BUNYAN CHARACTERS: FIRST SERIESBEING LECTURES DELIVERED IN ST. GEORGE'S FREE CHURCH EDINBURGHBY ALEXANDER WHYTE, D. D. 

INTRODUCTORY

 'The express image' [Gr. 'the character']. --Heb. 1. 3. 

The word 'character' occurs only once in the New Testament, and that isin the passage in the prologue of the Epistle to the Hebrews, where theoriginal word is translated 'express image' in our version. Our Lord isthe Express Image of the Invisible Father. No man hath seen God at anytime. The only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He hathdeclared Him. The Father hath sealed His divine image upon His Son, sothat he that hath seen the Son hath seen the Father. The Son is thus theFather's character stamped upon and set forth in human nature. The Wordwas made flesh. This is the highest and best use to which our soexpressive word 'character' has ever been put, and the use to which it isput when we speak of Bunyan's Characters partakes of the same high senseand usage. For it is of the outstanding good or evil in a man that wethink when we speak of his character. It is really either of hislikeness or unlikeness to Jesus Christ we speak, and then, through Him, his likeness or unlikeness to God Himself. And thus it is that theadjective 'moral' usually accompanies our word 'character'--moral orimmoral. A man's character does not have its seat or source in his body;character is not a physical thing: not even in his mind; it is not anintellectual thing. Character comes up out of the will and out of theheart. There are more good minds, as we say, in the world than there aregood hearts. There are more clever people than good people;character, --high, spotless, saintly character, --is a far rarer thing inthis world than talent or even genius. Character is an infinitely betterthing than either of these, and it is of corresponding rarity. And yetso true is it that the world loves its own, that all men worship talent, and even bodily strength and bodily beauty, while only one here and onethere either understands or values or pursues moral character, though itis the strength and the beauty and the sweetness of the soul. 

We naturally turn to Bishop Butler when we think of moral character. Butler is an author who has drawn no characters of his own. Butler'sgenius was not creative like Shakespeare's or Bunyan's. Butler had notthat splendid imagination which those two masters in character-paintingpossessed, but he had very great gifts of his own, and he has done usvery great service by means of his gifts. Bishop Butler has helped manymen in the intelligent formation of their character, and what higherpraise could be given to any author? Butler will lie on our table allwinter beside Bunyan; the bishop beside the tinker, the philosopherbeside the poet, the moralist beside the evangelical minister. 

In seeking a solid bottom for our subject, then, we naturally turn toButler. Bunyan will people the house for us once it is built, but Butlerlays bare for us the naked rock on which men like Bunyan build andbeautify and people the dwelling-place of God and man. What exactly isthis thing, character, we hear so much about? we ask the sagaciousbishop. And how shall we understand our own character so as to form itwell till it stands firm and endures? 'Character, ' answers Butler, inhis bald, dry, deep way, 'by character is meant that temper, taste, disposition, whole frame of mind from whence we act in one way ratherthan another . . . Those principles from which a man acts, when theybecome fixed and habitual in him we call his character . . . Andconsequently there is a far greater variety in men's characters thanthere is in the features of their faces. ' Open Bunyan now, with Butler'skeywords in your mind, and see the various tempers, tastes, dispositions, frames of mind from which his various characters act, and which, atbottom, really make them the characters, good or bad, which they are. Seethe principles which Bunyan has with such inimitable felicity embodiedand exhibited in their names, the principles within them from which theyhave acted till they have become a habit and then a character, thatcharacter which they themselves are and will remain. See the variety ofJohn Bunyan's characters, a richer and a more endless variety than arethe features of their faces. Christian and Christiana, Obstinate andPliable, Mr. Fearing and Mr. Feeblemind, Temporary and Talkative, Mr. By-ends and Mr. Facing-both-ways, Simple, Sloth, Presumption, that brisk ladIgnorance, and the genuine Mr. Brisk himself. And then Captain Boasting, Mr. High-mind, Mr. Wet-Eyes, and so on, through a less known (but equallywell worth knowing) company of municipal and military characters in the_Holy War_. 

We shall see, as we proceed, how this and that character in Bunyan wasformed and deformed. But let us ask in this introductory lecture if wecan find out any law or principle upon which all our own characters, goodor bad, are formed. Do our characters come to be what they are bychance, or have we anything to do in the formation of our own characters, and if so, in what way? And here, again, Butler steps forward at ourcall with his key to our own and to all Bunyan's characters in his hand, and in three familiar and fruitful words he answers our question andgives us food for thought and solemn reflection for a lifetime. Thereare but three steps, says Butler, from earth to heaven, or, if you will, from earth to hell--acts, habits, character. All Butler's propheticburden is bound up in these three great words--acts, habits, character. Remember and ponder these three words, and you will in due time become amoral philosopher. Ponder and practise them, and you will become what isinfinitely better--a moral man. For acts, often repeated, graduallybecome habits, and habits, long enough continued, settle and harden andsolidify into character. And thus it is that the severe and laconicbishop has so often made us shudder as he demonstrated it to us that weare all with our own hands shaping our character not only for this world, but much more for the world to come, by every act we perform, by everyword we speak, almost by every breath we draw. Butler is one of the mostterrible authors in the world. He stands on our nearest shelf with Danteon one side of him and Pascal on the other. He is indeed terrible, butit is with a terror that purifies the heart and keeps the life in thehour of temptation. Paul sometimes arms himself with the same terror;only he composes in another style than that of Butler, and, with all hisvivid intensity, he calls it the terror of the Lord. Paul and Bunyan areof the same school of moralists and stylists; Butler went to school tothe Stoics, to Aristotle, and to Plato. 

Our Lord Himself came to be the express image He was and is by living andacting under this same universal law of human life--acts, habits, character. He was made perfect on this same principle. He learnedobedience both by the things that He did, and the things that Hesuffered. Butler says in one deep place, that benevolence and justiceand veracity are the basis of all good character in God and in man, andthus also in the God-man. And those three foundation stones of ourLord's character settled deeper and grew stronger to bear and to sufferas He went on practising acts and speaking words of justice, goodness, and truth. And so of all the other elements of His moral character. OurLord left Gethsemane a much more submissive and a much more surrenderedman than He entered it. His forgiveness of injuries, and thus Hissplendid benevolence, had not yet come to its climax and crown till Hesaid on the cross, 'Father, forgive them'. And, as He was, so are we inthis world. This world's evil and ill-desert made it but the betterarena and theatre for the development and the display of His moralcharacter; and the same instruments that fashioned Him into the perfectand express image He was and is, are still, happily, in full operation. Take that divinest and noblest of all instruments for the carving out andrefining of moral character, the will of God. How our Lord made His ownunselfish and unsinful will to bow to silence and to praise before theholy will of His Father, till that gave the finishing touch to His alwayssanctified will and heart! And, happily, that awful and blessedinstrument for the formation of moral character is still active andavailable to those whose ambition rises to moral character, and who areaiming at heaven in all they do and all they suffer upon the earth. Gethsemane has gone out till it has covered all the earth. Its cup, ifnot in all the depth and strength of its first mixture, still in quitesufficient bitterness, is put many times in life into every man's hand. There is not a day, there is not an hour of the day, that the disciple ofthe submissive and all-surrendered Son has not the opportunity to saywith his Master, If it be possible, let this cup pass: nevertheless, notas I will, but as Thou wilt. 

It is not in the great tragedies of life only that character is testedand strengthened and consolidated. No man who is not himself under God'smoral and spiritual instruments could believe how often in the quietest, clearest, and least tempestuous day he has the chance and the call tosay, Yea, Lord, Thy will be done. And, then, when the confessedly tragicdays and nights come, when all men admit that this is Gethsemane indeed, the practised soul is able, with a calmness and a peace that confound andoffend the bystanders, to say, to act so that he does not need to say, Not my will, but Thine. And so of all the other forms and features ofmoral character; so of humility and meekness, so of purity andtemperance, so of magnanimity and munificence, so of all self-suppressionand self-extinction, and all corresponding exalting and magnifying andbenefiting of other men. Whatever other passing uses this present world, so full of trial and temptation and suffering, may have, this surely isthe supreme and final use of it--to be a furnace, a graving-house, arefining place for human character. Literally all things in this lifeand in this world--I challenge you to point out a single exception--worktogether for this supreme and only good, the purification, the refining, the testing, and the approval of human character. Not only so, but weare all in the very heat of the furnace, and under the very graving ironand in the very refining fire that our prefigured and predestinatedcharacter needs. Your life and its trials would not suit the necessitiesof my moral character, and you would lose your soul beyond redemption ifyou exchanged lots with me. You do not put a pearl under the potter'swheel; you do not cast clay into a refining fire. Abraham's characterwas not like David's, nor David's like Christ's, nor Christ's likePaul's. As Butler says, there is 'a providential disposition of things'around every one of us, and it is as exactly suited to the flaws andexcrescences, the faults and corruptions of our character as ifProvidence had had no other life to make a disposition of things for butone, and that one our own. Have you discovered that in your life, or anymeasure of that? Have you acknowledged to God that you have at lastdiscovered the true key of your life? Have you given Him thesatisfaction to know that He is not making His providential dispositionsaround a stock or a stone, but that He has one under His hand whounderstands His hand, and responds to it, and rises up to meet and saluteit?

And we cease to wonder so much at the care God takes of human character, and the cost He lays out upon it, when we think that it is the only workof His hands that shall last for ever. It is fit, surely, that theephemeral should minister to the eternal, and time to eternity, and allelse in this world to the only thing in this world that shall endure andsurvive this world. All else we possess and pursue shall fade andperish, our moral character shall alone survive. Riches, honours, possessions, pleasures of all kinds: death, with one stroke of hisdesolating hand, shall one day strip us bare to a winding-sheet and acoffin of all the things we are so mad to possess. But the last enemy, with all his malice and all his resistless power, cannot touch our moralcharacter--unless it be in some way utterly mysterious to us that he ismade under God to refine and perfect it. The Express Image carried up toHis Father's House, not only the divine life He had brought hither withHim when He came to obey and submit and suffer among us; He carried backmore than He brought, for He carried back a human heart, a human life, ahuman character, which was and is a new wonder in heaven. He carried upto heaven all the love to God and angels and men He had learned andpractised on earth, with all the earthly fruits of it. He carried backHis humility, His meekness, His humanity, His approachableness, and Hissympathy. And we see to our salvation some of the uses to which thoseparts of His moral character are at this moment being put in His Father'sHouse; and what we see not now of all the ends and uses and employmentsof our Lord's glorified humanity we shall, mayhap, see hereafter. And wealso shall carry our moral character to heaven; it is the only thing wehave worth carrying so far. But, then, moral character is well worthachieving here and then carrying there, for it is nothing else andnothing less than the divine nature itself; it is the divine natureincarnate, incorporate, and made manifest in man. And it is, therefore, immortal with the immortality of God, and blessed for ever with theblessedness of God. 

EVANGELIST

 'Do the work of an evangelist. '--Paul to Timothy. 

On the 1st of June 1648 a very bitter fight was fought at Maidstone, inKent, between the Parliamentary forces under Fairfax and the Royalists. Till Cromwell rose to all his military and administrative greatness, Fairfax was generalissimo of the Puritan army, and that able soldiernever executed a more brilliant exploit than he did that memorable nightat Maidstone. In one night the Royalist insurrection was stamped out andextinguished in its own blood. Hundreds of dead bodies filled thestreets of the town, hundreds of the enemy were taken prisoners, whilehundreds more, who were hiding in the hop-fields and forests around thetown, fell into Fairfax's hands next morning. 

Among the prisoners so taken was a Royalist major who had had a deep handin the Maidstone insurrection, named John Gifford, a man who was destinedin the time to come to run a remarkable career. Only, to-day, the dayafter the battle, he has no prospect before him but the gallows. On thenight before his execution, by the courtesy of Fairfax, Gifford's sisterwas permitted to visit her brother in his prison. The soldiers wereovercome with weariness and sleep after the engagement, and Gifford'ssister so managed it that her brother got past the sentries and escapedout of the town. He lay hid for some days in the ditches and thicketsaround the town till he was able to escape to London, and thence to theshelter of some friends of his at Bedford. Gifford had studied medicinebefore he entered the army, and as soon as he thought it safe he began topractise his old art in the town of Bedford. Gifford had been adissolute man as a soldier, and he became, if possible, a still morescandalously dissolute man as a civilian. Gifford's life in Bedford wasa public disgrace, and his hatred and persecution of the Puritans in thattown made his very name an infamy and a fear. He reduced himself tobeggary with gambling and drink, but, when near suicide, he came underthe power of the truth, till we see him clothed with rags and with agreat burden on his back, crying out, 'What must I do to be saved?' 'Butat last'--I quote from the session records of his future church atBedford--'God did so plentifully discover to him the forgiveness of sinsfor the sake of Christ, that all his life after he lost not the light ofGod's countenance, no, not for an hour, save only about two days beforehe died. ' Gifford's conversion had been so conspicuous and notoriousthat both town and country soon heard of it: and instead of being ashamedof it, and seeking to hide it, Gifford at once, and openly, threw in hislot with the extremest Puritans in the Puritan town of Bedford. Norcould Gifford's talents be hid; till from one thing to another, we findthe former Royalist and dissolute Cavalier actually the parish ministerof Bedford in Cromwell's so evangelical but otherwise so elasticestablishment. 

At this point we open John Bunyan's _Grace Abounding to the Chief ofSinners_, and we read this classical passage:--'Upon a day the goodprovidence of God did cast me to Bedford to work in my calling: and inone of the streets of that town I came where there were three or fourpoor women sitting at the door in the sun and talking about the things ofGod. But I may say I heard, but I understood not, for they were farabove and out of my reach . . . About this time I began to break my mindto those poor people in Bedford, and to tell them of my condition, which, when they had heard, they told Mr. Gifford of me, who himself also tookoccasion to talk with me, and was willing to be well persuaded of methough I think on too little grounds. But he invited me to his house, where I should hear him confer with others about the dealings of God withtheir souls, from all which I still received more conviction, and fromthat time began to see something of the vanity and inner wretchedness ofmy own heart, for as yet I knew no great matter therein . . . At thattime also I sat under the ministry of holy Mr. Gifford, whose doctrine, by the grace of God, was much for my stability. ' And so on in thatinimitable narrative. 

The first minister whose words were truly blessed of God for ourawakening and conversion has always a place of his own in our hearts. Weall have some minister, some revivalist, some faithful friend, or somegood book in a warm place in our heart. It may be a great city preacher;it may be a humble American or Irish revivalist; it may be _The Pilgrim'sProgress_, or _The Cardiphonia_, or the _Serious Call_--whoever orwhatever it was that first arrested and awakened and turned us into theway of life, they all our days stand in a place by themselves in ourgrateful heart. And John Gifford has been immortalised by John Bunyan, both in his _Grace Abounding_ and in his _Pilgrim's Progress_. In his_Grace Abounding_, as we have just seen, and in _The Pilgrim_, Giffordhas his portrait painted in holy oil on the wall of the Interpreter'shouse, and again in eloquent pen and ink in the person of Evangelist. 

John Gifford had himself made a narrow escape out of the City ofDestruction, and John Bunyan had, by Gifford's assistance, made the sameescape also. The scene, therefore, both within that city and outside thegate of it, was so fixed in Bunyan's mind and memory that no part of hismemorable book is more memorably put than just its opening page. Bunyanhimself is the man in rags, and Gifford is the evangelist who comes toconsole and to conduct him. Bunyan's portraits are all taken from thelife. Brilliant and well-furnished as Bunyan's imagination was, Bedfordwas still better furnished with all kinds of men and women, and with allkinds of saints and sinners. And thus, instead of drawing upon hisimagination in writing his books, Bunyan drew from life. And thus it isthat we see first John Gifford, and then John Bunyan himself at the gateof the city; and then, over the page, Gifford becomes the evangelist whois sent by the four poor women to speak to the awakened tinker. 

'Wherefore dost thou so cry?' asks Evangelist. 'Because, ' replied theman, 'I am condemned to die. ' 'But why are you so unwilling to die, since this life is so full of evils?' And I suppose we must all hearEvangelist putting the same pungent question to ourselves every day, atwhatever point of the celestial journey we at present are. Yes; why arewe all so unwilling to die? Why do we number our days to put off ourdeath to the last possible period? Why do we so refuse to think of theonly thing we are sure soon to come to? We are absolutely sure ofnothing else in the future but death. We may not see to-morrow, but weshall certainly see the day of our death. And yet we have all our planslaid for to-morrow, and only one here and one there has any plan laid forthe day of his death. And can it be for the same reason that made theman in rags unwilling to die? Is it because of the burden on our back?Is it because we are not fit to go to judgment? And yet the trumpet maysound summoning us hence before the midnight clock strikes. If this bethy condition, why standest thou still? Dost thou see yonder shininglight? Keep that light in thine eye. Go up straight to it, knock at thegate, and it shall be told thee there what thou shalt do next. Burdenedsinner, son of man in rags and terror: What has burdened thee so? Whathas torn thy garments into such shameful rags? What is it in thy burdenthat makes it so heavy? And how long has it lain so heavy upon thee? 'Icannot run, ' said the man, 'because of the burden on my back. ' And ithas been noticed of you that you do not laugh, or run, or dress, ordance, or walk, or eat, or drink as once you did. All men see that thereis some burden on your back; some sore burden on your heart and yourmind. Do you see yonder wicket gate? Do you see yonder shining light?There is no light in all the horizon for you but yonder light over thegate. Keep it in your eye; make straight, and make at once for it, andHe who keeps the gate and keeps the light burning over it, He will tellyou what to do with your burden. He told John Gifford, and He told JohnBunyan, till both their burdens rolled off their backs, and they saw themno more. What would you not give to-night to be released like them? Doyou not see yonder shining light?

Having set Christian fairly on the way to the wicket gate, Evangelistleaves him in order to seek out and assist some other seeker. Butyesterday he had set Faithful's face to the celestial city, and he is offnow to look for another pilgrim. We know some of Christian's adventuresand episodes after Evangelist left him, but we do not take up these atpresent. We pass on to the next time that Evangelist finds Christian, and he finds him in a sorry plight. He has listened to bad advice. Hehas gone off the right road, he has lost sight of the gate, and all thethunders and lightnings of Sinai are rolling and flashing out againsthim. What doest thou here of all men in the world? asked Evangelist, with a severe and dreadful countenance. Did I not direct thee to Hisgate, and why art thou here? Christian told him that a fair-spoken manhad met him, and had persuaded him to take an easier and shorter way ofgetting rid of his burden. Read the whole place for yourselves. The endof it was that Evangelist set Christian right again, and gave him twocounsels which would be his salvation if he attended to them: Strive toenter in at the strait gate, and, Take up thy cross daily. He would needmore counsel afterwards than that; but, meantime, that was enough. LetChristian follow that, and he would before long be rid of his burden. 

In the introductory lecture Bishop Butler has been commended and praisedas a moralist, and certainly not one word beyond his deserts; but anevangelical preacher cannot send any man with the burden of a bad pastupon him to Butler for advice and direction about that. While lecturingon and praising the sound philosophical and ethical spirit of the greatbishop, Dr. Chalmers complains that he so much lacks the _salevangelicum_, the strength and the health and the sweetness of thedoctrines of grace. Legality and Civility and Morality are all good andnecessary in their own places; but he is a cheat who would send a guilt-burdened and sick-at-heart sinner to any or all of them. The wicket gatefirst, and then He who keeps that gate will tell us what to do, and wherenext to go; but any other way out of the City of Destruction but by thewicket gate is sure to land us where it landed Evangelist's quaking andsweating charge. When Bishop Butler lay on his deathbed he called forhis chaplain, and said, 'Though I have endeavoured to avoid sin, and toplease God to the utmost of my power, yet from the consciousness of myperpetual infirmities I am still afraid to die. ' 'My lord, ' said hishappily evangelical chaplain, 'have you forgotten that Jesus Christ is aSaviour?' 'True, ' said the dying philosopher, 'but how shall I know thatHe is a Saviour for me?' 'My lord, it is written, "Him that cometh toMe, I will in no wise cast out. "' 'True, ' said Butler, 'and I amsurprised that though I have read that Scripture a thousand times, Inever felt its virtue till this moment, and now I die in peace. '

The third and the last time on which the pilgrims meet with their oldfriend and helper, Evangelist, is when they are just at the gates of thetown of Vanity. They have come through many wonderful experiences sincelast they saw and spoke with him. They have had the gate opened to themby Goodwill. They have been received and entertained in theInterpreter's House, and in the House Beautiful. The burden has fallenoff their backs at the cross, and they have had their rags removed andhave received change of raiment. They have climbed the Hill Difficulty, and they have fought their way through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. More than the half of their adventures and sufferings are past; but theyare not yet out of gunshot of the devil, and the bones of many apromising pilgrim lie whitening the way between this and the city. Manyof our young communicants have made a fair and a promising start forsalvation. They have got over the initial difficulties that lay in theirway to the Lord's table, and we have entered their names with honestpride in our communion roll. But a year or two passes over, and thecritical season arrives when our young communicant 'comes out, ' as theword is. Up till now she has been a child, a little maid, a Bible-classstudent, a young communicant, a Sabbath-school teacher. But she is now ayoung lady, and she comes out into the world. We soon see that she hasso come out, as we begin to miss her from places and from employments herpresence used to brighten; and, very unwillingly, we overhear men andwomen with her name on their lips in a way that makes us fear for hersoul, till many, oh, in a single ministry, how many, who promised well atthe gate and ran safely past many snares, at last sell all--body and souland Saviour--in Vanity Fair. 

Well, Evangelist remains Evangelist still. Only, without losing any ofhis sweetness and freeness and fulness of promise, he adds to that somesolemn warnings and counsels suitable now, as never before, to these twopilgrims. If one may say so, he would add now such moral treatises asButler's _Sermons_ and _Serious Call_ to such evangelical books as _GraceAbounding_ and _A Jerusalem Sinner Saved_. 

To-morrow the two pilgrims will come out of the wilderness and will beplunged into a city where they will be offered all kinds ofmerchandise, --houses, lands, places, honours, preferments, titles, pleasures, delights, wives, children, bodies, souls, and what not. Analtogether new world from anything they have yet come through, and aworld where many who once began well have gone no further. Such counselsas these, then, Evangelist gave Christian and Faithful as they left thelonely wilderness behind them and came out towards the gate of theseductive city--'Let the Kingdom of Heaven be always before your eyes, and believe steadfastly concerning things that are invisible. ' Visible, tangible, sweet, and desirable things will immediately be offered tothem, and unless they have a faith in their hearts that is the substanceof things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen, it will soon beall over with them and their pilgrimage. 'Let no man take your crown, 'he said also, as he foresaw at how many booths and counters, houses, lands, places, preferments, wives, husbands, and what not, would beoffered them and pressed upon them in exchange for their heavenly crown. 'Above all, look well to your own hearts, ' he said. Canon Venableslaments over the teaching that Bunyan received from John Gifford. 'Itsprinciple, ' he says, 'was constant introspection and scrupulous weighingof every word and deed, and even of every thought, instead of leading themind off from self to the Saviour. ' The canon seems to think that it wasspecially unfortunate for Bunyan to be told to keep his heart and toweigh well every thought of it; but I must point out to you thatEvangelist puts as above all other things the most important for thepilgrims the looking well to their own hearts; and our plain-spokenauthor has used a very severe word about any minister who should whisperanything to any pilgrim that could be construed or misunderstood intoputting Christ in the place of thought and word and deed, and thescrupulous weighing of every one of them. 'Let nothing that is on thisside the other world get within you; and above all, look well to your ownhearts, and to the lusts thereof. '

'Set your faces like a flint, ' Evangelist proceeds. How little like allthat you hear in the counsels of the pulpit to young women coming out andto young men entering into business life. I am convinced that if weministers were more direct and plain-spoken to such persons at suchtimes; if we, like Bunyan, told them plainly what kind of a world it isthey are coming out to buy and sell in, and what its merchandise and itsprices are; if our people would let us so preach to their sons anddaughters, I feel sure far fewer young communicants would make shipwreck, and far fewer grey heads would go down with sorrow to the grave. 'Be notafraid, ' said Robert Hall in his charge to a young minister, 'of devotingwhole sermons to particular parts of moral conduct and religious duty. Itis impossible to give right views of them unless you dissect charactersand describe particular virtues and vices. The works of the flesh andthe fruits of the Spirit must be distinctly pointed out. To preachagainst sin in general without descending to particulars may lead many tocomplain of the evil of their hearts, while at the same time they areawfully inattentive to the evil of their conduct. ' Take Evangelist'snoble counsels at the gate of Vanity Fair, and then take John Bunyan'smasterly description of the Fair itself, with all that is bought and soldin it, and you will have a lesson in evangelical preaching that theevangelical pulpit needed in Bunyan's day, in Robert Hall's day, and notless in our own. 

'My sons, you have heard the truth of the gospel, that you must throughmany tribulations enter the Kingdom of God. When, therefore, you arecome to the Fair and shall find fulfilled what I have here related, thenremember your friend; quit yourselves like men, and commit the keeping ofyour souls to your God in well-doing as unto a faithful Creator. '

OBSTINATE

 'Be ye not as the mule. '--David. 

Little Obstinate was born and brought up in the City of Destruction. Hisfather was old Spare-the-Rod, and his mother's name was Spoil-the-Child. Little Obstinate was the only child of his parents; he was born when theywere no longer young, and they doted on their only child, and gave himhis own way in everything. Everything he asked for he got, and if he didnot immediately get it you would have heard his screams and his kicksthree doors off. His parents were not in themselves bad people, but, ifSolomon speaks true, they hated their child, for they gave him all hisown way in everything, and nothing would ever make them say no to him, orlift up the rod when he said no to them. When the Scriptures, in theirpedagogical parts, speak so often about the rod, they do not necessarilymean a rod of iron or even of wood. There are other ways of teaching anobstinate child than the way that Gideon took with the men of Succothwhen he taught them with the thorns of the wilderness and with the briarsthereof. George Offor, John Bunyan's somewhat quaint editor, gives thereaders of his edition this personal testimony:--'After bringing up avery large family, who are a blessing to their parents, I have yet tolearn what part of the human body was created to be beaten. ' At the sametime the rod must mean something in the word of God; it certainly meanssomething in God's hand when His obstinate children are under it, and itought to mean something in a godly parent's hand also. LittleObstinate's two parents were far from ungodly people, though they livedin such a city; but they were daily destroying their only son by lettinghim always have his own way, and by never saying no to his greed, and hislies, and his anger, and his noisy and disorderly ways. Eli in the OldTestament was not a bad man, but he destroyed both the ark of the Lordand himself and his sons also, because his sons made themselves vile, andhe restrained them not. God's children are never so soft, and sweet, andgood, and happy as just after He restrains them, and has again laid therod of correction upon them. They then kiss both the rod and Him whoappointed it. And earthly fathers learn their craft from God. Themeekness, the sweetness, the docility, and the love of a chastised childhas gone to all our hearts in a way we can never forget. There issomething sometimes almost past description or belief in the way achastised child clings to and kisses the hand that chastised it. Butpoor old Spare-the-Rod never had experiences like that. And youngObstinate, having been born like Job's wild ass's colt, grew up to be aman like David's unbitted and unbridled mule, till in after life hebecame the author of all the evil and mischief that is associated in ourminds with his evil name. 

In old Spare-the-Rod's child also this true proverb was fulfilled, thatthe child is the father of the man. For all that little Obstinate hadbeen in the nursery, in the schoolroom, and in the playground--all that, only in an aggravated way--he was as a youth and as a grown-up man. Forone thing, Obstinate all his days was a densely ignorant man. He had notgot into the way of learning his lessons when he was a child; he had notbeen made to learn his lessons when he was a child; and the dislike andcontempt he had for his books as a boy accompanied him through anignorant and a narrow-minded life. It was reason enough to this sounreasonable man not to buy and read a book that you had asked him to buyand read it. And so many of the books about him were either written, orprinted, or published, or sold, or read, or praised by people he did notlike, that there was little left for this unhappy man to read, even ifotherwise he would have read it. And thus, as his mulish obstinacy kepthim so ignorant, so his ignorance in turn increased his obstinacy. Andthen when he came, as life went on, to have anything to do with othermen's affairs, either in public or in private life, either in the church, or in the nation, or in the city, or in the family, this unhappy mancould only be a drag on all kinds of progress, and in obstacle to everygood work. Use and wont, a very good rule on occasion, was a rigid and auniversal rule with Obstinate. And to be told that the wont in this caseand in that had ceased to be the useful, only made him rail at you asonly an ignorant and an obstinate man can rail. He could only rail; hehad not knowledge enough, or good temper enough, or good manners enoughto reason out a matter; he was too hot-tempered for an argument, and hehated those who had an acquaintance with the subject in hand, and a self-command in connection with it that he had not. 'The obstinate man'sunderstanding is like Pharaoh's heart, and it is proof against all sortsof arguments whatsoever. ' Like the demented king of Egypt, the obstinateman has glimpses sometimes both of his bounden duty and of his trueinterest, but the sinew of iron that is in his neck will not let himperform the one or pursue the other. 'Nothing, ' says a penetratingwriter, 'is more like firm conviction than simple obstinacy. Plots andparties in the state, and heresies and divisions in the church alikeproceed from it. ' Let any honest man take that sentence and carry itlike a candle down into his own heart and back into his own life, andthen with the insight and honesty there learned carry the same candleback through some of the plots and parties, the heresies and schisms ofthe past as well as of the present day, and he will have learned a lessonthat will surely help to cure himself, at any rate, of his own remainingobstinacy. All our firm convictions, as we too easily and too fondlycall them, must continually be examined and searched out in the light ofmore reading of the best authors, in the light of more experience ofourselves and of the world we live in, and in that best of all light, that increasing purity, simplicity, and sincerity of heart alone cankindle. And in not a few instances we shall to a certainty find thatwhat has hitherto been clothing itself with the honourable name andcharacter of a conviction was all the time only an ignorant prejudice, adistaste or a dislike, a too great fondness for ourselves and for our ownopinion and our own interest. Many of our firmest convictions, as we nowcall them, when we shall have let light enough fall upon them, we shallbe compelled and enabled to confess to be at bottom mere mulishness andpride of heart. The mulish, obstinate, and proud man never says, I don'tknow. He never asks anything to be explained to him. He never admitsthat he has got any new light. He never admits having spoken or actedwrongly. He never takes back what he has said. He was never heard tosay, You are right in that line of action, and I have all along beenwrong. Had he ever said that, the day he said it would have been a white-stone day both for his mind and his heart. Only, the spoiled son ofSpare-the-Rod never said that, or anything like that. 

But, most unfortunately, it is in the very best things of life that thetrue mulishness of the obstinate man most comes out. He shows worst inhis home life and in the matters of religion. When our Obstinate was inlove he was as sweet as honey and as soft as butter. His old friendsthat he used so to trample upon scarcely recognised him. They hadsometimes seen men converted, but they had never seen such an immediateand such a complete conversion as this. He actually invited correction, and reproof, and advice, and assistance, who had often struck at you withhis hands and his feet when you even hinted at such a thing to him. Thebest upbringing, the best books, the best preaching, the best and mostobedient life, taken all together, had not done for other men what awoman's smile and the touch of her hand had in a moment done for thisonce so obstinate man. He would read anything now, and especially thebest books. He would hear and enjoy any preacher now, and especially thebest and most earnest in preaching. His old likes and dislikes, prejudices and prepossessions, self-opinionativeness andself-assertiveness all miraculously melted off him, and he became in aday an open-minded, intelligent, good-mannered, devout-minded gentleman. He who was once such a mule to everybody was now led about by a child ina silken bridle. All old things had passed away, and all things hadbecome new. For a time; for a time. But time passes, and there passesaway with it all the humility, meekness, pliability, softness, andsweetness of the obstinate man. Till when long enough time has elapsedyou find him all the obstinate and mulish man he ever was. It is notthat he has ceased to love his wife and his children. It is not that. But there is this in all genuine and inbred obstinacy, that after a timeit often comes out worst beside those we love best. A man will beaffable, accessible, entertaining, the best of company, and the soul ofit abroad, and, then, instantly he turns the latch-key in his own door hewill relapse into silence, and sink back into utter boorishness andbearishness, mulishness and doggedness. He swallows his evening meal atthe foot of the table in silence, and then he sits all night at thefireside with a cloud out of nothing on his brow. His sunshine, hissmile, and his universal urbanity is all gone now; he is discourteous tonobody but to his own wife. Nothing pleases him; he finds nothing athome to his mind. The furniture, the hours, the habits of the house areall disposed so as to please him; but he was never yet heard to say towife, or child, or servant that he was pleased. He never says that ameal is to his taste or a seat set so as to shelter and repose him. Theobstinate man makes his house a very prison and treadmill to himself andto all those who are condemned to suffer with him. And all the time itis not that he does not love and honour his household; but by an evil lawof the obstinate heart its worst obstinacy and mulishness comes out amongthose it loves best. 

But, my brethren, worse than all that, we have all what good Bishop Hallcalls 'a stone of obstination' in our hearts against God. With all hisown depth and clearness and plain-spokenness, Paul tells us that ourhearts are by nature enmity against God. Were we proud and obstinate andmalicious against men only it would be bad enough, and it would bedifficult enough to cure, but our case is dreadful beyond all descriptionor belief when our obstinacy strikes out against God. We know as well aswe know anything, that in doing this and in not doing that we are goingevery day right in the teeth both of God's law and God's grace; and yetin the sheer obstinacy and perversity of our heart we still go on in whatwe know quite well to be the suicide of our souls. We are told by ourminister to do this and not to do that; to begin to do this at this newyear and to break off from doing that; but, partly through obstinacytowards him, reinforced by a deeper and subtler and deadlier obstinacyagainst God, and against all the deepest and most godly of the things ofGod, we neither do the one nor cease from doing the other. There is asullenness in some men's minds, a gloom and a bitter air that rises upfrom the unploughed, undrained, unweeded, uncultivated fens of theirhearts that chills and blasts all the feeble beginnings of a better life. The natural and constitutional obstinacy of the obstinate heart isexasperated when it comes to deal with the things of God. For it is thenreinforced with all the guilt and all the fear, all the suspicion and allthe aversion of the corrupt and self-condemned heart. There is anobdurateness of obstinacy against all the men, and the books, and thedoctrines, and the precepts, and the practices that are in any wayconnected with spiritual religion that does not come out even in theobstinate man's family life. 

John Bunyan's Obstinate, both by his conduct as well as by the etymologyof his name, not only stands in the way of his own salvation, but he doesall he can to stand in the way of other men setting out to salvationalso. Obstinate set out after Christian to fetch him back by force, andif it had not been that he met his match in Christian, _The Pilgrim'sProgress_ would never have been written. 'That can by no means be, ' saidChristian to his pursuer, and he is first called Christian when he showsthat one man can be as obstinate in good as another man can be in evil. 'I never now can go back to my former life. ' And then the two obstinatemen parted company for ever, Christian in holy obstinacy being determinedto have eternal life at any cost, and Obstinate as determined against it. The opening pages of _The Pilgrim's Progress_ set the two men verygraphically and very impressively before us. 

As to the cure of obstinacy, the rod in a firm, watchful, wise, andloving hand will cure it. And in later life a long enough and closeenough succession of humble, yielding, docile, submissive, self-chastening and thanksgiving acts will cure it. Reading and obeyingthe best books on the subjugation and the regulation of the heart willcure it. Descending with Dante to where the obstinate, and theembittered, and the gloomy, and the sullen have made their beds in hellwill cure it. And much and most agonising prayer will above all cure it. 

 'O Lord, if thus so obstinate I, Choose Thou, before my spirit die, A piercing pain, a killing sin, And to my proud heart run them in. 

PLIABLE

 'He hath not root in himself. '--Our Lord. 

With one stroke of His pencil our Lord gives us this Flaxman-like outlineof one of his well-known hearers. And then John Bunyan takes up that soexpressive profile, and puts flesh and blood into it, till it becomes thewell-known Pliable of _The Pilgrim's Progress_. We call the text aparable, but our Lord's parables are all portraits--portraits and groupsof portraits, rather than ordinary parables. Our Lord knew this manquite well who had no root in himself. Our Lord had crowds of such menalways running after Him, and He threw off this rapid portrait fromhundreds of men and women who caused discredit to fall on His name andHis work, and burdened His heart continually. And John Bunyan, with allhis genius, could never have given us such speaking likenesses as that ofPliable and Temporary and Talkative, unless he had had scores of them inhis own congregation. 

Our Lord's short preliminary description of Pliable goes, like all Hisdescriptions, to the very bottom of the whole matter. Our Lord in thispassage is like one of those masterly artists who begin their portrait-painting with the study of anatomy. All the great artists in this walkbuild up their best portraits from the inside of their subjects. He hathnot root in himself, says our Lord, and we need no more than that to betold us to foresee how all his outside religion will end. 'Without self-knowledge, ' says one of the greatest students of the human heart thatever lived, 'you have no real root in yourselves. Real self-knowledge isthe root of all real religious knowledge. It is a deceit and a mischiefto think that the Christian doctrines can either be understood or arightaccepted by any outward means. It is just in proportion as we search ourown hearts and understand our own nature that we shall ever feel what ablessing the removal of sin will be; redemption, pardon, sanctification, are all otherwise mere words without meaning or power to us. God speaksto us first in our own hearts. ' Happily for us our Lord has annotatedHis own text and has told us that an honest heart is the alone root ofall true religion. Honest, that is, with itself, and with God and manabout itself. As David says in his so honest psalm, 'Behold, Thoudesirest truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden part Thou shaltmake me to know wisdom. ' And, indeed, all the preachers and writers inScripture, and all Scriptural preachers and writers outside of Scripture, are at one in this: that all true wisdom begins at home, and that it allbegins at the heart. And they all teach us that he is the wisest of menwho has the worst opinion of his own heart, as he is the foolishest ofmen who does not know his own heart to be the worst heart that ever anyman was cursed with in this world. 'Here is wisdom': not to know thenumber of the beast, but to know his mark, and to read it written soindelibly in our own heart. 

And where this first and best of all wisdom is not, there, in our Lord'swords, there is no deepness of earth, no root, and no fruit. And anyreligion that most men have is of this outside, shallow, rootlessdescription. This was all the religion that poor Pliable ever had. Thispoor creature had a certain slight root of something that looked likereligion for a short season, but even that slight root was all outside ofhimself. His root, what he had of a root, was all in Christian'scompanionship and impassioned appeals, and then in those impressivepassages of Scripture that Christian read to him. At your firstattention to these things you would think that no possible root could bebetter planted than in the Bible and in earnest preaching. But even theBible, and, much more, the best preaching, is all really outside of a mantill true religion once gets its piercing roots down into himself. Wehave perhaps all heard of men, and men of no small eminence, who werebrought up to believe the teaching of the Bible and the pulpit, but who, when some of their inherited and external ideas about some thingsconnected with the Bible began to be shaken, straightway felt as if allthe grounds of their faith were shaken, and all the roots of their faithpulled up. But where that happened, all that was because such men'sreligion was all rooted outside of themselves; in the best things outsideof themselves, indeed, but because, in our Lord's words, their religionwas rooted in something outside of themselves and not inside, they wereby and by offended, and threw off their faith. There is another well-known class of men all whose religion is rooted in their church, and intheir church not as a member of the body of Christ, but as a socialinstitution set up in this world. They believe in their church. Theyworship their church. They suffer and make sacrifices for their church. They are proud of the size and the income of their church; her pastcontendings and sufferings, and present dangers, all endear their churchto their heart. But if tribulation and persecution arise, that is tosay, if anything arises to vex or thwart or disappoint them with theirchurch, they incontinently pull up their roots and their religion withit, and transplant both to any other church that for the time betterpleases them, or to no church at all. Others, again, have all theirreligiosity rooted in their family life. Their religion is all made upof domestic sentiment. They love their earthly home with that supremesatisfaction and that all-absorbing affection that truly religious menentertain for their heavenly home. And thus it is that when anythinghappens to disturb or break up their earthly home their rootlessreligiosity goes with it. Other men's religion, again, and all theirinterest in it, is rooted in their shop; you can make them anything ornothing in religion, according as you do or do not do business in theirshop. Companionship, also, accounts for the fluctuations of many men's, and almost all women's, religious lives. If they happen to fall in withgodly lovers and friends, they are sincerely godly with them; but iftheir companions are indifferent or hostile to true religion, theygradually fall into the same temper and attitude. We sometimes seestudents destined for the Christian ministry also with all their religionso without root in themselves that a session in an unsympathetic class, asceptical book, sometimes just a sneer or a scoff, will wither all thepromise of their coming service. And so on through the whole of humanlife. He that hath not the root of the matter in himself dureth for awhile, but by and by, for one reason or another, he is sure to beoffended. 

So much, then, --not enough, nor good enough--for our Lord's swift strokeat the heart of His hearers. But let us now pass on to Pliable, as he sosoon and so completely discovers himself to us under John Bunyan's soskilful hand. Look well at our author's speaking portrait of awell-known man in Bedford who had no root in himself, and who, as aconsequence, was pliable to any influence, good or bad, that happened tocome across him. 'Don't revile, ' are the first words that come fromPliable's lips, and they are not unpromising words. Pliable is hurt withObstinate's coarse abuse of the Christian life, till he is downrightashamed to be seen in his company. Pliable, at least, is a gentlemancompared with Obstinate, and his gentlemanly feelings and his goodmanners make him at once take sides with Christian. Obstinate's foultongue has almost made Pliable a Christian. And this finely-conceivedscene on the plain outside the city gate is enacted over again every dayamong ourselves. Where men are in dead earnest about religion it alwaysarouses the bad passions of bad men; and where earnest preachers anddevoted workers are assailed with violence or with bad language, there isalways enough love of fair play in the bystanders to compel them to takesides, for the time at least, with those who suffer for the truth. Andwe are sometimes too apt to count all that love of common fairness, andthat hatred of foul play, as a sure sign of some sympathy with the hatedtruth itself. When an onlooker says 'Don't revile, ' we are too ready toset down that expression of civility as at least the first beginning oftrue religion. But the religion of Jesus Christ cuts far deeper into theheart of man than to the dividing asunder of justice and injustice, civility and incivility, ribaldry and good manners. And it is alwaysfound in the long-run that the cross of Christ and its crucifixion of thehuman heart goes quite as hard with the gentlemanly-mannered man, thecivil and urbane man, as it does with the man of bad behaviour and ofbrutish manners. 'Civil men, ' says Thomas Goodwin, 'are this world'ssaints. ' And poor Pliable was one of them. 'My heart really inclines togo with my neighbour, ' said Pliable next. 'Yes, ' he said, 'I begin tocome to a point. I really think I will go along with this good man. Yes, I will cast in my lot with him. Come, good neighbour, let us be going. '

The apocalyptic side of some men's imaginations is very easily workedupon. No kind of book sells better among those of our people who have noroot in themselves than just picture-books about heaven. Ourmissionaries make use of lantern-slides to bring home the scenes in theGospels to the dull minds of their village hearers, and with goodsuccess. And at home a magic-lantern filled with the splendours of theNew Jerusalem would carry multitudes of rootless hearts quite captive fora time. 'Well said; and what else? This is excellent; and what else?'Christian could not tell Pliable fast enough about the glories of heaven. 'There we shall be with seraphim and cherubim, creatures that will dazzleyour eyes to look on them. There also you shall meet with thousands andten thousands who have gone before us to that place. Elders with goldencrowns, and holy virgins with golden harps, and all clothed withimmortality as with a garment. ' 'The hearing of all this, ' criedPliable, 'is enough to ravish one's heart. ' 'An overly faith, ' says oldThomas Shepard, 'is easily wrought. '

As if the text itself was not graphic enough, Bunyan's racy, humorous, pathetic style overflows the text and enriches the very margins of hispages, as every possessor of a good edition of _The Pilgrim_ knows. 'Christian and Obstinate pull for Pliable's soul' is the eloquent summaryset down on the side of the sufficiently eloquent page. As the pictureof a man's soul being pulled for rises before my mind, I can think of nobetter companion picture to that of Pliable than that of poor, hard-besetBrodie of Brodie, as he lets us see the pull for his soul in the honestpages of his inward diary. Under the head of 'Pliable' in my Bunyan note-book I find a crowd of references to Brodie; and if only to illustrateour author's marginal note, I shall transcribe one or two of them. 'Thewriter of this diary desires to be cast down under the facileness andplausibleness of his nature, by which he labours to please men more thanGod, and whence it comes that the wicked speak good of him . . . The Lordpity the proneness of his heart to comply with the men who have the power. . . Lord, he is unsound and double in his heart, politically crafty, selfish, not savouring nor discerning the things of God . . . Let notself-love, wit, craft, and timorousness corrupt his mind, but indue himwith fortitude, patience, steadfastness, tenderness, mortification . . . Shall I expose myself and my family to danger at this time? A grain ofsound faith would solve all my questions. ' 'Die Dom. I stayed at home, partly to decline the ill-will and rage of men and to declineobservation. ' Or, take another Sabbath-day entry: 'Die Dom. I stayed athome, because of the time, and the observation, and the Earl of Moray . .. Came to Cuttiehillock. I am neither cold nor hot. I am not rightlyprincipled as to the time. I suspect that it is not all conscience thatmakes me conform, but wit, and to avoid suffering; Lord, deliver me fromall this unsoundness of heart. ' And after this miserable fashion doheaven and earth, duty and self-interest, the covenant and the crown pullfor Lord Brodie's soul through 422 quarto pages. Brodie's diary is oneof the most humiliating, heart-searching, and heart-instructing books Iever read. Let all public men tempted and afflicted with a facile, pliable, time-serving heart have honest Brodie at their elbow. 

'Glad I am, my good companion, ' said Pliable, after the passage about thecherubim and the seraphim, and the golden crowns and the golden harps, 'it ravishes my very heart to hear all this. Come on, let us mend ourpace. ' This is delightful, this is perfect. How often have we ourselvesheard these very words of challenge and reproof from the pliablefrequenters of emotional meetings, and from the emotional members of anemotional but rootless ministry. Come on, let us mend our pace! 'I amsorry to say, ' replied the man with the burden on his back, 'that Icannot go so fast as I would. ' 'Christian, ' says Mr. Kerr Bain, 'hasmore to carry than Pliable has, as, indeed, he would still have if hewere carrying nothing but himself; and he does have about him, besides, afew sobering thoughts as to the length and labour and some of theunforeseen chances of the way. ' And as Dean Paget says in his profoundand powerful sermon on 'The Disasters of Shallowness': 'Yes, but there issomething else first; something else without which that inexpensivebrightness, that easy hopefulness, is apt to be a frail resourcelessgrowth, withering away when the sun is up and the hot winds of trial aresweeping over it. We must open our hearts to our religion; we must havethe inward soil broken up, freely and deeply its roots must penetrate ourinner being. We must take to ourselves in silence and in sincerity itswords of judgment with its words of hope, its sternness with itsencouragement, its denunciations with its promises, its requirements, with its offers, its absolute intolerance of sin with its inconceivableand divine long-suffering towards sinners. ' But preaching like thiswould have frightened away poor Pliable. He would not have understoodit, and what he did understand of it he would have hated with all hisshallow heart. 

'Where are we now?' called Pliable to his companion, as they both wentover head and ears into the Slough of Despond. 'Truly, ' said Christian, 'I do not know. '--No work of man is perfect, not even the all-but-perfect_Pilgrim's Progress_. Christian was bound to fall sooner or later into aslough filled with his own despondency about himself, his past guilt, hispresent sinfulness, and his anxious future. But Pliable had notknowledge enough of himself to make him ever despond. He was alwaysready and able to mend his pace. He had no burden on his back, andtherefore no doubt in his heart. But Christian had enough of both forany ten men, and it was Christian's overflowing despondency and doubt atthis point of the road that suddenly filled his own slough, and, Isuppose, overflowed into a slough for Pliable also. Had Pliable only hada genuine and original slough of his own to so sink and be bedaubed in, he would have got out of it at the right side of it, and been a tender-stepping pilgrim all his days. --'Is this the happiness you have told meall this while of? May I get out of this with my life, you may possessthe brave country alone for me. ' And with that he gave a desperatestruggle or two, and got out of the mire on that side of the slough whichwas next his own house; so he went away, and Christian saw him no more. 'The side of the slough which was next his own house. ' Let us close withthat. Let us go home thinking about that. And in this trial of faithand patience, and in that, in this temptation to sin, and in that, inthis actual transgression, and in that, let us always ask ourselves whichis the side of the slough that is farthest away from our own house, andlet us still struggle to that side of the slough, and it will all be wellwith us at the last. 

HELP

 'I was brought low, and He helped me. '--David. 

The Slough of Despond is one of John Bunyan's masterpieces. In hisdescription of the slough, Bunyan touches his highest water-mark forhumour, and pathos, and power, and beauty of language. If we did nothave the English Bible in our own hands we would have to ask, as LordJeffrey asked Lord Macaulay, where the brazier of Bedford got hisinimitable style. Bunyan confesses to us that he got all his Latin fromthe prescription papers of his doctors, and we know that he got all hisperfect English from his English Bible. And then he got his humour andhis pathos out of his own deep and tender heart. The God of all gracegave a great gift to the English-speaking world and to the Church ofChrist in all lands when He created and converted John Bunyan, and put itinto his head and his heart to compose _The Pilgrim's Progress_. Hisheart-affecting page on the slough has been wetted with the tears ofthousands of its readers, and their tears have been mingled with smilesas they read their own sin and misery, and the never-to-be-forgotten timeand place where their sin and misery first found them out, all told sorecognisably, so pathetically, and so amusingly almost to laughablenessin the passage upon the slough. We see the ocean of scum and filthpouring down into the slough through the subterranean sewers of the Cityof Destruction and of the Town of Stupidity, which lies four degreesbeyond the City of Destruction, and from many other of the houses andhaunts of men. We see His Majesty's sappers and miners at their wits'end how to cope with the deluges of pollution that pour into this sloughthat they have been ordained to drain and dry up. For ages and ages theroyal surveyors have been laying out all their skill on this slough. Morecartloads than you could count of the best material for filling up aslough have been shot into it, and yet you would never know that so muchas a single labourer had emptied his barrow here. True, excellentstepping-stones have been laid across the slough by skilful engineers, but they are always so slippery with the scum and slime of the slough, that it is only now and then that a traveller can keep his feet uponthem. Altogether, our author's picture of the Slough of Despond is sucha picture that no one who has seen it can ever forget it. But betterthan reading the best description of the slough is to see certain well-known pilgrims trying to cross it. Mr. Fearing at the Slough of Despondwas a tale often told at the tavern suppers of that country. Neverpilgrim attempted the perilous journey with such a chicken-heart in hisbosom as this Mr. Fearing. He lay above a month on the bank of theslough, and would not even attempt the steps. Some kind Pilgrims, thoughthey had enough to do to keep the steps themselves, offered him a hand;but no. And after they were safely over it made them almost weep to hearthe man still roaring in his horror at the other side. Some bade him gohome if he would not take the steps, but he said that he would rathermake his grave in the slough than go back one hairsbreadth. Till, onesunshiny morning, --no one knew how, and he never knew how himself--thesteps were so high and dry, and the scum and slime were so low, that thishare-hearted man made a venture, and so got over. But, then, as anunkind friend of his said, this pitiful pilgrim had a slough of despondin his own mind which he carried always and everywhere about with him, and made him the proverb of despondency that he was and is. Only, thatsunshiny morning he got over both the slough inside of him and outside ofhim, and was heard by Help and his family singing this song on the hitherside of the slough: 'He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out ofthe miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings. '

Our pilgrim did not have such a good crossing as Mr. Fearing. Whether itwas that the discharge from the city was deeper and fouler, or that theday was darker, or what, we are not told, but both Christian and Pliablewere in a moment out of sight in the slough. They both wallowed, saystheir plain-spoken historian, in the slough, only the one of the two whohad the burden on his back at every wallow went deeper into the mire;when his neighbour, who had no such burden, instead of coming to hisassistance, got out of the slough at the same side as he had entered it, and made with all his might for his own house. But the man calledChristian made what way he could, and still tumbled on to the side of theslough that was farthest from his own house, till a man called Help gavehim his hand and set him upon sound ground. Christiana, again, and Mercyand the boys found the slough in a far worse condition than it had everbeen found before. And the reason was not that the country that drainedinto the slough was worse, but that those who had the mending of theslough and the keeping in repair of the steps had so bungled their workthat they had marred the way instead of mending it. At the same time, bythe tact and good sense of Mercy, the whole party got over, Mercyremarking to the mother of the boys, that if she had as good ground tohope for a loving reception at the gate as Christiana had, no slough ofdespond would discourage her, she said. To which the older woman madethe characteristic reply: 'You know your sore and I know mine, and weshall both have enough evil to face before we come to our journey's end. '

Now, I do not for a moment suppose that there is any one here who canneed to be told what the Slough of Despond in reality is. Indeed, itsvery name sufficiently declares it. But if any one should still be at aloss to understand this terrible experience of all the pilgrims, theexplanation offered by the good man who gave Christian his hand may herebe repeated. 'This miry slough, ' he said, 'is such a place as cannot bemended. This slough is the descent whither the scum and filth thatattends conviction of sin doth continually run, and therefore it iscalled by the name of Despond, for still as the sinner is awakened abouthis lost condition there ariseth in his soul many fears and doubts anddiscouraging apprehensions, which all of them get together, and settle inthis place, and this is the reason of the badness of the ground. ' Thatis the parable, with its interpretation; but there is a passage in _GraceAbounding_ which is no parable, and which may even better than this sopictorial slough describe some men's condition here. 'My original andinward pollution, ' says Bunyan himself in his autobiography, 'that, thatwas my plague and my affliction; that, I say, at a dreadful rate wasalways putting itself forth within me; that I had the guilt of toamazement; by reason of that I was more loathsome in my own eyes than atoad; and I thought I was so in God's eyes also. Sin and corruptionwould bubble up out of my heart as naturally as water bubbles up out of afountain. I thought now that every one had a better heart than I had. Icould have changed heart with anybody. I thought none but the devilhimself could equalise me for inward wickedness and pollution of mind. Ifell, therefore, at the sight of my own vileness, deeply into despair, for I concluded that this condition in which I was in could not standwith a life of grace. Sure, thought I, I am forsaken of God; sure I amgiven up to the devil, and to a reprobate mind. '

 'Let no man, then, count me a fable maker, Nor made my name and credit a partaker Of their derision: what is here in view, Of mine own knowledge I dare say is true. '

Sometimes, as with Christian at the slough, a man's way in life is allslashed up into sudden ditches and pitfalls out of the sins of his youth. His sins, by God's grace, find him out, and under their arrest andoverthrow he begins to seek his way to a better life and a better world;and then both the burden and the slough have their explanation andfulfilment in his own life every day. But it is even more dreadful thana slough in a man's way to have a slough in his mind, as both Bunyanhimself and Mr. Fearing, his exquisite creation, had. After the awful-enough slough, filled with the guilt and fear of actual sin, had beenbridged and crossed and left behind, a still worse slough of inwardcorruption and pollution rose up in John Bunyan's soul and threatened toengulf him altogether. So terrible to Bunyan was this experience, thathe has not thought it possible to make a parable of it, and so put itinto the _Pilgrim_; he has kept it rather for the plain, direct, unpictured, personal testimony of the _Grace Abounding_. I do not knowanother passage anywhere to compare with the eighty-fourth paragraph of_Grace Abounding_ for hope and encouragement to a great inward sinnerunder a great inward sanctification. I commend that powerful passage tothe appropriation of any man here who may have stuck fast in the Sloughof Despond to-day, and who could not on that account come to the Lord'sTable. Let him still struggle out at the side of the slough farthestfrom his own house, and to-night, who can tell, Help may come and givethat man his hand. When the Slough of Despond is drained, and its bottomlaid bare, what a find of all kinds of precious treasures shall be laidbare! Will you be able to lay claim to any of it when the long-losttreasure-trove is distributed by command of the King to its rightfulowners?

'What are you doing there?' the man whose name was Help demanded ofChristian, as he still wallowed and plunged to the hither side of theslough, 'and why did you not look for the steps?' And so saying he setChristian's feet upon sound ground again, and showed him the nearest wayto the gate. Help is one of the King's officers who are planted allalong the way to the Celestial City, in order to assist and counsel allpilgrims. Evangelist was one of those officers; this Help is another;Goodwill will be another, unless, indeed, he is more than a mere officer;Interpreter will be another, and Greatheart, and so on. All these arepreachers and pastors and evangelists who correspond to all those namesand all their offices. Only some unhappy preachers are better at pushingpoor pilgrims into the slough, and pushing them down to the bottom of it, than they are at helping a sinking pilgrim out; while some other morehappy preachers and pastors have their manses built at the hither side ofthe slough and do nothing else all their days but help pilgrims out oftheir slough and direct them to the gate. And then there are multitudesof so-called ministers who eat the King's bread who can neither push aproud sinner into the slough nor help a prostrate sinner out of it; no, nor point him the way when he has himself wallowed out. And then, thereare men called ministers, too, who also eat the King's bread, whose voiceyou never hear in connection with such matters, unless it be to revileboth the pilgrims and their helpers, and all who run with fear andtrembling up the heavenly road. But our pilgrim was happy enough to meetwith a minister to whom he could look back all his remaining pilgrimageand say: 'He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miryclay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings. And hehath put a new song in my mouth, even praise to our God. '

Now, as might have been expected, there is a great deal said about allkinds of help in the Bible. After the help of God, of which the Bibleand especially the more experimental Psalms are full, this fine name isthen applied to many Scriptural persons, and on many Scripturaloccasions. The first woman whom God Almighty made bore from her Maker toher husband this noble name. Her Father, so to speak, gave her awayunder this noble name. And of all the sweet and noble names that a womanbears, there is none so rich, so sweet, so lasting, and so fruitful asjust her first Divine name of a helpmeet. And how favoured of God isthat man to be accounted whose life still continues to draw meet help outof his wife's fulness of help, till all her and his days together he isable to say, I have of God a helpmeet indeed! For in how many sloughs domany men lie till this daughter of Help gives them her hand, and out ofhow many more sloughs are they all their days by her delivered and kept!Sweet, maidenly, and most sensible Mercy was a great help to widowChristiana at the slough, and to her and her sons all the way up to theriver--a very present help in many a need to her future mother-in-law andher pilgrim sons. Let every young man seek his future wife of God, andlet him seek her of her Divine Father under that fine, homely, divinename. For God, who knoweth what we have need of before we ask Him, likesnothing better than to make a helpmeet for those who so ask Him, andstill to bring the woman to the man under that so spouse-like name. 

 'What next I bring shall please thee, be assured, Thy likeness, thy fit help, thy other self, Thy wish exactly to thy heart's desire. '

And then when the apostle is making an enumeration of the various officesand agencies in the New Testament church of his day, after apostles andteachers and gifts of healing, he says, 'helps, '--assistants, that is, succourers, especially of the sick and the aged and the poor. And we donot read that either election or ordination was needed to make any givenmember of the apostolic church a helper. But we do read of helpers beingfound by the apostle among all classes and conditions of that rich andliving church; both sexes, all ages, and all descriptions of churchmembers bore this fine apostolic name. 'Salute Urbane, our helper inChrist . . . Greet Priscilla and Aquila, my helpers in Christ. ' And bothPaul and John and all the apostles were forward to confess in theirepistles how much they owed of their apostolic success, as well as oftheir personal comfort and joy, to the helpers, both men and women, theirLord had blessed them with. 

Now, the most part of us here to-night have been at the Lord's Table to-day. We kept our feet firm on the steps as we skirted or crossed theslough that self-examination always fills and defiles for us before everynew communion. And before our Lord let us rise from His Table thismorning. He again said to us: 'Ye call Me Master and Lord, and ye saywell, for so I am. If I then have given you My hand, and have helpedyou, ye ought also to help one another. ' Who, then, any more willwithhold such help as it is in his power to give to a sinking brother?And you do not need to go far afield seeking the slough of desponding, despairing, drowning men. This whole world is full of such sloughs. There is scarce sound ground enough in this world on which to build aslough-watcher's tower. And after it is built, the very tower itself issoon stained and blinded with the scudding slime. Where are your eyes, and full of what? Do you not see sloughs full of sinking men at yourvery door; ay, and inside of your best built and best kept house? Yourvery next neighbour; nay, your own flesh and blood, if they have nothingelse of Greatheart's most troublesome pilgrim about them, have at leastthis, that they carry about a slough with them in their own mind and intheir own heart. Have you only henceforth a heart and a hand to help, and see if hundreds of sinking hearts do not cry out your name, andhundreds of slimy hands grasp at your stretched-out arm. Sloughs of allkinds of vice, open and secret; sloughs of poverty, sloughs of youthfulignorance, temptation, and transgression; sloughs of inward gloom, familydisquiet and dispute; lonely grief; all manner of sloughs, deep and miry, where no man would suspect them. And how good, how like Christ Himself, and how well-pleasing to Him to lay down steps for such sliding feet, andto lift out another and another human soul upon sound and solid ground. 'Know ye what I have done to you? For I have given you an example, thatye should do as I have done to you. If ye know these things, happy areye if ye do them. '

MR. WORLDLY-WISEMAN

 'Wise in this world. '--Paul. 

Mr. Worldly-Wiseman has a long history behind him on which we cannot nowenter at any length. As a child, the little worldling, it was observed, took much after his secular father, but much more after his schemingmother. He was already a self-seeking, self-satisfied youth; and when hebecame a man and began business for himself, no man's business flourishedlike his. 'Nothing of news, ' says his biographer in another place, 'nothing of doctrine, nothing of alteration or talk of alteration couldat any time be set on foot in the town but be sure Mr. Worldly-Wisemanwould be at the head or tail of it. But, to be sure, he would alwaysdecline those he deemed to be the weakest, and stood always with those, in his way of thinking, that he supposed were the strongest side. ' Hewas a man, it was often remarked, of but one book also. Sunday andSaturday he was to be found deep in _The Architect of Fortune_; _or_, _Advancement in Life_, a book written by its author so as to 'come hometo all men's business and bosoms. ' He drove over scrupulously once aSunday to the State church, of which he was one of the most determinedpillars. He had set his mind on being Lord Mayor of the town beforelong, and he was determined that his eldest son should be called SirWorldly-Wiseman after him, and he chose his church accordingly. Anotherof his biographers in this connection wrote of him thus: 'Our Lord Mayorparted his religion betwixt his conscience and his purse, and he went tochurch not to serve God, but to please the king. The face of the lawmade him wear the mask of the Gospel, which he used not as a means tosave his soul, but his charges. ' Such, in a short word, was this'sottish man' who crossed over the field to meet with our pilgrim when hewas walking solitary by himself after his escape from the slough. 

'How now, good fellow? Whither away after this burdened manner?' What acontrast those two men were to one another in the midst of that plainthat day! Our pilgrim was full of the most laborious going; sighs andgroans rose out of his heart at every step; and then his burden on hisback, and his filthy, slimy rags all made him a picture such that it wasto any man's credit and praise that he should stop to speak to him. Andthen, when our pilgrim looked up, he saw a gentleman standing beside himto whom he was ashamed to speak. For the gentleman had no burden on hisback, and he did not go over the plain laboriously. There was not a spotor a speck, a rent or a wrinkle on all his fine raiment. He could nothave been better appointed if he had just stepped out of the gate at thehead of the way; they can wear no cleaner garments than his in theCelestial City itself. 'How now, good fellow? Whither away after thisburdened manner?' 'A burdened manner, indeed, as ever I think poorcreature had. And whereas you ask me whither away, I tell you, sir, I amgoing to yonder wicket gate before me; for there, as I am informed, Ishall be put into a way to be rid of my heavy burden. ' 'Hast thou a wifeand children?' Yes; he is ashamed to say that he has. But he confessesthat he cannot to-day take the pleasure in them that he used to do. Sincehis sin so came upon him, he is sometimes as if he had neither wife norchild nor a house over his head. John Bunyan was of Samuel Rutherford'sterrible experience, --that our sins and our sinfulness poison all ourbest enjoyments. We do not hear much of Rutherford's wife and children, and that, no doubt, for the sufficient reason that he gives us in his soopen-minded letter. But Bunyan laments over his blind child with alament worthy to stand beside the lament of David over Absalom, and againover Saul and Jonathan at Mount Gilboa. At the same time, John Bunyanoften felt sore and sad at heart that he could not love and give all hisheart to his wife and children as they deserved to be loved and to haveall his heart. He often felt guilty as he looked on them and knew inhimself that they did not have in him such a father as, God knew, hewished he was, or ever in this world could hope to be. 'Yes, ' he said, 'but I cannot take the pleasure in them that I would. I am sometimes asif I had none. My sin sometimes drives me like a man bereft of hisreason and clean demented. ' 'Who bid thee go this way to be rid of thyburden? I beshrew him for his counsel. There is not a more troublesomeand dangerous way in the world than this is to which he hath directedthee. And besides, though I used to have some of the same burden when Iwas young, not since I settled in that town, ' pointing to the town ofCarnal-Policy over the plain, 'have I been at any time troubled in thatway. ' And then he went on to describe and denounce the way to theCelestial City, and he did it like a man who had been all over it, andhad come back again. His alarming description of the upward way reads tous like a page out of Job, or Jeremiah, or David, or Paul. 'Hear me, ' hesays, 'for I am older than thou. Thou art like to meet with in the waywhich thou goest wearisomeness, painfulness, hunger, perils, nakedness, sword, lions, dragons, darkness, and in a word, death, and what not. ' Youwould think that you were reading the eighth of the Romans at the thirty-fifth verse; only Mr. Worldly-Wiseman does not go on to finish thechapter. He does not go on to add, 'I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shallbe able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Jesus Christ ourLord. ' No; Worldly-Wiseman never reads the Romans, and he never hears asermon on that chapter when he goes to church. 

Mr. Worldly-Wiseman became positively eloquent and impressive and all butconvincing as he went so graphically and cumulatively over all thesorrows that attended on the way to which this pilgrim was now settinghis face. But, staggering as it all was, the man in rags and slime onlysmiled a sad and sobbing smile in answer, and said: 'Why, sir, thisburden upon my back is far more terrible to me than all the things whichyou have mentioned; nay, methinks I care not what I meet with in the way, so be I can also meet with deliverance from my burden. ' This is what ourLord calls a pilgrim having the root of the matter in himself. This poorsoul had by this time so much wearisomeness, painfulness, hunger, perils, nakedness, sword, lions, dragons, darkness, death, and what not inhimself, that all these threatened things outside of himself were but somany bugbears and hobgoblins wherewith to terrify children; they were butthings to be laughed at by every man who is in ernest in the way. 'Icare not what else I meet with if only I also meet with deliverance. 'There speaks the true pilgrim. There speaks the man who drew down theSon of God to the cross for that man's deliverance. There speaks theman, who, mire, and rags, and burdens and all, will yet be found in theheaven of heavens where the chief of sinners shall see their Delivererface to face, and shall at last and for ever be like Him. Peter examinedDante in heaven on faith, James examined him on hope, and John took himthrough his catechism on love, and the seer came out of the tent with alaurel crown on his brow. I do not know who the examiner on sin will be, but, speaking for myself on this matter, I would rather take my degree inthat subject than in all the other subjects set for a sinner'sexamination on earth or in heaven. For to know myself, and especially, as the wise man says, to know the plague of my own heart, is the true andthe only key to all other true knowledge: God and man; the Redeemer andthe devil; heaven and hell; faith, hope, and charity; unbelief, despair, and malignity, and all things of that kind else, all knowledge will cometo that man who knows himself, and to that man alone, and to that man inthe exact measure in which he does really know himself. Listen again tothis slough-stained, sin-burdened, sighing and sobbing pilgrim, who, inspite of all these things--nay, in virtue of all these things--is as sureof heaven and of the far end of heaven as if he were already enthronedthere. 'Wearisomeness, ' he protests, 'painfulness, hunger, perils, nakedness, sword, lions, dragons, darkness, death, and what not--why, sir, this burden on my back is far more terrible to me than all thesethings which you have mentioned; nay, methinks I care not what I meetwith in the way, so be I can also meet with deliverance from my burden. 'O God! let this same mind be found in me and in all the men and women forwhose souls I shall have to answer at the day of judgment, and I shall becontent and safe before Thee. 

That strong outburst from this so forfoughten man for a moment quiteoverawed Worldly-Wiseman. He could not reply to an earnestness likethis. He did not understand it, and could not account for it. The onlything he ever was in such earnestness as that about was his success inbusiness and his title that he and his wife were scheming for. Butstill, though silenced by this unaccountable outburst of our pilgrim, Worldly-Wiseman's enmity against the upward way, and especially againstall the men and all the books that made pilgrims take to that way, wasnot silenced. 'How camest thou by thy burden at first?' By reading thisBook in my hand. ' Worldly-Wiseman did not fall foul of the Book indeed, but he fell all the more foul of those who meddled with matters they hadnot a head for. 'Leave these high and deep things for the ministers whoare paid to understand and explain them, and attend to matters morewithin thy scope. ' And then he went on to tell of a far better way toget rid of the burden that meddlesome men brought on themselves byreading that book too much--a far better and swifter way than attemptingthe wicket-gate. 'Thou wilt never be settled in thy mind till thou artrid of that burden, nor canst thou enjoy the blessings of wife and childas long as that burden lies so heavy upon thee. ' That was so true thatit made the pilgrim look up. A gentleman who can speak in that truestyle must know more than he says about such burdens as this of mine;and, after all, he may be able, who knows, to give me some good advice inmy great straits. 'Pray, sir, open this secret to me, for I sorely standin need of good counsel. ' Let him here who has no such burden as thispoor pilgrim had cast the first stone at Christian; I cannot. If one wholooked like a gentleman came to me to-night and told me how I would onthe spot get to a peace of conscience never to be lost again, and how Iwould get a heart to-night that would never any more plague and polluteme, I would be mightily tempted to forget what all my former teachers hadtold me and try this new Gospel. And especially if the gentleman saidthat the remedy was just at hand. 'Pray, sir, ' said the breathless andspiritless man, 'wilt thou, then, open this secret to me?'

The wit and the humour and the satire of the rest of the scene must befully enjoyed over the great book itself. The village named Morality, hard by the hill; that judicious man Legality, who dwells in the firsthouse you come at after you have turned the hill; Civility, the prettyyoung man that Legality hath to his son; the hospitality of the village;the low rents and the cheap provisions, and all the charities andamenities of the place, --all together make up such a picture as youcannot get anywhere out of John Bunyan. And then the pilgrim's starkfolly in entering into Worldly-Wiseman's secret; his horror as the hillbegan to thunder and lighten and threaten to fall upon him; the suddendescent of Evangelist; and then the plain-spoken words that passedbetween the preacher and the pilgrim, --don't say again that the poorestof the Puritans were without letters, or that they had not their ownesoteric writings full of fun and frolic; don't say that again till youare a pilgrim yourself, and have our John Bunyan for one of your classicsby heart. 

We are near an end, but before you depart, stand still a little, asEvangelist said to Christian, that I may show you the words of God. Andfirst, watch yourselves well, for you all have a large piece of thisworldly-wise man in yourselves. You all take something of some ancestor, remote or immediate, who was wise only for this world. Yes, to be sure, for you still decline as they did, and desert as they did, those you deemto be the weakest, and stand with those that you suppose to be thestrongest side. _The Architect of Fortune_ is perhaps too strong meatfor your stomach; but still, if you ever light upon its powerful pages, you will surely blush in secret to see yourself turned so completelyinside out. You may not have chosen your church wholly with an eye toyour shop; but you must admit that you see as good and better men thanyou are doing that every day. And it is a sure sign to you that you donot yet know the plague of your own heart, unless you know yourself to bea man more set upon the position and the praise that this world givesthan you yet are on the position and the praise that come from God only. Set a watch on your own worldly heart. Watch and pray, lest you alsoenter into all Worldly-Wiseman's temptation. This is one of the words ofGod to you. 

Another word of God is this. The way of the cross, said severeEvangelist, is odious to every worldly-wise man; while, all the time, itis the only way there is, and there never will be any other way toeternal life. The only way to life is the way of the cross. There aretwo crosses, indeed, on the way to the Celestial City; there is, first, the Cross of Christ, once for you, and then there is your cross daily forChrist, and it takes both crosses to secure and to assure any man that heis on the right road, and that he will come at last to the right end. 'The Christian's great conquest over the world, ' says William Law, 'isall contained in the mystery of Christ upon the cross. And trueChristianity is nothing else but an entire and absolute conformity tothat spirit which Christ showed in the mysterious sacrifice of Himselfupon the cross. Every man is only so far a Christian as he partakes ofthis same spirit of Christ--the same suffering spirit, the same sacrificeof himself, the same renunciation of the world, the same humility andmeekness, the same patient bearing of injuries, reproaches, andcontempts, the same dying to all the greatness, honours, and happiness ofthis world that Christ showed on the cross. We also are to suffer, to becrucified, to die, to rise with Christ, or else His crucifixion, Hisdeath, and His resurrection will profit us nothing. 'This is the secondword of God unto thee. And the third thing to-night is this, that thoughthy sin be very great, though thou hast a past life round thy neck enoughto sink thee for ever out of the sight of God and all good men; a youthof sensuality now long and closely cloaked over with an after life ofworldly prosperity, worldly decency, and worldly religion, all which onlymakes thee that whited sepulchre that Christ has in His eye when Hespeaks of thee with such a severe and dreadful countenance; yet if thouconfess thyself to be all the whited sepulchre He sees thee to be, andyet knock at His gate in all thy rags and slime, He will immediately layaside that severe countenance and will show thee all His goodwill. Notwithstanding all that thou hast done, and all thou still art, He willnot deny His own words, or do otherwise than at once fulfil them all tothee. Ask, then, and it shall be given thee; seek, and thou shalt find;knock, and it shall be opened unto thee. And with a great goodwill, Hewill say to those that stand by Him, Take away the filthy garments fromhim. And to thee He will say, Behold, I have caused all thine iniquityto pass from thee, and I will clothe thee with change of raiment. 

GOODWILL, THE GATEKEEPER

 'Goodwill. '--Luke 2. 14. 

'So in process of time Christian got up to the gate. Now there waswritten over the gate, _Knock_, _and it shall be opened unto you_. Heknocked, therefore, more than once or twice, saying, May I now enterhere? when at last there came a grave person to the gate, named Goodwill, who asked him who was there?' The gravity of the gatekeeper was thefirst thing that struck the pilgrim. And it was the same thing that sostruck some of the men who saw most of our Lord that they handed down totheir children the true tradition that He was often seen in tears, butthat no one had ever seen or heard Him laugh. The prophecy in theprophet concerning our Lord was fulfilled to the letter. He was indeed aman of sorrows, and He early and all His life long had a closeacquaintance with grief. Our Lord had come into this world on a very saderrand. We are so stupefied and besotted with sin, that we have noconception how sad an errand our Lord had been sent on, and how sad atask He soon discovered it to be. To be a man without sin, a man hatingsin, and hating nothing else but sin, and yet to have to spend all Hisdays in a world lying in sin, and in the end to have all that world ofsin laid upon Him till He was Himself made sin, --how sad a task was that!Great, no doubt, as was the joy that was set before our Lord, and sure asHe was of one day entering on that joy, yet the daily sight of so muchsin in all men around Him, and the cross and the shame that lay rightbefore Him, made Him, in spite of the future joy, all the Man of SorrowIsaiah had said He would be, and made light-mindedness and laughterimpossible to our Lord, --as it is, indeed, to all men among ourselves whohave anything of His mind about this present world and the sin of thisworld, they also are men of sorrow, and of His sorrow. They, too, areacquainted with grief. Their tears, like His, will never be wiped off inthis world. They will not laugh with all their heart till they laughwhere He now laughs. Then it will be said of them, too, that they beganto be merry. 'What was the matter with you that you did laugh in yoursleep last night? asked Christiana of Mercy in the morning. I supposeyou were in a dream. So I was, said Mercy, but are you sure that Ilaughed? Yes, you laughed heartily; but, prithee, Mercy, tell me thydream. Well, I dreamed that I was in a solitary place and all alone, andwas there bemoaning the hardness of my heart, when methought I saw onecoming with wings towards me. So he came directly to me, and said, Mercy, what aileth thee? Now, when he heard my complaint, he said, Peacebe to thee. He also wiped mine eyes with his handkerchief, and clad mein silver and gold; he put a chain about my neck also, and earrings inmine ears, and a beautiful crown upon my head. So he went up. Ifollowed him till we came to a golden gate; and I thought I saw yourhusband there. But did I laugh? Laugh! ay, and well you might, to seeyourself so well. '

But to return and begin again. Goodwill, who opened the gate, was, as wesaw, a person of a very grave and commanding aspect; so much so, that inhis sudden joy our pilgrim was a good deal overawed as he looked on thecountenance of the man who stood in the gate, and it was some timeafterwards before he understood why he wore such a grave and almost sadaspect. But afterwards, as he went up the way, and sometimes returned inthought to the wicket-gate, he came to see very good reason why thekeeper of that gate looked as he did look. The site and situation of thegate, for one thing, was of itself enough to banish all light-mindednessfrom the man who was stationed there. For the gatehouse stood just abovethe Slough of Despond, and that itself filled the air of the place with adampness and a depression that could be felt. And then out of thedownward windows of the gate, the watcher's eye always fell on the Cityof Destruction in the distance, and on her sister cities sitting like herdaughters round about her. And that also made mirth and hilarityimpossible at that gate. And then the kind of characters who cameknocking all hours of the day and the night at that gate. Goodwill neversaw a happy face or heard a cheerful voice from one year's end to theother. And when any one so far forgot himself as to put on an untimelyconfidence and self-satisfaction, the gatekeeper would soon put himthrough such questions as quickly sobered him if he had anything at allof the root of the matter in him. Terror, horror, despair, remorse, chased men and women up to that gate. They would often fall before histhreshold more dead than alive. And then, after the gate was opened andthe pilgrims pulled in, the gate had only opened on a path of suchpainfulness, toil, and terrible risk, that at whatever window Goodwilllooked out, he always saw enough to make him and keep him a grave, if nota sad, man. It was, as he sometimes said, his meat and his drink to keepthe gate open for pilgrims; but the class of men who came callingthemselves pilgrims; the condition they came in; the past, that in spiteof all both he and they could do, still came in through his gate afterthem, and went up all the way with them; their ignorance of the way, onwhich he could only start them; the multitudes who started, and thehandfuls who held on; the many who for a time ran well, but afterwardsleft their bones to bleach by the wayside; and all the impossible-to-be-told troubles, dangers, sorrows, shipwrecks that certainly lay before themost steadfast and single-hearted pilgrim--all that was more than enoughto give the man at the gate his grave and anxious aspect. 

Not that his great gravity, with all the causes of it, ever made him amelancholy, a morose, a despairing, or even a desponding man. Far fromthat. The man of sorrows Himself sometimes rejoiced in spirit. Notsometimes only, but often He lifted up His heart and thanked His Fatherfor the work His Father had given Him to do, and for the success that hadbeen granted to Him in the doing of it. And as often as He lookedforward to the time when he should finish His work and receive Hisdischarge, and return to His Father's house, at the thought of that Hestraightway forgot all His present sorrows. And somewhat so was it withGoodwill at his gate. No man could be but at bottom happy, and evenjoyful, who had a post like his to occupy, a gate like his to keep, and, altogether, a work like his to do. No man with his name and his naturecan ever in any circumstances be really unhappy. 'Happiness is the bloomthat always lies on a life of true goodness, ' and this gatehouse was fullof the happiness that follows on and always dwells with true goodness. Goodwill cannot have more happiness till he shuts in his last pilgriminto the Celestial City, and then himself enters in after him as ashepherd after a lost sheep. 

The happy, heavenly, divine disposition of the gatekeeper was such, thatit overflowed from the pilgrim who stood beside him and descended uponhis wife and children who remained behind him in the doomed city. Sofull of love was the gatekeeper's heart, that it ran out upon Obstinateand Pliable also. His heart was so large and so hospitable, that he wasnot satisfied with one pilgrim received and assisted that day. How isit, he asked, that you have come here alone? Did any of your neighboursknow of your coming? And why did he who came so far not come through?Alas, poor man, said Goodwill, is the celestial glory of so little esteemwith him that he counteth it not worth running the hazards of a fewdifficulties to obtain it? Our pilgrim got a lifelong lesson in goodwillto all men at that gate that day. The gatekeeper showed such deep andpatient and genuine interest in all the pilgrim's past history, and inall his family and personal affairs, that Christian all his days couldnever show impatience, or haste, or lack of interest in the most long-winded and egotistical pilgrim he ever met. He always remembered, whenhe was becoming impatient, how much of his precious time and of hisloving attention his old friend Goodwill had given to him. Our pilgrimgot tired of talking about himself long before Goodwill had ceased to askquestions and to listen to the answers. So much was Christian taken withthe courtesy and the kindness of Goodwill, that had it not been for hiscrushing burden, he would have offered to remain in Goodwill's house torun his errands, to light his fires, and to sweep his floors. So muchwas he taken captive with Goodwill's extraordinary kindness and unweariedattention. And since he could not remain at the gate, but must go on tothe city of all goodwill itself, our pilgrim set himself all his days tocopy this gatekeeper when he met with any fellow-pilgrim who had anystory that he wished to tell. And many were the lonely and forgottensouls that Christian cheered and helped on, not by his gold or hissilver, nor by anything else, but just by his open ear. To listen withpatience and with attention to a fellow-pilgrim's wrongs and sorrows, andeven his smallest interests, said this Christian to himself, is just whatGoodwill so winningly did to me. 

With all his goodwill the grave gatekeeper could not say that the way tothe Celestial City was other than a narrow, a stringent, and aheart-searching way. 'Come, ' he said, 'and I will tell thee the way thoumust go. ' There are many wide ways to hell, and many there be who crowdthem, but there is only one way to heaven, and you will sometimes thinkyou must have gone off it, there are so few companions; sometimes therewill be only one footprint, with here and there a stream of blood, andalways as you proceed, it becomes more and more narrow, till it strips aman bare, and sometimes threatens to close upon him and crush him to theearth altogether. Our Lord in as many words tells us all that. Strive, He says, strive every day. For many shall seek to enter into the way ofsalvation, but because they do not early enough, and long enough, andpainfully enough strive, they come short, and are shut out. Have you, then, anything in your religious life that Christ will at last accept asthe striving He intended and demanded? Does your religion cause you anyreal effort--Christ calls it _agony_? Have you ever had, do you everhave, anything that He would so describe? What cross do you every daytake up? In what thing do you every day deny yourself? Name it. Putyour finger on it. Write it in cipher on the margin of your Bible. Wouldthe most liberal judgment be able to say of you that you have any fearand trembling in the work of your salvation? If not, I am afraid theremust be some mistake somewhere. There must be great guilt somewhere. Atyour parents' door, or at your minister's, or, if their hands are clean, then at your own. Christ has made it plain to a proverb, and John Bunyanhas made it a nursery and a schoolboy story, that the way to heaven issteep and narrow and lonely and perilous. And that, remember, not a fewof the first miles of the way, but all the way, and even through the darkvalley itself. 'Almost all that is said in the New Testament of men'swatching, giving earnest heed to themselves, running the race that is setbefore them, striving and agonising, fighting, putting on the wholearmour of God, pressing forward, reaching forth, crying to God day andnight; I say, almost all that we have in the New Testament on thesesubjects is spoken and directed to the saints. Where those things areapplied to sinners seeking salvation once, they are spoken of the saints'prosecution of their salvation ten times' (Jonathan Edwards). If youhave a life at all like that, you will be sorely tempted to think thatsuch suffering and struggle, increasing rather than diminishing as lifegoes on, is a sign that you are so bad as not to be a true Christian atall. You will be tempted to think and say so. But all the time thetruth is, that he who has not that labouring, striving, agonising, fearing, and trembling in himself, knows nothing at all about thereligion of Christ and the way to heaven; and if he thinks he does, thenthat but proves him a hypocrite, a self-deceived, self-satisfiedhypocrite; there is not an ounce of a true Christian in him. Says SamuelRutherford on this matter: 'Christ commandeth His hearers to a strict andnarrow way, in mortifying heart-lusts, in loving our enemy, in feedinghim when he is hungry, in suffering for Christ's sake and the gospel's, in bearing His cross, in denying ourselves, in becoming humble aschildren, in being to all men and at all times meek and lowly in heart. 'Let any man lay all that intelligently and imaginatively alongside of hisown daily life. Let him name some such heart-lust. Let him name alsosome enemy, and ask himself what it is to love that man, and to feed himin his hunger; what it is in which he is called to suffer for Christ'ssake and the gospel's, in his reputation, in his property, in hisbusiness, in his feelings. Let him put his finger on something in whichhe is every day to deny himself, and to be humble and teachable, and tokeep himself out of sight like a little child; and if that man does notfind out how narrow and heart-searching the way to heaven is, he will bethe first who has so found his way thither. No, no; be not deceived. Deceive not yourself, and let no man deceive you. God is not mocked, neither are His true saints. 'Would to God I were back in my pulpit butfor one Sabbath, ' said a dying minister in Aberdeen. 'What would youdo?' asked a brother minister at his bedside. 'I would preach to thepeople the difficulty of salvation, ' he said. All which things are told, not for purposes of debate or defiance, but to comfort and instruct God'strue people who are finding salvation far more difficult than anybody hadever told them it would be. Comfort My people, saith your God. Speakcomfortably to My people. Come, said Goodwill, and I will teach theeabout the way thou must go. Look before thee, dost thou see that narrowway? That is the way thou must go. And then thou mayest alwaysdistinguish the right way from the wrong. The wrong is crooked and wide, and the right is straight as a rule can make it, --straight and narrow. 

Goodwill said all that in order to direct and to comfort the pilgrim; butthat was not all that this good man said with that end. For, whenChristian asked him if he could not help him off with his burden that wasupon his back, he told him: 'As to thy burden, be content to bear ituntil thou comest to the place of deliverance, for there it will fallfrom thy back of itself. ' Get you into the straight and narrow way, saysGoodwill, with his much experience of the ways and fortunes of truepilgrims; get you sure into the right way, and leave your burden to God. He appoints the place of deliverance, and it lies before thee. The placeof thy deliverance cannot be behind thee, and it is not in my house, elsethy burden would have been already off. But it is before thee. Beearnest, therefore, in the way. Look not behind thee. Go not into anycrooked way; and one day, before you know, and when you are not pullingat it, your burden will fall off of itself. Be content to bear it tillthen, says bold and honest Goodwill, speaking so true to pilgrimexperience. Yes; be content, O ye people of God, crying with thispilgrim for release from your burden of guilt, and no less those of youwho are calling with Paul for release from the still more bitter andcrushing burden made up of combined guilt and corruption. Be contenttill the place and the time of deliverance; nay, even under your burdenand your bonds be glad, as Paul was, and go up the narrow way, stillchanting to yourself, I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. It isonly becoming that a great sinner should tarry the Lord's leisure; allthe more that the greatest sinner may be sure the Lord will come, andwill not tarry. The time is long, but the thing is sure. 

And now two lessons from Goodwill's gate:--

1. The gate was shut when Christian came up to it, and no one wasvisible anywhere about it. The only thing visible was the writing overthe gate which told all pilgrims to knock. Now, when we come up to thesame gate we are disappointed and discouraged that the gatekeeper is notstanding already upon his doorstep and his arms round our neck. We kneltto-day in secret prayer, and there was only our bed or our chair visiblebefore us. There was no human being, much less to all appearance anyDivine Presence, in the place. And we prayed a short, indeed, but a notunearnest prayer, and then we rose up and came away disappointed becauseno one appeared. But look at him who is now inheriting the promises. Heknocked, says his history, more than once or twice. That is to say, hedid not content himself with praying one or two seconds and then givingover, but he continued in prayer till the gatekeeper came. And as heknocked, he said, so loud and so impatient that all those in thegatehouse could hear him, 'May I now enter here? Will he within Open to sorry me, though I have been A wandering rebel? Then shall I Not fail to sing his lasting praise on high. '

2. 'We make no objections against any, ' said Goodwill; 'notwithstandingall that they have done before they come hither, they are in no wise castout. ' He told me all things that ever I did, said the woman of Samaria, telling her neighbours about our Lord's conversation with her. And, somehow, there was something in the gatekeeper's words that called backto Christian, if not all the things he had ever done, yet from among themthe worst things he had ever done. They all rose up black as hell beforehis eyes as the gatekeeper did not name them at all, but only said'notwithstanding all that thou hast done. ' Christian never felt his pastlife so black, or his burden so heavy, or his heart so broken, as whenGoodwill just said that one word 'notwithstanding. ' 'We make noobjections against any; notwithstanding all that they have done beforethey come hither, they are in no wise cast out. '

THE INTERPRETER

 'An interpreter, one among a thousand. '--Elihu. 

We come to-night to the Interpreter's House. And since every minister ofthe gospel is an interpreter, and every evangelical church is aninterpreter's house, let us gather up some of the precious lessons toministers and to people with which this passage of the _Pilgrim'sProgress_ so much abounds. 

1. In the first place, then, I observe that the House of the Interpreterstands just beyond the Wicket Gate. In the whole topography of the_Pilgrim's Progress_ there lies many a deep lesson. The church that Mr. Worldly-Wiseman supported, and on the communion roll of which he was sodetermined to have our pilgrim's so unprepared name, stood far down onthe other side of Goodwill's gate. It was a fine building, and it had aneloquent man for its minister, and the whole service was an attractionand an enjoyment to all the people of the place; but our Interpreter wasnever asked to show any of his significant things there; and, indeed, neither minister nor people would have understood him had he ever doneso. And had any of the parishioners from below the gate ever by anychance stumbled into the Interpreter's house, his most significant roomswould have had no significance to them. Both he and his house would havebeen a mystery and an offence to Worldly-Wiseman, his minister, and hisfellow-worshippers. John Bunyan has the clear warrant both of JesusChrist and the Apostle Paul for the place on which he has planted theInterpreter's house. 'It is given to you, ' said our Lord to Hisdisciples, 'to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven, but to themit is not given. ' And Paul tells us that 'the natural man receiveth notthe things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him:neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. ' And, accordingly, no reader of the _Pilgrim's Progress_ will really understandwhat he sees in the Interpreter's House, unless he is already a man of aspiritual mind. Intelligent children enjoy the pictures and the peoplethat are set before them in this illustrated house, but they must becomethe children of God, and must be well on in the life of God, before theywill be able to say that the house next the gate has been a profitableand a helpful house to them. All that is displayed here--all thefurniture and all the vessels, all the ornaments and all the employmentsand all the people of the Interpreter's House--is fitted and intended tobe profitable as well as interesting to pilgrims only. No man has anyreal interest in the things of this house, or will take any abidingprofit out of it, till he is fairly started on the upward road. In hisformer life, and while still on the other side of the gate, our pilgrimhad no interest in such things as he is now to see and hear; and if hehad seen and heard them in his former life, he would not, with all theInterpreter's explanation, have understood them. As here among ourselvesto-night, they who will understand and delight in the things they hear inthis house to-night are those only who have really begun to live areligious life. The realities of true religion are now the most realthings in life--to them; they love divine things now; and since theybegan to love divine things, you cannot entertain them better than byexhibiting and explaining divine things to them. There is no house inall the earth, after the gate itself, that is more dear to the truepilgrim heart than just the Interpreter's House. 'I was glad when it wassaid to me, Let us go into the house of the Lord. Peace be within thywalls, and prosperity within thy palaces. '

2. And besides being built on the very best spot in all the land for itsowner's purposes, every several room in that great house was furnishedand fitted up for the entertainment and instruction of pilgrims. Everyinch of that capacious and many-chambered house was given up to thedelectation of pilgrims. The public rooms were thrown open for theirconvenience and use at all hours of the day and night, and the privaterooms were kept retired and secluded for such as sought retirement andseclusion. There were dark rooms also with iron cages in them, tillChristian and his companions came out of those terrible places, bringingwith them an everlasting caution to watchfulness and a sober mind. Therewere rooms also given up to vile and sordid uses. One room there wasfull of straws and sticks and dust, with an old man who did nothing elseday nor night but wade about among the straws and sticks and dust, andrake it all into little heaps, and then sit watching lest any one shouldoverturn them. And then, strange to tell it, and not easy to get to thefull significance of it, the bravest room in all the house had absolutelynothing in it but a huge, ugly, poisonous spider hanging to the wall withher hands. 'Is there but one spider in all this spacious room?' askedthe Interpreter. And the water stood in Christiana's eyes; she had comeby this time thus far on her journey also. She was a woman of a quickapprehension, and the water stood in her eyes at the Interpreter'squestion, and she said: 'Yes, Lord, there is here more than one. Yea, and spiders whose venom is far more destructive than that which is inher. ' The Interpreter then looked pleasantly on her, and said: 'Thouhast said the truth. ' This made Mercy blush, and the boys to cover theirfaces, for they all began now to understand the riddle. 'This is to showyou, ' said the Interpreter, 'that however full of the venom of sin youmay be, yet you may, by the hand of faith, lay hold of, and dwell in thebest room that belongs to the King's House above. ' Then they all seemedto be glad, but the water stood in their eyes. A wall also stood aparton the grounds of the house with an always dying fire on one side of it, while a man on the other side of the wall continually fed the firethrough hidden openings in the wall. A whole palace stood also on thegrounds, the inspection of which so kindled our pilgrim's heart, that herefused to stay here any longer, or to see any more sights--so much hadhe already seen of the evil of sin and of the blessedness of salvation. Not that he had seen as yet the half of what that house held for theinstruction of pilgrims. Only, time would fail us to visit the hen andher chickens; the butcher killing a sheep and pulling her skin over herears, and she lying still under his hands and taking her death patiently;also the garden with the flowers all diverse in stature, and quality, andcolour, and smell, and virtue, and some better than some, and all wherethe gardener had set them, there they stand, and quarrel not with oneanother. The robin-red-breast also, so pretty of note and colour andcarriage, but instead of bread and crumbs, and such like harmless matter, with a great spider in his mouth. A tree also, whose inside was rotten, and yet it grew and had leaves. So they went on their way and sang:

 'This place hath been our second stage, Here have we heard and seen Those good things that from age to age To others hid have been. The butcher, garden, and the field, The robin and his bait, Also the rotten tree, doth yield Me argument of weight; To move me for to watch and pray, To strive to be sincere, To take my cross up day by day, And serve the Lord with few. '

The significant rooms of that divine house instruct us also that all thelessons requisite for our salvation are not to be found in any onescripture or in any one sermon, but that all that is required by anypilgrim or any company of pilgrims should all be found in everyminister's ministry as he leads his flock on from one Sabbath-day toanother, rightly dividing the word of truth. Our ministers should havesomething in their successive sermons for everybody. Something for thechildren, something for the slow-witted and the dull of understanding, and something specially suited for those who are of a quick apprehension;something at one time to make the people smile, at another time to makethem blush, and at another time to make the water stand in their eyes. 

3. And, then, the Interpreter's life was as full of work as his housewas of entertainment and instruction. Not only so, but his life, it waswell known, had been quite as full of work before he had a house to workfor as ever it had been since. The Interpreter did nothing else butcontinually preside over his house and all that was in it and around it, and it was all gone over and seen to with his own eyes and hands everyday. He had been present at the laying of every stone and beam of thatsolid and spacious house of his. There was not a pin nor a loop of itsfurniture, there was not a picture on its walls, nor a bird nor a beastin its woods and gardens, that he did not know all about and could nothold discourse about. And then, after he had taken you all over hishouse, with its significant rooms and woods and gardens, he was full allsupper-time of all wise saws and witty proverbs. 'One leak will sink aship, ' he said that night, 'and one sin will destroy a sinner. ' And alltheir days the pilgrims remembered that word from the Interpreter's lips, and they often said it to themselves as they thought of their ownbesetting sin. Now, if it is indeed so, that every gospel minister is aninterpreter, and every evangelical church an interpreter's house, what animportant passage this is for all those who are proposing and preparingto be ministers. Let them reflect upon it: what a house this is that theInterpreter dwells in; how early and how long ago he began to lay out hisgrounds and to build his house upon them; how complete in all its partsit is, and how he still watches and labours to have it more complete. Understandest thou what thou here readest? it is asked of all ministers, young and old, as they turn over John Bunyan's pungent pages. And everynew room, every new bird, and beast, and herb, and flower makes us blushfor shame as we contrast our own insignificant and ill-furnished housewith the noble house of the Interpreter. Let all our students who havenot yet fatally destroyed themselves and lost their opportunity lay theInterpreter's House well to heart. Let them be students not in idle nameonly, as so many are, but in intense reality, as so few are. Let themread everything that bears upon the Bible, and let them read nothing thatdoes not. They have not the time nor the permission. Let them becontent to be men of one book. Let them give themselves wholly to theinterpretation of divine truth as its riddles are set in nature and inman, in scripture, in providence, and in spiritual experience. Let themstore their memories at college with all sacred truth, and with allsecular truth that can be made sacred. And if their memories are weakand treacherous, let them be quiet under God's will in that, and all themore labour to make up in other ways for that defect, so that they mayhave always something to say to the purpose when their future people comeup to church hungry for instruction and comfort and encouragement. Letthem look around and see the sin that sinks the ship of so manyministers; and let them begin while yet their ship is in the yard and seethat she is fitted up and furnished, stored and stocked, so that sheshall in spite of sure storms and sunken rocks deliver her freight in theappointed haven. When they are lying in bed of a Sabbath morning, letthem forecast the day when they shall have to give a strict account oftheir eight years of golden opportunity among the churches, and theclasses, and the societies, and the libraries of our university seats. Let them be able to name some great book, ay, more than one great book, they mastered, for every year of their priceless and irredeemable studentlife. Let them all their days have old treasure-houses that they filledfull with scholarship and with literature and with all that will ministerto a congregation's many desires and necessities, collected and keptready from their student days. 'Meditate upon these things; give thyselfwholly up to them, that thy profiting may appear unto all. '

4. And then with a sly stroke at us old ministers, our significantauthor points out to us how much better furnished the Interpreter's Housewas by the time Christiana and the boys visited it compared with thatearly time when Christian was entertained in it. Our pilgrim got farmore in the Interpreter's House of delight and instruction than he couldcarry out of it, but that did not tempt the Interpreter to sit down andcontent himself with taking all his future pilgrims into the same room, and showing them the same pictures, and repeating to them the sameexplanations. No, for he reflected that each coming pilgrim would needsome new significant room to himself, and therefore, as soon as he gotone pilgrim off his hands, he straightway set about building andfurnishing new rooms, putting up new pictures, and replenishing his woodsand his waters with new beasts and birds and fishes. I am ashamed, hesaid, that I had so little to show when I first opened my gates toreceive pilgrims, and I do not know why they came to me as they did. Iwas only a beginner in these things when my first visitor came to mygates. Let every long-settled, middle-aged, and even grey-headedminister read the life of the Interpreter at this point and take courageand have hope. Let it teach us all to break some new ground in the fieldof divine truth with every new year. Let it teach us all to be studentsall our days. Let us buy, somehow, the poorest and the oldest of us, some new and first-rate book every year. Let us not indeed shut upaltogether our old rooms if they ever had anything significant in them, but let us add now a new wing to our spiritual house, now a new pictureto its walls, and now a new herb to its gardens. 'Resolved, ' wroteJonathan Edwards, 'that as old men have seldom any advantage of newdiscoveries, because these are beside a way of thinking they have beenlong used to; resolved, therefore, if ever I live to years, that I willbe impartial to hear the reasons of all pretended discoveries, andreceive them, if rational, how long soever I have been used to anotherway of thinking. '

5. The fickle, frivolous, volatile character of so many divinitystudents is excellently hit off by Bunyan in our pilgrim's impatience tobe out of the Interpreter's House. No sooner had he seen one or two ofthe significant rooms than this easily satisfied student was as eager toget out of that house as he had been to get in. Twice over the wise andlearned Interpreter had to beg and beseech this ignorant and impulsivepilgrim to stop and get another lesson in the religious life before heleft the great school-house. All our professors of divinity and all ourministers understand the parable at this point only too well. Theirstudents are eager to get into their classes; like our pilgrim, they haveheard the fame of this and that teacher, and there is not standing-roomin the class for the first weeks of the session. But before Christmasthere is room enough for strangers, and long before the session closes, half the students are counting the weeks and plotting to petition theAssembly against the length and labour of the curriculum. Was there evera class that was as full and attentive at the end of the session as itwas at the beginning? Never since our poor human nature was so strickenwith laziness and shallowness and self-sufficiency. But what is thechaff to the wheat? It is the wheat that deserves and repays thehusbandman's love and labour. When Plato looked up from his desk in theAcademy, after reading and expounding one of his greatest Dialogues, hefound only one student left in the class-room, but then, that student wasAristotle. 'Now let me go, ' said Christian. 'Nay, stay, ' said theInterpreter, 'till I have showed thee a little more. ' 'Sir, is it nottime for me to go?' 'Do tarry till I show thee just one thing more. '

6. 'Here have I seen things rare and profitable, . . . Then let me be

Thankful, O good Interpreter, to thee. '

Sydney Smith, with his usual sagacity, says that the last vice of thepulpit is to be uninteresting. Now, the Interpreter's House had thisprime virtue in it, that it was all interesting. Do not our children begof us on Sabbath nights to let them see the Interpreter's show once more;it is so inexhaustibly and unfailingly interesting? It is only stupidmen and women who ever weary of it. But, 'profitable' was the one anduniversal word with which all the pilgrims left the Interpreter's House. 'Rare and pleasant, ' they said, and sometimes 'dreadful;' but it wasalways 'profitable. ' Now, how seldom do we hear our people at the churchdoor step down into the street saying, 'profitable'? If they said thatoftener their ministers would study profit more than they do. The peoplesay 'able, ' or 'not at all able'; 'eloquent, ' or 'stammering andstumbling'; 'excellent' in style and manner and accent, or the oppositeof all that; and their ministers, to please the people and to earn theirapproval, labour after these approved things. But if the people onlysaid that the prayers and the preaching were profitable and helpful, evenwhen they too seldom are, then our preachers would set the profit of thepeople far more before them both in selecting and treating and deliveringtheir Sabbath-day subjects. A lady on one occasion said to her minister, 'Sir, your preaching does my soul good. ' And her minister never forgotthe grave and loving look with which that was said. Not only did henever forget it, but often when selecting his subject, and treating it, and delivering it, the question would rise in his heart and conscience, Will that do my friend's soul any good? 'Rare and profitable, ' said thepilgrim as he left the gate; and hearing that sent the Interpreter backwith new spirit and new invention to fill his house of still moresignificant, rare, and profitable things than ever before. 'Meditate onthese things, ' said Paul to Timothy his son in the gospel, 'that thyprofiting may appear unto all. ' 'Thou art a minister of the word, ' wrotethe learned William Perkins beside his name on all his books, 'mind thybusiness. '

PASSION

 'A man subject to like passions as we are. '--James 5. 17. 

That was a very significant room in the Interpreter's House where ourpilgrim saw Passion and Patience sitting each one in his chair. Passionwas a young lad who seemed to our pilgrim to be much discontented. Hewas never satisfied. He would have all his good things now. Hisgovernor would have him wait for his best things till the beginning ofnext year; but no, he will have them all now. And then, when he had gotall his good things, he soon lavished and wasted them all till he hadnothing left but rags. Then said Christian to the Interpreter, 'Expoundthis matter more fully to me. ' So he said, 'Those two lads are figures;Passion, of the men of this world; and Patience of the men of that whichis to come. ' 'Then I perceive, ' said Christian, ''tis not best to covetthings that are now, but to wait for things to come. ' 'You say truth, 'replied the Interpreter, 'for the things that are seen are temporal, butthe things that are not seen are eternal. '

Now from the texts that I have taken out of James and out of this sosignificant room in the Interpreter's House, let me try to tell yousomething profitable, if so it may be, about passion; the nature of it, the place it holds, and the part it performs both in human nature and inthe life and the character of a Christian man. 

The name of Passion has already told us his nature, his past life, andhis present character. The whole nomenclature of _The Pilgrim'sProgress_ and of _The Holy War_ is composed on the divine, original, andnatural principle of embodying the nature of a man in his name. Godtakes His own names to Himself on that principle. The Creator gave Adamhis name also on that same principle; and then Adam gave their names toall cattle, to the fowls of the air, and to every beast of the field onthe same principle on which he had got his own name. And so it was atfirst with all the Bible names of men and of nations of men. Their namecontained their nature. And John Bunyan was such a student of the Bible, and of no other book but the Bible, that all his best books are all full, like the Bible, of the most descriptive and suggestive names. As soon asBunyan tells us the name of some new acquaintance or fellow-traveller, wealready know him, so exactly is his nature put into his name. And thusit is that when we stop for a moment at the door of this littlesignificant room in the Interpreter's House and ask ourselves the meaningof the name Passion, we see at once where we are and what we have herebefore us. For a 'passion' is just some excitement or agitation of themind caused by some outward thing acting on the mind. The inward worldof the mind and heart of man, and this outward world down into which Godhas placed man, instantly and continually respond to one another. Andwhat are called, with so much correctness and propriety, our passions, are just those inward responses, excitements, and agitations that theoutward world causes in the inward world when those two worlds meettogether. 'Passion' and 'perturbation' are the old classical names thatthe ancient philosophers and moralists gave to what they felt inthemselves as their minds and their hearts were affected by the world ofmen and things around them. And they used to illustrate their teachingon the subject of the passions by the figure of a storm at sea. Theysaid that it was because God had made the sea sensitive and responsive tothe winds that blew over it that a storm at sea ever arose. The stormdid not arise and the ships were not wrecked by anything from within thesea itself; it was the outward world of the winds striking against thequiet and inward world of the waters that roused the storms and sank theships. And with that illustration well printed in the minds andimaginations of their scholars the old moralists felt their work amongtheir scholars was already all but done. For, so full of adaptation andappeal is the whole outward world to the mind and heart of man, and sosensitive and instantly responsive is the mind and heart of man to allthe approaches of the outward world, that the mind and heart of man areconstantly full of all kinds of passions, both bad and good. And, then, this is our present life of probation and opportunity, that all ourpassions are placed within us and are committed and entrusted to us as somany first elements and so much unformed material out of which we aresummoned to build up our life and to shape and complete our character. The springs of all our actions are in our passions. All our activitiesin life, trace them all up to their source, and they will all be found torun up into the wellhead of our passions. All our virtues are cut aswith a chisel out of our passions, and all our vices are just thedisorders and rebellions of our passions. Our several passions, as theylie still asleep in our hearts, have as yet no moral character; they areonly the raw material so to speak, of moral character. Our passions arethe life and the riches and the ornaments of human nature, and it is onlybecause human nature in its present estate is so corrupt and disorderedand degraded, that the otherwise so honourable name of passion has such asinister sound to us. And the full regeneration and restitution of humannature will be accomplished when every several passion is in its rightplace, and when reason and conscience and the Spirit of God shall inspireand rule and regulate all that is within us. 

 'On life's vast ocean diversely we sail, Reason the card, but passion is the gale. '

And not Elijah only, as James says, and not Paul and Barnabas only, asthey themselves said, were men of like passions with ourselves, but ourLord Himself was a man of like passions with us also. He took to Himselfa true body, full of all the appetites of the body, and a reasonablesoul, full of all the affections, passions, and emotions of the soul. Only, in Him reason and conscience and the law and the Spirit of God werethe card and the compass according to which He steered His life. We haveall our ruling passion, and our Lord also had His. As His disciples sawHis ruling passion kindled in His heart and coming out in His life, theyremembered that it was written of Him in an old Messianic psalm: 'Thezeal of Thine house hath eaten me up. ' They were all eaten up of theirruling passions also. One of ambition, one of emulation, one of avarice, and so on, --each several disciple was eaten up of his own besetting sin. But they all saw that it was not so with their Master. He was eaten upalways and wholly of the zeal of His Father's house, and of absolutesurrender and devotion to His Father's service, till His ruling passionwas seen to be as strong in His death as it had been in His life. TheLaird of Brodie's Diary has repeatedly been of great use to us in theseinward matters, and his words on this subject are well worth repeating. 'We poor creatures, ' he says, 'are commanded by our affections andpassions. They are not at our command. But the Holy One doth exerciseall His attributes at His own will; they are at His command; they are notpassions nor perturbations in His mind, though they transport us. When Iwould hate, I cannot. When I would love, I cannot. When I would grieve, I cannot. When I would desire, I cannot. But it is the better for usthat all is as He wills it to be. '

And now, to come still closer home, let us look for a moment or two atsome of our own ruling and tyrannising passions. And let us look firstat self-love--that master-passion in every human heart. Let us give self-love the first place in the inventory and catalogue of our passions, because it has the largest place in all our hearts and lives. Nay, notonly has self-love the largest place of any of the passions of ourhearts, but it is out of self-love that all our other evil passionsspring. It is out of this parent passion that all the poisonous brood ofour other evil passions are born. The whole fall and ruin and misery ofour present human nature lies in this, that in every human being self-love has taken, in addition to its own place, the place of the love ofGod and of the love of man also. We naturally now love nothing and noone but ourselves. And as long as self-love is in the ascendant in ourhearts, all the passions that are awakened in us by our self-love will beselfish with its selfishness, inhumane with its inhumanity, and ungodlywith its ungodliness. And it is to kill and extirpate our so passionateself-love that is the end and aim of all God's dealings with us in thisworld. All that God is doing with us and for us in providence and ingrace, in the world and in the church, --it is all to cure us of thisdeadly disease of self-love. We may never have had that told us before, and we may not like it, and we may not believe it; but there can be nobetter proof of the truth of what is now said than just this, that we donot like it and will not have it. Self-love will not let us listen tothe truth about ourselves; it puts us in a passion both against the truthand against him who tells the truth, as the history of the truthabundantly testifies. Yes, your indignant protest is quite true. Self-love has her divine rights, --no doubt she has. But you are not commandedto attend to them. Your self-love will look after herself. She willmanage to have her full share of what is right and proper for any passionto possess even after she cries out that she is trampled upon anddespoiled. My brethren, till you begin to crucify yourselves and topluck up your self-love by the roots, you will never know what a crueland hopeless task the Christian life is--I do not say the Christianprofession. Nor, on the other hand, will you ever discover what a nobletask it is--what a divine task and how divinely assisted and divinelyrecompensed. You will not know what a kennel of hell-hounds your ownheart is till you have long sought to enter it and cleanse it out. Andafter you have done your utmost, and your best, death will hurry you awayfrom your but half-accomplished task. Only, in that case you will beable to die in the hope that what is impossible with man is possible withGod, as promised by Him, and that He will not leave your soul in hell, but will perfect that good thing which alone concerneth you, even youreverlasting deliverance from all sinful self-love. 

And if self-love is the fruitful mother of all our passions, thensensuality is surely her eldest son. Indeed, so shallow are we, and soshallow are our words, that when we speak of sinful passion most meninstantly think of sensuality. There are so many seductive things thatappeal to our appetites, and our appetites are so easily awakened, andare so imperious when they are awakened, that when passion is spokenabout, few men think of the soul, all men think instantly of the body. And no wonder. For, stupid and besotted as we are, we must all at sometime of our life have felt the bondage and degradation of the senses. Passion in the Interpreter's House had soon nothing left but rags. Andin this house to-night there are many men whose consciences and heartsand characters are all in such rags from sensual sin, that when theScriptures speak of uncleanness, or rags, or corruption, their thoughtsflee at once to sensual sin and its conscience-rending results. Ceasefrom sensuality, said Cicero, for if once you give your minds up tosensuality, you will never be able to think of anything else. 

Ambition, emulation, and envy are the leading members of a whole prolificfamily of satanic passions in the human heart. Indeed, these passions, taken along with their kindred passions of hatred and ill-will, are, inour Lord's words, the very lusts of the devil himself. The Jews hatedour Lord the more for what He said about these detestable passions, butHis own disciples love Him only the more that He so well knows the evilaffections of their hearts, and so well describes and denounces them. Anybody can denounce sensual sin, and everybody will understand andapprove. But spiritual sin, --ambition and emulation and envy and ill-will--these things are more easy to denounce than they are to detect anddescribe, and more easy to detect and describe than they are to cast out. These sins seem rather to multiply and to strike a deeper root when youbegin to cast them out. What an utterly and abominably evil passion isenvy which is awakened not by bad things but by the best things! Thatanother man's talents, attainments, praises, rewards should kindle it, and that the blame, the depreciation, the hurt that another man suffersshould satisfy it, --what a piece of very hell must that be in the humanheart! What more do we need than just a little envy in our hearts tomake us prostrate penitents before God and man all our days? What moredoctrine, argument, proof, authority, persuasion should a sane man needbeyond a little envy in his heart at his best friend to make him anevangelical believer and an evangelical preacher? How, in the name ofwonder, is it that men can be so ignorant of the plague of their ownhearts as to remain indifferent, and, much more, hostile, to the gospelof love and holiness? Pride, also, --what a hateful and intolerablepassion is that! How stone-blind to his own state must that sinner bewhose heart is filled with pride, and how impossible it is for that manto make any real progress in any kind of truth or goodness! Andresentment, --what a deep-seated, long-lived, and suicidal passion isthat! How it hunts down him it hates, and how surely it shuts the doorof salvation against him who harbours it! Forgive us our debts, theresentful man says in his prayer, as we forgive our debtors. Anddetraction, --how some men's ink-horns are filled with detraction for ink, and how it drops from their tongue like poison! At their every word areputation dies. Life and all its opportunities of doing good and havinggood done to us is laid like a bag of treasure at our feet, but, like theprodigal son in the Interpreter's House, with all those passions ragingin our own hearts at other men, and in other men's hearts at us, we havesoon nothing left us but rags. God be thanked for every man here whosees and feels that he has nothing left him but rags; and, still more, thanks for all those who see and feel how, by their bad passions, sensualand spiritual, they have left on other people nothing but rags. 

Now, from all this let us lay it to heart that our sanctification andsalvation lie in our mastery over all these and over many other passionsthat have not even been named. He is an accepted saint of God, who, taking his and other people's rags to God's mercy every day, every dayalso in God's strength grapples with, bridles, and tames his own wild andungodly passions. Be not deceived, my friends; he alone is a saint ofGod who is a sanctified man; and his passions, --as they are the spring ofhis actions, so they are the sphere and seat of his sanctification. Benot deceived; that man, and no other manner of man, is, or ever will be, a partaker of God's salvation. You often hear me recommending thosestudents who have first to subdue their own passions and then thepassions of those who hear them to study Jonathan Edwards' ethical andspiritual writings. Well, just at this present point, to show you howwell that great man practised what he preached, let me read to you a fewlines from his biographer: 'Few men, ' says Henry Rogers, 'ever attained amore complete mastery over their passions than Jonathan Edwards did. Thiswas partly owing to the ascendency of his intellect; partly, and in astill greater degree, to the elevation of his piety. For the subjugationof his passions he was no doubt very greatly indebted to the prodigioussuperiority of his reason. Such was the commanding attitude his reasonassumed, and such the tremendous power with which it controlled the wholeman, that any insurrection among his senses was hopeless; they had theirtenure only by doing fealty and homage to his intellect. Those other andmore dangerous enemies, because more subtle and more spiritual, such aspride, vanity, wrath, and envy, which lurk in the inmost recesses of ournature, and some of which have such affinities for a genius like that ofEdwards, yield not to such exorcism. Such more powerful kind of demonsgo not forth but by prayer and fasting; to their complete mortification, therefore, Edwards brought incessant watchfulness and devotion; andseldom, assuredly, have they been more nearly expelled from the bosom ofa depraved intelligence. ' We shall be in the best company, bothintellectually and spiritually, if we work out our own salvation amongthe sinful passions of our depraved hearts. And then, as life goes on, and we continue in well-doing, we shall be able to measure and registerour growth in grace best by watching the effect of outward temptationsupon our still sinful and but half-sanctified hearts. And among much tobe humbled for, and much to make us fear and tremble for the issue, weshall, from time to time, have a good conscience and a holy and humblejoy that this passion and that is at last showing some signs ofcrucifixion and mortification. And thus that death to sin shallgradually set in which shall issue at last in an everlasting life untoholiness. 

'Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: fromall your filthiness, and from all your idols will I cleanse you. A newheart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you . . . Behold, I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee, and I will clothethee with change of raiment. In that day there shall be a fountainopened to the house of David, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, forsin and for uncleanness . . . Bring forth the best robe and put it uponhim, for this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and isfound . . . What are these that are arrayed in white robes, and whencecame they? These are they which came out of great tribulation, and havewashed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. '

PATIENCE

 'In your patience possess ye your souls. ' (Revised Version: 'In your patience ye shall win your souls. ')--Our Lord. 

'I saw moreover in my dream that the Interpreter took the pilgrim by thehand, and had him into a little room, where sate two little children, each one in his chair. The name of the eldest was Passion and of theother Patience. Passion seemed to be much discontent, but Patience wasvery quiet. Then Christian asked, What is the reason of the discontentof Passion? The interpreter answered, The governor of them would havehim stay for his best things till the beginning of the next year; but hewill have all now. But Patience is willing to wait. '

Passion and Patience, like Esau and Jacob, are twin-brothers. And theirnames, like their natures, spring up from the same root. 'Patience, 'says Crabb in his _English Synonyms_, 'comes from the active participleto suffer; while passion comes from the passive participle of the sameverb; and hence the difference between the two names. Patience signifiessuffering from an active principle, a determination to suffer; whilepassion signifies what is suffered from want of power to prevent thesuffering. Patience, therefore, is always taken in a good sense, andPassion always in a bad sense. ' So far this excellent etymologist. Thisis, therefore, another case of blessing and cursing proceeding out of thesame mouth, and of the same fountain sending forth at the same place bothsweet water and bitter. 

Our Lord tells us in this striking text that our very souls by reason ofsin are not our own. He tells us that we have lost hold of our soulsbefore we have as yet come to know that we have souls. We only discoverthat we have souls after we have lost them. And our Lord, --our best, indeed our only, authority in the things of the soul, --here tells us thatit is only by patience that we shall ever win back our lost souls. More, far more, is needed to the winning back of a lost soul than its owner'spatience, and our Lord knew that to His cost. But that is not His pointwith us to-night. His sole point with each one of us to-night is ourpersonal part in the conquest and redemption of our sin-enslaved souls. He who has redeemed our souls with His own blood tells us with allplainness of speech, that His blood will be shed in vain, as far as weare concerned, unless we add to His atoning death our own patient life. Every human life, as our Lord looks at it, and would have us look at it, is a vast field of battle in which a soul is lost or won; little as wethink of it or will believe it, in His sight every trial, temptation, provocation, insult, injury, and all kinds and all degrees of pain andsuffering, are all so many divinely appointed opportunities afforded usfor the reconquest and recovery of our souls. Sometimes faith issummoned into the battle-field, sometimes hope, sometimes self-denial, sometimes prayer, sometimes one grace and sometimes another; but as withthe sound of a trumpet the Captain of our salvation here summons Patienceto the forefront of the fight. 

1. To begin with, how much impatience we are all from time to timeguilty of in our family life. Among the very foundations of our familylife how much impatience the husband often exhibits toward the wife, andthe wife toward her husband. Patience is the very last grace they lookforward to having any need of when they are still dreaming about theirmarried life; but, in too many cases, they have not well entered on thatlife, when they find that they need no grace of God so much as justpatience, if the yoke of their new life is not to gall them beyondendurance. However many good qualities of mind and heart and characterany husband or wife may have, no human being is perfect, and most of usare very far from being perfect. When therefore, we are closely andindissolubly joined to another life and another will, it is no wonderthat sometimes the ill-fitting yoke eats into a lifelong sore. We haveall many defects in our manners, in our habits, and in our constitutionalways of thinking and speaking and acting, --defects that tempt those wholive nearest us to fall into annoyances with us that sometimes deepeninto dislike, and even positive disgust, till it has been seen, in someextreme cases, that home-life has become a very prison-house, in whichthe impatient prisoner chafes and jibs and strikes out as he does nowhereelse. Now, when any unhappy man or woman wakens up to discover howdifferent life is now to be from what it once promised to become, letthem know that all their past blindness, and precipitancy, and all thepainful results of all that, may yet be made to work together for good. In your patience with one another, says our Lord, you will make aconquest of your adverse lot, and of your souls to the bargain. Say toyourselves, therefore, that perfection, faultlessness, and absolutesatisfaction are not to be found in this world. And say also that sinceyou have not brought perfection to your side of the house any more thanyour partner has to his side, you are not so foolish as to expectperfection in return for such imperfection. You have your own share ofwhat causes fireside silence, aversion, disappointment, and dislike; and, with God's help, say that you will patiently submit to what may not nowbe mended. And then, the sterner the battle the nobler will the victorybe; and the lonelier the fight, the more honour to him who flinches notfrom it. In your patience possess ye your souls. 

What a beautiful, instructive, and even impressive sight it is to see anurse patiently cherishing her children! How she has her eye and herheart at all their times upon them, till she never has any need to layher hand upon them! Passion has no place in her little household, because patience fills all its own place and the place of passion too. What a genius she displays in her talks to her children! How she cheatstheir little hours of temptation, and tides them over the rough placesthat her eye sees lying like sunken rocks before her little ship! Howskilfully she stills and heals their impulsive little passions by hersudden and absorbing surprise at some miracle in a picture-book, or someastonishing sight under her window! She has a thousand occupations alsofor her children, and each of them with a touch of enterprise andadventure and benevolence in it. She is so full of patience herself, that the little gusts of passion are soon over in her presence, and thesunshine is soon back brighter than ever in her little paradise. And, over and above her children rising up and calling her blessed, whatwounds she escapes in her own heart and memory by keeping her patienthands from ever wounding her children! What peace she keeps in thehouse, just by having peace always within herself! Paul can find nobetter figure wherewith to set forth God's marvellous patience withIsrael during her fretful childhood in the wilderness, than just that ofsuch a nurse among her provoking children. And we see the deep hold thatsame touching and instructive sight had taken of the apostle's heart ashe returns to it again to the Thessalonians: 'We were gentle among you, even as a nurse cherisheth her children. So, being affectionatelydesirous of you, we were willing to have imparted unto you, not thegospel of God only, but also our own souls, because ye were dear untous. ' What a school of divine patience is every man's own family at homeif he only were teachable, observant, and obedient!

2. Clever, quick-witted, and, themselves, much-gifted men, are terriblyintolerant of slow and stupid men, as they call them. But themany-talented man makes a great mistake here, and falls into a great sin. In his fulness of all kinds of intellectual gifts, he quite forgets fromWhom he has his many gifts, and why it is that his despised neighbour hasso few gifts. If you have ten or twenty talents, and I have only two, who is to be praised and who is to be blamed for that allotment? Yourcleverness has misled you and has hitherto done you far more evil thangood. You bear yourself among ordinary men, among less men thanyourself, as if you had added all these cubits to your own stature. Youride over us as if you had already given in your account, and had heardit said, Take the one talent from them and give it to this myten-talented servant. You seem to have set it down to your side of thegreat account, that you had such a good start in talent, and that yourfine mind had so many tutors and governors all devoting themselves toyour advancement. And you conduct yourself to us as if the RighteousJudge had cast us away from His presence, because we were not found amongthe wise and mighty of this world. The truth is, that the whole world ison a wholly wrong tack in its praise and in its blame. We praise the manof great gifts, and we blame the man of small gifts, completely forgetfulthat in so doing we give men the praise that belongs to God, and lay onmen the blame, which, if there is any blame in the matter, ought to belaid elsewhere. Learn and lay to heart, my richly-gifted brethren, to bepatient with all men, but especially to be patient with all stupid, slow-witted, ungifted, God-impoverished men. Do not add your insults and yourill-usage to the low estate of those on whom, in the meantime, God's handlies so cold and so straitened. For who maketh thee to differ fromanother? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive? Now, if thoudidst receive it, why dost thou glory as if thou hadst not received it?Call that to mind the next time you are tempted to cry out that you haveno patience with your slow-witted servant. 

3. 'Is patient with the bad' is one of the tributes of praise that ispaid in the fine paraphrase to that heart that is full of the same lovethat is in God. A patient love to the unjust and the evil is one of theattributes and manifestations of the divine nature, as that nature isseen both in God and in all genuinely godly men. And, indeed, in noother thing is the divine nature so surely seen in any man as just in hislove to and his patience with bad men. He schools and exercises himselfevery day to be patient and good to other men as God has been to him. Heremembers when tempted to resentment how God did not resent his evil, but, while he was yet an enemy to God and to godliness, reconciled him toHimself by the death of His Son. And ever since the godly man saw that, he has tried to reconcile his worst enemies to himself by the death ofhis impatience and passion toward them, and has more pitied than blamedthem, even when their evil was done against himself. Let God judge, andif it must be, condemn that bad man. But I am too bad myself to cast astone at the worst and most injurious of men. If we so much pityourselves for our sinful lot, if we have so much compassion on ourselvesbecause of our inherited and unavoidable estate of sin and misery, why dowe not share our pity and our compassion with those miserable men who arein an even worse estate than our own? At any rate, I must not judge themlest I be judged. I must take care when I say, Forgive me my trespasses, as I forgive them that trespass against me. Not to seven times must Igrudgingly forgive, but ungrudgingly to seventy times seven. For withwhat judgment I judge, I shall be judged; and with what measure I mete, it shall be measured to me again. 

 'Love harbours no suspicious thought, Is patient to the bad: Grieved when she hears of sins and crimes, And in the truth is glad. '

4. And then, most difficult and most dangerous, but most necessary ofall patience, we must learn how to be patient with ourselves. Every daywe hear of miserable men rushing upon death because they can no longerendure themselves and the things they have brought on themselves. Andthere are moral suicides who cast off the faith and the hope and theendurance of a Christian man because they are so evil and have lived suchan evil life. We speak of patience with bad men, but there is no man sobad, there is no man among all our enemies who has at all hurt us likethat man who is within ourselves. And to bear patiently what we havebrought upon ourselves, --to endure the inward shame, the self-reproof, the self-contempt bitterer to drink than blood, the lifelong injuries, impoverishment, and disgrace, --to bear all these patiently anduncomplainingly, --to acquiesce humbly in the discovery that all this wasalways in our hearts, and still is in our hearts--what humility, whatpatience, what compassion and pity for ourselves must all that callforth! The wise nurse is patient with her passionate, greedy, untidy, disobedient child. She does not cast it out of doors, she does not runand leave it, she does not kill it because all these things have been andstill are in its sad little heart. Her power for good with such a childlies just in her pity, in her compassion, and in her patience with herchild. And the child that is in all of us is to be treated in the samepatient, hopeful, believing, forgiving, divine way. We should all bewith ourselves as God is with us. He knoweth our frame. He remembereththat we are dust. He shows all patience toward us. He does not look forgreat things from us. He does not break the bruised reed, nor quench thesmoking flax. He shall not fail nor be discouraged till He have setjudgment in the earth. And so shall not we. 

5. And, then, --it is a sufficiently startling thing to say, but--we mustlearn to be patient with God also. All our patience, and all theexercises of it, if we think aright about it, all run up in the long-runinto patience with God. But there are some exercises of patience thathave to do directly and immediately with God and with God alone. Whenany man's heart has become fully alive to God and to the things of God;when he begins to see and feel that he lives and moves and has his beingin God; then everything that in any way affects him is looked on by himas come to him from God. Absolutely, all things. The very weather thateverybody is so atheistic about, the climate, the soil he labours, therain, the winter's cold and the summer's heat, --true piety sees all thesethings as God's things, and sees God's immediate will in the dispositionand dispensation of them all. He feels the untameableness of his tonguein the indecent talk that goes on everlastingly about the weather. Allthese things may be without God to other men, as they once were to himalso, but you will find that the truly and the intelligently devout manno longer allows himself in such unbecoming speech. For, though hecannot trace God's hand in all the changes of the seasons, in heat andcold, in sunshine and snow, yet he is as sure that God's wisdom and willare there as that Scripture is true and the Scripture-taught heart. 'Great is our Lord, and His understanding is infinite. Who covereth theheavens with clouds, and prepareth rain for the earth, and maketh thegrass to grow upon the mountains. He giveth snow like wool; Hescattereth the hoarfrost like ashes; He casteth forth His ice likemorsels. Who can stand before his cold?' Here is the patience and thefaith of the saints. Here are they that keep the commandments of God andthe faith of Jesus Christ. 

And, then, when through rain or frost or fire, when out of any terror bynight or arrow that flieth by day, any calamity comes on the man who isthus pointed and practised in his patience, he is able with Job to say, 'This is the Lord. What, shall we receive good at the hand of God andnot also receive evil?' By far the best thing I have ever read on thissubject, and I have read it a thousand times since I first read it as astudent, is Dr. Thomas Goodwin's _Patience and its Perfect Work_. Thatnoble treatise had its origin in the great fire of London in 1666. Thelearned President of Magdalen College lost the half of his library, fivehundred pounds worth of the best books, in that terrible fire. And hisson tells us he had often heard his father say that in the loss of hisnot-to-be-replaced books, God had struck him in a very sensible place. Tolose his Augustine, and his Calvin, and his Musculus, and his Zanchius, and his Amesius, and his Suarez, and his Estius was a sore stroke to sucha man. I loved my books too well, said the great preacher, and Godrebuked me by this affliction. Let the students here read Goodwin'scostly treatise, and they will be the better prepared to meet suchcalamities as the burning of their manse and their library, as also tocounsel and comfort their people when they shall lose their shops ortheir stockyards by fire. 

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

And, then, in a multitude of New Testament scriptures, we are summoned togreat exercise of patience with the God of our salvation, because it isHis purpose and plan that we shall have to wait long for our salvation. God has not seen it good to carry us to heaven on the day of ourconversion. He does not glorify us on the same day that He justifies us. We are appointed to salvation indeed, but it is also appointed us to waitlong for it. This is not our rest. We are called to be pilgrims andstrangers for a season with God upon the earth. We are told to endure tothe end. It is to be through faith and patience that we, with ourfathers, shall at last inherit the promises. Holiness is not a Jonah'sgourd. It does not come up in a night, and it does not perish in anight. Holiness is the Divine nature, and it takes a lifetime to make uspartakers of it. But, then, if the time is long the thing is sure. Letus, then, with a holy and a submissive patience wait for it. 

'I saw moreover in my dream that Passion seemed to be much discontent, but Patience was very quiet. Then Christian asked, What is the reason ofthe discontent of Passion? The Interpreter answered, The governor ofthem would have him stay for his best things till the beginning of thenext year; but he will have them all now. But Patience is willing towait. '

SIMPLE, SLOTH, AND PRESUMPTION

 'Ye did run well, who did hinder you?'--Paul. 

It startles us not a little to come suddenly upon three pilgrims fastasleep with fetters on their heels on the upward side of theInterpreter's House, and even on the upward side of the cross and thesepulchre. We would have looked for those three miserable men somewherein the City of Destruction or in the Town of Stupidity, or, at best, somewhere still outside of the wicket-gate. But John Bunyan did not laydown his _Pilgrim's Progress_ on any abstract theory, or on any easy andpleasant presupposition, of the Christian life. He constructed his solifelike book out of his own experiences as a Christian man, as well asout of all he had learned as a Christian minister. And in nothing isBunyan's power of observation, deep insight, and firm hold of fact betterseen than just in the way he names and places the various people of thepilgrimage. Long after he had been at the Cross of Christ himself, andhad seen with his own eyes all the significant rooms in the Interpreter'sHouse, Bunyan had often to confess that the fetters of evil habit, unholyaffection, and a hard heart were still firmly riveted on his own heels. And his pastoral work had led him to see only too well that he was notalone in the temptations and the dangers and the still-abiding bondage tosin that had so surprised himself after he was so far on in the Christianlife. It was the greatest sorrow of his heart, he tells us in a powerfulpassage in his _Grace Abounding_, that so many of his spiritual childrenbroke down and came short in the arduous and perilous way in which he hadso hopefully started them. 'If any of those who were awakened by myministry did after that fall back, as sometimes too many did, I can trulysay that their loss hath been more to me than if one of my own children, begotten of my body, had been going to its grave. I think, verily, I mayspeak it without an offence to the Lord, nothing hath gone so near me asthat, unless it was the fear of the salvation of my own soul. I havecounted as if I had goodly buildings and lordships in those places wheremy children were born; my heart has been so wrapped up in this excellentwork that I counted myself more blessed and honoured of God by this thanif He had made me the emperor of the Christian world, or the lord of allthe glory of the earth without it. ' And I have no doubt that we havehere the three things that above everything else bereft Bunyan of so manyof his spiritual children personified and then laid down by the heels inSimple, Sloth, and Presumption. 

SIMPLE

Let us shake up Simple first and ask him what it was that laid him sosoon and in such a plight and in such company in this bottom. It was notthat which from his name we might at first think it was. It was not theweakness of his intellects, nor his youth, nor his inexperience. Thereis danger enough, no doubt, in all these things if they are not carefullyattended to, but none of all these things in themselves, nor all of themtaken together, will lay any pilgrim by the heels. There must be morethan mere and pure simplicity. No blame attaches to a simple mind, muchless to an artless and an open heart. We do not blame such a man evenwhen we pity him. We take him, if he will let us, under our care, or weput him under better care, but we do not anticipate any immediate ill tohim so long as he remains simple in mind, untainted in heart, and willingto learn. But, then, unless he is better watched over than any young manor young woman can well be in this world, that simplicity andchild-likeness and inexperience of his may soon become a fatal snare tohim. There is so much that is not simple and sincere in this world;there is so much falsehood and duplicity; there are so many men abroadwhose endeavour is to waylay, mislead, entrap, and corrupt the simple-minded and the inexperienced, that it is next to impossible that anyyouth or maiden shall long remain in this world both simple and safealso. My son, says the Wise Man, keep my words, and lay up mycommandments with thee. For at the window of my house I looked throughmy casement, and beheld among the simple ones, I discerned among theyouths, a young man void of understanding;--and so on, --till a dartstrike through his liver, and he goeth as an ox to the slaughter. Andso, too often in our own land, the maiden in her simplicity also opensher ear to the promises and vows and oaths of the flatterer, till sheloses both her simplicity and her soul, and lies buried in that samebottom beside Sloth and Presumption. 

It is not so much his small mind and his weak understanding that is thefatal danger of their possessor, it is his imbecile way of treating hissmall mind. In our experience of him we cannot get him, all we can do, to read an instructive book. We cannot get him to attend our young men'sclass with all the baits and traps we can set for him. Where does hespend his Sabbath-day and week-day evenings? We cannot find out until wehear some distressing thing about him, that, ten to one, he would haveescaped had he been a reader of good books, or a student with us, say, ofDante and Bunyan and Rutherford, and a companion of those young men andyoung women who talk about and follow such intellectual tastes andpursuits. Now, if you are such a young man or young woman as that, orsuch an old man or old woman, you will not be able to understand what inthe world Bunyan can mean by saying that he saw you in his dream fastasleep in a bottom with irons on your heels. No; for to understand the_Pilgrim's Progress_, beyond a nursery and five-year-old understanding ofit, you must have worked and studied and suffered your way out of yourmental and spiritual imbecility. You must have for years attended towhat is taught from the pulpit and the desk, and, alongside of that, youmust have made a sobering and solemnising application of it all to yourown heart. And then you would have seen and felt that the heels of yourmind and of your heart are only too firmly fettered with the irons ofignorance and inexperience and self-complacency. But as it is, if youwould tell the truth, you would say to us what Simple said to Christian, I see no danger. The next time that John Bunyan passed that bottom, thechains had been taken off the heels of this sleeping fool and had beenput round his neck. 

SLOTH

Sloth had a far better head than Simple had; but what of that when hemade no better use of it? There are many able men who lie all their daysin a sad bottom with the irons of indolence and inefficiency on theirheels. We often envy them their abilities, and say about them, Whatmight they not have done for themselves and for us had they only workedhard? Just as we are surprised to see other men away above us on themountain top, not because they have better abilities than we have, butbecause they tore the fetters of sloth out of their soft flesh and setthemselves down doggedly to their work. And the same sloth that starvesand fetters the mind at the same time casts the conscience and the heartinto a deep sleep. I often wonder as I go on working among you, if youever attach any meaning or make any application to yourselves of allthose commands and counsels of which the Scriptures are full, --to be upand doing, to watch and pray, to watch and be sober, to fight the goodfight of faith, to hold the fort, to rise early, and even by night, andto endure unto death, and never for one moment to be found off yourguard. Do you attach any real meaning to these examples of thepsalmists, to these continual commands and examples of Christ, and tothese urgent counsels of his apostles? Do you? Against whom and againstwhat do you thus campaign and fight? For fear of whom or of what do youthus watch? What fort do you hold? What occupies your thoughts in night-watches, and what inspires and compels your early prayers? It is yourstupefying life of spiritual sloth that makes it impossible for you toanswer these simple and superficial questions. Sloth is not the word forit. Let them give the right word to insanity like that who sleep andsoak in sinful sloth no longer. 

We have all enemies in our own souls that never sleep, whatever we maydo. There are no irons on their heels. They never procrastinate. Theynever say to their master, A little more slumber. Now, could you nameany hateful enemy entrenched in your own heart, of which you have ofyourself said far more than that? And, if so, what have you done, whatare you at this moment doing, to cast that enemy out? Have you anyarmour on, any weapons of offence and precision, against that enemy? Andwhat success and what defeat have you had in unearthing and casting outthat enemy? What fort do you hold? On what virtue, on what grace areyou posted by your Lord to keep for yourself and for Him? And with whatcost of meat and drink and sleep and amusement do you lose it or keep itfor Him? Alexander used to leave his tent at midnight and go round thecamp, and spear to his post the sentinel he found sleeping. 

There is nothing we are all so slothful in as secret, particular, importunate prayer. We have an almighty instrument in our hand in secretand exact prayer if we would only importunately and perseveringly employit. But there is an utterly unaccountable restraint of secret andparticularising prayer in all of us. There is a soaking, stupefyingsloth, that so fills our hearts that we forget and neglect the immenseconcession and privilege we have afforded us in secret prayer. Our slothand stupidity in prayer is surely the last proof of our fall and of themisery of our fallen state. Our sloth with a gold mine open at our feet;a little more sleep on the top of a mast with a gulf under us that hathno bottom, --no language of this life can adequately describe thebesottedness of that man who lies with irons on his heels between Simpleand Presumption. 

PRESUMPTION

The greatest theologian of the Roman Catholic Church has made aninduction and classification of sins that has often been borrowed by ourProtestant and Puritan divines. His classification is made, as will beseen, on an ascending scale of guilt and aggravation. In the world ofsin, he says, there are, first, sins of ignorance; next, there are sinsof infirmity; and then, at the top, there are sins of presumption. Andthis, it will be remembered, was the Psalmist's inventory and estimate ofsins also. His last and his most earnest prayer was, that he might bekept back from all presumptuous sin. Now you know quite well, withoutany explanation, what presumption is. Don't presume, you say, withrising and scarce controlled anger. Don't presume too far. Take care, you say, with your heart beating so high that you can scarcely commandit, take care lest you go too far. And the word of God feels and speaksabout presumptuous sin very much as you do yourself. Now, what gave thisthird man who lay in fetters a little beyond the cross the name ofPresumption was just this, that he had been at the cross with his pastsin, and had left the cross to commit the same sin at the firstopportunity. Presumption presumed upon his pardon. He presumed upon theabounding grace of God. He presumed upon the blood of Christ. He was sohigh on the Atonement, that he held that the gospel was not sufficientlypreached to him, unless not past sin only and present, but also allfuture sin was atoned for on the tree before it was committed. There isa reprobate in Dante, who, all the time he was repenting, had his eye onhis next opportunity. Now, our Presumption was like that. He presumedon his youth, on his temptations, on his opportunities, and especially onhis future reformation and the permanence and the freeness of the gospeloffer. When he was in the Interpreter's House he did not hear what theInterpreter was saying, the blood was roaring so through his veins. Hiseyes were so full of other images that he did not see the man in the ironcage, nor the spider on the wall, nor the fire fed secretly. He had nomore intention of keeping always to the way that was as straight as arule could make it, than he had of cutting off both his hands andplucking out both his eyes. When the three shining ones stripped him ofhis rags and clothed him with change of raiment, he had no more intentionof keeping his garments clean than he had of flying straight up to heavenon the spot. Now, let each man name to himself what that is in which heintentionally, deliberately, and by foresight and forethought sins. Haveyou named it? Well, it was for that that this reprobate was laid by theheels on the immediately hither side of the cross and the sepulchre. Notthat the iron might not have been taken off his heels again on certainconditions, even after it was on; but, even so, he would never have beenthe same man again that he was before his presumptuous sin. You willeasily know a man who has committed much presumptuous sin, --that is tosay, if you have any eye for a sinner. I think I would find him out if Iheard him pray once, or preach once, or even select a psalm for public orfor family worship; even if I heard him say grace at a dinner-table, orreprove his son, or scold his servant. Presumptuous sin has so much ofthe venom and essence of sin in it that, forgiven or unforgiven, even alittle of it never leaves the sinner as it found him. Even if hisfetters are knocked off, there is always a piece of the poisonous ironleft in his flesh; there is always a fang of his fetters left in thebroken bone. The presumptuous saint will always be detected by the wayhe halts on his heels all his after days. Keep back Thy servant, O God, from presumptuous sin. Let him be innocent of the great transgression. 

Dr. Thomas Goodwin says somewhere that the worm that dieth not only comesto its sharpest sting and to its deadliest venom when it is hatched upunder gospel light. The very light of nature itself greatly aggravatessome of our sins. The light of our early education greatly aggravatesothers of our sins. But nothing wounds our conscience and thenexasperates the wound like a past experience of the same sin, and, especially, an experience of the grace of God in forgiving that sin. Hadwe found young Presumption in his irons before his conversion, we wouldhave been afraid enough at the sight. Had we found him laid by the heelsafter his first uncleanness, it would have made us shudder for ourselves. But we are horrified and speechless as we see him apprehended and laid inirons on the very night of his first communion, and with the winescarcely dry on his unclean lips. Augustine postponed his baptism tillhe should have his fill of sin, and till he should no longer return tosin like a dog to his vomit. Now, next Sabbath is our communion day inthis congregation. Let us therefore this week examine ourselves. And ifwe must sin as long as we are in this world, let it henceforth be the sinof ignorance and of infirmity. 

So the three reprobates lay down to sleep again, and Christian as he leftthat bottom went on in the narrow way singing:

 'O to grace how great a debtor Daily I'm constrained to be Let that grace, Lord, like a fetter, Bind my wandering heart to Thee. '

THE THREE SHINING ONES AT THE CROSS

 'Salvation shall God appoint for walls. '--Isaiah. 

John Bunyan's autobiography, _Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners_, is the best of all our commentaries on _The Pilgrim's Progress_, andagain to-night I shall have to fall back on that incomparable book. 'Now, I saw in my dream that the highway up which Christian was to go wasfenced on either side with a wall, and that wall is called Salvation. Upthis way, therefore, did burdened Christian run, but not without greatdifficulty, because of the load on his back. ' In the correspondingparagraph in _Grace Abounding_, our author says, speaking about himself:'But forasmuch as the passage was wonderful narrow, even so narrow that Icould not but with great difficulty enter in thereat, it showed me thatnone could enter into life but those that were in downright earnest, andunless also they left this wicked world behind them; for here was onlyroom for body and soul, but not for body and soul and sin. ' 'He ran thustill he came to a place somewhat ascending, and upon that place stood across, and a little below in the bottom a sepulchre. So I saw in mydream, that just as Christian came up with this cross, his burden loosedfrom off his shoulders and fell from off his back, and began to tumble, and so continued to do till it came to the mouth of the sepulchre, whereit fell in, and I saw it no more. ' Turning again to the _GraceAbounding_, we read in the 115th paragraph: 'I remember that one day as Iwas travelling into the country and musing on the wickedness andblasphemy of my heart, and considering of the enmity that was in me toGod, that scripture came into my mind, He hath made peace by the blood ofHis Cross. By which I was made to see both again and again and againthat day that God and my soul were friends by that blood: yea, I saw thatthe justice of God and my sinful soul could embrace and kiss each otherthrough that blood. That was a good day to me; I hope I shall not forgetit. I thought I could have spoken of His love and of His mercy to methat day to the very crows that sat upon the ploughed lands before me hadthey been capable to have understood me. Wherefore I said in my soulwith much gladness, Well, I would I had a pen and ink here and I wouldwrite this down before I go any farther, for surely I will not forgetthis forty years hence. '

From all this we learn that the way to the Celestial City lies withinhigh and close fencing walls. There is not room for many pilgrims towalk abreast in that way; indeed, there is seldom room for two. Thereare some parts of the way where two or even three pilgrims can for a timewalk and converse together, but for the most part the path isdistressingly lonely. The way is so fenced up also that a pilgrim cannotso much as look either to the right hand or the left. Indeed, it is oneof the laws of that road that no man is to attempt to look exceptstraight on before him. But then there is this compensation for thesolitude and stringency of the way that the wall that so encloses it isSalvation. And Salvation is such a wall that it is companionship andprospect enough of itself. Dante saw a long reach of this same wallrunning round the bottom of the mount that cleanses him who climbs it, --along stretch of such sculptured beauty, that it arrested him andinstructed him and delighted him beyond his power sufficiently to praiseit. And thus, that being so, burdened and bowed down to the earth as ourpilgrim was, he was on the sure way, sooner or later, to deliverance. Somewhere and sometime and somehow on that steep and high fenced waydeliverance was sure to come. And, then, as to the burdened man himself. His name was once Graceless, but his name is Graceless no longer. Nograceless man runs long between these close and cramping-up walls; and, especially, no graceless man has that burden long on his back. That isnot Graceless any longer who is leaving the Interpreter's House for thefenced way; that is Christian, and as long as he remains Christian, thecloseness of the fence and the weight of his burden are a small matter. But long-looked-for comes at last. And so, still carrying his burden andkeeping close within the fenced-up way, our pilgrim came at last to across. And a perfect miracle immediately took place in that somewhatascending ground. For scarcely had Christian set his eyes on the cross, when, without his pulling at it, or pushing it, or even at that momentthinking of it, ere ever he was aware, he saw his burden begin to tumble, and so it continued to do till it fell fairly out of his sight into anopen sepulchre. 

The application of all that is surely self-evident. For our way in aholy life is always closely fenced up. It is far oftener a lonely waythan otherwise. And the steepness, sternness, and loneliness of our wayare all aggravated by the remembrance of our past sins and follies. Theystill, and more and more, lie upon our hearts a heart-crushing burden. But if we, like Christian, know how to keep our back to our former houseand our face to heaven, sooner or later we too shall surely come to thecross. And then, either suddenly, or after a long agony, our burden alsoshall be taken off our back and shut down into Christ's sepulchre. And Isaw it no more, says the dreamer. He does not say that its owner saw itno more. He was too wise and too true a dreamer to say that. 

It will be remembered that the first time we saw this man, with whoseprogress to the Celestial City we are at present occupied, he wasstanding in a certain place clothed with rags and with a burden on hisback. After a long journey with him, we have just seen his burden takenoff his back, and it is only after his burden is off and a Shining Onehas said to him, Thy sins be forgiven, that a second Shining One comesand strips him of his rags and clothes him with change of raiment. Now, why, it may be asked, has Christian had to carry his burden so long, andwhy is he still kept so ragged and so miserable and he so far on in thepilgrim's path? Surely, it will be said, John Bunyan was dreaming indeedwhen he kept a truly converted man, a confessedly true and sincereChristian, so long in bonds and in rags. Well, as to his rags: filthyrags are only once spoken of in the Bible, and it is the prophet Isaiah, whose experience and whose language John Bunyan had so entirely by heart, who puts them on. And that evangelist among the prophets not only callshis own and Israel's sins filthy rags, but Isaiah is very bold, and callstheir very righteousnesses by that opprobrious name. Had that boldprophet said that all his and all his people's _un_righteousnesses werefilthy rags, all Israel would have subscribed to that. There was no manso brutish as not to admit that. But as long as they had any sense oftruth and any self-respect, multitudes of Isaiah's first hearers andreaders would resent what he so rudely said of their righteousnesses. Onthe other hand, the prophet's terrible discovery and comparison, justlike our dreamer's dramatic distribution of Christian experience, was, toa certainty, an immense consolation to many men in Israel in his day. They gathered round Isaiah because, but for him and his evangelicalministry, they would have been alone in their despair. To them Isaiah'sministry was a house of refuge, and the prophet himself a veritable towerof strength. They felt they were not alone so long as Isaiah dwelt inthe same city with them. And thus, whatever he might be to others, hewas God's very prophet to them as his daily prayers in the temple bothcast them down and lifted them up. 'Oh that Thou wouldst rend theheavens and come down . . . But we are all as an unclean thing, and allour righteousnesses are as filthy rags, and our iniquities like the windhave taken us away. ' Thousands in Israel found in these terrible words adoor of hope, a sense of fellowship, and a call to trust andthanksgiving. And tens of thousands have found the same help andconsolation out of what have seemed to others the very darkest and mostperplexing pages of the _Pilgrim's Progress_ and the _Grace Abounding_. 'It made me greatly ashamed, ' says Hopeful, 'of the vileness of my formerlife, and confounded me with the sense of mine own ignorance, for therenever came into mine heart before now that showed me so by contrast thebeauty of the Lord Jesus. My own vileness and nakedness made me love aholy life. Yea, I thought that had I now a thousand gallons of blood inmy body, I could spill it all for the sake of the Lord Jesus. ' And ifyou, my brother, far on in the way of Salvation, still think sometimesthat, after all, you must be a reprobate because of your filthy rags, read what David Brainerd wrote with his half-dead hand on the last pageof his seraphic journal: 'How sweet it is to love God and to have a heartall for God! Yes; but a voice answered me, You are not all for God, youare not an angel. To which my whole soul replied, I as sincerely desireto love and glorify God as any angel in heaven. But you are filthy, andnot fit for heaven. When hereupon there instantly appeared above me andspread over me the blessed robes of Christ's righteousness which I couldnot but exult and triumph in. And then I knew that I should be as activeas an angel in heaven, and should then be for ever stripped of my filthygarments and clothed with spotless raiment. ' Let me die the death ofDavid Brainerd, and let my latter end be like his!

The third Shining One then came forward and set a mark on the forehead ofthis happy man. And it was a most ancient and a most honourable mark. For it was the same redeeming mark that was set by Moses upon theforeheads of the children of Israel when the Lord took them into covenantwith Himself at the Passover in the wilderness. It was the samedistinguishing mark also that the man with the slaughter-weapon in hishand first set upon the foreheads of the men who sighed and cried for theabominations that were done in the midst of Jerusalem. And it was thesame glorious mark that John saw in the foreheads of the hundred andforty and four thousand who stood upon Mount Zion and sang a song that noman knew but those men who had been redeemed from the earth by the bloodof the Lamb. The mark was set for propriety and for ornament and forbeauty. It was set upon his forehead so that all who looked on him everafter might thus know to what company and what country he belonged, andthat this was not his rest, but that he had been called and chosen to aheavenly inheritance. And, besides, it was no sooner set upon hisforehead than it greatly added to his dignity and his comeliness. He hadnow the gravity and beauty of an angel; nay, the beauty in his measureand the gravity of Goodwill at the gate himself. And, then, as if thatwere not enough, the third Shining One also gave him a roll with a sealupon it, which he was bidden look on as he ran, and which he was to givein when he arrived at the Celestial Gate. Now, what was that sealed rollbut just the inward memory and record of all this pilgrim's experiencesof the grace of God from the day he set out on pilgrimage down to thatday when he stood unburdened of his guilt, unclothed of his rags, andclothed upon with change of raiment? The roll contained his own secretlife, all sealed and shone in upon by the light of God's countenance. Thesecret of the Lord with this pilgrim was written within that roll, asecret that no man could read but he himself alone. It was the same rollthat this same Shining One gave to Abraham, the first pilgrim and thefather of all true pilgrims, after Melchizedek, the priest of the MostHigh God, had brought forth bread and wine and had blessed that greatbeliever. 'Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding greatreward. ' And, again, after Abram had lost his roll, like our pilgrim inthe arbour, when he recovered it he read thus in it: 'I am the AlmightyGod: walk before Me, and be thou perfect. And I will make My covenantbetween Me and thee. ' And Abram fell on his face for joy. It was thesame roll out of which the Psalmist proposed to read a passage to allthose in his day who feared God. 'Come and hear, all ye that fear God, and I will declare what He hath done for my soul. ' It was the same rollalso that God sent to Israel in his sore captivity. 'Fear not, O Israel, for I have redeemed thee; I have called thee by thy name, thou art Mine. When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee. ' The highpriest Joshua also had the same roll put into his hand, and that not onlyfor his own comfort, but to make him the comforter of God's afflictedpeople. For after the Lord had plucked Joshua as a brand out of thefire, and had made his iniquity to pass from him, and had clothed himwith change of raiment, and had set a fair mitre on his head, the Lordgave to Joshua a sealed roll, the contents of which may be read to thisday in the book of the prophet Zechariah. Nay, more: 'Will you have meto speak plainly?' says great Goodwin on this matter. 'Then, though ourLord had the assurance of faith that He was the Son of God, for He knewit out of the Scriptures by reading all the prophets, yet, to have itsealed to Him with joy unspeakable and glorious, --this was deferred tothe time of His baptism. He was then anointed with the oil of assuranceand gladness in a more peculiar and transcendent manner. ' 'In Hisbaptism, ' says Bengel, 'our Lord was magnificently enlightened. He waspreviously the Son of God, and yet the power of the Divine testimony toHis Sonship at His baptism long affected Him in a lively manner. ' And wesee our Lord reading His roll to assure and sustain His heart when alloutward acceptance and sustenance failed Him. 'There is One who bearethwitness of Me, and His witness is true. I receive not witness from men. I have a greater witness than even that of John. For the Father Himselfthat hath sent Me, He beareth witness of Me. ' No wonder that our heavy-laden pilgrim of yesterday gave three leaps for joy and went on singingwith such a roll as that in his bosom. For, at that supreme moment hehad that inward illumination and assurance sealed on his heart that hadso gladdened and sustained so many prophets and psalmists and apostlesand saints before his day. And though, like Abraham and all the othersaints who ever had that noble roll put into their keeping, except JesusChrist, he often lost it, yet as often as he again recovered it, itbrought back again with it all his first joy and gladness. 

But, as was said at the beginning, the _Grace Abounding_ is the best ofall our commentaries on _The Pilgrim's Progress_. As thus here also:'Now had I an evidence, as I thought, of my salvation from heaven, withmany golden seals thereon, all hanging in my sight. Now could I rememberthis manifestation and that other discovery of grace with comfort, andshould often long and desire that the last day were come, that I might befor ever inflamed with the sight and joy of Him and communion with Himwhose head was crowned with thorns, whose face was spit on, and bodybroken, and soul made an offering for my sins. For whereas, before, Ilay continually trembling at the mouth of hell, now, methought, I was gotso far therefrom that I could not, when I looked back, scarce discern it. And oh! thought I, that I were fourscore years old now, that I might diequickly, that my soul might be gone to rest. '

Then Christian gave three leaps for joy and went on singing:

 'Thus far did I come laden with my sin, Nor could ought ease the grief that I was in Till I came hither: . . . Blest Cross! blest Sepulchre! blest rather be The Man that there was put to shame for me. '

FORMALIST AND HYPOCRISY

 'A form of godliness. '--Paul. 

We all began our religious life by being formalists. And we were notaltogether to blame for that. Our parents were first to blame for that, and then our teachers, and then our ministers. They made us say ourpsalm and our catechism to them, and if we only said our sacred lessonwithout stumbling, we were straightway rewarded with their highestpraise. They seldom took the trouble to make us understand the things wesaid to them. They were more than content with our correct repetition ofthe words. We were never taught either to read or repeat with our eyeson the object. And we had come to our manhood before we knew how to seekfor the visual image that lies at the root of all our words. And thusthe ill-taught schoolboy became in us the father of the confirmedformalist. The mischief of this neglect still spreads through the wholeof our life, but it is absolutely disastrous in our religious life. Lookat the religious formalist at family worship with his household gatheredround him all in his own image. He would not on any account let hisfamily break up any night without the habitual duty. He has a severemethod in his religious duties that nothing is ever allowed to disarrangeor in any way to interfere with. As the hour strikes, the big Bible isbrought out. He opens where he left off last night, he reads theregulation chapter, he leads the singing in the regulation psalm, andthen, as from a book, he repeats his regulation prayer. But he neversays a word to show that he either sees or feels what he reads, and hishousehold break up without an idea in their heads or an affection intheir hearts. He comes to church and goes through public worship in thesame wooden way, and he sits through the Lord's Table in the same formaland ceremonious manner. He has eyes of glass and hands of wood, and aheart without either blood or motion in it. His mind and his heart weredestroyed in his youth, and all his religion is a religion of rites andceremonies without sense or substance. 'Because I knew no better, ' saysBunyan, 'I fell in very eagerly with the religion of the times: to wit, to go to church twice a day, and that, too, with the foremost. And thereshould I sing and say as others did. Withal, I was so overrun with thespirit of superstition that I adored, and that with great devotion, evenall things, both the high place, priest, clerk, vestment, service, andwhat else belonged to the church: counting all things holy that weretherein contained. But all this time I was not sensible of the dangerand evil of sin. I was kept from considering that sin would damn me, what religion soever I followed, unless I was found in Christ. Nay, Inever thought of Christ, nor whether there was one or no. '

A formalist is not yet a hypocrite exactly, but he is ready now and wellon the way at any moment to become a hypocrite. As soon now as sometemptation shall come to him to make appear another and a better man thanhe really is: when in some way it becomes his advantage to seem to otherpeople to be a spiritual man: when he thinks he sees his way to someprofit or praise by saying things and doing things that are not true andnatural to him, --then he will pass on from being a bare and simpleformalist, and will henceforth become a hypocrite. He has never had anyreal possession or experience of spiritual things amid all his formalobservances of religious duties, and he has little or no difficulty, therefore, in adding another formality or two to his former life ofunreality. And thus the transition is easily made from a comparativelyinnocent and unconscious formalist to a conscious and studied hypocrite. 'An hypocrite, ' says Samuel Rutherford, 'is he who on the stagerepresents a king when he is none, a beggar, an old man, a husband, whenhe is really no such thing. To the Hebrews, they were _faciales_, face-men; _colorati_, dyed men, red men, birds of many colours. You may painta man, you may paint a rose, you may paint a fire burning, but you cannotpaint a soul, or the smell of a rose, or the heat of a fire. And it ishard to counterfeit spiritual graces, such as love to Christ, sincereintending of the glory of God, and such like spiritual things. ' Yes, indeed; it is hard to put on and to go through with a truly spiritualgrace even to the best and most spiritually-minded of men; and as for thetrue hypocrite, he never honestly attempts it. If he ever did honestlyand resolutely attempt it, he would at once in that pass out of the ranksof the hypocrites altogether and pass over into a very differentcategory. Bunyan lets us see how a formalist and a hypocrite and aChristian all respectively do when they come to a real difficulty. Thethree pilgrims were all walking in the same path, and with their facesfor the time in the same direction. They had not held much conferencetogether since their first conversation, and as time goes on, Christianhas no more talk but with himself, and that sometimes sighingly, andsometimes more comfortably. When, all at once, the three men come on thehill Difficulty. A severe act of self-denial has to be done at thispoint of their pilgrimage. A proud heart has to be humbled to the dust. A second, a third, a tenth place has to be taken in the praise of men. Anoutbreak of anger and wrath has to be kept under for hours and days. Agreat injury, a scandalous case of ingratitude, has to be forgiven andforgotten; in short, as Rutherford says, animpossible-to-be-counterfeited spiritual grace has to be put into itsseverest and sorest exercise; and the result was--what we know. Ourpilgrim went and drank of the spring that always runs at the bottom ofthe hill Difficulty, and thus refreshed himself against that hill; whileFormalist took the one low road, and Hypocrisy the other, which led himinto a wide field full of dark mountains, where he stumbled and fell androse no more. When, after his visit to the spring, Christian began to goup the hill, saying:

 'This hill, though high, I covet to ascend; The difficulty will not me offend; For I perceive the way to life lies here; Come, pluck up heart; let's neither faint nor fear; Better, though difficult, the right way to go, Than wrong, though easy, where the end is woe. '

Now, all this brings us to the last step in the evolution of a perfecthypocrite out of a simple formalist. The perfect and finished hypocriteis not your commonplace and vulgar scoundrel of the playwright and thepenny-novelist type; the finest hypocrite is a character their art cannottouch. 'The worst of hypocrites, ' Rutherford goes on to say, 'is he whowhitens himself till he deceives himself. It is strange that a man hathsuch power over himself. But a man's heart may deceive his heart, and hemay persuade himself that he is godly and righteous when he knows nothingabout it. ' 'Preaching in a certain place, ' says Boston, 'after supperthe mistress of the house told me how I had terrified God's people. Thiswas by my doctrine of self-love, self-righteousness, self-ends, and suchlike. She restricted hypocrites to that sort that do all things to beseen of men, and harped much on this--how can one be a hypocrite whohates hypocrisy in other people? how can one be a hypocrite and not knowit? All this led me to see the need of such doctrine. ' And if only toshow you that this is not the dismal doctrine of antediluvianPresbyterians only, Canon Mozley says: 'The Pharisee did not know that hewas a Pharisee; if he had known it he would not have been a Pharisee. Hedoes not know that he is a hypocrite. The vulgar hypocrite knows that heis a hypocrite because he deceives others, but the true Scripturehypocrite deceives himself. ' And the most subtle teacher of our century, or of any century, has said: 'What is a hypocrite? We are apt tounderstand by a hypocrite one who makes a profession of religion forsecret ends without practising what he professes; who is malevolent, covetous, or profligate, while he assumes an outward sanctity in hiswords and conduct, and who does so deliberately, deceiving others, andnot at all self-deceived. But this is not what our Saviour seems to havemeant by a hypocrite; nor were the Pharisees such. The Phariseesdeceived themselves as well as others. Indeed, it is not in human natureto deceive others for any long time without in a measure deceivingourselves also. When they began, each in his turn, to deceive thepeople, they were not at the moment self-deceived. But by degrees theyforgot that outward ceremonies avail nothing without inward purity. Theydid not know themselves, and they unawares deceived themselves as well asthe people. ' What a terrible light, as of the last day itself, does allthat cast upon the formalisms and the hypocrisies of which our ownreligious life is full! And what a terrible light it casts on thosemiserable men who are complete and finished in their self-deception! Forthe complete and finished hypocrite is not he who thinks that he isbetter than all other men; that is hopeless enough; but the paragon ofhypocrisy is he who does not know that he is worse than all other men. And in his stone-blindness to himself, and consequently to all realityand inwardness and spirituality in religion, you see him intenselyinterested in, and day and night occupied with, the outside things ofreligion, till nothing short of a miracle will open his eyes. See him inthe ministry, for instance, sweating at his sermons and in his visiting, till you would almost think that he is the minister of whom Paulprophesied, who should spend and be spent for the salvation of men'ssouls. But all the time, such is the hypocrisy that haunts theministerial calling, he is really and at bottom animated with ambitionfor the praise of men only, and for the increase of his congregation. Seehim, again, now assailing or now defending a church's secular privileges, and he knowing no more, all the time, what a church has been set up foron earth than the man in the moon. What a penalty his defence is and hissupport to a church of Christ, and what an incubus his membership mustbe! Or, see him, again, making long speeches and many prayers for theextension of the kingdom of Christ, and all the time spending ten timesmore on wine or whisky or tobacco, or on books or pictures or foreigntravel, than he gives to the cause of home or foreign missions. And soon, all through our hypocritical and self-blinded life. Through suchstages, and to such a finish, does the formalist pass from histhoughtless and neglected youth to his hardened, blinded, self-seekinglife, spent in the ostensible service of the church of Christ. If thelight that is in such men be darkness, how great is that darkness! Wemay all well shudder as we hear our Lord saying to ministers and membersand church defenders and church supporters, like ourselves: 'Now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth. '

Now, the first step to the cure of all such hypocrisy, and to thesalvation of our souls, is to know that we are hypocrites, and to knowalso what that is in which we are most hypocritical. Well, there are twoabsolutely infallible tests of a true hypocrite, --tests warranted tounmask, expose, and condemn the most finished, refined, and evenevangelical hypocrite in this house to-night, or in all the world. Byfar and away the best and swiftest is prayer. True prayer, that is. Forhere again our inexpugnable hypocrisy comes in and leads us down toperdition even in our prayers. There is nothing our Lord more bitterlyand more contemptuously assails the Pharisees for than just the length, the loudness, the number, and the publicity of their prayers. The truthis, public prayer, for the most part, is no true prayer at all. It is atbest an open homage paid to secret prayer. We make such shipwrecks ofdevotion in public prayer, that if we have a shred of true religion aboutus, we are glad to get home and to shut our door. We preach in ourpublic prayers. We make speeches on public men and on public events inour public prayers. We see the reporters all the time in our publicprayers. We do everything but pray in our public prayers. And to getaway alone, --what an escape that is from the temptations and defeats ofpublic prayer! No; public prayer is no test whatever of a hypocrite. Ahypocrite revels in public prayer. It is secret prayer that finds himout. And even secret prayer will sometimes deceive us. We are crusheddown on our secret knees sometimes, by sheer shame and the strength ofconscience. Fear of exposure, fear of death and hell, will sometimesmake us shut our door. A flood of passing feeling will sometimes make uspray for a season in secret. Job had all that before him when he said, 'Will the hypocrite delight himself in the Almighty? will he always callupon God?' No, he will not. And it is just here that the hypocrite andthe true Christian best discover themselves both to God and tothemselves. The true Christian will, as Job again says, pray in secrettill God slays him. He will pray in his dreams; he will pray till death;he will pray after he is dead. Are you in earnest, then, not to be anymore a hypocrite and to know the infallible marks of such? Ask the keyof your closet door. Ask the chair at your bedside. Ask the watchmanwhat you were doing and why your light was in so long. Ask the birds ofthe air and the beasts of the field and the crows on the ploughed landsafter your solitary walk. 

Almost a better test of true and false religion than even secret prayer, but a test that is far more difficult to handle, is our opinion ofourselves. In His last analysis of the truly justified man and the trulyreprobate, our Lord made the deepest test to be their opinion ofthemselves. 'God, I thank Thee that I am not as this publican, ' said thehypocrite. 'God be merciful to me a sinner, ' said the true penitent. Andthen this fine principle comes in here--not only to speed the suresanctification of a true Christian, but also, if he has skill and courageto use it, for his assurance and comfort, --that the saintlier he becomesand the riper for glory, the more he will beat his breast over what yetabides within his breast. Yes; a man's secret opinion of himself isalmost a better test of his true spiritual state than even secret prayer. But, then, these two are not competing and exclusive tests; they alwaysgo together and are never found apart. And at the mouth of these twowitnesses every true hypocrite shall be condemned and every trueChristian justified. 

Dr. Pusey says somewhere that the perfect hypocrite is the man who hasthe truth of God in his mind, but is without the love of God in hisheart. 'Truth without love, ' says that saintly scholar, 'makes afinished Pharisee. ' Now we Scottish and Free Church people believe wehave the truth, if any people on the face of the earth have it; and if wehave not love mixed with it, you see where and what we are. We arecalled to display a banner because of the truth, but let love always beour flag-staff. Let us be jealous for the truth, but let it be a godly, that is to say, a loving jealousy. When we contend for purity ofdoctrine and for purity of worship, when we protest against popery andpriestcraft, when we resist rationalism and infidelity, when we do battlenow for national religion, as we call it, and now for the freedom of thechurch, let us do it all in love to all men, else we had better not do itat all. If we cannot do it with clean and all-men-loving hearts, let usleave all debate and contention to stronger and better men than we are. The truth will never be advanced or guarded by us, nor will the Lord oftruth and love accept our service or bless our souls, till we put on thedivine nature, and have our hearts and our mouths still more full of lovethan our minds and our mouths are full of truth. Let us watch ourselves, lest with all our so-called love of truth we be found reprobates at lastbecause we loved the truth for some selfish or party end, and hated anddespised our brother, and believed all evil and disbelieved all goodconcerning our brother. Truth without love makes a hypocrite, says Dr. Pusey; and evangelical truth without evangelical love makes anevangelical hypocrite, says Thomas Shepard. Only where the whole truthis united to a heart full of love have we the perfect New TestamentChristian. 

TIMOROUS AND MISTRUST

 'There is a lion in the way. '--The Slothful Man. 

 'I must venture. '--Christian. 

'I at any rate must venture, ' said Christian to Timorous and Mistrust. 'Whatever you may do I must venture, even if the lions you speak ofshould pull me to pieces. I, for one, shall never go back. To go backis nothing but death; to go forward is fear of death and everlasting lifebeyond it. I will yet go forward. ' So Mistrust and Timorous ran downthe hill, and Christian went on his way. George Offor says, in his noteson this passage, that civil despotism and ecclesiastical tyranny soterrified many young converts in John Bunyan's day, that multitudesturned back like Mistrust and Timorous; while at the same time, many likeBunyan himself went forward and for a time fell into the lion's mouth. Civil despotism and ecclesiastical tyranny do not stand in our way asthey stood in Bunyan's way--at least, not in the same shape: but everyage has its own lions, and every Christian man has his own lions thatneither civil despots nor ecclesiastical tyrants know anything about. 

Now, who or what is the lion in your way? Who or what is it that fillsyou with such timorousness and mistrust, that you are almost turning backfrom the way to life altogether? The fiercest of all our lions is ourown sin. When a man's own sin not only finds him out and comes roaringafter him, but when it dashes past him and gets into the woods andthickets before him, and stands pawing and foaming on the side of hisway, that is a trial of faith and love and trust indeed. Sometimes aman's past sins will fill all his future life with sleeplessapprehensions. He is never sure at what turn in his upward way he maynot suddenly run against some of them standing ready to rush out uponhim. And it needs no little quiet trust and humble-minded resignation tocarry a man through this slough and that bottom, up this hill and downthat valley, all the time with his life in his hand; and yet at everyturn, at every rumour that there are lions in the way, to say, Come lion, come lamb, come death, come life, I must venture, I will yet go forward. As Job also, that wonderful saint of God, said, 'Hold your peace, let mealone that I may speak, and let come on me what will. Wherefore do Itake my flesh in my teeth and put my life in my hand? Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him. He also shall be my salvation; for an hypocriteshall not come before Him. '

One false step, one stumble in life, one error in judgment, one outbreakof an unbridled temperament, one small sin, if it is even so much as asin, of ignorance or of infirmity, will sometimes not only greatly injureus at the time, but, in some cases, will fill all our future life withtrials and difficulties and dangers. Many of us shall have all our daysto face a future of defeat, humiliation, impoverishment, and manyhardships, that has not come on us on account of any presumptuoustransgression of God's law so much as simply out of some combination ofunfortunate circumstances in which we may have only done our duty, buthave not done it in the most serpent-like way. And when we are made tosuffer unjustly or disproportionately all our days for our error ofjudgment or our want of the wisdom of this world, or what not, we aresorely tempted to be bitter and proud and resentful and unforgiving, andto go back from duty and endurance and danger altogether. But we mustnot. We must rather say to ourselves, Now and here, if not in the past, I must play the man, and, by God's help, the wise man. I must plucksafety henceforth out of the heart of the nettle danger. Yes, I made amistake. I did what I would not do now, and I must not be too proud tosay so. I acted, I see now, precipitately, inconsiderately, imprudently. And I must not gloom and rebel and run away from the cross and the lion. I must not insist or expect that the always wise and prudent man's rewardis to come to me. The lion in my way is a lion of my own rearing; and Imust not turn my back on him, even if he should be let loose to leap onme and rend me. I must pass under his paw and through his teeth, if needbe, to a life with him and beyond him of humility and duty andquiet-hearted submission to his God and mine. 

Then, again, our salvation itself sometimes, our true sanctification, puts on a lion's skin and not unsuccessfully imitates an angry lion'sroar. Some saving grace that up till now we have been fatally lacking inlies under the very lip of that lion we see standing straight in our way. God in His wisdom so orders our salvation, that we must work out the bestpart of it with fear and trembling. Right before us, just beside us, standing over us with his heavy paw upon us, is a lion, from under whosepaw and from between whose teeth we must pluck and put on that grace inwhich our salvation lies. Repentance and reformation lie in the way ofthat lion; resignation also and humility; the crucifixion of our ownwill; the sacrifice of our own heart; in short, everything that is stilllacking but is indispensable to our salvation lies through that den oflions. One man here is homeless and loveless; another is childless;another has a home and children, and much envies the man who has neither;one has talents there is no scope for; another has the scope, but not thesufficient talent; another must now spend all his remaining life in aplace where he sees that anger and envy and jealousy and malevolence willbe his roaring lions daily seeking to devour his soul. There is not aChristian man or woman in this house whose salvation, worth being calleda salvation, does not lie through such a lion's thicket as that. OurLord Himself was a roaring lion to John the Baptist. For the Baptist'ssalvation lay not in his powerful preaching, but in his being laid asidefrom all preaching; not in his crowds increasing, but in his Successor'scrowds increasing and his decreasing. The Baptist was the greatest bornof woman in that day, not because he was a thundering preacher--anyordinary mother in Israel might have been his mother in that: but todecrease sweetly and to steal down quietly to perfect humility and self-oblivion, --that salvation was reserved for the son of Elisabeth alone. Iwould not like to say Who that is champing and pawing for your bloodright in your present way. Reverence will not let me say Who it is. Only, you venture on Him. 

'Yes, I shall venture!' said Christian to the two terrified andretreating men. Now, every true venture is made against risk anduncertainty, against anxiety and danger and fear. And it is just thisthat constitutes the nobleness and blessedness of faith. Faith sells allfor Christ. Faith risks all for eternal life. Faith faces all forsalvation. When it is at the worst, faith still says, Very well; even ifthere is no Celestial City anywhere in the world, it is better to diestill seeking it than to live on in the City of Destruction. Even ifthere is no Jesus Christ, --I have read about Him and heard about Him andpictured Him to myself, till, say what you will, I shall die kissing andembracing that Divine Image I have in my heart. Even if there is neithermercy-seat nor intercession in heaven, I shall henceforth pray withoutceasing. Far far better for me all the rest of my sinful life to beclothed with sackcloth and ashes, even if there is no fountain opened inJerusalem for sin and uncleanness, and no change of raiment. Christianprotested that, as for him, lions and all, he had no choice left. And nomore have we. He must away somewhere, anywhere, from his past life. Andso must we. If all the lions that ever drank blood are to collect uponhis way, let them do so; they shall not all make him turn back. Whyshould they? What is a whole forest full of lions to a heart and a lifefull of sin? Lions are like lambs compared with sin. 'Good morning! Ifor one must venture. I shall yet go forward. ' So Mistrust and Timorousran down the hill, and Christian went on his way. 

So I saw in my dream that he made haste and went forward, that ifpossible he might get lodging in the house called Beautiful that stood bythe highway side. Now, before he had gone far he entered into a verynarrow passage which was about a furlong off from the porter's lodge, andlooking very narrowly before him as he went, he espied two lions in theway. Then was he afraid, and thought also to go back, for he thoughtthat nothing but death was before him. But the porter at the lodge, whose name was Watchful, perceiving that Christian made a halt, as if hewould go back, cried unto him, saying, 'Is thy strength so small? Fearnot the lions, for they are chained, and are only placed there for thetrial of faith where it is, and for the discovery of those who have none. Keep the midst of the path and no hurt shall come to thee. ' Yes, that isall we have to do. Whatever our past life may have been, whatever ourpast sins, past errors of judgment, past mistakes and mishaps, whateverof punishment or chastisement or correction or instruction orsanctification and growth in grace may be under those lions' skins andbetween their teeth for us, all we have got to do at present is to leavethe lions to Him who set them there, and to go on, up to them and pastthem, keeping always to the midst of the path. The lions may roar at ustill they have roared us deaf and blind, but we are far safer in themidst of that path than we would be in our own bed. Only let us keep inthe midst of the path. When their breath is hot and full of blood on ourcheek; when they paw up the blinding earth; when we feel as if theirteeth had closed round our heart, --still, all the more, let us keep inthe midst of the path. We must sometimes walk on a razor-edge of fearand straightforwardness; that is the only way left for us now. But, then, we have the Divine assurance that on that perilous edge no hurtshall come to us. 'Temptations, ' says our author in another place, 'whenwe meet them at first, are as the lion that roared upon Samson; but if weovercome them, the next time we see them we shall find a nest of honey inthem. ' O God, for grace and sense and imagination to see and understandand apply all that to our own daily life! O to be able to take all thathome to-night and see it all there; lions and runaways, venturesomesouls, narrow paths, palaces of beauty, everlasting life and all! OpenThou our eyes that we may see the wonderful things that await us in ourown house at home!

 'Things out of hope are compassed oft with venturing. '

So they are; and so they were that day with our terrified pilgrim. Hemade a venture at the supreme moment of his danger, and things that werequite out of all hope but an hour before were then compassed and everafter possessed by him. Make the same venture, then, yourselvesto-night. Naught venture, naught have. Your lost soul is not much toventure, but it is all that Christ at this moment asks of you--that youleave your lost soul in His hand, and then go straight on from thismoment in the middle of the path: the path, that is, as your case may be, of purity, humility, submission, resignation, and self-denial. Keep yourmind and your heart, your eyes and your feet, in the very middle of thatpath, and you shall have compassed the House Beautiful before you know. The lions shall soon be behind you, and the grave and graceful damsels ofthe House--Discretion and Prudence and Piety and Charity--shall all bewaiting upon you. 

PRUDENCE {1}

 'Let a man examine himself. '--Paul. 

Let a man examine himself, says the apostle to the Corinthians, and solet him eat of that bread and drink of that cup. And thus it was, thatbefore the pilgrim was invited to sit down at the supper table in theHouse Beautiful, quite a number of most pointed and penetrating questionswere put to him by those who had charge of that house and its suppertable. And thus the time was excellently improved till the table wasspread, while the short delay and the successive exercises whetted to anextraordinary sharpness the pilgrim's hunger for the supper. Piety andCharity, who had joint charge of the house from the Master of the house, held each a characteristic conversation with Christian, but it was leftto Prudence to hold the most particular discourse with him until supperwas ready, and it is to that so particular discourse that I much wish toturn your attention to-night. 

With great tenderness, but at the same time with the greatest possiblegravity, Prudence asked the pilgrim whether he did not still thinksometimes of the country from whence he had come out. Yes, he replied;how could I help thinking continually of that unhappy country and of mysad and miserable life in it; but, believe me, --or, rather, you cannotbelieve me, --with what shame and detestation I always think of my pastlife. My face burns as I now speak of my past life to you, and as Ithink what my old companions know and must often say about me. I detest, as you cannot possibly understand, every remembrance of my past life, andI hate and never can forgive myself, who, with mine own hands, so filledall my past life with shame and self-contempt. Gently stopping theremorseful pilgrim's self-accusations about his past life, Prudence askedhim if he had not still with him, and, indeed, within him, some of thevery things that had so destroyed both him and all his past life. 'Yes, 'he honestly and humbly said. 'Yes, but greatly against my will:especially my inward and sinful cogitations. ' At this Prudence looked onhim with all her deep and soft eyes, for it was to this that she had beenleading the conversation up all the time. Prudence had a great look ofsatisfaction, mingled with love and pity, at the way the pilgrim said'especially my inward and sinful cogitations. ' Those who stood by andobserved Prudence wondered at her delight in the sad discourse on whichthe pilgrim now entered. But she had her own reasons for her delight inthis particular kind of discourse, and it was seldom that she lighted ona pilgrim who both understood her questions and responded to them as didthis man now sitting beside her. Now, my brethren, all parable apart, isthat your religious experience? Are you full of shame and detestation atyour inward cogitations? Are you tormented, enslaved, and downrightcursed with your own evil thoughts? I do not ask whether or no you havesuch thoughts always within you. I do not ask, because I know. But Iask, because I would like to make sure that you know what, and the truenature of what, goes on incessantly in your mind and in your heart. Doyou, or do you not, spit out your most inward thoughts ten times a daylike poison? If you do, you are a truly religious man, and if you donot, you do not yet know the very ABC of true religion, and your dog hasa better errand at the Lord's table than you have. And if your ministerlets you sit down at the Lord's table without holding from time to timesome particular discourse with you about your sinful thoughts, he isdeceiving and misleading you, besides laying up for himself an awakeningat last to shame and everlasting contempt. What a mill-stone hiscommunion roll will be round such a minister's neck! And how hiscongregation will gnash their teeth at him when they see to what hismiserable ministry has brought them!

Let a man examine himself, said Paul. What about your inward and sinfulcogitations? asked Prudence. How long shall thy vain thoughts lodgewithin thee? demanded the bold prophet. Now, my brethren, what have youto say to that particular accusation? Do you know what vain thoughts are?Are you at all aware what multitudes of such thoughts lodge within you?Do they drive you every day to your knees, and do you blush with shamewhen you are alone before God at the fountain of folly that fills yourmind and your heart continually? The Apostle speaks of vain hopes thatmake us ashamed that we ever entertained them. You have been often soashamed, and yet do not such hopes still too easily arise in your heart?What castles of idiotic folly you still build! Were a sane man or amodest woman even to dream such dreams of folly overnight, they wouldblush and hide their heads all day at the thought. Out of a word, out ofa look, out of what was neither a word nor a look intended for you, whata world of vanity will you build out of it! The question of Prudence isnot whether or no you are still a born fool at heart, she does not putunnecessary questions: hers to you is the more pertinent and particularquestion, whether, since you left your former life and became aChristian, you feel every day increasing shame and detestation atyourself, on account of the vanity of your inward cogitations. Mybrethren, can you satisfy her who is set by her Master to hold particulardiscourse with all true Christians before supper? Can you say with thePsalmist, --could you tell Prudence where the Psalmist says, --I hate vainthoughts, but Thy law do I love? And can you silence her by telling herthat her Master alone knows with what shame you think that He has such afool as you are among His people?

Anger, also, sudden and even long-entertained anger, was one of the 'manyfailings' of which Christian was so conscious to himself. His outburstsof anger at home, he bitterly felt, might well be one of the causes whyhis wife and children did not accompany him on his pilgrimage. Andthough he knew his failing in this respect, and was very wary of it, yethe often failed even when he was most wary. Now, while anger is largelya result of our blood and temperament, yet few of us are so well-balancedand equable in our temperament and so pure and cool in our blood, asaltogether to escape frequent outbursts of anger. The most happilyconstituted and the best governed of us have too much cause to be ashamedand penitent both before God and our neighbours for our outbursts ofangry passion. But Prudence is so particular in her discourse beforesupper, that she goes far deeper into our anger than our wives and ourchildren, our servants and our neighbours, can go. She not only asks ifwe stamp out the rising anger of our heart as we would stamp out sparksof fire in a house full of gunpowder; but she insists on being told whatwe think of ourselves when the house of our heart is still so full ofsuch fire and such gunpowder. Any man, to call a man, would be humbledin his own eyes and in his walk before his house at home after anexplosion of anger among them; but he who would satisfy Prudence and sitbeside her at supper, must not only never let his anger kindle, but thesimple secret heat of it, that fire of hell that is hid from all men buthimself in the flint of his own hard and proud heart, --what, asksPrudence, do you think of that, and of yourself on account of that? Doesthat keep you not only watchful and prayerful, but, what is the bestground in you of all true watchfulness and prayerfulness, full of secretshame, self-fear, and self-detestation? One forenoon table would easilyhold all our communicants if Prudence had the distribution of the tokens. 

And, then, we who are true pilgrims, are of all men the most miserable, on account of that 'failing, ' that rankling sting in our hearts, when anyof our friends has more of this world's possessions, honours, and praisesthan we have, that pain at our neighbour's pleasure, that sickness at hishealth, that hunger for what we see him eat, that thirst for what we seehim drink, that imprisonment of our spirits when we see him set atliberty, that depression at his exaltation, that sorrow at his joy, andjoy at his sorrow, that evil heart that would have all things to itself. Yes, said Christian, I am only too conversant with all these sinfulcogitations, but they are all greatly against my will, and might I butchoose mine own thoughts, do you suppose that I would ever think thesethings any more? 'The cause is in my will, ' said Caesar, on a greatoccasion. But the true Christian, unhappily, cannot say that. If hecould say that, he would soon say also that the snare is broken and thathis soul has escaped. And then the cause of all his evil cogitations, his vain thoughts, his angry feelings, his envious feelings, hisineradicable covetousness, his hell-rooted and heaven-towering pride, andhis whole evil heart of unbelief would soon be at an end. 'I cannot befree of sin, ' said Thomas Boston, 'but God knows that He would be welcometo make havoc of my lusts to-night and to make me henceforth a holy man. I know no lust that I would not be content to part with. My will boundhand and foot I desire to lay at His feet. ' Yes: such is the mystery anddepth of sin in the hearts of all God's saints, that far deeper thantheir will, far back behind their will, the whole substance and very coreof their hearts is wholly corrupt and enslaved to sin. And thus it isthat while their renewed and delivered will works out, so far, theirsalvation in their walk and conversation among men, the helplessness oftheir will in the cleansing and the keeping of their hearts is to the endthe sorrow and the mystery of their sanctification. To will was presentwith Paul, and with Bunyan, and with Boston; but their heart--they couldnot with all their keeping keep their heart. No man can; no man who hasat all tried it can. 'Might I but choose mine own thoughts, I wouldchoose never to think of these things more: but when I would be doing ofthat which is best, that which is worst is with me. ' We can choosealmost all things. Our will and choice have almost all things at theirdisposal. We can choose our God. We can choose life or death. We canchoose heaven or hell. We can choose our church, our minister, ourbooks, our companions, our words, our works, and, to some extent, ourinward thoughts, but only to some extent. We can encourage this or thatthought; we can entertain it and dwell upon it; or we can detect it, detest it, and cast it out. But that secret place in our heart where ourthoughts hide and harbour, and out of which they spring so suddenly uponthe mind and the heart, the imagination and the conscience, --of thatsecretest of all secret places, God alone is able to say, I search theheart. 'As for secret thoughts, ' says our author, speaking of his ownformer religious life, 'I took no notice of them, neither did Iunderstand what Satan's temptations were, nor how they were to bewithstood and resisted. ' But now all these things are his deepest grief, as they are ours, --as many of us as have been truly turned in our deepesthearts to God. 

'But, ' replied Prudence, 'do you not find sometimes as if those thingswere vanquished which at other times are your perplexity?' 'Yes, butthat is but seldom; but they are to me golden hours in which such thingshappen to me. ' 'Can you remember by what means you find your annoyancesat times as if they were vanquished?' 'Yes, when I think what I saw atthe cross, that will do it; and when I look upon my broidered coat, thatwill do it; also, when I look into the roll that I carry in my bosom, that will do it; and when my thoughts wax warm about whither I am going, that will do it. ' Yes; and these same things have many a time done it toourselves also. We also, my brethren--let me tell you your ownundeniable experience--we also have such golden hours sometimes, when wefeel as if we should never again have such an evil heart within us. TheCross of Christ to us also has done it. It is of such golden hours thatIsaac Watts sings in his noble hymn:

 'When I survey the wondrous Cross;'

and as often as we sing that hymn with our eyes upon the object, thatwill for a time vanquish our worst cogitations. Also, when we read theroll that we too carry in our bosom--that is to say, when we go back intoour past life till we see it and feel it all, and till we can think andspeak of nothing else but the sin that abounded in it and the grace thatmuch more abounded, that has a thousand times given us also golden hours, even rest from our own evil hearts. And we also have often made ourhearts too hot for sin to show itself, when we read our hearts deep intosuch books as _The Paradiso_, _The Pilgrim's Progress_, _The Saint'sRest_, _The Serious Call_, _The Religious Affections_, and such like. These books have often vanquished our annoyances, and given us goldenhours on the earth. Yes, but that is but seldom. 

'Now, what is it, ' asked Prudence, as she wound up this so particularcolloquy, 'that makes you so desirous to go to Mount Zion?'

'Why, ' replied the pilgrim, and the water stood in his eyes, 'why, thereI hope to see Him alive that did hang dead on the cross; and there I hopeto be rid of all those things that to this day are an annoyance to me;there they say is no death, and there shall I dwell with such company asI love best. For, to tell you truth, I love Him, because by Him I waseased of my burden, and I am weary of my inward sickness; and I wouldfain be where I shall die no more, and for ever with that company thatshall continually cry, Holy, holy, holy. '

CHARITY

 'I will walk within my house with a perfect heart. '--David. 

There can be nobody here to-night so stark stupid as to suppose that thepilgrim had run away from home and left his wife and children to the work-house. There have been wiseacres who have found severe fault with JohnBunyan because he made his Puritan pilgrim such a bad husband and such anunnatural father. But nobody possessed of a spark of common sense, notto say religion or literature, would ever commit himself to such an utterimbecility as that. John Bunyan's pilgrim, whatever he may have beenbefore he became a pilgrim, all the time he was a pilgrim, was the mostfaithful, affectionate, and solicitous husband in all the country roundabout, and the tenderest, the most watchful, and the wisest of fathers. This pilgrim stayed all the more at home that he went so far away fromhome; he accomplished his whole wonderful pilgrimage beside his own forgeand at his own fireside; and he entered the Celestial City amid trumpetsand bells and harps and psalms, while all the time sleeping in his ownhumble bed. The House Beautiful, therefore, to which we have now come inhis company, is not some remote and romantic mansion away up among themountains a great many days' journey distant from this poor man'severyday home. The House Beautiful was nothing else, --what else better, what else so good could it be?--than just this Christian man's firstcommunion Sabbath and his first communion table (first, that is, afterhis true conversion from sin to God and his confessed entrance into a newlife), while the country from whence he had come out, and concerningwhich both Piety and Prudence catechised him so closely, was just hisformer life of open ungodliness and all his evil walk and conversationwhile he was as yet living without God and without hope in the world. Thecountry on which he confessed that he now looked back with so much shameand detestation was not England or Bedfordshire, but the wicked life hehad lived in that land and in that shire. And when Charity asked him asto whether he was a married man and had a family, she knew quite wellthat he was, only she made a pretence of asking him those domesticquestions in order thereby to start the touching conversation. 

Beginning, then, at home, as she always began, Charity said to Christian, 'Have you a family? Are you a married man?' 'I have a wife and foursmall children, ' answered Christian. 'And why did you not bring themwith you?' Then Christian wept and said, 'Oh, how willingly would I havedone so, but they were all of them utterly averse to my going onpilgrimage. ' 'But you should have talked to them and have shown themtheir danger. ' 'So I did, ' he replied, 'but I seemed to them as one thatmocked. ' Now, this of talking, and, especially, of talking aboutreligious things to children, is one of the most difficult things in theworld, --that is, to do it well. Some people have the happy knack oftalking to their own and to other people's children so as always tointerest and impress them. But such happy people are few. Most peopletalk at their children whenever they begin to talk to them, and thus, without knowing it, they nauseate their children with their conversationaltogether. To respect a little child, to stand in some awe of a littlechild, to choose your topics, your opportunities, your neighbourhood, your moods and his as well as all your words, and always to speak yoursincerest, simplest, most straightforward and absolutely wisest isindispensable with a child. Take your mannerisms, your condescensions, your affectations, your moralisings, and all your insincerities to yourdebauched equals, but bring your truest and your best to your child. Unless you do so, you will be sure to lay yourself open to a look thatwill suddenly go through you, and that will swiftly convey to you thatyour child sees through you and despises you and your conversation too. 'You should not only have talked to your children of their danger, ' saidCharity, 'but you should have shown them their danger. ' Yes, Charity;but a man must himself see his own and his children's danger too, beforehe can show it to them, as well as see it clearly at the time he istrying to show it to them. And how many fathers, do you suppose, havethe eyes to see such danger, and how then can they shew such danger totheir children, of all people? Once get fathers to see dangers oranything else aright, and then you will not need to tell them how theyare to instruct and impress their children. Nature herself will thentell them how to talk to their children, and when Nature teaches, all ourchildren will immediately and unweariedly listen. 

But, especially, said Charity, as your boys grew up--I think you saidthat you had four boys and no girls?--well, then, all the more, as theygrew up, you should have taken occasion to talk to them about yourself. Did your little boy never petition you for a story about yourself; and ashe grew up did you never confide to him what you have never confided tohis mother? Something, as I was saying, that made you sad when you werea boy and a rising man, with a sadness your son can still see in you asyou talk to him. In conversations like that a boy finds out what afriend he has in his father, and his father from that day has his bestfriend in his son. And then as Matthew grew up and began to out-grow hisbrothers and to form friendships out of doors, did you study to talk atthe proper time to him, and on subjects on which you never venture totalk about to any other boy or man? You men, Charity went on to say, live in a world of your own, and though we women are well out of it, yetwe cannot be wholly ignorant that it is there. And, we may well bewrong, but we cannot but think that fathers, if not mothers, might safelytell their men-children at least more than they do tell them of the suredangers that lie straight in their way, of the sorrow that men and womenbring on one another, and of what is the destruction of so many cities. We may well be wrong, for we are only women, but I have told you what weall think who keep this house and hear the reports and repentances ofpilgrims, both Piety and Prudence and I myself. And I, for one, largelyagree with the three women. It is easier said than done. But the simplesaying of it may perhaps lead some fathers and mothers to think about it, and to ask whether or no it is desirable and advisable to do it, which ofthem is to attempt it, on what occasion, and to what extent. Christianby this time had the Slough of Despond with all its history and all thatit contained to tell his eldest son about; he had the wicket gate alsojust above the slough, the hill Difficulty, the Interpreter's House, theplace somewhat ascending with a cross standing upon it, and a littlebelow, in the bottom, a sepulchre, not to speak of her who assaultedFaithful, whose name was Wanton, and who at one time was like to havedone even that trusty pilgrim a lifelong mischief. Christian ratherboasted to Charity of his wariness, especially in the matter of hischildren's amusements, but Charity seemed to think that he had carriedhis wariness into other matters besides amusements, without the bestpossible results there either. I have sometimes thought with her thatamong our multitude of congresses and conferences of all kinds of peopleand upon all manner of subjects, room and membership might have beenfound for a conference of fathers and mothers. Fathers to give and takecounsel about how to talk to their sons, and mothers to their daughters. I am much of Charity's mind, that, if more were done at home, and donewith some frankness, for our sons and daughters, there would be fewerfathers and mothers found sitting at the Lord's table alone. 'You shouldhave talked to them, ' said Charity, with some severity in her tones, 'and, especially, you should have told them of your own sorrow. '

And then, coming still closer up to Christian, Charity asked him whetherhe prayed, both before and after he so spoke to his children, that Godwould bless what he said to them. Charity believeth all things, hopethall things, but when she saw this man about to sit down all alone at thesupper table, it took Charity all her might to believe that he had bothspoken to his children and at the same time prayed to God for them as heought to have done. Our old ministers used to lay this vow on allfathers and mothers at the time of baptism, that they were to pray bothwith and for their children. Now, that is a fine formula; it is a mostcomprehensive, and, indeed, exhaustive formula. Both with and for. Andespecially with. With, at such and such times, on such and suchoccasions, and in such and such places. At those times, say, when yourboy has told a lie, or struck his little brother, or stolen something, ordestroyed something. To pray with him at such times, and to pray withhim properly, and, if you feel able to do it, and are led to do it, totell him something after the prayer about yourself, and your own not-yet-forgotten boyhood, and your father; it makes a fine time to mix talk andprayer together in that way. Charity is not easily provoked, but thelonger she lives and keeps the table in the House Beautiful the more sheis provoked to think that there is far too little prayer among pilgrims;far too little of all kinds of prayer, but especially prayer with and fortheir children. But hard as it was to tell all the truth at that momentabout Christian's past walk in his house at home, yet he was able withthe simple truth to say that he had indeed prayed both with and for hischildren, and that, as they knew and could not but remember, not seldom. Yes, he said, I did sometimes so pray with my boys, and that too, as youmay believe, with much affection, for you must think that my four boyswere all very dear to me. And it is my firm belief that all that goodman's boys will come right yet: Matthew and Joseph and James and Samueland all. 'With much affection. ' I like that. I have unbounded faith inthose prayers, both for and with, in which there is much affection. Itis want of affection, and want of imagination, that shipwrecks so many ofour prayers. But this man's prayers had both these elements of suresuccess in them, and they must come at last to harbour. At that one word'with much affection, ' this man's closet door flies open and I see theold pilgrim first alone, and then with his arms round his eldest son'sneck, and both father and son weeping together till they are ashamed toappear at supper till they have washed their faces and got their mostsmiling and everyday looks put on again. You just wait and see ifMatthew and all the four boys down to the last do not escape into theCelestial City before the gate is shut. And when it is asked, Who arethese and whence came they? listen to their song and you will hear thosefour happy children saying that their father, when they were yet boys, both talked with them and prayed for and with them with so much affectionthat therefore they are before the throne. 

Why, then, with such a father and with such makable boys, why was thishousehold brought so near everlasting shipwreck? It was the mother thatdid it. In one word, it was the wife and the mother that did it. It wasthe mistress of the house who wrought the mischief here. She was a poorwoman, she was a poor man's wife, and one would have thought that she hadlittle enough temptation to harm upon this present world. But there itwas, she did hang upon it as much as if she had been the mother of thefinest daughters and the most promising boys in all the town. Thingslike this were from time to time reported to her by her neighbours. Onefine lady had been heard to say that she would never have for hertradesman any man who frequented conventicles, who was not content withthe religion of his betters, and who must needs scorn the parish churchand do despite to the saints' days. Another gossip asked her what sheexpected to make of her great family of boys when it was well known thatall the gentry in the neighbourhood but two or three had sworn that theywould never have a hulking Puritan to brush their boots or run theirerrands. And it almost made her husband burn his book and swear that hewould never be seen at another prayer-meeting when his wife so often saidto him that he should never have had children, that he should never havemade her his wife, and that he was not like this when they were first manand wife. And in her bitterness she would name this wife or that maid, and would say, You should have married her. She would have gone to themeeting-house with you as often as you wished. Her sons are far enoughfrom good service to please you. 'My wife, ' he softly said, 'was afraidof losing the world. And then, after that, my growing sons were soongiven over, all I could do, to the foolish delights of youth, so that, what by one thing and what by another, they left me to wander in thismanner alone. ' And I suppose there is scarcely a household amongourselves where there have not been serious and damagingmisunderstandings between old-fashioned fathers and their young peopleabout what the old people called the 'foolish delights' of their sons anddaughters. And in thinking this matter over, I have often been struckwith how Job did when his sons and his daughters were bent upon feastingand dancing in their eldest brother's house. The old man did not lay aninterdict upon the entertainment. He did not take part in it, butneither did he absolutely forbid it. If it must be it must be, said thewise patriarch. And since I do not know whom they may meet there, orwhat they may be tempted to do, I will sanctify them all. I will not goup into my bed till I have prayed for all my seven sons and threedaughters, each one of them by their names; and till they come homesafely I will rise every morning and offer burnt-offerings according tothe number of them all. And do you think that those burnt-offerings andaccompanying intercessions would go for nothing when the great wind camefrom the wilderness and smote the four corners of the banqueting-house?If you cannot banish the love of foolish delights out the hearts of yoursons and daughters, then do not quarrel with them over such things; afamily quarrel in a Christian man's house is surely far worse than afeast or a dance. Only, if they must feast and dance and such like, beyou all the more diligent in your exercises at home on their behalf tillthey are back again, where, after all, they like best to be, in theirgood, kind, liberal, and loving father's house. 

Have you a family? Are you a married man? Or, if not, do you hope oneday to be? Then attend betimes to what Charity says to Christian in theHouse Beautiful, and not less to what he says back again to her. 

SHAME

 'Whosoever shall be ashamed of Me, and of My words, of him shall the Son of Man be ashamed, when He shall come in His own glory, and in His Father's, and of the holy angels. '--Our Lord. 

Shame has not got the attention that it deserves either from our moralphilosophers or from our practical and experimental divines. And yet itwould well repay both classes of students to attend far more to shame. For, what really is shame? Shame is an original instinct planted in oursouls by our Maker, and intended by Him to act as a powerful and pungentcheck to our doing of any act that is mean or dishonourable in the eyesof our fellow-men. Shame is a kind of social conscience. Shame is asecondary sense of sin. In shame, our imagination becomes a kind ofmoral sense. Shame sets up in our bosom a not undivine tribunal, whichjudges us and sentences us in the absence or the silence of nobler andmore awful sanctions and sentences. But then, as things now are with us, like all the rest of the machinery of the soul, shame has gone sadlyastray both in its objects and in its operations, till it demands a long, a severe, and a very noble discipline over himself before any man cankeep shame in its proper place and directed in upon its proper objects. In the present disorder of our souls, we are all acutely ashamed of manythings that are not the proper objects of shame at all; while, on theother hand, we feel no shame at all at multitudes of things that arereally most blameworthy, dishonourable, and contemptible. We are ashamedof things in our lot and in our circumstances that, if we only knew it, are our opportunity and our honour; we are ashamed of things that are theclear will and the immediate dispensation of Almighty God. And, then, wefeel no shame at all at the most dishonourable things, and that simplybecause the men around us are too coarse in their morals and too dull intheir sensibilities to see any shame in such things. And thus it comesabout that, in the very best of men, their still perverted sense of shameremains in them a constant snare and a source of temptation. A man of afine nature feels keenly the temptation to shrink from those paths oftruth and duty that expose him to the cruel judgments and the coarse andscandalising attacks of public and private enemies. It was in the Valleyof Humiliation that Shame set upon Faithful, and it is a real humiliationto any man of anything of this pilgrim's fine character and feeling to beattacked, scoffed at, and held up to blame and opprobrium. And the finerand the more affectionate any man's heart and character are, the more hefeels and shrinks from the coarse treatment this world gives to thosewhom it has its own reasons to hate and assail. They had the stocks andthe pillory and the shears in Bunyan's rude and uncivilised day, by meansof which many of the best men of that day were exposed to the insults andbrutalities of the mob. The newspapers would be the pillory of our day, were it not that, on the whole, the newspaper press is conducted withsuch scrupulous fairness and with a love of truth and justice such thatno man need shrink from the path of duty through fear of insult andinjury. 

But it is time to come to the encounter between Shame and Faithful in theValley of Humiliation. Shame, properly speaking, is not one of ourBunyan gallery of portraits at all. Shame, at best, is but a kind ofsecondary character in this dramatic book. We do not meet with Shamedirectly; we only hear about him through the report of Faithful. Thatfirst-class pilgrim was almost overcome of Shame, so hot was theirencounter; and it is the extraordinarily feeling, graphic, and realisticaccount of their encounter that Faithful gives us that has led me to takeup Shame for our reproof and correction to-night. 

Religion altogether, but especially all personal religion, said Shame toFaithful, is an unmanly business. There is a certain touch of smallnessand pitifulness, he said, in all religion, but especially in experimentalreligion. It brings a man into junctures and into companionships, and itputs offices and endurances upon one such as try a man if he has anygreatness of spirit about him at all. This life on which you areentering, said Shame, will cost you many a blush before you are done withit. You will lay yourself open to many a scoff. The Puritan religion, and all the ways of that religious fraternity, are peculiarly open to theshafts of ridicule. Now, all that was quite true. There was no denyingthe truth of what Shame said. And Faithful felt the truth of it all, andfelt it most keenly, as he confessed to Christian. The blood came intomy face as the fellow spake, and what he said for a time almost beat meout of the upward way altogether. But in this dilemma also all trueChristians can fall back, as Faithful fell back, upon the example oftheir Master. In this as in every other experience of temptation andendurance, our Lord is the forerunner and the example of His people. OurLord was in all points tempted like as we are, and among all His othertemptations He was tempted to be ashamed of His work on earth and of thelife and the death His work led Him into. He must have often feltashamed at the treatment He received during His life of humiliation, asit is well called; and He must often have felt ashamed of His disciples:but all that is blotted out by the crowning shame of the cross. We hangour worst criminals rather than behead or shoot them, in order to heap upthe utmost possible shame and disgrace upon them, as well as to executejustice upon them. And what the hangman's rope is in our day, all thatthe cross was in our Lord's day. And, then, as if the cross itself wasnot shame enough, all the circumstances connected with His cross wereplanned and carried out so as to heap the utmost possible shame andhumiliation upon His head. Our prison warders have to watch themurderers in their cells night and day, lest they should take their ownlife in order to escape the hangman's rope; but our Lord, keenly as Hefelt His coming shame, said to His horrified disciples, Behold, we go upto Jerusalem, when the Son of Man shall be mocked, and spitefullyentreated, and spitted on; and they shall scourge Him and put Him todeath. Do you ever think of your Lord in His shame? How they made afool of Him, as we say. How they took off His own clothes and put on Himnow a red cloak and now a white; how they put a sword of lath in Hishand, and a crown of thorns on His head; how they bowed the knee beforeHim, and asked royal favours from Him; and then how they spat in Hisface, and struck Him on the cheek, while the whole house rang with shoutsof laughter. And, then, the last indignity of man, how they stripped Himnaked and lashed His naked and bleeding body to a whipping-post. And howthey wagged their heads and put out their tongues at Him when He was onthe tree, and invited Him to come down and preach to them now, and theywould all become His disciples. Did not Shame say the simple truth whenhe warned Faithful that religion had always and from the beginning madeits followers the ridicule of their times?

If you are really going to be a religious man, Shame went on, you willhave to carry about with you a very tender conscience, and a more unmanlyand miserable thing than a tender conscience I cannot conceive. A tenderconscience will cost you something, let me tell you, to keep it. Ifnothing else, a tender conscience will all your life long expose you tothe mockery and the contempt of all the brave spirits of the time. Thatalso is true. At any rate, a tender conscience will undoubtedly compelits possessor to face the brave spirits of the time. There is a goodstory told to this present point about Sir Robert Peel, a Prime Ministerof our Queen. When a young man, Peel was one of the guests at a selectdinner-party in the West-end of London. And after the ladies had leftthe table the conversation of the gentlemen took a turn such that itcould not have taken as long as the ladies were present. Peel took noshare in the stories or the merriment that went on, and, at last, he roseup and ordered his carriage, and, with a burning face, left the room. When he was challenged as to why he had broken up the pleasant party sosoon, he could only reply that his conscience would not let him stay anylonger. No doubt Peel felt the mocking laughter that he left behind him, but, as Shame said to Faithful, the tenderness of the young statesman'sconscience compelled him to do as he did. But we are not all Peels. Andthere are plenty of workshops and offices and dinner-tables in our owncity, where young men who would walk up to the cannon's mouth withoutflinching have not had Peel's courage to protest against indecency or toconfess that they belonged to an evangelical church. If a church is onlysufficiently unevangelical there is no trial of conscience or of couragein confessing that you belong to it. But as Shame so ably and honestlysaid, that type of religion that creates a tender conscience in itsfollowers, and sets them to watch their words and their ways, and makesthem tie themselves up from all hectoring liberty--to choose thatreligion, and to cleave to it to the end, will make a young man theridicule still of all the brave spirits round about him. Ambitious youngmen get promotion and reward every day among us for desertions andapostasies in religion, for which, if they had been guilty of the like inwar, they would have been shot. 'And so you are a Free Churchman, I amtold. ' That was all that was said. But the sharp youth understoodwithout any more words, and he made his choice accordingly; till it isbecoming a positive surprise to find the rising members of certainprofessions in certain churches. The Quakers have a proverb in Englandthat a family carriage never drives for two generations past the parishchurch door. Of which state of matters Shame showed himself a shrewdprophet two hundred years ago when he said that but few of the rich andthe mighty and the wise remained long of Faithful's Puritan opinionunless they were first persuaded to be fools, and to be of a voluntaryfondness to venture the loss of all. 

And I will tell you two other things, said sharp-sighted and plain-spokenShame, that your present religion will compel you to do if you adhere toit. It will compel you from time to time to ask your neighbour'sforgiveness even for petty faults, and it will insist with you that youmake restitution when you have done the weak and the friendless any hurtor any wrong. And every manly mind will tell you that life is not worthhaving on such humbling terms as those are. Whatever may be thoughtabout Shame in other respects, it cannot be denied that he had a sharpeye for the facts of life, and a shrewd tongue in setting those factsforth. He has hit the blot exactly in the matter of our first duty toour neighbour; he has put his finger on one of the matters where so manyof us, through a false shame, come short. It costs us a tremendousstruggle with our pride to go to our neighbour and to ask his forgivenessfor a fault, petty fault or other. Did you ever do it? When did you doit last, to whom, and for what? One Sabbath morning, now many years ago, I had occasion to urge this elementary evangelical duty on my peoplehere, and I did it as plainly as I could. Next day one of my young men, who is now a devoted and honoured elder, came to me and told me that hehad done that morning what his conscience yesterday told him in thechurch to do. He had gone to a neighbour's place of business, had askedfor an interview, and had begged his neighbour's pardon. I am sureneither of those two men have forgotten that moment, and the thought ofit has often since nerved me to speak plainly about some of their mostunwelcome duties to my people. Shame, no doubt, pulled back my noblefriend's hand when it was on the office bell, but, like Faithful in thetext, he shook him out of his company and went in. I spoke of theremarkable justice of the newspaper press in the opening of theseremarks. And it so happens that, as I lay down my pen to rest my handafter writing this sentence and lift a London evening paper, I read thiseditorial note, set within the well-known brackets at the end of anindignant and expostulatory letter: ['Our correspondent's complaint isjust. The paragraph imputing bad motives should not have beenadmitted. '] I have no doubt that editor felt some shame as he handedthat apologetic note to the printer. But not to speak of any otherrecognition and recompense, he has the recompense of the recognition ofall honourable-minded men who have read that honourable admission andapology. 

Shame was quite right in his scoff about restitution also. Forrestitution rings like a trumpet tone through the whole of the law ofMoses, and then the New Testament republishes that law if only in theexquisite story of Zaccheus. And, indeed, take it altogether, I do notknow where to find in the same space a finer vindication of Puritanpulpit ethics than just in this taunting and terrifying attack onFaithful. There is no better test of true religion both as it ispreached and practised than just to ask for and to grant forgiveness, andto offer and accept restitution. Now, does your public and private lifedefend and adorn your minister's pulpit in these two so practicalmatters? Could your minister point to you as a proof of the ethics ofevangelical teaching? Can any one in this city speak up in defence ofyour church and thus protest: 'Say what you like about that church andits ministers, all I can say is, that its members know how to make anapology; as, also, how to pay back with interest what they at one timedamaged or defrauded'? Can any old creditor's widow or orphan stand upfor our doctrine and defend our discipline pointing to you? If you go onto be a Puritan, said Shame to Faithful, you will have to ask yourneighbour's forgiveness even for petty faults, and you will have to makerestitution with usury where you have taken anything from any one, andhow will you like that?

And what did you say to all this, my brother? Say? I could not tellwhat to say at the first. I felt my blood coming up into my face at someof the things that Shame said and threatened. But, at last, I began toconsider that that which is highly esteemed among men is often had inabomination with God. And I said to myself again, Shame tells me whatmen do and what men think, but he has told me nothing about what Hethinks with Whom I shall soon have alone to do. Therefore, thought I, what God thinks and says is wisest and best, let all the men of the worldsay what they will. Let all false shame, then, depart from my heart, forhow else shall I look upon my Lord, and how shall He look upon me at Hiscoming?

TALKATIVE

 'A man full of talk. '--Zophar. 

 'Let thy words be few. '--The Preacher. 

 'The soul of religion is the practick part. '--Christian. 

Since we all have a tongue, and since so much of our time is taken upwith talk, a simple catalogue of the sins of the tongue is enough toterrify us. The sins of the tongue take up a much larger space in theBible than we would believe till we have begun to suffer from other men'stongues and especially from our own. The Bible speaks a great deal moreand a great deal plainer about the sins of the tongue than any of ourpulpits dare to do. In the Psalms alone you would think that thepsalmists scarcely suffer from anything else worth speaking about but theevil tongues of their friends and of their enemies. The Book of Proverbsalso is full of the same lashing scourge. And James the Just, in apassage of terrible truth and power, tells us that we are already as goodas perfect men if we can bridle our tongue; and that, on the other hand, if we do not bridle our tongue, all our seeming to be religious is a shamand a self-deception, --that man's religion is vain. 

With many men and many women great talkativeness is a matter of simpletemperament and mental constitution. And a talkative habit would be achildlike and an innocent habit if the heart of talker and the hearts ofthose to whom he talks so much were only full of truth and love. But ourhearts and our neighbours' hearts being what they are, in the multitudeof words there wanteth not sin. So much of our talk is about our absentneighbours, and there are so many misunderstandings, prejudices, ambitions, competitions, oppositions, and all kinds of cross-interestsbetween us and our absent neighbours, that we cannot long talk about themtill our hearts have run our tongues into all manner of trespass. BishopButler discourses on the great dangers that beset a talkative temperamentwith almost more than all his usual sagacity, seriousness, and depth. Andthose who care to see how the greatest of our modern moralists deals withtheir besetting sin should lose no time in possessing and masteringButler's great discourse. It is a truly golden discourse, and it oughtto be read at least once a month by all the men and all the women whohave tongues in their heads. Bishop Butler points out to his offendingreaders, in a way they can never forget, the certain mischief they do tothemselves and to other people just by talking too much. But there arefar worse sins that our tongues fall into than the bad enough sins thatspring out of impertinent and unrestrained loquacity. There are manytimes when our talk, long or short, is already simple and downright evil. It is ten to one, it is a hundred to one, that you do not know and wouldnot believe how much you fall every day and in every conversation intoone or other of the sins of the tongue. If you would only begin to seeand accept this, that every time you speak or hear about your absentneighbour what you would not like him to speak or hear about you, you arein that a talebearer, a slanderer, a backbiter, or a liar, --when youbegin to see and admit that about yourself, you will not wonder at whatthe Bible says with such bitter indignation about the diabolical sins ofthe tongue. If you would just begin to-night to watch yourselves--on theway home from church, at home after the day is over, to-morrow morningwhen the letters and the papers are opened, and so on, --howinstinctively, incessantly, irrepressibly you speak about the absent in away you would be astounded and horrified to be told they were at thatmoment speaking about you, then you would soon be wiser than all yourteachers in the sins and in the government of the tongue. And you wouldseven times every day pluck out your tongue before God till He gives itback to you clean and kind in that land where all men shall love theirneighbours, present and absent, as themselves. 

Take detraction for an example, one of the commonest, and, surely, one ofthe most detestable of the sins of the tongue. And the etymology here, as in this whole region, is most instructive and most impressive. Indetraction you _draw away_ something from your neighbour that is mostprecious and most dear to him. In detraction you are a thief, and athief of the falsest and wickedest kind. For your neighbour's purse istrash, while his good name is far more precious to him than all his gold. Some one praises your neighbour in your hearing, his talents, hisperformances, his character, his motives, or something else that belongsto your neighbour. Some one does that in your hearing who either doesnot know you, or who wishes to torture and expose you, and you fallstraight into the snare thus set for you, and begin at once to belittle, depreciate, detract from, and run down your neighbour, who has been toomuch praised for your peace of mind and your self-control. You insinuatesomething to his disadvantage and dishonour. You quote some authorityyou have heard to his hurt. And so on past all our power to picture you. For detraction has a thousand devices taught to it by the master of allsuch devices, wherewith to drag down and defile the great and the good. But with all you can say or do, you cannot for many days get out of yourmind the heart-poisoning praise you heard spoken of your enviedneighbour. Never praise any potter's pots in the hearing of anotherpotter, said the author of the _Nicomachean Ethics_. Aristotle saidpotter's pots, but he really all the time was thinking of a philosopher'sbooks; only he said potter's pots to draw off his readers' attention fromhimself. Now, always remember that ancient and wise advice. Take carehow you praise a potter's pots, a philosopher's books, a woman's beauty, a speaker's speech, a preacher's sermon to another potter, philosopher, woman, speaker, or preacher; unless, indeed, you maliciously wishsecretly to torture them, or publicly to expose them, or, if theirsanctification is begun, to sanctify them to their most inward andspiritual sanctification. 

Backbiting, again, would seem at first sight to be a sin of the teethrather than of the tongue, only, no sharpest tooth can tear you when yourback is turned like your neighbour's evil tongue. Pascal has manydreadful things about the corruption and misery of man, but he hasnothing that strikes its terrible barb deeper into all our consciencesthan this, that if all our friends only knew what we have said about thembehind their back, we would not have four friends in all the world. Neither we would. I know I would not have one. How many would you have?And who would they be? You cannot name them. I defy you to name them. They do not exist. The tongue can no man tame. 

'Giving of characters' also takes up a large part of our everydayconversation. We cannot well help characterising, describing, andestimating one another. But, as far as possible, when we see theconversation again approaching that dangerous subject, we should call tomind our past remorse; we should suppose our absent neighbour present; weshould imagine him in our place and ourselves in his place, and so turnthe rising talk into another channel. For, the truth is, few of us areable to do justice to our neighbour when we begin to discuss and describehim. Generosity in our talk is far easier for us than justice. It wasthis incessant giving of characters that our Lord had in His eye when Hesaid in His Sermon on the Mount, Judge not. But our Lord might as wellnever have uttered that warning word for all the attention we give it. For we go on judging one another and sentencing one another as if we wereentirely and in all things blameless ourselves, and as if God had set usup in our blamelessness in His seat of judgment over all our fellows. Howseldom do we hear any one say in a public debate or in a privateconversation, I don't know; or, It is no matter of mine; or, I feel thatI am not in possession of all the facts; or, It may be so, but I must notjudge. We never hear such things as these said. No one pays the leastattention to the Preacher on the Mount. And if any one says to us, Imust not judge, we never forgive him, because his humility and hisobedience so condemn all our ill-formed, prejudiced, rash, andill-natured judgments of our neighbour. Since, therefore, so Butler sumsup, it is so hard for us to enter on our neighbour's character withoutoffending the law of Christ, we should learn to decline that kind ofconversation altogether, and determine to get over that stronginclination most of us have, to be continually talking about theconcerns, the behaviour, and the deserts of our neighbours. 

Now, it was all those vices of the tongue in full outbreak in the day ofJames the Just that made that apostle, half in sorrow, half in anger, demand of all his readers that they should henceforth begin to bridletheir tongues. And, like all that most practical apostle's counsels, that is a most impressive and memorable commandment. For, it is wellknown that all sane men who either ride on or drive unruly horses, takegood care to bridle their horses well before they bring them out of theirstable door. And then they keep their bridle-hand firm closed on thebridle-rein till their horses are back in the stable again. Especiallyand particularly they keep a close eye and a firm hand on their horse'sbridle on all steep inclines and at all sharp angles and sudden turns inthe road; when sudden trains are passing and when stray dogs are barking. If the rider or the driver of a horse did not look at nothing else butthe bridle of his horse, both he and his horse under him would soon be inthe ditch, --as so many of us are at the present moment because we have anuntamed tongue in our mouth on which we have not yet begun to put thebridle of truth and justice and brotherly love. Indeed, such woe andmisery has an untamed tongue wrought in other churches and in other andmore serious ages than ours, that special religious brotherhoods havebeen banded together just on the special and strict engagement that theywould above all things put a bridle on their tongues. 'What are thechief cares of a young convert?' asked such a convert at an agedCarthusian. 'I said I will take heed to my ways that I trespass not withmy tongue, ' replied the saintly father. 'Say no more for the present, 'interrupted the youthful beginner; 'I will go home and practise that, andwill come again when I have performed it. '

Now, whatever faults that tall man had who took up so much of Faithful'stime and attention, he was a saint compared with the men and the womenwho have just passed before us. Talkative, as John Bunyan so scornfullynames that tall man, though he undoubtedly takes up too much time and toomuch space in Bunyan's book, was not a busybody in other men's matters atany rate. Nobody could call him a detractor or a backbiter or atalebearer or a liar. Christian knew him well, and had known him long, but Christian was not afraid to leave him alone with Faithful. We allknow men we feel it unsafe to leave long alone with our friends. We feelsure that they will be talking about us, and that to our hurt, as soon asour backs are about. But to give that tall man his due, he was not givenwith all his talk to tale-bearing or scandal or detraction. Had he beenguilty of any of these things, Faithful would soon have found him out, and would have left him to go to the Celestial City by himself. But, after talking for half a day with Talkative, instead of finding outanything wrong in the tall man's talk, Faithful was so taken and sostruck with it, that he stepped across to Christian and said, 'What abrave companion we have got! Surely this man will make a most excellentpilgrim!' 'So I once thought too, ' said Christian, 'till I went to livebeside him, and have to do with him in the business of daily life. ' Yes, it is near neighbourhood and the business of everyday life that try atalking man. If you go to a meeting for prayer, and hear some menpraying and speaking on religious subjects, you would say to yourself, What a good man that is, and how happy must his wife and children andservants and neighbours be with such an example always before them, andwith such an intercessor for them always with God! But if you were to gohome with that so devotional man, and try to do business with him, andwere compelled to cross him and go against him, you would find out whyChristian smiled so when Faithful was so full of Talkative's praises. 

But of all the religiously-loquacious men of our day, your ministers arethe chief. For your ministers must talk in public, and that often and atgreat length, whether they are truly religious men at home or no. It istheir calling to talk to you unceasingly about religious matters. Youchose them to be your ministers because they could talk well. You wouldnot put up with a minister who could not talk well on religious things. You estimate them by their talk. You praise and pay them by their talk. And if they are to live, talk incessantly to you about religion theymust, and they do. If any other man among us is not a religious man, well, then, he can at least hold his tongue. There is no necessity laidon him to speak in public about things that he does not practise at home. But we hard-bested ministers must go on speaking continually about themost solemn things. And if we are not extraordinarily watchful overourselves, and extraordinarily and increasingly conscientious, if we arenot steadily growing in inwardness and insight and depth and realspirituality of mind and life ourselves, we cannot escape, --our callingin life will not let us escape, --becoming as sounding brass. There is anawful sentence in Butler that should be written in letters of fire inevery minister's conscience, to the effect that continually going overreligion in talk and making fine pictures of it in the pulpit, creates aprofessional insensibility to personal religion that is the everlastingruin of multitudes of eloquent ministers. That is true. We ministersall feel that to be true. Our miserable experience tells us that is onlytoo true of ourselves. What a flood of demoralising talk has been pouredout from the pulpits of this one city to-day!--demoralising to preachersand to hearers both, because not intended to be put in practice. How fewof those who have talked and heard talk all this day about divine truthand human duty, have made the least beginning or the least resolve tolive as they have spoken and heard! And, yet, all will in words againadmit that the soul of religion is the practick part, and that the tonguewithout the heart and the life is but death and corruption. 

Let us, then, this very night begin to do something practical after allthis talk about talk. And let us all begin to do something in the directline of our present talk. What a noble congregation of evangelicalCarthusians that would make us if we all put a bridle on our tongue to-night before we left this house. For we all have neighbours, friends, enemies, against whom we every day sin with our unbridled tongue. We allhave acquaintances we are ashamed to meet, we have been so unkind and sounjust to them with our tongue. We hang down our head when they shakeour hand. Yes, we know the men quite well of whom Pascal speaks. Weknow many men who would never speak to us again if they only knew how, and how often, we have spoken about them behind their back. Well, let ussin against them, and against ourselves, and against our Master's commandand example no more. Let this night and this lecture on Talkative andhis kindred see the last of our sin against our ill-used neighbour. Letus promise God and our own consciences to-night, that we shall all thisweek put on a bridle about that man, and about that subject, and in thatplace, and in that company. Let us say, God helping me, I shall for allthis week not speak about that man at all, anything either good or bad, nor on that subject, nor will I let the conversation turn into thatchannel at all if I can help it. And God will surely help us, till, after weeks and years of such prayer and such practice, we shall by slowdegrees, and after many defeats, be able to say with the Psalmist, 'Iwill take heed to my ways, that I sin not with my tongue. I will keep mymouth with a bridle. I will be dumb with silence. I will hold my peaceeven from good. '

JUDGE HATE-GOOD

 'Hear, O heads of Jacob, and ye princes of the house of Israel . . . Who hate the good and love the evil. '--Micah. 

The portrait of Judge Hate-good in _The Pilgrim's Progress_ is but a poorreplica, as our artists say, of the portrait of Judge Jeffreys in ourEnglish history books. I am sure you have often read, with astonishmentat Bunyan's literary power, his wonderful account of the trial ofFaithful, when, as Bunyan says, he was brought forth to his trial inorder to his condemnation. We have the whole ecclesiasticaljurisprudence of Charles and James Stuart put before us in that singlesatirical sentence. But, powerful as Bunyan's whole picture of JudgeHate-good's court is, it is a tame and a poor picture compared with whatall the historians tell us of the injustice and cruelty of the court ofJudge Jeffreys. Macaulay's portrait of the Lord Chief Justice of Englandfor ferocity and fiendishness beats out of sight Bunyan's picture of thatjudge who keeps Satan's own seal in Bunyan's Book. Jeffreys was bred forhis future work at the bar of the Old Bailey, a bar already proverbialfor the licence of its tongue and for the coarseness of its cases. Jeffreys served his apprenticeship for the service that our two lastStuarts had in reserve for him so well, that he soon became, so hisbeggared biographer describes him, the most consummate bully that everdisgraced an English bench. The boldest impudence when he was a youngadvocate, and the most brutal ferocity when he was an old judge, satequally secure on the brazen forehead of George Jeffreys. The real andundoubted ability and scholarship of Jeffreys only made his wickednessthe more awful, and his whole career the greater curse both to thosewhose tool he was, and to those whose blood he drank daily. Jeffreysdrank brandy and sang lewd songs all night, and he drank blood and cursedand swore on the bench all day. Just imagine the state of our Englishcourts when a judge could thus assail a poor wretch of a woman afterpassing a cruel sentence upon her. 'Hangman, ' shouted the ermined brute, 'Hangman, pay particular attention to this lady. Scourge her soundly, man. Scourge her till the blood runs. It is the Christmas season; acold season for madam to strip in. See, therefore, man, that you warmher shoulders thoroughly. ' And you all know who Richard Baxter was. Youhave all read his seraphic book, _The Saints' Rest_. Well, besides beingthe Richard Baxter so well known to our saintly fathers and mothers, hewas also, and he was emphatically, the peace-maker of the Puritan party. Baxter's political principles were of the most temperate andconciliatory, and indeed, almost royalist kind. He was a man of strongpassions, indeed, but all the strength and heat of his passions ran outinto his hatred of sin and his love of holiness, and an unsparing andconsuming care for the souls of his people. Very Faithful himself stoodbefore the bar of Judge Jeffreys in the person of Richard Baxter. Ittook all the barefaced falsehood and scandalous injustice of the crownprosecutors to draw out the sham indictment that was read out in courtagainst inoffensive Richard Baxter. But what was lacking in the chargeof the crown was soon made up by the abominable scurrility of the judge. 'You are a schismatical knave, ' roared out Jeffreys, as soon as Baxterwas brought into court. 'You are an old hypocritical villain. ' Andthen, clasping his hands and turning up his eyes, he sang through hisnose: 'O Lord, we are Thy peculiar people: we are Thy dear and onlypeople. ' 'You old blockhead, ' he again roared out, 'I will have youwhipped through the city at the tail of the cart. By the grace of God Iwill look after you, Richard. ' And the tiger would have been as good ashis word had not an overpowering sense of shame compelled the otherjudges to protest and get Baxter's inhuman sentence commuted to fine andimprisonment. And so on, and so on. But it was Jeffreys' 'WesternCircuit, ' as it was called, that filled up the cup of his infamy--aninfamy, say the historians, that will last as long as the language andthe history of England last. The only parallel to it is the infamy of aroyal house and a royal court that could welcome home and promote tohonour such a detestable miscreant as Jeffreys was. But the slaughter inSomerset was only over in order that a similar slaughter in London mightbegin. Let those who have a stomach for more blood and tears follow outthe hell upon earth that James Stuart and George Jeffreys together letloose on the best life of England in their now fast-shortening day. WasJudge Jeffreys, some of you will ask me, born and bred in hell? Was thedevil his father, and original sin his mother? Or, was he not the verydevil himself come to earth for a season in English flesh? No, mybrethren, not so. Judge Jeffreys was one of ourselves. Little GeorgeJeffreys was born and brought up in a happy English home. He wasbaptised and confirmed in an English church. He took honours in anEnglish university. He ate dinners, was called to the bar, conductedcases, and took silk in an English court of justice. And in the ripenessof his years and of his services, he wore the honourable ermine and satupon the envied wool-sack of an English sovereign. It would have beenfar less awful and far less alarming to think of, had Judge Jeffreysbeen, as you supposed, a pure devil let loose on the Church of Christ andthe awakening liberty of England. But some innocent soul will ask menext whether there has ever been any other monster on the face of theearth like Judge Jeffreys; and whether by any possibility there are anysuch monsters anywhere in our own day. Yes, truth compels me to reply. Yes, there are, plenty, too many. Only their environment, nowadays, asour naturalists say, does not permit them to grow to such strength anddimensions as those of James Stuart, and George Jeffreys, his favouritejudge. At the same time, be not deceived by your own deceitful heart, nor by any other deceiver's smooth speeches. Judge Jeffreys is inyourself, only circumstances have not yet let him fully show himself inyou. Still, if you look close enough and deep enough into your ownhearts, you will see the same wicked light glancing sometimes there thatused so to terrify Judge Jeffreys' prisoners when they saw it in hiswicked eyes. If you lay your ear close enough to your own heart, youwill sometimes hear something of that same hiss with which that humanserpent sentenced to torture and to death the men and the women who wouldnot submit to his command. The same savage laughter also will sometimesall but escape your lips as you think of how your enemy has been made tosuffer in body and in estate. O yes, the very same hell-broth that ranfor blood in Judge Jeffreys' heart is in all our hearts also; and thosewho have the least of its poison left in their hearts will be theforemost to confess its presence, and to hate and condemn and bewailthemselves on account of its terrible dregs. 

HATE-GOOD is an awful enough name for any human being to bear. Those whoreally know what goodness is, and then, what hatred is, --they will feelhow awful a thing it is for any man to hate goodness. But there issomething among us sinful men far more awful than even that, and that isto hate God. The carnal mind, writes the apostle Paul to the Romans--andit is surely the most terrible sentence that often terrible enoughapostle ever wrote--the carnal mind is enmity against God. And Dr. JohnOwen annotating on that sentence is equally terrible. The carnal mind, he says, has 'chosen a great enemy indeed. ' And having mentioned JohnOwen, will you let me once more beseech all students of divinity, thatis, all students, amongst other things, of the desperate depravity of thehuman heart, to read John Owen's sixth volume till they have it byheart, --by a broken, believing heart. Owen _On Indwelling Sin_ is one ofthe greatest works of the great Puritan period. It is a really great, and as we nowadays say, a truly scientific work to the bargain. But allthat by the way. Yes, this carnal heart that is still left in every oneof us has chosen a great enemy, and it would need both strong andfaithful allies in order to fight him. The hatred that His Son also metwith when He was in this world is one of the most hateful pages of thishateful world's hateful history. He knew His own heart towards Hisenemies, and thus He was able to say to the Searcher of Hearts with Hisdying breath, They hated Me without a cause. Truly our hatred is hottestwhen it is most unjust. 

'Look to yourselves, ' wrote the apostle John to the elect lady and herchildren. Yes; let us all look sharply and suspiciously to ourselves inthis matter now in hand, and we shall not need John Owen nor anybody elseto discover to us the hatred and the hatefulness of our own hearts. Lookto yourselves, and the work of the law will soon be fulfilled in you. _Homo homini lupus_, taught an old philosopher who had studied moralphilosophy not in books so much as in his own heart. 'Is no mannaturally good?' asked innocent Lady Macleod of Dunvegan Castle at herguest, Dr. Samuel Johnson. 'No, madam, no more than a wolf. ' That isquite past all question with all those who either in natural morals or inrevealed religion look to and know and characterise themselves. We haveall an inborn propensity to dislike one another, and a very smallprovocation will suddenly blow that banked-up furnace into a flame. Itis ever present with me, says self-examining Paul, and hence its sosudden and so destructive outbreaks. So the written or the printed nameof our enemy, his image in our mind, his passing step, his figure out ofthe window; his wife, his child, his carriage, his cart in the street, anything, everything will stir up our heart at the man we do not like. And the whole of our so honest Bible, our present text, and theillustrations of our text in Judge Jeffreys' and Judge Hate-good'scourts, all go to show that the better a man is the more sometimes willwe hate him. Good men, better men than we are, men who in public lifeand in private life pursue great and good ends, of necessity cross and gocounter to us in our pursuit of small, selfish, evil ends, and ofnecessity we hate them. For, cross a selfish sinner sufficiently and youhave a very devil--as many good men, if they knew it, have in us. Again, good men who come into contact with us cannot help seeing our bad lives, our tempers, our selfishness, our public and private vices; and we seethat they see us, and we cannot love those whose averted eye so goes toour conscience. And not only in the hatred of good men, but if you knowof God how to watch yourselves, you will find yourselves out every dayalso in the hatred of good movements, good causes, good institutions, andgood works. There are doctors who would far rather hear of their rival'spatient expiring in his hands than hear their rival's success trumpetedthrough all the town. There are ministers, also, who would rather thatthe masses of the city and the country sank yet deeper into improvidenceand drink and neglect of ordinances than that they were rescued by anyother church than their own. They hate to hear of the successes ofanother church. There are party politicians who would rather that theship of the state ran on the rocks both in her home and her foreignpolicy than that the opposite party should steer her amid a nation'scheers into harbour. And so of good news. I will stake the divine truthof this evening's Scriptures, and of their historical and imaginativeillustrations, on the feelings, if you know how to observe, detect, characterise, and confess them, --the feelings, I say, that will rise inyour heart to-morrow morning when you read what is good news to othermen, even to good men, and to the families and family interests of goodmen. It does not matter one atom into what profession, office, occupation, interest you track the corrupt heart of man, as sure as asubstance casts a shadow, so sure will you find your own selfish hearthating goodness when the goodness does not serve or flatter you. 

Now, though they will never be many, yet there must be some men among us, one here and another there, who have so looked at and found outthemselves. I can well believe that some men here came up to this houseto-night trembling in their heart all the way. They felt the veryadvertisement go through them like a knife: they felt that they weresummoned up hither almost by name as to judgment. For they feel everyday, though they have never told their feelings to any, that they havethis horrible heart deep-seated within them to love evil and to hategood. They gnash their teeth at themselves as they catch themselvesrejoicing in iniquity. They feel their hearts expanding, and they knowthat their faces shine, when you tell them evil tidings. They sicken andlose heart and sit solitary when you carry to them a good report. Theyfeel as John Bunyan felt, that no one but the devil can equal them inpollution of heart. And their wonder sometimes is that the Searcher ofHearts does not drive them down where devils dwell and hate God and manand one another. They look around them when the penitential psalm isbeing sung, and they smile bitterly to themselves. O people of God, theysay, you do not know what you are saying. Leave that psalm to me. I cansing it. I can tell to God what He knows about sin, and about sin in theheart. Stand away back from me, that man says, for I am a leper. Thechief of sinners is beside you. A whited sepulchre stands open besideyou. --Stop now, O hating and hateful man, and let me speak for a singlemoment before we separate. Before you say any more about yourself, andbefore you leave the house of God, lift up your broken heart and with allyour might bless God that He has opened your eyes and taught you how tolook at yourself and how to hate yourself. There are hundreds of honestChristian men and women in this house at this moment to whom God has notdone as, in His free grace, He has done to you. For He has not onlybegun a good work in you, but He has begun that special and peculiar workwhich, when it goes on to perfection, makes a great and an eminent saintof God. To know your own heart as you evidently know it, and to hate itas you say you hate it, and to hunger after a clean heart as, with everybreath, you hunger, --all that, if you would only believe it, sets you, orwill yet set you, high up among the people of God. Be comforted; it isyour bounden duty to be comforted. God deserves it at your hands thatyou be more than comforted amid such unmistakable signs of His eminentgrace to you. And be patient under your exceptional sanctification. Romewas not built in a day. You cannot reverse the awful law of yoursanctification. You cannot be saved by Jesus Christ and His Holy Spiritwithout seeing yourself, and you cannot see yourself without hatingyourself, and you cannot begin to hate yourself without all your hatredhenceforth turning against yourself. You are deep in the red-hot bosomof the refiner's fire. And when you are once sufficiently tried by theDivine Refiner of Souls, He will in His own good time and way bring youout as gold. Be patient, therefore, till the coming of the Lord. Andsay continually amid all your increasing knowledge of yourself, and amidall your increasing hatred of yourself, 'As for me, I will behold Thyface in righteousness; I shall be satisfied when I awake with Thylikeness. '

FAITHFUL IN VANITY FAIR {2}

 'Be thou faithful. '--Rev. 2. 10. 

The breadth of John Bunyan's mind, the largeness of his heart, and thetolerance of his temper all come excellently out in his fine portrait ofFaithful. New beginners in personal religion, when they first take up_The Pilgrim's Progress_ in earnest, always try to find out something inthemselves that shall somewhat correspond to the recorded experience ofChristian, the chief pilgrim. And they are afraid that all is not rightwith them unless they, like him, have had, to begin with, a heavy burdenon their back. They look for something in their religious life thatshall answer to the Slough of Despond also, to the Hill Difficulty, tothe House Beautiful, and, especially and indispensably, to the placesomewhat ascending with a cross upon it and an open sepulchre beneath it. And because they cannot always find all these things in themselves in theexact order and in the full power in which they are told of Christian inBunyan's book, they begin to have doubts about themselves as to whetherthey are true pilgrims at all. But here is Faithful, with whom Christianheld such sweet and confidential discourse, and yet he had come throughnot a single one of all these things. The two pilgrims had come from thesame City of Destruction indeed, and they had met at the gate of Vanityand passed through Vanity Fair together, but, till they embraced oneanother again in the Celestial City, that was absolutely all theexperience they had in common. Faithful had never had any such burden onhis back as that was which had for so long crushed Christian to theearth. And the all but complete absence of such a burden may have helpedto let Faithful get over the Slough of Despond dry shod. He had the goodlot to escape Sinai also and the Hill Difficulty, and his passing by theHouse Beautiful and not making the acquaintance of Discretion andPrudence and Charity may have had something to do with the fact that onenamed Wanton had like to have done him such a mischief. His remarkableexperiences, however, with Adam the First, with Moses, and then with theMan with holes in His hands, all that makes up a page in Faithful'sautobiography we could ill have spared. His encounter with Shame also, and soon afterwards with Talkative, are classical passages in his soindividual history. Altogether, it would be almost impossible for us toimagine two pilgrims talking so heartily together, and yet so completelyunlike one another. A very important lesson surely as to how we shouldabstain from measuring other men by ourselves, as well as ourselves byother men; an excellent lesson also as to how we should learn to allowfor all possible varieties among good men, both in their opinions, theirexperiences, and their attainments. True Puritan as the author of _ThePilgrim's Progress_ is, he is no Procrustes. He does not cut down allhis pilgrims to one size, nor does he clip them all into one pattern. They are all thinking men, but they are not all men of one way ofthinking. John Bunyan is as fresh as Nature herself, and as free andfull as Holy Scripture herself in the variety, in the individuality, andeven in the idiosyncrasy of his spiritual portrait gallery. 

Vanity Fair is one of John Bunyan's universally-admitted masterpieces. The very name of the fair is one of his happiest strokes. Thackeray'sfamous book owes half its popularity to the happy name he borrowed fromJohn Bunyan. Thackeray's author's heart must have leaped in his bosomwhen Vanity Fair struck him as a title for his great satire. 'Then I sawin my dream that when they were got out of the wilderness they presentlysaw a town before them, and the name of that town is Vanity, and at thattown there is a fair kept called Vanity Fair. The fair is kept all theyear long, and it beareth the name of Vanity Fair, because the town whereit is kept is lighter than Vanity. And, also, because all that is soldthere is vanity. As is the saying of the wise, All that cometh isvanity. The fair is no new erected business, but a thing of ancientstanding: I will show you the original of it. About five thousand yearsago there were pilgrims walking to the Celestial City, as these twohonest persons now are, and Beelzebub, Apollyon, and Legion, with theircompanions, perceiving that by the path that the pilgrims made, thattheir way to the city lay through this town of Vanity, they contrivedthere to set up a fair: a fair wherein should be sold all sorts ofvanity, and that it should last all the year long. Therefore at thisfair are all such merchandise sold as houses, lands, trades, places, honours, preferments, titles, countries, kingdoms, pleasures, anddelights of all sorts, as wives, husbands, children, masters, servants, lives, blood, bodies, souls, silver, gold, precious stones, and what not. And, moreover, at this fair at all times there is to be seen juggling, cheats, games, plays, fools, apes, knaves, and rogues, and that of everykind. ' And then our author goes on to tell us the names of the variousstreets and rows where such and such wares are vended. And from thatagain he goes on to tell how the Prince of princes Himself went at onetime through this same fair, and that upon a fair day too, and how thelord of the fair himself came and took Him from street to street to tryto get Him induced to cheapen and buy some of the vain merchandise. Butas it turned out He had no mind to the merchandise in question, and Hetherefore passed through the town without laying out so much as onefarthing upon its vanities. The fair, therefore, you will see, is oflong standing and a very great fair. Now, our two pilgrims had heard ofall that, they remembered also what Evangelist had told them about thefair, and so they buttoned up their pockets and pushed through the boothsin the hope of getting out at the upper gate before any one had time tospeak to them. But that was not possible, for they were soon set upon bythe men of the fair, who cried after them: 'Hail, strangers, look here, what will you buy?' 'We buy the truth only, ' said Faithful, 'and we donot see any of that article of merchandise set out on any of yourstalls. ' And from that began a hubbub that ended in a riot, and the riotin the apprehension and shutting up in a public cage of the two innocentpilgrims. Lord Hate-good was the judge on the bench of Vanity in the dayof their trial, and the three witnesses who appeared in the witness-boxagainst the two prisoners were Envy, Superstition, and Pickthank. Thetwelve jurymen who sat on their case were Mr. Blindman, Mr. No-good, Mr. Malice, Mr. Love-lust, Mr. Live-loose, Mr. Heady, Mr. High-mind, Mr. Enmity, Mr. Liar, Mr. Cruelty, Mr. Hate-light, and Mr. Implacable, --Mr. Blindman to be the foreman. And it was before these men that Faithfulwas brought forth to his trial in order to his condemnation. And verysoon after his trial Faithful came to his end. 'Now I saw that therestood behind the multitude a chariot and a couple of horses waiting forFaithful, who (so soon as his adversaries had despatched him) was takenup into it, and straightway was carried up through the clouds, with soundof trumpet, the nearest way to the Celestial gate. '

Now, I cannot tell you how it was, I cannot account for it to myself, butit is nevertheless absolutely true that as I was reading my author lastweek and was meditating my present exposition, it came somehow into mymind, and I could not get it out of my mind, that there is a great and aclose similarity between John Bunyan's Vanity Fair and a generalelection. And, all I could do to keep the whole thing out of my mind, one similarity after another would leap up into my mind and would not beput out of it. I protest that I did not go out to seek for suchsimilarities, but the more I frowned on them the thicker they came. Andthen the further question arose as to whether I should write them down orno; and then much more, as to whether I should set them out before mypeople or no. As you will easily believe, I was immediately in a realstrait as to what I should do. I saw on the one side what would be sureto be said by ill-natured people and people of a hasty judgment. And Isaw with much more anxiety what would be felt even when they restrainedthemselves from saying it by timid and cautious and scrupulous people. Ihad the full fear of all such judges before my eyes; but, somehow, something kept this before my eyes also, that, as Evangelist met the twopilgrims just as they were entering the fair, so, for anything I knew tothe contrary, it might be of God, that I also, in my own way, should warnmy people of the real and special danger that their souls will be in forthe next fortnight. And as I thought of it a procession of people passedbefore me all bearing to this day the stains and scars they had taken ontheir hearts and their lives and their characters at former generalelections. And, like Evangelist, I felt a divine desire takingpossession of me to do all I could to pull my people out of gunshot ofthe devil at this election. And, then, when I read again how both thepilgrims thanked Evangelist for his exhortation, and told him withal thatthey would have him speak further to them about the dangers of the way, Isaid at last to myself, that the thanks of one true Christian saved inanything and in any measure from the gun of the devil are far more to beattended to by a minister than the blame and the neglect of a hundred whodo not know their hour of temptation and will not be told it. And so Itook my pen and set down some similarities between Vanity Fair and theapproaching election, with some lessons to those who are not altogetherbeyond being taught. 

Well, then, in the first place, the only way to the Celestial City ranthrough Vanity Fair; by no possibility could the advancing pilgrimsescape the temptations and the dangers of the fatal fair. He that willgo to the Celestial City and yet not go through Vanity Fair must needs goout of the world. And so it is with the temptations and trials of thenext ten days. We cannot get past them. They are laid down right acrossour way. And to many men now in this house the next ten days will be atime of simply terrible temptation. If I had been quite sure that all mypeople saw that and felt that, I would not have introduced here to-nightwhat some of them, judging too hastily, will certainly call this sosecular and unseemly subject. But I am so afraid that many not untrue, and in other things most earnest men amongst us, do not yet knowsufficiently the weakness and the evil of their own hearts, that I wishmuch, if they will allow me, to put them on their guard. ''Tis hard, 'said Contrite, who was a householder and had a vote in the town ofVanity, ''tis hard keeping our hearts and our spirits in any good orderwhen we are in a cumbered condition. And you may be sure that we arefull of hurry at fair-time. He that lives in such a place as this is, and that has to do with such as we have to do with, has need of an itemto caution him to take heed every hour of the day. ' Now, if all mypeople, and all this day's communicants, were only contrite enough, Iwould leave them to the hurry of the approaching election with much morecomfort. But as it is, I wish to give them such an item as I am able tocaution them for the next ten days. Let them know, then, that their wayfor the next fortnight lies, I will not say through a fair of jugglingsand cheatings, carried on by apes and knaves, but, to speak withoutfigure, their way certainly lies through what will be to many of them aseason of the greatest temptation to the very worst of all possiblesins--to anger and bitterness and ill-will; to no end of evil-thinkingand evil-speaking; to the breaking up of lifelong friendships; and towidespread and lasting damage to the cause of Christ, which is the causeof truth and love, meekness and a heavenly mind. Now, amid all that, asEvangelist said to the two pilgrims, look well to your own hearts. Letnone of all these evil things enter your heart from the outside, and letnone of all these evil things come out of your hearts from the inside. Set your faces like a flint from the beginning against all evil-speakingand evil-thinking. Let your own election to the kingdom of heaven bealways before you, and walk worthy of it; and amid all the hurry ofthings seen and temporal, believe steadfastly concerning the things thatare eternal, and walk worthy of them. 

'We buy the truth and we sell it not again for anything, ' was the replyof the two pilgrims to every stall-keeper as they passed up the fair, andthis it was that made them to be so hated and hunted down by the men ofthe fair. And, in like manner, there is nothing more difficult to gethold of at an election time than just the very truth. All the truth onany question is not very likely to be found put forward in the programmeof any man or any party, and, even if it were, a general election is notthe best time for you to find it out. 'I design the search after truthto be the one business of my life, ' wrote the future Bishop Butler at theage of twenty-one. And whether you are to be a member of Parliament or asilent voter for a member of Parliament, you, too, must love truth andsearch for her as for hid treasure from your youth up. You must searchfor all kinds of truth, --historical, political, scientific, andreligious, --with much reading, much observation, and much reflection. Andthose who have searched longest and dug deepest will always be found tobe the most temperate, patient, and forbearing with those who have notyet found the truth. I do not know who first said it, but he was a truedisciple of Socrates and Plato who first said it. 'Plato, ' he said, 'ismy friend, and Socrates is my friend, but the truth is much more myfriend. ' There is a thrill of enthusiasm, admiration and hope that goesthrough the whole country and comes down out of history as often as wehear or read of some public man parting with all his own past, as well aswith all his leaders and patrons and allies and colleagues in thepresent, and taking his solitary way out after the truth. Many may callthat man Quixotic, visionary, unpractical, imprudent, and he may be allthat and more, but to follow conscience and the love of truth even whenthey are for the time leading him wrong is noble, and is every way farbetter both for himself and for the cause he serves, than if he werealways found following his leaders loyally and even walking in the way ofrighteousness with the love of self and the love of party at bottomruling his heart. How healthful and how refreshing at an election timeit is to hear a speech replete with the love of the truth, full knowledgeof the subject, and with the dignity, the good temper, the respect foropponents, and the love of fair play that full knowledge of the wholesubject is so well fitted to bring with it! And next to hearing such aspeaker is the pleasure of meeting such a hearer or such a reader at sucha time. Now, I want such readers and such hearers, if not such speakers, to be found all the next fortnight among my office-bearers and my people. Be sure you say to some of your political opponents something likethis:--'I do not profess to read all the speeches that fill the papers atpresent. I do not read all the utterances made even on my own side, andmuch less all the utterances made on your side. But there is one of yourspeakers I always read, and I almost always find him instructive andimpressive, a gentleman, if not a Christian. He is fair, temperate, frank, bold, and independent; and, to my mind at least, he always throwslight on these so perplexing questions. ' Now, if you have theintelligence and the integrity and the fair-mindedness to say somethinglike that to a member of the opposite party you have poured oil on thewaters of party; nay, you are in that a wily politician, for you havealmost, just in saying that, won over your friend to your own side. Sonoble is the love of truth, and so potent is the high-principled pursuitand the fearless proclamation of the truth. 

A general election is a trying time to all kinds of public men, but it isperhaps most trying of all to Christian ministers. Unless they are todisfranchise themselves and are to detach and shut themselves in from allinterest in public affairs altogether, an election time is to ourministers, beyond any other class of citizens perhaps, a peculiarlytrying time. How they are to escape the Scylla of cowardice and thecontempt of all free and true men on the one hand, and the Charybdis ofpride and self-will and scorn of other men's opinions and wishes on theother, is no easy dilemma to our ministers. Some happily constituted andhappily circumstanced ministers manage to get through life, and eventhrough political life, without taking or giving a wound in all theirway. They are so wise and so watchful; they are so inoffensive, unprovoking, and conciliatory; and even where they are not always allthat, they have around them sometimes a people who are so patient andtolerant and full of the old-fashioned respect for their minister thatthey do not attempt to interfere with him. Then, again, some ministerspreach so well, and perform all their pastoral work so well, that theymake it unsafe and impossible for the most censorious and intolerant oftheir people to find fault with them. But all our ministers are not likethat. And all our congregations are not like that. And those of ourministers who are not like that must just be left to bear that whichtheir past unwisdom or misfortune has brought upon them. Only, if theyhave profited by their past mistakes or misfortunes, a means of grace, and an opportunity of better playing the man is again at their doors. Iam sure you will all join with me in the prayer that all our ministers, as well as all their people, may come well out of the approachingelection. 

There is yet one other class of public men, if I may call them so, manyof whom come almost worse out of an election time than even ourministers, and that class is composed of those, who, to continue thelanguage of Vanity Fair, keep the cages of the fair. I wish I had to-night, what I have not, the ear of the conductors of our public journals. For, what an omnipotence in God's providence to this generation for goodor evil is theirs! If they would only all consider well at electiontimes, and at all times, who they put into their cages and for whatreason; if they would only all ask what can that man's motives be forthrowing such dirt at his neighbour; if they would only all set aside allthe letters they will get during the next fortnight that are avowedlycomposed on the old principle of calumniating boldly in the certaintythat some of it will stick, what a service they would do to the cause oflove and truth and justice, which is, surely, after all, their own causealso! The very best papers sin sadly in this respect when theirconductors are full for the time of party passion. And it isinexpressibly sad when a reader sees great journals to which he owes alifelong debt of gratitude absolutely poisoned under his very eyes withthe malignant spirit of untruthful partisanship. But so long as ourpublic cages are so kept, let those who are exposed in them resolve toimitate Christian and Faithful, who behaved themselves amid all their ill-usage yet more wisely, and received all the ignominy and shame that wascast upon them with so much meekness and patience that it actually won totheir side several of the men of the fair. 

My brethren, this is the last time this season that I shall be able tospeak to you from this pulpit; and, perhaps, the last time altogether. But, if it so turns out, I shall not repent that the last time I spoke toyou, and that, too, immediately after the communion table, the burden ofmy message was the burden of my Master's message after the firstcommunion table. 'If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them. Anew commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another. By this shallall men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another. Herein is My Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit, so shall ye be Mydisciples. These things have I spoken unto you that in Me ye might havepeace. In the world ye shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer, Ihave overcome the world. Know ye what I have done unto you? Ye call MeMaster and Lord, and ye say well, for so I am. '

BY-ENDS

 'Ye seek Me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves. '--Our Lord. 

In no part of John Bunyan's ingenious book is his strong sense and hissarcastic and humorous vein better displayed than just in his descriptionof By-ends, and in the full and particular account he gives of thekinsfolk and affinity of By-ends. Is there another single stroke in allsacred literature better fitted at once to teach the gayest and to makethe gravest smile than just John Bunyan's sketch of By-ends'great-grandfather, the founder of the egoistical family of Fairspeech, who was, to begin with, but a waterman who always looked one way androwed another? By-ends' wife also is a true helpmate to her husband. Shewas my Lady Feigning's favourite daughter, under whose nurture andexample the young lady had early come to a quite extraordinary pitch ofgood breeding; and now that she was a married woman, she and her husbandhad, so their biographer tells us, two firm points of family religion inwhich they were always agreed and according to which they brought up alltheir children, namely, never to strive too much against wind and tide, and always to watch when Religion was walking on the sunny side of thestreet in his silver slippers, and then at once to cross over and takehis arm. But abundantly amusing and entertaining as John Bunyan is atthe expense of By-ends and his family and friends, he has far other aimsin view than the amusement and entertainment of his readers. Bunyan usesall his great gifts of insight and sense and humour and scorn so as tomark unmistakably the road and to guide the progress of his reader's soulto God, his chiefest end and his everlasting portion. 

It was no small part of our Lord's life of humiliation on the earth, --muchmore so than His being born in a low condition and being made under thelaw, --to have to go about all His days among men, knowing in every caseand on every occasion what was in man. It was a real humiliation to ourLord to see those watermen of the sea of Tiberias sweating at their oarsas they rowed round and round the lake after Him; and His humiliationcame still more home to Him as often as He saw His own disciplesdisputing and pressing who should get closest to Him while for a shortseason He walked in the sunshine; just as it was His estate of exaltationalready begun, when He could enter into Himself and see to the bottom ofHis own heart, till He was able to say that it was His very meat anddrink to do His father's will, and to finish the work His Father hadgiven Him to do. The men of Capernaum went out after our Lord in theirboats because they had eaten of the multiplied loaves and hoped to do soagain. Zebedee's children had forsaken all and followed our Lord, because they counted to sit the one on His right hand and the other onHis left hand in His soon-coming kingdom. The pain and the shame allthat cost our Lord, we can only remotely imagine. But as for Himself, our Lord never once had to blush in secret at His own motives. He neveronce had to hang down His head at the discovery of His own selfish aimsand by-ends. Happy man! The thought of what He should eat or what Heshould drink or wherewithal He should be clothed never troubled His head. The thought of success, as His poor-spirited disciples counted success, the thought of honour and power and praise, never once rose in His heart. All these things, and all things like them, had no attraction for Him;they awoke nothing but indifference and contempt in him. But to pleaseHis Father and to hear from time to time His Father's voice saying thatHe was well pleased with His beloved Son, --that was better than life toour Lord. To find out and follow every new day His Father's mind andwill, and to finish every night another part of His Father's appointedwork, --that was more than His necessary food to our Lord. The greatschoolmen, as they meditated on these deep matters, had a saying to theeffect that all created things take their true goodness or their trueevil from the end they aim at. And thus it was that our Lord, aimingonly at His Father's ends and never at His own, both manifested andattained to a Divine goodness, just as the greedy crowds of Galilee andthe disputatious disciples, as long and as far as they made their bellyor their honour their end and aim, to that extent fell short of all truegoodness, all true satisfaction, and all true acceptance. 

By-ends was so called because he was full of low, mean, selfish motives, and of nothing else. All that this wretched creature did, he did with asingle eye to himself. The best things that he did became bad things inhis self-seeking hands. His very religion stank in those men's nostrilswho knew what was in his heart. By-ends was one of our Lord's whitedsepulchres. And so deep, so pervading, and so abiding is this corrupttaint in human nature, that long after a man has had his attention calledto it, and is far on to a clean escape from it, he still--nay, he all themore--languishes and faints and is ready to die under it. Just hear whattwo great servants of God have said on this humiliating and degradingmatter. Writing on this subject with all his wonted depth and solemnity, Hooker says, 'Even in the good things that we do, how many defects arethere intermingled! For God in that which is done, respecteth especiallythe mind and intention of the doer. Cut off, then, all those thingswherein we have regarded our own glory, those things which we do toplease men, or to satisfy our own liking, those things which we do withany by-respect, and not sincerely and purely for the love of God, and asmall score will serve for the number of our righteous deeds. Let theholiest and best things we do be considered. We are never betteraffected to God than when we pray; yet, when we pray, how are ouraffections many times distracted! How little reverence do we show tothat God unto whom we speak! How little remorse of our own miseries! Howlittle taste of the sweet influence of His tender mercy do we feel! Thelittle fruit we have in holiness, it is, God knoweth, corrupt andunsound; we put no confidence at all in it, we challenge nothing in theworld for it, we dare not call God to a reckoning as if we had Him in ourdebt-books; our continued suit to Him is, and must be, to bear with ourinfirmities, and to pardon our offences. ' And Thomas Shepard, a divineof a very different school, as we say, but a saint and a scholar equal tothe best, and indeed with few to equal him, thus writes in his _SpiritualExperiences_:--'On Sabbath morning I saw that I had a secret eye to myown name in all that I did, for which I judged myself worthy of death. Onanother Sabbath, when I came home, I saw the deep hypocrisy of my heart, that in my ministry I sought to comfort and quicken others, that theglory might reflect on me as well as on God. On the evening before thesacrament I saw that mine own ends were to procure honour, pleasure, gainto myself, and not to the Lord, and I saw how impossible it was for me toseek the Lord for Himself, and to lay up all my honour and all mypleasures in Him. On Sabbath-day, when the Lord had given me somecomfortable enlargements, I searched my heart and found my sin. I sawthat though I did to some extent seek Christ's glory, yet I sought it notalone, but my own glory too. After my Wednesday sermon I saw the prideof my heart acting thus, that presently my heart would look out and askwhether I had done well or ill. Hereupon I saw my vileness to make men'sopinions my rule. The Lord thus gave me some glimpse of myself and agood day that was to me. ' One would think that this was By-ends himselfclimbed up into the ministry. And so it was. And yet David Brainerdcould write on his deathbed about Thomas Shepard in this way. 'He valuednothing in religion that was not done to the glory of God, and, oh! thatothers would lay the stress of religion here also. His method ofexamining his ends and aims and the temper of his mind both before andafter preaching, is an excellent example for all who bear the sacredcharacter. By this means they are like to gain a large acquaintance withtheir own hearts, as it is evident he had with his. '

But it is not those who bear the sacred character of the ministry alonewho are full of by-ends. We all are. You all are. And there is not oneall-reaching, all-exposing, and all-humbling way of salvation appointedfor ministers, and another, a more external, superficial, easy, and self-satisfied way for their people. No. Not only must the ambitious anddisputing disciples enter into themselves and become witnesses and judgesand executioners within themselves before they can be saved or be of anyuse in the salvation of others--not only they, but the fishermen of theLake of Tiberias, they also must open their hearts to these stabbingwords of Christ, and see how true it is that they had followed Him forloaves and fishes, and not for His grace and His truth. And only whenthey had seen and submitted to that humiliating self-discovery wouldtheir true acquaintance with Christ and their true search after Himbegin. Come, then, all my brethren, and not ministers only, waken up tothe tremendous importance of that which you have utterly neglected, itmay be ostentatiously neglected, up to this hour, --the true nature, thetrue character, of your motives and your ends. Enter into yourselves. Benot strangers and foreigners to yourselves. Let not the day of judgmentbe any surprise to you. Witness against, judge, and execute yourselves, and that especially because of your by-aims and by-ends. Take up thetouchstone of truth and lay it upon your most secret heart. Do not beafraid to discover how double-minded and deceitful your heart is. Huntyour heart down. Track it to its most secret lair. Put its true name, and continue to put its true name, upon the main motive of your life. Extort an answer by boot and by wheel, only extort an answer from theinner man of the heart, to the torturing question as to what is histreasure, his hope, his deepest wish, his daily dream. Watch not againstany outward enemy, keep all your eyes and all your ears to your ownthoughts. God keeps His awful eye on your thoughts. His eye goes atevery glance to that great depth in you. Even His all-seeing eye can gono deeper into you than to your secret thoughts. Go you as deep as Godgoes, and you will be a wise man; go as deep and as often as He does, andthen you will soon come to see eye to eye with God, not only about yourown thoughts, but about His thoughts too, and about everything else. Tillyou begin to watch your own thoughts, and to watch them especially intheir aims and their ends, you will have no idea what that moral andspiritual life is that all God's saints live; that life that Christlived, and which He this night summons you all to enter henceforth upon. 

It is such a happy fact that it cannot be too often told, that in thethings of the soul really and truly to know and feel the disease is tohave already entered on the remedy. You will not feel, indeed, that youhave entered on the remedy; but that does not much matter so long as youreally have. And there is nothing more certain among all the certaintiesof divine things than that he who feels himself to be in death and hellwith his heart so full of by-ends is all the time as far from death andhell as any one can be who is still on this side of heaven. When a man'swhole will and desire is set on God, as is now and then the case, thatman is perilously near a sudden and an abundant entrance into that lifeand that presence where his heart has for so long been. When a man ishalf mad with his own heart, as Thomas Shepard for one was, that strangeron the earth is at last within a step of that happy coast where allwishes end. Watch that man. Take a last look at that man. He will soonbe taken out of your sight. Ere ever he is himself aware, he will berapt up into that life where saints and angels seek not their own will, labour not for their own profit or promotion, listen not for their ownpraises, but find their blessedness, the half of which had not here beentold them, in glorifying God and in enjoying Him for ever. 

You must all have heard the name of a book that has helped many a saintnow in glory to the examination and the keeping of his own heart. Irefer to Jeremy Taylor's _Holy Living and Dying_. Take two or three ofTaylor's excellent rules with you as you go down from God's houseto-night. 'If you would really live a holy life and die a holy death, 'says Taylor, 'learn to reflect in your every action on your secret end init; consider with yourself why you do it, and what you propound toyourself for your reward. Pray importunately that all your purposes andall your motives may be sanctified. Renew and rekindle your purestpurposes by such ejaculations as these: "Not unto us, O God, not unto us, but to Thy name be all the praise. I am in this Thy servant; let all thegain be Thine. " In great and eminent actions let there be a special andpeculiar act of resignation or oblation made to God; and in smaller andmore frequent actions fail not to secure a pious habitual intention. ' Andso on. And above all, I will add, labour and pray till you feel in yourheart that you love God with a supreme and an ever-growing love. And, far as that may be above you as yet, impress your heart with theassurance that such a love is possible to you also, and that you cannever be safe or happy till you attain to that love. Other men once asfar from the supreme love of God as you are have afterwards attained toit; and so will you if you continue to set it before yourself. Thinkoften on God; read the best books about God; call continually upon God;hold an intimate communion with God, till you feel that you also actuallyand certainly love God. And though you begin with loving God because Hefirst loved you, you will, beginning with that, rise far above that tillyou come to love Him for what He is in Himself as well as for what He hasdone for you. 'I have done this in order to have a seat in the Academy, 'said a young man, handing the solution of a problem to an oldphilosopher. 'Sir, ' was the reply, 'with such dispositions you willnever earn a seat there. Science must be loved for its own sake, and notfor any advantage to be derived from it. ' And much more is that true ofthe highest of all the sciences, the knowledge and the love of God. LoveHim, then, till you arrive at loving Him for Himself, and then you shallbe for ever delivered from all self-love and by-ends, and shall bothglorify and enjoy God for ever. As all they now do who engaged theirhearts on earth to the service and the love and the enjoyment of God issuch psalms and prayers as these: 'Whom have I in heaven but Thee? andthere is no one on earth that I desire beside Thee. How excellent is Thyloving-kindness, O God! The children of men shall put their trust underthe shadow of Thy wings. For with Thee is the fountain of life, and inThy light shall we see light. As for me, I will behold Thy face inrighteousness: I shall be satisfied when I awake with Thy likeness. Thouwilt show me the path of life; in Thy presence is fullness of joy, and atThy right hand there are pleasures for evermore. '

GIANT DESPAIR

 'A wounded spirit who can bear?'--Solomon. 

Every schoolboy has Giant Despair by heart. The rough road after themeadow of lilies, the stile into By-Path-Meadow, the night coming on, thethunder and the lightning and the waters rising amain, Giant Despair'sapprehension of Christian and Hopeful, their dreadful bed in his dungeonfrom Wednesday morning till Saturday night, how they were famished withhunger and beaten with a grievous crab-tree cudgel till they were notable to turn, with many other sufferings too many and too terrible to betold which they endured till Saturday about midnight, when they began topray, and continued in prayer till almost break of day;--John Bunyan issurely the best story-teller in all the world. And, then, over and abovethat, as often as a boy reads Giant Despair and his dungeon to his fatherand mother, the two hearers are like Christian and Hopeful when theDelectable shepherds showed them what had happened to some who once wentin at By-Path stile: the two pilgrims looked one upon another with tearsgushing out, but yet said nothing to the shepherds. 

John Bunyan's own experience enters deeply into these terrible pages. Incomposing these terrible pages, Bunyan writes straight and bold out ofhis own heart and conscience. The black and bitter essence of a wholeblack and bitter volume is crushed into these four or five bitter pages. Last week I went over _Grace Abounding_ again, and marked the passages inwhich its author describes his own experiences of doubt, diffidence, anddespair, till I gave over counting the passages, they are so many. I hadintended to illustrate the passage before us to-night out of the kindredmaterials that I knew were so abundant in Bunyan's terribleautobiography, but I had to give up that idea. It would have taken twoor three lectures to itself to tell all that Bunyan suffered all his lifelong from an easily-wounded spirit. The whole book is just Giant Despairand his dungeon, with a gleam here and there of that sunshiny weatherthat threw the giant into one of his fits, in which he always lost forthe time the use of his limbs. Return often, my brethren, to thatmasterpiece, _Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners_. I have read it ahundred times, but last week it was as fresh and powerful and consolingas ever to my sin-wounded spirit. 

Let me select some of the incidents that offer occasion for a comment ortwo. 

1. And, in the first place, take notice, and lay well to heart, howsudden, and almost instantaneous, is the fall of Christian and Hopefulfrom the very gate of heaven to the very gate of hell. All the Sabbathand the Monday and the Tuesday before that fatal Wednesday, the twopilgrims had walked with great delight on the banks of a very pleasantriver; that river, in fact, which David the King called the river of God, and John, the river of the water of life. They drank also of the waterof the river, which was pleasant and enlivening to their weary spirits. On either side of the river was there a meadow curiously beautified withlilies, and it was green all the year long. In this meadow they lay downand slept, for here they might lie down and sleep safely. When theyawoke they gathered again of the fruits of the trees, and drank again ofthe water of the river, and then lay down again to sleep. Thus they didseveral days and nights. Now, could you have believed it that two suchmen as our pilgrims were could be in the enjoyment of all that the firsthalf of the week, and then by their own doing should be in GiantDespair's deepest dungeon before the end of the same week? And yet so itwas. And all that is written for the solemn warning of those who are atany time in great enlargement and refreshment and joy in their spirituallife. It is intended for all those who are at any time revelling in aseason of revival: those, for example, who are just come home fromKeswick or Dunblane, as well as for all those who at home have just madethe discovery of some great master of the spiritual life, and who arealmost beside themselves with their delight in their divine author. Ifthey are new beginners they will not take this warning well, nor willeven all old pilgrims lay it aright to heart; but there it is as plain asthe plainest, simplest, and most practical writer in our language couldput it. 

 Behold ye how these crystal streams do glide To comfort pilgrims by the highway side; The meadows green, besides their fragrant smell, Yield dainties for them: And he that can tell What pleasant fruits, yea leaves, these trees do yield, Will soon sell all that he may buy this field. 

Thus the two pilgrims sang: only, adds our author in a parenthesis, theywere not, as yet, at their journey's end. 

2. 'Now, I beheld in my dream that they had not journeyed far when theriver and the way for a time parted. At which the two pilgrims were nota little sorry. ' The two pilgrims could not perhaps be expected to breakforth into dancing and singing at the parting of the river and the way, even though they had recollected at that moment what the brother of theLord says about our counting it all joy when we fall into diverstemptations. But it would not have been too much to expect from suchexperienced pilgrims as they by this time were, that they should havesuspected and checked and commanded their sorrow. They should have saidsomething like this to one another: Well, it would have been verypleasant had it been our King's will and way with us that we should havefinished the rest of our pilgrimage among the apples and the lilies andon the soft and fragrant bank of the river; but we believe that it mustin some as yet hidden way be better for us that the river and our roadshould part from one another at least for a season. Come, brother, andlet us go on till we find out our Master's deep and loving mind. But, instead of saying that, Christian and Hopeful soon became like thechildren of Israel as they journeyed from Mount Hor, their soul was muchdiscouraged because of the way. And always as they went on they wishedfor a softer and a better way. And it was so that they very soon came tothe very thing they so much wished for. For, what is that on the lefthand of the hard road but a stile, and over the stile a meadow as soft tothe feet as the meadow of lilies itself? ''Tis just according to mywish, ' said Christian; 'here is the easiest going. Come, good Hopeful, and let us go over. ' Hopeful: 'But how if the path should lead us out ofthe way?' 'That's not like, ' said the other; 'look, doth it not go alongby the wayside?' So Hopeful, being persuaded by his fellow, went afterhim over the stile. 

Call to mind, all you who are delivered and restored pilgrims, that samestile that once seduced you. To keep that stile ever before you is atonce a safe and a seemly occupation of mind for any one who has made yourmistakes and come through your chastisements. Christian's eyes all hisafter-days filled with tears, and he turned away his face and blushedscarlet, as often as he suddenly came upon any opening in a wall at alllike that opening he here persuaded Hopeful to climb through. It is toomuch to expect that those who are just mounting the stile, and have justcaught sight of the smooth path beyond it, will let themselves be pulledback into the hard and narrow way by any persuasion of ours. Christianput down Hopeful's objection till Hopeful broke out bitterly when thethunder was roaring over his head and he was wading about among the darkwaters: 'Oh that I had kept myself in my way!' Are you a little sorry to-night that the river and the way are parting in your life? Is your souldiscouraged in you because of the soreness of the way? And as you go doyou still wish for some better way than the strait way? And have youjust espied a stile on the left hand of your narrow and flinty path, andon looking over it is there a pleasant meadow? And does your companionpoint out to your satisfaction, and, almost to your good conscience, thatthe soft road runs right along the hard road, only over the stile andoutside the fence? Then, good-bye. For it is all over with you. Weshall meet you again, please God; but when we meet you again, your mindand memory will be full of shame and remorse and suffering enough to keepyou in songs of repentance for all the rest of your life on earth. Farewell!

 The Pilgrims now, to gratify the flesh, Will seek its ease; but oh! how they afresh Do thereby plunge themselves new grieves into: Who seek to please the flesh themselves undo. 

3. The two transgressors had not gone far on their own way when nightcame on and with the night a very great darkness. But what soon added tothe horror of their condition was that they heard a man fall into a deeppit right before them, and it sounded to them as if he was dashed topieces by his fall. So they called to know the matter, but there wasnone to answer, only they heard a groaning. Then said Hopeful: Where arewe now? Then was his fellow silent, as mistrusting that he had ledHopeful out of the way. Now, all that also is true to the very life, andhas been taken down by Bunyan from the very life. We have all heard menfalling and heard them groaning just a little before us after we had leftthe strait road. They had just gone a little farther wrong than we hadas yet gone, --just a very little farther; in some cases, indeed, not sofar, when they fell and were dashed to pieces with their fall. It waswell for us at that dreadful moment that we heard the same voice sayingto us for our encouragement as said to the two trembling transgressors:'Let thine heart be toward the highway, even the way that thou wentest;turn again. ' Now, what is it in which you are at this moment going offthe right road? What is that life of disobedience or self-indulgencethat you are just entering on? Keep your ears open and you will hearhundreds of men and women falling and being dashed to pieces before youand all around you. Are you falling of late too much under the power ofyour bodily appetites? It is not one man, nor two, well known to you, who have fallen never to rise again out of that horrible pit. Are youwell enough aware that you are being led into bad company? Or, is yourcompanion, who is not a bad man in anything else, leading you, in thisand in that, into what at any rate is bad for you? You will soon, unlessyou cut off your companion like a right hand, be found saying withmisguided and overruled Hopeful: Oh that I had kept me to my right way!And so on in all manner of sin and trespass. Those who have ears to hearsuch things hear every day one man after another falling through lust orpride or malice or idleness or infidelity, till there is none to answer. 

4. 'All hope abandon' was the writing that Dante read over the door ofhell. And the two prisoners all but abandoned all hope when they foundthemselves in Giant Despair's dungeon. Only, Christian, the elder man, had the most distress because their being where they now were lay mostlyat his door. All this part of the history also is written in Bunyan'svery heart's blood. 'I found it hard work, ' he tells us of himself, 'topray to God because despair was swallowing me up. I thought I was aswith a tempest driven away from God. About this time I did light on thatdreadful story of that miserable mortal, Francis Spira, a book that wasto my troubled spirit as salt when rubbed into a fresh wound; every groanof that man with all the rest of his actions in his dolours, as histears, his prayers, his gnashing of teeth, his wringing of hands, was asknives and daggers in my soul, especially that sentence of his wasfrightful to me: "Man knows the beginning of sin, but who bounds theissues thereof?"' We never read anything like Spira's experience and_Grace Abounding_ and Giant Despair's dungeon in the books of our day. And why not, do you think? Is there less sin among us modern men, or didsuch writers as John Bunyan overdraw and exaggerate the sinfulness ofsin? Were they wrong in holding so fast as they did hold that death andhell are the sure wages of sin? Has divine justice become less fearfulthan it used to be to those who rush against it, or is it that we are somuch better men? Is our faith stronger and more victorious over doubtand fear? Is it that our hope is better anchored? Whatever the reasonis, there can be no question but that we walk in a liberty that ourfathers did not always walk in. Whether or no our liberty is notrecklessness and licentiousness is another matter. Whether or no itwould be a better sign of us if we were better acquainted with doubt anddejection and diffidence, and even despair, is a question it would onlydo us good to put to ourselves. When we properly attend to these matterswe shall find out that, the holier a man is, the more liable he is to theassaults of doubt and fear and even despair. We have whole psalms ofdespair, so deep was David's sense of sin, so high were his views ofGod's holiness and justice, and so full of diffidence was his woundedheart. And David's Son, when our sin was laid upon Him, felt the curseand the horror of His state so much that His sweat was in drops of blood, and His cry in the darkness was that His God had forsaken Him. And whenour spirits are wounded with our sins, as the spirits of all God's greatsaints have always been wounded, we too shall feel ourselves more at homewith David and with Asaph, with Spira even, and with Bunyan. Despair isnot good, but it is infinitely better than indifference. 'It is a commonsaying, ' says South, 'and an observation in divinity, that where despairhas slain its thousands, presumption has slain its ten thousands. Theagonies of the former are indeed more terrible, but the securities of thelatter are far more fatal. '

5. 'I will, ' says Paul to Timothy, 'that men pray everywhere, lifting upholy hands without doubting. ' And, just as Paul would have it, Christianand Hopeful began to lift up their hands even in the dungeon of DoubtingCastle. 'Well, ' we read, 'on Saturday night about midnight they began topray, and continued in prayer till almost break of day. Now, before itwas day, good Christian, as one half amazed, broke out in this passionatespeech: "What a fool, " quoth he, "am I thus to lie in a stinking dungeonwhen I may as well walk at liberty; I have a key in my bosom, calledPromise, that will, I am persuaded, open any lock in all DoubtingCastle. " Then said Hopeful: "That's good news, good brother; pluck itout of thy bosom and try. "' Then Christian pulled the key out of hisbosom and the bolt gave back, and Christian and Hopeful both came out, and you may be sure they were soon out of the giant's jurisdiction. 

Now, I do not know that I can do better at this point, and in closing, than just to tell you about some of that bunch of keys that John Bunyanfound from time to time in his own bosom, and which made all his prisondoors one after another fly open at their touch. 'About ten o'clock oneday, as I was walking under a hedge, full of sorrow and guilt, God knows, and bemoaning myself for my hard hap, suddenly this sentence bolted inupon me: The blood of Christ remits all guilt. Again, when I was fleeingfrom the face of God, for I did flee from His face, that is, my mind andspirit fled before Him; for by reason of His highness I could not endure;then would the text cry: Return unto Me; it would cry with a very greatvoice: Return unto me, for I have redeemed thee. And this would make melook over my shoulder behind me to see if I could discern that this Godof grace did follow me with a pardon in His hand. Again, the next day, at evening, being under many fears, I went to seek the Lord, and as Iprayed, I cried, with strong cries: O Lord, I beseech Thee, show me thatThou hast loved me with an everlasting love. I had no sooner said itbut, with sweetness, this returned upon me as an echo or sounding-again, I have loved thee with an everlasting love. Now, I went to bed at quiet;also, when I awaked the next morning it was fresh upon my soul and Ibelieved it . . . Again, as I was then before the Lord, that Scripturefastened on my heart: O man, great is thy faith, even as if one hadclapped me on the back as I was on my knees before God . . . At anothertime I remember I was again much under this question: Whether the bloodof Christ was sufficient to save my soul? In which doubt I continuedfrom morning till about seven or eight at night, and at last, when I was, as it were, quite worn out with fear, these words did sound suddenlywithin my heart: He is able. Methought this word _able_ was spoke soloud unto me and gave such a justle to my fear and doubt as I never hadall my life either before that or after . . . Again, one morning, when Iwas at prayer and trembling under fear, that piece of a sentence dashedin upon me: My grace is sufficient. At this, methought: Oh, how good athing it is for God to send His word! . . . Again, one day as I was in ameeting of God's people, full of sadness and terror, for my fears wereagain strong upon me, and as I was thinking that my soul was never thebetter, these words did with great power suddenly break in upon me: Mygrace is sufficient for thee, My grace is sufficient for thee, threetimes together; and, oh! methought that every word was a mighty word untome; as _My_, and _grace_, and _sufficient_, and _for thee_. These wordswere then, and sometimes still are, far bigger words than others are. Again, one day as I was passing in the field, and that, too, with somedashes in my conscience, suddenly this sentence fell upon my soul: Thyrighteousness is in heaven. And methought withal I saw, with the eyes ofmy soul, Jesus Christ at God's right hand. I saw also, moreover, that itwas not my good frame of heart that made my righteousness better, nor mybad frame that made my righteousness worse, for my righteousness wasJesus Christ Himself, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever . . . Again, oh, what did I see in that blessed sixth of John: Him that comethto Me I will in nowise cast out. I should in those days often flouncetoward that promise as horses do toward sound ground that yet stick inthe mire. Oh! many a pull hath my heart had with Satan for this blessedsixth of John . . . And, again, as I was thus in a muse, that Scripturealso came with great power upon my spirit: Not by works of righteousnesswhich we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us. Now was Igot on high: I saw my self within the arms of Grace and Mercy, and thoughI was before afraid to think of a dying hour, yet now I cried: Let medie. Now death was lovely and beautiful in my sight; for I saw that weshall never live indeed till we be gone to the other world. Heirs ofGod, methought, heirs of God! God himself is the portion of His saints. This did sweetly revive my spirit, and help me to hope in God; which whenI had with comfort mused on a while, that word fell with great weightupon my mind: Oh Death, where is thy sting? Oh Grave, where is thyvictory? At this I became both well in body and mind at once, for mysickness did presently vanish, and I walked comfortably in my work forGod again. '

Such were some of the many keys by the use of which God let John Bunyanso often out of despair into full assurance and out of darkness intolight. Which of the promises have been of such help to you? Over whatScriptures have you ever cried out: Oh, how good a thing it is for God tosend me His word! Which are the biggest words in all the Bible to you?To what promise did you ever flounce as a horse flounces when he issticking in the mire? And has any word of God so made God your God thateven death itself, since it alone separates you from His presence, islovely and beautiful in your eyes? Have you a cluster of such keys inyour bosom? If you have, take them all out to-night and go over themagain with thanksgiving before you sleep. 

KNOWLEDGE

 'I will give you pastors after Mine own heart, which shall feed you with knowledge and understanding. '

The Delectable Mountains rise out of the heart of Immanuel's Land. Thisfine range of far-rolling hills falls away on the one side toward theplain of Destruction, and on the other side toward the land of Beulah andthe Celestial City, and the way to the Celestial City runs like a bee-line over these well-watered pastures. Standing on a clear day on thehighest peak of the Delectable Mountains, if you have good eyes you cansee the hill Difficulty in the far-back distance with a perpetual mistclinging to its base and climbing up its sides, which mist the shepherdssay to you rises all the year round off the Slough of Despond, while, beyond that again the heavy smoke of the city of Destruction and the townof Stupidity shuts in the whole horizon. And then, when you turn yourback on all that, in favourable states of the weather you can see hereand there the shimmer of that river over which there is no bridge; and, then again, so high above the river that it seems to be a city standingin heaven rather than upon the earth, you will see the high towers andshining palace roofs and broad battlements of the New Jerusalem itself. The two travellers should have spent the past three days among the sightsof the Delectable Mountains; and they would have done so had not theelder traveller misled the younger. But now that they were set free andfairly on the right road again, the way they had spent the past threedays and three nights made the gardens and the orchards and the pasturesthat ran round the bottom and climbed up the sides of the DelectableMountains delectable beyond all description to them. 

Now, there were on the tops of those mountains certain shepherds feedingtheir flocks, and they stood by the highway side. The two travellerstherefore went up to the shepherds, and leaning upon their staves (as iscommon with weary travellers when they stand to talk with any by theway), they asked: Whose delectable mountains are these? and whose be thesheep that feed upon them? These mountains, replied the shepherds, areImmanuel's Land, and they are within sight of the city; the sheep alsoare His, and He laid down His life for them. After some more talk likethis by the wayside, the shepherds, being pleased with the pilgrims, looked very lovingly upon them and said: Welcome to the DelectableMountains. The shepherds then, whose names were Knowledge, Experience, Watchful, and Sincere, took them by the hand to lead them to their tents, and made them partake of what was ready at present. They said, moreover:We would that you should stay with us a while to be acquainted with us, and yet more to solace yourselves with the cheer of these DelectableMountains. Then the travellers told them they were content to stay; andso they went to rest that night because it was now very late. The fourshepherds lived all summer-time in a lodge of tents well up among theirsheep, while their wives and families had their homes all the year roundin the land of Beulah. The four men formed a happy fraternity, and theyworked among and watched over their Master's sheep with one united mind. What one of those shepherds could not so well do in the tent or in thefold or out on the hillside, some of the others better did. And what oneof them could do to any perfection all the others by one consent leftthat to him to do. You would have thought that they were made by aperfect miracle to fit into one another, so harmoniously did they liveand work together, and such was the bond of brotherly love that held themtogether. At the same time, there was one of the happy quaternity who, from his years on the hills, and his services in times of trial anddanger, and one thing and another, fell always, and with the finesthumility too, into the foremost place, and his name, as you have alreadyheard, was Knowledge. Old Mr. Know-all the children in the villagesbelow ran after him and named him as they clustered round his staff andhid in the great folds of his shepherd's coat. 

Now, in all this John Bunyan speaks as a child to children; but, of suchchildren as John Bunyan and his readers is the kingdom of heaven. Myvery youngest hearer here to-night knows quite well, or, at any rate, shrewdly suspects, that Knowledge was not a shepherd going about with hisstaff among woolly sheep; nor would the simplest-minded reader of JohnBunyan's book go to seek the Delectable Mountains and Immanuel's Land inany geographer's atlas, or on any schoolroom map. Oh, no. I do not needto stop to tell the most guileless of my hearers that old Knowledge wasnot a shepherd whose sheep were four-footed creatures, but a minister ofthe gospel, whose sheep are men, women, and children. Nor are theDelectable Mountains any range of hills and valleys of grass and herbs inEngland or Scotland. The prophet Ezekiel calls them the mountains ofIsrael; but by that you all know that he had in his mind something farbetter than any earthly mountain. That prophet of Israel had in his mindthe church of God with its synagogues and its sacraments, with all thegrace and truth that all these things conveyed from God to the childrenof Israel. As David also sang in the twenty-third Psalm: 'The Lord is myShepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures;He leadeth me beside the still waters. '

Knowledge, then, is a minister; but every congregation has not such aminister set over it as Knowledge is. All our college-bred and ordainedmen are not ministers like Knowledge. This excellent minister takes hisexcellent name from his great talents and his great attainments. Andwhile all his great talents are his Master's gift to him, his greatattainments are all his own to lay out in his Master's service. To beginwith, his Master had given His highly-favoured servant a goodunderstanding and a good memory, and many good and suitableopportunities. Now, a good understanding is a grand endowment for aminister, and his ministerial office will all his days afford himopportunity for the best understanding he can bring to it. The Christianministry, first and last, has had a noble roll of men of a strongunderstanding. The author of the book now open before us was a man of astrong understanding. John Bunyan had a fine imagination, with greatgifts of eloquent, tender, and most heart-winning utterance, but in hiscase also all that was bottomed in a strong English understanding. Then, again, a good memory is indispensable to a minister of knowledge. Youmust be content to take a second, a third, or even a lower place still ifyour Master has withheld from you a good memory. Dr. Goodwin has apassage on this point that I have often turned up when I had againforgotten it. 'Thou mayest have a weak memory, perhaps, yet if it canand doth remember good things as well and better than other things, thenit is a sanctified memory, and the defilement of thy memory is healedthough the imperfection of it is not; and, though thou art to be humbledfor it as a misery, yet thou art not to be discouraged; for God doth nothate thee for it, but pities thee; and the like holds good and may besaid as to the want of other like gifts. ' You cannot be a man of acommanding knowledge anywhere, and you must be content to take a verysubordinate and second place, even in the ministry, unless you have botha good understanding and a good memory; but then, at the last day yourMaster will not call you and your congregation to an account for what Hehas not committed to your stewardship. And on that day that will besomething. But not only must ministers of knowledge have a good mind anda good memory; they must also be the most industrious of men. Other menmay squander and kill their time as they please, but a minister had asgood kill himself at once out of the way of better men unless he is tohoard his hours like gold and jewels. He must read only the best books, and he must read them with the 'pain of attention. ' He must read nothingthat is not the best. He has not the time. And if he is poor and remoteand has not many books, he will have Butler, and let him read Butler'sPreface to his Sermons till he has it by heart. The best books arealways few, and they must be read over and over again when other men arereading the 'great number of books and papers of amusement that comedaily in their way, and which most perfectly fall in with their idle wayof reading and considering things. ' And, then, such a minister muststore up what he reads, if not in a good memory, then in some otherpigeon-hole that he has made for himself outside of himself, since hisMaster has not seen fit to furnish him with such a repository withinhimself. And, then, after all that, --for a good minister is not madeyet, --understanding and memory and industry must all be sanctified bysecret prayer many times every day, and then laid out every day in theinstruction, impression, and comfort of his people. And, then, thatprivileged people will be as happy in possessing that man for theirminister as the sheep of Immanuel's Land were in having Knowledge setover them for their shepherd. They will never look up without being fed. They will every Sabbath-day be led by green pastures and still waters. And when they sing of the mercies of the Lord to them and to theirchildren, and forget not all His benefits, among the best of theirbenefits they will not forget to hold up and bless their minister. 

But, then, there is, nowadays, so much sound knowledge to be gained, notto speak of so many books and papers of mere pastime and amusement, thatit may well be asked by a young man who is to be a minister whether he isindeed called to be like that great student who took all knowledge forhis province. Yes, indeed, he is. For, if the minister and interpreterof nature is to lay all possible knowledge under contribution, what mustnot the minister of Jesus Christ and the interpreter of Scripture andprovidence and experience and the human heart be able to make thesanctified use of? Yes, all kinds and all degrees of knowledge, to becalled knowledge, belong by right and obligation to his office who is theminister and interpreter of Him Who made all things, Who is the Heir ofall things, and by Whom all things consist. At the same time, since thehuman mind has its limits, and since human life has its limits, aminister of all men must make up his mind to limit himself to the bestknowledge; the knowledge, that is, that chiefly concerns him, --theknowledge of God so far as God has made Himself known, and the knowledgeof Christ. He must be a student of his Bible night and day and all hisdays. If he has not the strength of understanding and memory to read hisBible easily in the original Hebrew and Greek, let him all the more makeup for that by reading it the oftener and the deeper in English. Let himnot only read his Bible deeply for his sermons and prayers, lectures andaddresses, let him do that all day every day of the week, and then readit all night, and every night of the week, for his own soul. Let everyminister know his Bible down to the bottom, and with his Bible his ownheart. He who so knows his Bible and with it his own heart has almostbooks enough. All else is but ostentatious apparatus. When a ministerhas neither understanding nor memory wherewith to feed his flock, let himlook deep enough into his Bible and into his own heart, and then beginout of them to write and speak. And, then, for the outside knowledge ofthe passing day he will read the newspapers, and though he gives up allthe morning to the newspapers, and returns to them again in the evening, his conscience will not upbraid him if he reads as Jonathan Edwards readthe newsletters of his day, --to see how the kingdom of heaven isprospering in the earth, and to pray for its prosperity. And, then, bythat time, and when he has got that length, all other kinds of knowledgewill have fallen into its own place, and will have taken its own properproportion of his time and his thought. He was a man of a greatunderstanding and a great memory and great industry who said that he hadtaken all knowledge for his province. But he was a far wiser man whosaid that knowledge is not our proper happiness. Our province, he wenton to say, is virtue and religion, life and manners: the science ofimproving the temper and making the heart better. This is the fieldassigned us to cultivate: how much it has lain neglected is indeedastonishing. 

Now, my brethren, two dangers, two simply terrible dangers, arise toevery one of you out of all this matter of your ministers and theirknowledge. 1. The first danger is, --to be frank with you on thissubject, --that you are yourselves so ignorant on all the matters that aminister has to do with, that you do not know one minister from another, a good minister from one who is really no minister at all. Now, I willput it to you, on what principle and for what reason did you choose yourpresent minister, if, indeed, you did choose him? Was it because youwere assured by people you could trust that he was a minister ofknowledge and knew his own business? Or was it that when you went toworship with him for yourself you have not been able ever since to tearyourself away from him, nor has any one else been able to tear you away, though some have tried? When you first came to the city, did you give, can you remember, some real anxiety, rising sometimes into prayer, as towho your minister among so many ministers was to be? Or did you choosehim and your present seat in his church because of some real or supposedworldly interest of yours you thought you could further by taking yourletter of introduction to him? Had you heard while yet at home, had yourfather and mother talked of such things to you, that rich men, and men ofplace and power, political men and men high in society, sat in thatchurch and took notice of who attended it and who did not? Do you, downto this day, know one church from another so far as spiritual and soul-saving knowledge is concerned? Do you know that two big buildings, called churches, may stand in the same street, and have men, calledministers, carrying on certain services in them from week to week, andyet, for all the purposes for which Christ came and died and rose againand gave ministers to His church, these two churches and their ministersare farther asunder than the two poles? Do you understand what I amsaying? Do you understand what I have been saying all night, or are youone of those of whom the prophet speaks in blame and in pity as beingdestroyed for lack of knowledge? Well, that is your first danger, thatyou are so ignorant, and as a consequence, so careless, as not to knowone minister from another. 

2. And your second danger in connection with your minister is, that youhave, and may have long had, a good minister, but that you still remainyourself a bad man. My brethren, be you all sure of it, there is aspecial and a fearful danger in having a specially good minister. Thinktwice, and make up your mind well, before you call a specially goodminister, or become a communicant, or even an adherent under a speciallygood minister. If two bad men go down together to the pit, and the onehas had a good minister, as, God have mercy on us, sometimes happens, andthe other has only had one who had the name of a minister, theevangelised reprobate will lie in a deeper bed in hell, and will spend amore remorseful eternity on it than will the other. No man among you, minister or no minister, good minister or bad, will be able to sin withimpunity. But he who sins on and on after good preaching will be beatenwith many stripes. 'Woe unto thee, Chorazin! Woe unto thee, Bethsaida!For if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Tyre andSidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But Isay unto you, it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day ofjudgment than for you. ' 'Thou that hast knowledge, ' says a powerful oldpreacher, 'canst not sin so cheap as another that is ignorant. Places ofmuch knowledge'--he was preaching in the university pulpit of Oxford--'andplentiful in the means of grace are dear places for a man to sin in. Tobe drunken or unclean after a powerful sermon, and after the Holy Ghosthas enlightened thee, is more than to have so sinned twenty times before. Thou mightest have sinned ten times more and been damned less. For doesnot Jesus Christ the Judge say to thee, This is thy condemnation, that somuch light has come to thee?' And, taking the then way of execution as asufficiently awful illustration, the old Oxford Puritan goes on to saythat to sin against light is the highest step of the ladder beforeturning off. And, again, that if there are worms in hell that die not, it is surely gospel light that breeds them. 

EXPERIENCE

 'My heart had great experience. '--The Preacher. 

 'I will give them pastors after Mine own heart. '

Experience, the excellent shepherd of the Delectable Mountains, had abrother in the army, and he was an equally excellent soldier. The twobrothers--they were twin-brothers--had been brought up together till theywere grown-up men in the same town of Mansoul. All the Experiencefamily, indeed, had from time immemorial hailed from that populous andimportant town, and their family tree ran away back beyond the oldestextant history. The two brothers, while in all other things as like astwo twin-brothers could be, at the same time very early in life began toexhibit very different talents and tastes and dispositions; till, when wemeet with them in their full manhood, the one is a soldier in the armyand the other a shepherd on the Delectable Mountains. Thesoldier-brother is thus described in one of the military histories of hisday: 'A man of conduct and of valour, and a person prudent in matters. Acomely person, moreover, well-spoken in negotiations, and very successfulin undertakings. His colours were the white colours of Mansoul and hisscutcheon was the dead lion and the dead bear. '

The shepherd-brother, on the other hand, is thus pictured out to us byone who has seen him. A traveller who has visited the DelectableMountains, and has met and talked with the shepherds, thus describesExperience in his excellent itinerary: 'Knowledge, ' he says, 'I found tobe the sage of the company, spare in build, high of forehead, worn inage, and his tranquil gait touched with abstractedness. While Experiencewas more firmly knit in form and face, with a shrewd kindly eye and ahappy readiness in his bearing, and all his hard-earned wisdom evidentlyon foot within him as a capability for work and for control. ' This, then, was the second of the four shepherds, who fed Immanuel's sheep onthe Delectable Mountains. 

But here again to-night, and in the case of Experience, just as lastSabbath night and in the case of Knowledge, in all this John Bunyanspeaks to children, --only the children here are the children of thekingdom of heaven. The veriest child who reads the Delectable Mountainsbegins to suspect before he is done that Knowledge and Experience are notafter all two real and true shepherds going their rounds with theirstaves and their wallets and their wheeling dogs. Yes, though the littlefellow cannot put his suspicions into proper words for you, all the samehe has his suspicions that he is being deceived by you and your Sabbathbook; and, ten to one, from that sceptical day he will not read much moreof John Bunyan till in after-life he takes up John Bunyan never for asingle Sabbath again to lay him down. Yes, let the truth be told atonce, Experience is simply a minister, and not a real shepherd at all; aminister of the gospel, a preacher, and a pastor; but, then, he is apreacher and a pastor of no ordinary kind, but of the selectest and verybest kind. 

1. Now, my brethren, to plunge at once out of the parable and into theinterpretation, I observe, in the first place, that pastors who areindeed to be pastors after God's own heart have all to pass into theirpastorate through the school of experience. Preaching after God's ownheart, and pastoral work of the same divine pattern, cannot be taught inany other school than the school of experience. Poets may be born andnot made, but not pastors nor preachers. Nay, do not all our best poetsfirst learn in their sufferings what afterwards they teach us in theirsongs? At any rate, that is certainly the case with preachers andpastors. As my own old minister once said to me in a conversation onthis very subject, 'Even God Himself cannot inspire an experience. ' No. For if He could He would surely have done so in the case of His own Son, to Whom in the gift of the Holy Ghost He gave all that He could give andall that His Son could receive. But an experience cannot in the verynature of things be either bestowed on the one hand or received andappropriated on the other. An experience in the unalterable nature ofthe thing itself must be undergone. The Holy Ghost Himself after He hasbeen bestowed and received has to be experimented upon, and taken intothis and that need, trial, cross, and care of life. He is not sent tospare us our experiences, but to carry us through them. And thus it is(to keep for a moment in sight of the highest illustration we have ofthis law of experience), thus it is, I say, that the apostle has it inhis Epistle to the Hebrews that though Christ Himself were a Son, yetlearned He obedience by the things that He suffered. And being byexperience made perfect He then went on to do such and such things forus. Why, for instance, for one thing, why do you think was our Lord ableto speak with such extraordinary point, impressiveness, and assuranceabout prayer; about the absolute necessity and certainty of secret, importunate, persevering prayer having, sooner or later, in one shape orother, and in the best possible shape, its answer? Why but because ofHis own experience? Why but because His own closet, hilltop, all-night, and up-before-the-day prayers had all been at last heard and better heardthan He had been able to ask? We can quite well read between the linesin all our Lord's parables and in all the passages of His sermons aboutprayer. The unmistakable traces of otherwise untold enterprises andsuccesses, agonies and victories of prayer, are to be seen in every suchsermon of His. And so, in like manner, in all that He says to Hisdisciples about the sweetness of submission, resignation, andself-denial, as also about the nourishment for His soul that He got outof every hard act of obedience, --and so on. There is running through allour Lord's doctrinal and homiletical teaching that note of reality and ofcertitude that can only come to any teaching out of the long and deep andintense experience of the teacher. And as the Master was, so are all Hisministers. When I read, for instance, what William Law says about theheart-searching and heart-cleansing efficacy of intercessory prayer inthe case of him who continues all his life so to pray, and carries suchprayer through all the experiences and all the relationships of life, Ido not need you to tell me where that great man of God made that greatdiscovery. I know that he made it in his own closet, and on his ownknees, and in his own evil heart. And so, also, when I come nearer home. Whenever I hear a single unconventional, immediate, penetrating, overawing petition or confession in a minister's pulpit prayer or in hisfamily worship, I do not need to be told out of what prayer-book he tookthat. I know without his telling me that my minister has been, allunknown to me till now, at that same school of prayer to which his Masterwas put in the days of His flesh, and out of which He brought theexperiences that He afterwards put into the Friend at midnight, and theImportunate widow, as also into the Egg and the scorpion, the Bread andthe stone, the Knocking and the opening, the Seeking and the finding. 

 His children thus most dear to Him, Their heavenly Father trains, Through all the hard experience led Of sorrows and of pains. 

And if His children, then ten times more the tutors and governors of Hischildren, --the pastors and the preachers He prepares for His people. 

2. Again, though I will not put those two collegiate shepherds againstone another, yet, in order to bring out the whole truth on this matter, Iwill risk so far as to say that where we cannot have both Knowledge andExperience, by all means let us have Experience. Yes, I declare to youthat if I were choosing a minister for myself, and could not have boththe book-knowledge and the experience of the Christian life in one andthe same man; and could not have two ministers, one with all the talentsand another with all the experiences; I would say that, much as I like anable and learned sermon from an able and learned man, I would rather haveless learning and more experience. And, then, no wonder that suchpastors and preachers are few. For how costly must a thoroughly goodminister's experience be to him! What a quantity and what a quality ofexperience is needed to take a raw, light-minded, ignorant, andself-satisfied youth and transform him into the pastor, the tried andtrusted friend of the tempted, the sorrow-laden, and the shipwreckedhearts and lives in his congregation! What years and years of theselectest experiences are needed to teach the average divinity student toknow himself, to track out and run to earth his own heart, and thus tolay open and read other men's hearts to their self-deceived owners in thelight of his own. A matter, moreover, that he gets not one word of helptoward in all his college curriculum. David was able to say in his oldage that he fed the flock of God in Israel according to the integrity ofhis heart, and guided them by the skilfulness of his hands. But whatyears and years of shortcoming and failure in private and in public lifelie behind that fine word 'integrity'! as also what stumbles and whatblunders behind that other fine word 'skilfulness'! But, then, how alightest touch of a preacher's own dear-bought experience skilfully letfall brightens up an obscure scripture! How it sends a thrill through aprayer! How it wings an arrow to the conscience! How it sheds abroadbalm upon the heart! Let no minister, then, lose heart when he is sentback to the school of experience. He knows in theory that tribulationworketh patience, and patience experience, but it is not theory, butexperience, that makes a minister after God's own heart. I sometimeswish that I may live to see a chair of Experimental Religion set up inall our colleges. I fear it is a dream, and that it must have beenpronounced impracticable long ago by our wisest heads. Still, all thesame, that does not prevent me from again and again indulging my dream. Iindulge my fond dream again as often as I look back on my own tremendousmistakes in the management of my own personal and ministerial life, aswell as sometimes see some signs of the same mistakes in some otherministers. In my dream for the Church of the future I see the programmeof lectures in the Experimental Class and the accompanying examinations. I see the class library, and I envy the students. I am present at theweekly book-day, and at the periodical addresses delivered to the classby those town and country ministers who have been most skilful in theirpastorate and most successful in the conversion and in the character oftheir people. And, unless I wholly deceive myself, I see, not all theclass--that will never be till the millennium--but here and there twosand threes, and more men than that, who will throw their whole heartsinto the work of such a class till they come out of the hall inexperimental religion like Sir Proteus in the play:

 Their years but young, but their experience old, Their heads unmellowed, but their judgment ripe. 

It is quite true, that, as my old minister shrewdly said to me, even theHoly Ghost cannot inspire an experience. No. But a class of genuineexperimental divinity would surely help to foster and develop anexperience. And, till the class is established, any student who has theheart for it may lay in the best of the class library for a fewshillings. Mr. Thin will tell you that there is no literature that issuch a drug in the market as the best books of Experimental Divinity. Nowonder, then, that we make such slow and short way in the skilfulness, success, and acceptance of our preaching and our pastorate. 

3. But, at the same time, my brethren, all your ministers' experience ofpersonal religion will be lost upon you unless you are yourselvesattending the same school. The salvation of the soul, you mustunderstand, is not offered to ministers only. Ministers are not the onlymen who are, to begin with, dead in trespasses and sins. The Son of Goddid not die for ministers only. The Holy Ghost is not offered toministers only. A clean, humble, holy heart is not to be the pursuit ofministers only. It is not to His ministers only that our Lord says, Takeup My yoke and learn of Me. The daily cross is not the opportunity ofministers only. It is not to ministers only that tribulation workethpatience, and patience experience, and experience hope. It was to allwho had obtained like precious faith with their ministers that Peterissued this exhortation that they were to give all diligence to add totheir faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge, and to knowledge temperance, and to temperance patience, --and so on. Now, my brethren, unless allthat is on foot in yourselves, as well as in your ministers, then theirprogress in Christian experience will only every new Sabbath-day separateyou and your ministers further and further away from one another. When aminister is really making progress himself in the life of religion thatprogress must come out, and ought to come out, both in his preaching andin his prayers. And, then, two results of all that will immediatelybegin to manifest themselves among his people. Some of his people willvisibly, and still more will invisibly, make corresponding progress withtheir minister; while some others, alas! will fall off in interest, inunderstanding, and in sympathy till at last they drop off from hisministry altogether. That is an old law in the Church of God: 'likepeople like priest, ' and 'like priest like people. ' And while there arevarious influences at work retarding and perplexing the immediateoperation of that law, at the same time, he who has eyes to see suchthings in a congregation and in a community will easily see Hosea's greatlaw of congregational selection in operation every day. Like peoplegradually gravitate to like preachers. You will see, if you have theeyes, congregations gradually dissolving and gradually being consolidatedagain under that great law. You will see friendships and families evenbreaking up and flying into pieces; and, again, new families and newfriendships being built up on that very same law. If you were to studythe session books of our city congregations in the light of that law, youwould get instruction. If you just studied who lifted their lines, andwhy; and, again, what other people came and left their lines, and why, you would get instruction. The shepherds in Israel did not need to huntup and herd their flocks like the shepherds in Scotland. A shepherd onthe mountains of Israel had nothing more to do than himself pass up intothe pasture lands and then begin to sing a psalm or offer a prayer, when, in an instant, his proper sheep were all round about him. The sheep knewtheir own shepherd's voice, and they fled from the voice of a stranger. And so it is with a true preacher, --a preacher of experience, that is. His own people know no voice like his voice. He does not need to bribeand flatter and run after his people. He may have, he usually has, butfew people as people go in our day, and the better the preacher sometimesthe smaller the flock. It was so in our Master's case. The multitudefollowed after the loaves but they fled from the feeding doctrines, tillHe first tasted that dejection and that sense of defeat which so many ofHis best servants are fed on in this world. Still, as our Lord did nottune His pulpit to the taste of the loungers of Galilee, no more will aminister worth the name do anything else but press deeper and deeper intothe depths of truth and life, till, as was the case with his Master, hisfollowers, though few, will be all the more worth having. The DelectableMountains are wide and roomy. They roll far away both before and behind. Immanuel's Land is a large place, and there are many other shepherdsamong those hills and valleys besides Knowledge and Experience andWatchful and Sincere. And each several shepherd has, on the whole, hisown sheep. Knowledge has his; Experience has his; Watchful has his; andSincere has his; and all the other here unnamed shepherds have all theirsalso. For, always, like shepherd like sheep. Yes. Hosea must have beensomething in Israel somewhat analogous to a session-clerk amongourselves. 'Like priest like people' is certainly a digest of some suchexperience. Let some inquisitive beginner in Hebrew this winter searchout the prophet upon that matter, consulting Mr. Hutcheson and Dr. Pusey, and he will let me hear the result. 

4. Now, my brethren, in closing, we must all keep it clearly before ourminds, and that too every day we live, that God orders and overrules thiswhole world, and, indeed, keeps it going very much just that He may bymeans of it make unceasing experiment upon His people. Experiment, youknow, results in experience. There is no other way by which any man canattain to a religious experience but by undergoing temptation, trial, tribulation:--experiment. And it gives a divine dignity to all things, great and small, good and bad, when we see them all taken up into God'shand, in order that by means of them He may make for Himself anexperienced people. Human life on this earth, when viewed under thisaspect, is one vast workshop. And all the shafts and wheels and pulleys;all the crushing hammers, and all the whirling knives; all the furnacesand smelting-pots; all the graving tools and smoothing irons, are all somany divinely-designed and divinely-worked instruments all directed inupon this one result, --our being deeply experienced in the ways of Godtill we are for ever fashioned into His nature and likeness. Our faithin the unseen world and in our unseen God and Saviour is at one time putto the experiment. At another time it is our love to Him; the reality ofit, and the strength of it. At another time it is our submission and ourresignation to His will. At another time it is our humility, or ourmeekness, or our capacity for self-denial, or our will and ability toforgive an injury, or our perseverance in still unanswered prayer; and soon the ever-shifting but never-ceasing experiment goes. I do beseechyou, my brethren, take that true view of life home with you again thisnight. This true view of life, namely, that experience in the divinelife can only come to you through your being much experimented upon. Meetall your trials and tribulations and temptations, then, under thisassurance, that all things will work together for good to you also if youare only rightly exercised by means of them. Nothing else but thisgrowing experience and this settling assurance will be able to supportyou under the sudden ills of life; but this will do it. This, when youbegin by experience to see that all this life, and all the good and allthe ill of this life, are all under this splendid divine law, --that yourtribulations also are indeed working within you a patience, and yourpatience an experience, and your experience a hope that maketh notashamed. 

WATCHFUL

 'Son of man, I have made thee a watchman unto the house of Israel. '--The word of the Lord to Ezekiel. 

 'They watch for your souls. '--The Apostle to the Hebrews. 

There were four shepherds who had the care of Immanuel's sheep on theDelectable Mountains, and their names were Knowledge, Experience, Watchful, and Sincere. Now, in that very beautiful episode of his greatallegory, John Bunyan is doing his very utmost to impress upon all hisministerial readers how much there is that goes to the making of a goodminister, and how much every good minister has to do. Each severalminister must do all that in him lies, from the day of his ordination tothe day of his death, to be all to his people that those four shepherdswere to Immanuel's sheep. He is to labour, in season and out of season, to be a minister of the ripest possible knowledge, the deepest and widestpossible experience, the most sleepless watchfulness, and the mostabsolute and scrupulous sincerity. Now, enough has perhaps been saidalready about a minister's knowledge and his experience; enough, certainly, and more than enough for some of us to hope half to carry out;and, therefore, I shall at once go on to take up Watchful, and to supply, so far as I am able, the plainest possible interpretation of this part ofBunyan's parable. 

1. Every true minister, then, watches, in the words of the apostle, forthe souls of his people. An ordinary minister's everyday work embracesmany duties and offers many opportunities, but through all his duties andthrough all his opportunities there runs this high and distinctive dutyof watching for the souls of his people. A minister may be a greatscholar, he may have taken all sacred learning for his province, he maybe a profound and a scientific theologian, he may be an able churchleader, he may be a universally consulted authority on ecclesiasticallaw, he may be a skilful and successful debater in church courts, he mayeven be a great pulpit orator, holding thousands entranced by hisimpassioned eloquence; but a true successor of the prophets of the OldTestament and of the apostles of the New Testament he is not, unless hewatches for the souls of men. All these endowments, and all theseoccupations, right and necessary as, in their own places, they allare, --great talents, great learning, great publicity, greatpopularity, --all tend, unless they are taken great care of, to lead theirpossessors away from all time for, and from all sympathy with, thewatchfulness of the New Testament minister. Watching over a flock bringsto you none of the exhilaration of authority and influence, none of theintoxication of publicity and applause. Your experiences are the quiteopposite of all these things when you are watching over your flock. Yourwork among your flock is all done in distant and lonely places, onhillsides, among woods and thickets, and in cloudy and dark days. Youspend your strength among sick and dying and wandering sheep, amongwolves and weasels, and what not, of that verminous kind. At the sametime, all good pastors are not so obscure and forgotten as all that. Someexceptionally able and exceptionally devoted and self-forgetful menmanage to combine both extremes of a minister's duties and opportunitiesin themselves. Our own Sir Henry Moncreiff was a pattern pastor. Therewas no better pastor in Edinburgh in his day than dear Sir Henry was; andyet, at the same time, everybody knows what an incomparableecclesiastical casuist Sir Henry was. Mr. Moody, again, is a greatpreacher, preaching to tens of thousands of hearers at a time; but, atthe same time, Mr. Moody is one of the most skilful and attentive pastorsthat ever took individual souls in hand and kept them over many years inmind. But these are completely exceptional men, and what I want to sayto commonplace and limited and everyday men like myself is this, thatwatching for the souls of our people, one by one, day in and dayout, --that, above everything else, that, and nothing else, --makes any mana pastor of the apostolic type. An able man may know all about thehistory, the habitat, the various species, the breeds, the diseases, andthe prices of sheep, and yet be nothing at all of a true shepherd. Andso may a minister. 

2. Pastoral visitation, combined with personal dealing, is by far thebest way of watching for souls. I well remember when I first began myministry in this congregation, how much I was impressed with what one ofthe ablest and best of our then ministers was reported to have testifiedon his deathbed. Calling back to his bedside a young minister who hadcome to see him, the dying man said: 'Prepare for the pulpit; aboveeverything else you do, prepare for the pulpit. Let me again repeat it, should it at any time stand with you between visiting a deathbed andpreparing for the pulpit, prepare for the pulpit. ' I was immenselyimpressed with that dying injunction when it was repeated to me, but Ihave lived, --I do not say to put my preparation for the pulpit, such asit is, second to my more pastoral work in my week's thoughts, but--to putmy visiting in the very front rank and beside my pulpit. 'We never wereaccustomed to much visiting, ' said my elders to me in their solicitudefor their young minister when he was first left alone with this wholecharge; 'only appear in your own pulpit twice on Sabbath: keep as much athome as possible: we were never used to much visiting, and we do not lookfor it. ' Well, that was most kindly intended; but it was much more kindthan wise. For I have lived to learn that no congregation will continueto prosper, or, if other more consolidated and less exactingcongregations, at any rate not this congregation, without constantpastoral attention. And remember, I do not complain of that. Far, farfrom that. For I am as sure as I am of anything connected with aminister's life, that a minister's own soul will prosper largely in themeasure that the souls of his people prosper through his pastoral work. No preaching, even if it were as good preaching as the apostle's itself, can be left to make up for the neglect of pastoral visitation andpersonal intercourse. 'I taught you from house to house, ' says Paulhimself, when he was resigning the charge of the church of Ephesus intothe hands of the elders of Ephesus. What would we ministers not give fora descriptive report of an afternoon's house-to-house visitation by theApostle Paul! Now in a workshop, now at a sickbed, now with a Greek, nowwith a Jew, and, in every case, not discussing politics and cursing theweather, not living his holidays over again and hearing of all theapproaching marriages, but testifying to all men in his own incomparablywinning and commanding way repentance toward God and faith toward theLord Jesus Christ. We city ministers call out and complain that we haveno time to visit our people in their own houses; but that is allsubterfuge. If the whole truth were told about the busiest of us, it isnot so much want of time as want of intention; it is want of set andindomitable purpose to do it; it is want of method and of regularity suchas all business men must have; and it is want, above all, of laying outevery hour of every day under the Great Taskmaster's eye. Many countryministers again, --we, miserable men that we are, are never happy or wellplaced, --complain continually that their people are so few, and soscattered, and so ignorant, and so uninteresting, and so unresponsive, that it is not worth their toil to go up and down in remote placesseeking after them. It takes a whole day among bad roads and wet bogs tovisit a shepherd's wife and children, and two or three bothies andpauper's hovels on the way home. 'On the morrow, ' so runs many an entryin Thomas Boston's _Memoirs_, 'I visited the sick, and spent theafternoon in visiting others, and found gross ignorance prevailing. Nothing but stupidity prevailed; till I saw that I had enough to do amongmy handful. I had another diet of catechising on Wednesday afternoon, and the discovery I made of the ignorance of God and of themselves mademe the more satisfied with the smallness of my charge . . . Twice a yearI catechised the parish, and once a year I visited their families. Mymethod of visitation was this. I made a particular application of mydoctrine in the pulpit to the family, exhorted them all to lay all thesethings to heart, exhorted them also to secret prayer, supposing they keptfamily worship, urged their relative duties upon them, ' etc. Etc. Andthen at his leaving Ettrick, he writes: 'Thus I parted with a peoplewhose hearts were knit to me and mine to them. The last three or fouryears had been much blessed, and had been made very comfortable to me, not in respect of my own handful only, but others of the countrysidealso. ' Jonathan Edwards called Thomas Boston 'that truly great divine. 'I am not such a judge of divinity as Jonathan Edwards was, but I alwayscall Boston to myself that truly great pastor. But my lazy and deceitfulheart says to me: No praise to Boston, for he lived and did his work inthe quiet Forest of Ettrick. True, so he did. Well, then, look at thepopulous and busy town of Kidderminster. And let me keep continuallybefore my abashed conscience that hard-working corpse Richard Baxter. Absolutely on the same page on which that dying man enters diseases andmedicines enough to fill a doctor's diary after a whole day in anincurable hospital, that noble soul goes on to say: 'I preached beforethe wars twice each Lord's Day, but after the wars but once, and onceevery Thursday, besides occasional sermons. Every Thursday evening myneighbours that were most desirous, and had opportunity, met at my house. Two days every week my assistant and I myself took fourteen familiesbetween us for private catechising and conference; he going through theparish, and the town coming to me. I first heard them recite the wordsof the Catechism, and then examined them about the sense, and lastlyurged them, with all possible engaging reason and vehemency, toanswerable affection and practice. If any of them were stalled throughignorance or bashfulness, I forbore to press them, but made them hearers, and turned all into instruction and exhortation. I spent about an hourwith a family, and admitted no others to be present, lest bashfulnessshould make it burdensome, or any should talk of the weakness of others. 'And then he tells how his people's necessity made him practise physicamong them, till he would have twenty at his door at once. 'All these myemployments were but my recreations, and, as it were, the work of myspare hours. For my writings were my chiefest daily labour. And blessedbe the God of mercies that brought me from the grave and gave me, afterwars and sickness, fourteen years' liberty in such sweet employment!' Letall ministers who would sit at home over a pipe and a newspaper with aquiet conscience keep Boston's _Memoirs_ and Baxter's _Reliquiae_ atarm's-length. 

3. Our young communicants' classes, and still more, those privateinterviews that precede and finish up our young communicants' classes, are by far our best opportunities as pastors. I remember Dr. MoodyStuart telling me long ago that he had found his young communicants'classes to be the most fruitful opportunities of all his ministry; as, also, next to them, times of baptism in families. And every minister whotries to be a minister at all after Dr. Moody Stuart's pattern, will tellyou something of the same thing. They get at the opening history oftheir young people's hearts before their first communion. They makeshorthand entries and secret memoranda at such a season like this: 'A. Arebuke to me. He had for long been astonished at me that I did not speakto him about his soul. B. Traced his conversion to the singing of 'Thesands of time are sinking' in this church last summer. C. Was spoken toby a room-mate. D. Was to be married, and she died. Of E. I have greathope. F. , were she anywhere but at home, I would have great hopes ofher, '--and so on. But, then, when a minister takes boldness to turn overthe pages of his young communicants' roll for half a lifetime--ah me, ahme! What was I doing to let that so promising communicant go so farastray, and I never to go after him? And that other. And that other. And that other. Till we can read no more. O God of mercy, when Thouinquirest after blood, let me be hidden in the cleft of that Rock sodeeply cleft for unwatchful ministers!

4. And then, as Dr. Joseph Parker says, who says everything so plainlyand so powerfully: 'There is pastoral preaching as well as pastoralvisitation. There is pastoral preaching; rich revelation of divinetruth; high, elevating treatment of the Christian mysteries; and he isthe pastor to me who does not come to my house to drink and smoke andgossip and show his littleness, but who, out of a rich experience, meetsme with God's word at every turn of my life, and speaks the something tome that I just at that moment want. ' Let us not have less pastoralvisitation in the time to come, but let us have more and more of suchpastoral preaching. 

5. But, my brethren, it is time for you, as John said to the elect ladyand her children, to look to yourselves. The salvation of your soul isprecious, and its salvation is such a task, such a battle, such a danger, and such a risk, that it will take all that your most watchful ministercan do, and all that you can do yourself, and all that God can do foryou, and yet your soul will scarcely be saved after all. You do not knowwhat salvation is nor what it costs. You will not be saved in yoursleep. You will not waken up at the last day and find yourself saved bythe grace of God and you not know it. You will know it to your bittercost before your soul is saved from sin and death. You and your ministertoo. And therefore it is that He Who is to judge your soul at last saysto you, as much as He says it to any of His ministers, Watch! What I sayunto one I say unto all, Watch. Watch and pray, lest you enter intotemptation. Look to yourself, then, sinner. In Christ's name, look toyourself and watch yourself. You have no enemy to fear but yourself. Noone can hurt a hair of your head but yourself. Have you found that out?Have you found yourself out? Do you ever look in the direction of yourown heart? Have you begun to watch what goes on in your own heart? Whatis it to you what goes on in the world around you compared with what goeson in the world within you? Look, then, to yourself. Watch, above allwatching, yourself. Watch what it is that moves you to do this or that. Stop sometimes and ask yourself why you do such and such a thing. Didyou ever hear of such a thing as a motive in a human heart? And did yourminister, watching for your soul, ever tell you that your soul will belost or saved, condemned or justified at the last day according to yourmotives? You never knew that! You were never told that by yourminister! Miserable pair! What does he take up his Sabbaths with? Andwhat leads you to waste your Sabbaths and your soul on such a stupidminister? But, shepherd or no shepherd, minister or no minister, look toyourself. Look to yourself when you lie down and when you rise up; whenyou go out and when you come in; when you are in the society of men andwhen you are alone with your own heart. Look to yourself when men praiseyou, and look to yourself when men blame you. Look to yourself when yousit down to eat and drink, and still more when you sit and speak aboutyour absent brother. Look to yourself when you meet your enemy or yourrival in the street, when you pass his house, or hear or read his name. Yes, you may well say so. At that rate a man's life would be allwatching. So it would. And so it must. And more than that, so it iswith some men not far from you who never told you how much you have madethem watch. Did you never know all that till now? Were you never toldthat every Christian man, I do not mean every communicant, but everytruly and sincerely and genuinely Christian man watches himself in thatway? For as the one essential and distinguishing mark of a New Testamentminister is not that he is an able man, or a studious man, or an eloquentman, but that he is a pastor and watches for souls, so it is the chiefestand the best mark, and to himself the only safe and infallible mark, thatany man is a sincere and true Christian man, that he watches himselfalways and in all things looks first and last to himself. 

SINCERE

 'In all things showing sincerity. '--Paul to Titus. 

Charles Bennett has a delightful drawing of Sincere in Charles Kingsley'sbeautiful edition of _The Pilgrim's Progress_. You feel that you couldlook all day into those clear eyes. Your eyes would begin to quailbefore you had looked long into the fourth shepherd's deep eyes; butthose eyes of his have no cause to quail under yours. This man hasnothing to hide from you. He never had. He loves you, and his love toyou is wholly without dissimulation. He absolutely and unreservedlymeans and intends by you and yours all that he has ever said to you andyours, and much more than he has ever been able to say. The owner ofthose deep blue eyes is as true to you when he is among your enemies ashe is true to the truth itself when he is among your friends. Mark alsothe unobtrusive strength of his mouth, all suffused over as it is with amost winning and reassuring sweetness. The fourth shepherd of theDelectable Mountains is one of the very best of Bennett's excellentportraits. But Mr. Kerr Bain's pen-and-ink portrait of Sincere in his_People of the Pilgrimage_ is even better than Bennett's excellentdrawing. 'Sincere is softer in outline and feature than Watchful. Hiseye is full-open and lucid, with a face of mingled expressiveness andstrength--a lovable, lowly, pure-spirited man--candid, considerate, willing, cheerful--not speaking many words, and never any but truewords. ' Happy sheep that have such a shepherd! Happy people! if onlyany people in the Church of Christ could have such a pastor. 

It is surely too late, too late or too early, to begin to put tests to aminister's sincerity after he has been licensed and called and is nowstanding in the presence of his presbytery and surrounded with hiscongregation. It is a tremendous enough question to put to any man atany time: 'Are not zeal for the honour of God, love to Jesus Christ, anddesire of saving souls your great motives and chief inducement to enterinto the function of the holy ministry?' A man who does not understandwhat it is you are saying to him will just make the same bow to theseawful words that he makes to all your other conventional questions. Butthe older he grows in his ministry, and the more he comes to discover theincurable plague of his own heart, and with that the whole meaning andfull weight of your overwhelming words, the more will he shrink back fromhaving such questions addressed to him. Fools will rush in where Mosesand Isaiah and Jeremiah and Peter and Paul feared to set their foot. Paulwas to be satisfied if only he was let do the work of a minister all hisdays and then was not at the end made a castaway. And yet, writing tothe same church, Paul says that his sincerity among them had been suchthat he could hold up his ministerial life like spotless linen betweenthe eye of his conscience and the sun. But all that was written and isto be read and understood as Paul's ideal that he had honestly labouredafter, rather than as an actual attainment he had arrived at. Great asPaul's attainments were in humility, in purity of intention, and insimplicity and sincerity of heart, yet the mind of Christ was not sogiven even to His most gifted apostle, that he could seriously say thathe had attained to such utter ingenuity, simplicity, disengagement fromhimself, and surrender to Christ, as to be able to face the sun with aspotless ministry. All he ever says at his boldest and best on thatgreat matter is to be read in the light of his universal law of personaland apostolic imperfection--Not that I have attained, either am alreadyperfect; but I follow after. And blessed be God that this is all that Helooks for in any of His ministers, that they follow all their days aftera more and more godly sincerity. It was the apostle's love of absolutesincerity, --and, especially, it was his bitter hatred of all theremaining dregs of insincerity that he from time to time detected in hisown heart, --it was this that gave him his good conscience before a God ofpity and compassion, truth and grace. And with something of the samelove of perfect sincerity, accompanied with something of the same hatredof insincerity and of ourselves on account of it, we, too, toward thissame God of pity and compassion, will hold up a conscience that wouldfain be a good conscience. And till it is a good conscience we shallhold up with it a broken heart. And that genuine love of all sincerity, and that equally genuine hatred of all remaining insincerity, will makeall our ministerial work, as it made all Paul's apostolic work, not onlyacceptable, but will also make its very defects and defeats bothacceptable and fruitful in the estimation and result of God. It sohappens that I am reading for my own private purposes at this moment anold book of 1641, Drexilius _On a Right Intention_, and I cannot dobetter at this point than share with you the page I am just reading. 'Notto be too much troubled or daunted at any cross event, ' he says, 'is thehappy state of his mind who has entered on any enterprise with a pure andpious intention. That great apostle James gained no more than eightpersons in all Spain when he was called to lay down his head underHerod's sword. And was not God ready to give the same reward to James asto those who converted kings and whole kingdoms? Surely He was. For Goddoes not give His ministers a charge as to what they shall effect, butonly as to what they shall intend to effect. Wherefore, when his artfaileth a servant of God, when nothing goes forward, when everythingturneth to his ruin, even when his hope is utterly void, he is scarce onewhit troubled; for this, saith he to himself, is not in my power, but inGod's power alone. I have done what I could. I have done what was fitfor me to do. Fair and foul is all of God's disposing. '

And, then, this simplicity and purity of intention gives a minister thatfine combination of candour and considerateness which we saw to existtogether so harmoniously in the character of Sincere. Such a minister isnot tongue-tied with sinister and selfish intentions. His sinceritytoward God gives him a masterful position among his people. His words ofrebuke and warning go straight to his people's consciences because theycome straight out of his own conscience. His words are their own witnessthat he is neither fearing his people nor fawning upon his people inspeaking to them. And, then, such candour prepares the way for theutmost considerateness when the proper time comes for considerateness. Such a minister is patient with the stupid, and even with the wicked andthe injurious, because in all their stupidity and wickedness andinjuriousness they have only injured and impoverished themselves. And ifGod is full of patience and pity for the ignorant and the evil and theout of the way, then His sincere-hearted minister is of all men the veryman to carry the divine message of forgiveness and instruction to suchsinners. Yes, Mr. Bain must have seen Sincere closely and in a clearlight when he took down this fine feature of his character, that he is atonce candid and considerate--with a whole face of mingled expressivenessand strength. 

Writing about sincerity and a right intention in young ministers, oldDrexilius says: 'When I turn to clergymen, I would have sighs and groansto speak for me. For, alas! I am afraid that there be found some whichcome into the ministry, not that they may obtain a holy office in whichto spend their life, but for worse ends. To enter the ministry with anaughty intention is to come straight to destruction. Let no ministerthink at any time of a better living, but only at all times of a holierlife. Wherefore, O ministers and spiritual men, consider and take heed. There can be no safe guide to your office but a right, sincere, pureintention. Whosoever cometh to it with any other conduct or companionmust either return to his former state of life, or here he shallcertainly perish . . . What is more commendable in a religious man thanto be always in action and to be exercised one while in teaching theignorant, another while in comforting such as are troubled in mind, sometimes in making sermons, and sometimes in admonishing the sick? Butwith what secret malignity doth a wrong intention insinuate itself intothese very actions that are the most religious! For ofttimes we desirenothing else but to be doing. We desire to become public, not that wemay profit many, but because we have not learned how to be private. Weseek for divers employments, not that we may avoid idleness, but that wemay come into people's knowledge. We despise a small number of hearers, and such as are poor, simple, and rustical, and let fly our endeavours atmore eminent chairs, though not in apparent pursuit; all which is theplain argument of a corrupt intention. O ye that wait upon religion, Oministers of God, this is to sell most transcendent wares at a very lowrate--nay, this is to cast them, and yourselves too, into the fire. '

There are some outstanding temptations to insincerity in some ministersthat must be pointed out here. (1) Ministers with a warm rhetoricaltemperament are beset continually with the temptation to pile up falsefire on the altar; to dilate, that is, both in their prayers and in theirsermons, upon certain topics in a style that is full of insincerity. Ministers who have no real hold of divine things in themselves will yetfill their pulpit hour with the most florid and affecting pictures ofsacred and even of evangelical things. This is what our shrewd andsatirical people mean when they say of us that So-and-so has a great_sough_ of the gospel in his preaching, but the _sough_ only. (2)Another kindred temptation to even the best and truest of ministers is tomake pulpit appeals about the evil of sin and the necessity of a holylife that they themselves do not feel and do not attempt to live up to. Butler has a terrible passage on the heart-hardening effects of makingpictures of virtue and never trying to put those pictures into practice. And readers of Newman will remember his powerful application of this sametemptation to literary men in his fine sermon on Unreal Words. (3)Another temptation is to affect an interest in our people and a sympathywith them that we do not in reality feel. All human life is full of thistemptation to double-dealing and hypocrisy; but, then, it is large partof a minister's office to feel with and for his people, and to give thetenderest and the most sacred expression to that feeling. And, unless heis a man of a scrupulously sincere, true, and tender heart, his dailyduties will soon develop him into a solemn hypocrite. And if he feelsonly for his own people, and for them only when they become and as longas they remain his own people, then his insincerity and imposture is onlythe more abominable in the sight of God. (4) Archbishop Whately, withthat strong English common sense and that cultivated clear-headednessthat almost make him a writer of genius, points out a view of sinceritythat it behoves ministers especially to cultivate in themselves. Hetells us not only to act always according to our convictions, but also tosee that our convictions are true and unbiassed convictions. It is avery superficial sincerity even when we actually believe what we professto believe. But that is a far deeper and a far nobler sincerity whichwatches with a strict and severe jealousy over the formation of ourbeliefs and convictions. Ministers must, first for themselves and thenfor their people, live far deeper down than other men. They must be athome among the roots, not of actions only, but much more of convictions. We may act honestly enough out of our present convictions and principles, while, all the time, our convictions and our principles are vitiated atbottom by the selfish ground they ultimately stand in. Let ministers, then, to begin with, live deep down among the roots of their opinions andtheir beliefs. Let them not only flee from being consciously insincereand hypocritical men; let them keep their eye like the eye of Godcontinually on that deep ground of the soul where so many men unknown tothemselves deceive themselves. And, thus exercised, they shall be ableout of a deep and clean heart to rise far above that trimming and hedgingand self-seeking and self-sheltering in disputed and unpopular questionswhich is such a temptation to all men, and is such a shame and scandal ina minister. 

Now, my good friends, we have kept all this time to the fourth shepherdand to his noble name, but let us look in closing at some of hissheep, --that is to say, at ourselves. For is it not said in the prophet:Ye my flock, the flock of my pasture, are men, and I am your God, saiththe Lord God. All, therefore, that has been said about the sincerity andinsincerity of ministers is to be said equally of their people also inall their special and peculiar walks of life. Sincerity is as noble avirtue, and insincerity is as detestable a vice, in a doctor, or alawyer, or a schoolmaster, or a merchant, --almost, if not altogether, asmuch so as in a minister. Your insincerity and hypocrisy in your dailyintercourse with your friends and neighbours is a miserable enough stateof mind, but at the root of all that there lies your radical insinceritytoward God and your own soul. In his _Christian Perfection_ William Lawintroduces his readers to a character called Julius, who goes regularlyto prayers, and there confesses himself to be a miserable sinner who hasno health in him; and yet that same Julius cannot bear to be informed ofany imperfection or suspected to be wanting in any kind or degree ofvirtue. Now, Law asks, can there be a stronger proof that Julius iswanting in the sincerity of his devotions? Is it not as plain asanything can be that that man's confessions of sin are only words ofcourse, a certain civility of sacred speech in which his heart has not asingle atom of share? Julius confesses himself to be in great weakness, corruption, disorder, and infirmity, and yet he is mortally angry withyou if at any time you remotely and tenderly hint that he may be just ashade wrong in his opinions, or one hair's-breadth off what is square andcorrect in his actions. Look to yourself, Julius, and to your insincereheart. Look to yourself at all times, but above all other times at thetimes and in the places of your devotions. Ten to one, my hearer of to-night, you may never have thought of that before. And what would youthink if you were told that this Sincere shepherd was appointed us forthis evening's discourse, and that you were led up to this house, justthat you might have your attention turned to your many miserableinsincerities of all kinds, but especially to your so Julius-likedevotions? 'And Nathan said unto David, Thou art the man. And Davidsaid unto Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord. '

What, then, my truly miserable fellow-sinner and fellow-worshipper, whatare we to do? Am I to give up preaching altogether because I amcontinually carried on under the impulse of the pulpit far beyond both myattainments and my intentions? Am I to cease from public prayeraltogether because when engaged in it I am compelled to utter words ofcontrition and confession and supplication that little agree with theeveryday temper and sensibility of my soul? And am I wholly to eschewpastoral work because my heart is not so absolutely clean and simple andsincere toward all my own people and toward other ministers' people as itought to be? No! Never! Never! Let me rather keep my heart of suchearth and slag in the hottest place of temptation, and then, suchhumiliating discoveries as are there continually being made to me ofmyself will surely at last empty me of all self-righteousness and self-sufficiency, and make me at the end of my ministry, if not till then, thepenitent pastor of a penitent people. And when thus penitent, thensurely, also somewhat more sincere in my designs and intentions, if noteven then in my attainments and performances. 

'O Eternal God, Who hast made all things for man, and man for Thy glory, sanctify my body and my soul, my thoughts and my intentions, my words andmy actions, that whatsoever I shall think or speak or do may be by medesigned to the glory of Thy name. O God, turn my necessities intovirtue, and the works of nature into the works of grace, by making themorderly, regular, temperate, subordinate, and profitable to ends beyondtheir own proper efficacy. And let no pride or self-seeking, nocovetousness or revenge, no impure mixtures or unhandsome purposes, nolittle ends and low imaginations, pollute my spirit or unhallow any of mywords or actions. But let my body be the servant of my spirit, and bothsoul and body servants of my Lord, that, doing all things for Thy gloryhere, I may be made a partaker of Thy glory hereafter; through JesusChrist, my Lord. Amen. '

FOOTNOTES

{1} Delivered on the Sabbath before Communion. 

{2} Delivered June 26th, 1892, on the eve of a general election.