Part 1
BUNYAN CHARACTERS:
SECOND SERIES
BEING LECTURES
DELIVERED IN
ST. GEORGE'S FREE CHURCH
EDINBURGH
ALEXANDER WHYTE, D.D.
CONTENTS
Page
Ignorance
Little-Faith
The Flatterer
Atheist
Hopeful
Temporary
Secret
Mrs. Timorous
Mercy
Mr. Brisk
Mr. Skill
The Shepherd Boy
Old Honest
Mr. Fearing
Feeble-Mind
Great-Heart
Mr. Ready-To-Halt
Valiant-For-Truth
Standfast
Madam Bubble
Gaius
Christian
Christiana
The Enchanted Ground
The Land Of Beulah
The Swelling Of Jordan
IGNORANCE
"I was alive without the law once." - Paul.
"I was now a brisk talker also myself in the matter of religion." -
Bunyan.
This is a new kind of pilgrim. There are not many pilgrims like
this bright brisk youth. A few more young gentlemen like this, and the
pilgrimage way would positively soon become fashionable and
popular, and be the thing to do. Had you met with this young
gentleman in society, had you noticed him beginning to come about
your church, you would have lost no time in finding out who he was. I
can well believe it, you would have replied. Indeed, I felt sure of it. I
must ask him to the house. I was quite struck with his appearance and
his manners. Yes; ask him at once to your house; show him some
pointed attentions and you will never regret it. For if he goes to the
bar and works even decently at his cases, he will be first a sheriff and
then a judge in no time. If he should take to politics, he will be an
under-secretary before his first parliament is out. And if he takes to
the church, which is not at all unlikely, our West-end congregations
will all be competing for him as their junior colleague; and, if he elects
either of our Established churches to exercise his profession in it, he
will have dined with Her Majesty while half of his class-fellows are
still half-starved probationers. Society fathers will point him out with
anger to their unsuccessful sons, and society mothers will smile under
their eyelids as they see him hanging over their daughters.
Well, as this handsome and well-appointed youth stepped out of
his own neat little lane into the rough road on which our two pilgrims
were staggering upward, he felt somewhat ashamed to be seen in
their company. And I do not wonder. For a greater contrast you would
not have seen on any road in all that country that day. He was at your
very first sight of him a gentleman and the son of a gentleman. A little
over-dressed perhaps; as, also, a little lofty to the two rather battered
but otherwise decent enough men who, being so much older than he,
took the liberty of first accosting him. "Brisk" is his biographer's description of him. Feather-headed, flippant, and almost impudent,
you might have been tempted to say of him had you joined the little
party at that moment. But those two tumbled, broken-winded, and,
indeed, broken-hearted old men had been, as an old author says, so
emptied from vessel to vessel - they had had a life of such sloughs and stiff climbs - they had been in hunger and thirst, in cold and
nakedness so often - that it was no wonder that their dandiacal
companion walked on a little ahead of them. 'Gentlemen,' his fine
clothes and his cane and his head in the air all said to his two
somewhat disreputable-looking fellow-travellers, - "Gentlemen, you
be utter strangers to me: I know you not.
And, besides, I take my pleasure in walking alone, even more a
great deal than in company, unless I like it better." But all his society manners, and all his costly and well-kept clothes, and all his easy and
self-confident airs did not impose upon the two wary old pilgrims.
They had seen too much of the world, and had been too long mixing
among all kinds of pilgrims, young and old, true and false, to be easily
imposed upon. Besides, as one could see from their weather-beaten
faces, and their threadbare garments, they had found the upward way
so dreadfully difficult that they both felt a real apprehension as to the
future of this light-hearted and light-headed youth. "You may find
some difficulty at the gate," somewhat bluntly broke in the oldest of
the two pilgrims on their young comrade. "I shall, no doubt, do at the
gate as other good people do," replied the young gentleman briskly.
"But what have you to show at the gate that may cause that the gate be
opened to you?" "Why, I know my Lord's will, and I have been a good
liver all my days, and I pay every man his own. I pray, moreover, and I
fast. I pay tithes, and give alms, and have left my country for whither I
am going." Now, before we go further: Do all you young gentlemen do
as much as that? Have you always been good livers? Have you paid
every man and woman their due? Do you pray to be called prayer?
And, if so, when, and where, and what for, and how long at a time? I do
not ask if your private prayer-book is like Bishop Andrewes'
Devotions, which was so reduced to pulp with tears and sweat and the
clenching of his agonising hands that his literary executors were with
difficulty able to decipher it. Clito in the Christian Perfection was so
expeditious with his prayers that he used to boast that he could both
dress and do his devotions in a quarter of an hour. What was the
longest time you ever took to dress or undress and say your prayers?
Then, again, there is another Anglican young gentleman in the same
High Church book who always fasts on Good Friday and the Thirtieth
of January. Did you ever deny yourself a glass of wine or a cigar or an opera ticket for the church or the poor? Could you honestly say that
you know what tithes are? And is there a poor man or woman or child
in this whole city who will by any chance put your name into their
prayers and praises at bedtime to-night? I am afraid there are not
many young gentlemen in this house to-night who could cast a stone
at that brisk lad Ignorance, Vain-Hope, door in the side of the hill, and
all. He was not far from the kingdom of heaven; indeed, he got up to
the very gate of it. How many of you will get half as far?
Now (what think you?), was it not a very bold thing in John
Bunyan, whose own descent was of such a low and inconsiderable
generation, his father's house being of that rank that is meanest and
most despised of all the families in the land - was it not almost too
bold in such a clown to take such a gentleman-scholar as Saul of
Tarsus, the future Apostle of the Lord, and put him into the Pilgrim's
Progress, and there go on to describe him as a very brisk lad and
nickname him with the nickname of Ignorance? For, in knowledge of
all kinds to be called knowledge, Gamaliel's gold medallist could have
bought the unlettered tinker of Elstow in one end of the market and
sold him in the other. And nobody knew that better than Bunyan did.
And yet such a lion was he for the truth, such a disciple of Luther was
he, and such a defender and preacher of the one doctrine of a standing
or falling church, that he fills page after page with the crass ignorance
of the otherwise most learned of all the New Testament men. Bunyan
does not accuse the rising hope of the Pharisees of school or of
synagogue ignorance. That young Hebrew Rabbi knew every jot and
tittle of the law of Moses, and all the accumulated traditions of the
fathers to boot. But Bunyan has Paul himself with him when he
accuses and convicts Saul of an absolutely brutish ignorance of his
own heart and hidden nature. That so very brisk lad was always
boasting in himself of the day on which he was circumcised, and of the
old stock of which he had come; of his tribe, of his zeal, of his
blamelessness, and of the profit he had made of his educational and
ecclesiastical opportunities. Whereas Bunyan is fain to say of himself
in his Grace Abounding that he is "not able to boast of noble blood or
of a high-born state according to the flesh. Though, all things
considered, I magnify the Heavenly Majesty for that by this door He
brought me into this world to partake of the grace and life that is in Christ by the Gospel."
As we listen to the conversation that goes on between the two old
pilgrims and this smartly appointed youth, we find them striving hard,
but without any sign of success, to convince him of some of the things
from which he gets his somewhat severe name. For one thing, they at
last bluntly told him that he evidently did not know the very A B C
about himself. Till, when too hard pressed by the more ruthless of the
two old men, the exasperated youth at last frankly burst out: "I will
never believe that my heart is thus bad!" There is a warm touch of
Bunyan's own experience here, mixed up with his so dramatic
development of Paul's morsels of autobiography that he lets drop in
his Epistles to the Philippians and to the Galatians. "Now was I
become godly; now I was become a right honest man. Though as yet I
was nothing but a poor painted hypocrite, yet I was proud of my
godliness. I read my Bible, but as for Paul's Epistles, and such like
Scriptures, I could not away with them; being, as yet, but ignorant
both of the corruptions of my nature and of the want and worth of
Jesus Christ to save me. The new birth did never enter my mind,
neither knew I the deceitfulness and treachery of my own wicked
heart. And as for secret thoughts, I took no notice of them." My
brethren, old and young, what do you think of all that? What have you
to say to all that? Does all that not open a window and let a flood of
daylight into your own breast? I am sure it does. That is the best
portrait of you that ever was painted. Do you not see yourself there as
in a glass? And do you not turn with disgust and loathing from the
stupid and foolish face? You complain and tell stories about how
impostors and cheats and liars have come to your door and have
impudently thrust themselves into your innermost rooms; but your
own heart, if you only knew it, is deceitful far above them all. Not the
human heart as it stands in confessions, and in catechisms, and in
deep religious books, but your own heart that beats out its blood-
poison of self-deceit, and darkness, and death day and night
continually. "My heart is a good heart," said that poor ill-brought-up boy, who was already destroyed by his father and his mother for lack
of self-knowledge. I entirely grant you that those two old sinners by
this time were taking very pessimistic and very melancholy views of
human nature, and, therefore, of every human being, young and old.
They knew that no language had ever been coined in any scripture, or
creed, or catechism, or secret diary of the deepest penitent, that even
half uttered their own evil hearts; and they had lived long enough to
see that we are all cut out of one web, are all dyed in one vat, and are
all corrupted beyond all accusation or confession in Adam's
corruption. But how was that poor, mishandled lad to know or believe
all that? He could not. It was impossible. "You go so fast, gentlemen,
that I cannot keep pace with you. Go you on before and I will stay a
while behind." Then said Christian to his companion: "It pities me
much for this poor lad, for it will certainly go ill with him at last."
"Alas!" said Hopeful, "there are abundance in our town in his
condition: whole families, yea, whole streets, and that of pilgrims too."
Is your family such a family as this? And are you yourself just such a
pilgrim as Ignorance was, and are you hastening on to just such an
end?
And then, as a consequence, being wholly ignorant of his own
corruption and condemnation in the sight of God, this miserable man
must remain ignorant and outside of all that God has done in Christ
for corrupt and condemned men. "I believe that Christ died for sinners
and that I shall be justified before God from the curse through His
gracious acceptance of my obedience to His law. Or, then, to take it this
way, Christ makes my duties that are religious acceptable to His
Father by virtue of His merits, and so shall I be justified." Now, I verify believe that nine out of ten of the young men who are here to-night
would subscribe that statement and never suspect there was anything
wrong with it or with themselves. And yet, what does Christian, who,
in this matter, is just John Bunyan, who again is just the word of God -
what does the old pilgrim say to this confession of this young pilgrim's
faith? "Ignorance is thy name," he says, "and as thy name is, so art thou: even this thy answer demonstrateth what I say. Ignorant thou
art of what justifying righteousness is, and as ignorant how to secure
thy soul through the faith of it from the heavy wrath of God. Yea, thou
also art ignorant of the true effect of saving faith in this righteousness
of Christ's, which is to bow and win over the heart to God in Christ, to
love His name, His word, His ways, and His people." Paul sums up all
his own early life in this one word, "ignorant of God's righteousness."
"Going about," he says also, "to establish our own righteousness, not submitting ourselves to be justified by the righteousness that God has
provided with such wisdom and grace, and at such a cost in His Son
Jesus Christ." Now, young men, I defy you to be better born, better
brought up, or to have better prospects than Saul of Tarsus had. I defy
you to have profited more by all your opportunities and advantages
than he had done. I defy you to be more blameless in your opening
manhood than he was. And yet it all went like smoke when he got a
true sight of himself, and, with that, a true sight of Christ and His
justifying righteousness. Read at home to-night, and read when alone,
what that great man of God says about all that in his classical epistle to
the Philippians, and refuse to sleep till you have made the same
submission. And, to-night, and all your days, let submission, Paul's
splendid submission, be the soul and spirit of all your religious life.
Submission to be searched by God's holy law as by a lighted candle:
submission to be justified from all that that candle discovers:
submission to take Christ as your life and righteousness, sanctification
and redemption: and submission of your mind and your will and your
heart to Him at all times and in all things. Nay, stay still, and say where
you sit, Lord, I submit. I submit on the spot to be pardoned. I submit
now to be saved. I submit in all things from this very hour and house
of God not any longer to be mine own, but to be Thine, O God, Thine,
Thine, for ever, in Jesus Christ Thy Son and my Saviour!
"But, one day, as I was passing in the field, and that, too, with
some dashes in my conscience, fearing lest all was not right, suddenly
this sentence fell upon my soul, Thy Righteousness is in heaven! And,
methought, I saw with the eyes of my soul Jesus Christ at God's right
hand. There, I saw, was my Righteousness. I also saw, moreover, that it
was not my good frame of heart that made my Righteousness better,
nor my bad frame of heart that made my Righteousness worse: for my
Righteousness was Jesus Christ Himself, the same yesterday, and to-
day, and for ever. 'Twas glorious to me to see His exaltation, and the
worth and prevalency of His benefits. And that because I could now
look from myself to Him and should reckon that all those graces of
God that were now green in me were yet but like those crack-groats
and four-pence halfpennies that rich men carry in their purses when
their gold is in their trunks at home! Oh, I saw that day that my gold
was all in my trunk at home! Even in Christ, my Lord and Saviour!
Now, Christ was all to me: all my wisdom, all my righteousness, all my
sanctification and all my redemption."
"Methinks in this God speaks,
No tinker hath such power."
LITTLE-FAITH
"O thou of little faith." - Our Lord.
Little-Faith, let it never be forgotten, was, all the time, a good
man. With all his mistakes about himself, with his sad misadventure,
with all his loss of blood and of money, and with his whole after-
lifetime of doleful and bitter complaints, - all the time, Little-Faith was
all through, in a way, a good man. To keep us right on this all-
important point, and to prevent our being prematurely prejudiced
against this pilgrim because of his somewhat prejudicial name -
because give a dog a bad name, you know, and you had better hang
him out of hand at once - because, I say, of this pilgrim's somewhat
suspicious name, his scrupulously just, and, indeed, kindly affected
biographer says of him, and says it of him not once nor twice, but over
and over and over again, that this Little-Faith was really all the time a
truly good man. And, more than that, this good man's goodness was
not a new thing with him it was not a thing of yesterday. This man had,
happily to begin with, a good father and a good mother. And if there
was a good town in all those parts for a boy to be born and brought up
in it was surely the town of Sincere. "Train up a child in the way he
should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." Well, Little-
Faith had been so trained up both by his father and his mother and his
schoolmaster and his minister, and he never cost either of them a sore
heart or even an hour's sleep.
One who knew him well, as well, indeed, as only one young man
knows another, has been fain to testify, when suspicions have been
cast on the purity and integrity of his youth, that nothing will describe
this pilgrim so well in the days of his youth as just those beautiful
words out of the New Testament - "an example to all young men in
word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith even, and in purity"
- and that, if there was one young man in all that town of Sincere who
kept his garments unspotted it was just our pilgrim of to-night. Yes,
said one who had known him all his days, if the child is the father of
the man, then Little-Faith, as you so unaccountably to me call him,
must have been all along a good man.
It was said long ago in Vanity Fair about our present Premier that
if he were a worse man he would be a better statesman. Now, I do not
repeat that in this place because I agree with it, but because it helps to
illustrate, as sometimes a violent paradox will help to illustrate, a truth that does not lie all at once on the surface. But it is no paradox
or extravagance or anything but the simple truth to say that if Little-
Faith had had more and earlier discoveries made to him of the innate
evil of his own heart, even if it had been by that innate evil bursting
out of his heart and laying waste his good life, he would either have
been driven out of his little faith altogether or driven into a far deeper
faith. Had the commandment come to him in the manner it came to
Paul; had it come so as that the sinfulness of his inward nature had
revived, as Paul says, under its entrance; then, either his great
goodness or his little faith must have there and then died. God's truth
and man's goodness cannot dwell together in the same heart. Either
the truth will kill the goodness, or the goodness will kill the truth.
Little-Faith, in short, was such a good man, and had always been such
a good man, and had led such an easy life in consequence, that his
faith had not been much exercised, and therefore had not grown, as it
must have been exercised and must have grown, had he not been such
a good man. In short, and to put it bluntly, had Little-Faith been a
worse sinner, he would have been a better saint. "O felix culpa!"
exclaimed a church father; "O happy fault, which found for us sinners
such a Redeemer." An apostrophe which Bishop Ken has put into these
four bold lines -
"What Adam did amiss,
Turned to our endless bliss;
O happy sin, which to atone,
Drew Filial God to leave His throne."
And John Calvin, the soberest of men, supports Augustine, the most
impulsive of men, in saying the same thing. All things which happen to
the saints are so overruled by God that what the world regards as evil
the issue shows to be good. For what Augustine says is true, that even
the sins of saints are, through the guiding providence of God, so far
from doing harm to them, that, on the contrary, they serve to advance
their salvation. And Richard Hooker, a theologian, if possible, still
more judicious than even John Calvin, says on this same subject and in
support of the same great father, "I am not afraid to affirm it boldly
with St. Augustine that men puffed up through a proud opinion of their own sanctity and holiness receive a benefit at the hands of God,
and are assisted with His grace, when with His grace they are not
assisted, but permitted, and that grievously, to transgress. Ask the
very soul of Peter, and it shall undoubtedly make you itself this
answer: My eager protestations, made in the glory of my ghostly
strength, I am ashamed of; but those crystal tears, wherewith my sin
and weakness were bewailed, have procured my endless joy: my
strength hath been my ruin, and my fall my stay." And our own Samuel
Rutherford is not likely to be left far behind by the best of them when
the grace of God is to be magnified. "Had sin never been we should
have wanted the mysterious Emmanuel, the Beloved, the Chief among
ten thousand, Christ, God-man, the Saviour of sinners. For, no sick
sinners, no soul-physician of sinners; no captive, no Redeemer; no
slave of hell, no lovely ransom-payer of heaven. Mary Magdalene with
her seven devils, Paul with his hands smoking with the blood of the
saints, and with his heart sick with malice and blasphemy against
Christ and His Church, and all the rest of the washen ones whose
robes are made fair in the blood of the Lamb, and all the multitude
that no man can number in that best of lands, are all but bits of free
grace.
O what a depth of unsearchable wisdom to contrive that lovely
plot of free grace. Come, all intellectual capacities, and warm your
hearts at this fire. Come, all ye created faculties, and smell the
precious ointment of Christ. Oh come, sit down under His shadow and
eat the apples of life. Oh that angels would come, and generations of
men, and wonder, and admire, and fall down before the unsearchable
wisdom of this gospel-art of the unsearchable riches of Christ!" And
always pungent Thomas Shepard of New England: "You shall find this,
that there is not any carriage or passage of the Lord's providence
toward thee but He will get a name to Himself, first and last, by it.
Hence you shall find that those very sins that dishonour His name He
will even by them get Himself a better name; for so far will they be
from casting you out of His love that He will actually do thee good by
them. Look and see if it is not so with thee? Doth not thy weakness
strengthen thee like Paul? Doth not thy blindness make thee cry for
light? And hath not God out of darkness oftentimes brought light?
Thou hast felt venom against Christ and thy brother, and thou hast on that account loathed thyself the more. Thy falls into sin make thee
weary of it, watchful against it, long to be rid of it. And thus He makes
thy poison thy food, thy death thy life, thy damnation thy salvation,
and thy very greatest enemies thy very best friends. And hence Mr. Fox
said that he thanked God more for his sins than for his good works.
And the reason is, God will have His name."
And, last, but not least, listen to our old acquaintance, James
Fraser of Brea: "I find advantages by my sins: 'Peccare nocet,
peccavisse vero juvat.' I may say, as Mr. Fox said, my sins have, in a
manner, done me more good than my graces. Grace and mercy have
more abounded where sin had much abounded. I am by my sins made
much more humble, watchful, revengeful against myself. I am made to
see a greater need to depend more upon Him and to love Him the
more. I find that true which Shepard says, 'sin loses strength by every
new fall.'" Have you followed all that, my brethren? Or have you
stumbled at it? Do you not understand it? Does your superficial gin-
horse mind incline to shake its empty head over all this? I know that
great names, and especially the great names of your own party, go
much farther with you than the truth goes, and therefore I have
sheltered this deep truth under a shield of great names. For their
sakes let this sure truth of God's best saints lie in peace and
undisputed beside you till you arrive to understand it.
But, to proceed, - the thing was this. At this passage there comes
down from Broadway-gate a lane called Dead-Man's-lane, so called
because of the murders that are commonly done there. And this Little-
Faith going on pilgrimage, as we now do, chanced to sit down there
and fell fast asleep. Yes; the thing was this: This good man had never
been what one would call really awake. He was not a bad man, as men
went in the town of Sincere, but he always had a half-slept half-
awakened look about his eyes, till now, at this most unfortunate spot,
he fell stone-dead asleep. You all know, I shall suppose, what the
apostle Paul and John Bunyan mean by sleep, do you not? You all
know, at any rate, to begin with, what sleep means in the accident
column of the morning papers. You all know what sleep meant and
what it involved and cost in the Thirsk signal-box the other night.
When a man is asleep, he is as good as dead, and other people are as
good as dead to him. He is dead to duty, to danger, to other people's lives, as well as to his own. He may be having pleasant dreams, and
may even be laughing aloud in his sleep, but that may only make his
awaking all the more hideous. He may awake just in time, or he may
awake just too late. Only, he is asleep and he neither knows nor cares.
Now, there is a sleep of the soul as well as of the body. And as the soul
is in worth, as the soul is in its life and in its death to the body, so is its sleep. Many of you sitting there are quite as dead to heaven and hell,
to death and judgment, and to what a stake other people as well as
yourselves have in your sleep as that poor sleeper in the signal-box
was dead to what was coming rushing on him through the black night.
And as all his gnashing of teeth at himself, and all his sobs before his
judge and before the laid-out dead, and before distracted widows and
half-mad husbands did not bring back that fatal moment when he fell
asleep so sweetly, so will it be with you. Lazarus! come forth!
Wise and foolish virgins both: Behold the Bridegroom cometh! Awake,
thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee
light!
And, with that, Guilt with a great club that was in his hand struck
Little-Faith on the head, and with that blow felled him to the earth,
where he lay bleeding as one that would soon bleed to death. Yes, yes,
all true to the very life. A man may be the boast and the example of all
the town, and yet, unknown to them all, and all but unknown to
himself till he is struck down, he may have had guilt enough on his
track all the time to lay him half dead at the mouth of Dead-Man's-
lane. Good as was the certificate that all men in their honesty gave to
Little-Faith, yet even he had some bad enough memories behind him
and within him had he only kept them ever present with him. But,
then, it was just this that all along was the matter with Little-Faith.
Till, somehow, after that sad and yet not wholly evil sleep, all his past
sins leapt out into the light and suddenly became and remained all the
rest of his life like scarlet. So loaded, indeed, was the club of Guilt with
the nails and studs and clamps of secret aggravation, that every nail
and stud left its own bleeding bruise in the prostrate man's head. I
have myself, says the narrator of Little-Faith's story, I have myself
been engaged as he was, and I found it to be a terrible thing. I would,
as the saying is, have sold my life at that moment for a penny; but that,
as God would have it, I was clothed with armour of proof: ay, and yet though I was thus harnessed, I found it hard work to quit myself like a
man. No man can tell what in that combat attends us but he that hath
been in the battle himself. Great-Grace himself, - whoso looks well
upon his face shall see those cuts and scars that shall easily give
demonstration of what I say.
Most unfortunately there was no good Samaritan with his beast
on the road that day to take the half-dead man to an inn. And thus it
was that Little-Faith was left to lie in his blood till there was almost no
more blood left in him. Till at last, coming a little to himself, he made a
shift to scrabble on his way. When he was able to look a little to
himself, besides all his wounds and loss of blood, he found that all his
spending money was gone, and what was he to do, a stranger in such a
plight on a strange road? There was nothing for it but he must just beg
his way with many a hungry belly for the remainder of his way. You all
understand the parable at this point? Our knowledge of gospel truth;
our personal experience of the life of God in our own soul; our
sensible attainments in this grace of the Spirit and in that; in secret
prayer, in love to God, in forgiveness of injuries, in goodwill to all men,
and in self-denial that no one knows of, - in things like these we
possess what may be called the pocket-money of the spiritual life. All
these things, at their best, are not the true jewel that no thief can
break through nor steal; but though they are not our best and truest
riches, yet they have their place and play their part in sending us up
the pilgrim way. By our long and close study of the word of God, if that
is indeed our case; by divine truth dwelling richly and experimentally
in our hearts; and by a hidden life that is its own witness, and which
always has the Holy Spirit's seal set upon it that we are the children of
God, - all that keeps, and is designed by God to keep our hearts up
amid the labours and the faintings, the hopes and the fears of the
spiritual life. All that keeps us at the least and the worst above famine
and beggary. Now, the whole pity with Little-Faith was, that though he
was not a bad man, yet he never, even at his best days, had much of
those things that make a good and well-furnished pilgrim; and what
little he had he had now clean lost. He had never been much a reader
of his Bible; he had never sat over it as other men sat over their news-
letters and their romances. He had never had much taste or talent for
spiritual books of any kind. He was a good sort of man, but he was not exactly the manner of man on whose broken heart the Holy Ghost sets
the broad seal of heaven. But for his dreadful misadventure, he might
have plodded on, a decent, humdrum, commonplace, everyday kind of
pilgrim; but when that catastrophe fell on him he had nothing to fall
back upon. The secret ways of faith and love and hope were wholly
unknown to him. He had no practice in importunate prayer. He had
never prayed a whole night all his life. He had never needed to do so.
For were we not told when we first met him what a blameless and
pure and true and good man he had always been? He did not know
how to find his way about in his Bible; and as for the maps and guide-
books that some pilgrims never let out of their hand, even when he
had some spending money about him, he never laid it out that way.
And a more helpless pilgrim than Little-Faith was all the rest of the
way you never saw. He was forced to beg as he went, says his
historian. That is to say, he had to lean upon and look to wiser and
better-furnished men than himself. He had to share their meals, look
to them to pay his bills, keep close to their company, walk in their foot-
prints, and at night borrow their oil, and it was only in this poor
dependent way that Little-Faith managed to struggle on to the end of
his dim and joyless journey.
It would have been far more becoming and far more profitable if
Christian and Hopeful, instead of falling out of temper and calling one
another bad names over the sad case of Little-Faith, had tried to tell
one another why that unhappy pilgrim's faith was so small, and how
both their own faith and his might from that day have been made
more. Hopeful, for some reason or other, was in a rude and boastful
mood of mind that day, and Christian was more tart and snappish than
we have ever before seen him; and, altogether, the opportunity of
learning something useful out of Little-Faith's story has been all but
lost to us. But, now, since there are so many of Little-Faith's kindred
among ourselves - so many good men who are either half asleep in
their religious life or are begging their way from door to door - let
them be told, in closing, one or two out of many other ways in which
their too little faith may possibly be made stronger and more fruitful.
Well, then, faith, like everything else, once we have it, grows greater by
our continual exercise of it. Exercise, then, intentionally and seriously
and on system your faith every day. And exercise it habitually and increasingly on your Bible, on heaven, and on Jesus Christ. And let
your faith on all these things, and places, and persons, work by love, -
by love and by imagination. Our love is cold and our faith is small and
weak for lack of imagination. Read your Psalm, your Gospel, your
Epistle every morning and every night with your eye upon the object.
Think you see the Psalmist amid all his deep and divine experiences.
Think you see Jesus Christ speaking His parables, saying His prayers,
and doing His good works. Walk up and down with Him, observing His
manner, His look, His gait, His divinity in your humanity, till Galilee
and Jerusalem become Scotland and Edinburgh; that is, till He is as
much with you, and more, than He was with Peter and James and John.
Never close your eye a single night till you have again laid your hand
on the very head of the Lamb of God, and till you feel that your sin and
guilt have all passed off your hand and on upon His head. And never
rise without, like William Law, saluting the rising sun in the name of
God, as if he had just been created and sent up into your sky to let you
see to serve God and your neighbour for another day. And be often out
of this world and up in heaven. Beat all about you at building castles in
the air; you have more material and more reason. For is not faith the
substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen?
Walk often in heaven's friendly streets. Pass often into heaven's many
mansions filled with happy families. Imagine this unhappy life at an
end, and imagine yourself sent back to this probationary world to play
the man for a few short years before heaven finally calls you home.
Little-Faith was a good man, but there was no speculation in his eyes
and no secrets of love in his heart. And if your faith also is little, and
your spending money also is run low, try this way of love and
imagination. If you have a better way, then go on with it and be happy
yourself and helpful to others; but if your faith is at a standstill and is
stricken with barrenness, try my counsel of putting more heart and
more inward eye, more holy love and more heavenly joy, into your
frigid and sterile religion.
THE FLATTERER
"A man that flattereth his neighbour spreadeth a net for his feet." - The Wise Man.
Both Ignorance and Little-Faith would have had their revenge and
satisfaction upon Christian and Hopeful had they seen those two so
Pharisaical old men taken in the Flatterer's net. For it was nothing else
but the swaggering pride of Hopeful over the pitiful case of Little-
Faith, taken along with the hard and hasty ways of Christian with that
unhappy youth Ignorance, that so soon laid them both down under
the small cords of the Shining One. This word of the wise man, that
pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall, was
fulfilled to the very letter in Christian and Hopeful that high-minded
day. At the same time, it must be admitted that Christian and Hopeful
would have been more than human if they had not both felt and let fall
some superiority, some scorn, and some impatience in the presence of
such a silly and upsetting stripling as Ignorance was; as, also, over the
story of such a poor-spirited and spunging creature as Little-Faith
was. Christian and Hopeful had just come down from their delightful
time among the Delectable Mountains, and they were as full as they
could hold of all kinds of knowledge, and faith, and hope, and
assurance; when, most unfortunately, as it turned out, they first came
across Ignorance, and then, after quarrelling with him, they fell out
between themselves over the case of Little-Faith. Their superior
knowledge of the truth, and their superior strength of faith, ought to
have made them more able to bear with the infirmities of the weak,
and with the passing moods, however provoking, of one another. But
no. And their impatience and contempt and bad temper all came at
this crisis to such a head with them that they could only be cured by
the small cords and the stinging words of the Shining One. The true
key to this so painful part of the parable hangs at our own girdle. We
who have been born and brought up in an evangelical church are
thrown from time to time into the company of men - ministers and
people - who have not had our advantages and opportunities. They
have been born, baptized, and brought up in communities and
churches the clean opposite of ours; and they are as ignorant of all
New Testament religion as Ignorance himself was; or, on the other
hand, they are as full of superstition and terror and spiritual
starvation as Little-Faith was. And then, instead of recollecting and laying to heart Who made us to differ from such ignorance and such
unbelief, and thus putting on love and humility and patience toward
our neighbours, we speak scornfully and roughly to them, and boast
ourselves over them, and as good as say to them, Stand by thyself,
come not near to me, for I am wiser, wider-minded, stronger, and
better every way than thou. And then, ere ever we are aware of what
we are doing, we have let the arch-flatterer of religious superiority
and of spiritual pride seduce us aside out of the lowly and heavenly
way of love and humility till we are again brought back to it with
rebukes of conscience and with other chastisements. You all
understand, my brethren, that the man black of flesh but covered with
a white robe was no wayside seducer who met Christian and Hopeful
at that dangerous part of the road only and only on that high-minded
day. You know from yourselves surely that both Christian and Hopeful
carried that black but smooth-spoken man within themselves. The
Flatterer who led the two pilgrims so fatally wrong that day was just
their own heart taken out of their own bosom and personified and
dramatised by Bunyan's dramatic genius, and so made to walk and
talk and flatter and puff up outside of themselves till they came again
to see who in reality he was and whence he came, - that is to say, till
they were brought to see what they themselves still were, and would
always be, when they were left to themselves. "Where did you lie last
night? asked the Shining One with the whip. With the Shepherds on
the Delectable Mountains, they answered. He asked them then if they
had not of those shepherds a note of direction for the way? They
answered, Yes. But did you not, said he, when you were at a stand
pluck out and read your note? They answered, No. He asked them
why? They said they forgot. He asked, moreover if the shepherds did
not bid them beware of the Flatterer? They answered, Yes; but we did
not imagine, said they, that this fine-spoken man had been he."
All good literature, both sacred and profane, both ancient and
modern, is full of the Flatterer. Let me not, protests Elihu in his
powerful speech in the book of Job, let me not accept any man's
person; neither let me give flattering titles unto man, lest in so doing
my Maker should soon take me away. And the Psalmist in his powerful
description of the wicked men of his day: There is no faithfulness in
their mouth; their inward part is very wickedness; their throat is an open sepulchre; they flatter with their tongue. And again: They speak
with flattering lips, and with a double heart do they speak. But the
Lord shall cut off all flattering lips, and the tongue that speaketh
proud things. "The perpetual hyperbole" of pure love becomes in the
lips of impure love the impure bait that leads the simple ones astray
on the streets of the city as seen and heard by the wise man out of his
casement. My son, say unto wisdom, Thou art my sister, and call
understanding thy kinswoman; that they may keep thee from the
strange woman, from the stranger which flattereth thee with her
words, which forsaketh the guide of her youth, and forgetteth the
covenant of her God. And then in the same book of Hebrew aphorisms
we find this text which Bunyan puts on the margin of the page: "A man
that flattereth his neighbour spreadeth a net for his feet." And now,
before we leave the ancient world, if you would not think it beneath
the dignity of the place we are in, I would like to read to you a passage
out of a round-about paper written by a satirist of Greece about the
time of Ezra and Nehemiah in Jerusalem. You will easily remark the
difference of tone between the seriousness and pathos of the Hebrew
prophet and the light and chaffing touch of Theophrastus. "The
Flatterer is a person," says that satirist of Greek society, "who will say to you as he walks with you, 'Do you observe how people are looking
at you? This happens to no man in Athens but to you. A fine
compliment was paid you yesterday in the Porch. More than thirty
persons were sitting there when the question was started, Who is our
foremost man? Every one mentioned you first, and ended by coming
back to your name.' The Flatterer will laugh also at your stalest joke,
and will stuff his cloak into his mouth as if he could not repress his
amusement when you again tell it. He will buy apples and pears and
will give to your children when you are by, and will kiss them all and
will say, 'Chicks of a good father.' Also, when he assists at the purchase
of slippers he will declare that the foot is more shapely than the shoe.
He is the first of the guests to praise the wine and to say as he reclines
next the host, 'How delicate your fare always is'; and taking up
something from the table, 'Now, how excellent that is!'" And so on. Yes,
we have heard it all over and over again in Modern Athens also. The
Greek fable also of the fox and the crow and the piece of cheese is only
another illustration of the truth that the God of truth and integrity never left Himself without a witness. Our own literature also is
scattered full of the Flatterer and his too willing dupes. "Of praise a
mere glutton," says Goldsmith of David Garrick, "he swallowed what
came. The puff of a dunce he mistook it for fame." "Delicious essence,"
exclaims Sterne, "how refreshing thou art to poor human nature! How
sweetly dost thou mix with the blood, and help it through the most
difficult and tortuous passages to the heart." "He that slanders me,"
says Cowper, "paints me blacker than I am, and he that flatters me
whiter. They both daub me, and when I look in the glass of conscience,
I see myself disguised by both." And then he sings:
"The worth of these three kingdoms I defy
To lure me to the baseness of a lie;
And of all lies (be that one poet's boast),
The lie that flatters I abhor the most."
Now, praise, which is one of the best and sweetest things in human
life, so soon passes over into flattery, which is one of the worst things,
that something must here be said and laid to heart about praise also.
But, to begin with, praise itself must first be praised. There is nothing
nobler than true praise in him who speaks it, and there is nothing
dearer and sweeter to him who hears it. God Himself inhabits the
praises of Israel. All God's works praise Him. Whoso offereth praise
glorifieth Me. Praise waiteth for Thee, O God, in Zion. Enter into His
gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise. Violence shall
no more be heard in thy land, wasting nor destruction within thy
borders; but thou shalt call thy walls Salvation, and thy gates Praise.
And such also is all true praise between man and man. How
deliciously sweet is praise!
How we labour after it! how we look for it and wait for it! and
how we languish and die if we do not get it! Again, when it comes to
us, how it cheers us up and makes our face to shine! For a long time
after it our step is so swift on the street and our face beams so that all
men can quite well see what has come to us. Praise is like wine in our
blood; it is new life to our fainting heart. So much is this the case that
a salutation of praise is to be our first taste of heaven itself. It will
wipe all tears off our eyes when we hear our Lord saying to us, "Well done!" when all our good works that we have done in the body shall
be found unto praise and honour and glory in the great day of Jesus
Christ.
At the same time, this same love of praise is one of our most
besetting and fatal temptations as long as we are in this false and
double and deceptive world. Sin, God curse it! has corrupted and
poisoned everything, the very best things of this life, and when the
best things are corrupted and poisoned they become the worst things.
And praise does not escape this universal and fatal law. Weak, evil, and
self-seeking men are near us, and we lean upon them, look to them,
and listen to them. We make them our strength and support, and seek
repose and refreshment from them. They cannot be all or any of these
things to us; but we are far on in life, we are done with life, before we
have discovered that and will admit that. Most men never discover
and admit that till they are out of this life altogether. Christ's praise
and the applause of His saints and angels are so future and so far away
from us, and man's praise and the applause of this world, hollow and
false as it is, is so near us, that we feed our souls on offal and garbage,
when, already, in the witness of a good conscience, we might be
feasting our souls on the finest of the wheat, and satisfying them with
honey out of the rock. And, then, this insatiable appetite of our hearts,
being so degraded and perverted, like all degraded and perverted
appetites, becomes an iron-fast slave to what it feeds upon. What
miserable slaves we all are to the approval and the praise of men! How
they hold us in their bondage!
How we lick their hands and sit up on our haunches and go
through our postures for a crumb! How we crawl on our belly and lick
their feet for a stroke and a smile! What a hound's life does that man
lead who lives upon the approval and the praise and the patronage of
men! What meanness fills his mind; what baseness fills his heart!
What a shameful leash he is led about the world in! How kicked about
and spat upon he is; while not half so much as he knows all the time
that he deserves to be! Better far be a dog at once and bay the moon
than be a man and fawn upon the praises of men.
If you would be a man at all, not to speak of a Christian man, starve
this appetite till you have quite extirpated it. You will never be safe
from it as long as it stirs within you. Extirpate it! Extirpate it! You will never know true self-respect and you will never deserve to know it,
till you have wholly extirpated your appetite for praise. Put your foot
upon it, put it out of your heart. Stop fishing for it, and when you see it
coming, turn away and stop your ears against it. And should it still
insinuate itself, at any rate do not repeat to others what has already so
flattered and humbled and weakened you. Telling it to others will only
humble and weaken you more. By repeating the praise that you have
heard or read about yourself you only expose yourself and purchase
well-deserved contempt for yourself. And, more than that, by fishing
for praise you lay yourself open to all sorts of flatterers. Honest men,
men who truly respect and admire you, will show you their dignified
regard and appreciation of you and your work by their silence; while
your leaky slaves will crowd around you with floods of praise that
they know well will please and purchase you. And when you cannot
with all your arts squeeze a drop out of those who love and honour
you, gallons will be poured upon you by those who have respect
neither for themselves nor for you. Faugh! Flee from flatterers, and
take up only with sternly true and faithful men. "I am much less
regardful," says Richard Baxter, "of the approbation of men, and set much lighter store by their praise and their blame, than I once did. All
worldly things appear most vain and unsatisfying to those who have
tried them most. But while I feel that this has had some hand in my
distaste for man's praise, yet it is the increasing impression on my
heart of man's nothingness and God's transcendent greatness; it is the
brevity and vanity of all earthly things, taken along with the nearness
of eternity; - it is all this that has at last lifted me above the blame and
the praise of men."
To conclude; let us make up our mind and determine to pass on
to God on the spot every syllable of praise that ever comes to our eyes
or our ears - if, in this cold, selfish, envious, and grudging world, any
syllable of praise ever should come to us. Even if pure and generous
and well-deserved praise should at any time come to us, all that does
not make it ours. The best earned usury is not the steward's own
money to do with it what he likes. The principal and the interest, and
the trader too, are all his master's. And, more than that, after the
wisest and the best trader has done his best, he will remain, to himself
at least, a most unprofitable servant. Pass on then immediately, dutifully, and to its very last syllable, to God all the praise that comes
to you. Wash your hands of it and say, Not unto us, O God, not unto us,
but unto Thy name. And then, to take the most selfish and hungry-
hearted view of this whole matter, what you thus pass on to God as
not your own but His, He will soon, and in a better and safer world,
return again to the full with usury to you, and you again to God, and
He again to you, and so on, all down the pure and true and sweet and
blessed life of heaven.
ATHEIST
" . . . without God [literally, atheists] in the world." - Paul.
"Yonder is a man with his back toward Zion, and he is coming to
meet us. So he drew nearer and nearer, and at last came up to them.
His name was Atheist, and he asked them whither they were going?
We are going to the Mount Zion, they answered. Then Atheist fell into
a very great laughter. What is the meaning of your laughter? they
asked. I laugh to see what ignorant persons you are to take upon you
so tedious a journey, and yet are like to have nothing but your travel
for your pains. Why, man? Do you think we shall not be received? they
said. Received! There is no such place as you dream of in all this
world. But there is in the world to come, replied Christian. When I was
at home, Atheist went on, in mine own country I heard as you now
affirm, and, from that hearing, I went out to see, and have been
seeking this city you speak of this twenty years, but find no more of it
than I did the first day I set out. And, still laughing, he went his way."
Having begun to tell us about Atheist, why did Bunyan not tell us
more?
We would have thanked him warmly to-night for a little more
about this unhappy man. Why did the dreamer not take another eight
or ten pages in order to tell us, as only he could have told us, how this
man that is now Atheist had spent his past twenty years seeking
Mount Zion? Those precious unwritten pages are now buried in John
Strudwick's vault in Bunhill Fields, and no other man has arisen able
to handle Bunyan's biographic pen. Had Bunyan but put off the
entrance of Christian and Hopeful into the city till he had told us
something more about the twenty years it had taken this once earnest
pilgrim to become an atheist, how valuable an interpolation that
would have been! What was it that made this man to set out so long
ago for the Celestial City? What was it that so stoutly determined him
to leave off all his old companions and turn his back on the sweet
refreshments of his youth? How did he do at the Slough of Despond?
Did he come that way? What about the Wicket Gate, and the House
Beautiful, and the Interpreter's House, and the Delectable Mountains?
What men, and especially what women, did he meet and converse
with on his way? What were his fortunes, and what his misfortunes?
How much did he lay out at Vanity Fair, and on what? At what point of
his twenty years' way did his youthful faith begin to shake, and his youthful love begin to become lukewarm? And what was it that at last
made him quite turn round his back on Zion and his face to his own
country? I cannot forgive Bunyan to-night for not telling us the story
of Atheist's conversion, his pilgrimage, and his apostasy in full.
At the same time, though it cannot be denied that Bunyan has lost at
this point a great opportunity for his genius and for our advantage, - at
the same time, he undoubtedly did a very courageous thing in
introducing Atheist at all; and, especially, in introducing him to us and
making him laugh so loudly at us when we are on the very borders of
the land of Beulah. A less courageous writer, and a writer less sure of
his ground, would have left out Atheist altogether; or, if he had felt
constrained to introduce him, would have introduced him at any other
period of our history rather than at this period. Under other hands
than Bunyan's we would have met with this mocking reprobate just
outside the City of Destruction; or, perhaps, among the booths of
Vanity Fair; or, indeed, anywhere but where we now meet him. And,
that our greater-minded author does not let loose the laughter of
Atheist upon us till we are almost out of the body is a stroke of skill
and truth and boldness that makes us glad indeed that we possess
such a sketch at Bunyan's hand at all, all too abrupt and all too short
as that sketch is. In the absence, then, of a full-length and finished
portrait of Atheist, we must be content to fall back on some of the
reflections and lessons that the mere mention of his name, the spot he
passes us on, and the ridicule of his laughter, all taken together,
awaken in our minds. One rapid stroke of such a brush as that of John
Bunyan conveys more to us than a full-length likeness, with all the
strongest colours, of any other artist would be able to do.
One thing the life-long admiration of John Bunyan's books has
helped to kindle and burn into my mind and my imagination is this:
What a universe of things is the heart of man! Were there nothing else
in the heart of man but all the places and all the persons and all the
adventures that John Bunyan saw in his sleep, what a world that
would open up in all our bosoms! All the pilgrims, good and bad - they,
or the seed and possibility of them all, are all in your heart and in
mine. All the cities, all the roads that lead from one city to another,
with all the paths and all the by-paths, - all the adventures,
experiences, endurances, conflicts, overthrows, victories, - all are within us and never are to be seen anywhere else. Heaven and hell,
God and the devil, life and death, salvation and damnation, time and
eternity, all are within us. "There is no Mount Zion in all this world,"
bellowed out this blinded fool. "No; I know that quite well," quickly responded Christian; "but there is in the world to come." He would
have said the whole truth, and he would have been entirely right, had
he taken time to add, "and in the world within." "And more," he should have said to Atheist, "much more in the world within than in any
possible world to come." The Celestial City, every Sabbath-school child
begins gradually to understand, is not up among the stars; till, as he
grows older, he takes in the whole of the New Testament truth that the
kingdom of heaven is wholly within him. You all understand, my
brethren, that were we swept in a moment up to the furthest star, by
all that infinite flight we would not be one hair's-breadth nearer the
heavenly city. That is not the right direction to that city. The city
whose builder and maker is God lies in quite a different direction from
that altogether; not by ascending up beyond sun and moon and stars
to all eternity would we ever get one hand's-breadth nearer God. But
if you deny yourself sleep tonight till you have read His book and
bowed your knees in His closet; if, for His sake, you deny yourself to-
morrow when you are eating and drinking; as often as you say, "Not
my will, but Thine be done"; as often as you humble yourself when
others exalt themselves; as often as you refuse praise and despise
blame for His sake; as often as you forgive before God your enemy, and
rejoice with your friend, - Behold! the kingdom of heaven, with its
King and all His shining court of angels and saints is around you; - is,
indeed, within you. No; there is no such place. Heaven is not in any
place: heaven is in a person where it is at all; and you are that person
as often as you put off an earthly and put on a heavenly mind. That
mocking reprobate, with his secret heart all through those twenty
years hungering after the lusts of his youth, - he was wholly right in
what he so unintentionally said; there is no such place in all this
world. And, even if there were, it would spue him and all who are like
him out of its mouth.
And, then, in all that universe of things that fills that bottomless
pit and shoreless sea the human heart, there is nothing deeper down
in it than just its deep and unsearchable atheism. The very deepest thing, and the most absolutely inexpugnable thing, in every human
heart is its theism; its original and inextinguishable convictions about
itself and about God. But, all but as deep as that - for all around that,
and all over that, and soaking all through that - there lies a super-
incumbent mass of sullen, brutish, malignant atheism. Nay, so deep
down is the atheism of all our hearts, that it is only one here and
another there of the holiest and the ripest of God's saints who ever get
down to it, or even get at their deepest within sight of it. Robert
Fleming tells us about Robert Bruce, that he was a man that had much
inward exercise about his own personal case, and had been often
assaulted anent that great foundation truth, if there was a God. And
often, when he had come up to the pulpit, after being some time silent,
which was his usual way, he would say, "I think it is a great matter to
believe there is a God"; telling the people that it was another thing to
believe that than they judged. But it was also known to his friends
what extraordinary confirmations he had from the Lord therein, and
what near familiarity he did attain to in his heart-converse with God:
Yea, truly, adds Fleming, some things I have had thereanent that seem
so strange and marvellous that I forbear to set them down. And in
Halyburton's priceless Memoirs we read: "Hereby I was brought into a
doubt about the truths of religion, the being of God, and things eternal.
Whenever I was in dangers or straits and would build upon these
things, a suspicion secretly haunted me, what if the things are not?
This perplexity was somewhat eased while one day I was reading how
Robert Bruce was shaken about the being of God, and how at length
he came to the fullest satisfaction." And in another place: "Some days ago reading Ex. ix. and x., and finding this, 'That ye may know that I
am God' frequently repeated, and elsewhere in passages innumerable,
as the end of God's manifesting Himself in His word and works; I
observe from it that atheism is deeply rooted even in the Lord's
people, seeing they need to be taught this so much. The great difficulty
that the whole of revelation has to grapple with is atheism; its whole
struggle is to recover man to his first impressions of a God. This one
point comprehends the whole of man's recovery, just as atheism is the
whole of man's apostasy." And, again, in another part of the same great
book, Halyburton says: "I must observe, also, the wise providence of
God, that the greatest difficulties that lie against religion are hid from atheists. All the objections I meet with in their writings are not nearly
so subtle as those which are often suggested to myself. The reason of
this is obvious from the very nature of the thing - such persons take
not a near-hand view of religion, and while persons stand at a
distance neither are the advantages nor the difficulties of religion
discerned." And now listen to Bunyan, that arch-atheist: "Whole floods of blasphemies both against God, Christ, and the Scriptures were
poured upon my spirit, to my great confusion and astonishment.
Against the very being of God and of His only beloved Son; or, whether
there were, in truth, a God and a Christ, or no. Of all the temptations
that ever I met with in my life, to question the being of God and the
truth of the Gospel is the worst, and the worst to be borne. When this
temptation comes it takes away my girdle from me, and removeth the
foundation from under me." "Fool, said my Muse to me, look in thy
heart and write." And John Bunyan looked into his own deep and holy
heart, and out of it he composed this incident of Atheist.
3. It may not be out of place at this point to look for a moment at
some of the things that agitate, stir up, and make the secret atheism of
our hearts to fluctuate and overflow. Butler has a fine passage in
which he points out that it is only the higher class of minds that are
tempted with speculative difficulties such as those were that assaulted
Christian and Hopeful after they were so near the end of their journey.
Coarse, commonplace, and mean-minded men have their probation
appointed them among coarse, mean, and commonplace things;
whereas enlightened, enlarged, and elevated men are exercised after
the manner of Robert Bruce, Thomas Halyburton, John Bunyan, and
Butler himself. "The chief temptations of the generality of the world
are the ordinary motives to injustice or unrestrained pleasure; but
there are other persons without this shallowness of temper; persons
of a deeper sense as to what is invisible and future. Now, these
persons have their moral discipline set them in that high region." The
profound bishop means that while their appetites and their tempers
are the stumbling-stones of the most of men, the difficult problems of
natural and revealed and experimental religion are the test and the
triumph of other men. As we have just seen in the men mentioned
above. Students, whose temptations lie fully as much in their intellects
as in their senses, should buy (for a few pence) Halyburton's Memoirs.
"With Halyburton," says Dr. John Duncan, "I feel great intellectual congruity. Halyburton was naturally a sceptic, but God gave that
sceptic great faith."
Then again, what Atheist calls the "tediousness" of the journey
has undoubtedly a great hand in making some half-in-earnest men
sceptics, if not scoffers. Many of us here to-night who can never now
take this miserable man's way out of the tedium of the Christian life,
yet most bitterly feel it. Whether that tedium is inherent in that life,
and inevitable to such men as we are who are attempting that life;
how far that feature belongs to the very essence of the pilgrim life, and
how far we import our own tedium into the pilgrimage; the fact
remains as Atheist puts it. As Atheist in this book says, so the Atheist
who is in our hearts often says: We are like to have nothing for all our
pains but a lifetime of tedious travel. Yes, wherever the blame lies,
there can be no doubt about it, that what this hilarious scoffer calls
the tediousness of the way is but a too common experience among
many of those who, tediousness and all, will still cleave fast to it and
will never leave it.
Then, again, great trials in life, great straits, dark and too-long-
continued providences, prayer unanswered, or not yet answered in
the way we dictate, bad men and bad causes growing like a green bay
tree, and good men and good work languishing and dying; these
things, and many more things such as these, of which this world of