Bunyan Characters

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Now, the first step to the cure of all such hypocrisy, and to the
salvation of our souls, is to know that we are hypocrites, and to know
also what that is in which we are most hypocritical. Well, there are two
absolutely infallible tests of a true hypocrite,--tests warranted to
unmask, expose, and condemn the most finished, refined, and even
evangelical hypocrite in this house to-night, or in all the world. By
far and away the best and swiftest is prayer. True prayer, that is. For
here again our inexpugnable hypocrisy comes in and leads us down to
perdition even in our prayers. There is nothing our Lord more bitterly
and more contemptuously assails the Pharisees for than just the length,
the loudness, the number, and the publicity of their prayers. The truth
is, public prayer, for the most part, is no true prayer at all. It is at
best an open homage paid to secret prayer. We make such shipwrecks of
devotion in public prayer, that if we have a shred of true religion about
us, we are glad to get home and to shut our door. We preach in our
public prayers. We make speeches on public men and on public events in
our public prayers. We see the reporters all the time in our public
prayers. We do everything but pray in our public prayers. And to get
away alone,--what an escape that is from the temptations and defeats of
public prayer! No; public prayer is no test whatever of a hypocrite. A
hypocrite revels in public prayer. It is secret prayer that finds him
out. And even secret prayer will sometimes deceive us. We are crushed
down on our secret knees sometimes, by sheer shame and the strength of
conscience. Fear of exposure, fear of death and hell, will sometimes
make us shut our door. A flood of passing feeling will sometimes make us
pray for a season in secret. Job had all that before him when he said,
'Will the hypocrite delight himself in the Almighty? will he always call
upon God?' No, he will not. And it is just here that the hypocrite and
the true Christian best discover themselves both to God and to
themselves. The true Christian will, as Job again says, pray in secret
till God slays him. He will pray in his dreams; he will pray till death;
he will pray after he is dead. Are you in earnest, then, not to be any
more a hypocrite and to know the infallible marks of such? Ask the key
of your closet door. Ask the chair at your bedside. Ask the watchman
what you were doing and why your light was in so long. Ask the birds of
the air and the beasts of the field and the crows on the ploughed lands
after your solitary walk.

Almost a better test of true and false religion than even secret prayer,
but a test that is far more difficult to handle, is our opinion of
ourselves. In His last analysis of the truly justified man and the truly
reprobate, our Lord made the deepest test to be their opinion of
themselves. 'God, I thank Thee that I am not as this publican,' said the
hypocrite. 'God be merciful to me a sinner,' said the true penitent. And
then this fine principle comes in here--not only to speed the sure
sanctification of a true Christian, but also, if he has skill and courage
to use it, for his assurance and comfort,--that the saintlier he becomes
and the riper for glory, the more he will beat his breast over what yet
abides within his breast. Yes; a man's secret opinion of himself is
almost a better test of his true spiritual state than even secret prayer.
But, then, these two are not competing and exclusive tests; they always
go together and are never found apart. And at the mouth of these two
witnesses every true hypocrite shall be condemned and every true
Christian justified.

Dr. Pusey says somewhere that the perfect hypocrite is the man who has
the truth of God in his mind, but is without the love of God in his
heart. 'Truth without love,' says that saintly scholar, 'makes a
finished Pharisee.' Now we Scottish and Free Church people believe we
have the truth, if any people on the face of the earth have it; and if we
have not love mixed with it, you see where and what we are. We are
called to display a banner because of the truth, but let love always be
our flag-staff. Let us be jealous for the truth, but let it be a godly,
that is to say, a loving jealousy. When we contend for purity of
doctrine and for purity of worship, when we protest against popery and
priestcraft, when we resist rationalism and infidelity, when we do battle
now for national religion, as we call it, and now for the freedom of the
church, let us do it all in love to all men, else we had better not do it
at all. If we cannot do it with clean and all-men-loving hearts, let us
leave all debate and contention to stronger and better men than we are.
The truth will never be advanced or guarded by us, nor will the Lord of
truth and love accept our service or bless our souls, till we put on the
divine nature, and have our hearts and our mouths still more full of love
than our minds and our mouths are full of truth. Let us watch ourselves,
lest with all our so-called love of truth we be found reprobates at last
because we loved the truth for some selfish or party end, and hated and
despised our brother, and believed all evil and disbelieved all good
concerning our brother. Truth without love makes a hypocrite, says Dr.
Pusey; and evangelical truth without evangelical love makes an
evangelical hypocrite, says Thomas Shepard. Only where the whole truth
is united to a heart full of love have we the perfect New Testament
Christian.




TIMOROUS AND MISTRUST


'There is a lion in the way.'--The Slothful Man.

'I must venture.'--Christian.

'I at any rate must venture,' said Christian to Timorous and Mistrust.
'Whatever you may do I must venture, even if the lions you speak of
should pull me to pieces. I, for one, shall never go back. To go back
is nothing but death; to go forward is fear of death and everlasting life
beyond it. I will yet go forward.' So Mistrust and Timorous ran down
the hill, and Christian went on his way. George Offor says, in his notes
on this passage, that civil despotism and ecclesiastical tyranny so
terrified many young converts in John Bunyan's day, that multitudes
turned back like Mistrust and Timorous; while at the same time, many like
Bunyan himself went forward and for a time fell into the lion's mouth.
Civil despotism and ecclesiastical tyranny do not stand in our way as
they stood in Bunyan's way--at least, not in the same shape: but every
age has its own lions, and every Christian man has his own lions that
neither civil despots nor ecclesiastical tyrants know anything about.

Now, who or what is the lion in your way? Who or what is it that fills
you with such timorousness and mistrust, that you are almost turning back
from the way to life altogether? The fiercest of all our lions is our
own sin. When a man's own sin not only finds him out and comes roaring
after him, but when it dashes past him and gets into the woods and
thickets before him, and stands pawing and foaming on the side of his
way, that is a trial of faith and love and trust indeed. Sometimes a
man's past sins will fill all his future life with sleepless
apprehensions. He is never sure at what turn in his upward way he may
not suddenly run against some of them standing ready to rush out upon
him. And it needs no little quiet trust and humble-minded resignation to
carry a man through this slough and that bottom, up this hill and down
that valley, all the time with his life in his hand; and yet at every
turn, at every rumour that there are lions in the way, to say, Come lion,
come lamb, come death, come life, I must venture, I will yet go forward.
As Job also, that wonderful saint of God, said, 'Hold your peace, let me
alone that I may speak, and let come on me what will. Wherefore do I
take my flesh in my teeth and put my life in my hand? Though He slay me,
yet will I trust in Him. He also shall be my salvation; for an hypocrite
shall not come before Him.'

One false step, one stumble in life, one error in judgment, one outbreak
of an unbridled temperament, one small sin, if it is even so much as a
sin, of ignorance or of infirmity, will sometimes not only greatly injure
us at the time, but, in some cases, will fill all our future life with
trials and difficulties and dangers. Many of us shall have all our days
to face a future of defeat, humiliation, impoverishment, and many
hardships, that has not come on us on account of any presumptuous
transgression of God's law so much as simply out of some combination of
unfortunate circumstances in which we may have only done our duty, but
have not done it in the most serpent-like way. And when we are made to
suffer unjustly or disproportionately all our days for our error of
judgment or our want of the wisdom of this world, or what not, we are
sorely tempted to be bitter and proud and resentful and unforgiving, and
to go back from duty and endurance and danger altogether. But we must
not. We must rather say to ourselves, Now and here, if not in the past,
I must play the man, and, by God's help, the wise man. I must pluck
safety henceforth out of the heart of the nettle danger. Yes, I made a
mistake. I did what I would not do now, and I must not be too proud to
say so. I acted, I see now, precipitately, inconsiderately, imprudently.
And I must not gloom and rebel and run away from the cross and the lion.
I must not insist or expect that the always wise and prudent man's reward
is to come to me. The lion in my way is a lion of my own rearing; and I
must not turn my back on him, even if he should be let loose to leap on
me and rend me. I must pass under his paw and through his teeth, if need
be, to a life with him and beyond him of humility and duty and
quiet-hearted submission to his God and mine.

Then, again, our salvation itself sometimes, our true sanctification,
puts on a lion's skin and not unsuccessfully imitates an angry lion's
roar. Some saving grace that up till now we have been fatally lacking in
lies under the very lip of that lion we see standing straight in our way.
God in His wisdom so orders our salvation, that we must work out the best
part of it with fear and trembling. Right before us, just beside us,
standing over us with his heavy paw upon us, is a lion, from under whose
paw and from between whose teeth we must pluck and put on that grace in
which our salvation lies. Repentance and reformation lie in the way of
that lion; resignation also and humility; the crucifixion of our own
will; the sacrifice of our own heart; in short, everything that is still
lacking but is indispensable to our salvation lies through that den of
lions. One man here is homeless and loveless; another is childless;
another has a home and children, and much envies the man who has neither;
one has talents there is no scope for; another has the scope, but not the
sufficient talent; another must now spend all his remaining life in a
place where he sees that anger and envy and jealousy and malevolence will
be his roaring lions daily seeking to devour his soul. There is not a
Christian man or woman in this house whose salvation, worth being called
a salvation, does not lie through such a lion's thicket as that. Our
Lord Himself was a roaring lion to John the Baptist. For the Baptist's
salvation lay not in his powerful preaching, but in his being laid aside
from all preaching; not in his crowds increasing, but in his Successor's
crowds increasing and his decreasing. The Baptist was the greatest born
of woman in that day, not because he was a thundering preacher--any
ordinary mother in Israel might have been his mother in that: but to
decrease sweetly and to steal down quietly to perfect humility and self-
oblivion,--that salvation was reserved for the son of Elisabeth alone. I
would not like to say Who that is champing and pawing for your blood
right in your present way. Reverence will not let me say Who it is.
Only, you venture on Him.

'Yes, I shall venture!' said Christian to the two terrified and
retreating men. Now, every true venture is made against risk and
uncertainty, against anxiety and danger and fear. And it is just this
that constitutes the nobleness and blessedness of faith. Faith sells all
for Christ. Faith risks all for eternal life. Faith faces all for
salvation. When it is at the worst, faith still says, Very well; even if
there is no Celestial City anywhere in the world, it is better to die
still seeking it than to live on in the City of Destruction. Even if
there is no Jesus Christ,--I have read about Him and heard about Him and
pictured Him to myself, till, say what you will, I shall die kissing and
embracing that Divine Image I have in my heart. Even if there is neither
mercy-seat nor intercession in heaven, I shall henceforth pray without
ceasing. Far far better for me all the rest of my sinful life to be
clothed with sackcloth and ashes, even if there is no fountain opened in
Jerusalem for sin and uncleanness, and no change of raiment. Christian
protested that, as for him, lions and all, he had no choice left. And no
more have we. He must away somewhere, anywhere, from his past life. And
so must we. If all the lions that ever drank blood are to collect upon
his way, let them do so; they shall not all make him turn back. Why
should they? What is a whole forest full of lions to a heart and a life
full of sin? Lions are like lambs compared with sin. 'Good morning! I
for one must venture. I shall yet go forward.' So Mistrust and Timorous
ran down the hill, and Christian went on his way.

So I saw in my dream that he made haste and went forward, that if
possible he might get lodging in the house called Beautiful that stood by
the highway side. Now, before he had gone far he entered into a very
narrow passage which was about a furlong off from the porter's lodge, and
looking very narrowly before him as he went, he espied two lions in the
way. Then was he afraid, and thought also to go back, for he thought
that nothing but death was before him. But the porter at the lodge,
whose name was Watchful, perceiving that Christian made a halt, as if he
would go back, cried unto him, saying, 'Is thy strength so small? Fear
not the lions, for they are chained, and are only placed there for the
trial of faith where it is, and for the discovery of those who have none.
Keep the midst of the path and no hurt shall come to thee.' Yes, that is
all we have to do. Whatever our past life may have been, whatever our
past sins, past errors of judgment, past mistakes and mishaps, whatever
of punishment or chastisement or correction or instruction or
sanctification and growth in grace may be under those lions' skins and
between their teeth for us, all we have got to do at present is to leave
the lions to Him who set them there, and to go on, up to them and past
them, keeping always to the midst of the path. The lions may roar at us
till they have roared us deaf and blind, but we are far safer in the
midst of that path than we would be in our own bed. Only let us keep in
the midst of the path. When their breath is hot and full of blood on our
cheek; when they paw up the blinding earth; when we feel as if their
teeth had closed round our heart,--still, all the more, let us keep in
the midst of the path. We must sometimes walk on a razor-edge of fear
and straightforwardness; that is the only way left for us now. But,
then, we have the Divine assurance that on that perilous edge no hurt
shall come to us. 'Temptations,' says our author in another place, 'when
we meet them at first, are as the lion that roared upon Samson; but if we
overcome them, the next time we see them we shall find a nest of honey in
them.' O God, for grace and sense and imagination to see and understand
and apply all that to our own daily life! O to be able to take all that
home to-night and see it all there; lions and runaways, venturesome
souls, narrow paths, palaces of beauty, everlasting life and all! Open
Thou our eyes that we may see the wonderful things that await us in our
own house at home!

'Things out of hope are compassed oft with venturing.'

So they are; and so they were that day with our terrified pilgrim. He
made a venture at the supreme moment of his danger, and things that were
quite out of all hope but an hour before were then compassed and ever
after possessed by him. Make the same venture, then, yourselves
to-night. Naught venture, naught have. Your lost soul is not much to
venture, but it is all that Christ at this moment asks of you--that you
leave your lost soul in His hand, and then go straight on from this
moment in the middle of the path: the path, that is, as your case may be,
of purity, humility, submission, resignation, and self-denial. Keep your
mind and your heart, your eyes and your feet, in the very middle of that
path, and you shall have compassed the House Beautiful before you know.
The lions shall soon be behind you, and the grave and graceful damsels of
the House--Discretion and Prudence and Piety and Charity--shall all be
waiting upon you.




PRUDENCE {1}


'Let a man examine himself.'--Paul.

Let a man examine himself, says the apostle to the Corinthians, and so
let him eat of that bread and drink of that cup. And thus it was, that
before the pilgrim was invited to sit down at the supper table in the
House Beautiful, quite a number of most pointed and penetrating questions
were put to him by those who had charge of that house and its supper
table. And thus the time was excellently improved till the table was
spread, while the short delay and the successive exercises whetted to an
extraordinary sharpness the pilgrim's hunger for the supper. Piety and
Charity, who had joint charge of the house from the Master of the house,
held each a characteristic conversation with Christian, but it was left
to Prudence to hold the most particular discourse with him until supper
was ready, and it is to that so particular discourse that I much wish to
turn your attention to-night.

With great tenderness, but at the same time with the greatest possible
gravity, Prudence asked the pilgrim whether he did not still think
sometimes of the country from whence he had come out. Yes, he replied;
how could I help thinking continually of that unhappy country and of my
sad and miserable life in it; but, believe me,--or, rather, you cannot
believe me,--with what shame and detestation I always think of my past
life. My face burns as I now speak of my past life to you, and as I
think what my old companions know and must often say about me. I detest,
as you cannot possibly understand, every remembrance of my past life, and
I hate and never can forgive myself, who, with mine own hands, so filled
all my past life with shame and self-contempt. Gently stopping the
remorseful pilgrim's self-accusations about his past life, Prudence asked
him if he had not still with him, and, indeed, within him, some of the
very things that had so destroyed both him and all his past life. 'Yes,'
he honestly and humbly said. 'Yes, but greatly against my will:
especially my inward and sinful cogitations.' At this Prudence looked on
him with all her deep and soft eyes, for it was to this that she had been
leading the conversation up all the time. Prudence had a great look of
satisfaction, mingled with love and pity, at the way the pilgrim said
'especially my inward and sinful cogitations.' Those who stood by and
observed Prudence wondered at her delight in the sad discourse on which
the pilgrim now entered. But she had her own reasons for her delight in
this particular kind of discourse, and it was seldom that she lighted on
a pilgrim who both understood her questions and responded to them as did
this man now sitting beside her. Now, my brethren, all parable apart, is
that your religious experience? Are you full of shame and detestation at
your inward cogitations? Are you tormented, enslaved, and downright
cursed with your own evil thoughts? I do not ask whether or no you have
such thoughts always within you. I do not ask, because I know. But I
ask, because I would like to make sure that you know what, and the true
nature of what, goes on incessantly in your mind and in your heart. Do
you, or do you not, spit out your most inward thoughts ten times a day
like poison? If you do, you are a truly religious man, and if you do
not, you do not yet know the very ABC of true religion, and your dog has
a better errand at the Lord's table than you have. And if your minister
lets you sit down at the Lord's table without holding from time to time
some particular discourse with you about your sinful thoughts, he is
deceiving and misleading you, besides laying up for himself an awakening
at last to shame and everlasting contempt. What a mill-stone his
communion roll will be round such a minister's neck! And how his
congregation will gnash their teeth at him when they see to what his
miserable ministry has brought them!

Let a man examine himself, said Paul. What about your inward and sinful
cogitations? asked Prudence. How long shall thy vain thoughts lodge
within thee? demanded the bold prophet. Now, my brethren, what have you
to say to that particular accusation? Do you know what vain thoughts are?
Are you at all aware what multitudes of such thoughts lodge within you?
Do they drive you every day to your knees, and do you blush with shame
when you are alone before God at the fountain of folly that fills your
mind and your heart continually? The Apostle speaks of vain hopes that
make us ashamed that we ever entertained them. You have been often so
ashamed, and yet do not such hopes still too easily arise in your heart?
What castles of idiotic folly you still build! Were a sane man or a
modest woman even to dream such dreams of folly overnight, they would
blush and hide their heads all day at the thought. Out of a word, out of
a look, out of what was neither a word nor a look intended for you, what
a world of vanity will you build out of it! The question of Prudence is
not whether or no you are still a born fool at heart, she does not put
unnecessary questions: hers to you is the more pertinent and particular
question, whether, since you left your former life and became a
Christian, you feel every day increasing shame and detestation at
yourself, on account of the vanity of your inward cogitations. My
brethren, can you satisfy her who is set by her Master to hold particular
discourse with all true Christians before supper? Can you say with the
Psalmist,--could you tell Prudence where the Psalmist says,--I hate vain
thoughts, but Thy law do I love? And can you silence her by telling her
that her Master alone knows with what shame you think that He has such a
fool as you are among His people?

Anger, also, sudden and even long-entertained anger, was one of the 'many
failings' of which Christian was so conscious to himself. His outbursts
of anger at home, he bitterly felt, might well be one of the causes why
his wife and children did not accompany him on his pilgrimage. And
though he knew his failing in this respect, and was very wary of it, yet
he often failed even when he was most wary. Now, while anger is largely
a result of our blood and temperament, yet few of us are so well-balanced
and equable in our temperament and so pure and cool in our blood, as
altogether to escape frequent outbursts of anger. The most happily
constituted and the best governed of us have too much cause to be ashamed
and penitent both before God and our neighbours for our outbursts of
angry passion. But Prudence is so particular in her discourse before
supper, that she goes far deeper into our anger than our wives and our
children, our servants and our neighbours, can go. She not only asks if
we stamp out the rising anger of our heart as we would stamp out sparks
of fire in a house full of gunpowder; but she insists on being told what
we think of ourselves when the house of our heart is still so full of
such fire and such gunpowder. Any man, to call a man, would be humbled
in his own eyes and in his walk before his house at home after an
explosion of anger among them; but he who would satisfy Prudence and sit
beside her at supper, must not only never let his anger kindle, but the
simple secret heat of it, that fire of hell that is hid from all men but
himself in the flint of his own hard and proud heart,--what, asks
Prudence, do you think of that, and of yourself on account of that? Does
that keep you not only watchful and prayerful, but, what is the best
ground in you of all true watchfulness and prayerfulness, full of secret
shame, self-fear, and self-detestation? One forenoon table would easily
hold all our communicants if Prudence had the distribution of the tokens.

And, then, we who are true pilgrims, are of all men the most miserable,
on account of that 'failing,' that rankling sting in our hearts, when any
of our friends has more of this world's possessions, honours, and praises
than we have, that pain at our neighbour's pleasure, that sickness at his
health, that hunger for what we see him eat, that thirst for what we see
him drink, that imprisonment of our spirits when we see him set at
liberty, that depression at his exaltation, that sorrow at his joy, and
joy at his sorrow, that evil heart that would have all things to itself.
Yes, said Christian, I am only too conversant with all these sinful
cogitations, but they are all greatly against my will, and might I but
choose mine own thoughts, do you suppose that I would ever think these
things any more? 'The cause is in my will,' said Caesar, on a great
occasion. But the true Christian, unhappily, cannot say that. If he
could say that, he would soon say also that the snare is broken and that
his soul has escaped. And then the cause of all his evil cogitations,
his vain thoughts, his angry feelings, his envious feelings, his
ineradicable covetousness, his hell-rooted and heaven-towering pride, and
his whole evil heart of unbelief would soon be at an end. 'I cannot be
free of sin,' said Thomas Boston, 'but God knows that He would be welcome
to make havoc of my lusts to-night and to make me henceforth a holy man.
I know no lust that I would not be content to part with. My will bound
hand and foot I desire to lay at His feet.' Yes: such is the mystery and
depth of sin in the hearts of all God's saints, that far deeper than
their will, far back behind their will, the whole substance and very core
of their hearts is wholly corrupt and enslaved to sin. And thus it is
that while their renewed and delivered will works out, so far, their
salvation in their walk and conversation among men, the helplessness of
their will in the cleansing and the keeping of their hearts is to the end
the sorrow and the mystery of their sanctification. To will was present
with Paul, and with Bunyan, and with Boston; but their heart--they could
not with all their keeping keep their heart. No man can; no man who has
at all tried it can. 'Might I but choose mine own thoughts, I would
choose never to think of these things more: but when I would be doing of
that which is best, that which is worst is with me.' We can choose
almost all things. Our will and choice have almost all things at their
disposal. We can choose our God. We can choose life or death. We can
choose heaven or hell. We can choose our church, our minister, our
books, our companions, our words, our works, and, to some extent, our
inward thoughts, but only to some extent. We can encourage this or that
thought; we can entertain it and dwell upon it; or we can detect it,
detest it, and cast it out. But that secret place in our heart where our
thoughts hide and harbour, and out of which they spring so suddenly upon
the mind and the heart, the imagination and the conscience,--of that
secretest of all secret places, God alone is able to say, I search the
heart. 'As for secret thoughts,' says our author, speaking of his own
former religious life, 'I took no notice of them, neither did I
understand what Satan's temptations were, nor how they were to be
withstood and resisted.' But now all these things are his deepest grief,
as they are ours,--as many of us as have been truly turned in our deepest
hearts to God.