'As he thinketh in his heart, so is he.' - A Proverb.
humiliation accepted every day that you would at one time have
spurned from you with passion; and then your own vile, hateful,
unbearable heart-all that is ordained of God to bring you down, down
to the dust; and this last, your own heart, will bring you down to the
very depths of hell. And thus, after all your other opportunities and
ordinances of humility are embraced and exhausted, then the plunges,
the depths, the abysses of humility that God will open up in your own
heart will all work in you a meetness for heaven and a ripeness for its
glory, that shall for ever reward you for all that degradation and
shame and self-despair which have been to you the sure way and the
only way to everlasting life.
Chapter 21 - MASTER THINK-WELL, THE LATE AND ONLY SON OF
OLD MR. MEDITATION
'As he thinketh in his heart, so is he.' - A Proverb.
It was a truly delightful sight to see old Mr. Meditation and his
only son, our little Think-well, out among the woods and hedgerows
of a summer afternoon. Little Think-well was the son of his father's
old age. That dry tree used to say to himself that if ever he was
intrusted with a son of his own, he would make his son his most
constant and his most confidential companion all his days. And so he
did. The eleventh of Deuteronomy had become a greater and greater
text to that childless man as he passed the mid-time of his days.
'Therefore,' he used to say to himself, as he walked abroad alone, and
as other men passed him with their children at their side - 'Therefore
ye shall teach them to your children, speaking of them when thou
sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, when thou
liest down and when thou risest up.
And thou shalt write them upon the doorposts of thine house and
upon thy gates.' And thus it was that, as the little lad grew up, there
was no day of all the seven that he so much numbered and waited for
as was that sacred day on which his father was free to take little
Think-well by the hand and lead him out to talk to him. 'No,' said an
Edinburgh boy to his mother the other day - 'No, mother,' he said, 'I
have no liking for these Sunday papers with their poor stories and
their pictures. I am to read the Bible stories and the Bible biographies
first.' He is not my boy. I wish my boys were all like him. 'And Plutarch
on week-days for such a boy,' I said to his mother. How to keep a
decent shred of the old sanctification on the modern Sabbath-day is
the anxious inquiry of many fathers and mothers among us. My friend
with her manly-minded boy, and Mr. Meditation with little Think-well
had no trouble in that matter.
'And once I said,
As I remember, looking round upon those rocks
And hills on which we all of us were born,
That God who made the Great Book of the world
Would bless such piety; -
Never did worthier lads break English bread:
The finest Sunday that the autumn saw,
With all its mealy clusters of ripe nuts,
Could never keep those boys away from church,
Or tempt them to an hour of Sabbath breach,
Leonard and James!'
Think-well and that mother's son.
Old Mr. Meditation, the father, was sprung of a poor but honest
and industrious stock in the city. He had not had many talents or
opportunities to begin with, but he had made the very best of the two
he had. And then, when the two estates of Mr. Fritter-day and Mr. Let-
good-slip were sequestered to the crown, the advisers of the crown
handed over those two neglected estates to Mr. Meditation to improve
them for the common good, and after him to his son, whose name we
know. The steps of a good man are ordered of the Lord, and He
delighteth in his way. I have been young and now am old; yet have I
not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.
Now, this Think-well old Mr. Meditation had by Mrs. Piety, and
she was the daughter of the old Recorder. 'I am Thy servant,' said Mrs.
Piety's son on occasion all his days - 'I am Thy servant and the son of
Thine handmaid.' And at that so dutiful acknowledgment of his a long
procession of the servants of God pass up before our eyes with their
sainted mothers leaning on the arms of their great sons. The Psalmist
and his mother, the Baptist and his mother, our Lord and His mother,
the author of the Fourth Gospel and his mother, Paul's son and
successor in the gospel and his mother and grandmother, the author
of The Confessions and his mother; and, in this noble connection, I
always think of Halyburton and his good mother. And in this ennobling
connection you will all think of your own mother also, and before we
go any further you will all say, I also, O Lord, am Thy servant and the
son of Thine handmaid. 'Fathers and mothers handle children
differently,' says Jeremy Taylor. And then that princely teacher of the
Church of Christ Catholic goes on to tell us how Mrs. Piety handled her
little Think-well which she had borne to Mr. Meditation. After other
things, she said this every night before she took sleep to her tired
eyelids, this: 'Oh give me grace to bring him up. Oh may I always
instruct him with diligence and meekness; govern him with prudence
and holiness; lead him in the paths of religion and justice; never provoking him to wrath, never indulging him in folly, and never
conniving at an unworthy action. Oh sanctify him in his body, soul, and
spirit. Let all his thoughts be pure and holy to the Searcher of hearts;
let his words be true and prudent before men; and may he have the
portion of the meek and the humble in the world to come, and all
through Jesus Christ our Lord!' How could a son get past a father and a
mother like that? Even if, for a season, he had got past them, he would
be sure to come back. Only, their young Think-well never did get past
his father and his mother.
There was not so much word of heredity in his day; but without
so much of the word young Think-well had the whole of the thing. And
as time went on, and the child became more and more the father of
the man, it was seen and spoken of by all the neighbours who knew
the house, how that their only child had inherited all his father's head,
and all his mother's heart, and then that he had reverted to his
maternal grandfather in his so keen and quick sense of right and
wrong. All which, under whatever name it was held, was a most
excellent outfit for our young gentleman.
His old father, good natural head and all, had next to no book-
learning. He had only two or three books that he read a hundred times
over till he had them by heart. And as he sighed over his unlettered lot
he always consoled himself with a saying he had once got out of one of
his old books. The saying of some great authority was to this effect,
that 'an old and simple woman, if she loves Jesus, may be greater than
our great brother Bonaventure.' He did not know who Bonaventure
was, but he always got a reproof again out of his name. Think-well, to
his father's immense delight, was a very methodical little fellow, and
his father and he had orderly little secrets that they told to none. Little
secret plans as to what they were to read about, and think about, and
pray about on certain days of the week and at certain hours of the day
and the night. You must not call the father an old pedant, for the fact
is, it was the son who was the pedant if there was one in that happy
house. The two intimate friends had a word between them they called
agenda. And nobody but themselves knew where they had borrowed
that uncouth word, what language it was, or what it meant. Only in the
old man's tattered pocket-book there were things like this found by
his minister after his death. Indeed, in a museum of such relics this is still to be read under a glass case, and in old Mr. Meditation's
ramshackle hand: 'Monday, death;
Tuesday, judgment; Wednesday, heaven; Thursday, hell; Friday, my
past life back to my youth; Saturday, the passion of my Saviour; Lord's
day, creation, salvation, and my own. - M.' And then, on an utterly
illegible page, this: 'Jesus, Thy life and Thy words are a perpetual
sermon to me. I meditate on Thee all the day. Make my memory a
vessel of election. Let all my thoughts be plain, honest, pious, simple,
prudent, and charitable, till Thou art pleased to draw the curtain and
let me see Thyself, O Eternal Jesu!' If I had time I could tell you more
about Think-well's quaint old father. But the above may be better than
nothing about the rare old gentleman.
A great authority has said - two great authorities have said in
their enigmatic way, that a 'dry light is ever the best.' That may be so
in some cases and to some uses, but nothing can be more sure than
this, that the light that little Think-well got from his father's head was
excellently drenched in his mother's heart. The sweet moisture of his
mother's heart mixed up beautifully with his father's drier head and
made a fine combination in their one boy as it turned out. Her
minister, preaching on one occasion on my text for to-night, had said -
and she had such a memory for a sermon that she had never forgotten
it, but had laid it up in her heart on the spot - 'As the philosopher's
stone,' the old-fashioned preacher had said, 'turns all metals into gold,
as the bee sucks honey out of every flower, and as the good stomach
sucks out some sweet and wholesome nourishment out of whatever it
takes into itself, so doth a holy heart, so far as sanctified, convert and
digest all things into spiritual and useful thoughts. This you may see in
Psalm cvii. 43.' And in her plain, silent, hidden, motherly way Mistress
Piety adorned her old minister's doctrine of the holy heart that he was
always preaching about, till she shared her soft and holy heart with
her son, as his father had shared his clear and deep, if too unlearned,
head.
We have one grandmother at least signalised in the Bible; but no
grandfather, so far as I remember. But amends are made for that in the
Holy War. For Think-well would never have been the man he became
had it not been for the old Recorder, his grandfather on his mother's
side. Some superficial people said that there was too much severity in the old Recorder; but his grandson who knew him best, never said
that. He was the best of men, his grandson used to stand up for him,
and say, I shall never forget the debt I owe him. It was he who taught
me first to make conscience of my thoughts. Indeed, as for my secret
thoughts, I had taken no notice of them till that summer afternoon
walk home from church, when we sat down among the bushes and he
showed me on the spot the way. And I can say to his memory that
scarce for one waking hour have I any day forgotten the lesson. The
lesson how to make a conscience, as he said, of all my thoughts about
myself and about all my neighbours. Such, then, were Think-well's
more immediate ancestors, and such was the inheritance that they all
taken together had left him.
Think-well! Think-well! My brethren, what do you think, what do
you say, as you hear that fine name? I will tell you what I think and say.
If I overcome, and have that white stone given to me, and in that stone
a new name written which no man shall know saving he that receiveth
it; and if it were asked me here to-night what I would like my new
name to be, I would say on the spot, Let it be THINK-WELL! Let my
new name among the saved and the sanctified before the throne be
THINK-WELL! As, O God, it will be the bottomless pit to me, if I am
forsaken of Thee for ever to my evil thoughts. Send down and prevent
it. Stir up all Thy strength and give commandment to prevent it. Do
Thou prevent it. For, after I have done all, - after I have made all my
overt acts blameless, after I have tamed my tongue which no man can
tame - all that only the more throws my thoughts into a very devil's
garden, a thicket of hell, a secret swamp of sin to the uttermost. How,
then, am I ever to attain to that white stone and that shining name?
And that in a world of such truth that every man's name and title there
shall be a strict and true and entirely accurate and adequate
description and exposition of the very thoughts and intents and
imaginations of his heart? How shall I, how shall you, my brethren,
ever have 'Think-well' written on our forehead? - Well, with God all
things are possible. With God, with a much meditating mind, and a
true and humble and tender heart, and a pure conscience, a
conscience void of offence, working together with Him - He, with all
these inheritances and all these environments working together with
Him, will at last enable us, you and me, to lift up such a clear and transparent forehead. But not without our constant working together.
We must ourselves make head, and heart, and, especially, conscience
of all our thoughts - for a long lifetime we must do that. The Ductor
Dubitantium has a deep chapter on 'The Thinking Conscience.' And
what a reproof to many of us lies in the mere name! For how much
evil-thinking and evil-speaking we have all been guilty of through our
unthinking conscience and through a zeal for God, but a zeal without
knowledge. Look back at the history of the Church and see; look back
at your own history in the Church and see. Yes, make conscience of
your thoughts: but let it first be an instructed conscience, a thinking
conscience, a conscience full of the best and the clearest light. And
then let us also make ourselves a new heart and a new spirit, as
Ezekiel has it. For our hearts are continually perverting and polluting
and poisoning our thoughts. That is a fearful thing that is said about
the men on whom the flood soon came. You remember what is said
about them, and in explanation and justification of the flood. God saw,
it is said, that every imagination of the thoughts of their hearts was
evil, and only evil continually. Fearful! Far more fearful than ten
floods! O God, Thou seest us. And Thou seest all the imaginations of
the thoughts of our hearts. Oh give us all a mind and a heart and a
conscience to think of nothing, to fear nothing, to watch and to pray
about nothing compared with our thoughts. 'As for my secret
thoughts,' says the author of the Holy War and the creator of Master