SECRET

"The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him."--_David_.

A truly religious life is always a secret life: it is a life hid, as Paul has it, with Christ in G.o.d. The secret of the Lord, says the Psalmist, is with them that fear Him. And thus it is that when men begin to fear G.o.d, both their hearts and their lives are henceforth full of all kinds of secrets that are known to themselves and to G.o.d only. It was when Christiana's fearful thoughts began to work in her mind about her husband whom she had lost--it was when all her unkind, unnatural, and unG.o.dly carriages to her dear friend came into her mind in swarms, clogged her conscience, and loaded her with guilt--it was then that Secret knocked at her door. "Next morning," so her opening history runs, "when she was up, and had prayed to G.o.d, and talked with her children awhile, one knocked hard at the door to whom she spake out, saying, If thou comest in G.o.d's name, come in. So he who was at the door said, Amen, and opened the door, and saluted her with, Peace be to this house. The which when he had done, he said, Christiana, knowest thou wherefore I am come? Then she blushed and trembled, also her heart began to wax warm with desires to know whence he came, and what was his errand to her. So he said unto her, My name is Secret, I dwell with those that are high. It is talked of where I dwell as if thou hadst a desire to go thither; also, there is a report that thou art aware now of the evil thou formerly didst to thy husband in hardening of thy heart against his way, and in keeping of thy babes in their ignorance. Christiana, the Merciful One has sent me to tell thee that He is a G.o.d ready to forgive, and that He taketh delight to multiply to pardon offences. He would also have thee know that He inviteth thee to come into His presence, even to His table, and that He will there feed thee with the fat of His house, and with the heritage of Jacob thy father. Christiana at all this was greatly abashed in herself, and she bowed her head to the ground, while her visitor proceeded and said, Christiana, here is a letter for thee which I have brought from thy husband's King. So she took it and opened it, and, as she opened it, it smelt after the manner of the best perfume; also it was written in lettering of gold. The contents of the letter was to this effect, that the King would have her do as did Christian her husband, for that was the way to come to the city and to dwell in His presence with joy for ever.

At this the good woman was completely overcome. So she said to her visitor, Sir, will you carry me and my children with you that we may go and worship this King? Then said the heavenly visitor, Christiana, the bitter is before the sweet. Thou must through troubles, as did he that went before thee, enter this celestial city." And so on.

1. Now, to begin with, you will have noticed the way in which Christiana was prepared for the entrance of Secret into her house. She was a widow.

She sat alone in that loneliness which only widows know and understand.

More than lonely, she was very miserable. "Mark this," says the author on the margin, "you that are churls to your G.o.dly relations." For this widow felt sure that her husband had been taken from her because of her cruel behaviour to him. Her past unnatural carriages toward her husband now rent the very caul of her heart in sunder. And, again and again, about that same time strange dreams would sometimes visit her. Dreams such as this. She would see her husband in a place of bliss with a harp in his hand, standing and playing upon it before One that sat on a throne with a rainbow round His head. She saw also as if he bowed his head with his face to the paved work that was under the Prince's feet, saying, I heartily thank my Lord and King for bringing me to this place. You will easily see how ready this lone woman was with all that for his entrance who knocked and said, Peace be to this house, and handed her a letter of perfume from her husband's King. Then you will have remarked also some of the things this visitor from on high said to her of the place whence he had come. He told her, to begin with, how they sometimes talked about her in his country. She thought that she was a lonely and forgotten widow, and that no one cared what became of her. But her visitor a.s.sured her she was quite wrong in thinking that. He had often himself heard her name mentioned in conversation above; and the most hopeful reports, he told her, were circulated from door to door that she was actually all but started on the upward way. Yes, he said, and we have a place prepared for you on the strength of these reports, a place among the immortals close beside your husband. And all that, as you will not wonder, was the beginning of Christiana's secret life. After that morning she never again felt alone or forgotten. I am not alone, she would after that say, when any of her old neighbours knocked at her door. No, I am not alone, but if thou comest in G.o.d's name, come in.

2. And from that day a long succession of secret providences began to enter Christiana's life, till, as time went on, her whole life was filled full of secret providences. And not her present life only, but her discoveries of G.o.d's secret providences towards her and hers became retrospective also, till both her own parentage and birth, her husband's parentage and birth also, the day she first saw him, the day of their espousals, the day of their marriage, and the day of his death, all shone out now as so many secret and special providences of G.o.d toward her.

Bishop Martensen has a fine pa.s.sage on the fragmentariness of our knowledge, not only of divine providence as a whole, but even of those divine providences that fill up our own lives. And he warns us that, till we have heard the "Prologue in Heaven," many a riddle in our lives must of necessity remain unsolved. Christiana could not have told her inquiring children what a prologue was, nor an epilogue either, but many were the wise and winning discourses she held with her boys about their father now in heaven, about her happiness in having had such a father for her children, and about their happiness that the road was open before them to go to where he now is. And there are many poor widows among ourselves who are wiser than all their teachers, because they are in that school of experience into which G.o.d takes His afflicted people and opens to them His deepest secrets. They remember, with Job, when the secret of the Lord was first upon their tabernacle. Their widowed hearts are full of holy household memories. They remember the days when the candle of the Lord shone upon their head when they washed their steps with b.u.t.ter, and the rock poured them out rivers of oil. And still, when, like Job also, they sit solitary among the ashes, the secret of the Lord is only the more secretly and intimately with them. John Bunyan was well fitted to be Christiana's biographer, because his own life was as full as it could hold of these same secret and special providences. One day he was walking--so he tells us--in a good man's shop, bemoaning himself of his sad and doleful state--when a mighty rushing wind came in through the window and seemed to carry words of Scripture on its wings to Bunyan's disconsolate soul. He candidly tells us that he does not know, after twenty years' reflection, what to make of that strange dispensation. That it took place, and that it left the most blessed results behind it, he is sure; but as to how G.o.d did it, by what means, by what instruments, both the rushing wind itself and the salutation that accompanied it, he is fain to let lie till the day of judgment. And many of ourselves have had strange dispensations too that we must leave alone, and seek no other explanation of them for the present but the blessed results of them. We have had divine descents into our lives that we can never attempt to describe. Interpositions as plain to us as if we had both seen and spoken with the angel who executed them. Miraculous deliverances that throw many Old and New Testament miracles into the shade. Providential adaptations and readjustments also, as if all things were actually and openly and without a veil being made to work together for our good.

Extrications also; nets broken, snares snapped, and such pavilions of safety and solace opened to us that we can find no psalm secret and special enough in which to utter our life-long astonishment. Importunate prayers antic.i.p.ated, postponed, denied, translated, trans.m.u.ted, and then answered till our cup was too full; sweet changed to bitter, and bitter changed to sweet, so wonderfully, so graciously, and so often, that words fail us, and we can only now laugh and now weep over it all. Poor Cowper knew something about it--

"G.o.d moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform; He plants His footsteps in the sea, And rides upon the storm.

"Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take, The clouds ye so much dread Are big with mercy, and shall break In blessings on your head.

"Blind unbelief is sure to err, And scan his work in vain; G.o.d is His own interpreter, And He will make it plain."

3. Secret scriptures also--from that enlightening day Christiana's Bible became full of them. Peter says that no prophecy is of any private interpretation; and, whatever he means by that, what he says must be true. But Christiana would have understood the apostle better if he had said the exact opposite of that,--if not about the prophecies, at least about the psalms. Leave the prophecies in this connection alone; but of the psalms it may safely be said that it is neither the literal nor the historical nor the mystical interpretation that gets at the heart of those supreme scriptures. It is the private, personal, and, indeed, secret interpretation that gets best at the deepest heart of the psalms.

An old Bible came into my hands the other day--a Bible that had seen service--and it opened of its own accord at the Book of Psalms. On turning over the yellow leaves I found a date and a deep indentation opposite these words: "Commit thy way unto the Lord: trust also in Him: and He will bring it to pa.s.s." And as I looked at the figures on the margin, and at the underscored text, I felt as if I were on the brink of an old-world secret. "Create in me a clean heart" had a significant initial also; as had this: "The sacrifices of G.o.d are a broken spirit."

The whole of the hundred-and-third psalm was bracketed off from all public interpretation; while the tenth, the cardinal verse of that secret psalm, had a special seal set upon it. Judging from its stains and scars and other accidents, the whole of the hundred-and-nineteenth psalm had been a special favourite; while the hundred-and-forty-third also was all broidered round with shorthand symbols. But the secret key of all those symbols and dates and enigmatical marks was no longer to be found; it had been carried away in the owner's own heart. But, my head being full of Christiana at the time, I felt as if I held her own old Bible in my hand as I turned over those ancient leaves.

4. Our Lord so practised secrecy Himself in His fasting, in His praying, and in His almsgiving, and He makes so much of that same secrecy in all His teaching, as almost to make the essence of all true religion to stand in its secrecy. "When thou prayest," says our Lord, "shut thy door and pray in secret." As much as to say that we are scarcely praying at all when we are praying in public. Praying in public is so difficult that new beginners, like His disciples, have to practise that so difficult art for a long time in secret. Public prayer has so many besetting sins, it is open to so many temptations, distractions, and corruptions, that it is almost impossible to preserve the real essence of prayer in public prayer. But in secret all those temptations and distractions are happily absent. We have no temptation to be too long in secret prayer, or too loud, or too eloquent. Stately old English goes for nothing in secret prayer. We never need to go to our knees in secret trembling, lest we lose the thread of our prayer, or forget that so fit and so fine expression. The longer we are the better in secret prayer. Much speaking is really a virtue in secret prayer; much speaking and many repet.i.tions. Also, we can put things into our secret prayers that we dare not come within a thousand miles of in the pulpit, or the prayer- meeting, or the family. We can enter into the most plain-spoken particulars about ourselves in secret. We can put our proper name upon ourselves, and upon our actions, and especially upon our thoughts when our door is shut. Then, again, we can pray for other people by name in secret; we can enter, so far as we know them, into all their circ.u.mstances in a way it is impossible to do anywhere but in the utmost secrecy. We can, in short, be ourselves in secret; and, unless it is to please or to impress men, we had better not pray at all unless we are ourselves when we are engaged in it. You can be yourself, your very worst self; nay, you must be, else you will not long pray in secret, and even if you did you would not be heard. I do not remember that very much is said in so many words in her after-history about Christiana's habits of closet-prayer. But that Secret taught her the way, and waited till she had tasted the sweetness and the strength of being a good while on her knees alone, I am safe to say; indeed, I read it between the lines in all her after-life. She was rewarded openly in a way that testifies to much secret prayer; that is to say, in the early conversion of her children, in the way they settled in life, and such like things. Pray much for those things in secret that you wish to possess openly.

5. But perhaps the best and most infallible evidence we can have of the truth of our religion in this life is in the steady increase of our secret sinfulness. Christiana had no trouble with her own wicked heart so long as she was a woman of a wicked life. But directly she became a new creature, her heart began to swarm, such is her own expression, with sinful memories, sinful thoughts, and sinful feelings; till she had need of some one ever near her, like Greatheart, constantly to a.s.sure her that those cruel and deadly swarms, instead of being a bad sign of her salvation, were the very best signs possible of her good estate. Humility is the foundation of all our graces, and there is no humility so deep and so ever-deepening as that evangelical humility which in its turn rises out of and rests upon secret sinfulness. Not upon acts of secret sin. Do not mistake me. Acts of secret sin harden the heart and debauch the conscience. But I speak of that secret, original, unexplored, and inexpugnable sinfulness out of which all a sinner's actual sins, both open sins and secret, spring; and out of which a like life of open and actual sins would spring in G.o.d's very best saints, if only both He and they did not watch night and day against them. Sensibility to sin, or rather to sinfulness, is far and away the best evidence of sanctification that is possible to us in this life. It is this keen and bitter sensibility that secures, amid all oppositions and obstructions, the true saint's onward and upward progress. Were it not for the misery of their own hearts, G.o.d's best saints would fall asleep and go back like other men. A sinful heart is the misery of all miseries. It is the deepest and darkest of all dungeons. It is the most painful and the most loathsome of all diseases. And the secrecy of it all adds to the bitterness and the gall of it all. We may know that other men's hearts are as sinful as our own, but we do not feel their sinfulness. We cannot sensibly feel humiliation, bondage, sickness, and self-loathing on account of another man's envy, or ill-will, or resentment, or cruelty, or falsehood, or impurity. All these things must be our own before we can enter into the pain and the shame of them; but, when we do, then we taste what death and h.e.l.l are indeed. As I write these feeble words about it, a devil's shaft of envy that was shot all against my will into my heart this morning, still, after a whole day, rankles and festers there. I have been on my knees with it again and again; I have stood and looked into an open grave to-day; but there it is sucking at my heart's blood still, like a leech of h.e.l.l. Who can understand his errors? Cleanse Thou me from secret faults. Create in me a clean heart, O G.o.d, O wretched man that I am! "Let a man," says William Law when he is enforcing humility, "but consider that if the world knew all that of him which he knows of himself: if they saw what vanity and what pa.s.sions govern his inside, and what secret tempers sully and corrupt his best actions, he would have no more pretence to be honoured and admired for his goodness and wisdom than a rotten and distempered body to be loved and admired for its beauty and comeliness. This is so true, and so known to the hearts of almost all people, that nothing would appear more dreadful to them than to have their hearts fully discovered to the eyes of all beholders. And, perhaps, there are very few people in the world who would not rather choose to die than to have all their secret follies, the errors of their judgments, the vanity of their minds, the falseness of their pretences, the frequency of their vain and disorderly pa.s.sions, their uneasinesses, hatreds, envies, and vexations made known to all the world." Where did William Law get that terrible pa.s.sage? Where could he get it but in the secret heart of the miserable author of the _Serious Call_?

6. The half cannot be told of the guilt and the corruption, the pain and the shame and the manifold misery of secret sin; but all that will be told, believed, and understood by all men long before the full magnificence of their sanctification, and the superb transcendence of their blessedness, will even begin to be described to G.o.d's secret saints. For, all that sleepless, cruel, and soul-killing pain, and all that shameful and humbling corruption,--all that means, all that is, so much holiness, so much heaven, working itself out in the soul. All that is so much immortal life, spotless beauty, and incorruptible joy already begun in the soul. Every such pang in a holy heart is a death-pang of another sin and a birth-pang of another grace. Brotherly love is at last being born never to die in that heart where envy and malice and resentment and revenge are causing inward agony. And humility and meekness and the whole mind of Christ are there where pride and anger and ill-will are felt to be very h.e.l.l itself. And holiness, even as G.o.d is holy, will soon be there for ever where the sinfulness of sin is a sinner's acutest sorrow. "As for me," said one whose sin was ever before him, "I will behold Thy face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied when I wake with Thy likeness."

MRS. TIMOROUS

"But the fearful [literally, the timid and the cowardly] shall have their part in the second death."--_Revelation xxi_.

No sooner had Secret bidden Christiana farewell than she began with all her might to make ready for her great journey. "Come, my children, let us pack up and begone to the gate that leads to the Celestial City, that we may see your father and be with him, and with his companions, in peace, according to the laws of that land." And then: "Come in, if you come in G.o.d's name!" Christiana called out, as two of her neighbours knocked at her door. "Having little to do at home this morning," said the elder of the two women, "I have come across to kill a little time with you. I spent last night with Mrs. Light-mind, and I have some good news for you this morning." "I am just preparing for a journey this morning," said Christiana, packing up all the time, "and I have not so much as one moment to spare." You know yourselves what Christiana's nervousness and almost impatience were. You know how it upsets your good temper and all your civility when you are packing up for a long absence from home, and some one comes in, and will talk, and will not see how behindhand and how busy you are. "For what journey, I pray you?" asked Mrs. Timorous, for that was her visitor's name. "Even to go after my good husband," the busy woman said, and with that she fell a-weeping. But you must read the whole account of that eventful morning in Christiana's memoirs for yourselves till you have it, as Secret said, by root-of-heart. On the understanding that you are not total strangers to that so excellently-written pa.s.sage I shall now venture a few observations upon it.

1. Well, to begin with, Mrs. Timorous was not a bad woman, as women went in that town and in that day. Her companions,--her gossips, as she would have called them,--were far worse women than she was; and, had it not been for her family infirmity, had it not been for that timid, hesitating, lukewarm, and half-and-half habit of mind which she had inherited from her father, there is no saying what part she might have played in the famous expedition of Christiana and Mercy and the boys. Her father had been a pilgrim himself at one time; but he had now for a long time been known in the town as a turncoat and a temporary, and all his children had unhappily taken after their father in that. Had her father held on as he at one time had begun--had he held on in the face of all fear and all danger as Christiana's n.o.ble husband had done--to a certainty his daughter would have started that morning with Christiana and her company, and would have been, if a timid, easily scared, and troublesome pilgrim, yet as true a pilgrim, and made as welcome at last, as, say, Miss Much-afraid, Mr. Fearing, and Mr. Ready-to-halt were made.

But her father's superficiality and shakiness, and at bottom his warm love of this world and his lukewarm love of the world to come, had unfortunately all descended to his daughter, till we find her actually reviling Christiana on that decisive morning, and returning to her dish of tea and t.i.ttle-tattle with Mrs. Bats-eyes, Mrs. Inconsiderate, Mrs.

Light-mind, and Mrs. Know-nothing.

2. The thing that positively terrified Mrs. Timorous at the very thought of setting out with Christiana that morning was that intolerable way in which Christiana had begun to go back upon her past life as a wife and a mother. Christiana could not hide her deep distress, and, indeed, she did not much try. Such were the swarms of painful memories that her husband's late death, the visit of Secret, and one thing and another had let loose upon Christiana's mind, that she could take pleasure in nothing but in how she was to escape away from her past life, and how she could in any way mend it and make up for it where she could not escape from it.

"You may judge yourself," said Mrs. Timorous to Mrs. Light-mind, "whether I was likely to find much entertainment with a woman like that!" For, Mrs. Timorous too, you must know, had a past life of her own; and it was that past life of hers all brought back by Christiana's words that morning that made Mrs. Timorous so revile her old friend and return to the society we so soon see her with. Now, is not this the case, that we all have swarms of evil memories that we dare not face? There is no single relationship in life that we can boldly look back upon and fully face. As son or as daughter, as brother or as sister, as friend or as lover, as husband or as wife, as minister or as member, as master or as servant--what swarms of hornet-memories darken our hearts as we so look back! Let any grown-up man, with some imagination, tenderness of heart, and integrity of conscience, go back step by step, taking some time to it,--at a new year, say, or a birthday, or on some such suitable occasion: let him go over his past life back to his youth and childhood--and what an intolerable burden will be laid on his heart before he is done! What a panorama of scarlet pictures will pa.s.s before his inward eye! What a forest of accusing fingers will be pointed at him! What hissing curses will be spat at him both by the lips of the living and the dead! What untold pains he will see that he has caused to the innocent and the helpless! What desolating disappointments, what shipwrecks of hope to this man and to that woman! What a stone of stumbling he has been to many who on that stone have been for ever broken and lost! What a rock of offence even his mere innocent existence, all unknown to himself till afterwards, has been! Swarms, said Christiana.

Swarms of hornets armed, said Samson. And many of us understand what that bitter word means better than any commentator on Bunyan or on Milton can tell us. One of the holiest men the Church of England ever produced, and one of her best devotional writers, used to shut his door on the night of every first day of the week, and on his knees spread out a prayer which always contained this pa.s.sage: "I worship Thee, O G.o.d, on my face. I smite my breast and say with the publican, G.o.d be merciful to me a sinner; the chief of sinners; a sinner far above the publican. Despise me not--an unclean worm, a dead dog, a putrid corpse. Despise me not, despise me not, O Lord. But look upon me with those eyes with which Thou didst look upon Magdalene at the feast, Peter in the hall, and the thief on the cross. O that mine eyes were a fountain of tears that I might weep night and day before Thee! I despise and bruise myself that my penitence is not deeper, is not fuller. Help Thou mine impenitence, and more and more pierce, rend, and crush my heart. My sins are more in number than the sand. My iniquities are multiplied, and I have no relief." Perish your Puritanism, and your prayer-books too! I hear some high-minded and indignant man saying. Perish your Celestial City and all my desire after it, before I say the like of that about myself! Brave words, my brother; brave words! But there have been men as blameless as you are, and as brave-hearted over it, who, when the scales fell off their eyes, were heard crying out ever after: O wretched man that I am!

And: Have mercy on me, the chief of sinners! And so, if it so please G.o.d, will it yet be with you.

3. "Having had little to do this morning," said Mrs. Timorous to Mrs.

Light-mind, "I went to give Christiana a visit." "Law," I read in his most impressive Life, "by this time was well turned fifty, but he rose as early and was as soon at his desk as when he was still a new, enthusiastic, and scrupulously methodical student at Cambridge." Summer and winter Law rose to his devotions and his studies at five o'clock, not because he had imperative sermons to prepare, but because, in his own words, it is more reasonable to suppose a person up early because he is a Christian than because he is a labourer or a tradesman or a servant. I have a great deal of business to do, he would say. I have a hardened heart to change; I have still the whole spirit of religion to get. When Law at any time felt a temptation to relax his rule of early devotion, he again reminded himself how fast he was becoming an old man, and how far back his sanctification still was, till he flung himself out of bed and began to make himself a new heart before the servants had lighted their fires or the farmers had yoked their horses. Shame on you, he said to himself, to lie folded up in a bed when you might be pouring out your heart in prayer and in praise, and thus be preparing yourself for a place among those blessed beings who rest not day and night saying, Holy, Holy, Holy. "I have little to do this morning," said Mrs. Timorous. "But I am preparing for a journey," said Christiana. "I have now a price put into my hand to get gain, and I should be a fool of the greatest size if I should have no heart to strike in with the opportunity."

4. Another thing that completely threw out Christiana's idle visitor and made her downright angry was the way she would finger and kiss and read pieces out of the fragrant letter she held in her hand. You will remember how Christiana came by that letter she was now so fond of.

"Here," said Secret, "is a letter I have brought thee from thy husband's King." So she took it and opened it, and it smelt after the manner of the best perfume; also it was written in letters of gold. "I advise thee," said Secret, "that thou put this letter in thy bosom, that thou read therein to thy children until you have all got it by root-of-heart."

"His messenger was here," said Christiana to Mrs. Timorous, "and has brought me a letter which invites me to come." And with that she plucked out the letter and read to her out of it, and said: "What now do you say to all that?" That, again, is so true to our own life. For there is nothing that more distastes and disrelishes many people among us than just that we should name to them our favourite books, and read a pa.s.sage out of them, and ask them to say what they think of such wonderful words.

Samuel Rutherford's _Letters_, for instance; a book that smells to some nostrils with the same heavenly perfume as Secret's own letter did. A book, moreover, that is written in the same ink of gold. Ask at afternoon tea to-morrow, even in so-called Christian homes, when any of the ladies round the table last read, and how often they have read, _Grace Abounding, The Saint's Rest, The Religious Affections, Jeremy Taylor, Law, a Kempis, Fenelon_, or such like, and they will smile to one another and remark after you are gone on your strange taste for old-fashioned and long-winded and introspective books. "Julia has buried her husband and married her daughters, and since that she spends her time in reading. She is always reading foolish and unedifying books. She tells you every time she sees you that she is almost at the end of the silliest book that ever she read in her life. But the best of it is that it serves to dispose of a good deal of her spare time. She tells you all romances are sad stuff, yet she is very impatient till she can get all she can hear of. Histories of intrigue and scandal are the books that Julia thinks are always too short. The truth is, she lives upon folly and scandal and impertinence. These things are the support of her dull hours. And yet she does not see that in all this she is plainly telling you that she is in a miserable, disordered, reprobate state of mind. Now, whether you read her books or no, you perhaps think with her that it is a dull task to read only religious and especially spiritual books. But when you have the spirit of true religion, when you can think of G.o.d as your only happiness, when you are not afraid of the joys of eternity, you will think it a dull task to read any other books. When it is the care of your soul to be humble, holy, pure, and heavenly-minded; when you know anything of the guilt and misery of sin, or feel a real need of salvation, then you will find religious and truly spiritual books to be the greatest feast and joy of your mind and heart." Yes. And then we shall thank G.o.d every day we live that He raised us up such helpers in our salvation as the gifted and gracious authors we have been speaking of.

5. "The further I go the more danger I meet with," said old Timorous, the father, to Christian, when Christian asked him on the Hill Difficulty why he was running the wrong way. "I, too, was going to the City of Zion," he said; "but the further on I go the more danger I meet with."

And, in saying that, the old runaway gave our persevering pilgrim something to think about for all his days. For, again and again, and times without number, Christian would have gone back too if only he had known where to go. Go on, therefore, he must. To go back to him was simply impossible. Every day he lived he felt the bitter truth of what that old apostate had so unwittingly said. But, with all that he kept himself in his onward way till, dangers and difficulties, death and h.e.l.l and all, he came to the blessed end of it. And that same has been the universal experience of all the true and out-and-out saints of G.o.d in all time. If poor old Timorous had only known it, if he had only had some one beside him to remind him of it, the very thing that so fatally turned him back was the best proof possible that he was on the right and the only right way; ay, and fast coming, poor old castaway, to the very city he had at one time set out to seek. Now, it is only too likely that there are some of my hearers at this with it to-night, that they are on the point of giving up the life of faith, and hope, and love, and holy living; because the deeper they carry that life into their own hearts the more impossible they find it to live that life there. The more they aim their hearts at G.o.d's law the more they despair of ever coming within sight of it. My supremely miserable brother! if this is any consolation to you, if you can take any crumb of consolation out of it, let this be told you, that, as a matter of fact, all truly holy men have in their heart of hearts had your very experience. That is no strange and unheard- of thing which is pa.s.sing within you. And, indeed, if you could but believe it, that is one of the surest signs and seals of a true and genuine child of G.o.d. Dante, one of the bravest, but hardest bestead of G.o.d's saints, was, just like you, well-nigh giving up the mountain altogether when his Greatheart, who was always at his side, divining what was going on within him, said to him--

"Those scars That when they pain thee most then kindliest heal."

"The more I do," complained one of Thomas Shepard's best friends to him, "the worse I am." "The best saints are the most sensible of sin," wrote Samuel Rutherford. And, again he wrote, "Sin rages far more in the G.o.dly than ever it does in the unG.o.dly." And you dare not deny but that Samuel Rutherford was one of the holiest men that ever lived, or that in saying all that he was speaking of himself. And Newman: "Every one who tries to do G.o.d's will"--and that also is Newman himself--"will feel himself to be full of all imperfection and sin; and the more he succeeds in regulating his heart, the more will he discern its original bitterness and guilt."

As our own hymn has it:

"They who fain would serve Thee best Are conscious most of wrong within."

Without knowing it, Mrs. Timorous's runaway father was speaking the same language as the chief of the saints. Only he said, "Therefore I have turned back," whereas, first Christian, and then Christiana his widow, said, "Yet I must venture!"

And so say you. Say, I must and I will venture! Say it; clench your teeth and your hands and say it. Say that you are determined to go on towards heaven where the holy are--absolutely determined, though you are quite well aware that you are carrying up with you the blackest, the wickedest, the most corrupt, and the most abominable heart either out of h.e.l.l or in it. Say that, say all that, and still venture. Say all that and all the more venture. Venture upon G.o.d of whom such rea.s.suring things are said. Venture upon the Son of G.o.d of whom His Father is represented as saying such inviting things. Venture upon the cross.

Survey the wondrous cross and then make a bold venture upon it. Think who that is who is bleeding to death upon the cross, and why? Look at Him till you never afterwards can see anything else. Look at G.o.d's Eternal, Divine, Well-pleasing Son with all the wages of sin dealt out to Him, body and soul, on that tree to the uttermost farthing. And, devil incarnate though you indeed are, yet, say, if that spectacle does not satisfy you, and encourage you, and carry your cowardice captive.

Venture! I say, venture! And if you find at last that you have ventured too far--if you have sinned and corrupted yourself beyond redemption--then it will be some consolation and distinction to you in h.e.l.l that you had out-sinned the infinite grace of G.o.d, and had seen the end of the unsearchable riches of Christ. Timid sinner, I but mock thee, therefore venture! Fearful sinner, venture! Cowardly sinner, venture. Venture thyself upon thy G.o.d, upon Christ thy Saviour, and upon His cross.

Venture all thy guilt and all thy corruption taken together upon Christ hanging upon His cross, and make that tremendous venture now!

MERCY

"Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy."--_Our Lord_.

The first time that we see Mercy she is standing one sunshine morning knocking along with another at Christiana's door. And all that we afterwards hear of Mercy might be described as, A morning call and all that came of it; or, How a G.o.dly matron led on a poor maid to fall in love with her own salvation. John Bunyan, her biographer, in all his devotion to Mercy, does not make it at all clear to us why such a sweet and good girl as Mercy was could be on such intimate terms with Mrs.

Timorous and all her so questionable circle. Could it be that Mercy's mother was one of that unhappy set? And had this dear little woman-child been brought up so as to know no better than to figure in their a.s.semblies, and go out on their morning rounds with Mrs. Light-mind and Mrs. Know-nothing? Or, was poor Mercy an orphan with no one to watch over her, and had her sweet face, her handsome figure, and her winning manners made her one of the attractions of old Madam Wanton's midnight routs? However it came about, there was Mercy out on a series of morning calls with a woman twice her age, but a woman whose many years had taught her neither womanliness nor wisdom. "If you come in G.o.d's name, come in," a voice from the inside answered the knocking of Mrs. Timorous and Mercy, her companion, at Christiana's door. In all their rounds that morning the two women had not been met with another salutation like that; and that strange salutation so disconcerted and so confounded them that they did not know whether to lift the latch and go in, or to run away and leave those to go in who could take their delight in such outlandish language. "If you come in G.o.d's name, come in." At this the women were stunned, for this kind of language they used not to hear or to perceive to drop from the lips of Christiana. Yet they came in; but, behold, they found the good woman preparing to be gone from her house. The conversation that ensued was all carried on by the two elder women. For it was often remarked about Mercy all her after-days that her voice was ever soft, and low, and, especially, seldom heard. But her ears were not idle. For all the time the debate went on--because by this time the conversation had risen to be a debate--Mercy was taking silent sides with Christiana and her distress and her intended enterprise, till, when Mrs.

Timorous reviled Christiana and said, "Come away, Mercy, and leave her in her own hands," Mercy by that time was brought to a standstill. For, like a rose among thorns, Mercy was thoughtful and wise and womanly far beyond her years. So much so, that already she had made up her mind to offer herself as a maidservant to help the widow with her work and to see her so far on her way, and, indeed, though she kept that to herself, to go all the way with her, if the way should prove open to her. First, her heart yearned over Christiana; so she said within herself, If my neighbour will needs be gone, I will go a little way with her to help her. Secondly, her heart yearned over her own soul's salvation, for what Christiana had said had taken some hold upon Mercy's mind. Wherefore she said within herself, I will yet have more talk with this Christiana, and if I find truth and life in what she shall say, myself with all my heart shall also go with her. "Neighbour," spoke out Mercy to Mrs. Timorous, "I did indeed come with you to see Christiana this morning, and since she is, as you see, a-taking of her last farewell of her country, I think to walk this sunshine morning a little way with her to help her on the way."

But she told her not of her second reason, but kept that to herself. I would fain go on with Mercy's memoirs all night. But you will take up that inviting thread for yourselves. And meantime I shall stop here and gather up under two or three heads some of the more memorable results and lessons of that sunshine-morning call.

1. Well, then, to begin with, there was something quite queen-like, something absolutely commanding, about Christiana's look and manner, as well as about all she said and did that morning. Mercy's morning companion had all the advantages that dress and equipage could give her; while Christiana stood in the middle of the floor in her housewife's clothes, covered with dust and surrounded with all her dismantled house; but, with all that, there was something about Christiana that took Mercy's heart completely captive. All that Christiana had by this time come through had blanched her cheek and whitened her hair: but all that only the more commanded Mercy's sensitive and n.o.ble soul. To be open to impressions of that kind is one of the finest endowments of a finely endowed nature; and, all through, the attentive reader of her history will be sure to remark and imitate Mercy's exquisite and tenacious sensibility to all that is true and good, upright and honourable and n.o.ble. And then, what a blessing it is to a girl of Mercy's mould to meet at opening womanhood with another woman, be it a mother, a mistress, or a neighbour, whose character then, and as life goes on, can supply the part of the supporting and sheltering oak to the springing and clinging vine. Christiana being now the new woman she was, as well as a woman of great natural wisdom, dignity, and stability of character, the safety, the salvation of poor motherless Mercy was as good as sure. Indeed, all Mercy's subsequent history is only one long and growing tribute to the worth, the constant love, and the sleepless solicitude of this true mother in Israel.

2. Now, it was so, that, wholly unknown to all her companions, young and old, in her own very remarkable words, Mercy had for a long time been hungering with all her heart to meet with some genuinely good people,--with some people, as she said herself,--"of truth and of life."

These are remarkable words to hear drop from the lips of a young girl, and especially a girl of Mercy's environment. Now, had there been anything hollow, had there been one atom of insincerity or exaggeration about Christiana that morning, had she talked too much, had all her actions not far more than borne out all her words, had there not been in the broken-hearted woman a depth of mind and a warmth of heart far beyond all her words, Mercy would never have become a pilgrim. But the natural dignity of Christiana's character; her capable, commanding, resolute ways; the reality, even to agony, of her sorrow for her past life--all taken together with her iron-fast determination to enter at once on a new life--all that carried Mercy's heart completely captive. Mercy felt that there was a solemnity, an awesomeness, and a mystery about her new friend's experiences and memories that it was not for a child like herself to attempt to intrude into. But, all the more because of that, a spell of love and fear and reverence lay on Mercy's heart and mind all her after-days from that so solemn and so eventful morning when she first saw Christiana's haggard countenance and heard her remorseful cries. My so churlish carriages to him! Now, such carriages between man and wife had often pained and made ashamed Mercy's maidenly heart beyond all expression. Till she had sometimes said to herself, blushing with shame before herself as she said it, that if ever she was a wife--may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth before I say one churlish word to him who is my husband! And thus it was that nothing that Christiana said that morning in the uprush of her remorse moved Mercy more with pity and with love than just what Christiana beat her breast about as concerning her lost husband. Mercy used to say that she saw truth and life enough in one hour that morning to sober and to solemnise and to warn her to set a watch on the door of her lips for all her after-days.

3. Before Mrs. Timorous was well out of the door, Mercy had already plucked off her gloves, and hung up her morning bonnet on a nail in the wall, so much did her heart heave to help the c.u.mbered widow and her fatherless children. "If thou wilt, I will hire thee," said Christiana, "and thou shalt go with me as my servant. Yet we will have all things common betwixt thee and me; only, now thou art here, go along with me."

At this Mercy fell on Christiana's neck and kissed her mother; for after that morning Christiana had always a daughter of her own, and Mercy a mother. And you may be sure, with two such women working with all their might, all things were soon ready for their happy departure.