Part 5
been taught your Catechism in your childhood, and that you know as
much of the principles of religion as is necessary to salvation. Let not
your teachers have cause to complain that while they spend and are
spent to impart knowledge to you, you take little pains to learn. Be
assiduous in reading the Holy Scriptures. And when you read, observe
what you read. Observe how things come in. Compare one scripture
with another. Procure and diligently use other books which may help
you to grow in this knowledge. There are many excellent books extant
which might greatly forward you in this knowledge. There is a great
defect in many, that through a lothness to be at a little expense, they
provide themselves with no more helps of this nature." Weighty, wise,
and lamentably true words.
"Mundanus," says William Law, "is a man of excellent parts, and clear apprehension. He is well advanced in age, and has made a great
figure in business. He has aimed at the greatest perfection in
everything. The only thing which has not fallen under his
improvement, nor received any benefit from his judicious mind, is his
devotion; this is just in the same poor state it was when he was six
years of age, and the old man prays now in that little form of words
which his mother used to hear him repeat night and morning. This
Mundanus that hardly ever saw the poorest utensil without
considering how it might be made or used to better advantage, has
gone on all his life long praying in the same manner as when he was a
child; without ever considering how much better or oftener he might
pray; without considering how improvable the spirit of devotion is,
how many helps a wise and reasonable man may call to his assistance,
and how necessary it is that our prayers should be enlarged, varied,
and suited to the particular state and condition of our lives. How poor
and pitiable is the conduct of this man of sense, who has so much
judgment and understanding in everything but that which is the
whole wisdom of man!" How true to every syllable is that! How
simple-looking, and yet how manly, and able, and noble! We close our young men's session with Law and Butler to-night, and I cannot
believe that our session with those two giants has left one feeble mind
in the two classes; they were all weeded out after the first fortnight of
the session; though, after all is done, there are still plenty left both
among old and young in the congregation. Even Homer sometimes
nods; and I cannot but think that John Bunyan has made a slip in
saying that Feeble-mind enjoyed the Interpreter's House. At any rate, I
wish I could say as much about all the feeble minds known to me.
The Hill Difficulty, which might have helped to make a man of
Feeble-mind, saw a laughable, if it had not been such a lamentable,
spectacle. For it saw this poor creature hanging as limp as wet linen
on the back of one of the Interpreter's sweating servants. Your little
boy will explain the parable to you. Shall I do this? or, shall I rather do
that? asks Feeble-mind at every stop. Would it be right? or, would it be
wrong? Shall I read that book? Shall I go to that ball? Shall I marry that
man? Tell me what to do. Give me your hand. Take me up upon your
back, and carry me over this difficult hill. "I was carried up that," says poor Feeble-mind, "by one of his servants."
"The one calamity of Mr. Feeble-mind's history," says our ablest
commentator on Bunyan, "was the finest mercy of his history." That
one calamity was his falling into Giant Slay-good's hands, and his
finest mercy was his rescue by Greatheart, and his consequent
companionship with his deliverer, with Mr. Honest, and with
Christiana and her party till they came to the river. You constantly see
the same thing in the life of the Church and of the Christian Family.
Some calamity throws a weak, ignorant, and immoral creature into
close contact with a minister or an elder or a Christian visitor, who not
only relieves him from his present distress, but continues to keep his
eye upon his new acquaintance, introduces him to wise and good
friends, invites him to his house, gives him books to read, and keeps
him under good influences, till, of a weak, feeble, and sometimes
vicious character, he is made a Christian man, till he is able for himself
to say, It was good for me to be afflicted; the one calamity of my
history has been my best mercy!
Feeble-mind, I am ashamed to have to admit, behaved himself in a
perfectly scandalous manner at the house of Gaius mine host. He went
beyond all bounds during those eventful weeks. Those weeks were one long temptation to Feeble-mind - and he went down in a pitiful
way before his temptation. Two marriages and two honeymoons, with
suppers and dances every night, made the old hostelry like very
Pandemonium itself to poor Feeble-mind. He would have had
Matthew's and James's marriages conducted next door to a funeral.
Because he would not eat flesh himself, he protested against Gaius
killing a sheep. "Man," said old Honest, almost laying his quarterstaff over Feeble-mind's shoulders - "Man, dost thou think because thou art
virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?" "I shall like no
laughing," said Feeble-mind; "I shall like no gay attire; I shall like no unprofitable questions." I think it took some self-conceit to refuse to
sit at table beside Christiana because of her gay attire. And I hope
Mercy did not give up dressing well, even after she was married, to
please that weak-minded old churl. And as to unprofitable questions -
we are all tempted to think that question unprofitable which our
incapacity or our ignorance keeps us silent upon at table. We think
that topic both ill-timed and impertinent and unsafe to which we are
not invited to contribute anything. "I am a very ignorant man," he
went on to say; and, if that was said in any humility, Feeble-mind
never said a truer word. "It is with me as it is with a weak man among
the strong, or as with a sick man among the healthy, or as a lamp
despised in the thought of him that is at ease." All which only brought
Greatheart out in his very best colours. "But, brother," said the guide,
"I have it in commission to comfort the feeble-minded, and to support
the weak. You must needs go along with us; we will wait for you, we
will lend you our help, we will deny ourselves of some things, both
opinionative and practical, for your sake; we will not enter into
doubtful disputations before you; we will be made all things to you
rather than that you shall be left behind."
The first thing that did Mr. Feeble-mind any real good was his
being made military guard over the women and the children while the
men went out to demolish Doubting Castle. Quis custodiet? you will
smile and say when you hear that. Who shall protect the protector?
you will say. But wait a little. Greatheart knew his business. For not
only did Feeble-mind rise to the occasion, when he was put to it; but,
more than that, he was the soul of good company at supper-time that
night. "Jocund and merry" are the very words. Yes; give your feeble and fault-finding folk something to do. Send them to teach a class.
Send them down into a mission district. Lay a sense of responsibility
upon them. Leave them to deal with this and that emergency
themselves. Cease carrying them on your back, and lay weak and evil
and self-willed people on their back. Let them feel that they are of
some real use. As Matthew Arnold says, Let the critic but try practice,
and you will make a new man of him. As Greatheart made of Feeble-
mind by making him mount guard over the Celestial caravan while the
fighting men were all up at Doubting Castle.
"Mark this," says Mr. Feeble-mind's biographer on the early
margin of his history, lest we should be tempted to forget the good
parts of this troublesome and provoking pilgrim - "Mark this." This, namely, which Feeble-mind says to his guide. "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." And that leads us with returning regard and love to turn to the
end of his history, where we read: "After this Mr. Feeble-mind had
tidings brought him that the post sounded his horn at his chamber
door. Then he came in and told him, saying, I am come to tell thee that
thy Master hath need of thee, and that in very little time thou must
behold His face in brightness. Then Mr. Feeble-mind called for his
friends, and told them what errand had been brought to him, and
what token he had received of the truth of the message. As for my
feeble mind he said, that I shall leave behind me, for I shall have no
need of that in the place whither I go. Nor is it worth bestowing upon
the poorest pilgrim. Wherefore, when I am gone, I desire that you
would bury it in a dung-hill. This done, and the day being come in
which he was about to depart, he entered the river as the rest. His last
words were, Hold out, faith and patience! So he went over to the other
side."
GREAT-HEART
" - when thou shalt enlarge my heart." - David.
On Sabbath, the 12th December 1886, I heard the late Canon
Liddon preach a sermon in St. Paul's Cathedral, in which he classed
Oliver Cromwell with Alexander the Sixth and with Richard the Third.
I had taken my estimate of the great Protector's character largely from
Carlyle's famous book, and you can judge with what feelings I heard
the canon's comparison. And, besides, I had been wont to think of the
Protector as having entered largely into John Bunyan's portrait of
Greatheart, the pilgrim guide. And the researches and the judgments
of Dr. Gardiner have only gone to convince me, the eloquent canon
notwithstanding, that Bunyan could not have chosen a better
contemporary groundwork for his Greatheart than just the great
Puritan soldier. Cromwell's "mental struggles before his conversion,"
his life-long "searchings of heart," his "utter absence of
vindictiveness," his unequalled capacity for "seeing into the heart of a situation," and his own "all-embracing hospitality of heart" - all have gone to reassure me that my first guess as to Bunyan's employment of
the Protector's matchless personality and services had not been so far
astray. And the oftener I read the noble history of Greatheart, the
better I seem to hear, beating behind his fine figure, by far the greatest
heart that ever ruled over the realm of England.
The first time that we catch a glimpse of Greatheart's weather-
beaten and sword-seamed face is when he is taking a stolen look out
of the window at Mr. Fearing, who is conducting himself more like a
chicken than a man around the Interpreter's door. And from that
moment till Mr. Fearing shouted "Grace reigns!" as he cleared the last river, never sportsman surely stalked a startled deer so patiently and
so skilfully and so successfully as Greatheart circumvented that
chicken-hearted pilgrim. "At last 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 him what he was; but, poor man, the water stood ill 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." Greatheart's whole account of Mr. Fearing always brings the water
to my eyes also. It is indeed a delicious piece of English prose. If I were
a professor of belles lettres instead of what I am, I would compel all my students, under pain of rustication, to get those three or four
classical pages by heart till they could neither perpetrate nor tolerate
bad English any more. This camp-fire tale, told by an old soldier, about
a troublesome young recruit and all his adventures, touches, surely,
the high-water mark of sweet and undefiled English. Greatheart was
not the first soldier who could handle both the sword and the pen, and
he has not been the last. But not Caesar and not Napier themselves
ever handled those two instruments better.
Greatheart had just returned to his Master's house from having
seen Mr. Fearing safely through all his troubles and well over the river,
when, behold, another caravan of pilgrims is ready for his convoy. For
Greatheart, you must know, was the Interpreter's armed servant.
When at any time Greatheart was off duty, which in those days was
but seldom, he took up his quarters again in the Interpreter's house.
As he says himself, he came back from the river-side only to look out
of the Interpreter's window to see if there was any more work on the
way for him to do. And, as good luck would have it, as has been said,
the guide was just come back from his adventures with Mr. Fearing
when a pilgrim party, than which he had never seen one more to his
mind, was introduced to him by his Master, the Interpreter. "The
Interpreter," so we read at this point, "then called for a man-servant of his, one Greatheart, and bid him take sword, and helmet, and shield,
and take these, my daughters," said he, "and conduct them to the
house called Beautiful, at which place they will rest next. So he took
his weapons and went before them, and the Interpreter said, God-
speed."
Now I saw in my dream that they went on, and Greatheart went
before them, so they came to the place where Christian's burden fell
off his back and tumbled into a sepulchre. Here, then, they made a
pause, and here also they blessed God. "Now," said Christiana, "it comes to my mind what was said to us at the gate; to wit, that we
should have pardon by word and by deed. What it is to have pardon by
deed, Mr. Greatheart, I suppose you know; wherefore, if you please, let
us hear your discourse thereof." "So then, to speak to the question,"
said Greatheart. You have all heard about the "question-day" at
Highland communions. That day is so called because questions that
have arisen in the minds of "the men" in connection with doctrine and with experience are on that day set forth, debated out, and solved by
much meditation and prayer; age, saintliness, doctrinal and
experimental reading, and personal experience all making their
contribution to the solution of the question in hand. Just such a
question, then, and handled in such a manner, was that question
which whiled the way and cheated the toil till the pilgrims came to the
House Beautiful. The great doctrinal and experimental Puritans, with
Hooker at their head, put forth their full strength and laid out their
finest work just on this same question that Christiana gave out at the
place, somewhat ascending, upon which stood a cross, and a little
below, in the bottom, a sepulchre. But not the great Comment on The
Galatians itself, next to the Holy Bible as it is, as most fit for a
wounded conscience; no, nor that perfect mass of purest gold, The
Learned Discourse of Justification, nor anything else of that kind
known to me, is for one moment, to compare in beauty, in tenderness,
in eloquence, in scriptural depth, and in scriptural simplicity with
Greatheart's noble resolution of Christiana's question which he made
on the way from the Interpreter's house to the House Beautiful. "This
is brave!" exclaimed that mother in Israel, when the guide had come to
an end. "Methinks it makes my heart to bleed to think that He should
bleed for me. O Thou loving One! O Thou blessed One! Thou deservest
to have me, for Thou hast bought me. No marvel that this made the
water to stand in my husband's eyes, and that it made him trudge so
nimbly on. O Mercy, that thy father and thy mother were here; yea, and
Mrs. Timorous too! Nay, I wish now with all my heart that here was
Madam Wanton too. Surely, surely their hearts would be affected
here!" Promise me to read at home Greatheart's discourse on the
Righteousness of Christ, and you will thank me for having exacted the
promise.
The incongruity of a soldier handling such questions, and
especially in such a style, has stumbled some of John Bunyan's fault-
finding readers. The same incongruity stumbled "the Honourable
Colonel Hacker, at Peebles or elsewhere," to whom Cromwell sent
these from Edinburgh on the 25th December 1650 - "But indeed I was
not satisfied with your last speech to me about Empson, that he was a
better preacher than fighter or soldier - or words to that effect. Truly, I
think that he that prays and preaches best will fight best. I know nothing that will give like courage and confidence as the knowledge of
God in Christ will; and I bless God to see any in this army able and
willing to impart the knowledge they have for the good of others. I
pray you receive Captain Empson lovingly: I dare assure you he is a
good man and a good officer; I would we had no worse."
"Will you not go in and stay till morning?" said the porter to
Greatheart, at the gate of the House Beautiful. "No," said the guide; "I will return to my lord to-night." "O sir!" cried Christiana and Mercy,
"we know not how to be willing you should leave us in our pilgrimage.
Oh that we might have your company till our journey's end." Then said
James, the youngest of the boys, "Pray be persuaded to go with us and
help us, because we are so weak and the way so dangerous as it is." "I am at my lord's commandment," said Greatheart. "If he shall allow me to be your guide quite through, I shall willingly wait upon you. But
here you failed at first; for when he bid me come thus far with you,
then you should have begged me of him to have gone quite through
with you, and he would have granted your request. However, at
present, I must withdraw, and so, good Christiana, Mercy, and my
brave children, adieu!" "Help lost for want of asking for," is our author's condemnatory comment on the margin at this point in the
history. And there is not a single page in my history, or in yours, my
brethren, on which the same marginal lament is not written. What
help we would have had on our Lord's promise if we had but taken the
trouble to ask for it! And what help we once had, and have now lost,
just because when we had it we did not ask for a continuance of it!
"No," said Greatheart to the porter, and to the two women, and to
James - "No. I will return to my lord to-night. I am at my lord's
commandment; only, if he shall still allot me I shall willingly wait upon
you."
Now, what with the House Beautiful, so full of the most delightful
company; what with music in the house and music in the heart; what
with Mr. Brisk's courtship of Mercy, Matthew's illness, Mr. Skill's cure
of the sick man, and what not - a whole month passed by like a day in
that so happy house. But at last Christiana and Mercy signified it to
those of the house that it was time for them to be up and going. Then
said Joseph to his mother, "It is convenient that you send back to the
house of Mr. Interpreter to pray him to grant that Mr. Greatheart should be sent to us that he may be our conductor the rest of our way."
"Good boy," said she, "I had almost forgot." So she drew up a petition and prayed Mr. Watchful the porter to send it by some fit man to her
good friend, Mr. Interpreter; who, when it was come and he had seen
the contents of the petition, said to the messenger, "Go, tell them that I will send him." . . . Now, about this time one knocked at the door. So
the porter opened, and, behold, Mr. Greatheart was there! But when he
came in, what joy was there! Then said Mr. Greatheart to the two
women, "My lord has sent each of you a bottle of wine, and also some
parched corn, together with a couple of pomegranates. He has also
sent the boys some figs and raisins to refresh you on your way." "The weak may sometimes call the strong to prayers," I read again in the
margin opposite the mention of Joseph's name. Not that I am strong,
and not that she is weak, but one of my people I spent an hour with
last afternoon whom you would to a certainty have called weak had
you seen her and her surrounding, - she so called me to prayer that I
had to hurry home and go straight to it. And all last night and all this
morning I have had as many pomegranates as I could eat
and as much wine as I could drink. Yes; you attend to what the
weakest will sometimes say to you, and they will often put you on the
way to get Greatheart back again with a load of wines and fruits and
corn on his shoulder to refresh you on your journey. "Good boy!" said Christiana to Joseph her youngest son, "Good boy! I had almost
forgot!"
When old Mr. Honest began to nod after the good supper that
Gaius mine host gave to the pilgrims, "What, sir," cried Greatheart,
"you begin to be drowsy; come, rub up; now here's a riddle for you."
Then said Mr. Honest, "Let's hear it." Then said Mr. Greatheart,
"He that will kill, must first be overcome;
Who live abroad would, first must die at home."
"Hah!" said Mr. Honest, "it is a hard one; hard to expound, and harder still to practise." Yes; this after-supper riddle of Mr. Greatheart is a
hard one in both respects; and for this reason, because the learned
and much experienced guide - learned with all that his life-long
quarters in the Interpreter's House could teach him, and experienced
with a lifetime's accumulated experience of the pilgrim life - has put
all his learning and all his life into these two mysterious lines. But old Honest, once he had sufficiently rubbed up his eyes and his intellects,
gave the answer:
"He first by grace must conquered be
That sin would mortify.
And who, that lives, would convince me,
Unto himself must die."
Exactly; shrewd old Honest; you have hit off both Greatheart and his
riddle too. You have dived into the deepest heart of the Interpreter's
man-servant. "The magnanimous man" was Aristotle's masterpiece.
That great teacher of mind and morals created for the Greek world
their Greatheart. But, "thou must understand," says Bunyan to his
readers, "that I never went to school to Aristotle or Plato. No; but to
Paul, who taught Bunyan that what Aristotle calls magnanimity is
really pride - taught him that, till there is far more of the Christian
religion in those two doggerel lines at Gaius's supper-table than there
is in all The Ethics taken together. And it is only from a personal
experience of the same life as that which the guide puts here into his
riddle that any man's proud heart will become really humble and thus
really great, really enlarged, and of an all-embracing hospitality like
Cromwell's and Greatheart's and John Bunyan's own. Would you, then,
become a Greatheart too? And would you be employed in your day as
they were employed in their day? Then expound to yourself, and
practise, and follow out that deep riddle with which Greatheart so
woke up old Honest:
"He that will kill, must first be overcome;
Who live abroad would, first must die at home.
Greatheart again and again at the river-side, Greatheart sending
pilgrim after pilgrim over the river with rapture, and he himself still
summoned to turn his back on the Celestial City, and to retrace his
steps through the land of Beulah, through the Valley of the Shadow of
Death, and through the Valley of Humiliation, and back to the
Interpreter's house to take on another and another and another
convoy of fresh pilgrims, and his own abundant entrance still put off
and never to come, - our hearts bleed for poor Greatheart. Back and
forward, back and forward, year after year, this noble soul
uncomplainingly goes. And, ever as he waves his hand to another
pilgrim entering with trumpets within the gates, he salutes his next pilgrim charge with the brave words: "Yet what I shall choose I wot
not. For I am in a strait betwixt two: having a desire to depart and to
be with Christ. Nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needful for
you, for your furtherance and joy of faith by my coming to you again."
If Greatheart could not "usher himself out of this life" along with
Christiana, and Mercy, and Mr. Honest, and Standfast, and Valiant-for-
truth - if he had still to toil back and bleed his way up again at the
head of another happy band of pilgrims - well, after all is said, what
had the Celestial City itself to give to Greatheart better than such
blessed work? With every such returning journey he got a more and
more enlarged, detached, hospitable, and Christ-like heart, and the
King's palace in very glory itself had nothing better in store for this
soldier-guide than that. A nobler heaven Greatheart could not taste
than he had already in himself, as he championed another and another
pilgrim company from his Master's earthly gate to his Master's
heavenly gate. Like Paul, his apostolic prototype, Greatheart
sometimes vacillated just for a moment when he came a little too near
heaven, and felt its magnificent and almost dissolving attractions full
in his soul. You will see Greatheart's mind staggering for a moment
between rest and labour, between war and peace, between "Christ" on
earth and "Christ" in heaven - you will see all that set forth with great sympathy and great ability in Principal Rainy's new book on Paul's
Epistle to the Philippians, and in the chapter entitled, The Apostle's
Choice between Living and Dying.
Then there came a summons for Mr. Standfast. At which he called
to him Mr. Greatheart, and said unto him, "Sir, although it was not my
hap to be much in your good company in the days of my pilgrimage,
yet, since the time I knew you, you have been profitable to me. When I
came from home I left behind me a wife and five small children. Let
me entreat you, at your return (for I know that you will go and return
to your master's house in hopes that you may be a conductor to more
of the holy pilgrims), that you send to my family and let them be
acquainted with all that hath and shall happen to me. Tell them,
moreover, of my happy arrival to this place, and of the present late
blessed condition I am in, and so on for many other messages and
charges." Yes, Mr. Standfast; very good. But I would have liked you on
your deathbed much better if you had had a word to spare from
yourself and your wife and your children for poor Greatheart himself,
who had neither wife nor children, nor near hope of heaven, but only
your trust and charge and many suchlike trusts and charges to carry
out when you are at home and free of all trust and all charge and all
care. But yours is the way of all the pilgrims - so long, at least, as they
are in this selfish life. Let them and their children only be well looked
after, and they have not many thoughts or many words left for those
who sweat and bleed to death for them and theirs. They lean on this
and that Greatheart all their own way up, and then they leave their
widows and children to lean on whatever Greatheart is sent to meet
them; but it is not one pilgrim in ten who takes the thought or has the
heart to send a message to Mr. Greatheart himself for his own
consolation and support. I read that Mr. Ready-to-halt alone, good
soul, had the good feeling to do it. He thanked Mr. Greatheart for his
conduct and for his kindness, and so addressed himself to his journey.
All the same, noble Greatheart! go on in thy magnanimous work. Take
back all their errands. Seek out at any trouble all their wives and
children. Embark again and again on all thy former battles and
hardships for the good of other men. But be assured that all this thy
labour is not in vain in thy Lord. Be well assured that not one drop of
thy blood or thy sweat or thy tears shall fall to the ground on that day
when they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament,
and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and
ever. Go back, then, from thy well-earned rest, O brave Greatheart! go
back to thy waiting task. Put on again thy whole armour. Receive
again, and again fulfil, thy Master's commission, till He has no more
commissions left for thy brave heart and thy bold hand to execute.
And, one glorious day, while thou art still returning to thy task, it shall
suddenly sound in thy dutiful ears: - "Well done! good and faithful
servant!" And then thou too
"Shalt hang thy trumpet in the hall
And study war no more."
MR. READY-TO-HALT
"For I am ready to halt." - David.
Mr. Ready-to-halt is the Mephibosheth of the pilgrimage. While
Mephibosheth was still a child in arms, his nurse let the young prince
fall, and from that day to the day of his death he was lame in both his
feet. Mephibosheth's life-long lameness, and then David's
extraordinary grace to the disinherited cripple in commanding him to
eat continually at the king's table; in those two points we have all that
we know about Mr. Ready-to-halt also. We have no proper portrait, as
we say, of Mr. Ready-to-halt. Mr. Ready-to-halt is but a name on John
Bunyan's pages - a name set upon two crutches; but, then, his simple
name is so suggestive and his two crutches are so eloquent, that I feel
as if we might venture to take this life-long lameter and his so
serviceable crutches for our character-lecture to-night.
John Bunyan, who could so easily and so delightfully have done it,
has given us no information at all about Mr. Ready-to-halt's early days.
For once his English passion for a pedigree has not compelled our
author's pen. We would have liked immensely to have been told the
name, and to have seen displayed the whole family tree of young
Ready-to-halt's father; and, especially, of his mother. Who was his
nurse also? And did she ever forgive herself for the terrible injury she
had done her young master? What were his occupations and
amusements as a little cripple boy? Who made him his first crutch? Of
what wood was it made? And at what age, and under whose kind and
tender directions did he begin to use it? And, then, with such an
infirmity, what ever put it into Mr. Ready-to-halt's head to attempt the
pilgrimage? For the pilgrimage was a task and a toil that took all the
limbs and all the lungs and all the labours and all the endurances that
the strongest and the bravest of men could bring to bear upon it. How
did this complete cripple ever get through the Slough, and first up and
then down the Hill Difficulty, and past all the lions, and over a
thousand other obstacles and stumbling-blocks, till he arrived at mine
host's so hospitable door? The first surprised sight we get of this so
handicapped pilgrim is when Greatheart and Feeble-mind are in the
heat of their discourse at the hostelry door. At that moment Mr. Ready-
to-halt came by with his crutches in his hand, and he also was going
on pilgrimage. Thus, therefore, they went on. Mr. Greatheart and Mr.
Honest went on before, Christiana and her children went next, and Mr.
Feeble-mind and Mr. Ready-to-halt came behind with his crutches.
"Put by the curtains, look within my veil,
Turn up my metaphors, and do not fail,
There, if thou seekest them, such things to find,
As will be helpful to an honest mind."
Well, then, when we put by the curtains and turn up the
metaphors, what do we find? What, but just this, that poor Mr. Ready-
to-halt was, after all, the greatest and the best believer, as the New
Testament would have called him, in all the pilgrimage. We have not
found so great faith as that of Mr. Ready-to-halt, no, not in the very
best of the pilgrim bands. Each several pilgrim had, no doubt, his own
good qualities; but, at pure and downright believing - at taking God at
His bare and simple word - Mr. Ready-to-halt beat them all. All that
flashes in upon us from one shining word that stands on the margin of
our so metaphorical author. This single word, the "promises," hangs
like a key of gold beside the first mention of Mr. Ready-to-halt's
crutches - a key such that in a moment it throws open the whole of Mr.
Ready-to-halt's otherwise lockfast and secret and inexplicable life.
There it all is, as plain as a pikestaff now! Yes; Mr. Ready-to-halt's
crutches are just the divine promises. I wonder I did not see that all
the time. Why, I could compose all his past life myself now. I have his
father and his mother and his nurse at my finger-ends now. This poor
pilgrim - unless it would be impertinence to call him poor any more -
had no limbs to be called limbs. Such limbs as he had were only an
encumbrance to this unique pedestrian. All the limbs he had were in
his crutches. He had not one atom of strength to lean upon apart from
his crutches. A bone, a muscle, a tendon, a sinew, may be ill-nourished,
undeveloped, green, and unknit, but, at the worst, they are inside of a
man and they are his own. But a crutch, of however good wood it may
be made, and however good a lame man may be at using it - still, a
crutch at its best is but an outside additament; it is not really and
originally a part of a man's very self at all. And yet a lame man is not
himself without his crutch. Other men do not need to give a moment's
forethought when they wish to rise up to walk, or to run, or to leap, or
to dance. But the lame man has to wait till his crutches are brought to
him; and then, after slowly and painfully hoisting himself up upon his
crutches, with great labour, he at last takes the road. Mr. Ready-to-halt, then, is a man of God; but he is one of those men of God who have no
godliness within themselves. He has no inward graces. He has no past
experiences. He has no attainments that he can for one safe moment
take his stand upon, or even partly lean upon. Mr. Ready-to-halt is
absolutely and always dependent upon the promises. The promises of
God in Holy Scripture are this man's very life. All his religion stands in
the promises. Take away the promises, and Mr. Ready-to-halt is a heap
of heaving rags on the roadside. He cannot take a single step unless
upon a promise. But, at the same time, give Mr. Ready-to-halt a
promise in his hand and he will wade the Slough upon it, and scale up
and slide down the Hill Difficulty upon it, and fight a lion, and even
brain Beelzebub with it, till he will with a grudge and a doubt
exchange it even for the chariots and the horses that wait him at the
river. What a delight our Lord would have taken in Mr. Ready-to-halt
had He come across him on His way to the passover! How He would
have given Mr. Ready-to-halt His arm; how He would have made
Himself late by walking with him, and would still have waited for him!
Nay, had that been a day of chap-books in carpenters' shops and on
the village stalls, how He would have had Mr. Ready-to-halt's story by
heart had any brass-worker in Galilee told the history! Our Lord was
within an inch of telling that story Himself, when He showed Thomas
His hands and His side. And at another time and in another place we
might well have had Mr. Ready-to-halt as one more of our Lord's
parables for the common people. Only, He left the delight and the
reward of drawing out this parable to one He already saw and dearly
loved in a far-off island of the sea, the Puritan tinker of Evangelical
England.
And now, after all that, would you think it going too far if I were to
say that in making Himself like unto all His brethren, our Lord made
Himself like Mr. Ready-to-halt too? Indeed He did. And it was because
his Lord did this, that Mr. Ready-to-halt so loved his Lord as to follow
Him upon crutches. It would not be thought seemly, perhaps, to carry
the figure too close to our Lord. But, figure apart, it is only orthodox
and scriptural to say that our Lord accomplished His pilgrimage and
finished His work leaning all along upon His Father's promises. Esaias
is very bold about this also, for he tells his readers again and again
that their Messiah, when He comes, will have to be held up. He will have to be encouraged, comforted, and carried through by Jehovah.
And in one remarkable passage he lets us see Jehovah hooping
Messiah's staff first with brass, and then with silver, and then with
gold. Let Thomas Goodwin's genius set the heavenly scene full before
us. "You have it dialoguewise set forth," says that great preacher. "First Christ shows His commission, telling God how He had called Him and
fitted Him for the work of redemption, and He would know what
reward He should receive of Him for so great an undertaking. God at
first offers low; only the elect of Israel. Christ thinks these too few, and
not worth so great a labour and work, because few of the Jews would
come in; and therefore He says that He would labour in vain if this
were all His recompense; and yet withal He tells God that seeing His
heart is so much set on saving sinners, to satisfy Him, He will do it
even for those few. Upon this God comes off more freely, and openeth
His heart more largely to Him, as meaning more amply to content Him
for His pains in dying. 'It is a light thing,' says God to Him, 'that Thou
shouldest be My servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob - that is not
worth Thy dying for. I value Thy sufferings more than so. I will give
Thee for a salvation to the ends of the earth.' Upon this He made a
promise to Christ, a promise which God, who cannot lie, promised
before the world began. God cannot lie, and, most of all, not to His
Son."
And, then, more even than that. This same deep divine tells us
that it is a certain rule in divinity that, whatsoever we receive from
Christ, that He Himself first receives in Himself for us. All the promises
of God's word are made and fulfilled to Christ first, and so to us in and
after Him. In other words, our Lord's life was so planned for Him in
heaven and was so followed out and fulfilled by Him on earth, that, to
take up the metaphor again, He actually tried every crutch and every
staff with His own hands and with His own armpits; He actually
leaned again and again His own whole weight upon every several one
of them. Every single promise, the most unlikely for Him to lean upon
and to plead, yet, be sure of it, He somehow made experiment upon
them all, and made sure that there was sufficient and serviceable
grace within and under every one of them. So that, Mr. Ready-to-halt,
there is no possible staff you can take into your hand that has not
already been in the hand of your Lord. Think of that, O Mr. Ready-to-halt! Reverence, then, and almost worship thy staff! Throw all thy
weight upon thy staff. Confide all thy weakness to it. Talk to it as thou
walkest with it. Make it talk to thee. Worm out of it all its secrets about
its first Owner.
And let it instruct thee about how He walked with it and how He
handled it. The Bible is very bold with its Master. It calls Him by the
most startling names sometimes. There is no name that a penitent and
a returning sinner goes by that the Bible does not put somewhere
upon the sinner's Saviour. And in one place it as good as calls Him
Ready-to-halt in as many words. Nay, it lets us see Him halting
altogether for a time; ay, oftener than once; and only taking the road
again, when a still stronger staff was put into his trembling hand. And
if John had but had room in his crowded gospel he would have given
us the very identical psalm with which our Lord took to the upward
way again, strong in His new staff. "For I am ready to halt," was His psalm in the house of His pilgrimage, "and My sorrow is continually
before Me. Mine enemies are lively, and they are strong; and they that
hate Me wrongfully are multiplied. They also that render evil for good
are Mine adversaries; because I follow the thing that good is. Forsake
Me not, O Lord; O My God, be not far from Me. Make haste to help Me,
O Lord My salvation."
Among all the devout and beautiful fables of the "dispensation of
paganism," there is nothing finer than the fable of blind Tiresias and
his staff. By some sad calamity this old prophet had lost the sight of
his eyes, and to compensate their servant for that great loss the gods
endowed him with a staff with eyes. As Aaron's rod budded before the
testimony and bloomed blossoms and yielded almonds, so Tiresias'
staff budded eyes, and divine eyes too, for the blind prophet's
guidance and direction. Tiresias had but to take his heaven-given staff
in his hand, when, straightway, such a divinity entered into the staff
that it both saw for him with divine eyes, and heard for him with
divine ears, and then led him and directed him, and never once in all
his after journeys let him go off the right way. All other men about
him, prophets and priests both, often lost their way, but Tiresias after
his blindness, never, till Tiresias and his staff became a proverb and a
parable in the land. And just such a staff, just such a crutch, just such a
pair of crutches, were the crutches of our own so homely Mr. Ready-to-halt. With all their lusty limbs, all the other pilgrims often stumbled
and went out of their way till they had to be helped up, led back, and
their faces set right again. But, last as Mr. Ready-to-halt always came
in the procession - behind even the women and the children as his
crutches always kept him - you will seek in vain for the dot of those
crutches on any bypath or on any wrong road. No; the fact is, if you
wish to go to the same city, and are afraid you lose the way; as
Evangelist said, "Do you see yon shining light?" so I would say to you tonight, "Do you see these crutch-marks on the road?" Well, keep
your feet in the prints of these crutches, and as sure as you do that
they will lead you straight to a chariot and horses, which, again, will
carry you inside the city gates. For Mr. Ready-to-halt's crutches have
not only eyes like Tiresias' staff, they have ears also, and hands and
feet. A lamp also burns on those crutches; and wine and oil distil from
their wonderful wood. Happy blindness that brings such a staff!
Happy exchange! eyes full of earth and sin for eyes full of heaven and
holiness!
"They began to be merry," says our Lord, telling the story of the
heart-broken father who had got back his younger son from a far
country. And even Feeble-mind and Ready-to-halt begin to be merry
on the green that day after Doubting Castle has fallen to Greatheart's
arms. Now, Christiana, if need was, could play upon the viol, and her
daughter Mercy upon the lute; and, since they were so merry
disposed, she played them a lesson, and Mr. Ready-to-halt would
dance. So he paid a boy a penny to hold one of his crutches, and,
taking Miss Much-afraid by the hand, to dancing they went. And, I
promise you he footed it well; the lame man leaped as an hart; also the
girl was to be commended, for she answered the music handsomely. In
spite of his life-long infirmity, there was deep down in Mr. Ready-to-
halt an unsuspected fund of good-humour. There was no heartier
merriment on the green that day than was the merriment that Mr.
Ready-to-halt knocked out of his nimble crutch. "True, he could not
dance without one crutch in his hand." True, dear and noble Bunyan,
thou canst not write a single page at any time or on any subject
without thy genius and thy tenderness and thy divine grace marking
the page as thine own alone!
The next time we see Mr. Ready-to-halt he is coming in on his
crutches to see Christiana, for she has sent for him to see him. So she
said to him, "Thy travel hither hath been with difficulty, but that will
make thy rest the sweeter." And then in process of time there came a
post to the town and his business this time was with Mr. Ready-to-
halt. "I am come to thee in the name of Him whom thou hast loved and
followed, though upon crutches. And my message is to tell thee that
He expects thee at His table to sup with Him in His kingdom the next
day after Easter." "I am sent for," said Mr. Ready-to-halt to his fellowpilgrims, "and God shall surely visit you also. These crutches," he said,
"I bequeath to my son that shall tread in my steps, with an hundred
warm wishes that he may prove better than I have done." Isaac was a
child of promise, and Mr. Ready-to-halt had an Isaac also on whom his
last thoughts turned. Isaac had been born to Abraham by a special and
extraordinary and supernatural interposition of the grace and the
power of God; and Mr. Ready-to-halt had always looked on himself as a
second Abraham in that respect. A second Abraham, and more. True,
his son was not yet a pilgrim; perhaps he was too young to be so
called; but Greatheart will take back the old man's crutches -
Greatheart was both man-of-war and beast-of-burden to the pilgrims
and their wives and children - and will in spare hours teach young
Ready-to-halt the use of the crutch, till the son can use with the same
effect as his father his father's instrument. Is your child a child of
promise? Is he to you a product of nature, or of grace? Did you receive
him and his brothers and sisters from God after you were as good as
dead? Did you ever steal in when his nurse was at supper and say over
his young cradle, He hath not dealt with me after my sins, nor
rewarded me according to my iniquities? Is it in your will laid up with
Christ in God about your crutches and your son what Mr. Ready-to-
halt dictated on his deathbed? And does God know that there is no
wish in your old heart a hundred times so warm for your son as is this
wish, - that he may prove better at handling God's promises than you
have been? Then, happy son, who has old Mr. Ready-to-halt for his
father!
"He whom thou hast loved and followed, though upon crutches,
expects thee at His table the next day after Easter." Take comfort,
cripples!
Had it been said that the King so expects Greatheart, or Standfast, or Valiantfor-truth, that would have been after the manner of the kings
of this world. But to insist on having Mr. Ready-to-halt beside Him by
such and such a day; to send such a post to a pilgrim who has not a
single sound bone in all his body; to a sinner without a single
trustworthy grace in all his heart; to a poor and simple believer who
has nothing in his hand but one of God's own promises - Who is a king
like unto our King? Surely King David was never a better type of Christ
than when he said to Mephibosheth, lame in both his feet from his
nurse's arms: "Fear not, Mephibosheth, for I will surely show thee
kindness, and thou shalt eat bread at my table continually." And
Mephibosheth shall always be our spokesman when he bows himself
and says in return: "What is thy servant, that thou shouldst look upon
such a dead dog as I am?"
VALIANT-FOR-TRUTH
" - They are not valiant for the truth." - Jeremiah
" - Ye should contend earnestly for the faith." - Jude.
"Forget not Master Valiant-for-the-Truth,
That man of courage, tho' a very youth.
Tell every one his spirit was so stout,
No man could ever make him face about." Bunyan.
"I am of Dark-land, for there was I born, and there my father and
mother are still." "Dark-land," said the guide; "doth not that lie upon the same coast as the City of Destruction?" "Yes, it doth," replied Valiant-for-truth. "And had I not found incommodity there, I had not
forsaken it at all; but finding it altogether unsuitable to me, and very
unprofitable for me, I forsook it for this way. Now, that which caused
me to come on pilgrimage was this. We had one Mr. Tell-true came
into our parts, and he told it about what Christian had done, that went
from the City of Destruction. That man so told the story of Christian
and his travels that my heart fell into a burning haste to be gone after
him, nor could my father and mother stay me, so I got from them, and
am come thus far on my way."
A very plain and practical lesson is already read to us all in
Valiant-for-truth's explanation of his own pilgrimage. He tells the
guide that he was made a pilgrim just by having the story of The
Pilgrim told to him. All that Tell-true did was just to recite the story of
the pilgrim, when young Valiant's heart fell into a burning haste to be
a pilgrim too. My brethren, could any lesson be plainer? Read the
Pilgrim's Progress with your children. And, after a time, read it again
till they call it beautiful, and till you see the same burning haste in
their hearts that young Valiant felt in his heart. Circulate the Pilgrim's
Progress. Make opportunities to give the Pilgrim's Progress to the
telegraph boys and errand boys at your door. Never go on a holiday
without taking a dozen cheap and tasteful copies of The Pilgrim to
give to boys and girls in the country. Make sure that no one, old or
young, of your acquaintance, in town or country, is without a good
copy of The Pilgrim. And the darker their house is, make all the more
sure that John Bunyan is in it.
"Now may this little book a blessing be,
To those that love this little book and me
And may its buyer have no cause to say
His money is but lost or thrown away."
But the great lesson of Valiant's so impressive life lies in the
tremendous fight he had with three ruffians who all set upon him at
once and well-nigh made an end of him. For, when we put by the
curtains here again, and turn up the metaphors, what do we find?
What, but a lesson of first-rate importance for many men among
ourselves; for many public men, many ministers, and many other
much-in-earnest men. For Valiant, as his name tells us, was set to
contend for the truth. He had the truth. The truth was put into his
keeping, and he was bound to defend it. He was thrown into a life of
controversy, and thus into all the terrible temptations - worse than the
temptations to whoredom or wine - that accompany a life of
controversy. The three scoundrels that fell upon Valiant at the mouth
of the lane were Wildhead, Inconsiderate, and Pragmatic. In other
words, the besetting temptations of many men who are set as
defenders of the truth in religion, as well as in other matters, is to be
wild-headed, inconsiderate, self-conceited, and intolerably arrogant.
The bloody battle that Valiant fought, you must know, was not fought
at the mouth of any dark lane in the midnight city, nor on the side of
any lonely road in the moonless country. This terrible fight was fought
in Valiant's own heart. For Valiant was none of your calculating and
cold-blooded friends of the truth. He did not wait till he saw the truth
walking in silver slippers. Let any man lay a finger on the truth, or wag
a tongue against the truth, and he will have to settle it with Valiant.
His love for the truth was a passion. There was a fierceness in his love
for the truth that frightened ordinary men even when they were on
his own side. Valiant would have died for the truth without a murmur.
But, with all that, Valiant had to learn a hard and a cruel lesson. He
had to learn that he, the best friend of truth as he thought he was, was
at the same time, as a matter of fact, the greatest enemy that the truth
had. He had to take home the terrible discovery that no man had hurt
the truth so much as he had done. Save me from my friend! the truth
was heard to say, as often as she saw him taking up his weapons in her
behalf. We see all that every day. We see Wildhead at his disservice of
the truth every day. Sometimes above his own name, and sometimes with grace enough to be ashamed to give his name, in the newspapers.
Sometimes on the platform; sometimes in the pulpit; and sometimes
at the dinner-table. But always to the detriment of the truth. In blind
fury he rushes at the character and the good name of men who were
servants of the truth before he was born, and whose shield he is not
worthy to bear. How shall Wildhead be got to see that he and the like
of him are really the worst friends the truth can possibly have? Will he
never learn that in his wild-bull gorings at men and at movements, he
is both hurting himself and hurting the truth as no sworn enemy of his
and of the truth can do? Will he never see what an insolent fool he is
to go on imputing bad motives to other men, when he ought to be
prostrate before God on account of his own? More than one wild-
headed student of William Law has told me what a blessing they have
got from that great man's teaching on the subject of controversy. Will
the Wildheads here tonight take a line or two out of that peace-
making author and lay them to heart? "My dear L - -, take notice of
this, that no truths, however solid and well-grounded, will help you to
any divine life, but only so far as they are taught, nourished, and
strengthened by an unction from above; and that nothing more dries
and extinguishes this heavenly unction than a talkative reasoning
temper that is always catching at every opportunity of hearing or
telling some religious matters. Stop your ears and shut your eyes to all
religious tales . . . I would no more bring a false charge against a deist
than I would bear false witness against an apostle. And if I knew how
to do the deists more justice in debate I would gladly do it . . . And as
the gospel requires me to be as glad to see piety, equity, strict sobriety,
and extensive charity in a Jew or a Gentile as in a Christian; as it
obliges me to look with pleasure upon their virtues, and to be thankful
to God that such persons have so much of true and sound Christianity
in them; so it cannot be an unchristian spirit to be as glad to see truths
in one party of Christians as in another, and to look with pleasure
upon any good doctrines that are held by any sect of Christian people,
and to be thankful to God that they have so much of the genuine
saving truths of the gospel among them . . . Selfishness and partiality
are very inhuman and base qualities even in the things of this world,
but in the doctrines of religion they are of a far baser nature. In the
present divided state of the Church, truth itself is torn and divided asunder; and, therefore, he is the only true Catholic who has more of
truth and less of error than is hedged in by any divided part. To see
this will enable us to live in a divided part unhurt by its division, and
keep us in a true liberty and fitness to be edified and assisted by all
the good that we hear or see in any other part of the Church. And thus,
uniting in heart and spirit with all that is holy and good in all
Churches, we enter into the true communion of saints, and become
real members of the Holy Catholic Church, though we are confined to
the outward worship of only one particular part of it. And thus we will
like no truth the less because Ignatius Loyola or John Bunyan were
very jealous for it, nor have the less aversion to any error because Dr.
Trapp or George Fox had brought it forth." If Wildhead would take a
winter of William Law, it would sweeten his temper, and civilise his
manners, and renew his heart.
Inconsiderate, again, is the shallow creature he is, and does the
endless mischief that he does, largely for lack of imagination. He never
thinks - neither before he speaks nor after he has spoken. He never
put himself in another man's place all his days. He is incapable of
doing that. He has neither the head nor the heart to do that. He never
once said, How would I like that said about me? or, How would I like
that done to me? or, How would that look and taste and feel to me if I
were in So-and-so's place? It needs genius to change places with other
men; it needs a grace beyond all genius; and this poor headless and
heartless creature does not know what genius is. It needs imagination,
the noblest gift of the mind, and it needs love, the noblest grace of the
heart, to consider the case of other people, and to see, as Butler says,
that we differ as much from other people as they differ from us. And it
is by far the noblest use of the imagination, far nobler than carving a
Laocoon, or painting a Last Judgment, or writing a "Paradiso" or a
"Paradise Lost," to put ourselves into the places of other men so as to see with their eyes, and feel with their hearts, and sympathise with
their principles, and even with their prejudices. Now, the
inconsiderate man has so little imagination and so little love that he is
sitting here and does not know what I am saying; and what suspicion
he has of what I am saying is just enough to make him dislike both me
and what I am saying too. But his dull suspicion and his blind dislike
are more than made up for by the love and appreciation of those lovers and defenders of the truth who painfully feel how wild and
inconsiderate, how hot-headed, how thoughtless, and how reckless
their past service even of God's truth has been.
"The King is full of grace and fair regard.
Consideration, like an angel, came
And whipp'd the offending Adam out of him."
And as to Pragmatic, I would not call you a stupid person even
though you confided to me that you had never heard this footpad's
name till tonight. John Bunyan has been borrowing Latin again, and
not to the improvement of his style, or to the advantage of his readers.
It would be insufferably pragmatic in me to begin to set John Bunyan
right in his English; but I had rather offend the shades of a hundred
John Bunyans than leave my most unlettered hearer without his full
and proper Sabbath-night lesson. The third armed thief, then, that fell
upon Valiant was, under other names, Impertinence, Meddle-
someness, Officiousness, Over-Interference. Pragmatic, - by whatever
name he calls himself, there is no mistaking him. He is never satisfied.
He is never pleased. He is never thankful. He is always setting his
superiors right. He is like the Psalmist in one thing, he has more
understanding than all his teachers. And he enjoys nothing more than
in letting them know that. There is nothing he will not correct you in -
from cutting for the stone to commanding the Channel Fleet. Now, if
all that has put any visual image of Pragmatic into your mind, you will
see at once what an enemy he too is fitted to be to the truth. For the
truth does not stand in points, but in principles. The truth does not
dwell in the letter but in the spirit. The truth is not served by setting
other people right, but by seeing every day and in every thing how far
wrong we are ourselves.
The truth is like charity in this, that it begins at home. It is like
charity in this also, that it never behaves itself unseemly. A
pragmatical man, taken along with an inconsiderate man, and then a
wildheaded man added on to them, are three about as fatal hands as
any truth could fall into. The worst enemy of the truth must pity the
truth, and feel his hatred at the truth relenting, when he sees her
under the championship of Wildhead, Inconsiderate, and Pragmatic.
The first time we see Valiant-for-truth he is standing at the mouth
of Dead-man's-lane with his sword in his hand and with his face all bloody. "They have left upon me, as you see," said the bleeding man,
"some of the marks of their valour, and have also carried away with
them some of mine." And, in like manner, we see Paul with the blood
of Barnabas still upon him when he is writing the thirteenth of First
Corinthians; and John with the blood of the Samaritans still upon him
down to his old age when he is writing his First Epistle; and John
Bunyan with the blood of the Quakers upon him when he is covertly
writing this page of his autobiography under the veil of Valiant-for-
truth; and William Law with the blood of Bishop Hoadly and John
Wesley dropping on the paper as he pens that golden passage which
ends with Dr. Trapp and George Fox. Where did you think Paul got that
splendid passage about charity? Where did you think William Law got
that companion passage about Church divisions, and about the Church
Catholic? Where are such passages ever got by inspired apostles, or by
any other men, but out of their own bloody battles with their own
wild-headedness, intolerance, dislike, and resentment? Where do you
suppose I got the true key to the veiled metaphor of Valiant-for-truth?
It does not exactly hang on the doorpost of his history. Where, then,
could I get it but off the inside wall of my own place of repentance?
Just as you understand what I am now labouring to say, not from my
success in saying it, but from your own trespasses against humility
and love, your unadvised speeches, and your wild and whirling words.
Without shame and remorse, without self-condemnation and self-
contempt, none of those great passages of Paul, or John, or Bunyan, or
Law were ever written; and without a like shame, remorse, self-
condemnation, and self-contempt they are not rightly read.
"Oh! who shall dare in this frail scene
On holiest, happiest thoughts to lean,
On Friendship, Kindred, or on Love?
Since not Apostles' hands can clasp
Each other in so firm a grasp,
But they shall change and variance prove.
"But sometimes even beneath the moon
The Saviour gives a gracious boon,
When reconciled Christians meet,
And face to face, and heart to heart,
High thoughts of Holy love impart
In silence meek, or converse sweet.
"Oh then the glory and the bliss
When all that pained or seemed amiss
Shall melt with earth and sin away!
When saints beneath their Saviour's eye,
Filled with each other's company,
Shall spend in love the eternal day!"
Then said Greatheart to Mr. Valiant-for-truth, "Thou hast worthily
behaved thyself; let me see thy sword." So he showed it him. When he
had taken it in his hand and had looked thereon a while, the guide
said: "Ha! it is a right Jerusalem blade!" "It is so," replied its owner.
"Let a man have one of these blades with a hand to wield it, and skill
to use it, and he may venture upon an angel with it. Its edges will
never blunt. It will cut flesh, and bones, and soul, and spirit, and all."
Both Damascus and Toledo blades were famous in former days for
their tenacity and flexibility, and for the beauty and the edge of their
steel. But even a Damascus blade would be worthless in a weak,
cowardly, or unskilled hand; while even a poor sword in the hand of a
good swordsman will do excellent execution. And much more so when
you have both a first-rate sword and a first-rate swordsman, such as
both Valiant and his Jerusalem blade were. Ha! yes. This is a right
wonderful blade we have now in our hand. For this sword was forged
in no earthly fire; and it was whetted to its unapproachable sharpness
on no earthly whetstone. But, best of all for us, when a good soldier of
Jesus Christ has this sword girt on his thigh he is able then to go forth
against himself with it; against his own only and worst enemy - that is,
against himself. As here, against his own wildness of head and pride of
heart. Against his own want of consideration also. "My people do not
consider." As also against himself as a lawless invader of other men's
freedom of judgment, following of truth, public honour, and good
name. As the Arabian warriors see themselves and dress themselves
in their swords as in a glass, so did Valiant-for-truth see the thoughts
and intents, the joints and the marrow of his own disordered soul in
his Jerusalem blade. In the sheen of it he could see himself even when
the darkness covered him; and with its two edges all his after-life he slew both all real error in other men and all real evil in himself. "Thou hast done well," said Greatheart the guide. "Thou hast resisted unto blood, striving against sin. Thou shalt abide by us, come in and go out
with us, for we are thy companions."
"Sir," said the widow indeed to Valiant-for-truth, "sir, you have in all places shown yourself true-hearted." The first time she ever saw
this man that she is now seeing for the last time on this side the river,
his own mother would not have known him, he was so hacked to
pieces with the swords of his three assailants. But as she washed the
blood off the mangled man's head and face and hands, she soon saw
beneath all his bloody wounds a true, a brave, and a generous-hearted
soldier of the Cross. The heart is always the man. And this woman had
lived long enough with men to have discovered that. And with all his
sears she saw that it was at bottom the truth of his heart that had cast
him into so many bloody encounters. There were men in that
company, and men near the river too, with far fewer marks of battle,
and even of defeat, upon them, who did not get this noble certificate
and its accompanying charge and trust from this clear-eyed widow.
And, then, she had never forgot - how could she? - his exclamation,
and almost embrace of her as of his own mother, when he burst out
with his eyes full of blood, "Why, is this Christian's wife? What! and
going on pilgrimage too? It glads my heart! Good man! How joyful will
he be when he shall see her and her children enter after him in at the
gates into the city!" He would have been hacked a hundred times
worse than he was before the widow of Christian, and the mother of
his children, would have seen anything but the manliest beauty in a
young soldier who could salute an old woman in that way. It
gladdened her heart to hear him, you may be sure, as much as it
gladdened his heart to see her. And that was the reason that she
actually set Greatheart himself aside, and left her children under this
young man's sword and shield. "I would also entreat you to have an
eye to my children," she said. Young men, has any dying mother