Part 6
description of By-ends, and in the full and particular account he gives
of the kinsfolk and affinity of By-ends. Is there another single stroke in
all sacred literature better fitted at once to teach the gayest and to
make the gravest smile than just John Bunyan's sketch of By-ends'
great-grandfather, the founder of the egoistical family of Fairspeech,
who was, to begin with, but a waterman who always looked one way
and rowed another? By-ends' wife also is a true helpmate to her
husband. She was my Lady Feigning's favourite daughter, under whose
nurture and example the young lady had early come to a quite
extraordinary pitch of good breeding; and now that she was a married
woman, she and her husband had, so their biographer tells us, two
firm points of family religion in which they were always agreed and
according to which they brought up all their children, namely, never to
strive too much against wind and tide, and always to watch when
Religion was walking on the sunny side of the street in his silver
slippers, and then at once to cross over and take his arm. But
abundantly amusing and entertaining as John Bunyan is at the
expense of By-ends and his family and friends, he has far other aims in
view than the amusement and entertainment of his readers. Bunyan
uses all his great gifts of insight and sense and humour and scorn so
as to mark unmistakably the road and to guide the progress of his
reader's soul to God, his chiefest end and his everlasting portion.
It was no small part of our Lord's life of humiliation on the earth,
- much more so than His being born in a low condition and being
made under the law, - to have to go about all His days among men,
knowing in every case and on every occasion what was in man. It was
a real humiliation to our Lord to see those watermen of the sea of
Tiberias sweating at their oars as they rowed round and round the
lake after Him; and His humiliation came still more home to Him as
often as He saw His own disciples disputing and pressing who should
get closest to Him while for a short season He walked in the sunshine;
just as it was His estate of exaltation already begun, when He could
enter into Himself and see to the bottom of His own heart, till He was able to say that it was His very meat and drink to do His father's will,
and to finish the work His Father had given Him to do. The men of
Capernaum went out after our Lord in their boats because they had
eaten of the multiplied loaves and hoped to do so again. Zebedee's
children had forsaken all and followed our Lord, because they counted
to sit the one on His right hand and the other on His left hand in His
soon-coming kingdom. The pain and the shame all that cost our Lord,
we can only remotely imagine. But as for Himself, our Lord never once
had to blush in secret at His own motives. He never once had to hang
down His head at the discovery of His own selfish aims and by-ends.
Happy man! The thought of what He should eat or what He should
drink or wherewithal He should be clothed never troubled His head.
The thought of success, as His poor-spirited disciples counted success,
the thought of honour and power and praise, never once rose in His
heart. All these things, and all things like them, had no attraction for
Him; they awoke nothing but indifference and contempt in him. But to
please His Father and to hear from time to time His Father's voice
saying that He was well pleased with His beloved Son, - that was
better than life to our Lord. To find out and follow every new day His
Father's mind and will, and to finish every night another part of His
Father's appointed work, - that was more than His necessary food to
our Lord. The great schoolmen, as they meditated on these deep
matters, had a saying to the effect that all created things take their
true goodness or their true evil from the end they aim at. And thus it
was that our Lord, aiming only at His Father's ends and never at His
own, both manifested and attained to a Divine goodness, just as the
greedy crowds of Galilee and the disputatious disciples, as long and as
far as they made their belly or their honour their end and aim, to that
extent fell short of all true goodness, all true satisfaction, and all true
acceptance.
By-ends was so called because he was full of low, mean, selfish
motives, and of nothing else. All that this wretched creature did, he
did with a single eye to himself. The best things that he did became
bad things in his self-seeking hands. His very religion stank in those
men's nostrils who knew what was in his heart. By-ends was one of
our Lord's whited sepulchres. And so deep, so pervading, and so
abiding is this corrupt taint in human nature, that long after a man has had his attention called to it, and is far on to a clean escape from it, he
still - nay, he all the more - languishes and faints and is ready to die
under it. Just hear what two great servants of God have said on this
humiliating and degrading matter. Writing on this subject with all his
wonted depth and solemnity, Hooker says, 'Even in the good things
that we do, how many defects are there intermingled! For God in that
which is done, respecteth especially the mind and intention of the
doer. Cut off, then, all those things wherein we have regarded our own
glory, those things which we do to please men, or to satisfy our own
liking, those things which we do with any by-respect, and not
sincerely and purely for the love of God, and a small score will serve
for the number of our righteous deeds. Let the holiest and best things
we do be considered. We are never better affected to God than when
we pray; yet, when we pray, how are our affections many times
distracted! How little reverence do we show to that God unto whom
we speak! How little remorse of our own miseries! How little taste of
the sweet influence of His tender mercy do we feel! The little fruit we
have in holiness, it is, God knoweth, corrupt and unsound; we put no
confidence at all in it, we challenge nothing in the world for it, we dare
not call God to a reckoning as if we had Him in our debt-books; our
continued suit to Him is, and must be, to bear with our infirmities, and
to pardon our offences.' And Thomas Shepard, a divine of a very
different school, as we say, but a saint and a scholar equal to the best,
and indeed with few to equal him, thus writes in his Spiritual
Experiences: - 'On Sabbath morning I saw that I had a secret eye to my
own name in all that I did, for which I judged myself worthy of death.
On another Sabbath, when I came home, I saw the deep hypocrisy of
my heart, that in my ministry I sought to comfort and quicken others,
that the glory might reflect on me as well as on God. On the evening
before the sacrament I saw that mine own ends were to procure
honour, pleasure, gain to myself, and not to the Lord, and I saw how
impossible it was for me to seek the Lord for Himself, and to lay up all
my honour and all my pleasures in Him. On Sabbath-day, when the
Lord had given me some comfortable enlargements, I searched my
heart and found my sin. I saw that though I did to some extent seek
Christ's glory, yet I sought it not alone, but my own glory too. After my
Wednesday sermon I saw the pride of my heart acting thus, that
presently my heart would look out and ask whether I had done well or
ill. Hereupon I saw my vileness to make men's opinions my rule. The
Lord thus gave me some glimpse of myself and a good day that was to
me.' One would think that this was By-ends himself climbed up into
the ministry. And so it was. And yet David Brainerd could write on his
deathbed about Thomas Shepard in this way. 'He valued nothing in
religion that was not done to the glory of God, and, oh! that others
would lay the stress of religion here also. His method of examining his
ends and aims and the temper of his mind both before and after
preaching, is an excellent example for all who bear the sacred
character. By this means they are like to gain a large acquaintance
with their own hearts, as it is evident he had with his.'
But it is not those who bear the sacred character of the ministry
alone who are full of by-ends. We all are. You all are. And there is not
one all-reaching, all-exposing, and all-humbling way of salvation
appointed for ministers, and another, a more external, superficial,
easy, and self-satisfied way for their people. No. Not only must the
ambitious and disputing disciples enter into themselves and become
witnesses and judges and executioners within themselves before they
can be saved or be of any use in the salvation of others - not only they,
but the fishermen of the Lake of Tiberias, they also must open their
hearts to these stabbing words of Christ, and see how true it is that
they had followed Him for loaves and fishes, and not for His grace and
His truth. And only when they had seen and submitted to that
humiliating self-discovery would their true acquaintance with Christ
and their true search after Him begin. Come, then, all my brethren,
and not ministers only, waken up to the tremendous importance of
that which you have utterly neglected, it may be ostentatiously
neglected, up to this hour, - the true nature, the true character, of your
motives and your ends. Enter into yourselves. Be not strangers and
foreigners to yourselves. Let not the day of judgment be any surprise
to you. Witness against, judge, and execute yourselves, and that
especially because of your by-aims and by-ends. Take up the
touchstone of truth and lay it upon your most secret heart. Do not be
afraid to discover how double-minded and deceitful your heart is.
Hunt your heart down. Track it to its most secret lair. Put its true
name, and continue to put its true name, upon the main motive of your life.
Extort an answer by boot and by wheel, only extort an answer
from the inner man of the heart, to the torturing question as to what is
his treasure, his hope, his deepest wish, his daily dream. Watch not
against any outward enemy, keep all your eyes and all your ears to
your own thoughts. God keeps His awful eye on your thoughts. His eye
goes at every glance to that great depth in you. Even His all-seeing eye
can go no deeper into you than to your secret thoughts. Go you as
deep as God goes, and you will be a wise man; go as deep and as often
as He does, and then you will soon come to see eye to eye with God,
not only about your own thoughts, but about His thoughts too, and
about everything else. Till you begin to watch your own thoughts, and
to watch them especially in their aims and their ends, you will have no
idea what that moral and spiritual life is that all God's saints live; that
life that Christ lived, and which He this night summons you all to enter
henceforth upon.
It is such a happy fact that it cannot be too often told, that in the
things of the soul really and truly to know and feel the disease is to
have already entered on the remedy. You will not feel, indeed, that you
have entered on the remedy; but that does not much matter so long as
you really have. And there is nothing more certain among all the
certainties of divine things than that he who feels himself to be in
death and hell with his heart so full of by-ends is all the time as far
from death and hell as any one can be who is still on this side of
heaven. When a man's whole will and desire is set on God, as is now
and then the case, that man is perilously near a sudden and an
abundant entrance into that life and that presence where his heart has
for so long been. When a man is half mad with his own heart, as
Thomas Shepard for one was, that stranger on the earth is at last
within a step of that happy coast where all wishes end. Watch that
man. Take a last look at that man. He will soon be taken out of your
sight. Ere ever he is himself aware, he will be rapt up into that life
where saints and angels seek not their own will, labour not for their
own profit or promotion, listen not for their own praises, but find
their blessedness, the half of which had not here been told them, in
glorifying God and in enjoying Him for ever.
You must all have heard the name of a book that has helped many a saint now in glory to the examination and the keeping of his own
heart. I refer to Jeremy Taylor's Holy Living and Dying. Take two or
three of Taylor's excellent rules with you as you go down from God's
house to-night. 'If you would really live a holy life and die a holy
death,' says Taylor, 'learn to reflect in your every action on your secret
end in it; consider with yourself why you do it, and what you
propound to yourself for your reward. Pray importunately that all
your purposes and all your motives may be sanctified. Renew and
rekindle your purest purposes by such ejaculations as these: "Not
unto us, O God, not unto us, but to Thy name be all the praise. I am in
this Thy servant; let all the gain be Thine." In great and eminent
actions let there be a special and peculiar act of resignation or
oblation made to God; and in smaller and more frequent actions fail
not to secure a pious habitual intention.' And so on. And above all, I
will add, labour and pray till you feel in your heart that you love God
with a supreme and an ever-growing love. And, far as that may be
above you as yet, impress your heart with the assurance that such a
love is possible to you also, and that you can never be safe or happy till
you attain to that love. Other men once as far from the supreme love of
God as you are have afterwards attained to it; and so will you if you
continue to set it before yourself. Think often on God; read the best
books about God; call continually upon God; hold an intimate
communion with God, till you feel that you also actually and certainly
love God. And though you begin with loving God because He first loved
you, you will, beginning with that, rise far above that till you come to
love Him for what He is in Himself as well as for what He has done for
you. 'I have done this in order to have a seat in the Academy,' said a
young man, handing the solution of a problem to an old philosopher.
'Sir,' was the reply, 'with such dispositions you will never earn a seat
there. Science must be loved for its own sake, and not for any
advantage to be derived from it.' And much more is that true of the
highest of all the sciences, the knowledge and the love of God. Love
Him, then, till you arrive at loving Him for Himself, and then you shall
be for ever delivered from all self-love and by-ends, and shall both
glorify and enjoy God for ever. As all they now do who engaged their
hearts on earth to the service and the love and the enjoyment of God
is such psalms and prayers as these: 'Whom have I in heaven but Thee? and there is no one on earth that I desire beside Thee. How
excellent is Thy loving-kindness, O God! The children of men shall put
their trust under the shadow of Thy wings. For with Thee is the
fountain of life, and in Thy light shall we see light. As for me, I will
behold Thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied when I awake
with Thy likeness. Thou wilt show me the path of life; in Thy presence
is fullness of joy, and at Thy right hand there are pleasures for
evermore.'
GIANT DESPAIR
'A wounded spirit who can bear?' - Solomon.
Every schoolboy has Giant Despair by heart. The rough road after
the meadow of lilies, the stile into By-Path-Meadow, the night coming
on, the thunder and the lightning and the waters rising amain, Giant
Despair's apprehension of Christian and Hopeful, their dreadful bed in
his dungeon from Wednesday morning till Saturday night, how they
were famished with hunger and beaten with a grievous crab-tree
cudgel till they were not able to turn, with many other sufferings too
many and too terrible to be told which they endured till Saturday
about midnight, when they began to pray, and continued in prayer till
almost break of day; - John Bunyan is surely the best story-teller in all
the world. And, then, over and above that, as often as a boy reads
Giant Despair and his dungeon to his father and mother, the two
hearers are like Christian and Hopeful when the Delectable shepherds
showed them what had happened to some who once went
in at By-Path stile: the two pilgrims looked one upon another with
tears gushing out, but yet said nothing to the shepherds.
John Bunyan's own experience enters deeply into these terrible
pages. In composing these terrible pages, Bunyan writes straight and
bold out of his own heart and conscience. The black and bitter essence
of a whole black and bitter volume is crushed into these four or five
bitter pages.
Last week I went over Grace Abounding again, and marked the
passages in which its author describes his own experiences of doubt,
diffidence, and despair, till I gave over counting the passages, they are
so many. I had intended to illustrate the passage before us to-night out
of the kindred materials that I knew were so abundant in Bunyan's
terrible autobiography, but I had to give up that idea. It would have
taken two or three lectures to itself to tell all that Bunyan suffered all
his life long from an easily-wounded spirit. The whole book is just
Giant Despair and his dungeon, with a gleam here and there of that
sunshiny weather that threw the giant into one of his fits, in which he
always lost for the time the use of his limbs. Return often, my
brethren, to that masterpiece, Grace Abounding to the Chief of
Sinners. I have read it a hundred times, but last week it was as fresh
and powerful and consoling as ever to my sin-wounded spirit.
Let me select some of the incidents that offer occasion for a comment or two.
And, in the first place, take notice, and lay well to heart, how
sudden, and almost instantaneous, is the fall of Christian and Hopeful
from the very gate of heaven to the very gate of hell. All the Sabbath
and the Monday and the Tuesday before that fatal Wednesday, the two
pilgrims had walked with great delight on the banks of a very pleasant
river; that river, in fact, which David the King called the river of God,
and John, the river of the water of life. They drank also of the water of
the river, which was pleasant and enlivening to their weary spirits.
On either side of the river was there a meadow curiously beautified
with lilies, and it was green all the year long. In this meadow they lay
down and slept, for here they might lie down and sleep safely. When
they awoke they gathered again of the fruits of the trees, and drank
again of the water of the river, and then lay down again to sleep. Thus
they did several days and nights. Now, could you have believed it that
two such men as our pilgrims were could be in the enjoyment of all
that the first half of the week, and then by their own doing should be
in Giant Despair's deepest dungeon before the end of the same week?
And yet so it was. And all that is written for the solemn warning of
those who are at any time in great enlargement and refreshment and
joy in their spiritual life. It is intended for all those who are at any time
revelling in a season of revival: those, for example, who are just come
home from Keswick or Dunblane, as well as for all those who at home
have just made the discovery of some great master of the spiritual life,
and who are almost beside themselves with their delight in their
divine author. If they are new beginners they will not take this
warning well, nor will even all old pilgrims lay it aright to heart; but
there it is as plain as the plainest, simplest, and most practical writer
in our language could put it.
Behold ye how these crystal streams do glide
To comfort pilgrims by the highway side;
The meadows green, besides their fragrant smell,
Yield dainties for them: And he that can tell
What pleasant fruits, yea leaves, these trees do yield,
Will soon sell all that he may buy this field.
Thus the two pilgrims sang: only, adds our author in a parenthesis, they were not, as yet, at their journey's end.
'Now, I beheld in my dream that they had not journeyed far when
the river and the way for a time parted. At which the two pilgrims
were not a little sorry.' The two pilgrims could not perhaps be
expected to break forth into dancing and singing at the parting of the
river and the way, even though they had recollected at that moment
what the brother of the Lord says about our counting it all joy when
we fall into divers temptations. But it would not have been too much
to expect from such experienced pilgrims as they by this time were,
that they should have suspected and checked and commanded their
sorrow. They should have said something like this to one another:
Well, it would have been very pleasant had it been our King's will and
way with us that we should have finished the rest of our pilgrimage
among the apples and the lilies and on the soft and fragrant bank of
the river; but we believe that it must in some as yet hidden way be
better for us that the river and our road should part from one another
at least for a season. Come, brother, and let us go on till we find out
our Master's deep and loving mind. But, instead of saying that,
Christian and Hopeful soon became like the children of Israel as they
journeyed from Mount Hor, their soul was much discouraged because
of the way. And always as they went on they wished for a softer and a
better way. And it was so that they very soon came to the very thing
they so much wished for. For, what is that on the left hand of the hard
road but a stile, and over the stile a meadow as soft to the feet as the
meadow of lilies itself? ' Tis just according to my wish,' said Christian;
'here is the easiest going. Come, good Hopeful, and let us go over.'
Hopeful: 'But how if the path should lead us out of the way?' 'That's
not like,' said the other; 'look, doth it not go along by the wayside?' So
Hopeful, being persuaded by his fellow, went after him over the stile.
Call to mind, all you who are delivered and restored pilgrims, that
same stile that once seduced you. To keep that stile ever before you is
at once a safe and a seemly occupation of mind for any one who has
made your mistakes and come through your chastisements.
Christian's eyes all his after-days filled with tears, and he turned away
his face and blushed scarlet, as often as he suddenly came upon any
opening in a wall at all like that opening he here persuaded Hopeful to
climb through. It is too much to expect that those who are just mounting the stile, and have just caught sight of the smooth path
beyond it, will let themselves be pulled back into the hard and narrow
way by any persuasion of ours. Christian put down Hopeful's
objection till Hopeful broke out bitterly when the thunder was roaring
over his head and he was wading about among the dark waters: 'Oh
that I had kept myself in my way!' Are you a little sorry tonight that
the river and the way are parting in your life? Is your soul discouraged
in you because of the soreness of the way? And as you go do you still
wish for some better way than the strait way? And have you just
espied a stile on the left hand of your narrow and flinty path, and on
looking over it is there a pleasant meadow? And does your companion
point out to your satisfaction, and, almost to your good conscience,
that the soft road runs right along the hard road, only over the stile
and outside the fence? Then, good-bye. For it is all over with you. We
shall meet you again, please God; but when we meet you again, your
mind and memory will be full of shame and remorse and suffering
enough to keep you in songs of repentance for all the rest of your life
on earth. Farewell!
The Pilgrims now, to gratify the flesh,
Will seek its ease; but oh! how they afresh
Do thereby plunge themselves new grieves into:
Who seek to please the flesh themselves undo.
The two transgressors had not gone far on their own way when
night came on and with the night a very great darkness. But what soon
added to the horror of their condition was that they heard a man fall
into a deep pit right before them, and it sounded to them as if he was
dashed to pieces by his fall. So they called to know the matter, but
there was none to answer, only they heard a groaning. Then said
Hopeful: Where are we now? Then was his fellow silent, as
mistrusting that he had led Hopeful out of the way. Now, all that also is
true to the very life, and has been taken down by Bunyan from the
very life. We have all heard men falling and heard them groaning just a
little before us after we had left the strait road. They had just gone a
little farther wrong than we had as yet gone, - just a very little farther;
in some cases, indeed, not so far, when they fell and were dashed to pieces with their fall. It was well for us at that dreadful moment that
we heard the same voice saying to us for our encouragement as said to
the two trembling transgressors: 'Let thine heart be toward the
highway, even the way that thou wentest; turn again.' Now, what is it
in which you are at this moment going off the right road? What is that
life of disobedience or self-indulgence that you are just entering on?
Keep your ears open and you will hear hundreds of men and women
falling and being dashed to pieces before you and all around you. Are
you falling of late too much under the power of your bodily appetites?
It is not one man, nor two, well known to you, who have fallen never
to rise again out of that horrible pit. Are you well enough aware that
you are being led into bad company? Or, is your companion, who is not
a bad man in anything else, leading you, in this and in that, into what
at any rate is bad for you? You will soon, unless you cut off your
companion like a right hand, be found saying with misguided and
overruled Hopeful: Oh that I had kept me to my right way! And so on
in all manner of sin and trespass. Those who have ears to hear such
things hear every day one man after another falling through lust or
pride or malice or idleness or infidelity, till there is none to answer.
'All hope abandon' was the writing that Dante read over the door
of hell. And the two prisoners all but abandoned all hope when they
found themselves in Giant Despair's dungeon. Only, Christian, the
elder man, had the most distress because their being where they now
were lay mostly at his door. All this part of the history also is written
in Bunyan's very heart's blood. 'I found it hard work,' he tells us of
himself, 'to pray to God because despair was swallowing me up. I
thought I was as with a tempest driven away from God. About this
time I did light on that dreadful story of that miserable mortal, Francis
Spira, a book that was to my troubled spirit as salt when rubbed into a
fresh wound; every groan of that man with all the rest of his actions in
his dolours, as his tears, his prayers, his gnashing of teeth, his
wringing of hands, was as knives and daggers in my soul, especially
that sentence of his was frightful to me: "Man knows the beginning of
sin, but who bounds the issues thereof?"' We never read anything like
Spira's experience and Grace Abounding and Giant Despair's dungeon
in the books of our day. And why not, do you think? Is there less sin
among us modern men, or did such writers as John Bunyan overdraw and exaggerate the sinfulness of sin? Were they wrong in holding so
fast as they did hold that death and hell are the sure wages of sin? Has
divine justice become less fearful than it used to be to those who rush
against it, or is it that we are so much better men? Is our faith stronger
and more victorious over doubt and fear? Is it that our hope is better
anchored? Whatever the reason is, there can be no question but that
we walk in a liberty that our fathers did not always walk in. Whether
or no our liberty is not recklessness and licentiousness is another
matter. Whether or no it would be a better sign of us if we were better
acquainted with doubt and dejection and diffidence, and even despair,
is a question it would only do us good to put to ourselves. When we
properly attend to these matters we shall find out that, the holier a
man is, the more liable he is to the assaults of doubt and fear and even
despair. We have whole psalms of despair, so deep was David's sense
of sin, so high were his views of God's holiness and justice, and so full
of diffidence was his wounded heart. And David's Son, when our sin
was laid upon Him, felt the curse and the horror of His state so much
that His sweat was in drops of blood, and His cry in the darkness was
that His God had forsaken Him. And when our spirits are wounded
with our sins, as the spirits of all God's great saints have always been
wounded, we too shall feel ourselves more at home with David and
with Asaph, with Spira even, and with Bunyan. Despair is not good,
but it is infinitely better than indifference. 'It is a common saying,' says
South, 'and an observation in divinity, that where despair has slain its
thousands, presumption has slain its ten thousands. The agonies of
the former are indeed more terrible, but the securities of the latter are
far more fatal.'
'I will,' says Paul to Timothy, 'that men pray everywhere, lifting up
holy hands without doubting.' And, just as Paul would have it,
Christian and Hopeful began to lift up their hands even in the dungeon
of Doubting Castle. 'Well,' we read, 'on Saturday night about midnight
they began to pray, and continued in prayer till almost break of day.
Now, before it was day, good Christian, as one half amazed, broke out
in this passionate speech: "What a fool," quoth he, "am I thus to lie in a stinking dungeon when I may as well walk at liberty; I have a key in
my bosom, called Promise, that will, I am persuaded, open any lock in
all Doubting Castle." Then said Hopeful: "That's good news, good brother; pluck it out of thy bosom and try."' Then Christian pulled the
key out of his bosom and the bolt gave back, and Christian and
Hopeful both came out, and you may be sure they were soon out of the
giant's jurisdiction.
Now, I do not know that I can do better at this point, and in
closing, than just to tell you about some of that bunch of keys that
John Bunyan found from time to time in his own bosom, and which
made all his prison doors one after another fly open at their touch.
'About ten o'clock one day, as I was walking under a hedge, full of
sorrow and guilt, God knows, and bemoaning myself for my hard hap,
suddenly this sentence bolted in upon me: The blood of Christ remits
all guilt. Again, when I was fleeing from the face of God, for I did flee
from His face, that is, my mind and spirit fled before Him; for by
reason of His highness I could not endure; then would the text cry:
Return unto Me; it would cry with a very great voice: Return unto me,
for I have redeemed thee. And this would make me look over my
shoulder behind me to see if I could discern that this God of grace did
follow me with a pardon in His hand. Again, the next day, at evening,
being under many fears, I went to seek the Lord, and as I prayed, I
cried, with strong cries: O Lord, I beseech Thee, show me that Thou
hast loved me with an everlasting love. I had no sooner said it but,
with sweetness, this returned upon me as an echo or sounding-again,
I have loved thee with an everlasting love. Now, I went to bed at
quiet; also, when I awaked the next morning it was fresh upon my soul
and I believed it . . . Again, as I was then before the Lord, that Scripture
fastened on my heart: O man, great is thy faith, even as if one had
clapped me on the back as I was on my knees before God . . . At
another time I remember I was again much under this question:
Whether the blood of Christ was sufficient to save my soul? In which
doubt I continued from morning till about seven or eight at night, and
at last, when I was, as it were, quite worn out with fear, these words
did sound suddenly within my heart: He is able. Methought this word
able was spoke so loud unto me and gave such a justle to my fear and
doubt as I never had all my life either before that or after . . . Again,
one morning, when I was at prayer and trembling under fear, that
piece of a sentence dashed in upon me: My grace is sufficient. At this,
methought: Oh, how good a thing it is for God to send His word! . . .
Again, one day as I was in a meeting of God's people, full of sadness
and terror, for my fears were again strong upon me, and as I was
thinking that my soul was never the better, these words did with great
power suddenly break in upon me: My grace is sufficient for thee, My
grace is sufficient for thee, three times together; and, oh! methought
that every word was a mighty word unto me; as My, and grace, and
sufficient, and for thee. These words were then, and sometimes still
are, far bigger words than others are.
Again, one day as I was passing in the field, and that, too, with
some dashes in my conscience, suddenly this sentence fell upon my
soul: Thy righteousness is in heaven. And methought withal I saw,
with the eyes of my soul, Jesus Christ at God's right hand. I saw also,
moreover, that it was not my good frame of heart that made my
righteousness better, nor my bad frame that made my righteousness
worse, for my righteousness was Jesus Christ Himself, the same
yesterday, to-day, and for ever . . .
Again, oh, what did I see in that blessed sixth of John: Him that
cometh to Me I will in nowise cast out. I should in those days often
flounce toward that promise as horses do toward sound ground that
yet stick in the mire. Oh! many a pull hath my heart had with Satan for
this blessed sixth of John . . . And, again, as I was thus in a muse, that
Scripture also came with great power upon my spirit: Not by works of
righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He
saved us. Now was I got on high: I saw my self within the arms of
Grace and Mercy, and though I was before afraid to think of a dying
hour, yet now I cried: Let me die. Now death was lovely and beautiful
in my sight; for I saw that we shall never live indeed till we be gone to
the other world. Heirs of God, methought, heirs of God! God himself is
the portion of His saints.
This did sweetly revive my spirit, and help me to hope in God;
which when I had with comfort mused on a while, that word fell with
great weight upon my mind: Oh Death, where is thy sting? Oh Grave,
where is thy victory? At this I became both well in body and mind at
once, for my sickness did presently vanish, and I walked comfortably
in my work for God again.'
Such were some of the many keys by the use of which God let
John Bunyan so often out of despair into full assurance and out of darkness into light. Which of the promises have been of such help to
you? Over what Scriptures have you ever cried out: Oh, how good a
thing it is for God to send me His word! Which are the biggest words
in all the Bible to you?
To what promise did you ever flounce as a horse flounces when
he is sticking in the mire? And has any word of God so made God your
God that even death itself, since it alone separates you from His
presence, is lovely and beautiful in your eyes? Have you a cluster of
such keys in your bosom? If you have, take them all out to-night and
go over them again with thanksgiving before you sleep.
KNOWLEDGE
'I will give you pastors after Mine own heart, which shall feed you with
knowledge and understanding.'
The Delectable Mountains rise out of the heart of Immanuel's
Land. This fine range of far-rolling hills falls away on the one side
toward the plain of Destruction, and on the other side toward the land
of Beulah and the Celestial City, and the way to the Celestial City runs
like a beeline over these well-watered pastures. Standing on a clear
day on the highest peak of the Delectable Mountains, if you have good
eyes you can see the hill Difficulty in the far-back distance with a
perpetual mist clinging to its base and climbing up its sides, which
mist the shepherds say to you rises all the year round off the Slough of
Despond, while, beyond that again the heavy smoke of the city of
Destruction and the town of Stupidity shuts in the whole horizon. And
then, when you turn your back on all that, in favourable states of the
weather you can see here and there the shimmer of that river over
which there is no bridge; and, then again, so high above the river that
it seems to be a city standing in heaven rather than upon the earth,
you will see the high towers and shining palace roofs and broad
battlements of the New Jerusalem itself.
The two travellers should have spent the past three days among
the sights of the Delectable Mountains; and they would have done so
had not the elder traveller misled the younger. But now that they were
set free and fairly on the right road again, the way they had spent the
past three days and three nights made the gardens and the orchards
and the pastures that ran round the bottom and climbed up the sides
of the Delectable Mountains delectable beyond all description to
them.
Now, there were on the tops of those mountains certain
shepherds feeding their flocks, and they stood by the highway side.
The two travellers therefore went up to the shepherds, and leaning
upon their staves [as is common with weary travellers when they
stand to talk with any by the way), they asked: Whose delectable
mountains are these? and whose be the sheep that feed upon them?
These mountains, replied the shepherds, are Immanuel's Land, and
they are within sight of the city; the sheep also are His, and He laid
down His life for them. After some more talk like this by the wayside,
the shepherds, being pleased with the pilgrims, looked very lovingly upon them and said: Welcome to the Delectable Mountains. The
shepherds then, whose names were Knowledge, Experience, Watchful,
and Sincere, took them by the hand to lead them to their tents, and
made them partake of what was ready at present. They said,
moreover: We would that you should stay with us a while to be
acquainted with us, and yet more to solace yourselves with the cheer
of these Delectable Mountains. Then the travellers told them they
were content to stay; and so they went to rest that night because it
was now very late. The four shepherds lived all summer-time in a
lodge of tents well up among their sheep, while their wives and
families had their homes all the year round in the land of Beulah. The
four men formed a happy fraternity, and they worked among and
watched over their Master's sheep with one united mind. What one of
those shepherds could not so well do in the tent or in the fold or out
on the hillside, some of the others better did. And what one of them
could do to any perfection all the others by one consent left that to
him to do. You would have thought that they were made by a perfect
miracle to fit into one another, so harmoniously did they live and work
together, and such was the bond of brotherly love that held them
together. At the same time, there was one of the happy quaternity
who, from his years on the hills, and his services in times of trial and
danger, and one thing and another, fell always, and with the finest
humility too, into the foremost place, and his name, as you have
already heard, was Knowledge. Old Mr. Know-all the children in the
villages below ran after him and named him as they clustered round
his staff and hid in the great folds of his shepherd's coat.
Now, in all this John Bunyan speaks as a child to children; but, of
such children as John Bunyan and his readers is the kingdom of
heaven. My very youngest hearer here to-night knows quite well, or, at
any rate, shrewdly suspects, that Knowledge was not a shepherd going
about with his staff among woolly sheep; nor would the simplest-
minded reader of John Bunyan's book go to seek the Delectable
Mountains and Immanuel's Land in any geographer's atlas, or on any
schoolroom map. Oh, no. I do not need to stop to tell the most
guileless of my hearers that old Knowledge was not a shepherd whose
sheep were four-footed creatures, but a minister of the gospel, whose
sheep are men, women, and children. Nor are the Delectable
Mountains any range of hills and valleys of grass and herbs in England
or Scotland. The prophet Ezekiel calls them the mountains of Israel;
but by that you all know that he had in his mind something far better
than any earthly mountain. That prophet of Israel had in his mind the
church of God with its synagogues and its sacraments, with all the
grace and truth that all these things conveyed from God to the
children of Israel. As David also sang in the twenty-third Psalm:
'The Lord is my Shepherd,
I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures;
He leadeth me beside the still waters.'
Knowledge, then, is a minister; but every congregation has not
such a minister set over it as Knowledge is. All our college-bred and
ordained men are not ministers like Knowledge. This excellent
minister takes his excellent name from his great talents and his great
attainments. And while all his great talents are his Master's gift to him,
his great attainments are all his own to lay out in his Master's service.
To begin with, his Master had given His highly-favoured servant a
good understanding and a good memory, and many good and suitable
opportunities. Now, a good understanding is a grand endowment for a
minister, and his ministerial office will all his days afford him
opportunity for the best understanding he can bring to it. The
Christian ministry, first and last, has had a noble roll of men of a
strong understanding. The author of the book now open before us was
a man of a strong understanding. John Bunyan had a fine imagination,
with great gifts of eloquent, tender, and most heart-winning utterance,
but in his case also all that was bottomed in a strong English
understanding. Then, again, a good memory is indispensable to a
minister of knowledge. You must be content to take a second, a third,
or even a lower place still if your Master has withheld from you a good
memory. Dr. Goodwin has a passage on this point that I have often
turned up when I had again forgotten it. 'Thou mayest have a weak
memory, perhaps, yet if it can and doth remember good things as well
and better than other things, then it is a sanctified memory, and the
defilement of thy memory is healed though the imperfection of it is not; and, though thou art to be humbled for it as a misery, yet thou art
not to be discouraged; for God doth not hate thee for it, but pities thee;
and the like holds good and may be said as to the want of other like
gifts.' You cannot be a man of a commanding knowledge anywhere,
and you must be content to take a very subordinate and second place,
even in the ministry, unless you have both a good understanding and a
good memory; but then, at the last day your Master will not call you
and your congregation to an account for what He has not committed
to your stewardship. And on that day that will be something. But not
only must ministers of knowledge have a good mind and a good
memory; they must also be the most industrious of men. Other men
may squander and kill their time as they please, but a minister had as
good kill himself at once out of the way of better men unless he is to
hoard his hours like gold and jewels. He must read only the best
books, and he must read them with the 'pain of attention.' He must
read nothing that is not the best. He has not the time. And if he is poor
and remote and has not many books, he will have Butler, and let him
read Butler's Preface to his Sermons till he has it by heart. The best
books are always few, and they must be read over and over again
when other men are reading the 'great number of books and papers of
amusement that come daily in their way, and which most perfectly fall
in with their idle way of reading and considering things.' And, then,
such a minister must store up what he reads, if not in a good memory,
then in some other pigeon-hole that he has made for himself outside
of himself, since his Master has not seen fit to furnish him with such a
repository within himself. And, then, after all that, - for a good
minister is not made yet, - understanding and memory and industry
must all be sanctified by secret prayer many times every day, and then
laid out every day in the instruction, impression, and comfort of his
people. And, then, that privileged people will be as happy in
possessing that man for their minister as the sheep of Immanuel's
Land were in having Knowledge set over them for their shepherd.
They will never look up without being fed. They will every Sabbath-
day be led by green pastures and still waters.
And when they sing of the mercies of the Lord to them and to
their children, and forget not all His benefits, among the best of their
benefits they will not forget to hold up and bless their minister.
But, then, there is, nowadays, so much sound knowledge to be gained,
not to speak of so many books and papers of mere pastime and
amusement, that it may well be asked by a young man who is to be a
minister whether he is indeed called to be like that great student who
took all knowledge for his province. Yes, indeed, he is. For, if the
minister and interpreter of nature is to lay all possible knowledge
under contribution, what must not the minister of Jesus Christ and the
interpreter of Scripture and providence and experience and the
human heart be able to make the sanctified use of? Yes, all kinds and
all degrees of knowledge, to be called knowledge, belong by right and
obligation to his office who is the minister and interpreter of Him Who
made all things, Who is the Heir of all things, and by Whom all things
consist. At the same time, since the human mind has its limits, and
since human life has its limits, a minister of all men must make up his
mind to limit himself to the best knowledge; the knowledge, that is,
that chiefly concerns him, - the knowledge of God so far as God has
made Himself known, and the knowledge of Christ. He must be a
student of his Bible night and day and all his days. If he has not the
strength of understanding and memory to read his Bible easily in the
original Hebrew and Greek, let him all the more make up for that by
reading it the oftener and the deeper in English. Let him not only read
his Bible deeply for his sermons and prayers, lectures and addresses,
let him do that all day every day of the week, and then read it all night,
and every night of the week, for his own soul. Let every minister know
his Bible down to the bottom, and with his Bible his own heart. He
who so knows his Bible and with it his own heart has almost books
enough. All else is but ostentatious apparatus. When a minister has
neither understanding nor memory wherewith to feed his flock, let
him look deep enough into his Bible and into his own heart, and then
begin out of them to write and speak. And, then, for the outside
knowledge of the passing day he will read the newspapers, and
though he gives up all the morning to the newspapers, and returns to
them again in the evening, his conscience will not upbraid him if he
reads as Jonathan Edwards read the newsletters of his day, - to see
how the kingdom of heaven is prospering in the earth, and to pray for
its prosperity. And, then, by that time, and when he has got that
length, all other kinds of knowledge will have fallen into its own place, and will have taken its own proper proportion of his time and his
thought. He was a man of a great understanding and a great memory
and great industry who said that he had taken all knowledge for his
province. But he was a far wiser man who said that knowledge is not
our proper happiness. Our province, he went on to say, is virtue and
religion, life and manners: the science of improving the temper and
making the heart better. This is the field assigned us to cultivate: how
much it has lain neglected is indeed astonishing.
Now, my brethren, two dangers, two simply terrible dangers,
arise to every one of you out of all this matter of your ministers and
their knowledge. 1. The first danger is, - to be frank with you on this
subject, - that you are yourselves so ignorant on all the matters that a
minister has to do with, that you do not know one minister from
another, a good minister from one who is really no minister at all.
Now, I will put it to you, on what principle and for what reason did you
choose your present minister, if, indeed, you did choose him? Was it
because you were assured by people you could trust that he was a
minister of knowledge and knew his own business? Or was it that
when you went to worship with him for yourself you have not been
able ever since to tear yourself away from him, nor has any one else
been able to tear you away, though some have tried? When you first
came to the city, did you give, can you remember, some real anxiety,
rising sometimes into prayer, as to who your minister among so many
ministers was to be? Or did you choose him and your present seat in
his church because of some real or supposed worldly interest of yours
you thought you could further by taking your letter of introduction to
him? Had you heard while yet at home, had your father and mother
talked of such things to you, that rich men, and men of place and
power, political men and men high in society, sat in that church and
took notice of who attended it and who did not? Do you, down to this
day, know one church from another so far as spiritual and soul-saving
knowledge is concerned? Do you know that two big buildings, called
churches, may stand in the same street, and have men, called
ministers, carrying on certain services in them from week to week,
and yet, for all the purposes for which Christ came and died and rose
again and gave ministers to His church, these two churches and their
ministers are farther asunder than the two poles? Do you understand what I am saying? Do you understand what I have been saying all
night, or are you one of those of whom the prophet speaks in blame
and in pity as being destroyed for lack of knowledge? Well, that is your
first danger, that you are so ignorant, and as a consequence, so
careless, as not to know one minister from another.
2. And your second danger in connection with your minister is, that
you have, and may have long had, a good minister, but that you still
remain yourself a bad man. My brethren, be you all sure of it, there is a
special and a fearful danger in having a specially good minister. Think
twice, and make up your mind well, before you call a specially good
minister, or become a communicant, or even an adherent under a
specially good minister. If two bad men go down together to the pit,
and the one has had a good minister, as, God have mercy on us,
sometimes happens, and the other has only had one who had the
name of a minister, the evangelised reprobate will lie in a deeper bed
in hell, and will spend a more remorseful eternity on it than will the
other. No man among you, minister or no minister, good minister or
bad, will be able to sin with impunity. But he who sins on and on after
good preaching will be beaten with many stripes. 'Woe unto thee,
Chorazin! Woe unto thee, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works which
were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have
repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I say unto you, it shall
be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment than for
you.' 'Thou that hast knowledge,' says a powerful old preacher, 'canst
not sin so cheap as another that is ignorant. Places of much
knowledge' - he was preaching in the university pulpit of Oxford - 'and
plentiful in the means of grace are dear places for a man to sin in. To
be drunken or unclean after a powerful sermon, and after the Holy
Ghost has enlightened thee, is more than to have so sinned twenty
times before. Thou mightest have sinned ten times more and been
damned less. For does not Jesus Christ the Judge say to thee, This is
thy condemnation, that so much light has come to thee?' And, taking
the then way of execution as a sufficiently awful illustration, the old
Oxford Puritan goes on to say that to sin against light is the highest
step of the ladder before turning off. And, again, that if there are
worms in hell that die not, it is surely gospel light that breeds them.
EXPERIENCE
'My heart had great experience.' - The Preacher.
'I will give them pastors after Mine own heart.'
Experience, the excellent shepherd of the Delectable Mountains,
had a brother in the army, and he was an equally excellent soldier. The
two brothers - they were twin-brothers - had been brought up
together till they were grown-up men in the same town of Mansoul.
All the Experience family, indeed, had from time immemorial hailed
from that populous and important town, and their family tree ran
away back beyond the oldest extant history. The two brothers, while
in all other things as like as two twin-brothers could be, at the same
time very early in life began to exhibit very different talents and tastes
and dispositions; till, when we meet with them in their full manhood,
the one is a soldier in the army and the other a shepherd on the
Delectable Mountains. The soldier-brother is thus described in one of
the military histories of his day: 'A man of conduct and of valour, and a
person prudent in matters. A comely person, moreover, well-spoken in
negotiations, and very successful in undertakings. His colours were
the white colours of Mansoul and his scutcheon was the dead lion and
the dead bear.'
The shepherd-brother, on the other hand, is thus pictured out to
us by one who has seen him. A traveller who has visited the Delectable
Mountains, and has met and talked with the shepherds, thus describes
Experience in his excellent itinerary: 'Knowledge,' he says, 'I found to
be the sage of the company, spare in build, high of forehead, worn in
age, and his tranquil gait touched with abstractedness. While
Experience was more firmly knit in form and face, with a shrewd
kindly eye and a happy readiness in his bearing, and all his hard-
earned wisdom evidently on foot within him as a capability for work
and for control.' This, then, was the second of the four shepherds, who
fed Immanuel's sheep on the Delectable Mountains.
But here again to-night, and in the case of Experience, just as last
Sabbath night and in the case of Knowledge, in all this John Bunyan
speaks to children, - only the children here are the children of the
kingdom of heaven. The veriest child who reads the Delectable
Mountains begins to suspect before he is done that Knowledge and
Experience are not after all two real and true shepherds going their
rounds with their staves and their wallets and their wheeling dogs.
Yes, though the little fellow cannot put his suspicions into proper
words for you, all the same he has his suspicions that he is being
deceived by you and your Sabbath book; and, ten to one, from that
sceptical day he will not read much more of John Bunyan till in after-
life he takes up John Bunyan never for a single Sabbath again to lay
him down. Yes, let the truth be told at once, Experience is simply a
minister, and not a real shepherd at all; a minister of the gospel, a
preacher, and a pastor; but, then, he is a preacher and a pastor of no
ordinary kind, but of the selectest and very best kind.
Now, my brethren, to plunge at once out of the parable and into
the interpretation, I observe, in the first place, that pastors who are
indeed to be pastors after God's own heart have all to pass into their
pastorate through the school of experience. Preaching after God's own
heart, and pastoral work of the same divine pattern, cannot be taught
in any other school than the school of experience. Poets may be born
and not made, but not pastors nor preachers. Nay, do not all our best
poets first learn in their sufferings what afterwards they teach us in
their songs? At any rate, that is certainly the case with preachers and
pastors. As my own old minister once said to me in a conversation on
this very subject, 'Even God Himself cannot inspire an experience.' No.
For if He could He would surely have done so in the case of His own
Son, to Whom in the gift of the Holy Ghost He gave all that He could
give and all that His Son could receive. But an experience cannot in the
very nature of things be either bestowed on the one hand or received
and appropriated on the other. An experience in the unalterable
nature of the thing itself must be undergone. The Holy Ghost Himself
after He has been bestowed and received has to be experimented
upon, and taken into this and that need, trial, cross, and care of life. He
is not sent to spare us our experiences, but to carry us through them.
And thus it is [to keep for a moment in sight of the highest illustration
we have of this law of experience), thus it is, I say, that the apostle has
it in his Epistle to the Hebrews that though Christ Himself were a Son,
yet learned He obedience by the things that He suffered. And being by
experience made perfect He then went on to do such and such things
for us. Why, for instance, for one thing, why do you think was our Lord
able to speak with such extraordinary point, impressiveness, and
assurance about prayer; about the absolute necessity and certainty of secret, importunate, persevering prayer having, sooner or later, in one
shape or other, and in the best possible shape, its answer? Why but
because of His own experience? Why but because His own closet,
hilltop, all-night, and up-before-the-day prayers had all been at last
heard and better heard than He had been able to ask? We can quite
well read between the lines in all our Lord's parables and in all the
passages of His sermons about prayer. The unmistakable traces of
otherwise untold enterprises and successes, agonies and victories of
prayer, are to be seen in every such sermon of His. And so, in like
manner, in all that He says to His disciples about the sweetness of
submission, resignation, and self-denial, as also about the
nourishment for His soul that He got out of every hard act of
obedience, - and so on. There is running through all our Lord's
doctrinal and homiletical teaching that note of reality and of certitude
that can only come to any teaching out of the long and deep and
intense experience of the teacher. And as the Master was, so are all His
ministers. When I read, for instance, what William Law says about the
heart-searching and heart-cleansing efficacy of intercessory prayer in
the case of him who continues all his life so to pray, and carries such
prayer through all the experiences and all the relationships of life, I do
not need you to tell me where that great man of God made that great
discovery. I know that he made it in his own closet, and on his own
knees, and in his own evil heart. And so, also, when I come nearer
home. Whenever I hear a single unconventional, immediate,
penetrating, overawing petition or confession in a minister's pulpit
prayer or in his family worship, I do not need to be told out of what
prayer-book he took that. I know without his telling me that my
minister has been, all unknown to me till now, at that same school of
prayer to which his Master was put in the days of His flesh, and out of
which He brought the experiences that He afterwards put into the
Friend at midnight, and the Importunate widow, as also into the Egg
and the scorpion, the Bread and the stone, the Knocking and the
opening, the Seeking and the finding.
His children thus most dear to Him,
Their heavenly Father trains,
Through all the hard experience led
Of sorrows and of pains.
And if His children, then ten times more the tutors and governors of
His children, - the pastors and the preachers He prepares for His
people.
Again, though I will not put those two collegiate shepherds
against one another, yet, in order to bring out the whole truth on this
matter, I will risk so far as to say that where we cannot have both
Knowledge and Experience, by all means let us have Experience. Yes, I
declare to you that if I were choosing a minister for myself, and could
not have both the book-knowledge and the experience of the Christian
life in one and the same man; and could not have two ministers, one
with all the talents and another with all the experiences; I would say
that, much as I like an able and learned sermon from an able and
learned man, I would rather have less learning and more experience.
And, then, no wonder that such pastors and preachers are few. For
how costly must a thoroughly good minister's experience be to him!
What a quantity and what a quality of experience is needed to take a
raw, light-minded, ignorant, and self-satisfied youth and transform
him into the pastor, the tried and trusted friend of the tempted, the
sorrow-laden, and the shipwrecked hearts and lives in his
congregation! What years and years of the selectest experiences are
needed to teach the average divinity student to know himself, to track
out and run to earth his own heart, and thus to lay open and read
other men's hearts to their self-deceived owners in the light of his
own. A matter, moreover, that he gets not one word of help toward in
all his college curriculum. David was able to say in his old age that he
fed the flock of God in Israel according to the integrity of his heart, and
guided them by the skilfulness of his hands. But what years and years
of shortcoming and failure in private and in public life lie behind that
fine word 'integrity'! as also what stumbles and what blunders behind
that other fine word 'skilfulness'! But, then, how a lightest touch of a
preacher's own dear-bought experience skilfully let fall brightens up
an obscure scripture! How it sends a thrill through a prayer! How it
wings an arrow to the conscience! How it sheds abroad balm upon the heart! Let no minister, then, lose heart when he is sent back to the
school of experience. He knows in theory that tribulation worketh
patience, and patience experience, but it is not theory, but experience,
that makes a minister after God's own heart. I sometimes wish that I
may live to see a chair of Experimental Religion set up in all our
colleges. I fear it is a dream, and that it must have been pronounced
impracticable long ago by our wisest heads. Still, all the same, that
does not prevent me from again and again indulging my dream. I
indulge my fond dream again as often as I look back on my own
tremendous mistakes in the management of my own personal and
ministerial life, as well as sometimes see some signs of the same
mistakes in some other ministers. In my dream for the Church of the
future I see the programme of lectures in the Experimental Class and
the accompanying examinations. I see the class library, and I envy the
students. I am present at the weekly book-day, and at the periodical
addresses delivered to the class by those town and country ministers
who have been most skilful in their pastorate and most successful in
the conversion and in the character of their people. And, unless I
wholly deceive myself, I see, not all the class - that will never be till the
millennium - but here and there twos and threes, and more men than
that, who will throw their whole hearts into the work of such a class
till they come out of the hall in experimental religion like Sir Proteus
in the play:
Their years but young, but their experience old,
Their heads unmellowed, but their judgment ripe.
It is quite true, that, as my old minister shrewdly said to me, even the
Holy Ghost cannot inspire an experience. No. But a class of genuine
experimental divinity would surely help to foster and develop an
experience. And, till the class is established, any student who has the
heart for it may lay in the best of the class library for a few shillings.
Mr. Thin will tell you that there is no literature that is such a drug in