Part 4
and wine and had blessed that great believer. 'Fear not, Abram: I am
thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward.' And, again, after Abram
had lost his roll, like our pilgrim in the arbour, when he recovered it he
read thus in it: 'I am the Almighty God: walk before Me, and be thou
perfect. And I will make My covenant between Me and thee.' And
Abram fell on his face for joy. It was the same roll out of which the
Psalmist proposed to read a passage to all those 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 roll also 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 high priest Joshua also
had the same roll put into his hand, and that not only for his own
comfort, but to make him the comforter of God's afflicted people. For
after the Lord had plucked Joshua as a brand out of the fire, and had
made his iniquity to pass from him, and had clothed him with change
of raiment, and had set a fair mitre on his head, the Lord gave to
Joshua a sealed roll, the contents of which may be read to this day in
the book of the prophet Zechariah. Nay, more: 'Will you have me to
speak plainly?' says great Goodwin on this matter. 'Then, though our
Lord had the assurance of faith that He was the Son of God, for He
knew it out of the Scriptures by reading all the prophets, yet, to have it
sealed to Him with joy unspeakable and glorious, - this was deferred
to the time of His baptism. He was then anointed with the oil of
assurance and gladness in a more peculiar and transcendent manner.'
'In His baptism,' says Bengel, 'our Lord was magnificently enlightened.
He was previously the Son of God, and yet the power of the Divine
testimony to His Sonship at His baptism long affected Him in a lively
manner.' And we see our Lord reading His roll to assure and sustain
His heart when all outward acceptance and sustenance failed Him.
'There is One who beareth witness 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 Himself that 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 singing with such a roll as that in his
bosom. For, at that supreme moment he had that inward illumination
and assurance sealed on his heart that had so gladdened and
sustained so many prophets and psalmists and apostles and saints
before his day. And though, like Abraham and all the other saints who
ever had that noble roll put into their keeping, except Jesus Christ, he
often lost it, yet as often as he again recovered it, it brought back again
with it all his first joy and gladness.
But, as was said at the beginning, the Grace Abounding is the best
of all our commentaries on The Pilgrim's Progress. As thus here also:
'Now had I an evidence, as I thought, of my salvation from heaven,
with many golden seals thereon, all hanging in my sight. Now could I
remember this manifestation and that other discovery of grace with
comfort, and should often long and desire that the last day were come, that I might be for ever inflamed with the sight and joy of Him and
communion with Him whose head was crowned with thorns, whose
face was spit on, and body broken, and soul made an offering for my
sins. For whereas, before, I lay continually trembling at the mouth of
hell, now, methought, I was got so 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 die quickly, 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
not altogether to blame for that. Our parents were first to blame for
that, and then our teachers, and then our ministers. They made us say
our psalm and our catechism to them, and if we only said our sacred
lesson without stumbling, we were straightway rewarded with their
highest praise. They seldom took the trouble to make us understand
the things we said to them. They were more than content with our
correct repetition of the words. We were never taught either to read
or repeat with our eyes on the object. And we had come to our
manhood before we knew how to seek for the visual image that lies at
the root of all our words. And thus the ill-taught schoolboy became in
us the father of the confirmed formalist. The mischief of this neglect
still spreads through the whole of our life, but it is absolutely
disastrous in our religious life. Look at the religious formalist at family
worship with his household gathered round him all in his own image.
He would not on any account let his family break up any night without
the habitual duty. He has a severe method in his religious duties that
nothing is ever allowed to disarrange or in any way to interfere with.
As the hour strikes, the big Bible is brought out. He opens where he
left off last night, he reads the regulation chapter, he leads the singing
in the regulation psalm, and then, as from a book, he repeats his
regulation prayer. But he never says a word to show that he either
sees or feels what he reads, and his household break up without an
idea in their heads or an affection in their hearts. He comes to church
and goes through public worship in the same wooden way, and he sits
through the Lord's Table in the same formal and ceremonious manner.
He has eyes of glass and hands of wood, and a heart without either
blood or motion in it. His mind and his heart were destroyed in his
youth, and all his religion is a religion of rites and ceremonies without
sense or substance. 'Because I knew no better,' says Bunyan, '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 there should I sing
and say as others did. Withal, I was so overrun with the spirit of
superstition that I adored, and that with great devotion, even all
things, both the high place, priest, clerk, vestment, service, and what
else belonged to the church: counting all things holy that were therein contained. But all this time I was not sensible of the danger and 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, I never
thought of Christ, nor whether there was one or no.'
A formalist is not yet a hypocrite exactly, but he is ready now and
well on the way at any moment to become a hypocrite. As soon now as
some temptation shall come to him to make appear another and a
better man than he really is: when in some way it becomes his
advantage to seem to other people to be a spiritual man: when he
thinks he sees his way to some profit or praise by saying things and
doing things that are not true and natural to him, - then he will pass
on from being a bare and simple formalist, and will henceforth
become a hypocrite. He has never had any real possession or
experience of spiritual things amid all his formal observances of
religious duties, and he has little or no difficulty, therefore, in adding
another formality or two to his former life of unreality. And thus the
transition is easily made from a comparatively innocent and
unconscious formalist to a conscious and studied hypocrite.
'An hypocrite,' says Samuel Rutherford, 'is he who on the stage
represents a king when he is none, a beggar, an old man, a husband,
when he is really no such thing. To the Hebrews, they were faciales,
face-men; colorati, dyed men, red men, birds of many colours. You may
paint a man, you may paint a rose, you may paint a fire burning, but
you cannot paint a soul, or the smell of a rose, or the heat of a fire. And
it is hard to counterfeit spiritual graces, such as love to Christ, sincere
intending 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 spiritual
grace even to the best and most spiritually-minded of men; and as for
the true hypocrite, he never honestly attempts it. If he ever did
honestly and resolutely attempt it, he would at once in that pass out of
the ranks of the hypocrites altogether and pass over into a very
different category. Bunyan lets us see how a formalist and a hypocrite
and a Christian all respectively do when they come to a real difficulty.
The three pilgrims were all walking in the same path, and with their
faces for the time in the same direction. They had not held much
conference together since their first conversation, and as time goes
on, Christian has no more talk but with himself, and that sometimes sighingly, and sometimes more comfortably. When, all at once, the
three men come on the hill Difficulty. A severe act of self-denial has to
be done at this point 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. An outbreak of anger and wrath has to be kept under for hours
and days. A great injury, a scandalous case of ingratitude, has to be
forgiven and forgotten; in short, as Rutherford says, an impossible-to-
be-counterfeited spiritual grace has to be put into its severest and
sorest exercise; and the result was - what we know. Our pilgrim went
and drank of the spring that always runs at the bottom of the hill
Difficulty, and thus refreshed himself against that hill; while Formalist
took the one low road, and Hypocrisy the other, which led him into a
wide field full of dark mountains, where he stumbled and fell and rose
no more. When, after his visit to the spring, Christian began to go up
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 perfect
hypocrite out of a simple formalist. The perfect and finished hypocrite
is not your commonplace and vulgar scoundrel of the playwright and
the penny-novelist type; the finest hypocrite is a character their art
cannot touch. 'The worst of hypocrites,' Rutherford goes on to say, 'is
he who whitens himself till he deceives himself. It is strange that a
man hath such power over himself. But a man's heart may deceive his
heart, and he may persuade himself that he is godly and righteous
when he knows nothing about it.' 'Preaching in a certain place,' says
Boston, 'after supper the mistress of the house told me how I had
terrified God's people. This was by my doctrine of self-love, self-
righteousness, self-ends, and such like. She restricted hypocrites to
that sort that do all things to be seen of men, and harped much on this
- how can one be a hypocrite who hates hypocrisy in other people?
how can one be a hypocrite and not know it? All this led me to see the
need of such doctrine.' And if only to show you that this is not the
dismal doctrine of antediluvian Presbyterians only, Canon Mozley
says: 'The Pharisee did not know that he was a Pharisee; if he had
known it he would not have been a Pharisee. He does not know that
he is a hypocrite. The vulgar hypocrite knows that he is a hypocrite
because he deceives others, but the true Scripture hypocrite deceives
himself.' And the most subtle teacher of our century, or of any century,
has said: 'What is a hypocrite? We are apt to understand by a
hypocrite one who makes a profession of religion for secret ends
without practising what he professes; who is malevolent, covetous, or
profligate, while he assumes an outward sanctity in his words and
conduct, and who does so deliberately, deceiving others, and not at all
self-deceived. But this is not what our Saviour seems to have meant by
a hypocrite; nor were the Pharisees such. The Pharisees deceived
themselves as well as others. Indeed, it is not in human nature to
deceive others for any long time without in a measure deceiving
ourselves also. When they began, each in his turn, to deceive the
people, they were not at the moment self-deceived. But by degrees
they forgot that outward ceremonies avail nothing without inward
purity. They did not know themselves, and they unawares deceived
themselves as well as the people.' What a terrible light, as of the last
day itself, does all that cast upon the formalisms and the hypocrisies
of which our own religious life is full! And what a terrible light it casts
on those miserable men who are complete and finished in their self-
deception! For the complete and finished hypocrite is not he who
thinks that he is better than all other men; that is hopeless enough;
but the paragon of hypocrisy 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
reality and inwardness and spirituality in religion, you see him
intensely interested in, and day and night occupied with, the outside
things of religion, till nothing short of a miracle will open his eyes. See
him in the ministry, for instance, sweating at his sermons and in his
visiting, till you would almost think that he is the minister of whom
Paul prophesied, who should spend and be spent for the salvation of men's souls. But all the time, such is the hypocrisy that haunts the
ministerial calling, he is really and at bottom animated with ambition
for the praise of men only, and for the increase of his congregation. See
him, 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 for on earth than the man in the moon. What a penalty his
defence is and his support to a church of Christ, and what an incubus
his membership must be! Or, see him, again, making long speeches
and many prayers for the extension of the kingdom of Christ, and all
the time spending ten times more on wine or whisky or tobacco, or on
books or pictures or foreign travel, than he gives to the cause of home
or foreign missions. And so on, all through our hypocritical and self-
blinded life. Through such stages, and to such a finish, does the
formalist pass from his thoughtless and neglected youth to his
hardened, blinded, self-seeking life, spent in the ostensible service of
the church of Christ. If the light that is in such men be darkness, how
great is that darkness! We may all well shudder as we hear our Lord
saying to ministers and members and 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 the
salvation of our souls, is to know that we are hypocrites, and to know
also what that is in which we are most hypocritical. Well, there are
two absolutely infallible tests of a true hypocrite, - tests warranted to
unmask, expose, and condemn the most finished, refined, and even
evangelical hypocrite in this house to-night, or in all the world. By far
and away the best and swiftest is prayer. True prayer, that is. For here
again our inexpugnable hypocrisy comes in and leads us down to
perdition even in our prayers. There is nothing our Lord more bitterly
and more contemptuously assails the Pharisees for than just the
length, the loudness, the number, and the publicity of their prayers.
The truth is, public prayer, for the most part, is no true prayer at all. It
is at best an open homage paid to secret prayer. We make such
shipwrecks of devotion in public prayer, that if we have a shred of true
religion about us, we are glad to get home and to shut our door. We
preach in our public prayers. We make speeches on public men and on
public events in our public prayers. We see the reporters all the time in our public prayers. We do everything but pray in our public prayers.
And to get away alone, - what an escape that is from the temptations
and defeats of public prayer! No; public prayer is no test whatever of a
hypocrite. A hypocrite revels in public prayer. It is secret prayer that
finds him out. And even secret prayer will sometimes deceive us. We
are crushed down on our secret knees sometimes, by sheer shame
and the strength of conscience. Fear of exposure, fear of death and
hell, will sometimes make us shut our door. A flood of passing feeling
will sometimes make us pray 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 call upon God?' No, he will not. And it is just
here that the hypocrite and the true Christian best discover
themselves both to God and to themselves. The true Christian will, as
Job again says, pray in secret till 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 any more a hypocrite and to know the
infallible marks of such? Ask the key of your closet door. Ask the chair
at your bedside. Ask the watchman what you were doing and why
your light was in so long. Ask the birds of the air and the beasts of the
field and the crows on the ploughed lands after 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 of
ourselves. In His last analysis of the truly justified man and the truly
reprobate, our Lord made the deepest test to be their opinion of
themselves. 'God, I thank Thee that I am not as this publican,' said the
hypocrite. 'God be merciful to me a sinner,' said the true penitent. And
then this fine principle comes in here - not only to speed the sure
sanctification of a true Christian, but also, if he has skill and courage to
use it, for his assurance and comfort, - that the saintlier he becomes
and the riper for glory, the more he will beat his breast over what yet
abides within his breast. Yes; a man's secret opinion of himself is
almost a better test of his true spiritual state than even secret prayer.
But, then, these two are not competing and exclusive tests; they
always go together and are never found apart. And at the mouth of
these two witnesses every true hypocrite shall be condemned and
every true Christian justified.
Dr. Pusey says somewhere that the perfect hypocrite is the man
who has the truth of God in his mind, but is without the love of God in
his heart. 'Truth without love,' says that saintly scholar, 'makes a
finished Pharisee.' Now we Scottish and Free Church people believe
we have the truth, if any people on the face of the earth have it; and if
we have not love mixed with it, you see where and what we are. We
are called to display a banner because of the truth, but let love always
be our 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 of
doctrine and for purity of worship, when we protest against popery
and priestcraft, when we resist rationalism and infidelity, when we do
battle now for national religion, as we call it, and now for the freedom
of the church, let us do it all in love to all men, else we had better not
do it at all. If we cannot do it with clean and all-men-loving hearts, let
us leave 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 of truth and love accept our service or bless our souls, till we put
on the divine nature, and have our hearts and our mouths still more
full of love than 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 last because we loved the truth for some selfish or party
end, and hated and despised our brother, and believed all evil and
disbelieved all good concerning our brother. Truth without love makes
a hypocrite, says Dr. Pusey; and evangelical truth without evangelical
love makes an evangelical hypocrite, says Thomas Shepard. Only
where the whole truth is united to a heart full of love have we the
perfect New Testament Christian.
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 of should pull me to pieces. I, for one, shall never go back. To go
back is nothing but death; to go forward is fear of death and
everlasting life beyond it. I will yet go forward.' So Mistrust and
Timorous ran down the hill, and Christian went on his way. George
Offor says, in his notes on this passage, that civil despotism and
ecclesiastical tyranny so terrified many young converts in John
Bunyan's day, that multitudes turned back like Mistrust and Timorous;
while at the same time, many like Bunyan himself went forward and
for a time fell into the lion's mouth. Civil despotism and ecclesiastical
tyranny do not stand in our way as they stood in Bunyan's way - at
least, not in the same shape: but every age has its own lions, and every
Christian man has his own lions that neither civil despots nor
ecclesiastical tyrants know anything about.
Now, who or what is the lion in your way? Who or what is it that
fills you with such timorousness and mistrust, that you are almost
turning back from the way to life altogether? The fiercest of all our
lions is our own sin. When a man's own sin not only finds him out and
comes roaring after him, but when it dashes past him and gets into the
woods and thickets before him, and stands pawing and foaming on the
side of his way, that is a trial of faith and love and trust indeed.
Sometimes a man's past sins will fill all his future life with sleepless
apprehensions. He is never sure at what turn in his upward way he
may not suddenly run against some of them standing ready to rush
out upon him. And it needs no little quiet trust and humble-minded
resignation to carry a man through this slough and that bottom, up
this hill and down that valley, all the time with his life in his hand; and
yet at every turn, 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
me alone that I may speak, and let come on me what will. Wherefore
do I take 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 hypocrite shall not come before Him.' One false step, one stumble in
life, one error in judgment, one outbreak of an unbridled
temperament, one small sin, if it is even so much as a sin, of ignorance
or of infirmity, will sometimes not only greatly injure us at the time,
but, in some cases, will fill all our future life with trials and difficulties
and dangers. Many of us shall have all our days to face a future of
defeat, humiliation, impoverishment, and many hardships, that has
not come on us on account of any presumptuous transgression of
God's law so much as simply out of some combination of unfortunate
circumstances in which we may have only done our duty, but have not
done it in the most serpent-like way. And when we are made to suffer
unjustly or disproportionately all our days for our error of judgment
or our want of the wisdom of this world, or what not, we are sorely
tempted to be bitter and proud and resentful and unforgiving, and to
go back from duty and endurance and danger altogether. But we must
not. 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 pluck
safety henceforth out of the heart of the nettle danger. Yes, I made a
mistake. I did what I would not do now, and I must not be too proud to
say 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 reward is to come to me. The lion in my way is a lion of my own
rearing; and I must not turn my back on him, even if he should be let
loose to leap on me and rend me. I must pass under his paw and
through his teeth, if need be, to a life with him and beyond him of
humility and duty and quiet-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's
roar. Some saving grace that up till now we have been fatally lacking in
lies 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
best part 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
whose paw and from between whose teeth we must pluck and put on
that grace in which our salvation lies. Repentance and reformation lie
in the way of that lion; resignation also and humility; the crucifixion of our own will; the sacrifice of our own heart; in short, everything that
is still lacking but is indispensable to our salvation lies through that
den of lions. 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 the sufficient talent; another must now spend all his
remaining life in a place where he sees that anger and envy and
jealousy and malevolence will be his roaring lions daily seeking to
devour his soul. There is not a Christian man or woman in this house
whose salvation, worth being called a salvation, does not lie through
such a lion's thicket as that. Our Lord Himself was a roaring lion to
John the Baptist. For the Baptist's salvation lay not in his powerful
preaching, but in his being laid aside from all preaching; not in his
crowds increasing, but in his Successor's crowds increasing and his
decreasing. The Baptist was the greatest born of woman in that day,
not because he was a thundering preacher - any ordinary mother in
Israel might have been his mother in that: but to decrease sweetly and
to steal down quietly to perfect humility and self-oblivion, - that
salvation was reserved for the son of Elisabeth alone. I would not like
to say Who that is champing and pawing for your blood right 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 and
retreating men. Now, every true venture is made against risk and
uncertainty, against anxiety and danger and fear. And it is just this that
constitutes the nobleness and blessedness of faith. Faith sells all for
Christ. Faith risks all for eternal life. Faith faces all for salvation. When
it is at the worst, faith still says, Very well; even if there is no Celestial
City anywhere in the world, it is better to die still seeking it than to
live on in the City of Destruction. Even if there is no Jesus Christ, - I
have read about Him and heard about Him and pictured Him to
myself, till, say what you will, I shall die kissing and embracing that
Divine Image I have in my heart. Even if there is neither mercy-seat
nor intercession in heaven, I shall henceforth pray without ceasing.
Far far better for me all the rest of my sinful life to be clothed with
sackcloth and ashes, even if there is no fountain opened in Jerusalem
for sin and uncleanness, and no change of raiment. Christian protested that, as for him, lions and all, he had no choice left. And no more have
we. He must away somewhere, anywhere, from his past life. And so
must we. If all the lions that ever drank blood are to collect upon his
way, let them do so; they shall not all make him turn back. Why should
they? What is a whole forest full of lions to a heart and a life full of sin?
Lions are like lambs compared with sin. 'Good morning! I for one must
venture. I shall yet go forward.' So Mistrust and Timorous ran down
the hill, and Christian went on his way.
So I saw in my dream that he made haste and went forward, that
if possible he might get lodging in the house called Beautiful that
stood by the highway side. Now, before he had gone far he entered
into a very narrow passage which was about a furlong off from the
porter's lodge, and looking very narrowly before him as he went, he
espied two lions in the way. Then was he afraid, and thought also to go
back, for he thought that nothing but death was before him. But the
porter at the lodge, whose name was Watchful, perceiving that
Christian made a halt, as if he would go back, cried unto him, saying,
'Is thy strength so small? Fear not the lions, for they are chained, and
are only placed there for the trial 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 is all we have to do. Whatever our past life may have been,
whatever our past sins, past errors of judgment, past mistakes and
mishaps, whatever of punishment or chastisement or correction or
instruction or sanctification and growth in grace may be under those
lions' skins and between their teeth for us, all we have got to do at
present is to leave the lions to Him who set them there, and to go on,
up to them and past them, keeping always to the midst of the path.
The lions may roar at us till they have roared us deaf and blind, but we
are far safer in the midst of that path than we would be in our own
bed. Only let us keep in the midst of the path. When their breath is hot
and full of blood on our cheek; when they paw up the blinding earth;
when we feel as if their teeth had closed round our heart, - still, all the
more, let us keep in the midst of the path. We must sometimes walk on
a razor-edge of fear and straightforwardness; that is the only way left
for us now. But, then, we have the Divine assurance that on that
perilous edge no hurt shall come to us. 'Temptations,' says our author in another place, 'when we meet them at first, are as the lion that
roared upon Samson; but if we overcome them, the next time we see
them we shall find a nest of honey in them.' O God, for grace and sense
and imagination to see and understand and apply all that to our own
daily life! O to be able to take all that home to-night and see it all
there; lions and runaways, venturesome souls, narrow paths, palaces
of beauty, everlasting life and all! Open Thou our eyes that we may see
the wonderful things that await us in our own 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.
He made a venture at the supreme moment of his danger, and things
that were quite out of all hope but an hour before were then
compassed and ever after possessed by him. Make the same venture,
then, yourselves to-night. Naught venture, naught have. Your lost soul
is not much to venture, but it is all that Christ at this moment asks of
you - that you leave your lost soul in His hand, and then go straight on
from this moment in the middle of the path: the path, that is, as your
case may be, of purity, humility, submission, resignation, and self-
denial. Keep your mind and your heart, your eyes and your feet, in the
very middle of that path, and you shall have compassed the House
Beautiful before you know. The lions shall soon be behind you, and the
grave and graceful damsels of the House - Discretion and Prudence
and Piety and Charity - shall all be waiting upon you.
PRUDENCE
'Let a man examine himself.' - Paul.
Let a man examine himself, says the apostle to the Corinthians,
and so let him eat of that bread and drink of that cup. And thus it was,
that before the pilgrim was invited to sit down at the supper table in
the House Beautiful, quite a number of most pointed and penetrating
questions were put to him by those who had charge of that house and
its supper table. And thus the time was excellently improved till the
table was spread, while the short delay and the successive exercises
whetted to an extraordinary sharpness the pilgrim's hunger for the
supper. Piety and Charity, who had joint charge of the house from the
Master of the house, held each a characteristic conversation with
Christian, but it was left to Prudence to hold the most particular
discourse with him until supper was ready, and it is to that so
particular discourse that I much wish to turn your attention to-night.
With great tenderness, but at the same time with the greatest
possible gravity, Prudence asked the pilgrim whether he did not still
think sometimes of the country from whence he had come out. Yes, he
replied; how could I help thinking continually of that unhappy country
and of my sad and miserable life in it; but, believe me, - or, rather, you
cannot believe me, - with what shame and detestation I always think
of my past life. My face burns as I now speak of my past life to you, and
as I think what my old companions know and must often say about
me. I detest, as you cannot possibly understand, every remembrance
of my past life, and I hate and never can forgive myself, who, with
mine own hands, so filled all my past life with shame and self-
contempt. Gently stopping the remorseful pilgrim's self-accusations
about his past life, Prudence asked him if he had not still with him,
and, indeed, within him, some of the very 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 on him with all her deep and soft
eyes, for it was to this that she had been leading the conversation up
all the time. Prudence had a great look of satisfaction, mingled with
love and pity, at the way the pilgrim said 'especially my inward and
sinful cogitations.' Those who stood by and observed Prudence
wondered at her delight in the sad discourse on which the pilgrim
now entered. But she had her own reasons for her delight in this particular kind of discourse, and it was seldom that she lighted on a
pilgrim who both understood her questions and responded to them as
did this man now sitting beside her. Now, my brethren, all parable
apart, is that your religious experience? Are you full of shame and
detestation at your inward cogitations? Are you tormented, enslaved,
and downright cursed with your own evil thoughts? I do not ask
whether or no you have such thoughts always within you. I do not ask,
because I know. But I ask, because I would like to make sure that you
know what, and the true nature of what, goes on incessantly in your
mind and in your heart. Do you, or do you not, spit out your most
inward thoughts ten times a day like poison? If you do, you are a truly
religious man, and if you do not, you do not yet know the very ABC of
true religion, and your dog has a better errand at the Lord's table than
you have. And if your minister lets you sit down at the Lord's table
without holding from time to time some particular discourse with you
about your sinful thoughts, he is deceiving and misleading you,
besides laying up for himself an awakening at last to shame and
everlasting contempt. What a mill-stone his communion roll will be
round such a minister's neck! And how his congregation will gnash
their teeth at him when they see to what his miserable ministry has
brought them!
Let a man examine himself, said Paul. What about your inward
and sinful cogitations? asked Prudence. How long shall thy vain
thoughts lodge within thee? demanded the bold prophet. Now, my
brethren, what have you to 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 shame when you are alone before God at
the fountain of folly that fills your mind and your heart continually?
The Apostle speaks of vain hopes that make us ashamed that we ever
entertained them. You have been often so ashamed, 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 a
modest woman even to dream such dreams of folly overnight, they
would blush and hide their heads all day at the thought. Out of a word,
out of a look, out of what was neither a word nor a look intended for
you, what a world of vanity will you build out of it! The question of Prudence is not whether or no you are still a born fool at heart, she
does not put unnecessary questions: hers to you is the more pertinent
and particular question, whether, since you left your former life and
became a Christian, you feel every day increasing shame and
detestation at yourself, on account of the vanity of your inward
cogitations. My brethren, can you satisfy her who is set by her Master
to hold particular discourse with all true Christians before supper?
Can you say with the Psalmist, - could you tell Prudence where the
Psalmist says, - I hate vain thoughts, but Thy law do I love? And can
you silence her by telling her that her Master alone knows with what
shame you think that He has such a fool as you are among His people?
Anger, also, sudden and even long-entertained anger, was one of the
'many failings' of which Christian was so conscious to himself. His
outbursts of anger at home, he bitterly felt, might well be one of the
causes why his wife and children did not accompany him on his
pilgrimage. And though he knew his failing in this respect, and was
very wary of it, yet he often failed even when he was most wary. Now,
while anger is largely a result of our blood and temperament, yet few
of us are so well-balanced and equable in our temperament and so
pure and cool in our blood, as altogether to escape frequent outbursts
of anger. The most happily constituted and the best governed of us
have too much cause to be ashamed and penitent both before God and
our neighbours for our outbursts of angry passion. But Prudence is so
particular in her discourse before supper, that she goes far deeper into
our anger than our wives and our children, our servants and our
neighbours, can go. She not only asks if we stamp out the rising anger
of our heart as we would stamp out sparks of fire in a house full of
gunpowder; but she insists on being told what we think of ourselves
when the house of our heart is still so full of such fire and such
gunpowder. Any man, to call a man, would be humbled in his own eyes
and in his walk before his house at home after an explosion of anger
among them; but he who would satisfy Prudence and sit beside her at
supper, must not only never let his anger kindle, but the simple secret
heat of it, that fire of hell that is hid from all men but himself in the
flint of his own hard and proud heart, - what, asks Prudence, do you
think of that, and of yourself on account of that? Does that keep you
not only watchful and prayerful, but, what is the best ground in you of all true watchfulness and prayerfulness, full of secret shame, self-fear,
and self-detestation? One forenoon table would easily hold 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 any of
our friends has more of this world's possessions, honours, and praises
than we have, that pain at our neighbour's pleasure, that sickness at
his health, that hunger for what we see him eat, that thirst for what we
see him drink, that imprisonment of our spirits when we see him set
at liberty, that depression at his exaltation, that sorrow at his joy, and
joy at his sorrow, that evil heart that would have all things to itself.
Yes, said Christian, I am only too conversant with all these sinful
cogitations, but they are all greatly against my will, and might I but
choose mine own thoughts, do you suppose that I would ever think
these things any more? 'The cause is in my will,' said Caesar, on a great
occasion. But the true Christian, unhappily, cannot say that. If he could
say that, he would soon say also that the snare is broken and that his
soul has escaped. And then the cause of all his evil cogitations, his vain
thoughts, his angry feelings, his envious feelings, his ineradicable
covetousness, his hell-rooted and heaven-towering pride, and his
whole evil heart of unbelief would soon be at an end. 'I cannot be free
of sin,' said Thomas Boston, 'but God knows that He would be
welcome to 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 bound hand and foot I desire to lay at His feet.' Yes:
such is the mystery and depth of sin in the hearts of all God's saints,
that far deeper than their will, far back behind their will, the whole
substance and very core of their hearts is wholly corrupt and enslaved
to sin. And thus it is that while their renewed and delivered will works
out, so far, their salvation in their walk and conversation among men,
the helplessness of their will in the cleansing and the keeping of their
hearts is to the end the sorrow and the mystery of their sanctification.
To will was present with Paul, and with Bunyan, and with Boston; but
their heart - they could not with all their keeping keep their heart. No
man can; no man who has at all tried it can. 'Might I but choose mine
own thoughts, I would choose never to think of these things more: but
when I would be doing of that which is best, that which is worst is with me.' We can choose almost all things. Our will and choice have
almost all things at their disposal. We can choose our God. We can
choose life or death. We can choose heaven or hell. We can choose our
church, our minister, our books, our companions, our words, our
works, and, to some extent, our inward thoughts, but only to some
extent. We can encourage this or that thought; 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 our thoughts hide and harbour, and
out of which they spring so suddenly upon the mind and the heart, the
imagination and the conscience, - of that secretest of all secret places,
God alone is able to say, I search the heart. 'As for secret thoughts,'
says our author, speaking of his own former religious life, 'I took no
notice of them, neither did I understand what Satan's temptations
were, nor how they were to be withstood 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 deepest hearts to God.
'But,' replied Prudence, 'do you not find sometimes as if those
things were vanquished which at other times are your perplexity?'
'Yes, but that is but seldom; but they are to me golden hours in which
such things happen to me.' 'Can you remember by what means you
find your annoyances at times as if they were vanquished?' 'Yes, when
I think what I saw at the cross, that will do it; and when I look upon
my broidered coat, that will 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 to ourselves also. We also, my brethren - let
me tell you your own undeniable experience - we also have such
golden hours sometimes, when we feel as if we should never again
have such an evil heart within us. The Cross of Christ to us also has
done it. It is of such golden hours that Isaac 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, that
will for a time vanquish our worst cogitations. Also, when we read the
roll that we too carry in our bosom - that is to say, when we go back
into our past life till we see it and feel it all, and till we can think and
speak of nothing else but the sin that abounded in it and the grace that much 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 our hearts too hot for sin to show itself, when we read our
hearts deep into such books as The Paradiso, The Pilgrim's Progress,
The Saint's Rest, The Serious Call, The Religious Affections, and such
like. These books have often vanquished our annoyances, and given us
golden hours on the earth. Yes, but that is but seldom.
'Now, what is it,' asked Prudence, as she wound up this so
particular colloquy, 'that makes you so desirous to go to Mount Zion?'
'Why,' replied the pilgrim, and the water stood in his eyes, 'why, there I
hope to see Him alive that did hang dead on the cross; and there I
hope to 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 as I love best. For, to tell you truth, I love Him, because by
Him I was eased of my burden, and I am weary of my inward sickness;
and I would fain be where I shall die no more, and for ever with that
company that shall 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 the pilgrim had run away from home and left his wife and
children to the workhouse. There have been wiseacres who have
found severe fault with John Bunyan because he made his Puritan
pilgrim such a bad husband and such an unnatural father. But nobody
possessed of a spark of common sense, not to say religion or
literature, would ever commit himself to such an utter imbecility as
that. John Bunyan's pilgrim, whatever he may have been before he
became a pilgrim, all the time he was a pilgrim, was the most faithful,
affectionate, and solicitous husband in all the country round about,
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
from home; he accomplished his whole wonderful pilgrimage beside
his own forge and at his own fireside; and he entered the Celestial City
amid trumpets and bells and harps and psalms, while all the time
sleeping in his own humble bed. The House Beautiful, therefore, to
which we have now come in his company, is not some remote and
romantic mansion away up among the mountains a great many days'
journey distant from this poor man's everyday home. The House
Beautiful was nothing else, - what else better, what else so good could
it be? - than just this Christian man's first communion Sabbath and his
first communion table [first, that is, after his true conversion from sin
to God and his confessed entrance into a new life), while the country
from whence he had come out, and concerning which both Piety and
Prudence catechised him so closely, was just his former life of open
ungodliness and all his evil walk and conversation while he was as yet
living without God and without hope in the world. The country on
which he confessed that he now looked back with so much shame and
detestation was not England or Bedfordshire, but the wicked life he
had lived in that land and in that shire. And when Charity asked him
as to whether he was a married man and had a family, she knew quite
well that he was, only she made a pretence of asking him those
domestic questions 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 four small children,' answered Christian. 'And why did you not bring them with you?' Then Christian wept and said, 'Oh, how
willingly would I have done so, but they were all of them utterly
averse to my going on pilgrimage.' 'But you should have talked to them
and have shown them their danger.' 'So I did,' he replied, 'but I seemed
to them as one that mocked.' Now, this of talking, and, especially, of
talking about religious things to children, is one of the most difficult
things in the world, - that is, to do it well. Some people have the happy
knack of talking to their own and to other people's children so as
always to interest and impress them. But such happy people are few.
Most people talk at their children whenever they begin to talk to them,
and thus, without knowing it, they nauseate their children with their
conversation altogether. To respect a little child, to stand in some awe
of a little child, to choose your topics, your opportunities, your
neighbourhood, your moods and his as well as all your words, and
always to speak your sincerest, simplest, most straightforward and
absolutely wisest is indispensable with a child. Take your
mannerisms, your condescensions, your affectations, your
moralisings, and all your insincerities to your debauched 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
that will suddenly go through you, and that will swiftly convey to you
that your child sees through you and despises you and your
conversation too. 'You should not only have talked to your children of
their danger,' said Charity, 'but you should have shown them their
danger.' Yes, Charity; but a man must himself see his own and his
children's danger too, before he can show it to them, as well as see it
clearly at the time he is trying to show it to them. And how many
fathers, do you suppose, have the eyes to see such danger, and how
then can they shew such danger to their children, of all people? Once
get fathers to see dangers or anything else aright, and then you will
not need to tell them how they are to instruct and impress their
children. Nature herself will then tell them how to talk to their
children, and when Nature teaches, all our children will immediately
and unweariedly listen.
But, especially, said Charity, as your boys grew up - I think you
said that you had four boys and no girls? - well, then, all the more, as
they grew 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 as he grew up did you never confide to him what you
have never confided to his mother? Something, as I was saying, that
made you sad when you were a boy and a rising man, with a sadness
your son can still see in you as you talk to him. In conversations like
that a boy finds out what a friend he has in his father, and his father
from that day has his best friend in his son. And then as Matthew grew
up and began to out-grow his brothers and to form friendships out of
doors, did you study to talk at the proper time to him, and on subjects
on which you never venture to talk 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, yet we cannot be wholly ignorant
that it is there. And, we may well be wrong, but we cannot but think
that fathers, if not mothers, might safely tell their men-children at
least more than they do tell them of the sure dangers that lie straight
in their way, of the sorrow that men and women bring 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 we all think who keep this house and hear the reports and
repentances of pilgrims, both Piety and Prudence and I myself. And I,
for one, largely agree with the three women. It is easier said than
done. But the simple saying 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 of them is to attempt it, on what occasion,
and to what extent. Christian by this time had the Slough of Despond
with all its history and all that it contained to tell his eldest son about;
he had the wicket gate also just above the slough, the hill Difficulty, the
Interpreter's House, the place somewhat ascending with a cross
standing upon it, and a little below, in the bottom, a sepulchre, not to
speak of her who assaulted Faithful, whose name was Wanton, and
who at one time was like to have done even that trusty pilgrim a
lifelong mischief. Christian rather boasted to Charity of his wariness,
especially in the matter of his children's amusements, but Charity
seemed to think that he had carried his wariness into other matters
besides amusements, without the best possible results there either. I
have sometimes thought with her that among our multitude of
congresses and conferences of all kinds of people and upon all manner of subjects, room and membership might have been found for a
conference of fathers and mothers. Fathers to give and take counsel
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
done with some frankness, for our sons and daughters, there would be
fewer fathers and mothers found sitting at the Lord's table alone. 'You
should have 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
whether he prayed, both before and after he so spoke to his children,
that God would bless what he said to them. Charity believeth all
things, hopeth all things, but when she saw this man about to sit down
all alone at the supper table, it took Charity all her might to believe
that he had both spoken to his children and at the same time prayed to
God for them as he ought to have done. Our old ministers used to lay
this vow on all fathers and mothers at the time of baptism, that they
were to pray both with and for their children. Now, that is a fine
formula; it is a most comprehensive, and, indeed, exhaustive formula.
Both with and for. And especially with. With, at such and such times,
on such and such occasions, and in such and such places. At those
times, say, when your boy has told a lie, or struck his little brother, or
stolen something, or destroyed something. To pray with him at such
times, and to pray with him properly, and, if you feel able to do it, and
are led to do it, to tell 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 and prayer together in that way. Charity is not
easily provoked, but the longer she lives and keeps the table in the
House Beautiful the more she is 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 for their children. But hard as it was to tell
all the truth at that moment about Christian's past walk in his house at
home, yet he was able with the simple truth to say that he had indeed
prayed both with and for his children, 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 you may believe, with much
affection, for you must think that my four boys were all very dear to
me. And it is my firm belief that all that good man's boys will come right yet: Matthew and Joseph and James and Samuel and all. 'With
much affection.' I like that. I have unbounded faith in those prayers,
both for and with, in which there is much affection. It is want of
affection, and want of imagination, that shipwrecks so many of our
prayers. But this man's prayers had both these elements of sure
success 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
the old pilgrim first alone, and then with his arms round his eldest
son's neck, and both father and son weeping together till they are
ashamed to appear at supper till they have washed their faces and got
their most smiling and everyday looks put on again. You just wait and
see if Matthew and all the four boys down to the last do not escape
into the Celestial City before the gate is shut. And when it is asked,
Who are these and whence came they? listen to their song and you
will hear those four happy children saying that their father, when they
were yet boys, both talked with them and prayed for and with them
with so much affection that therefore they are before the throne.
Why, then, with such a father and with such makable boys, why
was this household brought so near everlasting shipwreck? It was the
mother that did it. In one word, it was the wife and the mother that
did it. It was the mistress of the house who wrought the mischief here.
She was a poor woman, she was a poor man's wife, and one would
have thought that she had little enough temptation to harm upon this
present world. But there it was, she did hang upon it as much as if she
had been the mother of the finest daughters and the most promising
boys in all the town. Things like this were from time to time reported
to her by her neighbours. One fine lady had been heard to say that she
would never have for her tradesman any man who frequented
conventicles, who was not content with the religion of his betters, and
who must needs scorn the parish church and do despite to the saints'
days. Another gossip asked her what she expected to make of her
great family of boys when it was well known that all the gentry in the
neighbourhood but two or three had sworn that they would never
have a hulking Puritan to brush their boots or run their errands. And
it almost made her husband burn his book and swear that he would
never be seen at another prayer-meeting when his wife so often said
to him that he should never have had children, that he should never have made her his wife, and that he was not like this when they were
first man and 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 the meeting-house with you as often as you wished. Her
sons are far enough from good service to please you. 'My wife,' he
softly said, 'was afraid of losing the world. And then, after that, my
growing sons were soon given 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 this manner alone.' And I suppose there is
scarcely a household among ourselves where there have not been
serious and damaging misunderstandings between old-fashioned
fathers and their young people about what the old people called the
'foolish delights' of their sons and daughters. And in thinking this
matter over, I have often been struck with how Job did when his sons
and his daughters were bent upon feasting and dancing in their eldest
brother's house. The old man did not lay an interdict upon the
entertainment. He did not take part in it, but neither did he absolutely
forbid it. If it must be it must be, said the wise patriarch. And since I
do not know whom they may meet there, or what they may be
tempted to do, I will sanctify them all. I will not go up into my bed till I
have prayed for all my seven sons and three daughters, each one of
them by their names; and till they come home safely I will rise every
morning and offer burnt-offerings according to the number of them
all. And do you think that those burnt-offerings and accompanying
intercessions would go for nothing when the great wind came from
the wilderness and smote the four corners of the banqueting-house?
If you cannot banish the love of foolish delights out the hearts of
your sons and daughters, then do not quarrel with them over such
things; a family quarrel in a Christian man's house is surely far worse
than a feast or a dance. Only, if they must feast and dance and such
like, be you all the more diligent in your exercises at home on their
behalf till they are back again, where, after all, they like best to be, in
their good, kind, liberal, and loving father's house. Have you a family?
Are you a married man? Or, if not, do you hope one day to be? Then
attend betimes to what Charity says to Christian in the House
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
moral philosophers or from our practical and experimental divines.
And yet it would well repay both classes of students to attend far more
to shame. For, what really is shame? Shame is an original instinct
planted in our souls by our Maker, and intended by Him to act as a
powerful and pungent check to our doing of any act that is mean or
dishonourable in the eyes of our fellow-men. Shame is a kind of social
conscience. Shame is a secondary sense of sin. In shame, our
imagination becomes a kind of moral sense. Shame sets up in our
bosom a not undivine tribunal, which judges us and sentences us in
the absence or the silence of nobler and more 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 sadly astray 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 can keep 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
many things that are not the proper objects of shame at all; while, on
the other hand, we feel no shame at all at multitudes of things that are
really most blameworthy, dishonourable, and contemptible. We are
ashamed of 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 the clear will and the immediate dispensation of
Almighty God. And, then, we feel no shame at all at the most
dishonourable things, and that simply because the men around us are
too coarse in their morals and too dull in their sensibilities to see any
shame in such things. And thus it comes about that, in the very best of
men, their still perverted sense of shame remains in them a constant
snare and a source of temptation. A man of a fine nature feels keenly
the temptation to shrink from those paths of truth and duty that
expose him to the cruel judgments and the coarse and scandalising
attacks of public and private enemies. It was in the Valley of
Humiliation that Shame set upon Faithful, and it is a real humiliation
to any man of anything of this pilgrim's fine character and feeling to be attacked, scoffed at, and held up to blame and opprobrium. And the
finer and the more affectionate any man's heart and character are, the
more he feels and shrinks from the coarse treatment this world gives
to those whom it has its own reasons to hate and assail. They had the
stocks and the pillory and the shears in Bunyan's rude and uncivilised
day, by means of which many of the best men of that day were
exposed to the insults and brutalities of the mob. The newspapers
would be the pillory of our day, were it not that, on the whole, the
newspaper press is conducted with such scrupulous fairness and with
a love of truth and justice such that no man need shrink from the path
of duty through fear of insult and injury.
But it is time to come to the encounter between Shame and
Faithful in the Valley of Humiliation. Shame, properly speaking, is not
one of our Bunyan gallery of portraits at all. Shame, at best, is but a