Part 3
it, the question would rise in his heart and conscience, Will that do my
friend's soul any good? 'Rare and profitable,' said the pilgrim as he left
the gate; and hearing that sent the Interpreter back with new spirit
and new invention to fill his house of still more significant, rare, and
profitable things than ever before. 'Meditate on these things,' said Paul
to Timothy his son in the gospel, 'that thy profiting may appear unto
all.' 'Thou art a minister of the word,' wrote the learned William
Perkins beside his name on all his books, 'mind thy business.'
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 our pilgrim saw Passion and Patience sitting each one in his
chair. Passion was a young lad who seemed to our pilgrim to be much
discontented. He was never satisfied. He would have all his good
things now. His governor would have him wait for his best things till
the beginning of next year; but no, he will have them all now. And
then, when he had got all his good things, he soon lavished and wasted
them all till he had nothing left but rags. Then said Christian to the
Interpreter, 'Expound this 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 which is to come.' 'Then I perceive,' said Christian, ' tis
not best to covet things that are now, but to wait for things to come.'
'You say truth,' replied the Interpreter, 'for the things that are seen are
temporal, but the things that are not seen are eternal.'
Now from the texts that I have taken out of James and out of this
so significant room in the Interpreter's House, let me try to tell you
something 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
in the life and the character of a Christian man.
The name of Passion has already told us his nature, his past life,
and his present character. The whole nomenclature of The Pilgrim's
Progress and of The Holy War is composed on the divine, original, and
natural principle of embodying the nature of a man in his name. God
takes His own names to Himself on that principle. The Creator gave
Adam his name also on that same principle; and then Adam gave their
names to all cattle, to the fowls of the air, and to every beast of the
field on the same principle on which he had got his own name. And so
it was at first with all the Bible names of men and of nations of men.
Their name contained 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 as Bunyan tells us the name of some new
acquaintance or fellow-traveller, we already know him, so exactly is
his nature put into his name. And thus it is that when we stop for a
moment at the door of this little significant room in the Interpreter's
House and ask ourselves the meaning of the name Passion, we see at once where we are and what we have here before us. For a 'passion' is
just some excitement or agitation of the mind caused by some
outward thing acting on the mind. The inward world of the mind and
heart of man, and this outward world down into which God has placed
man, instantly and continually respond to one another. And what are
called, with so much correctness and propriety, our passions, are just
those inward responses, excitements, and agitations that the outward
world causes in the inward world when those two worlds meet
together. 'Passion' and 'perturbation' are the old classical names that
the ancient philosophers and moralists gave to what they felt in
themselves as their minds and their hearts were affected by the world
of men and things around them. And they used to illustrate their
teaching on the subject of the passions by the figure of a storm at sea.
They said that it was because God had made the sea sensitive and
responsive to the winds that blew over it that a storm at sea ever
arose. The storm did not arise and the ships were not wrecked by
anything from within the sea itself; it was the outward world of the
winds striking against the quiet and inward world of the waters that
roused the storms and sank the ships. And with that illustration well
printed in the minds and imaginations of their scholars the old
moralists felt their work among their scholars was already all but
done. For, so full of adaptation and appeal is the whole outward world
to the mind and heart of man, and so sensitive and instantly
responsive is the mind and heart of man to all the approaches of the
outward world, that the mind and heart of man are constantly full of
all kinds of passions, both bad and good. And, then, this is our present
life of probation and opportunity, that all our passions are placed
within us and are committed and entrusted to us as so many first
elements and so much unformed material out of which we are
summoned to build up our life and to shape and complete our
character.
The springs of all our actions are in our passions. All our
activities in life, trace them all up to their source, and they will all be
found to run up into the wellhead of our passions. All our virtues are
cut as with a chisel out of our passions, and all our vices are just the
disorders and rebellions of our passions. Our several passions, as they
lie still asleep in our hearts, have as yet no moral character; they are only the raw material so to speak, of moral character. Our passions are
the life and the riches and the ornaments of human nature, and it is
only because human nature in its present estate is so corrupt and
disordered and degraded, that the otherwise so honourable name of
passion has such a sinister sound to us. And the full regeneration and
restitution of human nature will be accomplished when every several
passion is in its right place, and when reason and conscience and the
Spirit of God shall inspire and 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, as
they themselves said, were men of like passions with ourselves, but
our Lord Himself was a man of like passions with us also. He took to
Himself a true body, full of all the appetites of the body, and a
reasonable soul, 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 were the card and the compass according to which He steered His
life. We have all our ruling passion, and our Lord also had His. As His
disciples saw His ruling passion kindled in His heart and coming out
in His life, they remembered that it was written of Him in an old
Messianic psalm: 'The zeal of Thine house hath eaten me up.' They
were all eaten up of their ruling 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
up always and wholly of the zeal of His Father's house, and of absolute
surrender and devotion to His Father's service, till His ruling passion
was seen to be as strong in His death as it had been in His life. The
Laird of Brodie's Diary has repeatedly been of great use to us in these
inward matters, and his words on this subject are well worth
repeating. 'We poor creatures,' he says, 'are commanded by our
affections and passions. They are not at our command. But the Holy
One doth exercise all His attributes at His own will; they are at His
command; they are not passions nor perturbations in His mind,
though they transport us. When I would 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 us that all is as He wills it to be.'
And now, to come still closer home, let us look for a moment or
two at some of our own ruling and tyrannising passions. And let us
look first at 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, not only has self-love the largest place of any of the passions of
our hearts, but it is out of self-love that all our other evil passions
spring. It is out of this parent passion that all the poisonous brood of
our other evil passions are born. The whole fall and ruin and misery of
our 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 of God
and of the love of man also. We naturally now love nothing and no one
but ourselves. And as long as self-love is in the ascendant in our
hearts, all the passions that are awakened in us by our self-love will be
selfish with its selfishness, inhumane with its inhumanity, and
ungodly with its ungodliness. And it is to kill and extirpate our so
passionate self-love that is the end and aim of all God's dealings with
us in this world. All that God is doing with us and for us in providence
and in grace, in the world and in the church, - it is all to cure us of this
deadly 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 no
better proof of the truth of what is now said than just this, that we do
not like it and will not have it. Self-love will not let us listen to the
truth about ourselves; it puts us in a passion both against the truth
and against him who tells the truth, as the history of the truth
abundantly testifies. Yes, your indignant protest is quite true. Self-love
has her divine rights, - no doubt she has. But you are not commanded
to attend to them. Your self-love will look after herself. She will
manage to have her full share of what is right and proper for any
passion to possess even after she cries out that she is trampled upon
and despoiled. My brethren, till you begin to crucify yourselves and to
pluck up your self-love by the roots, you will never know what a cruel
and hopeless task the Christian life is—I do not say the Christian
profession. Nor, on the other hand, will you ever discover what a noble task it is - what a divine task and how divinely assisted and divinely
recompensed. You will not know what a kennel of hell-hounds your
own heart is till you have long sought to enter it and cleanse it out.
And after you have done your utmost, and your best, death will hurry
you away from your but half-accomplished task. Only, in that case you
will be able to die in the hope that what is impossible with man is
possible with God, 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 your everlasting deliverance from all sinful self-
love. And if self-love is the fruitful mother of all our passions, then
sensuality is surely her eldest son. Indeed, so shallow are we, and so
shallow are our words, that when we speak of sinful passion most
men instantly think of sensuality. There are so many seductive things
that appeal to our appetites, and our appetites are so easily awakened,
and are so imperious when they are awakened, that when passion is
spoken about, 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
some time of our life have felt the bondage and degradation of the
senses. Passion in the Interpreter's House had soon nothing left but
rags. And in this house to-night there are many men whose
consciences and hearts and characters are all in such rags from
sensual sin, that when the Scriptures speak of uncleanness, or rags, or
corruption, their thoughts flee at once to sensual sin and its
conscience-rending results. Cease from sensuality, said Cicero, for if
once you give your minds up to sensuality, you will never be able to
think of anything else.
Ambition, emulation, and envy are the leading members of a
whole prolific family of satanic passions in the human heart. Indeed,
these passions, taken along with their kindred passions of hatred and
ill-will, are, in our Lord's words, the very lusts of the devil himself. The
Jews hated our Lord the more for what He said about these detestable
passions, but His own disciples love Him only the more that He so well
knows the evil affections of their hearts, and so well describes and
denounces them. Anybody can denounce sensual sin, and everybody
will understand and approve. But spiritual sin, - ambition and
emulation and envy and ill-will - these things are more easy to
denounce than they are to detect and describe, 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 you begin to cast them
out. What an utterly and abominably evil passion is envy which is
awakened not by bad things but by the best things! That another
man's talents, attainments, praises, rewards should kindle it, and that
the blame, the depreciation, the hurt that another man suffers should
satisfy it, - what a piece of very hell must that be in the human heart!
What more do we need than just a little envy in our hearts to make us
prostrate penitents before God and man all our days? What more
doctrine, argument, proof, authority, persuasion should a sane man
need beyond a little envy in his heart at his best friend to make him an
evangelical believer and an evangelical preacher? How, in the name of
wonder, is it that men can be so ignorant of the plague of their own
hearts as to remain indifferent, and, much more, hostile, to the gospel
of love and holiness? Pride, also, - what a hateful and intolerable
passion is that! How stone-blind to his own state must that sinner be
whose heart is filled with pride, and how impossible it is for that man
to make any real progress in any kind of truth or goodness! And
resentment, - what a deep-seated, long-lived, and suicidal passion is
that! How it hunts down him it hates, and how surely it shuts the door
of salvation against him who harbours it! Forgive us our debts, the
resentful man says in his prayer, as we forgive our debtors. And
detraction, - 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 a reputation dies. Life and all its opportunities of doing good and
having good done to us is laid like a bag of treasure at our feet, but,
like the prodigal son in the Interpreter's House, with all those
passions raging in our own hearts at other men, and in other men's
hearts at us, we have soon nothing left us but rags. God be thanked for
every man here who sees 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, sensual and spiritual, they have left on other
people nothing but rags.
Now, from all this let us lay it to heart that our sanctification and
salvation lie in our mastery over all these and over many other
passions that 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 day also in God's strength grapples with, bridles, and tames his
own wild and ungodly passions. Be not deceived, my friends; he alone
is a saint of God who is a sanctified man; and his passions, - as they
are the spring of his actions, so they are the sphere and seat of his
sanctification. Be not 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 those students who have first to subdue their own
passions and then the passions of those who hear them to study
Jonathan Edwards' ethical and spiritual writings. Well, just at this
present point, to show you how well that great man practised what he
preached, let me read to you a few lines from his biographer: 'Few
men,' says Henry Rogers, 'ever attained a more complete mastery over
their passions than Jonathan Edwards did. This was partly owing to
the ascendency of his intellect; partly, and in a still greater degree, to
the elevation of his piety. For the subjugation of his passions he was
no doubt very greatly indebted to the prodigious superiority of his
reason. Such was the commanding attitude his reason assumed, and
such the tremendous power with which it controlled the whole man,
that any insurrection among his senses was hopeless; they had their
tenure only by doing fealty and homage to his intellect. Those other
and more dangerous enemies, because more subtle and more
spiritual, such as pride, vanity, wrath, and envy, which lurk in the
inmost recesses of our nature, and some of which have such affinities
for a genius like that of Edwards, yield not to such exorcism. Such
more powerful kind of demons go not forth but by prayer and fasting;
to their complete mortification, therefore, Edwards brought incessant
watchfulness and devotion; and seldom, assuredly, have they been
more nearly expelled from the bosom of a depraved intelligence.' We
shall be in the best company, both intellectually and spiritually, if we
work out our own salvation among the 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 register our growth in grace
best by watching the effect of outward temptations upon our still
sinful and but half-sanctified hearts. And among much to be humbled
for, and much to make us fear and tremble for the issue, we shall, from
time to time, have a good conscience and a holy and humble joy that this passion and that is at last showing some signs of crucifixion and
mortification. And thus that death to sin shall gradually set in which
shall issue at last in an everlasting life unto holiness.
'Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean:
from all your filthiness, and from all your idols will I cleanse you. A
new heart 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 clothe
thee with change of raiment. In that day there shall be a fountain
opened to the house of David, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for
sin and for uncleanness . . . Bring forth the best robe and put it upon
him, for this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is
found . . . What are these that are arrayed in white robes, and whence
came they? These are they which came out of great tribulation, and
have washed 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 the hand, 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 the other Patience. Passion seemed to be much
discontent, but Patience was very quiet. Then Christian asked, What is
the reason of the discontent of Passion? The interpreter answered,
The governor of them would have him stay for his best things till the
beginning of the next year; but he will have all now. But Patience is
willing to wait.'
Passion and Patience, like Esau and Jacob, are twin-brothers. And
their names, like their natures, spring up from the same root.
'Patience,' says Crabb in his English Synonyms, 'comes from the active
participle to suffer; while passion comes from the passive participle of
the same verb; and hence the difference between the two names.
Patience signifies suffering from an active principle, a determination
to suffer; while passion signifies what is suffered from want of power
to prevent the suffering. Patience, therefore, is always taken in a good
sense, and Passion always in a bad sense.' So far this excellent
etymologist. This is, therefore, another case of blessing and cursing
proceeding out of the same mouth, and of the same fountain sending
forth at the same place both sweet water and bitter.
Our Lord tells us in this striking text that our very souls by reason
of sin are not our own. He tells us that we have lost hold of our souls
before we have as yet come to know that we have souls. We only
discover that 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 that it 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's patience, and our Lord knew that to His cost. But that is
not His point with us to-night. His sole point with each one of us to-
night is our personal part in the conquest and redemption of our sin-
enslaved souls.
He who has redeemed our souls with His own blood tells us with
all plainness of speech, that His blood will be shed in vain, as far as we
are 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 we
think of it or will believe it, in His sight every trial, temptation,
provocation, insult, injury, and all kinds and all degrees of pain and
suffering, are all so many divinely appointed opportunities afforded us
for the reconquest and recovery of our souls. Sometimes faith is
summoned into the battle-field, sometimes hope, sometimes self-
denial, sometimes prayer, sometimes one grace and sometimes
another; but as with the sound of a trumpet the Captain of our
salvation here summons Patience to the forefront of the fight.
To begin with, how much impatience we are all from time to time
guilty of in our family life. Among the very foundations of our family
life how much impatience the husband often exhibits toward the wife,
and the wife toward her husband. Patience is the very last grace they
look forward to having any need of when they are still dreaming about
their married life; but, in too many cases, they have not well entered
on that life, when they find that they need no grace of God so much as
just patience, if the yoke of their new life is not to gall them beyond
endurance. However many good qualities of mind and heart and
character any husband or wife may have, no human being is perfect,
and most of us are very far from being perfect. When therefore, we are
closely and indissolubly joined to another life and another will, it is no
wonder that sometimes the ill-fitting yoke eats into a lifelong sore. We
have all many defects in our manners, in our habits, and in our
constitutional ways of thinking and speaking and acting, - defects that
tempt those who live nearest us to fall into annoyances with us that
sometimes deepen into dislike, and even positive disgust, till it has
been seen, in some extreme cases, that home-life has become a very
prison-house, in which the impatient prisoner chafes and jibs and
strikes out as he does nowhere else. Now, when any unhappy man or
woman wakens up to discover how different life is now to be from
what it once promised to become, let them know that all their past
blindness, and precipitancy, and all the painful 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 a
conquest of your adverse lot, and of your souls to the bargain. Say to
yourselves, therefore, that perfection, faultlessness, and absolute satisfaction are not to be found in this world. And say also that since
you have not brought perfection to your side of the house any more
than your partner has to his side, you are not so foolish as to expect
perfection in return for such imperfection. You have your own share of
what causes fireside silence, aversion, disappointment, and dislike;
and, with God's help, say that you will patiently submit to what may
not now be mended. And then, the sterner the battle the nobler will
the victory be; and the lonelier the fight, the more honour to him who
flinches not from it. In your patience possess ye your souls.
What a beautiful, instructive, and even impressive sight it is to see
a nurse patiently cherishing her children! How she has her eye and
her heart at all their times upon them, till she never has any need to
lay her 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
cheats their little hours of temptation, and tides them over the rough
places that her eye sees lying like sunken rocks before her little ship!
How skilfully she stills and heals their impulsive little passions by her
sudden and absorbing surprise at some miracle in a picture-book, or
some astonishing sight under her window! She has a thousand
occupations also for her children, and each of them with a touch of
enterprise and adventure and benevolence in it. She is so full of
patience herself, that the little gusts of passion are soon over in her
presence, and the sunshine is soon back brighter than ever in her little
paradise. And, over and above her children rising up and calling her
blessed, what wounds she escapes in her own heart and memory by
keeping her patient hands from ever wounding her children! What
peace she keeps in the house, just by having peace always within
herself! Paul can find no better figure wherewith to set forth God's
marvellous patience with Israel during her fretful childhood in the
wilderness, than just that of such a nurse among her provoking
children. And we see the deep hold that same touching and instructive
sight had taken of the apostle's heart as he returns to it again to the
Thessalonians: 'We were gentle among you, even as a nurse
cherisheth her children. So, being affectionately desirous of you, we
were willing to have imparted unto you, not the gospel of God only,
but also our own souls, because ye were dear unto us.' What a school of divine patience is every man's own family at home if he only were
teachable, observant, and obedient!
Clever, quick-witted, and, themselves, much-gifted men, are
terribly intolerant of slow and stupid men, as they call them. But the
many-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 from
Whom he has his many gifts, and why it is that his despised neighbour
has so 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? Your
cleverness has misled you and has hitherto done you far more evil
than good. You bear yourself among ordinary men, among less men
than yourself, as if you had added all these cubits to your own stature.
You ride over us as if you had already given in your account, and had
heard it said, Take the one talent from them and give it to this my ten-
talented servant. You seem to have set it down to your side of the
great account, that you had such a good start in talent, and that your
fine mind had so many tutors and governors all devoting themselves
to your advancement. And you conduct yourself to us as if the
Righteous Judge had cast us away from His presence, because we were
not found among the wise and mighty of this world. The truth is, that
the whole world is on a wholly wrong tack in its praise and in its
blame. We praise the man of great gifts, and we blame the man of
small gifts, completely forgetful that in so doing we give men the
praise that belongs to God, and lay on men the blame, which, if there is
any blame in the matter, ought to be laid elsewhere. Learn and lay to
heart, my richly-gifted brethren, to be patient with all men, but
especially to be patient with all stupid, slow-witted, ungifted, God-
impoverished men. Do not add your insults and your ill-usage to the
low estate of those on whom, in the meantime, God's hand lies so cold
and so straitened. For who maketh thee to differ from another? and
what hast thou that thou didst not receive? Now, if thou didst 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 have no
patience with your slow-witted servant.
'Is patient with the bad' is one of the tributes of praise that is paid
in the fine paraphrase to that heart that is full of the same love that is
in God. A patient love to the unjust and the evil is one of the attributes and manifestations of the divine nature, as that nature is seen both in
God and in all genuinely godly men. And, indeed, in no other thing is
the divine nature so surely seen in any man as just in his love to and
his patience with bad men. He schools and exercises himself every day
to be patient and good to other men as God has been to him. He
remembers 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 to Himself 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 of his impatience and passion toward them, and
has more pitied than blamed them, even when their evil was done
against himself. Let God judge, and if it must be, condemn that bad
man. But I am too bad myself to cast a stone at the worst and most
injurious of men. If we so much pity ourselves for our sinful lot, if we
have so much compassion on ourselves because of our inherited and
unavoidable estate of sin and misery, why do we not share our pity
and our compassion with those miserable men who are in an even
worse estate than our own? At any rate, I must not judge them lest 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 I
grudgingly forgive, but ungrudgingly to seventy times seven. For with
what 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.'
And then, most difficult and most dangerous, but most necessary
of all patience, we must learn how to be patient with ourselves. Every
day we hear of miserable men rushing upon death because they can
no longer endure themselves and the things they have brought on
themselves. And there are moral suicides who cast off the faith and
the hope and the endurance of a Christian man because they are so
evil and have lived such an evil life. We speak of patience with bad
men, but there is no man so bad, there is no man among all our
enemies who has at all hurt us like that man who is within ourselves.
And to bear patiently what we have brought 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 and uncomplainingly, - to
acquiesce humbly in the discovery that all this was always in our
hearts, and still is in our hearts - what humility, what patience, what
compassion and pity for ourselves must all that call forth! The wise
nurse is patient with her passionate, greedy, untidy, disobedient child.
She does not cast it out of doors, she does not run and leave it, she
does not kill it because all these things have been and still are in its
sad little heart. Her power for good with such a child lies just in her
pity, in her compassion, and in her patience with her child. And the
child that is in all of us is to be treated in the same patient, hopeful,
believing, forgiving, divine way. We should all be with ourselves as
God is with us. He knoweth our frame. He remembereth that we are
dust. He shows all patience toward us. He does not look for great
things from us. He does not break the bruised reed, nor quench the
smoking flax. He shall not fail nor be discouraged till He have set
judgment in the earth. And so shall not we.
And, then, - it is a sufficiently startling thing to say, but - we must
learn to be patient with God also. All our patience, and all the
exercises of it, if we think aright about it, all run up in the long-run
into patience with God. But there are some exercises of patience that
have to do directly and immediately with God and with God alone.
When any 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 being in God; then everything that in any way affects him is looked
on by him as come to him from God. Absolutely, all things. The very
weather that everybody is so atheistic about, the climate, the soil he
labours, the rain, the winter's cold and the summer's heat, - true piety
sees all these things as God's things, and sees God's immediate will in
the disposition and dispensation of them all. He feels the
untameableness of his tongue in the indecent talk that goes on
everlastingly about the weather. All these things may be without God
to other men, as they once were to him also, but you will find that the
truly and the intelligently devout man no longer allows himself in such unbecoming speech. For, though he cannot trace God's hand in all
the changes of the seasons, in heat and cold, in sunshine and snow, yet
he is as sure that God's wisdom and will are there as that Scripture is
true and the Scripture-taught heart.
'Great is our Lord, and His understanding is infinite. Who
covereth the heavens with clouds, and prepareth rain for the earth,
and maketh the grass to grow upon the mountains. He giveth snow
like wool; He scattereth the hoarfrost like ashes; He casteth forth His
ice like morsels. Who can stand before his cold?' Here is the patience
and the faith of the saints. Here are they that keep the commandments
of God and the faith of Jesus Christ. And, then, when through rain or
frost or fire, when out of any terror by night or arrow that flieth by
day, any calamity comes on the man who is thus 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 and not also receive evil?' By far
the best thing I have ever read on this subject, and I have read it a
thousand times since I first read it as a student, is Dr. Thomas
Goodwin's Patience and its Perfect Work. That noble treatise had its
origin in the great fire of London in 1666. The learned President of
Magdalen College lost the half of his library, five hundred pounds
worth of the best books, in that terrible fire. And his son tells us he
had often heard his father say that in the loss of his not-to-be-replaced
books, God had struck him in a very sensible place. To lose 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 such a
man. I loved my books too well, said the great preacher, and God
rebuked me by this affliction. Let the students here read Goodwin's
costly treatise, and they will be the better prepared to meet such
calamities as the burning of their manse and their library, as also to
counsel and comfort their people when they shall lose their shops or
their 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 to great exercise of patience with the God of our salvation,
because it is His 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 our
conversion. 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
wait long for it. This is not our rest. We are called to be pilgrims and
strangers for a season with God upon the earth. We are told to endure
to the end. It is to be through faith and patience that we, with our
fathers, shall at last inherit the promises. Holiness is not a Jonah's
gourd. It does not come up in a night, and it does not perish in a night.
Holiness is the Divine nature, and it takes a lifetime to make us
partakers of it. But, then, if the time is long the thing is sure. Let us,
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 of the discontent of Passion? The Interpreter answered,
The governor of them would have him stay for his best things till the
beginning of the next year; but he will have them all now. But Patience
is willing to wait.'
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
fast asleep with fetters on their heels on the upward side of the
Interpreter's House, and even on the upward side of the cross and the
sepulchre. We would have looked for those three miserable men
somewhere in 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 lay down his Pilgrim's Progress on any abstract theory, or on any
easy and pleasant presupposition, of the Christian life. He constructed
his so lifelike book out of his own experiences as a Christian man, as
well as out of all he had learned as a Christian minister. And in nothing
is Bunyan's power of observation, deep insight, and firm hold of fact
better seen than just in the way he names and places the various
people of the pilgrimage. Long after he had been at the Cross of Christ
himself, and had seen with his own eyes all the significant rooms in
the Interpreter's House, Bunyan had often to confess that the fetters of
evil habit, unholy affection, 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 not alone in the temptations and the dangers and the still-abiding
bondage to sin that had so surprised himself after he was so far on in
the Christian life. It was the greatest sorrow of his heart, he tells us in
a powerful passage in his Grace Abounding, that so many of his
spiritual children broke down and came short in the arduous and
perilous way in which he had so hopefully started them. 'If any of
those who were awakened by my ministry did after that fall back, as
sometimes too many did, I can truly say 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 may speak it without an offence to
the Lord, nothing hath gone so near me as that, unless it was the fear
of the salvation of my own soul. I have counted as if I had goodly
buildings and lordships in those places where my children were born;
my heart has been so wrapped up in this excellent work that I counted
myself more blessed and honoured of God by this than if He had made
me the emperor of the Christian world, or the lord of all the glory of
the earth without it.' And I have no doubt that we have here the three
things that above everything else bereft Bunyan of so many of his spiritual children personified and then laid down by the heels in
Simple, Sloth, and Presumption.
SIMPLE
Let us shake up Simple first and ask him what it was that laid him
so soon and in such a plight and in such company in this bottom. It
was not that which from his name we might at first think it was. It was
not the weakness of his intellects, nor his youth, nor his inexperience.
There is danger enough, no doubt, in all these things if they are not
carefully attended to, but none of all these things in themselves, nor
all of them taken together, will lay any pilgrim by the heels. There
must be more than mere and pure simplicity. No blame attaches to a
simple mind, much less to an artless and an open heart. We do not
blame such a man even when we pity him. We take him, if he will let
us, under our care, or we put him under better care, but we do not
anticipate any immediate ill to him so long as he remains simple in
mind, untainted in heart, and willing to learn. But, then, unless he is
better watched over than any young man or young woman can well be
in this world, that simplicity and child-likeness and inexperience of
his may soon become a fatal snare to him. 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 abroad whose endeavour is to
waylay, mislead, entrap, and corrupt the simple-minded and the
inexperienced, that it is next to impossible that any youth or maiden
shall long remain in this world both simple and safe also. My son, says
the Wise Man, keep my words, and lay up my commandments with
thee. For at the window of my house I looked through my casement,
and beheld among the simple ones, I discerned among the youths, a
young man void of understanding; - and so on, - till a dart strike
through his liver, and he goeth as an ox to the slaughter. And so, too
often in our own land, the maiden in her simplicity also opens her ear
to the promises and vows and oaths of the flatterer, till she loses both
her simplicity and her soul, and lies buried in that same bottom beside
Sloth and Presumption.
It is not so much his small mind and his weak understanding that
is the fatal danger of their possessor, it is his imbecile way of treating
his small 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's class with all the baits and traps we can set for him. Where does
he spend his Sabbath-day and week-day evenings? We cannot find out
until we hear some distressing thing about him, that, ten to one, he
would have escaped had he been a reader of good books, or a student
with us, say, of Dante and Bunyan and Rutherford, and a companion of
those young men and young women who talk about and follow such
intellectual tastes and pursuits. Now, if you are such a young man or
young woman as that, or such an old man or old woman, you will not
be able to understand what in the world Bunyan can mean by saying
that he saw you in his dream fast asleep in a bottom with irons on
your heels. No; for to understand the Pilgrim's Progress, beyond a
nursery and five-year-old understanding of it, you must have worked
and studied and suffered your way out of your mental and spiritual
imbecility. You must have for years attended to what is taught from
the pulpit and the desk, and, alongside of that, you must have made a
sobering and solemnising application of it all to your own heart. And
then you would have seen and felt that the heels of your mind and of
your heart are only too firmly fettered with the irons of ignorance and
inexperience and self-complacency. But as it is, if you would 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, the
chains had been taken off the heels of this sleeping fool and had been
put round his neck.
SLOTH
Sloth had a far better head than Simple had; but what of that
when he made no better use of it? There are many able men who lie
all their days in a sad bottom with the irons of indolence and
inefficiency on their heels. We often envy them their abilities, and say
about them, What might they not have done for themselves and for us
had they only worked hard? Just as we are surprised to see other men
away above us on the mountain top, not because they have better
abilities than we have, but because they tore the fetters of sloth out of
their soft flesh and set themselves down doggedly to their work. And
the same sloth that starves and fetters the mind at the same time casts
the conscience and the heart into a deep sleep. I often wonder as I go on working among you, if you ever attach any meaning or make any
application to yourselves of all those commands and counsels of
which the Scriptures are full, - to be up and doing, to watch and pray,
to watch and be sober, to fight the good fight of faith, to hold the fort,
to rise early, and even by night, and to endure unto death, and never
for one moment to be found off your guard. Do you attach any real
meaning to these examples of the psalmists, to these continual
commands and examples of Christ, and to these urgent counsels of his
apostles? Do you? Against whom and against what do you thus
campaign and fight? For fear of whom or of what do you thus watch?
What fort do you hold? What occupies your thoughts in night-watches,
and what inspires and compels your early prayers? It is your
stupefying life of spiritual sloth that makes it impossible for you to
answer these simple and superficial questions. Sloth is not the word
for it. Let them give the right word to insanity like that who sleep and
soak in sinful sloth no longer.
We have all enemies in our own souls that never sleep, whatever
we may do. There are no irons on their heels. They never
procrastinate. They never say to their master, A little more slumber.
Now, could you name any hateful enemy entrenched in your own
heart, of which you have of yourself said far more than that? And, if so,
what have you done, what are you at this moment doing, to cast that
enemy out? Have you any armour on, any weapons of offence and
precision, against that enemy? And what success and what defeat have
you had in unearthing and casting out that enemy? What fort do you
hold? On what virtue, on what grace are you posted by your Lord to
keep for yourself and for Him? And with what cost of meat and drink
and sleep and amusement do you lose it or keep it for Him? Alexander
used to leave his tent at midnight and go round the camp, 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
secret and exact prayer if we would only importunately and
perseveringly employ it. But there is an utterly unaccountable
restraint of secret and particularising prayer in all of us. There is a
soaking, stupefying sloth, that so fills our hearts that we forget and
neglect the immense concession and privilege we have afforded us in secret prayer. Our sloth and stupidity in prayer is surely the last proof
of our fall and of the misery 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 hath no bottom, - no language of this life can
adequately describe the besottedness of that man who lies with irons
on his heels between Simple and Presumption.
PRESUMPTION
The greatest theologian of the Roman Catholic Church has made
an induction and classification of sins that has often been borrowed
by our Protestant and Puritan divines. His classification is made, as
will be seen, on an ascending scale of guilt and aggravation. In the
world of sin, he says, there are, first, sins of ignorance; next, there are
sins of infirmity; and then, at the top, there are sins of presumption.
And this, it will be remembered, was the Psalmist's inventory and
estimate of sins also. His last and his most earnest prayer was, that he
might be kept back from all presumptuous sin. Now you know quite
well, without any explanation, what presumption is. Don't presume,
you say, with rising and scarce controlled anger. Don't presume too far.
Take care, you say, with your heart beating so high that you can
scarcely command it, take care lest you go too far. And the word of God
feels and speaks about presumptuous sin very much as you do
yourself. Now, what gave this third man who lay in fetters a little
beyond the cross the name of Presumption was just this, that he had
been at the cross with his past sin, and had left the cross to commit
the same sin at the first opportunity. Presumption presumed upon his
pardon. He presumed upon the abounding grace of God. He presumed
upon the blood of Christ. He was so high on the Atonement, that he
held that the gospel was not sufficiently preached to him, unless not
past sin only and present, but also all future sin was atoned for on the
tree before it was committed. There is a reprobate in Dante, who, all
the time he was repenting, had his eye on his next opportunity. Now,
our Presumption was like that. He presumed on his youth, on his
temptations, on his opportunities, and especially on his future
reformation and the permanence and the freeness of the gospel offer.
When he was in the Interpreter's House he did not hear what the
Interpreter was saying, the blood was roaring so through his veins. His eyes were so full of other images that he did not see the man in the
iron cage, nor the spider on the wall, nor the fire fed secretly. He had
no more intention of keeping always to the way that was as straight as
a rule could make it, than he had of cutting off both his hands and
plucking out both his eyes. When the three shining ones stripped him
of his rags and clothed him with change of raiment, he had no more
intention of keeping his garments clean than he had of flying straight
up to heaven on the spot. Now, let each man name to himself what that
is in which he intentionally, deliberately, and by foresight and
forethought sins. Have you named it? Well, it was for that that this
reprobate was laid by the heels on the immediately hither side of the
cross and the sepulchre. Not that the iron might not have been taken
off his heels again on certain conditions, even after it was on; but, even
so, he would never have been the same man again that he was before
his presumptuous sin. You will easily know a man who has committed
much presumptuous sin, - that is to say, if you have any eye for a
sinner. I think I would find him out if I heard him pray once, or preach
once, or even select a psalm for public or for family worship; even if I
heard him say grace at a dinner-table, or reprove his son, or scold his
servant. Presumptuous sin has so much of the venom and essence of
sin in it that, forgiven or unforgiven, even a little of it never leaves the
sinner as it found him. Even if his fetters are knocked off, there is
always a piece of the poisonous iron left in his flesh; there is always a
fang of his fetters left in the broken bone. The presumptuous saint will
always be detected by the way he 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 comes to its sharpest sting and to its deadliest venom when it
is hatched up under gospel light. The very light of nature itself greatly
aggravates some of our sins. The light of our early education greatly
aggravates others of our sins. But nothing wounds our conscience and
then exasperates the wound like a past experience of the same sin,
and, especially, an experience of the grace of God in forgiving that sin.
Had we found young Presumption in his irons before his conversion,
we would have been afraid enough at the sight. Had we found him laid
by the heels after his first uncleanness, it would have made us
shudder for ourselves.
But we are horrified and speechless as we see him apprehended
and laid in irons on the very night of his first communion, and with
the wine scarcely dry on his unclean lips. Augustine postponed his
baptism till he should have his fill of sin, and till he should no longer
return to sin like a dog to his vomit. Now, next Sabbath is our
communion day in this congregation. Let us therefore this week
examine ourselves. And if we must sin as long as we are in this world,
let it henceforth be the sin of ignorance and of infirmity.
So the three reprobates lay down to sleep again, and Christian as
he left that 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,
and again 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 was fenced on either side with a wall, and that wall is called
Salvation. Up this way, therefore, did burdened Christian run, but not
without great difficulty, because of the load on his back.' In the
corresponding paragraph in Grace Abounding, our author says,
speaking about himself: 'But forasmuch as the passage was wonderful
narrow, even so narrow that I could not but with great difficulty enter
in thereat, it showed me that none could enter into life but those that
were in downright earnest, and unless also they left this wicked world
behind them; for here was only room for body and soul, but not for
body and soul and sin.' 'He ran thus till he came to a place somewhat
ascending, and upon that place stood a cross, and a little below in the
bottom a sepulchre. So I saw in my dream, that just as Christian came
up with this cross, his burden loosed from 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, where it fell in, and I saw it no
more.' Turning again to the Grace Abounding, we read in the 115th
paragraph: 'I remember that one day as I was travelling into the
country and musing on the wickedness and blasphemy of my heart,
and considering of the enmity that was in me to God, that scripture
came into my mind, He hath made peace by the blood of His Cross. By
which I was made to see both again and again and again that day that
God and my soul were friends by that blood: yea, I saw that the justice
of God and my sinful soul could embrace and kiss each other through
that blood. That was a good day to me; I hope I shall not forget it. I
thought I could have spoken of His love and of His mercy to me that
day to the very crows that sat upon the ploughed lands before me had
they been capable to have understood me. Wherefore I said in my soul
with much gladness, Well, I would I had a pen and ink here and I
would write this down before I go any farther, for surely I will not
forget this forty years hence.'
From all this we learn that the way to the Celestial City lies within
high and close fencing walls. There is not room for many pilgrims to walk abreast in that way; indeed, there is seldom room for two. There
are some parts of the way where two or even three pilgrims can for a
time walk and converse together, but for the most part the path is
distressingly lonely. The way is so fenced up also that a pilgrim cannot
so much as look either to the right hand or the left. Indeed, it is one of
the laws of that road that no man is to attempt to look except straight
on before him. But then there is this compensation for the solitude
and stringency of the way that the wall that so encloses it is Salvation.
And Salvation is such a wall that it is companionship and prospect
enough of itself. Dante saw a long reach of this same wall running
round the bottom of the mount that cleanses him who climbs it, - a
long stretch of such sculptured beauty, that it arrested him and
instructed him and delighted him beyond his power sufficiently to
praise it. And thus, that being so, burdened and bowed down to the
earth as our pilgrim was, he was on the sure way, sooner or later, to
deliverance. Somewhere and sometime and somehow on that steep
and high fenced way deliverance was sure to come. And, then, as to the
burdened man himself. His name was once Graceless, but his name is
Graceless no longer. No graceless man runs long between these close
and cramping-up walls; and, especially, no graceless man has that
burden long on his back. That is not Graceless any longer who is
leaving the Interpreter's House for the fenced way; that is Christian,
and as long as he remains Christian, the closeness 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 and keeping close within the fenced-up way, our pilgrim came
at last to a cross. And a perfect miracle immediately took place in that
somewhat ascending ground. For scarcely had Christian set his eyes
on the cross, when, without his pulling at it, or pushing it, or even at
that moment thinking 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 an open sepulchre. The application of all that is surely self-
evident. For our way in a holy life is always closely fenced up. It is far
oftener a lonely way than otherwise. And the steepness, sternness,
and loneliness of our way are all aggravated by the remembrance of
our past sins and follies. They still, 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 house and our face to heaven, sooner or
later we too shall surely come to the cross. And then, either suddenly,
or after a long agony, our burden also shall be taken off our back and
shut down into Christ's sepulchre. And I saw it no more, says the
dreamer. He does not say that its owner saw it no 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
whose progress to the Celestial City we are at present occupied, he
was standing in a certain place clothed with rags and with a burden
on his back. After a long journey with him, we have just seen his
burden taken off his back, and it is only after his burden is off and a
Shining One has said to him, Thy sins be forgiven, that a second
Shining One comes and 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, and why is he still kept so ragged and so
miserable and he so far on in the pilgrim's path? Surely, it will be said,
John Bunyan was dreaming indeed when he kept a truly converted
man, a confessedly true and sincere Christian, so long in bonds and in
rags. Well, as to his rags: filthy rags 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 calls his own
and Israel's sins filthy rags, but Isaiah is very bold, and calls their very
righteousnesses by that opprobrious name. Had that bold prophet
said that all his and all his people's unrighteousnesses were filthy
rags, all Israel would have subscribed to that. There was no man so
brutish as not to admit that. But as long as they had any sense of truth
and any self-respect, multitudes of Isaiah's first hearers and readers
would resent what he so rudely said of their righteousnesses. On the
other hand, the prophet's terrible discovery and comparison, just like
our dreamer's dramatic distribution of Christian experience, was, to a
certainty, an immense consolation to many men in Israel in his day.
They gathered round Isaiah because, but for him and his
evangelical ministry, they would have been alone in their despair. To
them Isaiah's ministry was a house of refuge, and the prophet himself
a veritable tower of strength. They felt they were not alone so long as
Isaiah dwelt in the same city with them. And thus, whatever he might be to others, he was God's very prophet to them as his daily prayers in
the temple both cast them down and lifted them up. 'Oh that Thou
wouldst rend the heavens and come down . . . But we are all as an
unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags, and our
iniquities like the wind have taken us away.' Thousands in Israel found
in these terrible words a door of hope, a sense of fellowship, and a call
to trust and thanksgiving. And tens of thousands have found the same
help and consolation out of what have seemed to others the very
darkest and most perplexing pages of the Pilgrim's Progress and the
Grace Abounding.
'It made me greatly ashamed,' says Hopeful, 'of the vileness of my
former life, and confounded me with the sense of mine own ignorance,
for there never came into mine heart before now that showed me so
by contrast the beauty of the Lord Jesus. My own vileness and
nakedness made me love a holy life. Yea, I thought that had I now a
thousand gallons of blood in my body, I could spill it all for the sake of
the Lord Jesus.' And if you, my brother, far on in the way of Salvation,
still think sometimes that, 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 page of his seraphic journal: 'How sweet it is to love
God and to have a heart all for God! Yes; but a voice answered me, You
are not all for God, you are not an angel. To which my whole soul
replied, I as sincerely desire to love and glorify God as any angel in
heaven. But you are filthy, and not fit for heaven. When hereupon
there instantly appeared above me and spread over me the blessed
robes of Christ's righteousness which I could not but exult and
triumph in. And then I knew that I should be as active as an angel in
heaven, and should then be for ever stripped of my filthy garments
and clothed with spotless raiment.' Let me die the death of David
Brainerd, and let my latter end be like his!
The third Shining One then came forward and set a mark on the
forehead of this 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 the foreheads of the children of Israel when the Lord took
them into covenant with Himself at the Passover in the wilderness. It
was the same distinguishing mark also that the man with the
slaughter-weapon in his hand first set upon the foreheads of the men who sighed and cried for the abominations that were done in the
midst of Jerusalem. And it was the same glorious mark that John saw
in the foreheads of the hundred and forty and four thousand who
stood upon Mount Zion and sang a song that no man knew but those
men who had been redeemed from the earth by the blood of the
Lamb. The mark was set for propriety and for ornament and for
beauty. It was set upon his forehead so that all who looked on him
ever after might thus know to what company and what country he
belonged, and that this was not his rest, but that he had been called
and chosen to a heavenly inheritance. And, besides, it was no sooner
set upon his forehead than it greatly added to his dignity and his
comeliness. He had now the gravity and beauty of an angel; nay, the
beauty in his measure and the gravity of Goodwill at the gate himself.
And, then, as if that were not enough, the third Shining One also gave
him a roll with a seal upon it, which he was bidden look on as he ran,
and which he was to give in when he arrived at the Celestial Gate.
Now, what was that sealed roll but just the inward memory and record
of all this pilgrim's experiences of the grace of God from the day he set
out on pilgrimage down to that day when he stood unburdened of his
guilt, unclothed of his rags, and clothed upon with change of raiment?
The roll contained his own secret life, all sealed and shone in upon by
the light of God's countenance. The secret of the Lord with this pilgrim
was written within that roll, a secret that no man could read but he
himself alone. It was the same roll that this same Shining One gave to
Abraham, the first pilgrim and the father of all true pilgrims, after
Melchizedek, the priest of the Most High God, had brought forth bread