Part 6
committed her children, if you at any time see them faint, to you? Have
you ever spoken so comfortably to any poor widow about her sainted
husband that she has passed by some of our foremost citizens, and
has astonished and offended her lawyers by putting a stripling like
you into the trusteeship? Did ever any dying mother say to you that she had seen you to be so true-hearted at all times that she entreated
you to have an eye to her children? Speaking at this point for myself, I
would rather see my son so trusted at such an hour by such a woman
than I would see him the Chancellor of Her Majesty's Exchequer, or
the Governor of the Bank of England. And so to-night would you.
STANDFAST
"So stand fast in the Lord, my dearly beloved." - Paul.
In his supplementary picture of Standfast John Bunyan is seen at
his very best, both as a religious teacher and as an English author. On
the Enchanted Ground Standfast is set before us with extraordinary
insight, sagacity, and wisdom; and then in the terrible river he is set
before us with an equally extraordinary rapture and transport; while,
in all that, Bunyan composes in English of a strength and a beauty and
a music in which he positively surpasses himself. Just before he closes
his great book John Bunyan rises up and once more puts forth his very
fullest strength, both as a minister of religion and as a classical writer,
when he takes Standfast down into that river which that pilgrim tells
us has been such a terror to so many, and the thought of which has so
often affrighted himself.
When Greatheart and his charge were almost at the end of the
Enchanted Ground, so we read, they perceived that a little before them
was a solemn noise as of one that was much concerned. So they went
on and looked before them. And behold, they saw, as they thought, a
man upon his knees, with hands and eyes lift up, and speaking, as they
thought, earnestly to one that was above. They drew nigh, but could
not tell what he said; so they went softly till he had done. When he had
done, he got up and began to run towards the Celestial City. "So-ho,
friend, let us have your company," called out the guide. At that the man
stopped, and they came up to him. "I know this man," said Mr. Honest;
"his name, I know, is Standfast, and he is certainly a right good
pilgrim." Then follows a conversation between Mr. Honest and Mr.
Standfast, in which some compliments and courtesies are exchanged,
such as are worthy of such men, met at such a time and in such a
place. "Well, but, brother," said Valiant-for-truth, "tell us, I pray thee, what was it that was the cause of thy being upon thy knees even now?
Was it for that some special mercy laid obligations upon thee, or
how?" And then Standfast tells how as he was coming along musing
with himself, Madam Bubble presented herself to him and offered him
three things. "I was both aweary and sleepy and also as poor as a
howlet, and all that the wicked witch knew. And still she followed me
with her enticements. Then I betook me, as you saw, to my knees, and
with hands lift up and cries, I prayed to Him who had said that He
would help. So just as you came up the gentlewoman went her way.
Then I continued to give thanks for my great deliverance; for I verify
believe she intended me no good, but rather sought to make stop of
me in my journey. What a mercy is it that I did resist her, for whither
might she not have drawn me?" And then, after all this discourse,
there was a mixture of joy and trembling among the pilgrims, but at
last they broke out and sang:
"What danger is the pilgrim in,
How many are his foes,
How many ways there are to sin,
No living mortal knows!"
"Well, as I was coming along I was musing with myself," said
Standfast. You understand what it is to come along musing with
yourself, do you not, my brethren? "I will muse on the work of Thy
hands," says the Psalmist. And again, "While I was musing the fire
burned." Well, Standfast was much given to musing, just as David was.
Each several pilgrim has his own way of occupying himself on the
road; but Standfast could never get his fill just of musing. Standfast
loved solitude. Standfast liked nothing better than to walk long
stretches at a time all by himself alone. Standfast was like the apostle
when he preferred to take the twenty miles from Troas to Assos on
foot and alone, rather than to round the cape on shipboard in a crowd.
"Minding himself to go afoot," says the apostle's companion. It would have made a precious chapter in the Acts of the Apostles had the
author of that book been able to give his readers some of Paul's
musings as he crossed the Troad on foot that day. But in the absence of
Paul's musings we have here the musings of a man whom Paul would
not have shaken off had he foregathered with him on that lonely road.
For Standfast was in a deep and serious muse mile after mile, when,
who should step into the middle of his path right before him but
Madam Bubble with her body and her purse and her bed? Now, had
this hungry howlet of a pilgrim been at that moment in any other but
a musing mood of mind, he had to a certainty sold himself, soul and
body, Celestial City and all, to that impudent slut. But, as He would
have it who overrules Madam Bubble's descents, and all things,
Standfast was at that moment in one of his most musing moods, and
all her smiles and all her offers fell flat and poor upon him. Cultivate
Standfast's mood of mind, my brethren. Walk a good deal alone. Strike across country from time to time alone and have good long walks and
talks with yourself. And when you know that you are passing places of
temptation see that your thoughts, and even your imaginations, are
well occupied with solemn considerations about the certain issue of
such and such temptations; and then, to you, as to Standfast,
"The arrow seen beforehand slacks its flight."
But, musing alone, the arrow seen beforehand, and all, Standfast
would have been a lost man on that lonely road that day had he not
instantly betaken himself to his knees. And it was while Standfast was
still on his knees that the ascending pilgrims heard that concerned
and solemn noise a little ahead of them. Did you ever suddenly come
across a man on his knees? Did you ever surprise a man at prayer as
Greatheart and his companions surprised Standfast? I do not ask, Did
you ever enter a room and find a family around their morning or
evening altar? We have all done that. And it left its own impression
upon us. But did you ever spring a surprise upon a man on his knees
alone and in broad daylight? I did the other day. It was between eleven
and twelve o'clock in the forenoon when I asked a clerk if his master
was in. Yes, he said, and opened his master's door. When, before I was
aware, I had almost fallen over a man on his knees and with his face in
his hands. "I pray thee," said Valiant-for-truth, "tell us what it was that drew thee to thy knees even now. Was it that some special mercy laid
its obligations on thee, or how?" I did not say that exactly to my
kneeling friend, though it was on the point of my tongue to say it. My
dear friend, I knew, had his own difficulties, though he was not exactly
as poor as a howlet. And it might have been about some of his
investments that had gone out of joint that he went that forenoon to
Him who had said that He would help. Or, like the author of the
Christian Perfection and The Spirit of Prayer, it was the sixth hour of
the day, and he may have gone to his knees for his clerks, or for his
boys at school, or for himself and for the man in the same business
with himself right across the street. I knew that my friend had the
charming book at home in which such counsels as these occur: "If
masters were thus to remember their servants, beseeching God to
bless them, letting no day pass without a full performance of this
devotion, the benefit would be as great to themselves as to their
servants." And perhaps my friend, after setting his clerks their several tasks for the day, was now asking grace of God for each one of them
that they might not be eye-servants and men-pleasers, but the
servants of Christ doing the will of God from the heart. Or, again, he
may have read in that noble book this passage: "If a father were daily
to make some particular prayer to God that He would please to inspire
his children with true piety, great humility, and strict temperance,
what could be more likely to make the father himself become
exemplary in these virtues?" Now, my friend (who can tell?) may just
that morning have lost his temper with his son; or he may last night
have indulged himself too much in eating, or in drinking, or in debate,
or in detraction; and that may have made it impossible for him to fix
his whole mind on his office work that morning. Or, just to make
another guess, when he opened the book I had asked him to buy and
read, he may have lighted on this heavenly passage: "Lastly, if all
people when they feel the first approaches of resentment or envy or
contempt towards others; or if in all little disagreements and
misunderstandings whatever they should have recourse at such times
to a more particular and extraordinary intercession with God for such
persons as had roused their envy, resentment, or discontent - this
would be a certain way to prevent the growth of all uncharitable
tempers." You may think that I am taking a roundabout way of
accounting for my friend's so concerned attitude at twelve o'clock that
business day; but the whole thing seemed to me so unusual at such a
time and in such a place that I was led to such guesses as these to
account for it. In so guessing I see now that I was intruding myself into
matters I had no business with; but all that day I could not keep my
mind off my blushing friend. For, like Mr. Standfast, my dear friend
blushed as he stood up and offered me the chair he had been kneeling
at. "But, why, did you see me?" said Mr. Standfast. "Yes, I did," quoth the other, "and with all my heart I was glad at the sight." "And what did you think?" said Mr. Standfast.
"Was it," asked Valiant-for-truth, in a holy curiosity, "was it some special mercy that brought thee to thy knees even now?" Yes; Valiant-for-truth had exactly hit it. Gracious wits, like great wits, jump
together. "Yes," confessed Standfast, "I continue to give thanks for my great deliverance." My brethren, you all pray importunately in your
time of sore trouble. Everybody does that. But do you feel an
obligation, like Standfast, to abide still on your knees long after your
trouble is past? Nature herself will teach us to pray; but it needs grace,
and great grace continually renewed, to teach us to praise, and to
continue all our days to praise. How we once prayed, ay, as earnestly,
and as concernedly, and as careless as to who should see or hear us as
Standfast himself! How some of us here to-night used to walk across a
whole country all the time praying! How we hoodwinked people in
order to get away from them to pray for twenty miles at a time all by
ourselves! Under that bush - it still stands to mark the spot; in that
wood, long since cut down into ploughed land - we could show our
children the spot to this day where we prayed, till a miracle was
wrought in our behalf. Yes, till God sent from above and took us as He
never took a psalmist, and set our feet upon a still more wonderful
rock. How He, yes, HE, with His own hand cut the cords, broke the net,
and set us free! Come, all ye that fear God! we then said, and said it
with all sincerity too. And yet, how have we forgotten what He did for
our soul? We start like a guilty thing surprised when we think how
long it is since we had a spell of thanksgiving. Shame on us! What
treacherous hearts we have! What short memories we have! How
soon we forgive ourselves, and so forget the forgiveness of our God!
Brethren, let us still lay plans for praise as we used to do for prayer. If
our friends will go out with us, let us at least insist on walking home
alone. Let us say with Paul that we get sick at sea; and, besides, that
we have some calls to make and some small accounts to settle before
we leave the country. Tell them not to wait dinner for us. And then let
us take plenty of time. Let us stop at all our old stations and call back
all our old terrors; let us repeat aloud our old psalms - the twenty-
fifth, the fifty-first, the hundred and third, and the hundred and
thirtieth. We used to terrify people with our prayers as Standfast
terrified the young pilgrims that day; let us surprise and delight them
now with our psalms of thanksgiving. For, with all our disgraceful
ingratitude in the past, if William Law is right, we are even yet not far
from being great saints, if he is not wrong when he asks: "Would you
know who is the greatest saint in the world? 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 most
thankful to God, and who has a heart always ready to praise God. This is the perfection of all virtues. Joy in God and thankfulness to God is
the highest perfection of a divine and holy life." Well, then, what an
endless cause of joy and thankfulness have we! Let us acknowledge it,
and henceforth employ it; and we shall, please God, even yet be
counted as not low down but high up among the saints and the
servants of God.
Christiana said many kind and wise and beautiful things to all the
other pilgrims before she entered the river, but it was observed that
though she sent for Mr. Standfast, she said not one word to him when
he came; she just gave him her ring. "The touch is human and
affecting," says Mr. Louis Stevenson, in his delightful paper on
Bagster's "Bunyan," in the Magazine of Art. By the way, do you who are lovers of Bunyan literature know that remarkable and delicious
paper? The Messrs. Bagster should secure that paper and should issue
an edition de luxe of their neglected "Bunyan," with Mr. Stevenson's paper for a preface and introduction. Bagster's "Illustrated Bunyan,"
with an introduction on the illustrations by Mr. Louis Stevenson, if I
am not much mistaken, would sell by the thousand.
Lord Rosebery knows books and loves books, and he has called
attention to the surpassing beauty of the English in the deathbed
scenes of the Pilgrim's Progress. And every lover of pure, tender, and
noble English must, like the Foreign Secretary, have all those precious
pages by heart. Were it not that we all have a cowardly fear at death
ourselves, and think it wicked and cruel even to hint at his
approaching death even to a fast-dying man, we would never let any of
our friends lie down on his sick-bed without having a reassuring and
victorious page of the Pilgrim read to him every day. If the doctors
would allow me, I would have these heavenly pages reprinted in sick-
bed type for all my people. But I am afraid at the doctors. And thus one
after another of my people passes away without the fortification and
the foretaste that the deathbeds of Christian, and Christiana, and
Hopeful, and Mr. Fearing, and Mr. Feeble-mind, and Mr. Honest, and
Mr. Standfast would most surely have given to them. Especially the
deathbed, if I must so call it, of Mr. Standfast. But as Christiana said
nothing that could be heard to Mr. Standfast about his or her latter
end, but just looked into his eyes and gave him her ring, so I may not
be able to say all that is in my heart when your doctor is standing close by. But you will understand what I would fain say, will you not?
You will remember, and will have this heavenly book read to you
alternately with your Bible, will you not? Even the most godless
doctor will give way to you when you tell him that you know as well as
he does just how it is with you, and that you are to have your own way
for the last time. I know a doctor who first forbade her minister and
her family to tell his patient that she was dying, and at the same time
told them to take away from her bedside all such alarming books as
the Pilgrim's Progress and the Saint's Rest, and to read to her a
reassuring chapter out of Old Mortality and Pickwick. It will, no doubt,
put the best-prepared of us into a deep muse, as it put Standfast, when
we are first told that we must at once prepare ourselves for a change
of life. But I for one would not for worlds miss that solemn warning,
and that last musing-time. It will all be just as my Master pleases; but
if it is within His will I shall till then continue to petition Him that I
may have a passage over the river like the passage of Standfast. Or, if
that may not now be, then, at least, a musing-time like his. The post
from the Celestial City brought Mr. Standfast's summons "open" in his hand. And thus it was that Standfast's translation did not take him by
surprise. Standfast was not plunged suddenly and without warning
into the terrible river. He took the open summons into big own hand
and read it out like a man. After which he went, as his manner was, for
a good while into a deep and undisturbed muse. As soon as he came
out of his muse he would have Greatheart to be sent for. And then
their last conversation together proceeded. And no one interfered
with the two brave-hearted men. No one interposed, or said that
Greatheart would exhaust or alarm Standfast, or would injuriously
hasten his end. Not only so, but all the way till he was half over the
river, Standfast kept up his own side of the noble conversation. And it
is his side of that half-earthly, whole-heavenly conversation that I
would like to have put into suitable type and scattered broadcast over
all our sick-beds.
"Tell me," says Valdes to Julia in his Christian Alphabet, "have you ever crossed a deep river by a ford?" "Yes," says Julia, "I have, many times." "And have you remarked how that by looking upon the water it seemed as though your head swam, so that, if you had not assisted
yourself, either by closing your eyes, or by fixing them on the opposite shore, you would have fallen into the water in great danger of
drowning?" "Yes, I have noticed that." "And have you seen how by keeping always for your object the view of the land that lies on the
other side, you have not felt that swimming of the head, and so have
suffered no danger of drowning?" "I have noticed that too," replied Julia. Now, it was exactly this same way of looking, not at the black and
swirling river, but at the angelic conduct waiting for him at the further
bank, and then at the open gate of the Celestial City, - it was this that
kept Standfast's head so steady and his heart like a glowing coal while
he stood and talked in the middle of the giddy stream. You would have
thought it was Paul himself talking to himself on the road to Assos. For
I defy even the apostle himself to have talked better or more boldly to
himself even on the solid midday road than Standfast talked to himself
in the bridgeless river. "I see myself," he said, "at the end of my journey now. My toilsome days are all ended. I am going now to see
that head that was crowned with thorns, and that face that was spat
upon for me. I loved to hear my Lord spoken of, and wherever I have
seen the print of His shoe in the earth I have coveted to set my foot
also. His name has been to me as a civet-box; yea, sweeter than all
perfumes. His word I did use to gather for my food, and for antidotes
against my faintings. He has held me, and I have kept me from my
iniquities. Yea, my steps He has strengthened in my way." Now, while
Standfast was thus in discourse his countenance changed, his strong
man bowed down under him, and after he had said "Take me!" he
ceased to be seen of them. But how glorious it was to see how the
open region was now filled with horses and chariots, with trumpeters
and pipers, and with singers and players on stringed instruments, all
to welcome the pilgrims as they went up and followed one another in
at the beautiful gate of the city!
MADAM BUBBLE
"Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." - Solomon.
"I have overcome the world." - Our Lord.
"Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. For
all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes,
and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And
the world passeth away, and the lust thereof." - John.
"This bubble world." - Quarles.
Madam Bubble's portrait was first painted by the Preacher. And
he painted her portrait with extraordinary insight, boldness, and
truthfulness. There is that in the Preacher's portrait of Madam Bubble
which only comes of the artist having mixed his colours, as Milman
says that Tacitus mixed his ink, with resentment and with remorse.
Out of His reading of Solomon and Moses and the Prophets on this
same subject, as well as out of His own observation and experience,
conflict and conquest, our Lord added some strong and deep and
inward touches of His own to that well-known picture, and then
named it by the New Testament name of the World. And then, after
Him, His longest-lived disciple set forth the same mother and her
three daughters under the three names that still stick to them to this
day, - the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. But it was reserved for John Bunyan to fill up and to finish those outlines
of Scripture and to pour over the whole work his own depth and
strength of colour, till, altogether, Madam Bubble stands out as yet
another masterpiece of our dreamer's astonishing genius. Let us take
our stand before this heaving canvas, then, till we have taken attentive
note of some of John Bunyan's inimitable touches and strokes and
triumphs of truth and art. "One in very pleasant attire, but old . . . This woman is a witch . . . I am the mistress of the world, she said, and men
are made happy by me . . . A tall, comely dame, something of a swarthy
complexion." In the newly discovered portrait of a woman, by Albert
Durer, one of the marks of its genuineness is the way that the great
artist's initials A. D. are pencilled in on the embroidery of the lady's
bodice. And you will note in this gentlewoman's open dress also how J.
B. is inextricably woven in. "She wears a great purse by her side also,
and her hand is often in her purse fingering her money. Yea, this is she
that has bought off many a man from a pilgrim's life after he had fairly
begun it. She is a bold and an impudent slut also, for she will talk with any man. If there be one cunning to make money in any place, she will
speak well of him from house to house . . . She has given it out in some
places also that she is a goddess, and therefore some do actually
worship her . . . She has her times and open places of cheating, and she
will say and avow it that none can show a good comparable to hers.
And thus she has brought many to the halter, and ten thousand times
more to hell. None can tell of the mischief that she does. She makes
variance betwixt rulers and subjects, betwixt parents and children,
'twixt neighbour and neighbour, 'twixt a man and his wife, 'twixt a
man and himself, 'twixt the flesh and the heart." And so on in the great
original. "Had she stood by all this while," said Standfast, whose eyes were still full of her, "you could not have set Madam Bubble more
amply before me, nor have better described her features." "He that
drew her picture was a good limner," said Mr. Honest, "and he that so wrote of her said true".
"I am the mistress of this world," says Madam Bubble. And though
all the time she is a bold and impudent slut, yet it is the simple truth
that she does sit as a queen over this world and over the men of this
world. For Madam Bubble has a royal family like all other sovereigns.
She has a court of her own, too, with its ball-room presentations and
its birthday honours. She has a cabinet council also, and a bar and a
bench with their pleadings and their decisions. Far more than all that,
she has a church which she has established and of which she is the
head; and a faith also of which she is the defender. She has a standing
army also for the extension and the protection of her dominions. She
levies taxes, too, and sends out ambassadors, and makes treaties, and
forms offensive and defensive alliances. But what a bubble all this
World is to him whose eyes have at last been opened to see the
hollowness and the heartlessness of it all! For all its pursuits and all
its possessions, from a child's rattle to a king's sceptre, all is one great
bubble. Wealth, fame, place, power; art, science, letters; politics,
churches, sacraments, and scriptures - all are so many bubbles in
Madam Bubble's World. This wicked enchantress, if she does not find
all these things bubbles already, by one touch of her evil wand she
makes them so. She turns gold into dross, God into an idle name, and
His Word into words only; unless when in her malice she turns it into
a fruitful ground of debate and contention; a ground of malice and hatred and ill-will. Vanity of vanities; all is vanity and vexation of
spirit. Still, she sits a queen and a goddess to a great multitude: to all
men, to begin with. And, like a goddess, she sheds abroad her spirit in
her people's hearts and lifts up upon them for a time the light of her
countenance.
"I am the mistress of the world," she says, "and men are made
happy by me." - I would like to see one of them. I have seen many men
to whom Madam Bubble had said that if they would be ruled by her
she would make them great and happy. But though I have seen not a
few who have believed her and let themselves be ruled by her, I have
never yet seen one happy man among them. - The truth is, Madam
Bubble is not able to make men happy even if she wished to do it. She
is not happy herself, and she cannot dispense to others what she does
not possess. And, yet, such are her sorceries that, while her old dupes
die in thousands every day, new dupes are born to her every day in
still greater numbers. New dupes who run to the same excess of folly
with her that their fathers ran; new dupes led in the same mad dance
after Madam Bubble and her three daughters. But, always, and to all
men, what a bubble both the mother and all her daughters are! How
they all make promises like their lying mother, and how, like her, they
all lead men, if not to the halter and to hell, as Greatheart said, yet to a
life of vanity and to a death of disappointment and despair! What
bubbles of empty hopes both she and her three children blow up in
the brains of men! What pictures of untold happiness they paint in the
imaginations of men! What pleasures, what successes in life, what
honours and what rewards she pledges herself to see bestowed! "She
has her times and open places of cheating," said one who knew her
and all her ways well. And when men and women are still young and
inexperienced, that is one of her great cheating times. At some
seasons of the year, and in some waters, to the fisherman's surprise
and confusion, the fish will sometimes take his bare hook; a bit of a
red rag is a deadly bait. And Madam Bubble's poorest and most
perfunctory busking is quite enough for the foolish fish she angles for.
And not in our salad days only, when we are still green in judgment,
but even to grey hairs, this wicked witch continues to entrap us to our
ruin. Love, in all its phases and in all its mixtures, first deludes the
very young; and then place, and power, and fame, and money are the bait she busks for the middle-aged and the old; and always with the
same bubble end. The whole truth is that without God, the living and
ever-present God, in all ages of it and in all parts and experiences of it,
our human life is one huge bubble. A far-shining, high-soaring bubble;
but sooner or later seen and tasted to be a bubble - a deceit-filled,
poison-filled bubble. - Happy by her! All men happy by her! The
impudent slut!
Another thing about this slut is this, that "she will talk with any
man." She makes up to us and makes eyes at us just as if we were free
to accept and return her three offers. And still she talks to us and
offers us the same things she offered to Standfast till, to escape her
and her offers, he betook himself to his knees. Nay, truth to tell, after
she had deceived us and ensnared us till we lay in her net cursing both
her and ourselves, so bold and so impudent and so persistent is this
temptress slut, and such fools and idiots are we, that we soon lay our
eyes on her painted beauty again and our heads in her loathsome lap;
our heads on that block over which the axe hangs by an angry hair.
"She will talk with any man." No doubt; but, then, it takes two to make a talk, and the sad thing is that there are few men among us so wise,
so steadfast, and so experienced in her ways that they will not on
occasion let Madam Bubble talk her talk to them, and talk back again
to her. The oldest saint, the oftenest sold and most dearly redeemed
sinner, needs to suspect himself to the end, till he is clear out of
Madam Bubble's enchanted ground and for ever over that river of
deliverance which shall sweep Madam Bubble and all her daughters
into the dead sea for ever.
"The grey-haired saint may fail at last,
The surest guide a wanderer prove;
Death only binds us fast
To the bright shore of love."
"She highly commends the rich," the guide goes on about Madam
Bubble, "and if there be one cunning to get money in any place she
will speak well of him from house to house." "The world," says Faber,
"is not altogether matter, nor yet altogether spirit. It is not man only, nor Satan only, nor is it exactly sin. It is an infection, an inspiration, an
atmosphere, a life, a colouring matter, a pageantry, a fashion, a taste, a
witchery. None of all these names suit it, and all of them suit it.
Meanwhile its power over the human creation is terrific, its presence
ubiquitous, its deceitfulness incredible. It can find a home under every
heart beneath the poles. It is wider than the catholic church, and it is
masterful, lawless, and intrusive within it. We are all living in it,
breathing it, acting under its influence, being cheated by its
appearances, and unwarily admitting its principles." Let young
ministers who wish to preach to their people on the World - after
studying what the Preacher, and the Saviour, and John, and John
Bunyan say about the World, - still read Faber's powerful chapter in
his Creator and Creature. Yes; Madam Bubble finds a home for herself
in every heart beneath the poles. The truth is Madam Bubble has no
home, as she has no existence, but in human hearts. And all that
Solomon, and our Saviour, and John, and John Bunyan, and Frederick
Faber say about the world and about Madam Bubble they really say
about the heart of man. It is we, you and I, my brethren, who so highly
commend the rich. It is we ourselves here who speak well from house
to house of him whose father or whose self has been cunning to get
money. We either speak well or ill of them. We either are sick with
envy at them, or we fawn upon them and fall down before them. How
men rise in our esteem in the degree that their money increases! With
what reverence and holy awe we look up at them as if they were gods
and the sons of gods! They become more than mortal men to our
reverent imaginations. How happy, how all but blessed they must be!
we say to ourselves. Within those park gates, under those high towers,
in that silver-mounted carriage, surrounded with all those liveried
servants, and loved and honoured by all those arriving and leaving
guests - what happiness that rich man must have! We are either eaten
up of lean-eyed envy of this and that rich man, or we positively
worship them as other men worship God and His saints. Yes; Madam
Bubble is our very mother. She conceived us and she suckled us. We
were brought up in her nurture and admonition. We learned her
Catechism, and her shrine is in our heart to-night. Like her, if only a
pilgrim is poor, we scorn him. We will not know him. But if there be
any one, pilgrim or no, cunning to get money, we honour him, and we
claim him as our kindred and relation, our acquaintance and our
friend. We will speak often of him as such from house to house. Just
see if we will not. There is room in our hearts, Madam Bubble, there is room in our hearts for thee!
"She loves them most that think best of her." But, surely, surely,
the guide goes quite too far in blaming and being hard upon poor
Madam Bubble for that? For, to give her fair play, she is not at all alone
in that. Is the guide himself wholly above that? Do we not all do that?
Is there one in ten, is there one in a thousand, who hates and
humiliates himself because his love of men and women goes up or
down just as they think of him? Yes; Greatheart is true to his great
name in his whole portrait of Madam Bubble also, and nowhere more
true than in this present feature. For when any man comes to have any
true greatness in his heart - how he despises and detests himself as he
finds himself out in not only claiming kindred and acquaintance with
the rich and despising and denying the poor; but, still more, in loving
or hating other men just as they love or hate him! The world loves her
own. Yes; but he who has been taken out of the world, and who has
had the world taken out of him, he loves - he strives to love, he goes to
his knees every day he lives to love - those who not only do not think
well of him, but who both think ill of him and speak ill of him.
"Humility," says William Law, "does not consist in having a worse opinion of ourselves than we deserve, or in abasing ourselves lower
than we really are. But as all virtue is founded in truth, so humility is
founded in a true and just sense of our weakness, misery, and sin. He
who rightly feels and lives in this sense of his condition lives in
humility. And, it may be added, when our hearts are wholly clothed
with humility we shall be prompt to approve the judgment and to
endorse the sentence of those who think and speak the least good of
us and the most evil."
"'Twas she," so the guide at last wound up, "that set Absalom
against his father, and Jeroboam against his master. 'Twas she that
persuaded Judas to sell his Lord, and that prevailed with Demas to
forsake the godly pilgrim's life. None can tell all the mischief that
Madam Bubble does. She makes variance between rulers and subjects,
between parents and children, 'twixt neighbour and neighbour, 'twixt
a man and his wife, 'twixt a man and himself, 'twixt the flesh and the
heart." Now, I shall leave that last indictment and its lessons and its
applications to yourselves, my brethren. You will get far more good
out of this accumulated count against Madam Bubble if you explain it, and open it up, and prove it, and illustrate it to yourselves. Explain,
then, in what way this sorceress set Absalom against his father and
Jeroboam against his master. Point out in what way she makes
variance between a ruler and his subjects, and give illustrations. Put
your finger on a parent and on a child between whom there is
variance at this moment on her account. And, if you are that parent or
that child, what have you done to remove that variance? Name two
neighbours that to your knowledge Madam Bubble has come between;
and say what you have done to be a peacemaker there. Set down what
you would say to a man and his wife so as to put them on their guard
against Madam Bubble ever coming in between them. And, last and
best of all, point out to yourself at what times and in what ways this
wicked witch tries to make variance between God's Holy Spirit
striving within you and your own evil heart still strong within you.
When you are weary and sleepy and hungry as a howlet, and, Madam
Bubble and her three daughters make a ring round you, what do you
do? Do you ever take to your knees? Really and honestly, do you?
When you find yourself out looking with holy fear on a rich and lofty
relation, and with insufferable contempt on a poor and intrusive
relation, by what name do you call yourself? Write it down. And when
she would fain put variance between you and those who do not think
well of you, what steps do you take to foil her? Where and how do you
get strength at that supreme moment to think of others as you would
have them think of you? "Oh," said Standfast, "what a mercy it is that I did resist her! for to what might she not have drawn me?"
GAIUS
"Gaius, mine host." - Paul.
Goodman Gaius was the head of a hostel that stood on the side of
the highway well on to the Celestial City. The hostess of the hostel was
no more, and the old hostel-keeper did all her once well-done work
and his own proper work into the bargain. Every day he inspected the
whole house with his own eyes, down even to the kitchen and the
scullery. The good woman had left our host an only daughter; but,
"Keep her as much out of sight as is possible," she said, and so fell asleep. And Gaius remembered his wife's last testament every day, till
none of the hostel customers knew that there was so much as a young
hostess in all the house. "Yes, gentlemen," replied the old innkeeper.
"Yes, come in. It is late, but I take you for true men, for you must know that my house is kept open only for such." So he took the large pilgrim
party to their several apartments with his own eyes, and then set
about a supper for those so late arrivals. Stamping with his foot, he
brought up the cook with the euphonious and eupeptic name, and that
quick-witted domestic soon had a supper on the table that would have
made a full man's mouth water. "The sight of all this," said Matthew, as the under-cook laid the cloth and the trenchers, and set the salt and
the bread in order - "the sight of this cloth and of this forerunner of a supper begetteth in me a greater appetite to my food than I thought I
had before." So supper came up; and first a heave-shoulder and a
wave-breast were set on the table before them, in order to show that
they must begin their meal with prayer and praise to God. These two
dishes were very fresh and good, and all the travellers did eat heartily
well thereof. The next was a bottle of wine red as blood. So Gaius said
to them, "Drink freely; this is the juice of the true vine that makes glad the heart of God and man." And they did drink and were very merry.
The next was a dish of milk well crumbed. At the sight of which Gaius
said, "Let the boys have that, that they may grow thereby." And so on, dish after dish, till the nuts came with the recitations and the riddles
and the saws and the stories over the nuts. Thus the happy party sat
talking till the break of day.
Now, it is natural to remark that the first thing about a host is his
hospitality. And that, too, whether our host is but the head of a hostel
like Goodman Gaius, or the head of a well-appointed private house like
Gaius's neighbour, Mr. Mnason. The first and the last thing about a host is his hospitality. "Say little and do much" is the example and the injunction to all our housekeepers that Rabban Shammai draws out of
the eighteenth of Genesis. "Be like your father Abraham," he says, "on the plains of Mamre, who only promised bread and water, but
straightway set Sarah to knead three measures of her finest meal,
while he ran to the herd and fetched a calf tender and good, and stood
by the three men while they did eat butter and milk under the tree.
Make thy Thorah an ordinance: say little and do much: and receive
every man with a pleasant expression of countenance." Now, this was
exactly what Gaius our goodman did that night, with one exception,
which we shall be constrained to attend to afterwards. "It is late," he said, "so we cannot conveniently go out to seek food; but such as we
have you shall be welcome to, if that will content." At the same time
Taste-that-which-is-good soon had a supper sent up to the table fit for
a prince: a supper of six courses at that time in the morning, so that
the sun was already in the sky when Old Honest closed his casement.
"Dining in company is a divine institution," says Mr. Edward White, in his delightful Minor Moralities of Life. "Let Soyer's art be honoured
among all men," he goes on. "Cookery distinguishes mankind from the
beasts that perish. Happy is the woman whose daily table is the result
of forethought. Her husband shall rise up and call her blessed. It is
piteous when the culinary art is neglected in our young women's
education. Let them, as St. Peter says, imitate Sarah. Let them see how
that venerable princess went quickly to her kneading-trough and oven
and prepared an extempore collation of cakes and pilau for the angels.
How few ladies, whether Gentiles or Jewesses, could do the like in the
present day!"
The wistful and punctilious attention that Goodman Gaius paid to
each individual guest of his was a fine feature in his munificent
hospitality. He made every one who crossed his doorstep, down even
to Mr. Fearing, feel at once at home, such was his exquisite as well as
his munificent hospitality. "Come, sir," he said, clapping that white-faced and trembling pilgrim on the shoulder, "come, sir, be of good
cheer, you are welcome to me and to my house; and what thou hast a
mind to, that call for freely: for what thou wouldst have my servants
will do for thee, and they will do it for thee with a ready mind." All the 160
same, for a long time Mr. Fearing was mortally afraid of the servants.
He would as soon have thought of stamping his foot for a duchess to
come up as for any of Gaius's serving-maids. He was afraid to make
any noise in his room lest all the house should hear it. He was afraid to
touch anything in the room lest it should fall and be broken. We
ourselves, with all our assumed ease and elaborate abandon, are often
afraid to ring our bell even in an inn. Mr. Fearing would as soon have
pulled the tail of a rattlesnake. But before their sojourn was over, the
Guide was amazed at Mr. Fearing, for that hare-hearted pilgrim would
be doing things in the house that he himself would scarcely do who
had been in the house a thousand times. It was Gaius's exuberant
heartiness that had demoralised Mr. Fearing and made him almost too
forward even for a wayside inn. In little things also Gaius, mine host,
showed his sensitive and solicitous hospitality. We all know
housekeepers, not to say innkeepers, and not otherwise ungenerous
housekeepers either who will grudge us a sixpennyworth of sticks and
coals in a cold night, and that, too, in a room furnished to overflowing
by Morton Brothers or the Messrs. Maple. We take a candlestick and a
dozen candles with us in the boot of the carriage when we wish to
read or write late into the night in that great house. Another
housekeeper, who would give you her only daughter with her wealthy
dowry, will sometimes be seen by all in her house to grudge you a
fresh cup of afternoon tea when you drop in to see her and her
daughter. She says to herself that it is to spare the servants the stairs;
but, all the time, under the stairs, the servants are blushing for the
sometimes unaccountable stinginess of their unusually munificent
mistress. I shall give you "line upon line, precept upon precept, here a
little and there a little" of Aristotle upon munificence in little things till you come up to his pagan standard. "There is a real greatness," he
says, "even in the way that some men will buy a toy to a child. Even in
the smallest matters the munificent man will act munificently!" As
Gaius, mine host, munificently did.
Speaking of children, what a night of entertainment good old
Gaius gave the children of the pilgrim party! "Let the boys have the
crumbed milk," he gave orders. "Butter and honey shall they eat," he exclaimed over them as that brimming dish came up. "This was our
Lord's dish when He was a child," he said to the mother of the boys,
"that He might know to refuse the evil and to choose the good." Then they brought up a dish of apples, and they were very good-tasted fruit.
Then said Matthew, "May we eat apples, since they were such by and
with which the serpent beguiled our first mother?" Then said Gaius,
"Apples were they by which we were beguiled,
Yet sin, not apples, hath our souls defiled.
Apples forbid, if eat, corrupt the blood.
To eat such, when commanded, does us good.
Drink of His flagons then, thou Church, His Dove,
And eat His apples who are sick of love."
Then said Matthew, "I make the scruple because I awhile since was
sick with eating of fruit." "Forbidden fruit," said the host, "will make you sick, but not what our Lord hath tolerated." While they were thus
talking they were presented with another dish, and it was a dish of
nuts. Then said some at the table, "Nuts spoil tender teeth, especially
the teeth of children," which when Gaius heard, he said,
"Hard texts are nuts (I will not call them cheaters)
Whose shells do keep their kernels from the eaters;
Ope then the shells and you shall have the meat;
They here are brought for you to crack and eat."
Then Samuel whispered to his mother and said, "Mother, this is a very
good man's house; let us stay here a good while before we go any
farther." The which Gaius the host overhearing, said, "With a very
good will, my child."
Widower as old Gaius was, and never for a single hour forgot that
he was, there was a certain sweet and stately gallantry awakened in
his withered old heart at the sight of Christiana and Mercy, and
especially at the sight of Matthew and Mercy when they were seen
together. He seems to have fallen almost in love with that aged
matron, as he called her, and the days of his youth came back to him as
he studied the young damsel, who was to her as a daughter. And this
set the loquacious old innkeeper upon that famous oration about
women which every man who has a mother, or a wife, or a sister, or a
daughter has by heart. And from that he went on to discourse on the
great advantages of an early marriage. He was not the man, nor was he
speaking to a mother who was the woman, ever to become a vulgar
and coarse-minded matchmaker; at the same time, he liked to see
Matthew and Mercy sent out on a message together, leaving it to nature and to grace to do the rest. The pros and cons of early marriage
were often up at his hearty table, but he always debated, and Gaius
was a great debater, that true hospitality largely consisted in throwing
open the family circle to let young people get well acquainted with one
another in its peace and sweetness. And Gaius both practised what he
preached, and at the same time endorsed his watchful wife's last
testament, when he gave his daughter Phebe to James, Christiana's
second son, and thus was left alone, poor old Gaius, when the happy
honeymoon party started upward from his hostel door.
Their next host was one Mr. Mnason, a Cyprusian by nation, and
an old disciple. "How far have you come to-day?" he asked. "From the house of Gaius our friend," they said. "I promise you," said he, "you have gone a good stitch; you may well be weary; sit down." So they sat
down. "Our great want a while since," said Old Honest, "was harbour and good company, and now I hope we have both." "For harbour," said the host, "you see what it is, but for good company that will appear in
the trial." After they were a little rested Old Honest again asked his
host if there were any store of good people in that town; and, "How,"
he said, "shall we do to see some of them? For the sight of good men to
them that are going on pilgrimage is like to the appearing of the moon
and stars to them that are sailing upon the seas." Then Mr. Mnason
stamped with his foot and his daughter Grace came up, when he sent
her out for five of his friends in the town, saying that he had a guest or
two in his house at present to whom he would like to introduce them.
Now, this is another of the good qualities of a good host, to know the
best and the most suitable people in the town, and to be on such terms
with them that on short notice they will step across to help to
entertain such travellers as had come to Mr. Mnason's table. And it is
an excellent thing to be sure that when we are so invited we shall not
only get a good dinner, but also, as good "kitchen" with our dinner, good company and good conversation. It is nothing short of a fine art
to gather together and to seat suitably beside one another good and
suitable people as Mr. and Miss Mnason did in their hospitable house
that afternoon. And then, as to the talk: let the host and the hostess
introduce the guests, and then let the guests introduce their own
topics. And as far as possible, in a city and a day like this, let our topics
be books rather than people. And let the books be the books that the guests have read rather than those that the host and the hostess have
read.
Books are a fine subject for a talk at table. Only, let great readers
order their learned and literary talk so as not to lead the less learned
into temptation. There is no finer exercise of fine feeling than to be
able to carry on a conversation about matters that other people
present are ignorant of, and at the same time to interest them, to set
them at ease, and to make them forget both you and themselves. I had
a letter the other day from an English Church clergyman, in which he
tells me that his bishop is coming this month to his vicarage for a kind
of visitation and retreat, and that they are to have William Law's
Characters and Characteristics read aloud to them when the bishop
and the assembled clergy are at their meals. For my part, I would
rather hear a good allround talk on that book by the bishop and his
clergy after they had all read the book over and over again at home.
But such readings at assembled meals have all along been a feature of
the best fraternal life in the Church of England and in some of the
sister churches.
Now, after dining and supping repeatedly with garrulous old
Gaius, and with the all-but-silent Mr. Mnason, I have come home
ruminating again and again on this - that a good host, the best host,
lets his guests talk while he attends to the table. If the truth may even
be whispered to one's-self about a table that one has just left, Gaius
did his best to spoil his good supper by his own over-garrulity. It was
good talk that he entertained his waiting guests with, but we may have
too much of a good thing. His oration in praise of women was an
excellent oration, had it been delivered in another house than his own;
and, say, when he was asked to give the health of Christiana, or of
Matthew the bridegroom and Mercy the bride, it would then have
been perfect; but not in his own house, and not when his guests were
waiting for their supper. On the other hand, you should have seen that
perfect gentleman, Mr. Mnason. For that true old Christian and old
English gentleman never once opened his mouth after he had set his
guests a-talking. He was too busy watching when any man's dish was
again empty. He was too much delighted to see that every one of his
guests was having his punctual share of the supper, and at the same
time his full share of the talk. Mr. Fearing's small voice was far more pleasant to Mr. Mnason than his own voice was in his own best story.
As I opened my own door the other night after supping with Mr. and
Miss Mnason, I said to myself - One thing I have again seen and
learned to-night, and that is, that a host, and still more a hostess,
should talk less at their own table than their most silent, most bashful,
and most backward guest. "Make this an ordinance for thee," said
Rabban Shammai to his sons in the law; "receive all thy guests with a
pleasant expression of countenance, and then say little and do much."
CHRISTIAN
"The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch." - Luke.
"Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian." - King Agrippa.
"Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity." -
Paul.
All the other personages in the Pilgrim's Progress come and go;
they all ascend the stage for a longer or shorter time, and then pass off
the stage and so pass out of our sight; but Christian in the First Part,
and Christiana in the Second Part, are never for a single moment out
of our sight. And, accordingly, we have had repeated occasion and
opportunity to learn many excellent lessons from the chief pilgrim's
upward walk and heavenly conversation. But so full and so rich are his
life and his character, that some very important things still remain to
be collected before we finally close his history. "Gather up the
fragments that nothing be lost," said our Lord, after His miraculous
meal of multiplied loaves and fishes with His disciples. And in like
manner I shall now proceed to gather up some of the remaining
fragments of Christian's life and character and experience. And I shall
collect these fragments into the three baskets of his book, his burden,
and his sealed roll and certificate.
And first, a few things as to his book. "As I slept I dreamed, and
behold I saw a man clothed in rags standing in a certain place, with his
face from his own house, a book in his hand, and a great burden upon
his back. I looked and saw him open the book and read therein; and as
he read he wept and trembled; and not being able longer to contain he
broke out with a lamentable cry, saying, What shall I do?" We hear a
great deal in these advertising days, and not one word too much,
about the books that have influenced and gone largely to the making
of our great men; but Graceless, like John Bunyan, his biographer, was
a man of but one book. But, then, that book was the most influential of
all books; it was the Book of books; it was God's very own and
peculiar Book. And those of us who, like this man, have passed out of a
graceless into a gracious state will for ever remember how that same
Book at that time influenced us till it made us what we are and shall
yet be. We read many other good books at that epoch in our life, but it
was the pure Bible that we read and prayed over out of sight the most.
We needed no commentators or exegetes on our simple Bible in those
days. The great texts stood out to our eyes in those days as if they had been written with a sunbeam; while all other books (and we read
nothing but the best books in those days) looked like twilight and
rushlight beside our Bible. In those immediate, direct, and intense
days we would have satisfied Wordsworth and Matthew Arnold
themselves in the way we read our Bible with our eye never off the
object. The Four Last Things were ever before us - death and
judgment, heaven and hell. "O my dear wife," said Graceless, "and you the children of my bowels, I your dear friend am in myself undone by
reason of a burden that lieth hard upon me; moreover, I am for certain
informed that this our city will be burned with fire from heaven, in
which fearful overthrow both myself, with thee my wife, and you my
sweet babes, shall miserably come to ruin, except (the which yet I see
not) some way of escape can be found whereby we may be delivered."
He would walk also solitarily in the fields, sometimes reading and
sometimes praying; and thus for some days he spent his time.
Graceless at that time and at that stage would have satisfied the
exigent author of the Practical Treatise upon Christian Perfection
where he says that "we are too apt also to think that we have
sufficiently read a book when we have so read it as to know what it
contains. This reading may be quite sufficient as to many books; but as
to the Bible we are not to think that we have read it enough because
we have often read and heard what it teaches. We must read our Bible,
not to know what it contains, but to fill our hearts with the spirit of it."
And, again, and on this same point, "There is this unerring key to the
right use of the Bible. The Bible has only one intent, and that is to
make a man know, resist, and abhor the working of his fallen earthly
nature, and to turn the faith, hope, and longing desire of his heart to
God; and therefore we are only to read our Bibles with this view and
to learn this one lesson from it . . . The critic looks into his books to see
how Latin and Greek authors have used the words 'stranger' and
'pilgrim,' but the Christian, who knows that man lives in labour and
toil, in sickness and pain, in hunger and thirst, in heat and cold among
the beasts of the field, where evil spirits like roaring lions seek to
devour him - he only knows in what truth and reality man is a poor
stranger and a distressed pilgrim upon the earth." John Bunyan read
neither Plato nor Aristotle, but he read David and Paul till he was the
chief of sinners, and till he was first the Graceless and then the Christian of his own next-to-the-Bible book.
In the second place, and as to his burden. We are supplied with no
particulars as to the first beginnings, the gradual make-up, and at last
the terrible size of Christian's burden. What this pilgrim's youthful life
must have been in such a city as his native city was, and while he was
still a young man of such a name and such a character in such a city,
we are left to ourselves to think and consider. Graceless was his name
by nature, and his life was as his name and his nature were. Still, as I
have said, we have no detailed and particular account of his early life
when his burden was still day and night in the making up. How long
into your life were you graceless, my brother? And what kind of life
did you lead day and night before you were persuaded or alarmed, as
the case may have been with you, into being a Christian? What
burdens do you carry on your broken back to this day that were made
up in the daylight or in the darkness by your own hands in your early
days? Were you early or were you too late in your conversion? Or are
you truly converted to God and to salvation even yet? And are you at
this moment still binding a burden on your back that you shall never
lay down on this side your grave - it may be, not on this side your
burning bed in hell? Ask yourselves all that before God and before
your own conscience, and make yourselves absolutely sure that God at
any rate is not mocked; and, therefore that you, too, shall in the end
reap exactly as you from the beginning have sown. "How camest thou
by thy burden at first?" asked Mr. Worldly-Wiseman at the trembling
pilgrim. "By reading this book in my hand," he answered. And, in the long run, it is always the Bible that best creates a sinner's burden,
binds it on his back, and makes it so terribly heavy to bear. Fear of
death and judgment will sometimes make up and bind on a sinner's
burden; and sometimes the fear of man's judgment on this side of
death will do it. Fear of being found out in some cases will make a
man's secret sin far too heavy for him to bear. The throne of public
opinion is not a very white throne; at the same time, it is a coarse
forecast and a rough foretaste of the last judgment; and the fear of it
not seldom makes a man's burden simply intolerable to him.
Sometimes a great sinner's burden leads him to flight and outlawry;
sometimes to madness and self-murder; and sometimes, by the
timeous and sufficient grace of God, to the way of escape that our pilgrim took. Tenderness of conscience, also, simple softness of heart
and conscience, will sometimes make a terrible burden out of what
other men would call a very light matter. Bind a burden on that iron
pillar standing there, and it will feel nothing and say nothing. But, bind
the same burden on that man in whose seat that dead pillar takes up a
sitter's room, and he will make all that are in the house hear his sighs
and his groans. And lay an act of sin - an evil word or evil work or evil
thought - on one man among us, and he will walk about the streets
with as erect a head and as smiling a countenance and as light a step
as if he were an innocent child; while, lay half as much on his
neighbour, and it will so bruise him to the earth that all men will take
knowledge of him that he is a miserable man. Our Lord could no doubt
have carried His cross from the hall of judgment to the hill-top
without help had His back not been wet with blood. What with a
whole and an unwealed body, a well-rested and well-nourished body,
He could easily have carried, with His broken body and broken heart
He quite sank under. And so it is with His people. One of His heart-
broken, heart-bleeding people will sink down to death and hell under
a burden of sin and corruption that another of them will scarcely feel
or know or believe that it is there. Some sins again in themselves, and
by reason of several aggravations, are far more heavy to bear than
others, and by some sinners than others. I was reading Bishop
Andrewes to myself last night and came upon this pertinent passage.
"Sin: its measure, its harm, its scandal. Its quality: how often - how
long. The person by whom: his age, condition, state, enlightenment. Its
manner, motive, time, and place. The folly of it, the ingratitude of it,
the hardness of it, the presumptuousness of it. By heart, by mouth, by
deed. Against God, my neighbours, my own body. By knowledge, by
ignorance. Willingly and unwillingly. Of old and of late. In boyhood and
youth, in mature and old age. Things done once, repeated often,
hidden and open. Things done in anger, and from the lust of the flesh
and of the world. Before and after my call. Asleep by night and awake
by day. Things remembered and things forgotten. Through the fiery
darts of the enemy, through the unclean desires of the flesh - I have
sinned against Thee. Have mercy on me, O God, and forgive me!" That
is the way some men's burdens are made up to such gigantic
proportions and then bound on by such acute cords. That is the way that Lancelot Andrewes and John Bunyan walked solitarily in the
fields, sometimes reading and sometimes praying, till the one of them
put himself into his immortal Devotions, and the other into his
immortal Grace Abounding and Pilgrim's Progress.
"Then I saw in my dream that Christian asked the Gatekeeper
further if he could not help him off with his burden that was upon his
back, for as yet he had not got rid of it, nor could he by any means get
it off without help. He told him, 'As to thy burden, be content to bear it
until thou comest to the place of deliverance, for there it will fall from
off thy back itself.' Now I saw in my dream that the highway up which
Christian was to go was fenced on either side with a wall, and that
wall is Salvation. Up this way, therefore, did burdened Christian run,
but not without great difficulty, because of the load on his back. He ran
thus till he came to a place somewhat ascending, and upon that place
stood a cross, and a little below in the bottom a sepulchre. So I saw in
my dream that just as Christian came up with the cross his burden
loosed from off his back, and began to tumble and so continued to do
till it came to the mouth of the sepulchre, where it fell in and I saw it
no more. Then was Christian glad and lightsome, and said with a
merry heart, 'He hath given me rest by His sorrow, and life by His
death!'"
"Blest Cross! blest Sepulchre! Blest rather be
The Man that there was put to shame for me."
But, then, how it could be that this so happy man was scarcely a
stone-cast past the cross when he had begun again to burden himself
with fresh sin, and thus to disinter all his former sin? How a true
pilgrim comes to have so many burdens to bear, and that till he ceases
to be any longer a pilgrim, - a burden of guilt, a burden of corruption,
and a burden of bare creaturehood, - I must leave all that, and all the