'Oh that my head were waters!' - Jeremiah.
All are but ministers of Love,
And feed His sacred flame.'
Now, if that is true, as it is true, even of earthly and ephemeral love, how much more true is it of the love that is in the immortal soul of
man for the everlasting God? And what a blessed life that already is
when all things that come to us - joy and sorrow, good and evil, nature
and grace, all thoughts, all passions, all delights - are all but so many
ministers to our soul's desire after God, after the Divine Likeness and
for the Beatific Vision.
'Oh! Christ, He is the Fountain,
The deep sweet Well of Love!
The streams on earth I've tasted,
More deep I'll drink above;
There, to an ocean fulness,
His mercy doth expand;
And glory - glory dwelleth
In Emmanuel's land.'
Chapter 19 - MR. WET-EYES
'Oh that my head were waters!' - Jeremiah.
'Tears gain everything.' - Teresa.
Now Mr. Desires-awake, when he saw that he must go on this
errand, besought that they would grant that Mr. Wet-eyes might go
with him. Now this Mr. Wet-eyes was a near neighbour of Mr. Desires-
awake, a poor man, and a man of a broken spirit, yet one that could
speak well to a petition; so they granted that he should go with him.
Wherefore the two men at once addressed themselves to their serious
business. Mr. Desires-awake put his rope upon his head, and Mr. Wet-
eyes went with his hands wringing together. Then said the Prince, And
what is he that is become thy companion in this so weighty a matter?
So Mr. Desires-awake told Emmanuel that this was a poor neighbour
of his, and one of his most intimate associates. And his name, said he,
may it please your most excellent Majesty, is Wet-eyes, of the town of
Mansoul. I know that there are many of that name that are naught,
said he; but I hope it will be no offence to my Lord that I have brought
my poor neighbour with me. Then Mr. Wet-eyes fell on his face to the
ground, and made this apology for his coming with his neighbour to
his Lord: - 'Oh, my Lord,' quoth he, 'what I am I know not myself, nor
whether my name be feigned or true, especially when I begin to think
what some have said, and that is that this name was given me because
Mr. Repentance was my father. But good men have sometimes bad
children, and the sincere do sometimes beget hypocrites. My mother
also called me by this name of mine from my cradle; but whether she
said so because of the moistness of my brain, or because of the
softness of my heart, I cannot tell. I see dirt in mine own tears, and
filthiness in the bottom of my prayers. But I pray Thee (and all this
while the gentleman wept) that Thou wouldst not remember against
us our transgressions, nor take offence at the unqualifiedness of Thy
servants, but mercifully pass by the sin of Mansoul, and refrain from
the magnifying of Thy grace no longer.' So at His bidding they arose,
and both stood trembling before Him.
'His name, may it please your Majesty, is Wet-eyes, of the town of
Mansoul. I know, at the same time, that there are many of that name
that are naught.' Naught, that is, for this great enterprise now in hand.
And thus it was that Mr. Desires-awake in setting out for the Prince's
pavilion besought that Mr. Wet-eyes might go with him. Mr. Desires-awake felt keenly how much might turn on who his companion was
that day, and therefore he took Mr. Wet-eyes with him. David would
have made a most excellent associate for Mr. Desires-awake that day. 'I
am weary with my groaning; all the night make I my bed to swim; I
water my couch with my tears.' And again, 'Rivers of waters run down
mine eyes, because they keep not Thy law.' This, then, was the only
manner of man that Mr. Desires-awake would stake his life alongside
of that day. 'I have seen some persons weep for the loss of sixpence,'
said Mr. Desires-awake, 'or for the breaking of a glass, or at some
trifling accident. And they cannot pretend to have their tears valued at
a bigger rate than they will confess their passion to be when they
weep. Some are vexed for the dirtying of their linen, or some such
trifle, for which the least passion is too big an expense. And thus it is
that a man cannot tell his own heart simply by his tears, or the truth of
his repentance by those short gusts of sorrow.' Well, then, my
brethren, tell me, Do you think that Mr. Desires-awake would have
taken you that day to the pavilion door? Would his head have been
safe with you for his associate? Your associates see many gusts in your
heart. Do they ever see your eyes red because of your sin? Did you
ever weep so much as one good tear-drop for pure sin? One true tear:
not because your sins have found you out, but for secret sins that you
know can never find you out in this world? And, still better, do you
ever weep in secret places not for sin, but for sinfulness - which is a
very different matter? Do you ever weep to yourself and to God alone
over your incurably wicked heart? If not, then weep for that with all
your might, night and day. No mortal man has so much cause to weep
as you have. Go to God on the spot, on every spot, and say with Bishop
Andrewes, who is both Mr. Desires-awake and Mr. Wet-eyes in one, say
with that deep man in his Private Devotions, say: 'I need more grief, O
God; I plainly need it. I can sin much, but I cannot correspondingly
repent. O Lord, give me a molten heart. Give me tears; give me a
fountain of tears. Give me the grace of tears. Drop down, ye heavens,
and bedew the dryness of my heart. Give me, O Lord, this saving grace.
No grace of all the graces were more welcome to me. If I may not
water my couch with my tears, nor wash Thy feet with my tears, at
least give me one or two little tears that Thou mayest put into Thy
bottle and write in Thy book!' If your heart is hard, and your eyes dry, make something like that your continual prayer.
'A poor-man,' said Mr. Desires-awake, about his associate. 'Mr.
Wet-eyes is a poor man, and a man of a broken spirit.' 'Let Oliver take
comfort in his dark sorrows and melancholies. The quantity of sorrow
he has, does it not mean withal the quantity of sympathy he has, and
the quantity of faculty and of victory he shall yet have? Our sorrow is
the inverted image of our nobleness. The depth of our despair
measures what capability and height of claim we have to hope. Black
smoke, as of Tophet, filling all your universe, it can yet by true heart-
energy become flame, and the brilliancy of heaven. Courage!'
'This is the angel of the earth,
And she is always weeping.'
'A poor man, and a man of a broken spirit, and yet one that can
speak well to a petition.' Yes; and you will see how true that eulogy of
Mr. Wet-eyes is if you will run over in your mind the outstanding
instances of successful petitioners in the Scriptures. As you come
down the Old and the New Testaments you will be astonished and
encouraged to find how prevailing a fountain of tears always is with
God. David with his swimming bed; Jeremiah with his head waters;
Mary Magdalene over His feet with her welling eyes; Peter's bitter cry
all his life long as often as he heard a cock crow, and so on. So on
through a multitude whose names are written in heaven, and who
went up to heaven all the way with inconsolable sorrow because of
their sins. They took words and turned to the Lord; but, - better than
the best words, - they took tears, or rather, their tears took them. The
best words, the words that the Holy Ghost Himself teacheth, if they are
without tears, will avail nothing. Even inspired words will not pass
through; while, all the time, tears, mere tears, without words, are
omnipotent with God. Words weary Him, while tears overcome and
command Him. He inhabits the tears of Israel. Therefore, also, now,
saith the Lord, turn ye unto Me with all your heart, and with weeping
and with mourning. And rend your heart, and not your garments, and
turn unto the Lord your God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to
anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth Him of the evil. It is the
same with ourselves. Tears move us. Tears melt us. We cannot resist
tears. Even counterfeit tears, we cannot be sure that they are not true.
And that is the main reason why our Lord is so good at speaking to a petition. It is because His whole heart, and all the moving passions of
His heart, are in His intercessory office. It is because He still
remembers in the skies His tears, His agonies, and cries. It is because
He is entered into the holiest with His own tears as well as with His
own blood. And it is because He will remain and abide before the
Father the Man of Sorrows till our last petition is answered, and till
God has wiped the last tear from our eyes. When He was in the coasts
of Caesarea-Philippi, our Lord felt a great curiosity to find out who the
people thereabouts took Him to be. And it must have touched His
heart to be told that some men had insight enough to insist that He
was the prophet Jeremiah come back again to weep over Jerusalem.
He is Elias, said some. No; He is John the Baptist risen from the dead,
said others. No, no; said some men who saw deeper than their
neighbours. His head is waters, and His eyes are a fountain of tears. Do
you not see that He so often escapes into a lodge in the wilderness to
weep for our sins? No; He is neither John nor Elijah; He is Jeremiah
come back again to weep over Jerusalem! And even an apostle, looking
back at the beginning of our Lord's priesthood on earth, says that He
was prepared for His office by prayers and supplications, and with
strong crying and tears. From all that, then, let us learn and lay to
heart that if we would have one to speak well to our petitions, the Man
of Sorrows is that one. And then, as His remembrancers on our behalf,
let us engage all those among our friends who have the same grace of
tears. But, above all, let us be men of tears ourselves. For all the tears
and all the intercessions of our great High Priest, and all the
importunings of our best friends to boot, will avail us nothing if our
own eyes are dry. Let us, then, turn back to Bishop Andrewes's prayer
for the grace of tears, and offer it every night with him till our head,
like his, is holy waters, and till, like him, we get beauty for ashes, the
oil of joy for mourning, and the garment of praise for the spirit of
heaviness.
'Clear as tears' is a Persian proverb when they would praise their
purest spring water. But Mr. Wet-eyes has from henceforth spoiled the
point of that proverb for us. 'I see,' he said, 'dirt in mine own tears, and
filthiness in the bottom of my prayers.' Mr. Wet-eyes is hopeless.
Mr. Wet-eyes is intolerable. Mr. Wet-eyes would weary out the
patience of a saint. There is no satisfying or pacifying or ever pleasing this morbose Mr. Wet-eyes. The man is absolutely insufferable. Why,
prayers and tears that the most and best of God's people cannot attain
to are spurned and spat upon by Mr. Wet-eyes. The man is beside
himself with his tears. For, tears that would console and assure us for
a long season after them, he will weep over them as we scarce weep
over our worst sins. His closet always turns all his comeliness to
corruption. He comes out of his closet after all night in it with his
psalm-book wrung to pulp, and with all his righteousnesses torn to
filthy rags; till all men escape Mr. Wet-eyes' society - all men except
Mr. Desires-awake. I will go out on your errand now, said Mr. Desires-
awake, if you will send Mr. Wet-eyes with me. And thus the two twin
sons of sorrow for sin and hunger after holiness went out arm in arm
to the great pavilion together, Mr. Desires-awake with his rope upon
his head, and Mr. Wet-eyes with his hands wringing together. Thus
they went to the Prince's pavilion. I gave you a specimen of one of Mr.
Wet-eyes' prayers in the introduction to this discourse, and you did
not discover much the matter with it, did you? You did not discover
much filthiness in the bottom of that prayer, did you? I am sure you
did not. Ah! but that is because you have not yet got Mr. Wet-eyes'
eyes. When you get his eyes; when you turn and employ upon
yourselves and upon your tears and upon your prayers his always-wet
eyes, - then you will begin to understand and love and take sides with
this inconsolable soul, and will choose his society rather than that of
any other man - as often, at any rate, as you go out to the Prince's
pavilion door.
'Mr. Repentance was my father, but good men sometimes have
bad children, and the most sincere do sometimes beget great
hypocrites. But, I pray Thee, take not offence at the unqualifiedness of
Thy servant.' Take good note of that uncommon expression,
'unqualifiedness,' in Mr. Wet-eyes' confession, all of you who are
attending to what is being said. Lay 'unqualifiedness' to heart. Learn
how to qualify yourselves before you begin to pray. In his fine
comment on the 137th Psalm, Matthew Henry discourses delightfully
on what he calls 'deliberate tears.' Look up that raciest of
commentators, and see what he there says about the deliberate tears
of the captives in Babylon. It was the lack of sufficient deliberation in
his tears that condemned and alarmed Mr. Wet-eyes that day. He felt now that he had not deliberated and qualified himself properly before
coming to the Prince's pavilion. Do not take up your time or your
thoughts with mere curiosities, either in your Bible or in any other
good book, says A Kempis. Read such things rather as may yield
compunction to your heart. And again, give thyself to compunction,
and thou shalt gain much devotion thereby. Mr. Wet-eyes, good and
true soul, was afraid that he had not qualified himself enough by
compunctious reading and self-recollection. The sincere, he sobbed
out, do often beget hypocrites! 'Our hearts are so deceitful in the
matter of repentance,' says Jeremy Taylor, 'that the masters of the
spiritual life are fain to invent suppletory arts and stratagems to
secure the duty.' Take not offence at the lack of all such suppletory arts
and stratagems in thy servant, said poor Wet-eyes. All which would
mean in the most of us: Take not offence at my rawness and ignorance
in the spiritual life, and especially in the life of inward devotion. Do
not count up against me the names and the numbers and the prices of
my poems, and plays, and novels, and newspapers, and then the
number of my devotional books. Compare not my outlay on my body
and on this life with my outlay on my soul and on the life to come. Oh,
take not mortal offence at the shameful and scandalous
unqualifiedness of Thy miserable servant. My father and my mother
read the books of the soul, but they have left behind them a dry-eyed
reprobate in me! Say that to-night as you look around on the grievous
famine of the suppletory arts and stratagems of repentance and
reformation in your heathenish bedroom.
Spiritual preaching; real face to face, inward, verifiable,
experimental, spiritual preaching; preaching to a heart in the agony of
its sanctification; preaching to men whose whole life is given over to
making them a new heart - that kind of preaching is scarcely ever
heard in our day. There is great intellectual ability in the pulpit of our
day, great scholarship, great eloquence, and great earnestness, but
spiritual preaching, preaching to the spirit - 'wet-eyed' preaching - is a
lost art.
At the same time, if that living art is for the present overlaid and
lost, the literature of a deeper spiritual day abides to us, and our
spiritually-minded people are not confined to us, they are not
dependent on us. Well, this is the Communion week with us yet once more. Will you not, then, make it the beginning of some of the
suppletory arts and stratagems of the spiritual life with yourselves? I
cannot preach as I would like on such subjects, but I can tell you who
could, and who, though dead, yet speak by their immortal books. You
have the wet-eyed psalms; but they are beyond the depth of most
people. Their meaning seems to us on the surface, and we all read and
sing them, but let us not therefore think that we understand them. I
cannot compel you to read the books, and to read little else but the
books, that would in time, and by God's blessing, lead you into the
depths of the psalms; but I can wash my hands so far in making their
names so many household words among my people. The Way to
Christ, the Imitation of Christ, the Theologia Germanica, Tauler's
Sermons, the Mortification of Sin, and Indwelling Sin in Believers, the
Saint's Rest, the Holy Living and Dying, the Privata Sacra, the Private