Part 4
if he did fall, he would only fall upon a fragrance-breathing bed of
lilies. The very herbs and flowers here would conspire to hold him up.
Many a day, as He grew up, the carpenter's son sat in that same valley
and sang that same song to His own humble and happy heart. He
loved much to be here. He loved also to walk these meadows, for He
found the air was pleasant. Methinks, He often said with Mercy, I am
as well in this valley as I have been anywhere else in My journey. The
place, methinks, suits with My spirit. I love to be in such places where
there is no rattling with coaches nor rumbling with wheels. Methinks,
also, here one may without much molestation be thinking what he is,
whence he came, and to what his King has called him.
He that is low, no pride.
Low in his own eyes, that is. For pride goeth before destruction,
and a haughty spirit before a fall. Yes; but he who is low enough
already - none of the sure destructions that pride always works shall ever come near to him. "The proud man," says Sir Henry Taylor, "is of all men the most vulnerable. 'Who calls?' asks the old shepherd in As
You Like It. 'Your betters,' is the insolent answer. And what is the
shepherd's rejoinder? 'Else are they very wretched.' By what retort,
reprisal, or repartee could it have been made half so manifest that the
insult had lighted upon armour of proof? Such is the invincible
independence and invulnerability of humility."
He that is humble ever shall Have God to be his guide.
For thus saith the high and holy One that inhabiteth eternity,
whose name is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also
that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the heart of the
humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones . . . All those things
hath Mine hand made, but to this man will I look, saith the Lord, even
to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and who trembleth at My
word . . . Though the Lord be high, yet hath He respect unto the lowly;
but the proud He knoweth afar off . . . Likewise, ye younger, submit
yourselves unto the elder. Yea, all of you be subject one to another, and
be clothed with humility; for God resisteth the proud and giveth grace
to the humble . . . Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty,
neither do I exercise myself in great matters, or in things too high for
me. Surely I have behaved and quieted myself, as a child that is
weaned of his mother: my soul is even as a weaned child . . . Take My
yoke upon you and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and
ye shall find rest unto your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden
is light.
I am content with what I have,
Little be it, or much:
And, Lord, contentment still I crave,
Because thou savest such.
The only thing this sweet singer is discontented with is his own
contentment. He will not be content as long as he has a shadow of
discontent left in his heart. And how blessed is such holy discontent!
For, would you know, asks Law, who is the greatest saint in all the
world? Well, it is not he who prays most or fasts most; it is not he who
gives most alms or is most eminent for temperance, chastity, or justice. But it is he who is always thankful to God, who wills
everything that God willeth, who receives everything as an instance of
God's goodness, and has a heart always ready to praise God for it.
"Perhaps the shepherd's boy," says Thomas Scott, "may refer to the obscure and quiet stations of some pastors over small congregations,
who live almost unknown to their brethren, but are in a measure
useful and very comfortable." Perhaps he does. And, whether he does
or no, at any rate such a song will suit some of our brethren very well
as they go about among their few and far-off flocks. They are not
church leaders or popular preachers. There is not much rattling with
coaches or rumbling with wheels at their church door. But, then,
methinks, they have their compensation. They are without much
molestation. They can be all the more thinking what they are, whence
they came, and to what their King has called them. Let them be happy
in their shut-in valleys. For I will dare to say that they wear more of
that herb called Heart's-ease in their bosom than those ministers do
they are sometimes tempted to emulate. I will add in this place that to
the men who live and trace these grounds the Lord hath left a yearly
revenue to be faithfully paid them at certain seasons for their
maintenance by the way, and for their further encouragement to go on
in their pilgrimage.
Here little, and hereafter bliss,
Is best from age to age.
But, now, from the shepherd boy and from his valley and his song,
let us go on without any more poetry or parable to look our own
selves full in the face and to ask our own hearts whether they are the
hearts of really humble-minded and New Testament men or no. Dr.
Newman, "that subtle, devout man," as Dr. Duncan calls him, says that
"humility is one of the most difficult of virtues both to attain and to
ascertain. It lies," he says, "close upon the heart itself, and its tests are exceedingly delicate and subtle. Its counterfeits abound." Most true.
And yet humility is not intended for experts in morals only, or for men
of a rare religious genius only. The plainest of men, the least skilled
and the most unlettered of men, may not only excel in humility, but
may also be permitted to know that they are indeed planted, and are
growing slowly but surely in that grace of all graces. No doubt our
Lord had, so to describe it, the most delicate and the most subtle of human minds; and, no doubt whatever, He had the most practised skill
in reading off what lay closest to His own heart. And, then, it was just
His attainment of the most perfect humility, and then His absolute
ascertainment of the same, that enabled Him to say: Take My yoke
upon you and learn of Me. At the same time, divine as the grace is, and
divine as the insight is that is able to trace it out in all its exquisite
refinements of thought and feeling in the sanctified soul, yet humility
is a human virtue after all, and it is open to all men to attain to it and
intelligently and lovingly to exercise it. The simplest and the least
philosophical soul now in this house may apply to himself some of the
subtlest and most sensitive tests of humility, as much as if he were Dr.
Duncan or Dr. Newman themselves; and may thus with all assurance
of hope know whether he is a counterfeit and a castaway or no.
Take this test for one, then. Explain this text to me: Phil. 2:3 - "In
lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than himself." Explain
and illustrate that. Not from a commentary, but straight out from your
own heart. What does your heart make of that scripture? Does your
heart turn away from that scripture almost in anger at it? Do you say
you are certain that there must be some other explanation of it than
that? Do you hold that this is just another of Paul's perpetual
hyperboles, and that the New Testament is the last book in the world
to be taken as it reads? Yes; both bold and subtle father that he is:
counterfeits abound!
Another much blunter test, but, perhaps, a sufficiently sharp test,
is this: How do you receive correction and instruction? Does your
heart meekly and spontaneously and naturally take to correction and
instruction as the most natural and proper thing possible to you? And
do you immediately, and before all men, show forth and exhibit the
correction and the instruction? Or, does this rather take place? Does
your heart beat, and swell, and boil, and boil over at him who dares to
correct or counsel you? If this is a fair test to put our humility to, how
little humility there is among us! How few men any of us could name
among our friends to whom we would risk telling all the things that
behind their backs we point out continually to others? We are terrified
to face their pride. We once did it, and we are not to do it again, if we
can help it! Let a man not have too many irons in the fire; let him
examine himself just by these two tests for the time - what he thinks of himself, and what he thinks of those who attempt, and especially
before other people, to set him right. And after these two tests have
been satisfied, others will no doubt be supplied till that so humble
man is made very humility itself.
And now, in the hope that there may be one or two men here who
are really and not counterfeitly in earnest to clothe themselves with
humility before God and man, let them take these two looms to
themselves out of which whole webs of such garments will be
delivered to them every day - their past life, and their present heart.
With a past life like ours, my brethren - and everyman knows his own
- pride is surely the maddest state of mind that any of us can allow
ourselves in. The first king of Bohemia kept his clouted old shoes ever
in his sight, that he might never forget that he had once been a
ploughman. And another wise king used to drink out of a coarse cup
at table, and excused himself to his guests that he had made the rude
thing in his rude potter days. Look with Primislaus and Agathocles at
the hole of the pit out of which you also have been dug; look often
enough, deep enough, and long enough, and you will be found passing
up through the Valley of Humiliation singing:
"With us He dealt not as we sinn'd,
Nor did requite our ill!"
Another excellent use of the past is, if you are equal to it, to call
yourself aloud sometimes, or in writing, some of the names that other
people who know your past are certainly calling you. It is a terrible
discipline, but it is the terror of the Lord, and He will not let it hurt
you too much. I was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and
injurious, says Paul. And, to show Titus, his gospel-son, the way, he
said to him: We ourselves were sometimes foolish, disobedient,
deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy,
hateful, and hating one another. And John Bunyan calls himself a
blackguard, and many other worse names; only he swears that neither
with his soldiering nor with his tinkering hands did he ever plash
down Beelzebub's orchard. But if you have done that, or anything like
that, call yourself aloud by your true name on your knees to-night.
William Law testifies, after five-and-twenty years' experience of it,
that he never heard of any harm that he had done to any in his house
by his habit of singing his secret psalms aloud, and sometimes, ere ever he was aware, bursting out in his penitential prayers.
And, then, how any man with a man's heart in his bosom for a single
day can escape being the chief of sinners, and consequently the
humblest of men for all the rest of his life on earth, passes my
comprehension! How a spark of pride can live in such a hell as every
human heart is would be past belief, did we not know that God
avenges sin by more sin; avenges Himself on a wicked and a false
heart by more wickedness and more falsehood, all ending in Satanic
pride.
Too long as I have kept you in this valley to-night, I dare not let
you out of it till I have shared with you a few sentences on evangelical
humiliation out of that other so subtle and devout man, Jonathan
Edwards. But what special kind of humiliation is evangelical
humiliation? you will ask. Hear, then, what this master in Israel says.
"Evangelical humiliation is the sense that a Christian man has of his
own utter insufficiency, utter despicableness, and utter odiousness;
with an always answerable frame of heart. This humiliation is peculiar
to the true saints. It arises from the special influence of the Spirit of
God implanting and exercising supernatural and divine principles; and
it is accompanied with a sense of the transcendent beauty of divine
things.
And, thus, God's true saints all more or less see their own
odiousness on account of sin, and the exceedingly hateful nature of all
sin. The very essence of evangelical humiliation consists in such
humility as becomes a man in himself exceeding sinful but now under
a dispensation of grace. It consists in a mean esteem of himself, as in
himself nothing, and altogether contemptible and odious. This,
indeed, is the greatest and the most essential thing in true religion."
And so on through a whole chapter of beaten gold. To which noble
chapter I shall only add that such teaching is as sweet, as
strengthening, and as reassuring to the truly Christian heart as it is
bitter and hateful to the counterfeit heart.
OLD HONEST
"An honest heart." - Our Lord.
Next tell them of Old Honest, who you found
With his white hairs treading the pilgrim's ground;
Yea, tell them how plain-hearted this man was,
How after his good Lord he bare his cross:
Perhaps with some grey head this may prevail,
With Christ to fall in love, and sin bewail.
You would have said that no pilgrim to the Celestial City could
possibly have come from a worse place, or a more unlikely place, than
was that place from which Christian and Christiana and Matthew and
Mercy had come. And yet so it was. For Old Honest, this most excellent
and every way most delightful old saint, hailed from a far less likely
place than even the City of Destruction. For he came, this rare old soul,
of all places in the world, from the Town of Stupidity. So he tells us
himself. And, partly to explain to us the humiliating name of his native
town, and partly to exhibit himself as a wonder to many, the frank old
gentleman goes on to tell us that his birthplace actually lies four
degrees further away from the sun than does the far-enough away City
of Destruction itself. So that you see this grey-haired saint is all that he
always said he was - a living witness to the fact that his Lord is able to
save to the uttermost, and to gather in His Father's elect from the
utmost corner of the land. Men are mountains of ice in my country,
said Old Honest. I was one of the biggest of those icebergs myself, he
said. No man was ever more cold and senseless to divine things than I
was, and still sometimes am. It takes the Sun of Righteousness all His
might to melt the men of my country. But that He can do it when He
rises to do it, and when He puts out His full strength to do it - Look at
me! said the genial old soul.
We have to construct this pilgrim's birth and boyhood and youth
from his after-character and conversation; and we have no difficulty at
all in doing that. For, if the child is the father of the man, then the man
must be the outcome of the child, and we can have no hesitation in
picturing to ourselves what kind of child and boy and young man dear
Old Honest must always have been. He never was a bright child, bright
and beaming old man as he is. He was always slow and heavy at his lessons; indeed, I would not like to repeat to you all the bad names
that his schoolmasters sometimes in their impatience called the
stupid child. Only, this was to be said of him, that dulness of uptake
and disappointment of his teachers were the worst things about this
poor boy; he was not so ill-behaved as many were who were made
more of. When his wits began to waken up after he had come some
length he had no little leeway to make up in his learning; but that was
the chief drawback to Old Honest's pilgrimage. For one thing, no
young man had a cleaner record behind him than our Honest had; his
youthful garments were as unspotted as ever any pilgrim's garments
were. Even as a young man he had had the good sense to keep
company with one Good-conscience; and that friend of his youth kept
true to Old Honest all his days, and even lent him his hand and helped
him over the river at last. In his own manly, hearty, blunt, breezy,
cheery, and genial way Old Honest is a pilgrim we could ill have
spared. Old Honest has a warm place all for himself in every good and
honest heart.
"Now, a little before the pilgrims stood an oak, and under it when
they came up to it they found an old pilgrim fast asleep; they knew
that he was a pilgrim by his clothes and his staff and his girdle. So the
guide, Mr. Greatheart, awaked him, and the old gentleman, as he lifted
up his eyes, cried out: What's the matter? Who are you? And what is
your business here? Come, man, said the guide, be not so hot; here is
none but friends! Yet the old man gets up and stands upon his guard,
and will know of them what they are." That weather-beaten oak-tree
under which we first meet with Old Honest is an excellent emblem of
the man. When he sat down to rest his old bones that day he did not
look out for a bank of soft moss or for a bed of fragrant roses; that
knotted oak-tree alone had power to draw down under its sturdy
trunk this heart of human oak. It was a sight to see those thin grey
haffets making a soft pillow of that jutting knee of gnarled and knotty
oak, and with his well-worn quarterstaff held close in a hand all
wrinkled skin and scraggy bone. And from that day till he waved his
quarterstaff when half over the river and shouted, Grace reigns! there
is no pilgrim of them all that affords us half the good humour, sagacity,
continual entertainment, and brave encouragement we enjoy through
this same old Christian gentleman.
Now, let us try to learn two or three lessons to-night from Old
Honest, his history, his character, and his conversation. And, to begin
with, let all those attend to Old Honest who are slow in the uptake in
the things of religion. O fools and slow of heart! exclaimed our Lord at
the two travellers to Emmaus. And this was Old Honest to the letter
when he first entered on the pilgrimage life; he was slow as sloth itself
in the things of the soul. I have often wondered, said Greatheart, that
any should come from your place; for your town is worse than is the
City of Destruction itself. Yes, answered Honest, we lie more off from
the sun, and so are more cold and senseless. And his biographer here
annotates on the margin this reflection: "Stupefied ones are worse
than merely carnal." So they are; though it takes some insight to see
that, and some courage to carry that through. Now, to be downright
stupid in a man's natural intellects is sad enough, but to be stupid in
the intellects of the soul and of the spirit is far more sad. You will often
see this if you have any eyes in your head, and are not one of the
stupid people yourself. You will see very clever people in the intellects
of the head who are yet as stupid as the beasts in the stall in the far
nobler intellects of the heart. You will meet every day with men and
women who have received the best college education this city can give
them, who are yet stark stupid in everything that belongs to true
religion. They are quick to find out the inefficiency of a university
chair, or a schoolmaster's desk, but they know no more of what a New
Testament pulpit has been set up for than the stupidest sot in the city.
The Divine Nature, human nature, sin, grace, redemption, salvation,
holiness, heart-corruption, spiritual life, prayer, communion with God,
a conversation and a treasure in heaven, - to all these noblest of
studies and divinest of exercises they are as a beast before God. When
you come upon a man who is a sot in his senses and in his
understanding, you expect him to be the same in his spiritual life. But
to meet with an expert in science, a classical scholar, an author or a
critic in letters, a leader in political or ecclesiastical or municipal life,
and yet to discover that he is as stupid as any sot in the things of his
own soul, is one of the saddest and most disheartening sights you can
see. Much sadder and much more disheartening than to see stairs and
streets of people who can neither read nor write. And yet our city is
full of such stupid people. You will find as utter spiritual stupidity among the rich and the lettered and the refined of this city as you will
find among the ignorant and the vicious and the criminal classes. Is
stupidity a sin? asks Thomas in his Forty-Sixth Question. And the great
schoolman answers himself, "Stupidity may come of natural
incapacity, in which case it is not a sin. But it may come, on the other
hand, of a man immersing his soul in the things of this world so as to
shut out all the things of God and of the world to come, in which case
stupidity is a deadly sin." Now, from all that, you must already see
what you are to do in order to escape from your inborn and super-
induced stupidity. You are, like Old Honest, to open your gross, cold,
senseless heart to the Sun of Righteousness, and you are to take care
every day to walk abroad under His beams. You are to emigrate south
for your life, as our well-to-do invalids do, to where the sun shines in
his strength all the day. You are to choose such a minister, buy and
read such a literature, cultivate such an acquaintanceship, and follow
out such a new life of habits and practices as shall bring you into the
full sunshine, till your heart of ice is melted, and your stupefied soul is
filled with spiritual sensibility. For, "were a man a mountain of ice,"
said Old Honest, "yet if the Sun of Righteousness will arise upon him
his frozen heart shall feel a thaw; and thus hath it been with me." Your
poets and your philosophers have no resource against the stupidity
that opposes them. "Even the gods," they complain, "fight unvictorious against stupidity." But your divines and your preachers have hope
beside the dullest and the stupidest and even the most imbruted. They
point themselves and their slowest and dullest-witted hearers to Old
Honest, this rare old saint; and they set up their pulpit with hope and
boldness on the very causeway of the town of Stupidity itself.
In the second place, - on this fine old pilgrim's birth and boyhood
and youth. The apostle says that there is no real difference between
one of us and another; and what he says on that subject must be true.
No; there is really no difference compared with the Celestial City
whether a pilgrim is born in Stupidity, in Destruction, in Vanity, or in
Darkland. At the same time, nature, as well as grace, is of God, and He
maketh, when it pleaseth Him, one man to differ in some most
important respects from another. You see such differences every day.
Some children are naturally, and from their very infancy, false and
cruel, mean and greedy; while their brothers and sisters are open and frank and generous. One son in a house is born a vulgar snob, and one
daughter a shallow-hearted and shameless little flirt; while another
brother is a born gentleman, and another sister a born saint. Some
children are tender-hearted, easily melted, and easily moulded; while
others in the same family are hard as stone and cold as ice. Sometimes
a noble and a truly Christian father will have all his days to weep and
pray over a son who is his shame; and then, in the next generation, a
grandson will be born to him who will more than recover the lost
image of his father's father. And so is it sometimes with father Adam's
family. Here and there, in Darkland, in Destruction, and in Stupidity, a
child will be born with a surprising likeness to the first Adam in his
first estate. That happy child at his best is but the relics and ruins of
his first father; at the same time, in him the relics are more abundant
and the ruins more easy to trace out. And little Honest was such a
well-born child. For, Stupidity and all, there was a real inborn and
inbred integrity, uprightness, straightforwardness, and nobleness
about this little and not over-clever man-child. And, on the principle of
"to him that hath shall be given," there was something like a special providence that hedged this boy about from the beginning. "I girded
thee though thou hast not known Me" was never out of Old Honest's
mouth as often as he remembered the days of his own youth and
heard other pilgrims mourning over theirs. "I have surnamed thee
though thou hast not known Me," he would say to himself in his sleep.
Slow-witted as he was, no one had been able to cheat young Honest
out of his youthful integrity. He had not been led, and he had led no
one else, into the paths of the destroyer. He could say about himself all
that John Bunyan so boldly and so bluntly said about himself when his
enemies charged him with youthful immorality. He left the town in
nobody's debt. He left the print of his heels on no man or woman or
child when he took his staff in his hand to be a pilgrim. The upward
walk of too many pilgrims is less a walk than an escape and a flight.
The avenger of men's blood and women's honour has hunted many
men deep into heaven's innermost gate. But Old Honest took his time.
He walked, if ever pilgrim walked, all the way with an easy mind. He
lay down to sleep under the oaks on the wayside, and smiled like a
child in his sleep. And, when he was suddenly awaked, instead of
crying out for mercy and starting to his heels, he grasped his staff and demanded even of an armed man what business he had to break in on
an honest pilgrim's midday repose! The King of the Celestial City had a
few names even in Stupidity which had not defiled their garments,
and Old Honest was one of them. And all his days his strength was as
the strength of ten, because his heart was pure.
At the same time, honesty is not holiness; and no one knew that
better than did this honest old saint. When any one spoke to Old
Honest about his blameless youth, the look in his eye made them keep
at arm's-length as he growled out that without holiness no man shall
see God! Writing from Aberdeen to John Bell of Hentoun, Samuel
Rutherford says: "I beseech you, in the Lord Jesus, to mind your
country above; and now, when old age is come upon you, advise with
Christ before you put your foot into the last ship and turn your back
on this life. Many are beguiled with this that they are free of
scandalous sins. But common honesty will not take men to heaven.
Alas! that men should think that ever they met with Christ who had
never a sick night or a sore heart for sin. I have known a man turn a
key in a door and lock it by." "I can," says John Owen, "and I do, commend moral virtues and honesty as much as any man ought to do,
and I am sure there is no grace where they are not. Yet to make
anything to be our holiness that is not derived from Jesus Christ, - I
know not what I do more abhor." "Are morally honest and sober men
qualified for the Lord's Supper?" asks John Flavel. "No; civility and morality do not make a man a worthy communicant. They are not the
wedding garment; but regenerating grace and faith in the smallest
measure are." "My outside may be honest," said this honest old
pilgrim, "while all the time my heart is most unholy. My life is open to
all men, but I must hide my heart with Christ in God."
And then this racy-hearted old bachelor was as full of delight in
children, and in children's parties, with all their sweetmeats and nuts
and games and riddles, - quite as much so - as if he had been their very
grandfather himself. Nay, this rosy-hearted old rogue was as
inveterate a matchmaker as if he had been a mother of the world with
a houseful of daughters on her hands and with the sons of the nobility
dangling around. It would make you wish you could kiss the two dear
old souls, Gaius the innkeeper and Old Honest his guest, if you would
only read how they laid their grey heads together to help forward the lovemaking of Matthew and Mercy. Yes, it would be a great pity, said
Old Honest, - thinking with a sigh of his own childless old age, - it
would be a great pity if this excellent family of our sainted brother
should fail for want of children, and die out like mine. And the two old
plotters went together to the mother of the bridegroom, and told her
with an aspect of authority that she must put no obstacle in her son's
way, but take Mercy as soon as convenient into a closer relation to
herself. And Gaius said that he for his part would give the marriage
supper. And I shall make no will, said Honest, but hand all I have over
to Matthew my son. This is the way, said Old Honest; and he skipped
and smiled and kissed the cheek of the aged mother and said, Then
thy two children shall preserve thee and thy husband a posterity in
the earth! Then he turned to the boys and he said, Matthew, be thou
like Matthew the publican, not in vice, but in virtue. Samuel, he said,
be thou like Samuel the prophet, a man of faith and of prayer. Joseph,
said he, be thou like Joseph in Potiphar's house, chaste, and one that
flees from temptation. And James, be thou like James the Just, and like
James the brother of our Lord. Mercy, he said, is thy name, and by
mercy shalt thou be sustained and carried through all thy difficulties
that shall assault thee in the way, till thou shalt come thither where
thou shalt look the Fountain of Mercy in the face with comfort. And all
this while the guide, Mr. Greatheart, was very much pleased, and
smiled upon the nimble old gentleman.
"Then it came to pass a while after that there was a post in the
town that inquired for Mr. Honest. So he came to his house where he
was, and delivered to his hands these lines, Thou art commanded to
be ready against this day seven night, to present thyself before thy
Lord at His Father's house. And for a token that my message is true, all
thy daughters of music shall be brought low. Then Mr. Honest called
for his friends and said unto them, I die, but shall make no will. As for
my honesty, it shall go with me: let him that comes after me be told of
this. When the day that he was to be gone was come he addressed
himself to go over the river. Now, the river at that time overflowed the
banks at some places. But Mr. Honest in his lifetime had spoken to one
Good-conscience to meet him there, the which he also did, and lent
him his hand, and so helped him over. The last words of Mr. Honest
were, Grace reigns! So he left the world." Look at that picture and now look at this: "They then addressed themselves to the water, and,
entering, Christian began to sink, and crying out to his good friend
Hopeful, he said, I sink in deep waves, the billows go over my head, all
His waters go over me. Then said the other, Be of good cheer, my
brother, I feel the bottom, and it is good. Then said Christian, Ah, my
friend, the sorrows of death have compassed me about; I shall not see
the land that flows with milk and honey. And with that a great horror
and darkness fell upon Christian, so that he could not see before him;
and all the words that he spoke still tended to discover that he had
horror of mind lest he should die in that river and never obtain
entrance in at the gate. Here also, as they that stood by perceived, he
was much in the troublesome thoughts of the sins that he had
committed, both since and before he began to be a pilgrim. 'Twas also
observed that he was troubled with apparitions of hobgoblins and evil
spirits. Hopeful, therefore, had much ado to keep his brother's head
above water. Yea, sometimes he would be quite gone down, and then
ere a while he would rise up again half dead." My brethren, all my
brethren, be not deceived; God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man
soweth that shall he also reap. Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth,
and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth. Thou, O God, wast a God
that forgavest them, but Thou tookest vengeance on their inventions.
MR. FEARING
"Happy is the man that feareth alway." - Solomon
For humour, for pathos, for tenderness, for acute and sympathetic
insight at once into nature and grace, for absolutely artless literary
skill, and for the sweetest, most musical, and most exquisite English,
show me another passage in our whole literature to compare with
John Bunyan's portrait of Mr. Fearing. You cannot do it. I defy you to do
it. Spenser, who, like John Bunyan, wrote an elaborate allegory, says: It
is not in me. Take all Mr. Fearing's features together, and even
Shakespeare himself has no such heart-touching and heart-comforting
character. Addison may have some of the humour and Lamb some of
the tenderness; but, then, they have not the religion. Scott has the
insight into nature, but he has no eye at all for grace; while Thackeray,
who, in some respects, comes nearest to John Bunyan of them all,
would be the foremost to confess that he is not worthy to touch the
shoe-latchet of the Bedford tinker. As Dr. Duncan said in his class one
day when telling us to read Augustine's Autobiography and
Halyburton's: - "But," he said, "be prepared for this, that the tinker beats them all!" "Methinks," says Browning, "in this God speaks, no tinker hath such powers."
Now, as they walked along together, the guide asked the old
gentleman if he knew one Mr. Fearing that came on pilgrimage out of
his parts. "Yes," said Mr. Honest, "very well. He was a man that had the root
of the matter in him; but he was one of the most troublesome
pilgrims that ever I met with in all my days." "I perceive you knew
him," said the guide, "for you have given a very right character of him."
"Knew him!" exclaimed Honest, "I was a great companion of his; I was with him most an end. When he first began to think of what would
come upon us hereafter, I was with him." "And I was his guide," said Greatheart, "from my Master's house to the gates of the Celestial City."
"Then," said Mr. Honest, "it seems he was well at last." "Yes, yes,"
answered the guide, "I never had any doubt about him; he was a man
of a choice spirit, only he was always kept very low, and that made his
life so burdensome to himself and so troublesome to others. He was,
above many, tender of sin; he was so afraid of doing injuries to others
that he would often deny himself of that which was lawful because he
would not offend." "But what," asked Honest, "should be the reason 102
that such a good man should be all his days so much in the dark?"
"There are two sorts of reasons for it," said the guide; "one is, the wise God will have it so: some must pipe and some must weep. Now, Mr.
Fearing was one that played upon this base. He and his fellows sound
the sackbut, whose notes are more doleful than the notes of other
music are. Though, indeed, some say that the base is the ground of
music. And, for my part, I care not at all for that profession that begins
not with heaviness of mind. The first string that the musician usually
touches is the base when he intends to put all in tune. God also plays
upon this string first when He sets the soul in tune for Himself. Only,
here was the imperfection of Mr. Fearing, that he could play upon no
other music but this till toward his latter end."
Take Mr. Fearing, then, to begin with, at the Slough of Despond.
Christian and Pliable, they being heedless, did both fall into that bog.
But Mr. Fearing, whatever faults you may think he had - and faults, too,
that you think you could mend in him - at any rate, he was never
heedless. Everybody has his fault to find with poor Mr. Fearing.
Everybody blames poor Mr. Fearing. Everybody can improve upon
poor Mr. Fearing. But I will say again for Mr. Fearing that he was never
heedless. Had Peter been on the road at that period he would have
stood up for Mr. Fearing, and would have taken his judges and would
have said to them, with some scorn - Go to, and pass the time of your
sojourning here with something of the same silence and the same
fear! Christian's excuse for falling into the Slough was that fear so
followed him that he fled the next way, and so fell in. But Mr. Fearing
had no such fear behind him in his city as Christian had in his. All Mr.
Fearing's fears were within himself. If you can take up the distinction
between actual and indwelling sin, between guilt and corruption, you
have already in that the whole key to Mr. Fearing. He was blamed and
counselled and corrected and pitied and patronised by every
morning-cloud and early-dew neophyte, while all the time he lived far
down from the strife of tongues where the root of the matter strikes
its deep roots still deeper every day. "It took him a whole month," tells Greatheart, "to face the Slough. But he would not go back neither. Till,
one sunshiny morning, nobody ever knew how, he ventured, and so
got over. But the fact of the matter is," said the shrewd-headed guide,
"Mr. Fearing had, I think, a slough of despond in his own mind; and a
slough that he carried everywhere with him." Yes, that was it.
Greatheart in that has hit the nail on the head. With one happy stroke
he has given us the whole secret of poor Mr. Fearing's lifelong trouble.
Just so; it was the slough in himself that so kept poor Mr. Fearing back.
This poor pilgrim, who had so little to fear in his past life, had yet so
much scum and filth, spume and mire in his present heart, that how to
get on the other side of that cost him not a month's roaring only, but
all the months and all the years till he went over the River not much
above wet-shod. And, till then, not twenty million cartloads of
wholesome instructions, nor any number of good and substantial
steps, would lift poor Mr. Fearing over the ditch that ran so deep and
so foul continually within himself. "Yes, he had, I think, a slough of
despond in his mind, a slough that he carried everywhere with him, or
else he never could have been the man he was." I, for one, thank the
great-hearted guide for that fine sentence.
It was a sight to see poor Mr. Fearing at the wicket gate. "Knock,
and it shall be opened unto you." He read the inscription over the gate
a thousand times, but every time he read it his slough-filled heart said
to him, Yes, but that is not for such as you. Pilgrim after pilgrim came
up the way, read the writing, knocked, and was taken in; but still Mr.
Fearing stood back, shaking and shrinking. At last he ventured to take
hold of the hammer that hung on the gate and gave with it a small rap
such as a mouse might make. But small as the sound was, the
Gatekeeper had had his eye on his man all the time out of his watch-
window; and before Mr. Fearing had time to turn and run, Goodwill
had him by the collar. But that sudden assault only made Mr. Fearing
sink to the earth, faint and half-dead. "Peace be to thee, O trembling
man!" said Goodwill. "Come in, and welcome!" When he did venture in, Mr. Fearing's face was as white as a sheet. You would have said that
an officer had caught a thief if you had seen poor Mr. Fearing hiding
his face, and the Gatekeeper hauling him in. And not all the
entertainment for which the Gate was famous, nor all the
encouragement that Goodwill was able to speak, could make terrified
Mr. Fearing for once to smile. A more hard-to-entertain pilgrim, all the
Gate declared when he had gone, they had never had in their
hospitable house.
"So he came," said the guide, "till he came to our House; but as he 104
behaved himself at the Gate, so he did at my Master the Interpreter's door. He lay about in the cold a good while before he would adventure
to call. Yet he would not go back neither. And the nights were cold and
long then. At last I think I looked out of the window, and perceiving a
man to be up and down about the door, I went out to him, and asked
what he was; but, poor man, the water stood in his eyes. So I perceived
what he wanted. I went in, therefore, and told it in the house, and we
showed the thing to our Lord. So He sent me out again to entreat him
to come in, but I dare say I had hard work to do it. At last he came in,
and I will say that for my Lord, He carried it wonderful lovingly to Mr.
Fearing. There were but a few good bits at the table, but some of it
was laid upon his trencher." In this way the guide tells us his first
introduction to Mr. Fearing, and how Mr. Fearing behaved himself in
the Interpreter's House. For instance, in the parlour full of dust, when
the Interpreter said that the dust is original sin and inward
corruption, you would have thought that the Interpreter had stabbed
poor Mr. Fearing to the heart, so did he break out and weep. Before
the damsel could come with the pitcher, Mr. Fearing's eyes alone
would have laid the dust, they were such a fountain of tears. When he
saw Passion and Patience, each one in his chair - "I am that child in
rags," said Mr. Fearing; "I have already received all my good things!"
Also, at the wall where the fire burned because oil was poured into it
from the other side, he perversely turned that fire also against himself.
And when they came to the man in the iron cage, you could not have
told whether the miserable man inside the cage or the miserable man
outside of it sighed the loudest. And so on, through all the significant
rooms. The spider-room overwhelmed him altogether, till his sobs and
the beating of his breast were heard all over the house. The robin also
when gobbling up spiders he made an emblem of himself, and the tree
that was rotten at the heart, - till the Interpreter's patience with this
so perverse pilgrim was fairly worn out. So the Interpreter shut up his
significant rooms, and had this so troublesome pilgrim into his own
chamber, and there carried it so tenderly to Mr. Fearing that at last he
did seem to have taken some little heart of grace. "And then we," said Greatheart, "set forward, and I went before him; but the man was of
few words, only he would often sigh aloud."
"Dumpish at the House Beautiful" is his biographer's not very
respectful comment on the margin of the history. There were too
many merry-hearted damsels running up and down that house for Mr.
Fearing. He could not lift his eyes but one of those too-tripping
maidens was looking at him. He could not stir a foot but he suddenly
ran against a talking and laughing bevy of them. There was one thing
he loved above everything, and that was to overhear the talk that went
on at that season in that house about the City above, and about the
King of that City, and about His wonderful ways with pilgrims, and the
entertainment they all got who entered that City. But to get a word out
of Mr. Fearing upon any of these subjects, - all the king's horses could
not have dragged it out of him. Only, the screen was always seen to
move during such conversations, till it soon came to be known to all
the house who was behind the screen. And the talkers only talked a
little louder as the screen moved, and took up, with a smile to one
another, another and a yet more comforting topic.
The Rarity Rooms also were more to Mr. Fearing than his
necessary food. He would be up in the morning and waiting at the
doors of those rooms before the keepers had come with their keys.
And they had to tell him that the candles were to be put out at night
before he would go away. He was always reading, as if he had never
read it before, the pedigree of the Lord of the Hill. Moses' rod,
Shamgar's goad, David's sling and stone, and what not - he laughed
and danced and sang like a child around these ancient tables. The
armoury-room also held him, where were the swords, and shields, and
helmets, and breast-plates, and shoes that would not wear out. You
would have thought you had your man all right as long as you had him
alone among these old relics; but, let supper be ready, and the house
gathered, and Mr. Fearing was as dumpish as ever. Eat he would not,
drink he would not, nor would he sit at the same table with those who
ate and drank with such gladness. I remembered Mr. Fearing at the
House Beautiful when I was present at a communion season some
time back in Ross-shire. The church was half full of Mr. Fearing's close
kindred that communion morning. For, all that the minister himself
could do, and all that the assisting minister could do - no! to the table
those self-examined, self-condemned, fear-filled souls would not
come. The two ministers, like Mr. Greatheart's Master, carried it
wonderful lovingly with those poor saints that day; but those who are in deed, and not in name only, passing the time of their sojourning
here in fear - they cannot all at once be lifted above all their fears,
even by the ablest action sermons, or by the most wise and tender
table-addresses. And, truth to tell, though you will rebuke me all the
way home to-night for saying it, my heart sat somewhat nearer to
those old people who were perhaps a little too dumpish in their
repentance and their faith and their hope that morning, than it did to
those who took to the table with a light heart. I know all your flippant
cant about gospel liberty and against Highland introspection, as you
call it - as well as all your habitual neglect of a close and deep self-
examination, as Paul called it; but I tell you all to-night that it would be
the salvation of your soul if you too worked your way up to every
returning Lord's table with much more fear and much more
trembling. Let a man examine himself, Saxon as well as Celt, in
Edinburgh as well as in Ross-shire, and so let him eat of that flesh and
drink of that blood. "These pills," said Mr. Skill, "are to be taken three at a time fasting in half a quarter of a pint of the tears of repentance;
these pills are good to prevent diseases, as well as to cure when one is
sick. Yea, I dare say it, and stand to it, that if a man will but use this
physic as he should, it will make him live for ever. But thou must give
these pills no other way but as I have prescribed; for, if you do, they
will do no good." "Then he and I set forward," said the guide, "and I went before; but my man was of but few words, only he would often
sigh aloud."
As to the Hill Difficulty, that was no stick at all to Mr. Fearing; and
as for the lions, he pulled their whiskers and snapped his fingers in
their dumfoundered faces. For you must know that Mr. Fearing's
trouble was not about such things as these at all; his only fear was
about his acceptance at last. He beat Mr. Greatheart himself at getting
down into the Valley of Humiliation, till the guide was fain to confess
that he went down as well as he ever saw man go down in all his life.
This pilgrim cared not how mean he was, so he might be but happy at
last. That is the reason why so many of God's best saints take so kindly
and so quietly to things that drive other men mad. You wonder
sometimes when you see an innocent man sit down quietly under
accusations and insults and injuries that you spend all the rest of your
life resenting and repaying. And that is the reason also that so many of God's best saints in other ages and other communions used to pursue
evangelical humility and ascetic poverty and seclusion till they
obliterated themselves out of all human remembrance, and buried
themselves in retreats of silence and of prayer. Yes, you are quite right.
A garment of sackcloth may cover an unsanctified heart; and the
fathers of the desert did not all escape the depths of Satan and the
plague of their own heart. Quite true. A contrite heart may be carried
about an applauding city in a coach and six; and a crucified heart may
be clothed in purple and fine linen, and may fare sumptuously every
day. A saint of God will sometimes sit on a throne with a more weaned
mind than that with which Elijah or the Baptist will macerate
themselves in the wilderness. Every man who is really set on heaven
must find his own way thither; and he who is really intent on his own
way thither will neither have the time nor the heart to throw stones at
his brother who thinks he has discovered his own best way. All the
pilgrims who got to the City at last did not get down Difficulty and
through Humiliation so well as Mr. Fearing did; nor was it absolutely
necessary that they should. It was not to lay down an iron-fast rule for
others, but it was only to amuse the way with his account of Mr.
Fearing, that the guide went on to say: "Yes, I think there was a kind of sympathy betwixt that valley and my man. For I never saw him better
in all his pilgrimage than when he was in that valley. For here he
would lie down, embrace the ground, and kiss the very flowers that
grew in this valley. He would now be up every morning by break of
day, tracing and walking to and fro in that valley."
Now, do you think you could guess how Mr. Fearing conducted
himself in Vanity Fair? Your guess is important to us and to you to-
night; for it will show whether or no John Bunyan and Mr. Greatheart
have spent their strength for nought and in vain on you. It will show
whether or no you have got inside of Mr. Fearing with all that has been
said; and thus, inside of yourself. Guess, then. How did Mr. Fearing do
in Vanity Fair, do you think? To give you a clue, recollect that he was
the timidest of souls. And remember how you have often been afraid
to look at things in a shop window lest the shopkeeper should come
out and hold you to the thing you were looking at. Remember also that
you are the life-long owners of some things just because they were
thrown at your head. Remember how you sauntered into a sale on one occasion, and, out of sheer idleness and pure fun, made a bid, and to
your consternation the encumbrance was knocked down to your
name; and it fills up your house today till you would give ten times its
value to some one to take it away for ever out of your sight. Well, what
was it that those who were so shamelessly and so pesteringly cadging
about places, and titles, and preferments, and wives, and gold, and
silver, and such like - what was it they prevailed on this poor stupid
countryman to cheapen and buy? Do you guess, or do you give it up?
Well, Greatheart himself was again and again almost taken in; and
would have been had not Mr. Fearing been beside him. But Mr. Fearing
looked at all the jugglers, and cheats, and knaves, and apes, and fools
as if he would have bitten a firebrand. "I thought he would have fought
with all the men of the fair; I feared there we should have both been
knock'd o' th' head, so hot was he against their fooleries." And then -
for Greatheart was a bit of a philosopher, and liked to entertain and
while the away with tracing things up to their causes - "it was all," he said, "because Mr. Fearing was so tender of sin. He was above many
tender of sin. He was so afraid, not for himself only, but of doing injury
to others, that he would deny himself the purchase and possession
and enjoyment even of that which was lawful, because he would not
offend." "All this while," says Bunyan himself, in the eighty-second paragraph of Grace Abounding, "as to the act of sinning I was never
more tender than now. I durst not take a pin or a stick, though but so
big as a straw, for my conscience now was sore and would smart at
every touch. I could not now tell how to speak my words for fear I
should misplace them." "The highest flames," says Jeremy Taylor in his Life of Christ, "are the most tremulous."
"But when he was come at the river where was no bridge, there,
again, Mr. Fearing was in a heavy case. Now, he said, he should be
drowned for ever, and so never see that Face with comfort that he had
come so many miles to behold. And here also I took notice of what was
very remarkable; the water of that river was lower at this time than
ever I saw it in all my life, so he went over at last not much above wet-
shod." Then said Christiana, "This relation of Mr. Fearing has done me good. I thought nobody had been like me, but I see there was some
semblance betwixt this good man and I, only we differed in two things.
His troubles were so great that they broke out, but mine I kept within.
His also lay so hard upon him that he could not knock at the houses
provided for entertainment, but my trouble was always such that it
made me knock the louder." "If I might also speak my heart," said Mercy, "I must say that something of him has also dwelt in me. For I
have ever been more afraid of the lake, and the loss of a place in
Paradise, than I have been of the loss of other things. Oh! thought I,
may I have the happiness to have a habitation there: 'tis enough
though I part with all the world to win it." Then said Matthew, "Fear was one thing that made me think that I was far from having that
within me that accompanies salvation; but if it was so with such a
good man as he, why may it not also go well with me?" "No fears, no
grace," said James. "Though there is not always grace where there is fear of hell; yet, to be sure, there is no grace where there is no fear of
God." "Well said, James," said Greatheart; "thou hast hit the mark, for the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom; and, to be sure, they that
want the beginning have neither middle nor end." But we shall here
conclude our discourse of Mr. Fearing after we have sent after him this
farewell: -
"It is because Then thou didst fear,
That now thou dost not fear.
Thou hast forestalled the agony, and so
For thee the bitterness of death is past.
Also, because already in thy soul
The judgment is begun. That day of doom,
One and the same for this collected world -
That solemn consummation for all flesh,
Is, in the case of each, anticipate
Upon his death; and, as the last great day
In the particular judgment is rehearsed,
So now, too, ere thou comest to the Throne,
A presage falls upon thee, as a ray
Straight from the Judge, expressive of thy lot.
That calm and joy uprising in thy soul
Is first-fruit to thy recompense,
And heaven begun."
FEEBLE-MIND
"Comfort the feeble-minded." - Paul.
Feeble-mind shall first tell you his own story in his own words,
and then I shall perhaps venture a few observations upon his history
and his character. "I am but a sickly man, as you see," said Feeble-mind to Greatheart, "and because Death did usually knock once a day at my
door, I thought I should never be well at home. So I betook myself to a
pilgrim's life, and have travelled hither from the town of Uncertain,
where I and my father were born. I am a man of no strength at all of
body, nor yet of mind; but would, if I could, though I can but crawl,
spend my life in the pilgrim's way. When I came at the gate that is at
the head of the way, the Lord of that place did entertain me freely.
Neither objected he against my weakly looks, nor against my feeble
mind; but gave me such things as were necessary for my journey, and
bade me hope to the end. When I came to the house of the Interpreter
I received much kindness there; and, because the Hill Difficulty was
judged too hard for me, I was carried up that hill by one of his
servants. Indeed I have found much relief from pilgrims, though none
were willing to go so softly as I am forced to do. Yet, still, as they came
on, they bid me be of good cheer, and said that it was the will of their
Lord that comfort should be given to the feebleminded, and so went
on their own pace. I look for brunts by the way; but this I have
resolved on, to wit, to run when I can, to go when I cannot run, and to
creep when I cannot go. As to the main, I thank Him that loves me, I
am fixed. My way is before me, my mind is beyond the river that has
no bridge, though I am, as you see, but of a feeble mind."
Then said old Mr. Honest, "Have you not some time ago been
acquainted with one Mr. Fearing, a pilgrim?" "Acquainted with him!
yes. He came from the town of Stupidity, which lies four degrees to the
northward of the City of Destruction, and as many off where I was
born. Yet we were well acquainted; for, indeed, he was mine uncle, my
father's brother. He and I have been much of a temper; he was a little
shorter than I, but yet we were much of a complexion." "I perceive that you know him," said Mr. Honest, "and I am apt to believe also that you were related one to another; for you have his whitely look, a cast like
his with your eye, and your speech is much alike."
"Alas!" Feeble-mind went on, "I want a suitable companion. You
are all lusty and strong, but I, as you see, am weak. I choose therefore rather to come behind, lest, by reason of my many infirmities, I should
be both a burden to myself and to you. I am, as I said, a man of a weak
and feeble mind, and shall be offended and made weak at that which
others can bear. I shall like no laughing; I shall like no gay attire; I shall like no unprofitable questions. Nay, I am so weak a man as to be
offended with what others have a liberty to do. I do not yet know all
the truth. I am a very ignorant Christian man. Sometimes, if I hear
some rejoice in the Lord, it troubles me because I cannot do so too. It
is with me as with a weak man among the strong, or as with a sickly
man among the healthy, or as a lamp despised." "But, brother," said Greatheart, "I have it in commission to comfort the feeble-minded and
to support the weak." Thus therefore, they went on - Mr. Greatheart
and Mr. Honest went before; Christiana and her children went next;
and Mr. Feeble-mind and Mr. Ready-to-halt came behind with his
crutches.
In the first place, a single word as to Feeble-mind's family tree.
Thackeray says that The Peerage is the Family Bible of every true-born
Englishman. Every genuine Englishman, he tells us, teaches that
sacred book diligently to his children. He talks out of it to them when
he sits in the house and when he walks by the way. He binds it upon
his children's hands, and it is as a frontlet between their eyes. He
writes its names upon the doorposts of his house, and makes pictures
out of it upon his gates. Now, John Bunyan was a born Englishman in
his liking for a family tree. He had no such tree himself - scarcely so
much as a bramble bush; but, all the same, let the tinker take his pen
in hand, and the pedigrees and genealogies of all his pilgrims are sure
to be set forth as much as if they were to form the certificates that
those pilgrims were to hand in at the gate. Feeble-mind, then, was of
an old, a well-rooted and a wide-spread race. The county of Indecision
was full of that ancient stock. They had intermarried in-and-in also till
their small stature, their whitely look, the droop of their eye, and their
weak leaky speech all made them to be easily recognised wherever
they went. It was Feeble-mind's salvation that Death had knocked at
his door every day from his youth up. He was feeble in body as well as
in mind; only the feebleness of his body had put a certain strength into
his mind; the only strength he ever showed, indeed, was the strength
that had its roots in a weak constitution at which sickness and death struck their dissolving blows every day. To escape death, both the first
and the second death, any man with a particle of strength left would
run with all his might; and Feeble-mind had strength enough
somewhere among his weak joints to make him say, "But this I have
resolved on, to wit, to run when I can, to go when I cannot run, and to
creep when I cannot go. As to the main, I am fixed!"
At the Wicket Gate pilgrim Feeble-mind met with nothing but the
kindest and the most condescending entertainment. It was the
gatekeepers way to become all things to all men. The gatekeeper's
nature was all in his name; for he was all Goodwill together. No kind of
pilgrim ever came wrong to Goodwill. He never found fault with any.
Only let them knock and come in and he will see to all the rest. The
way is full of all the gatekeeper's kind words and still kinder actions.
Every several pilgrim has his wager with all the rest that no one ever
got such kindness at the gate as he got. And even Feeble-mind gave
the gatekeeper this praise - "The Lord of the place," he said, "did entertain me freely. Neither objected he against my weakly looks nor
against my feeble mind. But he gave me such things as were necessary
for my journey, and bade me hope to the end." All things considered,
that is perhaps the best praise that Goodwill and his house ever
earned. For, to receive and to secure Feeble-mind as a pilgrim - to
make it impossible for Feeble-mind to entertain a scruple or a
suspicion that was not removed beforehand - to make it impossible
for Feeble-mind to find in all the house and in all its grounds so much
as a straw over which he could stumble - that was extraordinary
attention, kindness, and condescension in Goodwill and all his good-
willed house. "Go on, go on, dear Mr. Feeble mind," said Goodwill
giving his hand to Mr. Fearing's nephew, "go on: keep your feeble mind
open to the truth, and still hope to the end!"
"As to the Interpreter's House, I received much kindness there."
That is all. But in that short speech I think there must he hid no little
shame and remorse. No words could possibly be a severer
condemnation of Feeble-mind than his own two or three so irrelevant
words about the Interpreter's house. No doubt at all, Feeble-mind
received kindness there; but that is not the point. That noble house
was not built at such cost, and fitted up, and kept open all the year
round, and filled with fresh furniture from year to year, merely that those who passed through its significant rooms might report that they
had received no rudeness at the hands of the Interpreter. "'Come,' said
the Interpreter to Feeble-mind, 'and I will show thee what will be
profitable to thee.' So he commanded his man to light the candle and
bid Feeble-mind follow him. But it was all to no use. Feeble-mind had
neither the taste nor the capacity for the significant rooms. Nay, as one
after another of those rich rooms was opened to him, Feeble-mind
took a positive dislike to them. Nothing interested him; nothing
instructed him. But many things stumbled and angered him. The
parlour full of dust, and how the dust was raised and laid; Passion and
Patience; the man in the iron cage; the spider-room; the muck-rake
room; the robin with its red breast and its pretty note, and yet with its
coarse food; the tree, green outside but rotten at the heart, - all the
thanks the Interpreter took that day for all that from Feeble-mind was
in such speeches as these: You make me lose my head. I do not know
where I am. I did not leave the town of Uncertain to be confused and
perplexed in my mind with sights and sounds like these. Let me out at
the door I came in at, and I shall go back to the gate. Goodwill had
none of these unhappy rooms in his sweet house!" Nothing could
exceed the kindness of the Interpreter himself; but his house was full
of annoyances and offences and obstructions to Mr. Feeble-mind. He
did not like the Interpreter's house, and he got out of it as fast as he
could, with his mind as feeble as when he entered it; and, what was
worse, with his temper not a little ruffled. And we see this very same
intellectual laziness, this very same downright dislike at divine truth,
in our own people every day. There are in every congregation people
who take up their lodgings at the gate and refuse to go one step
farther on the way. A visit to the Interpreter's House always upsets
them. It turns their empty head. They do not know where they are.
They will not give what mind they have to divine truth, all you can do
to draw them on to it, till they die as feeble-minded, as ignorant, and
as inexperienced as they were born. They never read a religious book
that has any brain or heart in it. The feeble Lives of feeble-minded
Christians, written by feeble-minded authors, and published by
feeble-minded publishers, - we all know the spoon-meat that
multitudes of our people go down to their second childhood upon.
Jonathan Edwards - a name they never hear at home, but one of the most masculine and seraphic of interpreters - has a noble discourse
on The Importance and Advantage of a thorough Knowledge of Divine
Truth. "Consider yourselves," he says, "as scholars or disciples put into the school of Christ, and therefore be diligent to make proficiency in
Christian knowledge. Content not yourselves with this, that you have