Chapter VII: Part 7

Then there came a summons for Mr. Standfast. At which he called to him Mr. Greatheart, and said unto him, "Sir, although it was not my hap to be much in your good company in the days of my pilgrimage, yet, since the time I knew you, you have been profitable to me. When I came from home I left behind me a wife and five small children. Let me entreat you, at your return (for I know that you will go and return to your master's house in hopes that you may be a conductor to more of the holy pilgrims), that you send to my family and let them be acquainted with all that hath and shall happen to me. Tell them, moreover, of my happy arrival to this place, and of the present late blessed condition I am in, and so on for many other messages and charges." Yes, Mr. Standfast; very good. But I would have liked you on your deathbed much better if you had had a word to spare from yourself and your wife and your children for poor Greatheart himself, who had neither wife nor children, nor near hope of heaven, but only your trust and charge and many suchlike trusts and charges to carry out when you are at home and free of all trust and all charge and all care. But yours is the way of all the pilgrims--so long, at least, as they are in this selfish life. Let them and their children only be well looked after, and they have not many thoughts or many words left for those who sweat and bleed to death for them and theirs. They lean on this and that Greatheart all their own way up, and then they leave their widows and children to lean on whatever Greatheart is sent to meet them; but it is not one pilgrim in ten who takes the thought or has the heart to send a message to Mr. Greatheart himself for his own consolation and support. I read that Mr. Ready-to-halt alone, good soul, had the good feeling to do it. He thanked Mr. Greatheart for his conduct and for his kindness, and so addressed himself to his journey. All the same, noble Greatheart! go on in thy magnanimous work. Take back all their errands. Seek out at any trouble all their wives and children. Embark again and again on all thy former battles and hardships for the good of other men. But be assured that all this thy labour is not in vain in thy Lord. Be well assured that not one drop of thy blood or thy sweat or thy tears shall fall to the ground on that day when they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever. Go back, then, from thy well-earned rest, O brave Greatheart! go back to thy waiting task. Put on again thy whole armour. Receive again, and again fulfil, thy Master's commission, till He has no more commissions left for thy brave heart and thy bold hand to execute. And, one glorious day, while thou art still returning to thy task, it shall suddenly sound in thy dutiful ears:--"Well done! good and faithful servant!" And then thou too

"Shalt hang thy trumpet in the hall
And study war no more."

MR. READY-TO-HALT

"For I am ready to halt."--_David_.

Mr. Ready-to-halt is the Mephibosheth of the pilgrimage. While Mephibosheth was still a child in arms, his nurse let the young prince fall, and from that day to the day of his death he was lame in both his feet. Mephibosheth's life-long lameness, and then David's extraordinary grace to the disinherited cripple in commanding him to eat continually at the king's table; in those two points we have all that we know about Mr. Ready-to-halt also. We have no proper portrait, as we say, of Mr. Ready- to-halt. Mr. Ready-to-halt is but a name on John Bunyan's pages--a name set upon two crutches; but, then, his simple name is so suggestive and his two crutches are so eloquent, that I feel as if we might venture to take this life-long lameter and his so serviceable crutches for our character-lecture to-night.

John Bunyan, who could so easily and so delightfully have done it, has given us no information at all about Mr. Ready-to-halt's early days. For once his English passion for a pedigree has not compelled our author's pen. We would have liked immensely to have been told the name, and to have seen displayed the whole family tree of young Ready-to-halt's father; and, especially, of his mother. Who was his nurse also? And did she ever forgive herself for the terrible injury she had done her young master? What were his occupations and amusements as a little cripple boy? Who made him his first crutch? Of what wood was it made? And at what age, and under whose kind and tender directions did he begin to use it? And, then, with such an infirmity, what ever put it into Mr. Ready- to-halt's head to attempt the pilgrimage? For the pilgrimage was a task and a toil that took all the limbs and all the lungs and all the labours and all the endurances that the strongest and the bravest of men could bring to bear upon it. How did this complete cripple ever get through the Slough, and first up and then down the Hill Difficulty, and past all the lions, and over a thousand other obstacles and stumbling-blocks, till he arrived at mine host's so hospitable door? The first surprised sight we get of this so handicapped pilgrim is when Greatheart and Feeble-mind are in the heat of their discourse at the hostelry door. At that moment Mr. Ready-to-halt came by with his crutches in his hand, and he also was going on pilgrimage. Thus, therefore, they went on. Mr. Greatheart and Mr. Honest went on before, Christiana and her children went next, and Mr. Feeble-mind and Mr. Ready-to-halt came behind with his crutches.

"Put by the curtains, look within my veil,
Turn up my metaphors, and do not fail,
There, if thou seekest them, such things to find,
As will be helpful to an honest mind."

1. Well, then, when we put by the curtains and turn up the metaphors, what do we find? What, but just this, that poor Mr. Ready-to-halt was, after all, the greatest and the best believer, as the New Testament would have called him, in all the pilgrimage. We have not found so great faith as that of Mr. Ready-to-halt, no, not in the very best of the pilgrim bands. Each several pilgrim had, no doubt, his own good qualities; but, at pure and downright believing--at taking God at His bare and simple word--Mr. Ready-to-halt beat them all. All that flashes in upon us from one shining word that stands on the margin of our so metaphorical author. This single word, the "promises," hangs like a key of gold beside the first mention of Mr. Ready-to-halt's crutches--a key such that in a moment it throws open the whole of Mr. Ready-to-halt's otherwise lockfast and secret and inexplicable life. There it all is, as plain as a pike- staff now! Yes; Mr. Ready-to-halt's crutches are just the divine promises. I wonder I did not see that all the time. Why, I could compose all his past life myself now. I have his father and his mother and his nurse at my finger-ends now. This poor pilgrim--unless it would be impertinence to call him poor any more--had no limbs to be called limbs. Such limbs as he had were only an encumbrance to this unique pedestrian. All the limbs he had were in his crutches. He had not one atom of strength to lean upon apart from his crutches. A bone, a muscle, a tendon, a sinew, may be ill-nourished, undeveloped, green, and unknit, but, at the worst, they are inside of a man and they are his own. But a crutch, of however good wood it may be made, and however good a lame man may be at using it--still, a crutch at its best is but an outside additament; it is not really and originally a part of a man's very self at all. And yet a lame man is not himself without his crutch. Other men do not need to give a moment's forethought when they wish to rise up to walk, or to run, or to leap, or to dance. But the lame man has to wait till his crutches are brought to him; and then, after slowly and painfully hoisting himself up upon his crutches, with great labour, he at last takes the road. Mr. Ready-to-halt, then, is a man of God; but he is one of those men of God who have no godliness within themselves. He has no inward graces. He has no past experiences. He has no attainments that he can for one safe moment take his stand upon, or even partly lean upon. Mr. Ready-to-halt is absolutely and always dependent upon the promises. The promises of God in Holy Scripture are this man's very life. All his religion stands in the promises. Take away the promises, and Mr. Ready-to-halt is a heap of heaving rags on the roadside. He cannot take a single step unless upon a promise. But, at the same time, give Mr. Ready-to-halt a promise in his hand and he will wade the Slough upon it, and scale up and slide down the Hill Difficulty upon it, and fight a lion, and even brain Beelzebub with it, till he will with a grudge and a doubt exchange it even for the chariots and the horses that wait him at the river. What a delight our Lord would have taken in Mr. Ready-to-halt had He come across him on His way to the passover! How He would have given Mr. Ready-to-halt His arm; how He would have made Himself late by walking with him, and would still have waited for him! Nay, had that been a day of chap-books in carpenters' shops and on the village stalls, how He would have had Mr. Ready-to-halt's story by heart had any brass-worker in Galilee told the history! Our Lord was within an inch of telling that story Himself, when He showed Thomas His hands and His side. And at another time and in another place we might well have had Mr. Ready-to-halt as one more of our Lord's parables for the common people. Only, He left the delight and the reward of drawing out this parable to one He already saw and dearly loved in a far-off island of the sea, the Puritan tinker of Evangelical England.

2. And now, after all that, would you think it going too far if I were to say that in making Himself like unto all His brethren, our Lord made Himself like Mr. Ready-to-halt too? Indeed He did. And it was because his Lord did this, that Mr. Ready-to-halt so loved his Lord as to follow Him upon crutches. It would not be thought seemly, perhaps, to carry the figure too close to our Lord. But, figure apart, it is only orthodox and scriptural to say that our Lord accomplished His pilgrimage and finished His work leaning all along upon His Father's promises. Esaias is very bold about this also, for he tells his readers again and again that their Messiah, when He comes, will have to be held up. He will have to be encouraged, comforted, and carried through by Jehovah. And in one remarkable passage he lets us see Jehovah hooping Messiah's staff first with brass, and then with silver, and then with gold. Let Thomas Goodwin's genius set the heavenly scene full before us. "You have it dialoguewise set forth," says that great preacher. "First Christ shows His commission, telling God how He had called Him and fitted Him for the work of redemption, and He would know what reward He should receive of Him for so great an undertaking. God at first offers low; only the elect of Israel. Christ thinks these too few, and not worth so great a labour and work, because few of the Jews would come in; and therefore He says that He would labour in vain if this were all His recompense; and yet withal He tells God that seeing His heart is so much set on saving sinners, to satisfy Him, He will do it even for those few. Upon this God comes off more freely, and openeth His heart more largely to Him, as meaning more amply to content Him for His pains in dying. 'It is a light thing,' says God to Him, 'that Thou shouldest be My servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob--that is not worth Thy dying for. I value Thy sufferings more than so. I will give Thee for a salvation to the ends of the earth.' Upon this He made a promise to Christ, a promise which God, who cannot lie, promised before the world began. God cannot lie, and, most of all, not to His Son."

And, then, more even than that. This same deep divine tells us that it is a certain rule in divinity that, whatsoever we receive from Christ, that He Himself first receives in Himself for us. All the promises of God's word are made and fulfilled to Christ first, and so to us in and after Him. In other words, our Lord's life was so planned for Him in heaven and was so followed out and fulfilled by Him on earth, that, to take up the metaphor again, He actually tried every crutch and every staff with His own hands and with His own armpits; He actually leaned again and again His own whole weight upon every several one of them. Every single promise, the most unlikely for Him to lean upon and to plead, yet, be sure of it, He somehow made experiment upon them all, and made sure that there was sufficient and serviceable grace within and under every one of them. So that, Mr. Ready-to-halt, there is no possible staff you can take into your hand that has not already been in the hand of your Lord. Think of that, O Mr. Ready-to-halt! Reverence, then, and almost worship thy staff! Throw all thy weight upon thy staff. Confide all thy weakness to it. Talk to it as thou walkest with it. Make it talk to thee. Worm out of it all its secrets about its first Owner. And let it instruct thee about how He walked with it and how He handled it. The Bible is very bold with its Master. It calls Him by the most startling names sometimes. There is no name that a penitent and a returning sinner goes by that the Bible does not put somewhere upon the sinner's Saviour. And in one place it as good as calls Him Ready-to-halt in as many words. Nay, it lets us see Him halting altogether for a time; ay, oftener than once; and only taking the road again, when a still stronger staff was put into his trembling hand. And if John had but had room in his crowded gospel he would have given us the very identical psalm with which our Lord took to the upward way again, strong in His new staff. "For I am ready to halt," was His psalm in the house of His pilgrimage, "and My sorrow is continually before Me. Mine enemies are lively, and they are strong; and they that hate Me wrongfully are multiplied. They also that render evil for good are Mine adversaries; because I follow the thing that good is. Forsake Me not, O Lord; O My God, be not far from Me. Make haste to help Me, O Lord My salvation."

3. Among all the devout and beautiful fables of the "dispensation of paganism," there is nothing finer than the fable of blind Tiresias and his staff. By some sad calamity this old prophet had lost the sight of his eyes, and to compensate their servant for that great loss the gods endowed him with a staff with eyes. As Aaron's rod budded before the testimony and bloomed blossoms and yielded almonds, so Tiresias' staff budded eyes, and divine eyes too, for the blind prophet's guidance and direction. Tiresias had but to take his heaven-given staff in his hand, when, straightway, such a divinity entered into the staff that it both saw for him with divine eyes, and heard for him with divine ears, and then led him and directed him, and never once in all his after journeys let him go off the right way. All other men about him, prophets and priests both, often lost their way, but Tiresias after his blindness, never, till Tiresias and his staff became a proverb and a parable in the land. And just such a staff, just such a crutch, just such a pair of crutches, were the crutches of our own so homely Mr. Ready-to-halt. With all their lusty limbs, all the other pilgrims often stumbled and went out of their way till they had to be helped up, led back, and their faces set right again. But, last as Mr. Ready-to-halt always came in the procession--behind even the women and the children as his crutches always kept him--you will seek in vain for the dot of those crutches on any by- path or on any wrong road. No; the fact is, if you wish to go to the same city, and are afraid you lose the way; as Evangelist said, "Do you see yon shining light?" so I would say to you to-night, "Do you see these crutch-marks on the road?" Well, keep your feet in the prints of these crutches, and as sure as you do that they will lead you straight to a chariot and horses, which, again, will carry you inside the city gates. For Mr. Ready-to-halt's crutches have not only eyes like Tiresias' staff, they have ears also, and hands and feet. A lamp also burns on those crutches; and wine and oil distil from their wonderful wood. Happy blindness that brings such a staff! Happy exchange! eyes full of earth and sin for eyes full of heaven and holiness!

4. "They began to be merry," says our Lord, telling the story of the heart-broken father who had got back his younger son from a far country. And even Feeble-mind and Ready-to-halt begin to be merry on the green that day after Doubting Castle has fallen to Greatheart's arms. Now, Christiana, if need was, could play upon the viol, and her daughter Mercy upon the lute; and, since they were so merry disposed, she played them a lesson, and Mr. Ready-to-halt would dance. So he paid a boy a penny to hold one of his crutches, and, taking Miss Much-afraid by the hand, to dancing they went. And, I promise you he footed it well; the lame man leaped as an hart; also the girl was to be commended, for she answered the music handsomely. In spite of his life-long infirmity, there was deep down in Mr. Ready-to-halt an unsuspected fund of good-humour. There was no heartier merriment on the green that day than was the merriment that Mr. Ready-to-halt knocked out of his nimble crutch. "True, he could not dance without one crutch in his hand." True, dear and noble Bunyan, thou canst not write a single page at any time or on any subject without thy genius and thy tenderness and thy divine grace marking the page as thine own alone!

5. The next time we see Mr. Ready-to-halt he is coming in on his crutches to see Christiana, for she has sent for him to see him. So she said to him, "Thy travel hither hath been with difficulty, but that will make thy rest the sweeter." And then in process of time there came a post to the town and his business this time was with Mr. Ready-to-halt. "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." "I am sent for," said Mr. Ready-to-halt to his fellow-pilgrims, "and God shall surely visit you also. These crutches," he said, "I bequeath to my son that shall tread in my steps, with an hundred warm wishes that he may prove better than I have done." Isaac was a child of promise, and Mr. Ready-to-halt had an Isaac also on whom his last thoughts turned. Isaac had been born to Abraham by a special and extraordinary and supernatural interposition of the grace and the power of God; and Mr. Ready-to-halt had always looked on himself as a second Abraham in that respect. A second Abraham, and more. True, his son was not yet a pilgrim; perhaps he was too young to be so called; but Greatheart will take back the old man's crutches--Greatheart was both man- of-war and beast-of-burden to the pilgrims and their wives and children--and will in spare hours teach young Ready-to-halt the use of the crutch, till the son can use with the same effect as his father his father's instrument. Is your child a child of promise? Is he to you a product of nature, or of grace? Did you receive him and his brothers and sisters from God after you were as good as dead? Did you ever steal in when his nurse was at supper and say over his young cradle, He hath not dealt with me after my sins, nor rewarded me according to my iniquities? Is it in your will laid up with Christ in God about your crutches and your son what Mr. Ready-to-halt dictated on his deathbed? And does God know that there is no wish in your old heart a hundred times so warm for your son as is this wish,--that he may prove better at handling God's promises than you have been? Then, happy son, who has old Mr. Ready-to- halt for his father!

6. "He whom thou hast loved and followed, though upon crutches, expects thee at His table the next day after Easter." Take comfort, cripples! Had it been said that the King so expects Greatheart, or Standfast, or Valiant-for-truth, that would have been after the manner of the kings of this world. But to insist on having Mr. Ready-to-halt beside Him by such and such a day; to send such a post to a pilgrim who has not a single sound bone in all his body; to a sinner without a single trustworthy grace in all his heart; to a poor and simple believer who has nothing in his hand but one of God's own promises--Who is a king like unto our King? Surely King David was never a better type of Christ than when he said to Mephibosheth, lame in both his feet from his nurse's arms: "Fear not, Mephibosheth, for I will surely show thee kindness, and thou shalt eat bread at my table continually." And Mephibosheth shall always be our spokesman when he bows himself and says in return: "What is thy servant, that thou shouldst look upon such a dead dog as I am?"

VALIANT-FOR-TRUTH

"--They are not valiant for the truth."--_Jeremiah_

"--Ye should contend earnestly for the faith."--_Jude_.

"Forget not Master Valiant-for-the-Truth,
That man of courage, tho' a very youth.
Tell every one his spirit was so stout,
No man could ever make him face about."
_Bunyan_.

"I am of Dark-land, for there was I born, and there my father and mother are still." "Dark-land," said the guide; "doth not that lie upon the same coast as the City of Destruction?" "Yes, it doth," replied Valiant- for-truth. "And had I not found incommodity there, I had not forsaken it at all; but finding it altogether unsuitable to me, and very unprofitable for me, I forsook it for this way. Now, that which caused me to come on pilgrimage was this. We had one Mr. Tell-true came into our parts, and he told it about what Christian had done, that went from the City of Destruction. That man so told the story of Christian and his travels that my heart fell into a burning haste to be gone after him, nor could my father and mother stay me, so I got from them, and am come thus far on my way."

1. A very plain and practical lesson is already read to us all in Valiant-for-truth's explanation of his own pilgrimage. He tells the guide that he was made a pilgrim just by having the story of The Pilgrim told to him. All that Tell-true did was just to recite the story of the pilgrim, when young Valiant's heart fell into a burning haste to be a pilgrim too. My brethren, could any lesson be plainer? Read the _Pilgrim's Progress_ with your children. And, after a time, read it again till they call it beautiful, and till you see the same burning haste in their hearts that young Valiant felt in his heart. Circulate the _Pilgrim's Progress_. Make opportunities to give the _Pilgrim's Progress_ to the telegraph boys and errand boys at your door. Never go on a holiday without taking a dozen cheap and tasteful copies of _The Pilgrim_ to give to boys and girls in the country. Make sure that no one, old or young, of your acquaintance, in town or country, is without a good copy of _The Pilgrim_. And the darker their house is, make all the more sure that John Bunyan is in it.

"Now may this little book a blessing be,
To those that love this little book and me
And may its buyer have no cause to say
His money is but lost or thrown away."

2. But the great lesson of Valiant's so impressive life lies in the tremendous fight he had with three ruffians who all set upon him at once and well-nigh made an end of him. For, when we put by the curtains here again, and turn up the metaphors, what do we find? What, but a lesson of first-rate importance for many men among ourselves; for many public men, many ministers, and many other much-in-earnest men. For Valiant, as his name tells us, was set to contend for the truth. He had the truth. The truth was put into his keeping, and he was bound to defend it. He was thrown into a life of controversy, and thus into all the terrible temptations--worse than the temptations to whoredom or wine--that accompany a life of controversy. The three scoundrels that fell upon Valiant at the mouth of the lane were Wildhead, Inconsiderate, and Pragmatic. In other words, the besetting temptations of many men who are set as defenders of the truth in religion, as well as in other matters, is to be wild-headed, inconsiderate, self-conceited, and intolerably arrogant. The bloody battle that Valiant fought, you must know, was not fought at the mouth of any dark lane in the midnight city, nor on the side of any lonely road in the moonless country. This terrible fight was fought in Valiant's own heart. For Valiant was none of your calculating and cold-blooded friends of the truth. He did not wait till he saw the truth walking in silver slippers. Let any man lay a finger on the truth, or wag a tongue against the truth, and he will have to settle it with Valiant. His love for the truth was a passion. There was a fierceness in his love for the truth that frightened ordinary men even when they were on his own side. Valiant would have died for the truth without a murmur. But, with all that, Valiant had to learn a hard and a cruel lesson. He had to learn that he, the best friend of truth as he thought he was, was at the same time, as a matter of fact, the greatest enemy that the truth had. He had to take home the terrible discovery that no man had hurt the truth so much as he had done. Save me from my friend! the truth was heard to say, as often as she saw him taking up his weapons in her behalf. We see all that every day. We see Wildhead at his disservice of the truth every day. Sometimes above his own name, and sometimes with grace enough to be ashamed to give his name, in the newspapers. Sometimes on the platform; sometimes in the pulpit; and sometimes at the dinner-table. But always to the detriment of the truth. In blind fury he rushes at the character and the good name of men who were servants of the truth before he was born, and whose shield he is not worthy to bear. How shall Wildhead be got to see that he and the like of him are really the worst friends the truth can possibly have? Will he never learn that in his wild-bull gorings at men and at movements, he is both hurting himself and hurting the truth as no sworn enemy of his and of the truth can do? Will he never see what an insolent fool he is to go on imputing bad motives to other men, when he ought to be prostrate before God on account of his own? More than one wild-headed student of William Law has told me what a blessing they have got from that great man's teaching on the subject of controversy. Will the Wildheads here to- night take a line or two out of that peace-making author and lay them to heart? "My dear L-, take notice of this, that no truths, however solid and well-grounded, will help you to any divine life, but only so far as they are taught, nourished, and strengthened by an unction from above; and that nothing more dries and extinguishes this heavenly unction than a talkative reasoning temper that is always catching at every opportunity of hearing or telling some religious matters. Stop your ears and shut your eyes to all religious tales . . . I would no more bring a false charge against a deist than I would bear false witness against an apostle. And if I knew how to do the deists more justice in debate I would gladly do it . . . And as the gospel requires me to be as glad to see piety, equity, strict sobriety, and extensive charity in a Jew or a Gentile as in a Christian; as it obliges me to look with pleasure upon their virtues, and to be thankful to God that such persons have so much of true and sound Christianity in them; so it cannot be an unchristian spirit to be as glad to see truths in one party of Christians as in another, and to look with pleasure upon any good doctrines that are held by any sect of Christian people, and to be thankful to God that they have so much of the genuine saving truths of the gospel among them . . . Selfishness and partiality are very inhuman and base qualities even in the things of this world, but in the doctrines of religion they are of a far baser nature. In the present divided state of the Church, truth itself is torn and divided asunder; and, therefore, he is the only true Catholic who has more of truth and less of error than is hedged in by any divided part. To see this will enable us to live in a divided part unhurt by its division, and keep us in a true liberty and fitness to be edified and assisted by all the good that we hear or see in any other part of the Church. And thus, uniting in heart and spirit with all that is holy and good in all Churches, we enter into the true communion of saints, and become real members of the Holy Catholic Church, though we are confined to the outward worship of only one particular part of it. And thus we will like no truth the less because Ignatius Loyola or John Bunyan were very jealous for it, nor have the less aversion to any error because Dr. Trapp or George Fox had brought it forth." If Wildhead would take a winter of William Law, it would sweeten his temper, and civilise his manners, and renew his heart.

3. Inconsiderate, again, is the shallow creature he is, and does the endless mischief that he does, largely for lack of imagination. He never thinks--neither before he speaks nor after he has spoken. He never put himself in another man's place all his days. He is incapable of doing that. He has neither the head nor the heart to do that. He never once said, How would I like that said about me? or, How would I like that done to me? or, How would that look and taste and feel to me if I were in So- and-so's place? It needs genius to change places with other men; it needs a grace beyond all genius; and this poor headless and heartless creature does not know what genius is. It needs imagination, the noblest gift of the mind, and it needs love, the noblest grace of the heart, to consider the case of other people, and to see, as Butler says, that we differ as much from other people as they differ from us. And it is by far the noblest use of the imagination, far nobler than carving a Laocoon, or painting a Last Judgment, or writing a "Paradiso" or a "Paradise Lost," to put ourselves into the places of other men so as to see with their eyes, and feel with their hearts, and sympathise with their principles, and even with their prejudices. Now, the inconsiderate man has so little imagination and so little love that he is sitting here and does not know what I am saying; and what suspicion he has of what I am saying is just enough to make him dislike both me and what I am saying too. But his dull suspicion and his blind dislike are more than made up for by the love and appreciation of those lovers and defenders of the truth who painfully feel how wild and inconsiderate, how hot-headed, how thoughtless, and how reckless their past service even of God's truth has been.

"The King is full of grace and fair regard.
Consideration, like an angel, came
And whipp'd the offending Adam out of him."

4. And as to Pragmatic, I would not call you a stupid person even though you confided to me that you had never heard this footpad's name till to- night. John Bunyan has been borrowing Latin again, and not to the improvement of his style, or to the advantage of his readers. It would be insufferably pragmatic in me to begin to set John Bunyan right in his English; but I had rather offend the shades of a hundred John Bunyans than leave my most unlettered hearer without his full and proper Sabbath- night lesson. The third armed thief, then, that fell upon Valiant was, under other names, Impertinence, Meddlesomeness, Officiousness, Over-Interference. Pragmatic,--by whatever name he calls himself, there is no mistaking him. He is never satisfied. He is never pleased. He is never thankful. He is always setting his superiors right. He is like the Psalmist in one thing, he has more understanding than all his teachers. And he enjoys nothing more than in letting them know that. There is nothing he will not correct you in--from cutting for the stone to commanding the Channel Fleet. Now, if all that has put any visual image of Pragmatic into your mind, you will see at once what an enemy he too is fitted to be to the truth. For the truth does not stand in points, but in principles. The truth does not dwell in the letter but in the spirit. The truth is not served by setting other people right, but by seeing every day and in every thing how far wrong we are ourselves. The truth is like charity in this, that it begins at home. It is like charity in this also, that it never behaves itself unseemly. A pragmatical man, taken along with an inconsiderate man, and then a wild- headed man added on to them, are three about as fatal hands as any truth could fall into. The worst enemy of the truth must pity the truth, and feel his hatred at the truth relenting, when he sees her under the championship of Wildhead, Inconsiderate, and Pragmatic.

5. The first time we see Valiant-for-truth he is standing at the mouth of Dead-man's-lane with his sword in his hand and with his face all bloody. "They have left upon me, as you see," said the bleeding man, "some of the marks of their valour, and have also carried away with them some of mine." And, in like manner, we see Paul with the blood of Barnabas still upon him when he is writing the thirteenth of First Corinthians; and John with the blood of the Samaritans still upon him down to his old age when he is writing his First Epistle; and John Bunyan with the blood of the Quakers upon him when he is covertly writing this page of his autobiography under the veil of Valiant-for-truth; and William Law with the blood of Bishop Hoadly and John Wesley dropping on the paper as he pens that golden passage which ends with Dr. Trapp and George Fox. Where did you think Paul got that splendid passage about charity? Where did you think William Law got that companion passage about Church divisions, and about the Church Catholic? Where are such passages ever got by inspired apostles, or by any other men, but out of their own bloody battles with their own wild-headedness, intolerance, dislike, and resentment? Where do you suppose I got the true key to the veiled metaphor of Valiant-for-truth? It does not exactly hang on the doorpost of his history. Where, then, could I get it but off the inside wall of my own place of repentance? Just as you understand what I am now labouring to say, not from my success in saying it, but from your own trespasses against humility and love, your unadvised speeches, and your wild and whirling words. Without shame and remorse, without self-condemnation and self-contempt, none of those great passages of Paul, or John, or Bunyan, or Law were ever written; and without a like shame, remorse, self-condemnation, and self-contempt they are not rightly read.

"Oh! who shall dare in this frail scene
On holiest, happiest thoughts to lean,
On Friendship, Kindred, or on Love?
Since not Apostles' hands can clasp
Each other in so firm a grasp,
But they shall change and variance prove.

"But sometimes even beneath the moon
The Saviour gives a gracious boon,
When reconciled Christians meet,
And face to face, and heart to heart,
High thoughts of Holy love impart
In silence meek, or converse sweet.

"Oh then the glory and the bliss
When all that pained or seemed amiss
Shall melt with earth and sin away!
When saints beneath their Saviour's eye,
Filled with each other's company,
Shall spend in love the eternal day!"

6. Then said Greatheart to Mr. Valiant-for-truth, "Thou hast worthily behaved thyself; let me see thy sword." So he showed it him. When he had taken it in his hand and had looked thereon a while, the guide said: "Ha! it is a right Jerusalem blade!" "It is so," replied its owner. "Let a man have one of these blades with a hand to wield it, and skill to use it, and he may venture upon an angel with it. Its edges will never blunt. It will cut flesh, and bones, and soul, and spirit, and all." Both Damascus and Toledo blades were famous in former days for their tenacity and flexibility, and for the beauty and the edge of their steel. But even a Damascus blade would be worthless in a weak, cowardly, or unskilled hand; while even a poor sword in the hand of a good swordsman will do excellent execution. And much more so when you have both a first- rate sword and a first-rate swordsman, such as both Valiant and his Jerusalem blade were. Ha! yes. This is a right wonderful blade we have now in our hand. For this sword was forged in no earthly fire; and it was whetted to its unapproachable sharpness on no earthly whetstone. But, best of all for us, when a good soldier of Jesus Christ has this sword girt on his thigh he is able then to go forth against himself with it; against his own only and worst enemy--that is, against himself. As here, against his own wildness of head and pride of heart. Against his own want of consideration also. "My people do not consider." As also against himself as a lawless invader of other men's freedom of judgment, following of truth, public honour, and good name. As the Arabian warriors see themselves and dress themselves in their swords as in a glass, so did Valiant-for-truth see the thoughts and intents, the joints and the marrow of his own disordered soul in his Jerusalem blade. In the sheen of it he could see himself even when the darkness covered him; and with its two edges all his after-life he slew both all real error in other men and all real evil in himself. "Thou hast done well," said Greatheart the guide. "Thou hast resisted unto blood, striving against sin. Thou shalt abide by us, come in and go out with us, for we are thy companions."

7. "Sir," said the widow indeed to Valiant-for-truth, "sir, you have in all places shown yourself true-hearted." The first time she ever saw this man that she is now seeing for the last time on this side the river, his own mother would not have known him, he was so hacked to pieces with the swords of his three assailants. But as she washed the blood off the mangled man's head and face and hands, she soon saw beneath all his bloody wounds a true, a brave, and a generous-hearted soldier of the Cross. The heart is always the man. And this woman had lived long enough with men to have discovered that. And with all his sears she saw that it was at bottom the truth of his heart that had cast him into so many bloody encounters. There were men in that company, and men near the river too, with far fewer marks of battle, and even of defeat, upon them, who did not get this noble certificate and its accompanying charge and trust from this clear-eyed widow. And, then, she had never forgot--how could she?--his exclamation, and almost embrace of her as of his own mother, when he burst out with his eyes full of blood, "Why, is this Christian's wife? What! and going on pilgrimage too? It glads my heart! Good man! How joyful will he be when he shall see her and her children enter after him in at the gates into the city!" He would have been hacked a hundred times worse than he was before the widow of Christian, and the mother of his children, would have seen anything but the manliest beauty in a young soldier who could salute an old woman in that way. It gladdened her heart to hear him, you may be sure, as much as it gladdened his heart to see her. And that was the reason that she actually set Greatheart himself aside, and left her children under this young man's sword and shield. "I would also entreat you to have an eye to my children," she said. Young men, has any dying mother committed her children, if you at any time see them faint, to you? Have you ever spoken so comfortably to any poor widow about her sainted husband that she has passed by some of our foremost citizens, and has astonished and offended her lawyers by putting a stripling like you into the trusteeship? Did ever any dying mother say to you that she had seen you to be so true-hearted at all times that she entreated you to have an eye to her children? Speaking at this point for myself, I would rather see my son so trusted at such an hour by such a woman than I would see him the Chancellor of Her Majesty's Exchequer, or the Governor of the Bank of England. And so to-night would you.

STANDFAST

"So stand fast in the Lord, my dearly beloved."--_Paul_.

In his supplementary picture of Standfast John Bunyan is seen at his very best, both as a religious teacher and as an English author. On the Enchanted Ground Standfast is set before us with extraordinary insight, sagacity, and wisdom; and then in the terrible river he is set before us with an equally extraordinary rapture and transport; while, in all that, Bunyan composes in English of a strength and a beauty and a music in which he positively surpasses himself. Just before he closes his great book John Bunyan rises up and once more puts forth his very fullest strength, both as a minister of religion and as a classical writer, when he takes Standfast down into that river which that pilgrim tells us has been such a terror to so many, and the thought of which has so often affrighted himself.

When Greatheart and his charge were almost at the end of the Enchanted Ground, so we read, they perceived that a little before them was a solemn noise as of one that was much concerned. So they went on and looked before them. And behold, they saw, as they thought, a man upon his knees, with hands and eyes lift up, and speaking, as they thought, earnestly to one that was above. They drew nigh, but could not tell what he said; so they went softly till he had done. When he had done, he got up and began to run towards the Celestial City. "So-ho, friend, let us have your company," called out the guide. At that the man stopped, and they came up to him. "I know this man," said Mr. Honest; "his name, I know, is Standfast, and he is certainly a right good pilgrim." Then follows a conversation between Mr. Honest and Mr. Standfast, in which some compliments and courtesies are exchanged, such as are worthy of such men, met at such a time and in such a place. "Well, but, brother," said Valiant-for-truth, "tell us, I pray thee, what was it that was the cause of thy being upon thy knees even now? Was it for that some special mercy laid obligations upon thee, or how?" And then Standfast tells how as he was coming along musing with himself, Madam Bubble presented herself to him and offered him three things. "I was both aweary and sleepy and also as poor as a howlet, and all that the wicked witch knew. And still she followed me with her enticements. Then I betook me, as you saw, to my knees, and with hands lift up and cries, I prayed to Him who had said that He would help. So just as you came up the gentlewoman went her way. Then I continued to give thanks for my great deliverance; for I verify believe she intended me no good, but rather sought to make stop of me in my journey. What a mercy is it that I did resist her, for whither might she not have drawn me?" And then, after all this discourse, there was a mixture of joy and trembling among the pilgrims, but at last they broke out and sang:

"What danger is the pilgrim in,
How many are his foes,
How many ways there are to sin,
No living mortal knows!"

1. "Well, as I was coming along I was musing with myself," said Standfast. You understand what it is to come along musing with yourself, do you not, my brethren? "I will muse on the work of Thy hands," says the Psalmist. And again, "While I was musing the fire burned." Well, Standfast was much given to musing, just as David was. Each several pilgrim has his own way of occupying himself on the road; but Standfast could never get his fill just of musing. Standfast loved solitude. Standfast liked nothing better than to walk long stretches at a time all by himself alone. Standfast was like the apostle when he preferred to take the twenty miles from Troas to Assos on foot and alone, rather than to round the cape on shipboard in a crowd. "Minding himself to go afoot," says the apostle's companion. It would have made a precious chapter in the Acts of the Apostles had the author of that book been able to give his readers some of Paul's musings as he crossed the Troad on foot that day. But in the absence of Paul's musings we have here the musings of a man whom Paul would not have shaken off had he foregathered with him on that lonely road. For Standfast was in a deep and serious muse mile after mile, when, who should step into the middle of his path right before him but Madam Bubble with her body and her purse and her bed? Now, had this hungry howlet of a pilgrim been at that moment in any other but a musing mood of mind, he had to a certainty sold himself, soul and body, Celestial City and all, to that impudent slut. But, as He would have it who overrules Madam Bubble's descents, and all things, Standfast was at that moment in one of his most musing moods, and all her smiles and all her offers fell flat and poor upon him. Cultivate Standfast's mood of mind, my brethren. Walk a good deal alone. Strike across country from time to time alone and have good long walks and talks with yourself. And when you know that you are passing places of temptation see that your thoughts, and even your imaginations, are well occupied with solemn considerations about the certain issue of such and such temptations; and then, to you, as to Standfast,

"The arrow seen beforehand slacks its flight."