Part 7
questions connected with all that, for you all to think out and work out
for yourselves; and you will not say any morning on this earth, like
Mrs. Timorous, that you have little to do.
The third of the three Shining Ones who saluted Christian at the
cross set a mark on his forehead, and put a roll with a seal set upon it
into his hand. A roll and a seal which he bid him look on as he ran, and
that he should give that roll in at the Celestial Gate. Bunyan does not in
all places come up to his usual clearness in what he says about the sealed roll. We must believe that he understood his own meaning and
intention in all that he says, first and last, about the roll, but he has not
always made his meaning clear, at least to one of his readers.
Theological students, and, indeed, all thoughtful Christian men, are
invited to read Dr. Cunningham's powerful paper on Assurance in his
Reformers. The whole literature of Assurance is there taken up and
weighed and sifted with all that great writer's incomparable learning
and power and judgment. Our Larger Catechism, also, is excellent on
this subject; and this subject is a favourite commonplace with all our
best Calvinistic, Puritan, and Evangelical authors. Let us take two or
three passages out of those authors just as a specimen, and so close.
"Can true believers" - Larger Catechism, Question 80 - "Can true believers be infallibly assured that they are in an estate of grace, and
that they shall persevere therein to the end? Answer: Such as truly
believe in Christ, and endeavour to walk in all good conscience before
Him may, without extraordinary revelation, by faith grounded upon
the truth of God's promise, and by the Spirit enabling them to discern
in themselves those graces to which the promises of eternal life are
made, and bearing witness with their spirits that they are the children
of God, they may be infallibly assured that they are in the estate of
grace, and shall persevere therein unto salvation." Question 81: "Are all true believers at all times assured of their present being in a state
of grace, and that they shall be saved? Answer: Assurance of grace and
salvation not being of the essence of faith, true believers may wait
long before they obtain it, and, after the enjoyment thereof, may have
it weakened and intermitted through manifold distempers, sins,
temptations, and desertions; yet are they never left without such a
presence and support of the Spirit of God as keeps them from sinking
into utter despair." "A Christian's assurance," says Fraser of Brea,
"though it does not firstly flow from his holiness, yet is ever after
proportionable to his holy walking. Faith is kept in a pure conscience.
Sin is like a blot of ink fallen upon our evidence. This I found to be a
truth." "It was the speech of one to me," says Thomas Shepard of New England, "next to the donation of Christ, no mercy like this, to deny
assurance long; and why? For if the Lord had not, I should have given
way to a loose heart and life. And this is a rule I have long held - long
denial of assurance is like fire to burn out some sin and then the Lord will speak peace."
"Serve your God day and night faithfully," says Dr. Goodwin. "Walk humbly; and there is a promise of the Holy Ghost to come and fill your
hearts with joy unspeakable and glorious to rear you up to the day of
redemption. Sue this promise out, wait for it, rest not in believing only,
rest not in assurance by graces only; there is a further assurance to be
had." "I would not give a straw for that assurance," says John Newton,
"which sin will not damp. If David had come from his adultery and still
have talked of his assurance, I should have despised his speech."
"When we want the faith of assurance," says Matthew Henry, "let us live by the faith of adherence." And then the whole truth is in a
nutshell in Isaiah and in John: "The effect of righteousness shall be
quietness and assurance for ever," and "My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth. And hereby
we shall know that we are of the truth, and so shall assure our hearts
before Him."
CHRISTIANA
"Honour widows that are widows indeed." - Paul.
We know next to nothing of Christiana till after she is a widow
indeed. The names of her parents, and what kind of parents they were,
the schools and the boarding-schools to which they sent their
daughter, her school companions, the books she read, if she ever read
any books at all, the amusements she was indulged in and indulged
herself in - on all that her otherwise full and minute biographer is
wholly silent. He does not go back beyond her married life; he does
not even go back to the beginning of that. The only thing we are sure
of about Christiana's early days is that she was an utterly ungodly
woman and that she married an utterly ungodly man. "Have you a
family? Are you a married man?" asked Charity of Christian in the
House Beautiful. "I have a wife and four small children," he replied.
"And why did you not bring them along with you?" Then Christian
wept, and said: "Oh, how willingly would I have done it; but they were
all utterly averse to my going on pilgrimage." "But you should have
talked to them," said Charity, "and have endeavoured to have shown
them the danger of being behind." "So I did," answered Christian. "And did you pray to God that He would bless your counsel to them?" "Yes, and with much affection; for you must think that my wife and poor
children were very dear unto me." "But what could they say for
themselves why they came not?" "Why, my wife was afraid of losing
the world, and my children were given over to the foolish delights of
youth; so what with one thing and what with another, they left me to
wander in this manner alone."
But what her husband's conversion, good example, and most
earnest entreaties could not all do for his worldly wife, that his
sudden death speedily did. And thus it is that both Christiana's best
life, all our interest in her, and all our information about her, dates, sad
to say, not from her espousal, nor from her marriage day, nor from any
part of her married life, but from her husband's death. Her
maidenhood has no interest for us; all our interest is fixed on her
widowhood. This work of fiction now in our hands begins where all
other works of fiction end; for in the life of religion, you must know,
our best is always before us. Well, scarcely was her husband dead
when Christiana began to accuse herself of having killed him. To take
her own bitter words for it, the most agonising and remorseful thoughts about her conduct to her husband stung her heart like so
many wasps. Ah yes! A wasp's sting is but a blade of innocent grass
compared with the thoughts that have stung us all as we recalled what
we said and did to those who are now no more. There are graves in
the churchyard we dare not go near. "I have sinned away your father!"
she cried, as she threw herself on the earth at the feet of her
astounded children. "I have sinned away your father and he is gone!"
And yet there was no mark of a bullet and no gash of a knife on his
dead body, and no chemistry could have extracted one grain of arsenic
or of strychnine out of his blood. But there are many ways of taking a
man's life besides those of poison or a knife or a gunshot. Constant
faultfinding, constant correction and studied contempt before
strangers, total want of sympathy and encouragement, gloomy looks,
rough remarks, all blame and never a word of praise, things like these
between man and wife will kill as silently and as surely as poison or
suffocation. Look at home, my brethren, and ask yourselves what you
will think of much of your present conduct when it has borne its
proper fruit. "Upon this came into her mind by swarms all her unkind,
unnatural, and ungodly carriages to her dear friend, which also
clogged her conscience and did load her with guilt. It all returned
upon her like a flash of lightning, and rent the caul of her heart
asunder." "That which troubleth me most," she would cry out, "is my churlish carriages to him when he was under distress. I am that
woman," she would cry out and would not be appeased - "I am that
woman that was so hardhearted as to slight my husband's troubles,
and that left him to go on his journey alone. How like a churl I carried
myself to him in all that! And so guilt took hold of my mind," she said
to the Interpreter, "and would have drawn me to the pond!"
A minister's widow once told me that she had gone home after
hearing a sermon of mine on the text, "What profit is there in my
blood?" and had destroyed a paper of poison she had purchased in her
despair on the previous Saturday night. It was not a sermon from her
unconscious minister, but it was far better; it was a conversation that
Christiana held with her four boys that fairly and for ever put all
thought of the pond out of their mother's remorseful mind. "So
Christiana," as we read in the opening of her history - "so Christiana 174
called her sons together and began thus to address herself unto them: My sons, I have, as you may perceive, been of late under much exercise
in my soul about the death of your father. My carriages to your father
in his distress are a great load on my conscience. Come, my children,
let us pack up and be gone to the gate, that we may see your father
and be with him, according to the laws of that land." I like that
passage, I think, the best in all Christiana's delightful history - that
passage which begins with these words: "So she called her children
together." For when she called her children together she opened to
them both her heart and her conscience; and from that day there was
but one heart and one conscience in all that happy house. I was
walking alone on a country road the other day, and as I was walking I
was thinking about my pastoral work and about my people and their
children, when all at once I met one of my people. My second sentence
to him was: "This very moment I was thinking about your sons. How
are they getting on?" He quite well understood me. He knew that I was
not indifferent as to how they were getting on in business, but he
knew that I was alluding more to the life of godliness and virtue in
their hearts and in their characters. "O sir," he said, "you may give your sons the skin off your back, but they will not give you their
confidence!" So had it been with Christian and his sons. He had never
managed, even in his religion, to get into the confidence of his sons;
but when their mother took them into her agonised confidence, from
that day she was in all their confidences, good and bad. You who are in
your children's confidences will pray in secret for my lonely friend
with the skin off his back, will you not? that he may soon be able to
call his sons together so as to start together on a new life of family
love, and family trust, and family religion. That was a fine sight. Who
will make a picture of it? This widow indeed at the head of her family
council-table, and Matthew at the foot, and James and Joseph and
Samuel all in their places. "Come, my children, let us pack up that we
may see your father!" Then did her children burst into tears for joy
that the heart of their mother was so inclined. From that first family
council let us pass on to Christiana's last interview with her family
and her other friends. Her biographer introduces her triumphant
translation with this happy comment on the margin: "How welcome is
death to them that have nothing to do but die!" Well, that was exactly
Christiana's case. She had so packed up at the beginning of her journey; she had so got and had so kept the confidences of all her
sons; she had seen them all so married in the Lord, and thus so settled
in a life of godliness and virtue; she had, in short, lived the life of a
widow indeed, till, when the post came for her, she had nothing left to
do but just to rise up and follow him. His token to her was an arrow
with a point sharpened with love, let easily into her heart, which by
degrees wrought so effectually with her that at the time appointed she
must be gone. We have read of arrows of death sharpened sometimes
with steel and sometimes with poison; but this arrow, shot from
heaven, was sharpened to a point with love. Indeed, that arrow, or the
very fellow of it, had been shot into Christiana's heart long ago when
she stood at that spot somewhat ascending where was a cross and a
sepulchre; and, especially, ever since the close of Greatheart's great
discourse on pardon by deed. For the hearing of that famous discourse
had made her exclaim: "Oh! Thou loving One, it makes my heart bleed
to think that Thou shouldest bleed for me! Oh! Thou blessed One,
Thou deservest to have me, for Thou hast bought me! Thou deservest
to have me all, for Thou hast paid for me ten thousand times more
than I am worth!" Now it was with all that love working effectually in
her heart that Christiana called for her children to give them her
blessing. And what a comfort it was to her to see them all around her
with the mark of the kingdom on their foreheads, and with their
garments white. "My sons and my daughters," she said, "be you all ready against the time His post calls for you." Then she called for Mr.
Valiant-for-truth, and entreated him to have an eye on her children,
and to speak comfortably to them if at any time he saw them faint.
And then she gave Mr. Standfast her ring. "Behold," she said, as Mr.
Honest came in - "Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!"
Then Mr. Ready-to-halt came in, and then Mr. Despondency and his
daughter Much-afraid, and then Mr. Feeble-mind. Now the day drew
on that Christiana must be gone. So the road was full of people to see
her take her journey. But, behold! all the banks beyond the river were
full of horses and chariots which were come down from above to
accompany her to the City gates, so she came forth and entered the
river with a beckon of farewell to those that followed her to the river-
side. The last word she was heard to say here was, "I come, Lord, to be
with Thee, and to bless Thee."
But with all this, you must not suppose that this good woman,
this mother in Israel, had forgotten her grandchildren. She would
sooner have forgotten her own children. But she was too good a
woman to forget either. For long ago, away back at the river on this
side the Delectable Mountains, she had said to her four daughters - I
must tell you exactly what she has said: "Here," she said, "in this meadow there are cotes and folds for sheep, and an house is built here
also for the nourishing and bringing up of those lambs, even the babes
of those women that go on pilgrimage. Also there is One here who can
have compassion and that can gather these lambs with His arm and
carry them in His bosom. This Man, she said, will house and harbour
and succour the little ones, so that none of them shall be lacking in
time to come. This Man, if any of them go astray or be lost, He will
bring them again, He will bind up that which was broken, and will
strengthen them that are sick. So they were content to commit their
little ones to that Man, and all this was to be at the charge of the King,
and so it was as a hospital to young children and orphans."
And now I shall sum up my chief impressions of Christiana under
the three heads of her mind, her heart, and her widowhood indeed.
The mother of Christian's four sons was a woman of real mind, as
so many of the maidens, and wives, and widows of Puritan England
and Covenanting Scotland were. You gradually gather that impression
just from being beside her as the journey goes on. She does not speak
much; but, then, there is always something individual, remarkable,
and memorable in what she says. I have a notion of my own that
Christiana must have been a reader of that princely Puritan, John
Milton. And if that was so, that of itself would be certificate enough as
to her possession of mind. There is always a dignity and a strength
about her utterances that make us feel sure that she had always had a
mind far above her neighbours, Mrs. Bat's-eyes, Mrs. Light-mind, and
Mrs. Know-nothing. The first time she opens her mouth in our hearing
she lets fall an expression that Milton had just made famous in his
Samson -
"Ease to the body some, none to the mind
From restless thoughts, that like a deadly swarm
Of hornets armed no sooner found alone,
But rush upon me thronging, and present
Times past, what once I was, and what am now."
Nor can I leave this point without asserting it to you that no
church and no school of theology has ever developed the mind as well
as sanctified the heart of the common people like the preaching of the
Puritan pulpit. Matthew Arnold was not likely to over-estimate the
good that Puritanism had done to England. Indeed, in his earlier
writings he sometimes went out of his way to lament the hurt that the
Puritan spirit had done to liberality of life and mind in his native land.
But in his riper years we find him saying: "Certainly," he says, "I am not blind to the faults of the Puritan discipline, but it has been an
invaluable discipline for that poor, inattentive, and immoral creature,
man. And the more I read history and the more I see of mankind, the
more I recognise the value of the Puritan discipline." And in that same
Address he "founded his best hopes for that so enviable and
unbounded country in which he was speaking, America, on the fact
that so many of its millions had passed through the Puritan
discipline." John Milton was a product of that discipline on the one
hand, as John Bunyan was on the other. Christiana was another of its
products in the sphere of the family, just as Matthew Arnold himself
had some of his best qualities out of the same fruitful school.
Her heart, her deep, strong, tender heart, is present on every
page of Christiana's noble history. Her heart keeps her often silent
when the water in her eyes becomes all the more eloquent. When she
does let her heart utter itself in words, her words are fine and
memorable. As, for one instance, after Greatheart's discourse on
redemption. "O Mercy, that thy father and mother were here; yea, and
Mrs. Timorous also. Nay, I wish with all my heart now that here was
Madam Wanton, too. Surely, surely, their hearts would be affected, nor
could the fear of the one, nor the powerful lusts of the other, prevail
with them to go home again, and to refuse to become good pilgrims."
But it was not so much what she said herself that brought out the
depth and tenderness of Christiana's heart, it was rather the way her
heart loosened other people's tongues. You must all have felt how some people's presence straitens your heart and sews up your mouth.
While there are other people, again, whose simple presence unseals
your heart and makes you eloquent. We ministers keenly feel that
both in our public and in our private ministrations. There are people
in whose hard and chilling presence we cannot even say grace as we
should say it. Whereas, we all know other people, people of a heart,
that is, whose presence somehow so touches our lips that we always
when near them rise far above ourselves. Christiana did not speak
much to her guides and instructors and companions, but they always
spoke their best to her, and it was her heart that did it.
And then a widow indeed is just a true and genuine widow; a
widow not in her name and in her weeds only, but still more in her
deep heart, in her whole life, and in her garnered experience. "Honour
widows that are widows indeed. Now, she that is a widow indeed and
desolate, trusteth in God, and continueth in supplications and in
prayers night and day. Well reported of for good works; if she have
brought up children, if she have lodged strangers, if she have washed
the saints' feet, if she have relieved the afflicted, if she have diligently
followed every good work." These are the true marks and seals and
occupations of a widow indeed. And if she has had unparalleled trials
and irreparable losses, she has her corresponding consolations and
compensations. For she has a freedom to go about and do good, a
liberty and an experience that neither the unmarried maiden nor the
married wife can possibly have. She can do multitudes of things that in
the nature of things neither of them can attempt to do. Things that
would be both unseemly and impossible for other women to say or to
do are both perfectly seemly and wholly open for her to say and to do.
Her widowhood is a sacred shield to her. Her sorrow is a crown of
honour and a sceptre of authority to her. She is consulted by the young
and the inexperienced, by the forsaken and by the forlorn, as no other
human being ever is. She has come through this life, and by a long
experience she knows this world and the hearts that fill it and make it
what it is. A widow indeed can show a sympathy, and give a counsel,
and speak with a weight of wisdom that one's own mother cannot
always do. All you who by God's sad dispensation are now clothed in
the "white and wimpled folds" of widowhood, let your prayer and
your endeavour day and night be that God would guide and enable you to be widows indeed. And, if you do, you shall want neither your
occupation nor your honour.
THE ENCHANTED GROUND
"Surely there is no enchantment against Jacob, neither is there any
divination against Israel." - Balaam.
"I saw then in my dream that they went till they came into a
certain country whose air naturally tended to make one drowsy if he
came a stranger to it. And here Hopeful began to be very dull and
heavy of sleep, wherefore he said unto Christian, I do now begin to
grow so drowsy that I can scarcely hold up mine eyes; let us lie down
here and take one nap." And then when we turn to the same place in
the Second Part we read thus: "By this time they were got to the
Enchanted Ground, where the air naturally tended to make one
drowsy. And that place was all grown over with briars and thorns,
excepting here and there, where was an enchanted arbour, upon
which, if a man sits, or in which if a man sleeps, 'tis a question, say
some, whether they shall ever rise or wake again in this world. Now,
they had not gone far, but a great mist and darkness fell upon them all,
so that they could scarce, for a great while, see the one the other.
Wherefore they were forced for some time to feel for one another by
words, for they walked not by sight. Nor was there on all this ground
so much as one inn or victualling-house wherein to refresh the feebler
sort. Then they came to an arbour, warm, and promising much
refreshing to the pilgrims, for it was finely wrought above head,
beautified with greens, and furnished with couches and settles. It also
had a soft couch on which the weary might lean. This arbour was
called The Slothful Man's Friend, on purpose to allure, if it might be,
some of the pilgrims there to take up their rest when weary. This, you
must think, all things considered, was tempting. I saw in my dream
also that they went on in this their solitary way till they came to a
place at which a man is very apt to lose his way. Now, though when it
was light, their guide could well enough tell how to miss those ways
that led wrong, yet in the dark he was put to a stand. But he had in his
pocket a map of all ways leading to or from the Celestial City,
wherefore he struck a light (for he never goes also without his tinder-
box), and takes a view of his book or map, which bids him be careful
in that place to turn to the right-hand way. Then I thought with myself,
who that goeth on pilgrimage but would have one of those maps about
him, that he may look when he is at a stand, which is the way to take?"
"But what is the meaning of all this?" asked Christiana of the
guide. "This Enchanted Ground," - her able and experienced friend
answered her, "this is one of the last refuges that the enemy to
pilgrims has; wherefore it is, as you see, placed almost at the end of
the way, and so it standeth against us with the more advantage. For
when, thinks the enemy, will these fools be so desirous to sit down as
when they are weary, and when so like to be weary as when almost at
their journey's end? Therefore it is, I say, that the Enchanted Ground is
placed so nigh to the land Beulah and so near the end of their race;
wherefore let pilgrims look to themselves lest they fall asleep till none
can waken them." "That masterpiece of Bunyan's insight into life, the Enchanted Ground," says Mr. Louis Stevenson, "where his allegory cuts so deep to people looking seriously on life." Yes, indeed, Bunyan's
insight into life! And his allegory that cuts so deep! For a neophyte,
and one with little insight into life, or into himself, would go to look
for this land of darkness and thorns and pitfalls, alternated with
arbours and settles and soft couches - one new to life and to himself, I
say, would naturally expect to see all that confined to the region
between the City of Destruction and the Slough of Despond; or, at the
worst, long before, and never after, the House Beautiful. But Bunyan
looked too straight at life and too unflinchingly into his own heart to
lay down his sub-Celestial lands in that way; and when we begin to
look with a like seriousness on the religious life, and especially when
we begin to look bold enough and deep enough into our own heart,
then we too shall freely acknowledge the splendid master-stroke of
Bunyan in the Enchanted Ground. That this so terrible experience is
laid down almost at the end of the Celestial way - the blaze of light
that pours upon our heads fairly startles us, while at the same time it
comforts us and assures us. That this Enchanted Ground, which has
proved so fatal to so many false pilgrims, and so all but fatal to so
many true pilgrims, should lie around the very borders of Beulah, and
should be within all but eye-shot of the Celestial
City itself, - that is something to be thankful for, and something to lay
up in the deepest and the most secret place in our heart. That these
pilgrims, after all their feastings and entertainments - after the
Delectable Mountains and the House Beautiful - should all be plunged
upon a land where there was not so much as a roadside inn, where the
ways were so dark and so long that the pilgrims had to shout aloud in order to keep together, where, instead of moon or stars, they had to
walk in the spark of a small tinder-box - what an encouragement and
assurance to us is all that! That is no strange thing, then, that is now
happening to us, when, after our fine communion season, we have
suddenly fallen back into this deep darkness, and are cast into these
terrible temptations, and feel as if all our past experiences and
attainments and enjoyments had been but a self-delusion and a snare.
That we should all but have fallen fast asleep, and all but have ceased
both from watching against sin and from waiting upon God - well, that
is nothing more than Hopeful himself would have done had he not had
a wary old companion to watch over him, and to hold his eyes open.
Let all God's people present who feel that they are nothing better of all
they have enjoyed of Scriptures and sacraments, but rather worse; let
all those who feel sure that they have wandered into a castaway land,
so dark, so thorny, so miry, and so lonely is their life - let them read
this masterpiece of John Bunyan again and again and take heart of
hope.
"When Saints do sleepy grow, let them come hither
And hear how these two pilgrims talk together;
Yea, let them hear of them, in any wise,
Thus to keep ope their drowsy slumb'ring eyes;
Saints' fellowship, if it be managed well,
Keeps them awake, and that in spite of hell."
But far worse than all its briars and thorns, far more fatal than all
its ditches and pitfalls, were the enchanted arbours they came on here
and there planted up and down that evil land. For those arbours are
all of this fatal nature, that if a man falls asleep in any of them it arises
a question whether he shall ever come to himself again in this world.
Now, where there are no inns nor victualling-houses, no Gaius and no
Mr. Mnason, what a danger all those ill-intended arbours scattered all
up and down that country become! Well, then, the first enchanted
arbour that the pilgrims came to was built just inside the borders of
the land, and it was called The Stranger's Arbour - so many new-
comers had lain down in it never to rise again. The young and the
inexperienced, with those who were naturally of a believing, buoyant,
easy mind, lay down in hundreds here. Hopeful's mind was naturally a
mind of a soft and easy and self-indulgent cast; and had he been alone that day, or had he had for a companion a man of a less wary, less
anxious, and less urgent mind than Christian was, Hopeful had taken a
nap, as he so confidingly called it - a fatal nap in that arbour built by
the enemy of pilgrims, just on purpose for the young and the ignorant,
the inexperienced and the self-indulgent.
The Slothful Man's Arbour has been already described. It was a
warm arbour, and it promised much refreshing to the pilgrims. It also
had in it a soft couch on which the weary might lean. "Let us lie down
here and take just one nap; we shall be refreshed if we take a nap!"
"Do you not remember," said the other, "that one of the shepherds bid us beware of the Enchanted Ground? And he meant by that that we
should beware of sleeping; wherefore let us not sleep as do others, but
let us watch and be sober." Now, what is a nap? And what is it to take a
nap in our religion? The New Testament is full of warnings to those
who read it and go by it - most solemn and most fearful warnings -
against sleep. Now, have you any clear idea in your minds as to what
this divinely denounced sleep is? Sleep is good and necessary in our
bodily life. We would not live long if we did not sleep; we would soon
go out of our mind; we would soon lose our senses if we did not sleep.
Insomnia is one of the worst symptoms of our eager, restless, over-
worked age. "He giveth His beloved sleep"; and while they sleep their corn grows they know not how. But sleep in the great exhortation-passages of the Holy Scriptures does not mean rest and restoration; it
means in all those passages insensibility, stupidity, danger, and death.
In our nightly sleep, and in the measure of its soundness, we are
utterly dead to the world around us. Men may come into our house
and rob us of our most precious possessions; they may even come up
to our bed and murder us; our whole house may be in a blaze about
us; we may only awaken to leap out of sleep into eternity. Now, we are
all in a sleep like that in our souls. There is above us, and around us,
and beneath us, and within us the eternal world, and we are all sound
asleep; we are all stone-dead in the midst of it. Devils and wicked men
are stealing our treasures for eternity, and we are sound asleep; hell is
already kindling our bed beneath us, but we smell not its flames, or
we only catch the first gasp of them before we make our everlasting
bed among them. Therefore let us not sleep as do others, but let us
watch and be sober. What meanest thou, O sleeper? arise and call upon thy God! When the guide shook Heedless and Too-bold off their
settles in that slothful arbour, the one of them said with his eyes still
shut, "I will pay you when I take my money," and the other said, "I will fight so long as I can hold my sword in my hand." At that one of the
children laughed. "What is the meaning of that?" asked Christiana. The guide said: "They talk in their sleep." So they did, and so do all men.
For this whole world is full of settles on which men sleep and talk in
their sleep. The newspapers to-morrow morning will all be full to
overflowing of what men have said and written to-day and yesterday
in their sleep. The shops and the banks and the exchanges will all be
full of men making promises and settling accounts in their sleep. They
will finger their purses, and grasp their swords, and all in their sleep.
And not children but devils will laugh as they hear the folly that falls
from men's lips who are besotted with spiritual sleep and drugged
with spiritual and fleshly sin. A dream cometh through the multitude
of business. I had just got this length in this lecture the other night
when I went to sleep. And in my sleep one of my people came to me
and asked me if I could make it quite clear and plain to him what it
would be for a man like him after a communion-time to begin to walk
with God. And I just wish I could make the things of the Enchanted
Ground as plain to myself and to you to-night as I was able to make a
walk with God plain to myself and to my visitor that night in my
ministerial dream. I often wish that my business mind worked as well
in my study chair and in my pulpit as it sometimes does in my bed and
in my sleep. "Now, I beheld in my dream that they talked more in their
sleep at this time than ever they did in all their journey. And being in a
muse thereabout, the gardener said even to me: Wherefore musest
thou at the matter? It is the nature of the fruit of the grapes of those
vineyards to go down so sweetly as to cause the lips of them that are
asleep to speak." The reason my poor lips spake so sweetly about a
walk with God that night most have been because I spent all the
summer evening before walking with God and with you in the
vineyards of Beulah.
Listen to Samson, shorn of his locks, as he shakes himself off a
soft and sweetly-worked couch in The Sensual Man's Arbour:
"No, no;
It fits not; thou and I long since are twain;
Nor think me so unwary or accurst
To bring my feet again into the snare
Where once I have been caught; I know thy trains,
Though dearly to my cost, thy gins, and toils;
Thy fair enchanted cup and warbling charms
No more on me have power, their force is null'd;
So much of adder's wisdom have I learnt
To fence my ear against thy sorceries.
If in my flower of youth and strength, when all men
Loved, honour'd, fear'd me, thou alone couldst hate me,
Thy husband, slight me, sell me, and forego me;
How wouldst thou use me now, blind, and thereby
Deceivable, in most things as a child,
Helpless, thence easily contemn'd, and scorn'd,
And last neglected? How wouldst thou insult,
When I must live uxorious to thy will
In perfect thraldom! How again betray me,
Bearing my words and doings to the lords
To gloss upon, and censuring, frown or smile!
This jail I count the house of liberty
To thine, whose doors my feet shall never enter."
The love of money to some men is the root of all evil. There came
once a youth to St. Philip Neri and, flushed with joy, told him that his
parents after much entreaty had at length allowed him to study law.
St. Philip was not a man of many words. "What then?" the saint simply asked the shining youth. "Then I shall become a lawyer!" "And then?"
pursued Philip. "Then," said the young man, "I shall earn a nice sum of money, and I shall purchase a fine country house, procure a carriage
and horses, marry a handsome and rich wife, and lead a delightful
life!" "And then?" "Then," - the youth reflected as death and eternity arose before his eyes, and from that day he began to take care of his
immortal soul. Philip with one word snatched that young man's soul
off The Rich Man's Settle.
The Vain Man's Settle draws down many men to shame and
everlasting contempt. Praise a vain man or a vain woman aright and enough and you will get them to do anything you like. Give a vain man
sufficient publicity in your paper or on your platform and he will
become a spy, a traitor, and cut-throat in your service. The sorcerer's
cup of praise - keep it full enough in a vain man's hand, and he will
sleep in the arbour of vanity till he wakens in hell. Madam Bubble, the
arch-enchantress, knows her own, and she has, with her purse, her
promotion, and her praise, bought off many a promising pilgrim.
And then she, by virtue of whose sorceries this whole land is
drugged and enchanted, is such a bold slut that she will build a Sacred
Arbour even, and will fill it full of religious enchantment for you rather
than lose hold of you. She will consecrate places and persons and
periods for you if your taste lies that way; she will build costly and
stately churches for you; she will weave rich vestments and carve rich
vessels; she will employ all the arts; she will even sanctify and set
apart and seat aloft her holy men - what will she not do to please you,
to take you, to intoxicate and enchant you? She will juggle for your
soul equally well whether you are a country clown in a feeing-market
or a fine lady of aesthetic tastes and religious sensibilities in the
capital and the court. But I shall let Father Faber speak, who can speak
on this subject both with authority and with attraction. "She can open
churches, and light candles on the altar, and intone Te Deums to the
Majesty on high. She can pass into the beauty of art, into the
splendour of dress, and into the magnificence of furniture. She can sit
with high principles on her lips discussing a religious vocation and
praising God and sanctity. On the benches of bishops and in the pages
of good books you will find her, and yet she is all the while the same
huge evil creature." Yes; she is all the time the same Madam Bubble
who offered to Standfast her body, her purse, and her bed.
Now, would you know for yourself, like the communicant who
came to me in my sleep, how you are ever to get past all those arbours,
and settles, and seats, and couches, with all their sweet sorceries and
intoxicating enchantments - would you in earnest know that? Then
study well the case of one Standfast. Especially the time when she who
enchants this whole ground hereabouts set so upon that pilgrim. In
one word, it was this: he remembered his Lord; and, like his Lord, he
fell on his face; and as his Lord would have it, His servant's lips as they
touched the ground touched also the healing plant harmony and he was saved.
"A small unsightly root,
But of divine effect.
Unknown, and like esteem'd, and the dull swain
Treads on it daily with his clouted shoon;
And yet more med'cinal is it than that moly
That Hermes once to wise Ulysses gave;
He call'd it haemony, and gave it me,
And bade me keep it as of sovran use
'Gainst all enchantments, mildew, blast, or damp,
Or ghastly furies' apparition.
And now I find it true; for by this means
I knew the foul enchantress, though disguised,
Enter'd the very lime-twigs of her spells,
And yet came off. If you have this about you
(As I will give you when you go) you may
Boldly assault the necromancer's hall:
Where if she be, with dauntless hardihood,
And brandished blade, rush on her, break her glass,
And shed her luscious liquor on the ground,
And seize her wand."
Prayer, my sin-beset brethren, standfast prayer, is the otherwise
unidentified haemony whose best habitat was the Garden of
Gethsemane; and with that holy root in your heart and in your mouth,
there is "no enchantment against Jacob, neither is there any divination
against Israel."
THE LAND OF BEULAH
"Thou shalt be called Hephzibah, and thy land Beulah." - Isaiah.
The first thing that John Bunyan tells us about the land of Beulah
is this - that the shortest and the best way to the Celestial City lies
directly through that land. The land of Beulah has its own indigenous
inhabitants indeed. Old men dwell in the streets of Beulah, and every
man with his staff in his hand for very age. The streets of the city also
are full of boys and girls playing in the streets thereof. The land of
Beulah has its frequent visitors also, and its welcome guests from the
regions above. Some of the shining ones come down from time to time
and make a short sojourn in Beulah. The angels in heaven have such a
desire to see the lands from which God's saints come up that at certain
seasons all the suburbs of the Celestial City are full of those shining
servants of God and of the Lamb.
But what made the dreamer to smile and to talk so in his sleep
was when he saw that all the upward ways to the Celestial City ran
through the land of Beulah. He saw also in his dream how all the
pilgrims blamed themselves so bitterly now because they had
misspent so much of their time and strength in the ways below, and so
had not come sooner to see and to taste this blessed land. But, at the
same time, as it was, they all rejoiced with a great joy because that,
after all their delays and all their wanderings, their way still led them
through the borders of Beulah. Now, my dear fellow-communicants,
how shall we find our way at once, and without any more wanderings,
into that so desirable land? How shall we attain to walk its streets all
the rest of our days with our staff in our hand? How shall we hope to
see our boys and our girls playing in the streets of Beulah, and eating
all their days of its sweet and its healing fruits? How shall we and our
children with us henceforth escape the Slough of Despond, and Giant
Despair's dungeon, and the Valley of the Shadow of Death? The word,
my brethren, the answer to all that, is nigh unto us, even in our mouth
and in our heart. For faith, simple faith, will do all that both for us and
for our children beside us. A heart-feeding faith in God, in the word of
God, and in the Son of God, will do it. Faith, and then obedience. For
obedience, my brethren, is Beulah. All obedience is already Beulah.
Holy obedience will bring the whole of Beulah into your heart and into
mine at any moment. It is disobedience that makes so many of those
who otherwise are true pilgrims to miss so much of the land of Beulah. Ask any affable old man with his staff in his hand for very age,
and he will tell you that it was his disobedience that kept him so long
out of the land of Beulah. While, let any man, and above all, let any
young man, begin early to live a life of believing obedience, and he will
grow up and grow old and see his children's children playing around
his staff in the streets of Beulah.
Let any young man make the experiment for himself upon
obedience and upon Beulah. Let him not too easily believe any
dreamer or even any seer about obedience and about the land of
Beulah. It is his own matter and not theirs; and let him make
experiment upon it all for his own satisfaction and assurance. Let any
young man, then, try prayer as his first step into obedience, and
especially secret prayer. Let him shut his door to-night, and let him see
if he is not already inside one of the gates of Beulah. Let him deny
himself every day also, if it is only in a very little thing. Let him say
sternly to his own heart every hour of temptation, No! never! and on
the spot a sweet waft of Beulah's finest spices will fall upon his face.
"The ineffable joy of renouncing joy" will every day make the lonely wilderness of this world a constant Beulah to such a man. For, to live
at all times, in all places, and in all things for other men, and never and
in nothing for yourself - that is the deepest secret of Beulah. To say it,
if need be, three times to-night on your face and in a sweat of blood,
"Not my will, but Thine be done!" - that will to-night turn the garden of Gethsemane itself into the very garden of Glory. Do you doubt it?
Are you not yet able to believe it? Then hear about it from One who
has Himself come through it. Hear His word upon the whole matter
who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. "Come unto Me," says the King of Beulah, "all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you
rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly
in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For My yoke is easy and
My burden is light." So after He had washed their feet, and had taken
His garments and was set down again, He said unto them, "Know ye
what I have done to you? For I have given you an example, that ye
should do as I have done to you. If ye know these things, happy are ye
if ye do them. If ye love Me, keep My commandments. And I will pray
the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide
with you for ever. If a man love Me, he will keep My words; and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him and will make Our
abode with him. Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you: not
as the world giveth, give I unto you. These things have I spoken unto
you that My joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.
Hitherto ye have asked nothing in My name; ask, and ye shall receive,
that your joy may be full. Father, I will that they also, whom Thou hast
given Me, be with Me where I am." And thus I saw in my dream that
their way lay right through the land of Beulah, in which land they
solaced themselves for a season.
"They solaced themselves." Now, solace is just the Latin solatium,
which, again, is just a soothing, an assuaging, a compensation, an
indemnification. Well, that land into which the pilgrims had now come
was very soothing to their ruffled spirits and to their weary hearts. It
assuaged their many and sore griefs also. It more than compensated
them for all their labours and all their afflictions. And it was a full
indemnification to them for all that they had forsaken and lost both in
beginning to be pilgrims and in enduring to the end. The children of
Israel had their first solace in their pilgrimage at Elim, where there
were twelve wells of water and threescore and ten palm-trees; and
they encamped there by the waters. And then they had their last and
crowning solace when the spies came back from Eshcol with a cluster
of grapes that they bare between two upon a staff, with pomegranates
and figs. And Moses kept solacing his charge all the way through the
weary wilderness with such strong consolations as these: "For the
Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water,
of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills; a land of
wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig-trees; a land of oil-olive and
honey; a land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou
shalt not lack anything in it; a land whose stones are iron, and out of
whose hills thou mayest dig brass." Our Lord spake solace to His
doubting and fainting disciples also in many such words as these:
"Verily, I say unto you, there is no man that hath left house, or parents, or brethren, or wife, or children for the kingdom of God's sake, who
shall not receive manifold more in this present time, and in the world
to come life everlasting." The Mount of Transfiguration also was His
own Beulah-solace; and the Last Supper and the prayer with which it
wound up were given to our Lord and to His disciples as a very Eshcolcluster from the Paradise above. Now, I saw in my dream that
they solaced themselves in the land of Beulah for a season. Yea, here
they heard continually the singing of birds. (The Latin poets called the
birds solatia ruris, because they refreshed and cheered the rustic
labourers with their sweet singing.) And every day the flowers
appeared in the earth, and the voice of the turtle was heard in the
land. In this country the sun shineth night and day, for there is no
night there.
"In this country the sun shineth night and day." How much
Standfast must have enjoyed that land of light you may guess when
you recollect that he came from Darkland, which lies in the
hemisphere right opposite to the land of Beulah. In Darkland the sun
never shines to be called sunshine at all. All the days of his youth,
Standfast told his companions, he had sat beside his father and his
mother in that obscure land where to his sorrow his father and his
mother still sat. But in Beulah "the rose of evening becomes silently
and suddenly the rose of dawn." This land lies beyond the Valley of the
Shadow of Death, neither could they from this place so much as see
Doubting Castle. Now, Doubting Castle is a dismal place for any soul of
man to be shut up into. And in that dark hold there are dungeons dug
for all kinds of doubting souls. There are dungeons dug for the souls of
men whose doubts are in their intellects, as well as for those also
whose doubts arise out of their hearts. Some men read themselves
into Doubting Castle, and some men sin and sell themselves to its
giant. God casts some of His own children all their days into those
dungeons as a punishment for their life of disobedience; He casts
others down into chains of darkness because of their idleness and
unfruitfulness. But Beulah is far away from Doubting Castle. Beulah is
a splendid spot for a studious man to lodge in. For what a clear light
shines night and day in Beulah! To what far horizons a man's eye will
carry him in Beulah! What large speculations rise before him who
walks abroad in Beulah! How clear the air is in Beulah, how clean the
heart and how unclouded the eye of its inhabitants! The King's walks
are in Beulah, and the arbours where He delighteth to be. Blessed are
the pure in heart, for they shall be admitted to see God in the land of
Beulah. In the land of Beulah the sun shall no more be thy light by day,
neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee; but the Lord shall be thine everlasting light, and thy God thy glory!
"In this land also the contract between the bride and the
bridegroom is renewed." Now, there is no other day so bitter in any
man's life as that day is on which his bridal contract is broken off. And
it is the very perfection and last extremity of bitterness when his
contract is broken off because of his own past life. Let all those, then,
who would fain enter into that sweet contract think well about it
beforehand. Let them look back into all their past life. For all their past
life will be sure to find them out on the day of their espousals. If they
have their enemies - as all espoused men have - this is the hour and
the power of their enemies. The day on which any man's espousals are
published is a small and local judgment-day to him. For all the men,
and, especially, all the women, who have ever been injured by him, or
who have injured themselves upon him; all the men and all the
women who for any reason, and for no reason, hate both him and his
happiness, - their tongues and their pens will take no sleep till they
have got his contract if they can, broken off. And even when the
bridegroom is too innocent, or the bride too true, or God too good to
let the contract continue long to be broken off, that great goodness of
God and that great trust of his contracted bride will only make the
bridegroom walk henceforth more softly and rejoice with more
trembling. And that is a most excellent mind. I know no better mind in
which any man, guilty or innocent, can enter on a married life. I
sometimes tell the bridegrooms that I can take a liberty with to keep
saying to themselves all the way up to the marriage altar the tenth
verse of the 103rd psalm; as well as when they come up afterwards to
the baptismal font: "He hath not dealt with us after our sins nor
rewarded us after our iniquities." And it is surely Beulah itself, at its very best, it is surely Beulah above itself, when a happy bridegroom is
full of that humble and happy mind, and when he is in one and the
same moment reconciled both to his bride on earth and to his God and
Father in heaven. In this land, therefore, in the land of Beulah, the
contract between the bride and the bridegroom is renewed; yea, as
the bridegroom rejoiceth over his bride, so shall thy God rejoice over
thee.
The salaams and salutations also that they were met with as often
as they went out to walk in the streets thereof were a constant
surprise, satisfaction, and sweetness to the fearful pilgrims. No
passer-by ever once frowned or scowled upon them because their
faces were Zionward, as they do in our cities. No one ever treated
them with scorn or contempt because they were poor or unlettered.
No man's face either turned dark at them or was turned away from
them as they passed up the street. They never, all the time they abode
in Beulah, took to the lanes of the city to escape the unkind looks of
any of its citizens. Greatheart's hand was never away from his helmet.
His helmet was never well on his head. His always bare and
unhelmeted head said to all the men of Beulah, I love and honour and
trust you. You would not hurt a hair of my head. And so on, till all the
streets of Beulah were one buzz of salutation, congratulation, and
benediction. Here they heard voices from out of the city, loud voices,
saying, Say ye to the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy salvation cometh;
behold, his reward is with him. Here all the inhabitants of the country
called them the holy people, the redeemed of the Lord, sought out, a
city not forsaken.
Now, as they walked in this land they had more rejoicing than in
parts more remote from the kingdom to which they were bound. And
still drawing nigh to that city they had yet a more perfect view thereof.
It was builded of pearls and precious stones, also the street thereof
was paved with gold, so that by reason of the natural glory of the city
and the reflection of the sunbeams upon it, Christian with desire fell
sick. Hopeful also had a fit or two of the same disease. Wherefore here
they lay by it awhile, crying out because of their pangs, If you see my
beloved, tell him that I am sick of love. There are in all good cases of
recovery three successive stages of soul-sickness. True, soul-sickness
always runs its own course, and it always runs its own course in its
own order. This special sickness first shows itself when the soul
becomes sick with sin. We have that sickness set forth in many a
psalm, notably in the thirty-eighth psalm; and in a multitude of other
scriptures, both old and new, this evil disease is dealt with if we had
only the eyes and the heart to read such scriptures. The second stage
of this sickness is when a sinner is not so much sick with the sin that
dwelleth in him as sick of himself. Sinfulness in its second stage
becomes so incorporate with the sinner's whole life - sin so becomes the sinner's very nature, and, indeed, himself, - that all his former
loathing of sin passes over henceforth into loathing of himself. This is
the most desperate stage in any man's sickness; but, bad as it is,
incurable as it is, it must be passed into before the third stage of the
healing process can either be experienced or understood. In the case
in hand, by the time the pilgrims had come to Beulah they had all had
their full share of sin and of themselves till they here entered on an
altogether new experience. "Christian with desire fell sick," we read,
"and Hopeful also had a fit or two of the same disease. Wherefore here
they lay by it a while, crying out because of their pangs, If you see my
beloved, tell him that I am sick of love." David, Paul, Bernard, Bunyan
himself, Rutherford, Brainerd, M'Cheyne, and many others crowd in
upon the mind. I shall but instance John Flavel and Mrs. Jonathan
Edwards, and so close. John Flavel being once on a journey set himself
to improve the time by meditation, when his mind grew intent, till at
length he had such ravishing tastes of heavenly joys, and such a full
assurance of his interest therein, that he utterly lost the sight and
sense of this world and all its concerns, so that for hours he knew not
where he was. At last, perceiving himself to be faint, he sat down at a
spring, where he refreshed himself, earnestly desiring, if it were the
will of God, that he might there leave the world. His spirit reviving, he
finished his journey in the same delightful frame, and all that night the
joy of the Lord still overflowed him so that he seemed an inhabitant of
the other world. The only other case of love-sickness I shall touch on
to-night I take from under the pen of a sin-sick and love-sick author,
who has been truthfully described as "one of the first, if not the very
first, of the masters of human reason," and, again, as "one of the
greatest of the sons of men." "There is a young lady in New-haven,"
says Edwards, "who is so loved of that Great Being who made and
rules the world, that there are certain seasons in which this Great
Being in some way or other invisible comes to her and fills her mind
with exceeding sweet delight, so that she hardly cares for anything but
to meditate upon Him. She looks soon to dwell wholly with Him, and
to be ravished with His love and delight for ever. Therefore, if you
present all this world before her, with the richest of its treasures, she
disregards it and cares not for it, and is unmindful of any pain or
affliction. She has a strange sweetness in her mind, and a singular piety in her affections; is most just and conscientious in all her
conduct; and you could not persuade her to do anything wrong or
sinful, if you would give her the whole world. She loves to be alone,
walking in the fields and groves, and seems to have some one invisible
always communing with her." And so on, all through her seraphic
history. "Now, if such things are too enthusiastic," says the author of A Careful and a Strict Enquiry into the Freedom of the Will, "if such
things are the offspring of a distempered brain, let my brain be
possessed evermore of that blessed distemper! If this be distraction, I
pray God that the whole world of mankind may all be seized with this
benign, meek, beneficent, beatific, glorious distraction! The peace of
God that passeth all understanding; rejoicing with joy unspeakable
and full of glory; God shining in our hearts, to give the light of the
knowledge of God in the face of Jesus Christ; with open face beholding
as in a glass the glory of God, and being changed into the same image
from glory to glory, even as by the spirit of the Lord; being called out
of darkness into marvellous light, and having the day-star arise in our
hearts! What a sweet distraction is that! And out of what a heavenly
distemper and out of what a sane enthusiasm has all that come to us!"
"More I would speak: but all my words are faint;
Celestial Love, what eloquence can paint?
No more, by mortal words, can be expressed,
But all Eternity shall tell the rest."
THE SWELLING OF JORDAN
"The swelling of Jordan." - Jeremiah.
"Fore-fancy your deathbed," says Samuel Rutherford. "Take an
essay," he says in his greatest book, that perfect mine of gold and
jewels, Christ Dying and Drawing Sinners to Himself - "Take an essay
and a lift at your death, and look at it before it actually comes to your
door." And so we shall. Since it is appointed to all men once to die, and after death the judgment; and since our death and our judgment are
the only two things that we are absolutely sure about in our whole
future, we shall henceforth fore-fancy those two events much more
than we have done in the past. And to assist us in that; to quicken our
fancy, to kindle it, to captivate it, and to turn our fancy wholly to our
salvation, we have all the entrancing river-scenes in the Pilgrim's
Progress set before us; a succession of scenes in which Bunyan
positively revels in his exquisite fancies, clothing them as he does, all
the time, in language of the utmost beauty, tenderness, pathos, power,
and dignity. Let us take our stand, then, on the bank of the river and
watch how pilgrim after pilgrim behaves himself in those terrible
waters. We are all voluntary spectators to-night, but we shall all be
compulsory performers before we know where we are.
On entering the river even Christian suddenly began to sink.
Forefancy that. All the words he spake still tended to discover that he
had great horror of mind and hearty fears that he would die in that
river; here also he was much in the troublesome thoughts of the sins
he had committed both since and before he began to be a pilgrim.
Fore-fancy that also, all you converted young men. Hopeful, therefore,
had much to do to keep his brother's head above water; yea,
sometimes he would be quite gone down, and then in a while he
would rise up again half-dead. Then I saw in my dream that Christian
was in a muse a while; to whom also Hopeful added this word, "Be of
good cheer; Jesus Christ maketh thee whole." And with that Christian
broke out with a loud voice, "When thou passest through the waters I
will be with thee, and through the rivers they shall not overflow thee."
Then they both took courage and the enemy was after that as still as a
stone till they were gone over. Fore-fancy that also. There is one other
thing out of that crossing that I hope I shall remember when I am in
the river: "Be of good cheer," said Hopeful to his sinking fellow - "Be of 197
good cheer, my brother, I feel the bottom, and it is good." "Hold His hand fast," wrote Samuel Rutherford to Lady Kenmure. "He knows all
the fords. You may be ducked in His company but never drowned. Put
in your foot, then, and wade after Him. And be sure you set your feet
always upon the stepping-stones." Yes; fore-fancy those stepping-
stones, and often practise your feet upon them before the time.
"Good woman," said the post to Christiana, the wife of Christian
the pilgrim; "Hail, good woman, I bring thee tidings that the Master
calleth for thee, and expecteth thee to stand in His presence in clothes
of immortality within this ten days." Fore-fancy that also. Now the day
was come that she must be gone. And so the road was full of people to
see her take her journey. But, behold, all the banks beyond the river
were full of horses and chariots which were come down from above to
accompany her to the city gate. So she came forth and entered the
river with a beckon of farewell to those that followed her to the river-
side. And thus she went and entered in at the gate with all the
ceremonies of joy that her husband had done before her. Fore-fancy, if
you can, some of those ceremonies of joy.
When Mr. Fearing came to the river where was no bridge, there
again he was in a heavy case. Now, he said, he should be drowned for
ever and never see that Face with comfort he had come so many miles
to behold. And here also I took notice of what was very remarkable;
the water of that river was lower at this time than ever I saw it in all
my life. So he went over at last not much above wet-shod. Fore-fancy
and fore-arrange, if it be possible, for a passage like that. When he was
going tip to the gate Mr. Greatheart began to take his leave of him, and
to wish him a good reception above. "I shall," he said, "I shall." Be foreassured, also, of a reception like that.
In process of time there came a post to the town again, and his
business was this time with Mr. Ready-to-halt. So he inquired him out
and said to him, "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." After this Mr. Ready-to-halt called
for his fellow-pilgrims and told them, saying, "I am sent for, and God
shall surely visit you also. These crutches," he said, "I bequeath to my son that he may tread in my steps, with a hundred warm wishes that
he may prove better than I have done." When he came to the brink of the river, he said, "Now I shall have no more need of these crutches,
since yonder are horses and chariots for me to ride on." The last
words he was heard to say were, "Welcome life!" Let all ready-to-halt hearts fore-fancy all that.
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. When I am gone, Mr. Valiant, I desire that you would bury it in a
dunghill." This done, and the day being come in which he was to
depart, he entered the river as the rest. His last words were, "Hold out