law.  St. Philip was not a man of many words.  "What
+then?" the saint simply asked the shining youth.  "Then I shall
+become a lawyer!"  "And then?" pursued Philip.  "Then," said the
+young man, "I shall earn a nice sum of money, and I shall purchase
+a fine country house, procure a carriage and horses, marry a
+handsome and rich wife, and lead a delightful life!"  "And then?"
+"Then,"--the youth reflected as death and eternity arose before his
+eyes, and from that day he began to take care of his immortal soul.
+Philip with one word snatched that young man's soul off The Rich
+Man's Settle.
+
+6.  The Vain Man's Settle draws down many men to shame and
+everlasting contempt.  Praise a vain man or a vain woman aright and
+enough and you will get them to do anything you like.  Give a vain
+man sufficient publicity in your paper or on your platform and he
+will become a spy, a traitor, and cut-throat in your service.  The
+sorcerer's cup of praise--keep it full enough in a vain man's hand,
+and he will sleep in the arbour of vanity till he wakens in hell.
+Madam Bubble, the arch-enchantress, knows her own, and she has,
+with her purse, her promotion, and her praise, bought off many a
+promising pilgrim.
+
+7.  And then she, by virtue of whose sorceries this whole land is
+drugged and enchanted, is such a bold slut that she will build a
+Sacred Arbour even, and will fill it full of religious enchantment
+for you rather than lose hold of you.  She will consecrate places
+and persons and periods for you if your taste lies that way; she
+will build costly and stately churches for you; she will weave rich
+vestments and carve rich vessels; she will employ all the arts; she
+will even sanctify and set apart and seat aloft her holy men--what
+will she not do to please you, to take you, to intoxicate and
+enchant you?  She will juggle for your soul equally well whether
+you are a country clown in a feeing-market or a fine lady of
+aesthetic tastes and religious sensibilities in the capital and the
+court.  But I shall let Father Faber speak, who can speak on this
+subject both with authority and with attraction.  "She can open
+churches, and light candles on the altar, and intone Te Deums to
+the Majesty on high.  She can pass into the beauty of art, into the
+splendour of dress, and into the magnificence of furniture.  She
+can sit with high principles on her lips discussing a religious
+vocation and praising God and sanctity.  On the benches of bishops
+and in the pages of good books you will find her, and yet she is
+all the while the same huge evil creature."  Yes; she is all the
+time the same Madam Bubble who offered to Standfast her body, her
+purse, and her bed.
+
+Now, would you know for yourself, like the communicant who came to
+me in my sleep, how you are ever to get past all those arbours, and
+settles, and seats, and couches, with all their sweet sorceries and
+intoxicating enchantments--would you in earnest know that?  Then
+study well the case of one Standfast.  Especially the time when she
+who enchants this whole ground hereabouts set so upon that pilgrim.
+In one word, it was this:  he remembered his Lord; and, like his
+Lord, he fell on his face; and as his Lord would have it, His
+servant's lips as they touched the ground touched also the healing
+plant harmony and he was saved.
+
+
+"A small unsightly root,
+But of divine effect.
+Unknown, and like esteem'd, and the dull swain
+Treads on it daily with his clouted shoon;
+And yet more med'cinal is it than that moly
+That Hermes once to wise Ulysses gave;
+He call'd it haemony, and gave it me,
+And bade me keep it as of sovran use
+'Gainst all enchantments, mildew, blast, or damp,
+Or ghastly furies' apparition.
+And now I find it true; for by this means
+I knew the foul enchantress, though disguised,
+Enter'd the very lime-twigs of her spells,
+And yet came off.  If you have this about you
+(As I will give you when you go) you may
+Boldly assault the necromancer's hall:
+Where if she be, with dauntless hardihood,
+And brandished blade, rush on her, break her glass,
+And shed her luscious liquor on the ground,
+And seize her wand."
+
+
+Prayer, my sin-beset brethren, standfast prayer, is the otherwise
+unidentified haemony whose best habitat was the Garden of
+Gethsemane; and with that holy root in your heart and in your
+mouth, there is "no enchantment against Jacob, neither is there any
+divination against Israel."
+
+
+
+THE LAND OF BEULAH
+
+
+
+"Thou shalt be called Hephzibah, and thy land Beulah."--Isaiah.
+
+The first thing that John Bunyan tells us about the land of Beulah
+is this--that the shortest and the best way to the Celestial City
+lies directly through that land.  The land of Beulah has its own
+indigenous inhabitants indeed.  Old men dwell in the streets of
+Beulah, and every man with his staff in his hand for very age.  The
+streets of the city also are full of boys and girls playing in the
+streets thereof.  The land of Beulah has its frequent visitors
+also, and its welcome guests from the regions above.  Some of the
+shining ones come down from time to time and make a short sojourn
+in Beulah.  The angels in heaven have such a desire to see the
+lands from which God's saints come up that at certain seasons all
+the suburbs of the Celestial City are full of those shining
+servants of God and of the Lamb.
+
+But what made the dreamer to smile and to talk so in his sleep was
+when he saw that all the upward ways to the Celestial City ran
+through the land of Beulah.  He saw also in his dream how all the
+pilgrims blamed themselves so bitterly now because they had
+misspent so much of their time and strength in the ways below, and
+so had not come sooner to see and to taste this blessed land.  But,
+at the same time, as it was, they all rejoiced with a great joy
+because that, after all their delays and all their wanderings,
+their way still led them through the borders of Beulah.  Now, my
+dear fellow-communicants, how shall we find our way at once, and
+without any more wanderings, into that so desirable land?  How
+shall we attain to walk its streets all the rest of our days with
+our staff in our hand?  How shall we hope to see our boys and our
+girls playing in the streets of Beulah, and eating all their days
+of its sweet and its healing fruits?  How shall we and our children
+with us henceforth escape the Slough of Despond, and Giant
+Despair's dungeon, and the Valley of the Shadow of Death?  The
+word, my brethren, the answer to all that, is nigh unto us, even in
+our mouth and in our heart.  For faith, simple faith, will do all
+that both for us and for our children beside us.  A heart-feeding
+faith in God, in the word of God, and in the Son of God, will do
+it.  Faith, and then obedience.  For obedience, my brethren, is
+Beulah.  All obedience is already Beulah.  Holy obedience will
+bring the whole of Beulah into your heart and into mine at any
+moment.  It is disobedience that makes so many of those who
+otherwise are true pilgrims to miss so much of the land of Beulah.
+Ask any affable old man with his staff in his hand for very age,
+and he will tell you that it was his disobedience that kept him so
+long out of the land of Beulah.  While, let any man, and above all,
+let any young man, begin early to live a life of believing
+obedience, and he will grow up and grow old and see his children's
+children playing around his staff in the streets of Beulah.  Let
+any young man make the experiment for himself upon obedience and
+upon Beulah.  Let him not too easily believe any dreamer or even
+any seer about obedience and about the land of Beulah.  It is his
+own matter and not theirs; and let him make experiment upon it all
+for his own satisfaction and assurance.  Let any young man, then,
+try prayer as his first step into obedience, and especially secret
+prayer.  Let him shut his door to-night, and let him see if he is
+not already inside one of the gates of Beulah.  Let him deny
+himself every day also, if it is only in a very little thing.  Let
+him say sternly to his own heart every hour of temptation, No!
+never! and on the spot a sweet waft of Beulah's finest spices will
+fall upon his face.  "The ineffable joy of renouncing joy" will
+every day make the lonely wilderness of this world a constant
+Beulah to such a man.  For, to live at all times, in all places,
+and in all things for other men, and never and in nothing for
+yourself--that is the deepest secret of Beulah.  To say it, if need
+be, three times to-night on your face and in a sweat of blood, "Not
+my will, but Thine be done!"--that will to-night turn the garden of
+Gethsemane itself into the very garden of Glory.  Do you doubt it?
+Are you not yet able to believe it?  Then hear about it from One
+who has Himself come through it.  Hear His word upon the whole
+matter who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  "Come unto Me,"
+says the King of Beulah, "all ye that labour and are heavy laden,
+and I will give you rest.  Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me,
+for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your
+souls.  For My yoke is easy and My burden is light."  So after He
+had washed their feet, and had taken His garments and was set down
+again, He said unto them, "Know ye what I have done to you?  For I
+have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you.
+If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them.  If ye love
+Me, keep My commandments.  And I will pray the Father, and He shall
+give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you for ever.
+If a man love Me, he will keep My words; and My Father will love
+him, and We will come unto him and will make Our abode with him.
+Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you:  not as the world
+giveth, give I unto you.  These things have I spoken unto you that
+My joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.
+Hitherto ye have asked nothing in My name; ask, and ye shall
+receive, that your joy may be full.  Father, I will that they also,
+whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am."  And thus I saw in
+my dream that their way lay right through the land of Beulah, in
+which land they solaced themselves for a season.
+
+2.  "They solaced themselves."  Now, solace is just the Latin
+solatium, which, again, is just a soothing, an assuaging, a
+compensation, an indemnification.  Well, that land into which the
+pilgrims had now come was very soothing to their ruffled spirits
+and to their weary hearts.  It assuaged their many and sore griefs
+also.  It more than compensated them for all their labours and all
+their afflictions.  And it was a full indemnification to them for
+all that they had forsaken and lost both in beginning to be
+pilgrims and in enduring to the end.  The children of Israel had
+their first solace in their pilgrimage at Elim, where there were
+twelve wells of water and threescore and ten palm-trees; and they
+encamped there by the waters.  And then they had their last and
+crowning solace when the spies came back from Eshcol with a cluster
+of grapes that they bare between two upon a staff, with
+pomegranates and figs.  And Moses kept solacing his charge all the
+way through the weary wilderness with such strong consolations as
+these:  "For the Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a
+land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of
+valleys and hills; a land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig-
+trees; a land of oil-olive and honey; a land wherein thou shalt eat
+bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack anything in it; a
+land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig
+brass."  Our Lord spake solace to His doubting and fainting
+disciples also in many such words as these:  "Verily, I say unto
+you, there is no man that hath left house, or parents, or brethren,
+or wife, or children for the kingdom of God's sake, who shall not
+receive manifold more in this present time, and in the world to
+come life everlasting."  The Mount of Transfiguration also was His
+own Beulah-solace; and the Last Supper and the prayer with which it
+wound up were given to our Lord and to His disciples as a very
+Eshcol-cluster from the Paradise above.  Now, I saw in my dream
+that they solaced themselves in the land of Beulah for a season.
+Yea, here they heard continually the singing of birds.  (The Latin
+poets called the birds solatia ruris, because they refreshed and
+cheered the rustic labourers with their sweet singing.)  And every
+day the flowers appeared in the earth, and the voice of the turtle
+was heard in the land.  In this country the sun shineth night and
+day, for there is no night there.
+
+3.  "In this country the sun shineth night and day."  How much
+Standfast must have enjoyed that land of light you may guess when
+you recollect that he came from Darkland, which lies in the
+hemisphere right opposite to the land of Beulah.  In Darkland the
+sun never shines to be called sunshine at all.  All the days of his
+youth, Standfast told his companions, he had sat beside his father
+and his mother in that obscure land where to his sorrow his father
+and his mother still sat.  But in Beulah "the rose of evening
+becomes silently and suddenly the rose of dawn."  This land lies
+beyond the Valley of the Shadow of Death, neither could they from
+this place so much as see Doubting Castle.  Now, Doubting Castle is
+a dismal place for any soul of man to be shut up into.  And in that
+dark hold there are dungeons dug for all kinds of doubting souls.
+There are dungeons dug for the souls of men whose doubts are in
+their intellects, as well as for those also whose doubts arise out
+of their hearts.  Some men read themselves into Doubting Castle,
+and some men sin and sell themselves to its giant.  God casts some
+of His own children all their days into those dungeons as a
+punishment for their life of disobedience; He casts others down
+into chains of darkness because of their idleness and
+unfruitfulness.  But Beulah is far away from Doubting Castle.
+Beulah is a splendid spot for a studious man to lodge in.  For what
+a clear light shines night and day in Beulah!  To what far horizons
+a man's eye will carry him in Beulah!  What large speculations rise
+before him who walks abroad in Beulah!  How clear the air is in
+Beulah, how clean the heart and how unclouded the eye of its
+inhabitants!  The King's walks are in Beulah, and the arbours where
+He delighteth to be.  Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall
+be admitted to see God in the land of Beulah.  In the land of
+Beulah the sun shall no more be thy light by day, neither for
+brightness shall the moon give light unto thee; but the Lord shall
+be thine everlasting light, and thy God thy glory!
+
+4.  "In this land also the contract between the bride and the
+bridegroom is renewed."  Now, there is no other day so bitter in
+any man's life as that day is on which his bridal contract is
+broken off.  And it is the very perfection and last extremity of
+bitterness when his contract is broken off because of his own past
+life.  Let all those, then, who would fain enter into that sweet
+contract think well about it beforehand.  Let them look back into
+all their past life.  For all their past life will be sure to find
+them out on the day of their espousals.  If they have their
+enemies--as all espoused men have--this is the hour and the power
+of their enemies.  The day on which any man's espousals are
+published is a small and local judgment-day to him.  For all the
+men, and, especially, all the women, who have ever been injured by
+him, or who have injured themselves upon him; all the men and all
+the women who for any reason, and for no reason, hate both him and
+his happiness,--their tongues and their pens will take no sleep
+till they have got his contract if they can, broken off.  And even
+when the bridegroom is too innocent, or the bride too true, or God
+too good to let the contract continue long to be broken off, that
+great goodness of God and that great trust of his contracted bride
+will only make the bridegroom walk henceforth more softly and
+rejoice with more trembling.  And that is a most excellent mind.  I
+know no better mind in which any man, guilty or innocent, can enter
+on a married life.  I sometimes tell the bridegrooms that I can
+take a liberty with to keep saying to themselves all the way up to
+the marriage altar the tenth verse of the 103rd psalm; as well as
+when they come up afterwards to the baptismal font:  "He hath not
+dealt with us after our sins nor rewarded us after our iniquities."
+And it is surely Beulah itself, at its very best, it is surely
+Beulah above itself, when a happy bridegroom is full of that humble
+and happy mind, and when he is in one and the same moment
+reconciled both to his bride on earth and to his God and Father in
+heaven.  In this land, therefore, in the land of Beulah, the
+contract between the bride and the bridegroom is renewed; yea, as
+the bridegroom rejoiceth over his bride, so shall thy God rejoice
+over thee.
+
+5.  The salaams and salutations also that they were met with as
+often as they went out to walk in the streets thereof were a
+constant surprise, satisfaction, and sweetness to the fearful
+pilgrims.  No passer-by ever once frowned or scowled upon them
+because their faces were Zionward, as they do in our cities.  No
+one ever treated them with scorn or contempt because they were poor
+or unlettered.  No man's face either turned dark at them or was
+turned away from them as they passed up the street.  They never,
+all the time they abode in Beulah, took to the lanes of the city to
+escape the unkind looks of any of its citizens.  Greatheart's hand
+was never away from his helmet.  His helmet was never well on his
+head.  His always bare and unhelmeted head said to all the men of
+Beulah, I love and honour and trust you.  You would not hurt a hair
+of my head.  And so on, till all the streets of Beulah were one
+buzz of salutation, congratulation, and benediction.  Here they
+heard voices from out of the city, loud voices, saying, Say ye to
+the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy salvation cometh; behold, his
+reward is with him.  Here all the inhabitants of the country called
+them the holy people, the redeemed of the Lord, sought out, a city
+not forsaken.
+
+6.  Now, as they walked in this land they had more rejoicing than
+in parts more remote from the kingdom to which they were bound.
+And still drawing nigh to that city they had yet a more perfect
+view thereof.  It was builded of pearls and precious stones, also
+the street thereof was paved with gold, so that by reason of the
+natural glory of the city and the reflection of the sunbeams upon
+it, Christian with desire fell sick.  Hopeful also had a fit or two
+of the same disease.  Wherefore here they lay by it awhile, crying
+out because of their pangs, If you see my beloved, tell him that I
+am sick of love.  There are in all good cases of recovery three
+successive stages of soul-sickness.  True, soul-sickness always
+runs its own course, and it always runs its own course in its own
+order.  This special sickness first shows itself when the soul
+becomes sick with sin.  We have that sickness set forth in many a
+psalm, notably in the thirty-eighth psalm; and in a multitude of
+other scriptures, both old and new, this evil disease is dealt with
+if we had only the eyes and the heart to read such scriptures.  The
+second stage of this sickness is when a sinner is not so much sick
+with the sin that dwelleth in him as sick of himself.  Sinfulness
+in its second stage becomes so incorporate with the sinner's whole
+life--sin so becomes the sinner's very nature, and, indeed,
+himself,--that all his former loathing of sin passes over
+henceforth into loathing of himself.  This is the most desperate
+stage in any man's sickness; but, bad as it is, incurable as it is,
+it must be passed into before the third stage of the healing
+process can either be experienced or understood.  In the case in
+hand, by the time the pilgrims had come to Beulah they had all had
+their full share of sin and of themselves till they here entered on
+an altogether new experience.  "Christian with desire fell sick,"
+we read, "and Hopeful also had a fit or two of the same disease.
+Wherefore here they lay by it a while, crying out because of their
+pangs, If you see my beloved, tell him that I am sick of love."
+David, Paul, Bernard, Bunyan himself, Rutherford, Brainerd,
+M'Cheyne, and many others crowd in upon the mind.  I shall but
+instance John Flavel and Mrs. Jonathan Edwards, and so close.  John
+Flavel being once on a journey set himself to improve the time by
+meditation, when his mind grew intent, till at length he had such
+ravishing tastes of heavenly joys, and such a full assurance of his
+interest therein, that he utterly lost the sight and sense of this
+world and all its concerns, so that for hours he knew not where he
+was.  At last, perceiving himself to be faint, he sat down at a
+spring, where he refreshed himself, earnestly desiring, if it were
+the will of God, that he might there leave the world.  His spirit
+reviving, he finished his journey in the same delightful frame, and
+all that night the joy of the Lord still overflowed him so that he
+seemed an inhabitant of the other world.  The only other case of
+love-sickness I shall touch on to-night I take from under the pen
+of a sin-sick and love-sick author, who has been truthfully
+described as "one of the first, if not the very first, of the
+masters of human reason," and, again, as "one of the greatest of
+the sons of men."  "There is a young lady in New-haven," says
+Edwards, "who is so loved of that Great Being who made and rules
+the world, that there are certain seasons in which this Great Being
+in some way or other invisible comes to her and fills her mind with
+exceeding sweet delight, so that she hardly cares for anything but
+to meditate upon Him.  She looks soon to dwell wholly with Him, and
+to be ravished with His love and delight for ever.  Therefore, if
+you present all this world before her, with the richest of its
+treasures, she disregards it and cares not for it, and is unmindful
+of any pain or affliction.  She has a strange sweetness in her
+mind, and a singular piety in her affections; is most just and
+conscientious in all her conduct; and you could not persuade her to
+do anything wrong or sinful, if you would give her the whole world.
+She loves to be alone, walking in the fields and groves, and seems
+to have some one invisible always communing with her."  And so on,
+all through her seraphic history.  "Now, if such things are too
+enthusiastic," says the author of A Careful and a Strict Enquiry
+into the Freedom of the Will, "if such things are the offspring of
+a distempered brain, let my brain be possessed evermore of that
+blessed distemper!  If this be distraction, I pray God that the
+whole world of mankind may all be seized with this benign, meek,
+beneficent, beatific, glorious distraction!  The peace of God that
+passeth all understanding; rejoicing with joy unspeakable and full
+of glory; God shining in our hearts, to give the light of the
+knowledge of God in the face of Jesus Christ; with open face
+beholding as in a glass the glory of God, and being changed into
+the same image from glory to glory, even as by the spirit of the
+Lord; being called out of darkness into marvellous light, and
+having the day-star arise in our hearts!  What a sweet distraction
+is that!  And out of what a heavenly distemper and out of what a
+sane enthusiasm has all that come to us!"
+
+
+"More I would speak:  but all my words are faint;
+Celestial Love, what eloquence can paint?
+No more, by mortal words, can be expressed,
+But all Eternity shall tell the rest."
+
+
+
+THE SWELLING OF JORDAN
+
+
+
+"The swelling of Jordan."--Jeremiah.
+
+"Fore-fancy your deathbed," says Samuel Rutherford.  "Take an
+essay," he says in his greatest book, that perfect mine of gold and
+jewels, Christ Dying and Drawing Sinners to Himself--"Take an essay
+and a lift at your death, and look at it before it actually comes
+to your door."  And so we shall.  Since it is appointed to all men
+once to die, and after death the judgment; and since our death and
+our judgment are the only two things that we are absolutely sure
+about in our whole future, we shall henceforth fore-fancy those two
+events much more than we have done in the past.  And to assist us
+in that; to quicken our fancy, to kindle it, to captivate it, and
+to turn our fancy wholly to our salvation, we have all the
+entrancing river-scenes in the Pilgrim's Progress set before us; a
+succession of scenes in which Bunyan positively revels in his
+exquisite fancies, clothing them as he does, all the time, in
+language of the utmost beauty, tenderness, pathos, power, and
+dignity.  Let us take our stand, then, on the bank of the river and
+watch how pilgrim after pilgrim behaves himself in those terrible
+waters.  We are all voluntary spectators to-night, but we shall all
+be compulsory performers before we know where we are.
+
+1.  On entering the river even Christian suddenly began to sink.
+Fore-fancy that.  All the words he spake still tended to discover
+that he had great horror of mind and hearty fears that he would die
+in that river; here also he was much in the troublesome thoughts of
+the sins he had committed both since and before he began to be a
+pilgrim.  Fore-fancy that also, all you converted young men.
+Hopeful, therefore, had much to do to keep his brother's head above
+water; yea, sometimes he would be quite gone down, and then in a
+while he would rise up again half-dead.  Then I saw in my dream
+that Christian was in a muse a while; to whom also Hopeful added
+this word, "Be of good cheer; Jesus Christ maketh thee whole."  And
+with that Christian broke out with a loud voice, "When thou passest
+through the waters I will be with thee, and through the rivers they
+shall not overflow thee."  Then they both took courage and the
+enemy was after that as still as a stone till they were gone over.
+Fore-fancy that also.  There is one other thing out of that
+crossing that I hope I shall remember when I am in the river:  "Be
+of good cheer," said Hopeful to his sinking fellow--"Be of good
+cheer, my brother, I feel the bottom, and it is good."  "Hold His
+hand fast," wrote Samuel Rutherford to Lady Kenmure.  "He knows all
+the fords.  You may be ducked in His company but never drowned.
+Put in your foot, then, and wade after Him.  And be sure you set
+your feet always upon the stepping-stones."  Yes; fore-fancy those
+stepping-stones, and often practise your feet upon them before the
+time.
+
+2.  "Good woman," said the post to Christiana, the wife of
+Christian the pilgrim; "Hail, good woman, I bring thee tidings that
+the Master calleth for thee, and expecteth thee to stand in His
+presence in clothes of immortality within this ten days."  Fore-
+fancy that also.  Now the day was come that she must be gone.  And
+so the road was full of people to see her take her journey.  But,
+behold, all the banks beyond the river were full of horses and
+chariots which were come down from above to accompany her to the
+city gate.  So she came forth and entered the river with a beckon
+of farewell to those that followed her to the river-side.  And thus
+she went and entered in at the gate with all the ceremonies of joy
+that her husband had done before her.  Fore-fancy, if you can, some
+of those ceremonies of joy.
+
+3.  When Mr. Fearing came to the river where was no bridge, there
+again he was in a heavy case.  Now, he said, he should be drowned
+for ever and never see that Face with comfort he had come so many
+miles to behold.  And here also I took notice of what was very
+remarkable; the water of that river was lower at this time than
+ever I saw it in all my life.  So he went over at last not much
+above wet-shod.  Fore-fancy and fore-arrange, if it be possible,
+for a passage like that.  When he was going tip to the gate Mr.
+Greatheart began to take his leave of him, and to wish him a good
+reception above.  "I shall," he said, "I shall."  Be fore-assured,
+also, of a reception like that.
+
+4.  In process of time there came a post to the town again, and his
+business was this time with Mr. Ready-to-halt.  So he inquired him
+out and said to him, "I am come to thee in the name of Him whom
+thou hast loved and followed, though upon crutches.  And my message
+is to tell thee that He expects thee at His table to sup with Him
+in His kingdom the next day after Easter."  After this Mr. Ready-
+to-halt called for his fellow-pilgrims and told them, saying, "I am
+sent for, and God shall surely visit you also.  These crutches," he
+said, "I bequeath to my son that he may tread in my steps, with a
+hundred warm wishes that he may prove better than I have done."
+When he came to the brink of the river, he said, "Now I shall have
+no more need of these crutches, since yonder are horses and
+chariots for me to ride on."  The last words he was heard to say
+were, "Welcome life!"  Let all ready-to-halt hearts fore-fancy all
+that.
+
+5.  Then Mr. Feeble-mind called for his friends and told them what
+errand had been brought to him, and what token he had received of
+the truth of the message.  "As for my feeble mind," he said, "that
+I shall leave behind me, for I shall have no need of that in the
+place whither I go.  When I am gone, Mr. Valiant, I desire that you
+would bury it in a dunghill."  This done, and the day being come in
+which he was to depart, he entered the river as the rest.  His last
+words were, "Hold out faith and patience."  Fore-fancy such an end
+as that to your feeble mind also.
+
+6.  Did you ever know a family, or, rather, the relics of a family,
+where there was just a decrepit old father and a lone daughter left
+to nurse him through his second childhood?  All his other children
+are either married or dead; but both marriage and death have spared
+Miss Much-afraid to watch over the dotage-days of Mr. Despondency;
+till one summer afternoon the old man fell asleep in his chair to
+waken where old men are for ever young.  And in a day or two there
+were two new graves side by side in the old churchyard.  Even death
+could not divide this old father and his trusty child.  And so when
+the time was come for them to depart, they went down together to
+the brink of the river.  The last words of Mr. Despondency were,
+"Farewell night and welcome day."  His daughter went through the
+river singing, but none could understand what it was she said.
+Fore-fancy that, all you godly old men, with a daughter who has
+made a husband and children to herself of her old father.
+
+7.  As I hear Old Honest shouting "Grace reigns!" I always remember
+what a lady told me about a saying of her poor Irish scullery-girl.
+The mistress and the servant were reading George Eliot's Life
+together in the kitchen, and when they came to her deathbed, on the
+pillow of which Thomas A'Kempis lay open, "Mem," said the girl, "I
+used to read that old book in the convent; but it is a better book
+to live upon than to die upon."  Now, that was exactly Old Honest's
+mind.  He lived upon one book, and then he died upon another.  He
+lived according to the commandments of God, but he died according
+to the comforts of the Gospel.  Now, we read in his history how
+that the river at that time overflowed its banks in some places.
+But Mr. Honest had in his lifetime spoken to one Good-conscience to
+meet him at the river, the which he also did, and lent him his
+hand, and so helped him over.  All the same, the last words of Mr.
+Honest still were, "Grace reigns!"  And so he left the world.
+Fore-fancy whether or no you are making, as one has said, "an
+assignation with terror" at that same river-side.
+
+8.  Standfast was the last of the pilgrims to go over the river.
+Standfast was left longest on this side the river because his
+Master could best trust him here.  His Master had to take away many
+of His other servants from the evil to come, but He could trust
+Standfast.  You can safely trust a man who takes to his knees in
+every hour of temptation, as Standfast was wont to do.  "This
+river," he said, "has been a terror to many.  Yea, the thoughts of
+it have often frighted me also.  The waters, indeed, are to the
+palate bitter, and to the stomach cold; yet the thoughts of what I
+am going to, and of the conduct that awaits me on the other side,
+doth lie as a glowing coal at my heart.  I see myself now at the
+end of my journey, and my toilsome days are all ended.  I am going
+now to see that head that was crowned with thorns, and that face
+that was spit upon for me.  His name has been to me as a civet-box,
+yea, sweeter than all perfumes.  His word I did use to gather for
+my food, and for antidotes against my faintings.  He has held me
+up, and I have kept myself from mine iniquities.  Yea, my steps
+hath He strengthened in the way."  Now, while he was thus in
+discourse his countenance changed, his strong man bowed down under
+him, and after he had said, "Take me, for I come to Thee," he
+ceased to be seen of them.  Fore-fancy, if you have the face, an
+end like that for yourself.
+
+This, then, is how Christian and Hopeful and Christiana and Old
+Honest and all the rest did in the swelling river.  But the
+important point is, HOW WILL YOU DO?  Have you ever fore-fancied
+how you will do?  Have you ever, among all your many imaginings,
+imagined yourself on your death-bed?  Have you ever thought you
+heard the doctor whisper, "To-night"?  Have you ever lain low in
+your bed and listened to the death-rattle in your own throat?  And
+have you still listened to the awful silence in the house after all
+was over?  Have you ever shot in imagination the dreadful gulf that
+stands fixed between life and death, and between time and eternity?
+Have you ever tried to get a glimpse beforehand of your own place
+where you will be an hour after your death, when they are putting
+the grave-clothes on your still warm body, and when they are
+measuring your corpse for your coffin?  Where will you be by that
+time?  Have you any idea?  Can you fancy it?  Did you ever try?
+And if not, why not?  "My lord," wrote Jeremy Taylor to the Earl of
+Carbery, when sending him the first copy of the Holy Dying,--"My
+lord, it is a great art to die well, and that art is to be learnt
+by men in health; for he that prepares not for death before his
+last sickness is like him that begins to study philosophy when he
+is going to dispute publicly in the faculty.  The precepts of dying
+well must be part of the studies of them that live in health,
+because in other notices an imperfect study may be supplied by a
+frequent exercise and a renewed experience; but here, if we
+practise imperfectly once, we shall never recover the error, for we
+die but once; and therefore it is necessary that our skill be more
+exact since it cannot be mended by another trial."  How wise, then,
+how far-seeing, how practical, and how urgent is the prophet's
+challenge and demand.  "How wilt thou do in the swelling of
+Jordan?"
+
+1.  Well, then, let us be practical before we close, and let us
+descend to particulars.  Let us take the prophet's question and run
+it through some parts and some practices of our daily life as
+already dying men.  And, to begin with, I have such a great faith
+in good books, whether we are to live or die, that I am impelled to
+ask you all at this point, and under shelter of this plain-spoken
+prophet, What books have you laid in for your deathbed, and for the
+weeks and months and even years before your death bed?  What do you
+look forward to be reading when Jordan is beginning to swell and
+roll for you and to leap up toward your doorstep?  If you get good
+from good books--everybody does not--but supposing you are one of
+those who do, what books can you absolutely count upon, without
+fail, to put you in the best possible frame for the river, and for
+the convoy across, and for the ceremonies of joy on the other side?
+What special Scriptures will you have read every day to you?
+"Read," said John Knox to his weeping wife, "read where I first
+cast my anchor."  An old lady I once knew used to say to me at
+every visit, "The Fifty-first Psalm."  She was the daughter of a
+Highland minister, and the wife of a Highland minister, and the
+mother of a Highland minister, and of an elder to boot.  "The
+Fifty-first Psalm," she said, and sometimes, "One of Hart's hymns
+also."  What is your favourite psalm and hymn?  Mr. James Taylor of
+Castle Street has several large-type libraries in his catalogue.
+Mr. Taylor might start a much worse paying speculation than a
+large-type library for the river-side; or, some select booklets for
+deathbeds.  The series might well open with "The Ninetieth Psalm"
+in letters an inch deep.  Scholars die as well as illiterates, and
+there might be provided for them, among other things, The Phaedo in
+two languages, Plato's and Jowett's.  Then The Seven Sayings from
+the Cross.  Bellarmine's Art of Dying Well would stand well beside
+John Bunyan's Dying Sayings.  And, were I the editor, I would put
+in Bishop Andrewes' Private Devotions, if only for my own last use.
+Then Richard Baxter's Saint's Rest, and John Howe's Platonico-
+Puritan book, Blessedness of the Righteous.  Then Bernard's "New
+Jerusalem," "The Sands of Time are sinking," "Rock of Ages," and
+such like.  These are some of the little books I have within reach
+of my bed against the hour when the post blows his first horn for
+me.  You might tell me some of your deathbed favourites.
+
+2.  Who will be your most welcome minister during your last days on
+earth?  For whom would you send to-night if the post were suddenly
+to sound his horn at your side on your way home from church?  I can
+well believe it would not be your own minister.  I have known
+fathers and mothers in this congregation to send for other
+ministers than their own minister when terrible trouble came upon
+them, and both my conscience and my common sense absolutely
+approved of the step they took.  Five students were once sitting
+and talking together in a city in which there was to be an
+execution to-morrow morning.  They were talking about the murderer
+who was to be executed in the morning, and about the minister he
+had sent for to come to see him.  And, like students, they began to
+put it to one another--Suppose you were to be executed to-morrow,
+for what minister in the city, or even in the whole land, would you
+send?  And, like students again, they said--Let each one write down
+on a piece of paper the name of the minister he would choose to be
+beside him at the last, and we shall see each man's last choice.
+They did so, when to their astonishment it was discovered that they
+had all written the same minister's name!  I do not know that they
+all went to his church every Sabbath while they were young and,
+well, and not yet under sentence of death.  I do not think they
+did.  For when I was in his church there was only a handful of old
+and decayed-looking people in it.  The chief part of the
+congregation seemed to me to be a charity school.  And I gathered
+from all that a lesson--several lessons, and this among the rest--
+that crowded passages do not always wait upon the best pastors; and
+this also, that a waft of death soon discovers to us a true
+minister from an incompetent and a counterfeit minister.
+
+3.  Writing to one of his correspondents about his correspondent's
+long-drawn-out deathbed, Samuel Rutherford said to him, "It is
+long-drawn-out that you may have ample time to go over all your old
+letters and all your still unsettled accounts before you take
+ship."  Have you any such old letters lying still unanswered?  Have
+you any such old accounts lying still unsettled?  Have you made
+full reparation and restitution for all that you and yours have
+done amiss?  Fore-fancy that you will soon be summoned into His
+presence who has said:  Therefore, if thou bring thy gift before
+the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught
+against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy
+way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer
+thy gift.  Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in
+the way with him."  You know all about Zacchaeus.  I need not tell
+his story over again.  But as I write these lines I take up a
+London newspaper and my eyes light on these lines:  "William Avary
+was a man of remarkable gifts, both of mind and character.  He
+dedicated the residue of his strength wholly to works of piety.  In
+middle age he failed in business, and in his old age, when better
+days came, he looked up such of his old creditors as could be found
+and divided among them a sum of several thousand pounds."  Look up
+such of your old creditors as you can find, and that not in matters
+of money alone.  And, be sure you begin to do it now, before the
+horn blows.  For, as sure as you take your keys and open your old
+repositories, you will come on things you had completely forgotten
+that will take more time and more strength, ay, and more resources,
+than will then be at your disposal.  Even after you have begun at
+once and done all that you can do, you will have to do at last as
+Samuel Rutherford told George Gillespie to do:  "Hand over all your
+bills, paid and unpaid, to your Surety.  Give Him the keys of the
+drawer, and let Him clear it out for Himself after you are gone."
+
+4.  And then, pray often to God for a clear mind between Him and
+you, and for a quick, warm, and heaven-hungry heart at the last.
+And take a promise from those who watch beside your bed that they
+will not drug and stupefy you even though you should ask for it.
+Whatever your pain, and it is all in God's hand, make up your mind,
+if it be possible, to bear it.  It cannot be greater than the pain
+of the cross, and your Saviour would not touch their drugs, however
+well-intended.  He determined to face the swelling of Jordan and to
+enter His Father's house with an unclouded mind.  Try your very
+uttermost to do the same.  I cannot believe that the thief even
+would have let the gall so much as touch his lips after Christ had
+said to him, "Today thou shalt be with Me in Paradise!"  Well, if
+your mind was ever clear and keen, let it be at its clearest and
+its keenest at the last.  Let your mind and your heart be full of
+repentance, and faith, and love, and hope, and all such saying
+graces, and let them all be at their fullest and brightest
+exercise, at that moment.  Be on the very tip-toe of expectation as
+the end draws near.  Another pang, another gasp, one more
+unutterable sinking of heart and flesh as if you were going down
+into the dreadful pit--and then the abundant entrance, and the
+beatific vision!  What wilt thou do then?  What wilt thou say then?
+Hast thou thy salutation and thy song ready?  And what will it be?
+
+
+
+Footnotes:
+
+{1}  Delivered November 27th, 1892.
+
+{2}  January 1st, 1893.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext Bunyan Characters (2nd Series), by Whyte
+
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