Bunyan Characters

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BUNYAN CHARACTERS: FIRST SERIES
BEING LECTURES DELIVERED IN ST. GEORGE'S FREE CHURCH EDINBURGH
BY ALEXANDER WHYTE, D.D.


INTRODUCTORY


'The express image' [Gr. 'the character'].--Heb. 1. 3.

The word 'character' occurs only once in the New Testament, and that is
in the passage in the prologue of the Epistle to the Hebrews, where the
original word is translated 'express image' in our version. Our Lord is
the Express Image of the Invisible Father. No man hath seen God at any
time. The only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath
declared Him. The Father hath sealed His divine image upon His Son, so
that he that hath seen the Son hath seen the Father. The Son is thus the
Father's character stamped upon and set forth in human nature. The Word
was made flesh. This is the highest and best use to which our so
expressive word 'character' has ever been put, and the use to which it is
put when we speak of Bunyan's Characters partakes of the same high sense
and usage. For it is of the outstanding good or evil in a man that we
think when we speak of his character. It is really either of his
likeness or unlikeness to Jesus Christ we speak, and then, through Him,
his likeness or unlikeness to God Himself. And thus it is that the
adjective 'moral' usually accompanies our word 'character'--moral or
immoral. A man's character does not have its seat or source in his body;
character is not a physical thing: not even in his mind; it is not an
intellectual thing. Character comes up out of the will and out of the
heart. There are more good minds, as we say, in the world than there are
good hearts. There are more clever people than good people;
character,--high, spotless, saintly character,--is a far rarer thing in
this world than talent or even genius. Character is an infinitely better
thing than either of these, and it is of corresponding rarity. And yet
so true is it that the world loves its own, that all men worship talent,
and even bodily strength and bodily beauty, while only one here and one
there either understands or values or pursues moral character, though it
is the strength and the beauty and the sweetness of the soul.

We naturally turn to Bishop Butler when we think of moral character.
Butler is an author who has drawn no characters of his own. Butler's
genius was not creative like Shakespeare's or Bunyan's. Butler had not
that splendid imagination which those two masters in character-painting
possessed, but he had very great gifts of his own, and he has done us
very great service by means of his gifts. Bishop Butler has helped many
men in the intelligent formation of their character, and what higher
praise could be given to any author? Butler will lie on our table all
winter beside Bunyan; the bishop beside the tinker, the philosopher
beside the poet, the moralist beside the evangelical minister.

In seeking a solid bottom for our subject, then, we naturally turn to
Butler. Bunyan will people the house for us once it is built, but Butler
lays bare for us the naked rock on which men like Bunyan build and
beautify and people the dwelling-place of God and man. What exactly is
this thing, character, we hear so much about? we ask the sagacious
bishop. And how shall we understand our own character so as to form it
well till it stands firm and endures? 'Character,' answers Butler, in
his bald, dry, deep way, 'by character is meant that temper, taste,
disposition, whole frame of mind from whence we act in one way rather
than another . . . those principles from which a man acts, when they
become fixed and habitual in him we call his character . . . And
consequently there is a far greater variety in men's characters than
there is in the features of their faces.' Open Bunyan now, with Butler's
keywords in your mind, and see the various tempers, tastes, dispositions,
frames of mind from which his various characters act, and which, at
bottom, really make them the characters, good or bad, which they are. See
the principles which Bunyan has with such inimitable felicity embodied
and exhibited in their names, the principles within them from which they
have acted till they have become a habit and then a character, that
character which they themselves are and will remain. See the variety of
John Bunyan's characters, a richer and a more endless variety than are
the features of their faces. Christian and Christiana, Obstinate and
Pliable, Mr. Fearing and Mr. Feeblemind, Temporary and Talkative, Mr. By-
ends and Mr. Facing-both-ways, Simple, Sloth, Presumption, that brisk lad
Ignorance, and the genuine Mr. Brisk himself. And then Captain Boasting,
Mr. High-mind, Mr. Wet-Eyes, and so on, through a less known (but equally
well worth knowing) company of municipal and military characters in the
_Holy War_.

We shall see, as we proceed, how this and that character in Bunyan was
formed and deformed. But let us ask in this introductory lecture if we
can find out any law or principle upon which all our own characters, good
or bad, are formed. Do our characters come to be what they are by
chance, or have we anything to do in the formation of our own characters,
and if so, in what way? And here, again, Butler steps forward at our
call with his key to our own and to all Bunyan's characters in his hand,
and in three familiar and fruitful words he answers our question and
gives us food for thought and solemn reflection for a lifetime. There
are but three steps, says Butler, from earth to heaven, or, if you will,
from earth to hell--acts, habits, character. All Butler's prophetic
burden is bound up in these three great words--acts, habits, character.
Remember and ponder these three words, and you will in due time become a
moral philosopher. Ponder and practise them, and you will become what is
infinitely better--a moral man. For acts, often repeated, gradually
become habits, and habits, long enough continued, settle and harden and
solidify into character. And thus it is that the severe and laconic
bishop has so often made us shudder as he demonstrated it to us that we
are all with our own hands shaping our character not only for this world,
but much more for the world to come, by every act we perform, by every
word we speak, almost by every breath we draw. Butler is one of the most
terrible authors in the world. He stands on our nearest shelf with Dante
on one side of him and Pascal on the other. He is indeed terrible, but
it is with a terror that purifies the heart and keeps the life in the
hour of temptation. Paul sometimes arms himself with the same terror;
only he composes in another style than that of Butler, and, with all his
vivid intensity, he calls it the terror of the Lord. Paul and Bunyan are
of the same school of moralists and stylists; Butler went to school to
the Stoics, to Aristotle, and to Plato.

Our Lord Himself came to be the express image He was and is by living and
acting under this same universal law of human life--acts, habits,
character. He was made perfect on this same principle. He learned
obedience both by the things that He did, and the things that He
suffered. Butler says in one deep place, that benevolence and justice
and veracity are the basis of all good character in God and in man, and
thus also in the God-man. And those three foundation stones of our
Lord's character settled deeper and grew stronger to bear and to suffer
as He went on practising acts and speaking words of justice, goodness,
and truth. And so of all the other elements of His moral character. Our
Lord left Gethsemane a much more submissive and a much more surrendered
man than He entered it. His forgiveness of injuries, and thus His
splendid benevolence, had not yet come to its climax and crown till He
said on the cross, 'Father, forgive them'. And, as He was, so are we in
this world. This world's evil and ill-desert made it but the better
arena and theatre for the development and the display of His moral
character; and the same instruments that fashioned Him into the perfect
and express image He was and is, are still, happily, in full operation.
Take that divinest and noblest of all instruments for the carving out and
refining of moral character, the will of God. How our Lord made His own
unselfish and unsinful will to bow to silence and to praise before the
holy will of His Father, till that gave the finishing touch to His always
sanctified will and heart! And, happily, that awful and blessed
instrument for the formation of moral character is still active and
available to those whose ambition rises to moral character, and who are
aiming at heaven in all they do and all they suffer upon the earth.
Gethsemane has gone out till it has covered all the earth. Its cup, if
not in all the depth and strength of its first mixture, still in quite
sufficient bitterness, is put many times in life into every man's hand.
There is not a day, there is not an hour of the day, that the disciple of
the submissive and all-surrendered Son has not the opportunity to say
with his Master, If it be possible, let this cup pass: nevertheless, not
as I will, but as Thou wilt.

It is not in the great tragedies of life only that character is tested
and strengthened and consolidated. No man who is not himself under God's
moral and spiritual instruments could believe how often in the quietest,
clearest, and least tempestuous day he has the chance and the call to
say, Yea, Lord, Thy will be done. And, then, when the confessedly tragic
days and nights come, when all men admit that this is Gethsemane indeed,
the practised soul is able, with a calmness and a peace that confound and
offend the bystanders, to say, to act so that he does not need to say,
Not my will, but Thine. And so of all the other forms and features of
moral character; so of humility and meekness, so of purity and
temperance, so of magnanimity and munificence, so of all self-suppression
and self-extinction, and all corresponding exalting and magnifying and
benefiting of other men. Whatever other passing uses this present world,
so full of trial and temptation and suffering, may have, this surely is
the supreme and final use of it--to be a furnace, a graving-house, a
refining place for human character. Literally all things in this life
and in this world--I challenge you to point out a single exception--work
together for this supreme and only good, the purification, the refining,
the testing, and the approval of human character. Not only so, but we
are all in the very heat of the furnace, and under the very graving iron
and in the very refining fire that our prefigured and predestinated
character needs. Your life and its trials would not suit the necessities
of my moral character, and you would lose your soul beyond redemption if
you exchanged lots with me. You do not put a pearl under the potter's
wheel; you do not cast clay into a refining fire. Abraham's character
was not like David's, nor David's like Christ's, nor Christ's like
Paul's. As Butler says, there is 'a providential disposition of things'
around every one of us, and it is as exactly suited to the flaws and
excrescences, the faults and corruptions of our character as if
Providence had had no other life to make a disposition of things for but
one, and that one our own. Have you discovered that in your life, or any
measure of that? Have you acknowledged to God that you have at last
discovered the true key of your life? Have you given Him the
satisfaction to know that He is not making His providential dispositions
around a stock or a stone, but that He has one under His hand who
understands His hand, and responds to it, and rises up to meet and salute
it?

And we cease to wonder so much at the care God takes of human character,
and the cost He lays out upon it, when we think that it is the only work
of His hands that shall last for ever. It is fit, surely, that the
ephemeral should minister to the eternal, and time to eternity, and all
else in this world to the only thing in this world that shall endure and
survive this world. All else we possess and pursue shall fade and
perish, our moral character shall alone survive. Riches, honours,
possessions, pleasures of all kinds: death, with one stroke of his
desolating hand, shall one day strip us bare to a winding-sheet and a
coffin of all the things we are so mad to possess. But the last enemy,
with all his malice and all his resistless power, cannot touch our moral
character--unless it be in some way utterly mysterious to us that he is
made under God to refine and perfect it. The Express Image carried up to
His Father's House, not only the divine life He had brought hither with
Him when He came to obey and submit and suffer among us; He carried back
more than He brought, for He carried back a human heart, a human life, a
human character, which was and is a new wonder in heaven. He carried up
to heaven all the love to God and angels and men He had learned and
practised on earth, with all the earthly fruits of it. He carried back
His humility, His meekness, His humanity, His approachableness, and His
sympathy. And we see to our salvation some of the uses to which those
parts of His moral character are at this moment being put in His Father's
House; and what we see not now of all the ends and uses and employments
of our Lord's glorified humanity we shall, mayhap, see hereafter. And we
also shall carry our moral character to heaven; it is the only thing we
have worth carrying so far. But, then, moral character is well worth
achieving here and then carrying there, for it is nothing else and
nothing less than the divine nature itself; it is the divine nature
incarnate, incorporate, and made manifest in man. And it is, therefore,
immortal with the immortality of God, and blessed for ever with the
blessedness of God.




EVANGELIST


'Do the work of an evangelist.'--Paul to Timothy.

On the 1st of June 1648 a very bitter fight was fought at Maidstone, in
Kent, between the Parliamentary forces under Fairfax and the Royalists.
Till Cromwell rose to all his military and administrative greatness,
Fairfax was generalissimo of the Puritan army, and that able soldier
never executed a more brilliant exploit than he did that memorable night
at Maidstone. In one night the Royalist insurrection was stamped out and
extinguished in its own blood. Hundreds of dead bodies filled the
streets of the town, hundreds of the enemy were taken prisoners, while
hundreds more, who were hiding in the hop-fields and forests around the
town, fell into Fairfax's hands next morning.

Among the prisoners so taken was a Royalist major who had had a deep hand
in the Maidstone insurrection, named John Gifford, a man who was destined
in the time to come to run a remarkable career. Only, to-day, the day
after the battle, he has no prospect before him but the gallows. On the
night before his execution, by the courtesy of Fairfax, Gifford's sister
was permitted to visit her brother in his prison. The soldiers were
overcome with weariness and sleep after the engagement, and Gifford's
sister so managed it that her brother got past the sentries and escaped
out of the town. He lay hid for some days in the ditches and thickets
around the town till he was able to escape to London, and thence to the
shelter of some friends of his at Bedford. Gifford had studied medicine
before he entered the army, and as soon as he thought it safe he began to
practise his old art in the town of Bedford. Gifford had been a
dissolute man as a soldier, and he became, if possible, a still more
scandalously dissolute man as a civilian. Gifford's life in Bedford was
a public disgrace, and his hatred and persecution of the Puritans in that
town made his very name an infamy and a fear. He reduced himself to
beggary with gambling and drink, but, when near suicide, he came under
the power of the truth, till we see him clothed with rags and with a
great burden on his back, crying out, 'What must I do to be saved?' 'But
at last'--I quote from the session records of his future church at
Bedford--'God did so plentifully discover to him the forgiveness of sins
for the sake of Christ, that all his life after he lost not the light of
God's countenance, no, not for an hour, save only about two days before
he died.' Gifford's conversion had been so conspicuous and notorious
that both town and country soon heard of it: and instead of being ashamed
of it, and seeking to hide it, Gifford at once, and openly, threw in his
lot with the extremest Puritans in the Puritan town of Bedford. Nor
could Gifford's talents be hid; till from one thing to another, we find
the former Royalist and dissolute Cavalier actually the parish minister
of Bedford in Cromwell's so evangelical but otherwise so elastic
establishment.

At this point we open John Bunyan's _Grace Abounding to the Chief of
Sinners_, and we read this classical passage:--'Upon a day the good
providence of God did cast me to Bedford to work in my calling: and in
one of the streets of that town I came where there were three or four
poor women sitting at the door in the sun and talking about the things of
God. But I may say I heard, but I understood not, for they were far
above and out of my reach . . . About this time I began to break my mind
to those poor people in Bedford, and to tell them of my condition, which,
when they had heard, they told Mr. Gifford of me, who himself also took
occasion to talk with me, and was willing to be well persuaded of me
though I think on too little grounds. But he invited me to his house,
where I should hear him confer with others about the dealings of God with
their souls, from all which I still received more conviction, and from
that time began to see something of the vanity and inner wretchedness of
my own heart, for as yet I knew no great matter therein . . . At that
time also I sat under the ministry of holy Mr. Gifford, whose doctrine,
by the grace of God, was much for my stability.' And so on in that
inimitable narrative.

The first minister whose words were truly blessed of God for our
awakening and conversion has always a place of his own in our hearts. We
all have some minister, some revivalist, some faithful friend, or some
good book in a warm place in our heart. It may be a great city preacher;
it may be a humble American or Irish revivalist; it may be _The Pilgrim's
Progress_, or _The Cardiphonia_, or the _Serious Call_--whoever or
whatever it was that first arrested and awakened and turned us into the
way of life, they all our days stand in a place by themselves in our
grateful heart. And John Gifford has been immortalised by John Bunyan,
both in his _Grace Abounding_ and in his _Pilgrim's Progress_. In his
_Grace Abounding_, as we have just seen, and in _The Pilgrim_, Gifford
has his portrait painted in holy oil on the wall of the Interpreter's
house, and again in eloquent pen and ink in the person of Evangelist.

John Gifford had himself made a narrow escape out of the City of
Destruction, and John Bunyan had, by Gifford's assistance, made the same
escape also. The scene, therefore, both within that city and outside the
gate of it, was so fixed in Bunyan's mind and memory that no part of his
memorable book is more memorably put than just its opening page. Bunyan
himself is the man in rags, and Gifford is the evangelist who comes to
console and to conduct him. Bunyan's portraits are all taken from the
life. Brilliant and well-furnished as Bunyan's imagination was, Bedford
was still better furnished with all kinds of men and women, and with all
kinds of saints and sinners. And thus, instead of drawing upon his
imagination in writing his books, Bunyan drew from life. And thus it is
that we see first John Gifford, and then John Bunyan himself at the gate
of the city; and then, over the page, Gifford becomes the evangelist who
is sent by the four poor women to speak to the awakened tinker.

'Wherefore dost thou so cry?' asks Evangelist. 'Because,' replied the
man, 'I am condemned to die.' 'But why are you so unwilling to die,
since this life is so full of evils?' And I suppose we must all hear
Evangelist putting the same pungent question to ourselves every day, at
whatever point of the celestial journey we at present are. Yes; why are
we all so unwilling to die? Why do we number our days to put off our
death to the last possible period? Why do we so refuse to think of the
only thing we are sure soon to come to? We are absolutely sure of
nothing else in the future but death. We may not see to-morrow, but we
shall certainly see the day of our death. And yet we have all our plans
laid for to-morrow, and only one here and one there has any plan laid for
the day of his death. And can it be for the same reason that made the
man in rags unwilling to die? Is it because of the burden on our back?
Is it because we are not fit to go to judgment? And yet the trumpet may
sound summoning us hence before the midnight clock strikes. If this be
thy condition, why standest thou still? Dost thou see yonder shining
light? Keep that light in thine eye. Go up straight to it, knock at the
gate, and it shall be told thee there what thou shalt do next. Burdened
sinner, son of man in rags and terror: What has burdened thee so? What
has torn thy garments into such shameful rags? What is it in thy burden
that makes it so heavy? And how long has it lain so heavy upon thee? 'I
cannot run,' said the man, 'because of the burden on my back.' And it
has been noticed of you that you do not laugh, or run, or dress, or
dance, or walk, or eat, or drink as once you did. All men see that there
is some burden on your back; some sore burden on your heart and your
mind. Do you see yonder wicket gate? Do you see yonder shining light?
There is no light in all the horizon for you but yonder light over the
gate. Keep it in your eye; make straight, and make at once for it, and
He who keeps the gate and keeps the light burning over it, He will tell
you what to do with your burden. He told John Gifford, and He told John
Bunyan, till both their burdens rolled off their backs, and they saw them
no more. What would you not give to-night to be released like them? Do
you not see yonder shining light?

Having set Christian fairly on the way to the wicket gate, Evangelist
leaves him in order to seek out and assist some other seeker. But
yesterday he had set Faithful's face to the celestial city, and he is off
now to look for another pilgrim. We know some of Christian's adventures
and episodes after Evangelist left him, but we do not take up these at
present. We pass on to the next time that Evangelist finds Christian,
and he finds him in a sorry plight. He has listened to bad advice. He
has gone off the right road, he has lost sight of the gate, and all the
thunders and lightnings of Sinai are rolling and flashing out against
him. What doest thou here of all men in the world? asked Evangelist,
with a severe and dreadful countenance. Did I not direct thee to His
gate, and why art thou here? Christian told him that a fair-spoken man
had met him, and had persuaded him to take an easier and shorter way of
getting rid of his burden. Read the whole place for yourselves. The end
of it was that Evangelist set Christian right again, and gave him two
counsels which would be his salvation if he attended to them: Strive to
enter in at the strait gate, and, Take up thy cross daily. He would need
more counsel afterwards than that; but, meantime, that was enough. Let
Christian follow that, and he would before long be rid of his burden.

In the introductory lecture Bishop Butler has been commended and praised
as a moralist, and certainly not one word beyond his deserts; but an
evangelical preacher cannot send any man with the burden of a bad past
upon him to Butler for advice and direction about that. While lecturing
on and praising the sound philosophical and ethical spirit of the great
bishop, Dr. Chalmers complains that he so much lacks the _sal
evangelicum_, the strength and the health and the sweetness of the
doctrines of grace. Legality and Civility and Morality are all good and
necessary in their own places; but he is a cheat who would send a guilt-
burdened and sick-at-heart sinner to any or all of them. The wicket gate
first, and then He who keeps that gate will tell us what to do, and where
next to go; but any other way out of the City of Destruction but by the
wicket gate is sure to land us where it landed Evangelist's quaking and
sweating charge. When Bishop Butler lay on his deathbed he called for
his chaplain, and said, 'Though I have endeavoured to avoid sin, and to
please God to the utmost of my power, yet from the consciousness of my
perpetual infirmities I am still afraid to die.' 'My lord,' said his
happily evangelical chaplain, 'have you forgotten that Jesus Christ is a
Saviour?' 'True,' said the dying philosopher, 'but how shall I know that
He is a Saviour for me?' 'My lord, it is written, "Him that cometh to
Me, I will in no wise cast out."' 'True,' said Butler, 'and I am
surprised that though I have read that Scripture a thousand times, I
never felt its virtue till this moment, and now I die in peace.'