CHAPTER X--CLIP-PROMISE

' . . . the promise made of none effect.'--_Paul_

Toward the end of the thirteenth century Edward the First, the English Justinian, brought a select colony of artists from Italy to England and gave them a commission to execute their best coinage for the English Mint. Deft and skilful as those artists were, the work they turned out was but rude and clumsy compared with some of the gold and silver and copper coins of our day. The Florentine artists took a sheet of gold or of silver and divided the sheet up with great scissors, and then they hammered the cut-out pieces as only a Florentine hammerman could hammer them. But, working with such tools, and working on such methods, those goldsmiths and silversmiths, with all their art, found it impossible to give an absolutely equal weight and worth to every piece of money that they turned out. For one thing, their cut and hammered coins had no carved rims round their edges as all our gold and silver and even copper coinage now has. And, accordingly, the clever rogues of that day soon discovered that it was far easier for them to take up a pair of shears and to clip a sliver of silver off the rough rim of a shilling, or a shaving of gold off a sovereign, than it was to take of their coats and work a hard day's work. Till to clip the coin of the realm soon became one of the easiest and most profitable kinds of crime. In the time of Elizabeth a great improvement was made in the way of coining the public money; but it was soon found that this had only made matters worse. For now, side by side with a pure and unimpaired and full-valued currency, and mingled up everywhere with it, there was the old, clipped, debased, and far too light gold and silver money; till troubles arose in connection with the coinage and circulation of the country that can only be told by Macaulay's extraordinarily graphic pen. 'It may well be doubted,' Macaulay says, in the twenty-first chapter of his _History of England_, 'whether all the misery which has been inflicted on the English nation in a quarter of a century by bad Kings, bad Ministers, bad Parliaments, and bad Judges was equal to the misery caused in a single year by bad crowns and bad shillings. Whether Whigs or Tories, Protestants or Papists were uppermost, the grazier drove his beasts to market, the grocer weighed out his currants, the draper measured out his broadcloth, the hum of buyers and sellers was as loud as ever in the towns; the cream overflowed the pails of Cheshire; the apple juice foamed in the presses of Herefordshire; the piles of crockery glowed in the furnaces of the Trent, and the barrows of coal rolled fast along the timber railways of the Tyne. But when the great instrument of exchange became thoroughly deranged all trade and all industry were smitten as with a palsy. Nothing could be purchased without a dispute. Over every counter there was wrangling from morning to night. The employer and his workmen had a quarrel as regularly as Sat.u.r.day night came round. On a fair day or a market day the clamours, the disputes, the reproaches, the taunts, the curses, were incessant. No merchant would contract to deliver goods without making some stipulation about the quality of the coin in which he was to be paid. The price of the necessaries of life, of shoes, of ale, of oatmeal, rose fast. The bit of metal called a shilling the labourer found would not go so far as sixpence. One day Tonson sends forty bra.s.s shillings to Dryden, to say nothing of clipped money. The great poet sends them all back and demands in their place good guineas. "I expect," he says, "good silver, not such as I had formerly." Meanwhile, at every session of the Old Bailey the most terrible example of coiners and clippers was made. Hurdles, with four, five, six wretches convicted of counterfeiting or mutilating the money of the realm, were dragged month after month up Holborn Hill.' But I cannot copy the whole chapter, wonderful as the writing is. Suffice it to say that before the clippers could be rooted out, and confidence restored between buyer and seller, the greatest statesmen, the greatest financiers, and the greatest philosophers were all at their wits' end.

Kings' speeches, cabinet councils, bills of Parliament, and showers of pamphlets were all full in those days of the clipper and the coiner. All John Locke's great intellect came short of grappling successfully with the terrible crisis the clipper of the coin had brought upon England.

Carry all that, then, over into the life of personal religion, after the manner of our Lord's parables, and after the manner of the _Pilgrim's Progress_ and the _Holy War_, and you will see what an able and impressive use John Bunyan will make of the shears of the coin-clippers of his day. Macaulay has but made us ready to open and understand Bunyan. 'After this, my Lord apprehended Clip-Promise. Now, because he was a notorious villain, for by his doings much of the king's coin was abused, therefore he was made a public example. He was arraigned and judged to be set first in the pillory, then to be whipped by all the children and servants in Mansoul, and then to be hanged till he was dead.

Some may wonder at the severity of this man's punishment, but those that are honest traders in Mansoul they are sensible of the great abuse that one clipper of promises in little time may do in the town of Mansoul; and, truly, my judgment is that all those of his name and life should be served out even as he.'

The grace of G.o.d is like a bullion ma.s.s of purest gold, and then Jesus Christ is the great ingot of that gold, and then Moses, and David, and Isaiah, and Hosea, and Paul, and Peter, and John are the inspired artists who have commission to take both bullion and ingot, and out of them to cut, and beat, and smelt, and shape, and stamp, and superscribe the promises, and then to issue the promises to pa.s.s current in the market of salvation like so many shekels, and pounds, and pence, and farthings, and mites, as the case may be. And it was just these royal coins, imaged and superscribed so richly and so beautifully, that Clip-Promise so mutilated, abused, and debased, till for doing so he was hanged by the neck till he was dead.

1. The very house of Israel herself, the very Mint-house, Tower Hill, and Lombard Street of Israel herself, was full of false coiners and clippers of the promises; as full as ever England was at her very worst.

Israel clipped her Messianic promises and lived upon the clippings instead of upon the coin. Her coming Christ, and His salvation already begun, were the true spiritual currency of Old Testament times; while round that central Image of her great promise there ran an outside rim of lesser promises that all took their true and their only value from Him whose image and superscription stood within. But those besotted and infatuated men of Israel, instead of entering into and living by the great spiritual promises given to them in their Messiah, made lands, and houses, and meat, and drink, all the Messiah they cared for. Matthew Henry says that when we go to the merchant to buy goods, he gives us the paper and the pack-thread to the bargain. Well, those children and fools in Israel actually threw away the goods and h.o.a.rded and boasted over the paper and the pack-thread. Our old Scottish lawyers have made us familiar with the distinction in the church between _spiritualia_ and _temporalia_. Well, the Jews let the _spiritualia_ go to those who cared to take such things, while they held fast to the _temporalia_. And all that went on till His disciples had the effrontery to clip and coin under our Lord's very eyes, and even to ask Him to hold the coin while they sharpened their shears. 'O faithless and perverse generation! How long shall I be with you? How long shall I suffer you? Have I been so long with you, and yet hast thou not known Me, Philip? O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! And beginning at Moses and all the prophets He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.'

2. But those who live in gla.s.s houses must take care not to throw stones. And thus the greatest fool in Israel is safe from you and me.

For, like them, and just as if we had never read one word about them, we bend our hearts and our children's hearts to things seen and temporal, and then, after things seen and temporal have all cast us off, we begin to ask if there is any solace or sweetness for a cast-off heart in things unseen and eternal. There are great gaps clipt out of our Bibles that not G.o.d Himself can ever print or paste in again. Look and see if half the Book of Proverbs, for instance, with all its n.o.ble promises to a G.o.dly youth, is not clipt clean out of your dismembered Bible. That fine leaf also, 'My son, give Me thine heart,' is clean gone out of the twenty- third chapter of the Proverbs years and years ago. As is the best part of the n.o.ble Book of Daniel, and almost the whole of Second Timothy.

'Seek ye first the Kingdom of G.o.d and His righteousness, and meat and drink, and wife and child shall be added unto you.' Your suicidal shears have cut that golden promise for ever out of your Sermon on the Mount. So much so that if any or all of these temporal mercies ever come to you, they will come of pure and undeserved mercy, for the time has long pa.s.sed when you could plead any promise for them. Still, there are two most excellent uses left to which you can even yet put your mangled and dismembered Bible. You can make a splendid use of its gaps and of its gashes, and of those waste places where great promises at one time stood.

You can make a grand use even of those gaps if you will descend into them and draw out of them humiliation and repentance, compunction, contrition, and resignation. And this use also: When you are moved to take some man who is still young into your confidence, ask him to let you see his Bible and then let him see yours, and point out to him the rents and wounds and wilderness places in yours. And thus, by these two uses of a clipped-up and half-empty Bible, you may make gains that shall yet set you above those whose Bibles of promises are still as fresh as when they came from G.o.d's own hand. And Samson said, I will now put forth a riddle unto you: Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness.

3. 'Go out,' said the Lord of Mansoul, 'and apprehend Clip-Promise and bring him before me.' And they did so. 'Go down to Edinburgh to-night, and go to the door of such and such a church, and, as he comes out arrest Clip-the-Commandments, for he has heard My word all this day again but will not do it.' Where would you be by midnight if G.o.d rose up in anger and swore at this moment that your disobedient time should be no longer?

You would be speechless before such a charge, for the shears are in your pocket at this moment with which you have clipped to pieces this Sabbath- day: shears red with the blood of the Fourth Commandment. For, when did you rise off your bed this resurrection morning? And what did you do when you did rise? What has your reading and your conversation been this whole Lord's day? How full your heart would have been of faith and love and holiness by this time of night had you not despised the Lord of the Sabbath, and cast all His commandments and opportunities to you behind your back? What private exercise have you had all day with your Father who sees in secret? How often have you been on your knees, and where, and how long, and for what, and for whom? What work of mercy have you done to-day, or determined to do to-morrow? And so with all the divine commandments: Mosaic and Christian, legal and evangelical. Such as: A tenth of all I have given to thee; a covenant with a wandering eye; a mouth once speaking evil, is it now well watched? not one vessel only, but all the vessels of thy body sanctified till every thought and imagination is well under the obedience of Christ. Lest His anger for all that begin to burn to-night, make your bed with Eli and Samuel in His sanctuary to-night, lest the avenger of the blood of the commandments leap out on you in your sleep!

4. The Old Serpent took with him the great shears of h.e.l.l, and clipped 'Thou shalt surely die' out of the second chapter of Genesis. And the same enemy of mankind will clip all the terror of the Lord out of your heart to-night again, if he can. And he will do it in this way, if he can. He will have some one at the church door ready and waiting for you.

As soon as the blessing is p.r.o.nounced, some one will take you by the arm and will entertain you with the talk you love, or that you once loved, till you will be ashamed to confess that there is any terror or turning to G.o.d in your heart. No! Thou shalt not surely die, says the serpent still. Why, hast thou not trampled Sabbaths and sermons past counting under thy feet? What commandment, laid on body or soul, hast thou not broken, and thou art still adding drunkenness to thirst, and G.o.d doth not know! 'The woman said unto the serpent, We may not eat of it, neither may we touch it, lest we die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die.'

5. You must all have heard of c.l.i.to, who used to say that he desired no more time for rising and dressing and saying his prayers than about a quarter of an hour. Well, that was clipping the thing pretty close, wasn't it? At the same time it must be admitted that a good deal of prayer may be got through in a quarter of an hour if you do not lose any moment of it. Especially in the first quarter of the day, if you are expeditious enough to begin to pray before you even begin to dress. And prayer is really a very strange experience. There are things about prayer that no man has yet fully found out or told to any. For one thing, once well began it grows upon a man in a most extraordinary and unheard-of way. This same c.l.i.to for instance, some time after we find him at his prayers before his eyes are open; and then he keeps all morning making his bath, his soap, his towels, his brushes, and his clothes all one long artifice of prayer. And that till there is not a single piece of his dressing-room furniture that is not ready to swear at the last day that its master long before he died had become a man full of secret prayer. There is a fountain filled with blood! he exclaims, as he throws himself into his bath; and Jeremiah second and twenty-second he uses regularly to repeat to himself half a dozen times a day as he washes the smoke and dust of the city off his hands and face. And then Revelation third and eighteenth till his toilet is completed. Nay, this same c.l.i.to has come to be such a devotee to that he had at one time been so expeditious with, that I have seen him forget himself on the street and think that his door was shut. But there is really no use telling you all that about c.l.i.to. For, till you try closet-prayer for yourself, all that G.o.d or man can say to you on that subject will be water spilt on the ground. All we can say is, Try it. Begin it. Some desperate day try it. Stop when you are on the way to the pond and try it. Stop when you are fastening up the rope and try it. When the poison is moving in the cup, stop, shut your door first. Try G.o.d first. See if He is still waiting. And, always after, when the steel shears of a too early, too crowded, and far too exacting day are clipping you out of all time for prayer, then what should you do? What do you do when you simply cannot get your proper fresh air and exercise everyday? Do you not fall back on the plasticity and pliability of nature and take your air and exercise in large parcels? You take a ride into the country two or three times a week. Or, two afternoons a week you have ten miles alone if you cannot get a G.o.dly friend. And then two or three times a year, if you can afford it, you climb an Alp or a Grampian every day for a week or a month; and, so gracious and so adaptable is human nature, that, what others get daily, you get weekly, or monthly, or quarterly, or yearly.

And, though a soul is not to be too much presumed upon, c.l.i.to came to tell his friends that his soul could on occasion take in prayer and praise enough for a week in a single morning or afternoon, and, almost, for a whole year in a good holiday. As Christ Himself did when He said: Come away apart into a desert place and rest a while; for there are so many people coming and going here that we have no time so much as to eat.

6. But I see I must clip off my last point with you, which was to tell you what you already know only too well, and that is, what terrible shears a bad conscience is armed with, and what havoc she makes at all ages of a poor sinner's Bible. But you can spare that head. You can preach on that text to yourselves far better than all your ministers.

Only, take home with you these two lines I have clipped out of Fraser of Brea for you. Nothing in man, he says to us, is to be a ground of despair, since the whole ground of all our hope is in Christ alone.

Christ's relation is always to men as they are sinners and not as they are righteous. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. 'Tis with sinners, then, Christ has to do. Nothing d.a.m.ns but unbelief; and unbelief is just holding back from pressing G.o.d with this promise, that Christ came to save sinners. This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, and it is still to be found standing in the most clipped-up Bible, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.

CHAPTER XI--STIFF MR. LOTH-TO-STOOP

'Thy neck is an iron sinew.'--_Jehovah to the house of Jacob_.

'King Zedekiah humbled not himself, but stiffened his neck.'--_The Chronicles_.

'He humbled himself.'--_Paul on our Lord_.

All John Bunyan's Characters, Situations, and Episodes are collected into this house to-night. Obstinate and Pliable are here; Pa.s.sion and Patience; Simple, Sloth, and Presumption; Madame Bubble and Mr. Worldly- wiseman; Talkative and By-ends; Deaf Mr. Prejudice is here also, and, sitting close beside him, stiff Mr. Loth-to-stoop; while good old Mr. Wet- eyes and young Captain Self-denial are not wholly wanting. It gives this house an immense and an ever-green interest to me to see character after character coming trooping in, Sabbath evening after Sabbath evening, each man to see himself and his neighbour in John Bunyan's so truthful and so fearless gla.s.s. But it stabs me to the heart with a mortal stab to see how few of us out of this weekly congregation are any better men after all we come to see and to hear. At the same time, such a constant dropping will surely in time wear away the hardest rock. Let that so stiff old man, then, stiff old Mr. Loth-to-stoop, came forward and behold his natural face in John Bunyan's gla.s.s again to-night. 'Lord, is it I?'

was a very good question, though put by a very bad man. Let us, one and all, then, put the traitor's question to ourselves to-night. Am I stiff old Loth-to-stoop?--let every man in this house say to himself all through this service, and then at home when reviewing the day, and then all to-morrow when to stoop will be so loathsome and so impossible to us all.

1. To begin, then, at the very bottom of this whole matter, take stiff old Loth-to-stoop as a guilty sinner in the sight of G.o.d. Let us take this stiff old man in this dreadful character to begin with, because it is in this deepest and most dreadful aspect of his nature and his character that he is introduced to us in the _Holy War_. And I shall stand aside and let John Bunyan himself describe Loth-to-stoop in the matter of his justification before G.o.d. 'That is a great stoop for a sinner to have to take,' says our apostolic author in another cla.s.sical place, 'a too great stoop to have to suffer the total loss of all his own righteousness, and, actually, to have to look to another for absolutely everything of that kind. That is no easy matter for any man to do. I a.s.sure you it stretches every vein in his heart before he will be brought to yield to that. What! for a man to deny, reject, abhor, and throw away all his prayers, tears, alms, keeping of Sabbaths, hearing, reading, and all the rest, and to admit both himself and them to be abominable and accursed, and to be willing in the very midst of his sins to throw himself wholly upon the righteousness and obedience of another man! I say to do that in deed and in truth is the biggest piece of the cross, and therefore it is that Paul calls it a suffering. "I have suffered the loss of all things that I might win Christ, and be found in Him, not having mine own righteousness."' That is John Bunyan's characteristic comment on stiff old Loth-to-stoop as a guilty sinner, with the offer of a full forgiveness set before him.

2. And then our so truthful and so fertile author goes on to give us Loth-to-stoop as a half-saved sinner; a sinner, that is, trying to make his own terms with G.o.d about his full salvation. Through three most powerful pages we see stiff old Loth-to-stoop engaged in beating down G.o.d's unalterable terms of salvation, and in bidding for his full salvation upon his own reduced and easy terms. It was the tremendous stoop of the Son of G.o.d from the throne of G.o.d to the cradle and the carpenter's shop; and then, as if that were not enough, it was that other tremendous stoop of His down to the Garden and the Cross,--it was these two so tremendous stoops of Jesus Christ that made stiff old Loth-to-stoop's salvation even possible. But, with all that, his true salvation was not possible without stoop after stoop of his own; stoop after stoop which, if not so tremendous as those of Christ, were yet tremendous enough, and too tremendous, for him. Old Loth-to-stoop carries on a long and a bold debate with Emmanuel in order to lessen the stoop that Emmanuel demands of him; and your own life and mine, my brethren, at their deepest and at their closest to our own heart, are really at bottom, like Loth-to-stoop's life, one long roup of salvation, in which G.o.d tries to get us up to His terms and in which we try to get Him down to our terms. His terms are, that we shall sell absolutely all that we have for the salvation of our souls; and our terms are, salvation or no salvation, to keep all that we have and to seek every day for more.

G.o.d absolutely demands that we shall stoop to the very dust every day, till we become the poorest, the meanest, the most despicable, and the most hopeless of men; whereas we meet that divine demand with the proud reply--Is Thy servant a dog? It was with this offended mind that stiff old Loth-to-stoop at last left off from Emmanuel's presence; he would die rather than come down to such degrading terms. And as Loth-to-stoop went away, Emmanuel looked after him, well remembering the terrible night when He Himself was, not indeed like Loth-to-stoop, nor near like him, but when His own last stoop was so deep that it made Him cry out, Father, save Me from this hour! and again, If it be possible let this so tremendous stoop pa.s.s from Me. For a moment Emmanuel Himself was loth to stoop, but only for a moment. For He soon rose from off His face in a bath of blood, saying, Not My will, but Thine be done! When Thomas A Kempis is negotiating with the Loth-to-stoops of his unevangelical day, we hear him saying to them things like this: 'Jesus Christ was despised of men, forsaken of His friends and lovers, and in the midst of slanders.

He was willing, under His Father's will, to suffer and to be despised, and darest thou to complain of any man's usage of thee? Christ, thy Master, had enemies and back-biters, and dost thou expect to have all men to be thy friends and benefactors? Whence shall thy patience attain her promised crown if no adversity befall thee? Suffer thou with Jesus Christ, and for His sake, if thou wouldst reign with Him. Set thyself, therefore, to bear manfully the cross of thy Lord, who, out of love, was crucified for thee. Know for certain that thou must lead a daily dying life. And the more that thou diest to thyself all that the more shalt thou live unto G.o.d.' With many such words as these did Thomas teach the saints of his day to stoop to their daily cross; a daily cross then, which has now been for long to him and to them an everlasting crown.

3. And speaking of A Kempis, and having lately read some of his most apposite chapters, such as that on the Holy Fathers and that on Obedience and Subjection, leads me on to look at Loth-to-stoop when he enters the sacred ministry, as he sometimes does. When a half-converted, half-subdued, half-saved sinner gets himself called to the sacred ministry his office will either greatly hasten on his salvation, or else it will greatly hinder and endanger it. He will either stoop down every day to deeper and ever deeper depths of humility, or he will tower up in pride of office and in pride of heart past all hope of humility, and thus of salvation. The holy ministry is a great nursing-house of pride as we see in a long line of popes, and prelates, and priests, and other lords over G.o.d's heritage. And our own Presbyterian polity, while it hands down to us the simplicity, the unity, the brotherhood, and the humility of the apostolic age, at the same time leaves plenty of temptation and plenty of opportunity for the pride of the human heart. Our preaching and pastoral office, when it is aright laid to our hearts, will always make us the meekest and the humblest of men, even when we carry the most magnificent of messages. But when our own hearts are not right the very magnificence of our message, and the very authority of our Master, become all so many subtle temptations to pride, pique, self-importance, and lothness-to-stoop. With so much still to learn, how slow we ministers are to stoop to learn! How still we stand, and even go back, when all other men are going forward! How few of us have made the n.o.ble resolution of Jonathan Edwards: 'Resolved,' he wrote, 'that, as old men have seldom any advantage of new discoveries because these are beside a way of thinking they have been long used to: resolved, therefore, if ever I live to years, that I shall be impartial to hear the reasons of all pretended discoveries, and to receive them, if rational how long soever I have been used to another way of thinking.' Let all ministers, then, young and old, resolve to stoop with Jonathan Edwards, who shines, in his life and in his works, like the cherubim with knowledge, and burns like the seraphim with love.

And then, when, not having so resolved, our thin vein of youthful knowledge and experience has been worked to the rock; when grey hairs are here and there upon us, how slow we are to stoop to that! How unwilling we are to let it light on our hearts that our time is past; that we are no longer able to understand, or interest, or attract the young; and, besides, that that is not all their blame, no, nor ours either, but simply the order and method of Divine Providence. How slow we are to see that Divine Providence has other men standing ready to take up our work if we would only humbly lay it down;--how loth we are to stoop to see all that! How unwilling we are to make up our minds, we old and ageing ministers, and to humble our hearts to accept an a.s.sistant or to submit to a colleague to stand alongside of us in our unaccomplished work!

4. In public life also, as we call it, what disasters to the state, to the services, and to society, are constantly caused by this same Loth-to- stoop! When he holds any public office; when he becomes the leader of a party; when he is promoted to be an adviser of the Crown; when he is put at the head of a fleet of ships, or of an army of men, what untold evils does Loth-to-stoop bring both on himself and on the nation! An old statesman will have committed himself to some line of legislation or of administration; a great captain will have committed himself to some manoeuvre of a squadron or of a division, or to some plan of battle, and some subordinate will have discovered the error his leader has made, and will be bold to point it out to him. But stiff old Loth-to-stoop has taken his line and has pa.s.sed his word. His honour, as he holds it, is committed to this announced line of action; and, if the Crown itself should perish before his policy, he will not stoop to change it. How often you see that in great affairs as well as in small. How seldom you see a public man openly confessing that he has. .h.i.therto all along been wrong, and that he has at last and by others been set right. Not once in a generation. But even that once redeems public life; it enn.o.bles public life; and it saves the nation and the sovereign who possess such a true patriot. Consistency and courage, independence and dignity, are high- sounding words; but openness of mind, teachableness, diffidence, and humility always go with true n.o.bility as well as with ultimate success and lasting honour.

CHAPTER XII--THAT VARLET ILL-PAUSE, THE DEVIL'S ORATOR

'I made haste and delayed not.'--_David_.

John Bunyan shall himself introduce, describe, and characterise this varlet, this devil's ally and accomplice, this ancient enemy of Mansoul, whose name is Ill-pause. Well, this same Ill-pause, says our author, was the orator of Diabolus on all difficult occasions, nor took Diabolus any other one with him on difficult occasions, but just Ill-pause alone. And always when Diabolus had any special plot a-foot against Mansoul, and when the thing went as Diabolus would have it go, then would Ill-pause stand up, for he was Diabolus his orator. When Mansoul was under siege of Emmanuel his four n.o.ble captains sent a message to the men of the town that if they would only throw Ill-pause over the wall to them, that they might reward him according to his works, then they would hold a parley with the city; but if this varlet was to be let live in the city, then, why, the city must see to the consequences. At which Diabolus, who was there present, was loth to lose his orator, because, had the four captains once laid their fingers on Ill-pause, be sure his master had lost his orator. And, then, in the last a.s.sault, we read that Ill-pause, the orator that came along with Diabolus, he also received a grievous wound in the head, some say that his brain-pan was cracked. This, at any rate, I have taken notice of, that never after this was he able to do that mischief to Mansoul as he had done in times past. And then there was also at Eye-gate that Ill-pause of whom you have heard before. The same was he that was orator to Diabolus. He did much mischief to the town of Mansoul, till at last he fell by the hand of the Captain Good- hope.

1. Well, to begin with, this Ill-pause was a filthy Diabolonian varlet; a treacherous and a villainous old varlet, the author of the _Holy War_ calls him. Now, what is a varlet? Well, a varlet is just a broken-down old valet. A varlet is a valet who has come down, and down, and down, and down again in the world, till, from once having been the servant and the trusty friend of the very best of masters, he has come to be the ally and accomplice of the very worst of masters. His first name, the name of his first office, still sticks to him, indeed; but, like himself, and with himself, his name has become depraved and corrupted till you would not know it. A varlet, then, is just short and sharp for a scoundrel who is ready for anything; and the worse the thing is the more ready he is for it. There are riff-raff and refuse always about who are ready to volunteer for any filibustering expedition; and that full as much for the sheer devilry of the enterprise as for any real profit it is to be to themselves. Wherever mischief is to be done, there your true varlet is sure to turn up. Well, just such a land-shark was this Ill-pause, who was such an ally and accomplice to Diabolus that he had need for no other. What possible certificate in evil could exceed this--that the devil took not any with him when he went out on his worst errand but this same Ill-pause, who was his orator on all his most difficult occasions?

2. Ill-pause was a varlet, then, and he was also an orator. Now, an orator, as you know, is a great speaker. An orator is a man who has the excellent and influential gift of public speech. And on great occasions in public life when people are to be instructed, and impressed, and moved, and won over, then the great orator sets up his platform.

Quintilian teaches us in his _Inst.i.tutes_ that it is only a good man who can be a really great orator. What would that fine writer have said had he lived to read the _Holy War_, and seen the most successful of all orators that ever opened a mouth, and who was all the time a diabolical old varlet? What would the author of _The Education of an Orator_ have said to that? Diabolus did not on every occasion bring up his great orator Ill-pause. He did not always come up himself, and he did not always send up Ill-pause. It was only on difficult occasions that both Diabolus and his orator also came up. You do not hear your great preachers every Sabbath. They would not long remain great preachers, and you would soon cease to pay any attention to them, if they were always in the pulpit. Neither do you have your great orators at every street corner. Their masters only build theatres for them when some great occasion arises in the land, and when the best wisdom must straightway be spoken to the people and in the best way. Then you bring up Quintilian's orator if you have him at your call. As Diabolus has done from time to time with his great and almost always successful orator Ill-pause. On difficult occasions he came himself on the scene and Ill-pause with him.

On such difficult occasions as in the Garden of Eden; as when Noah was told to make haste and build an ark; as also when Abraham was told to make haste and leave his father's house; when Jacob was bid remember and pay the vow he had made when his trouble was upon him; as also when Joseph had to flee for what was better than life; and on that memorable occasion when David sent Joab out against Rabbah, but David tarried still at Jerusalem. On all these essential, first-cla.s.s, and difficult occasions the old serpent brought up Ill-pause. As also when our Lord was in the wilderness; when He set His face to go up to Jerusalem; when He saw certain Greeks among them that came up to the pa.s.sover; as also again and again in the Garden. As also on crucial occasions in your own life. As when you had been told not to eat, not to touch, and not even to look at the forbidden fruit, then Ill-pause, the devil's orator, came to you and said that it was a tree to be desired. And, you shall not surely die. As also when you were moved to terror and to tears under a Sabbath, or under a sermon, or at some death-bed, or on your own sick- bed--Ill-pause got you to put off till a more convenient season your admitted need of repentance and reformation and peace with G.o.d. On such difficult occasions as these the devil took Ill-pause to help him with you, and the result, from the devil's point of view, has justified his confidence in his orator. When Ill-pause gets his new honours paid him in h.e.l.l; when there is a new joy in h.e.l.l over another sinner that has not yet repented, your name will be heard sounding among the infernal cheers.

Just think of your baptismal name and your pet name at home giving them joy to-night at their supper in h.e.l.l! And yet one would not at first sight think that such triumphs and such toasts, such medals, and clasps, and garters were to be won on earth or in h.e.l.l just by saying such simple- sounding and such commonplace things as those are for which Ill-pause receives his decorations. 'Take time,' he says. 'Yes,' he admits, 'but there is no such hurry; to-morrow will do; next year will do; after you are old will do quite as well. The darkness shall cover you, and your sin will not find you out. Christ died for sin, and it is a faithful saying that His blood will cleanse you later on from all this sin.'

Everyday and well-known words, indeed, but a true orator is seen in nothing more than in this, that he can take up what everybody knows and says, and put it so as to carry everybody captive. One of Quintilian's own orators has said that a great speaker only gives back to his hearers in flood what they have already given to him in vapour.

3. 'I was always pleased,' says Calvin, 'with that saying of Chrysostom, "The foundation of our philosophy is humility"; and yet more pleased with that of Augustine: "As," says he, "the rhetorician being asked, What was the first thing in the rules of eloquence? he answered, p.r.o.nunciation; what was the second? p.r.o.nunciation; what was the third? and still he answered, p.r.o.nunciation. So if you would ask me concerning the precepts of the Christian religion, I would answer, firstly, secondly, thirdly, and for ever, Humility."' And when Ill-pause opened his elocutionary school for the young orators of h.e.l.l, he is reported to have said this to them in his opening address, 'There are only three things in my school,'

he said; 'three rules, and no more to be called rules. The first is Delay, the second is Delay, and the third is Delay. Study the art of delay, my sons; make all your studies to tell on how to make the fools delay. Only get those to whom your master sends you to delay, and you will not need to envy me my laurels; you will soon have a shining crown of your own. Get the father to delay teaching his little boy how to pray. Get him on any pretext you can invent to put off speaking in private to his son about his soul. Get him to delegate all that to the minister. And then by hook or by crook get that son as he grows up to put off the Lord's Supper. And after that you will easily get him to put off purity and prayer till he is a married man and at the head of a house. Only get the idea of a more convenient season well into their heads, and their game is up, and your spurs are won. Take their arm in yours, as I used to do, at their church door, if you are posted there, and say to them as they come out that to-morrow will be time enough to give what they had thought of giving while they were still in their pew and the minister or missionary was still in the pulpit. Only, as you value your master's praises and the applause of all this place, keep them, at any cost, from striking while the iron is hot. Let them fill their hearts, and their mouths too, if it gives them any comfort, with the best intentions; only, my scholars, remember that the beginning and middle and end of your office is by hook or by crook to secure delay.'

And a great crop of young orators sprang up ready for their work under that teaching and out of the persuasionary school of Ill-pause. In fine, Mansoul desired some time in which to prepare its answer.'

There are many men among ourselves who have been bedevilled out of their best life, out of the salvation of their souls, and out of all that const.i.tutes and accompanies salvation now for many years. And still their sin-deceived hearts are saying to them to-night, Take time! For many years, every new year, every birthday, and, for a long time, every Communion-day, they were just about to be done with their besetting sin; and now all the years lie behind them, one long downward road all paved, down to this Sabbath night, with the best intentions. And, still, as if that were not enough, that same varlet is squat at their ear. Well, my very miserable brother, you have long talked about the end of an old year and the beginning of a new year as being your set time for repentance and for reformation. Let all the weight of those so many remorseful years fall on your heart at the close of this year, and at last compel you to take the step that should have been taken, oh! so many unhappy years ago!

Go straight home then, to-night, shut your door, and, after so many desecrated Sabbath nights, G.o.d will still meet you in your secret chamber. As soon as you shut your door G.o.d will be with you, and you will be with G.o.d. With G.o.d! Think of it, my brother, and the thing is done. With G.o.d! And then tell Him all. And if any one knocks at your door, say that there is Some One with you to-night, and that you cannot come down. And continue till you have told it all to G.o.d. He knows it all already; but that is one of Ill-pause's sophistries still in your heart. Tell your Father it all. Tell Him how many years it is. Tell Him all that you so well remember over all those wild, miserable, mad, remorseful years. Tell Him that you have not had one really happy, one really satisfied day all those years, and tell Him that you have spent all, and are now no longer a young man; youth and health and self-respect and self-command are all gone, till you are a shipwreck rather than a man. And tell Him that if He will take you back that you are to-night at His feet.

4. 'We seldom overcome any one vice perfectly,' complains A Kempis. And, again, 'If only every new year we would root out but one vice.' Well, now, what do you say to that, my true and very brethren? What do you say to that? Here we are, by G.o.d's grace and long-suffering to usward, near the end of another year, another vicious year; and why have we been borne with through so many vicious years but that we should now cease from vice and begin to learn virtue? Why are we here over Ill-pause this Sabbath night? Why, but that we should shake off that varlet liar before another new year. That is the whole reason why we have been spared to see this Sabbath night. G.o.d decreed it for us that we should have this text and this discourse here to-night, and that is the reason why you and I have been so unaccountably spared so long. Let us select one vice for the axe then to-night, and give G.o.d in heaven the satisfaction of seeing that His long-suffering with us has not been wholly in vain. Let us lay the axe at one vice from this night. And what one from among so many shall it be? What is the mockery of preaching if a preacher does not practise?

And, accordingly, I have selected one vice out of my thicket for next year. Will you do the same? The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him. Just make your selection and keep it to yourself, at least till you are able this time next year to say to us--Come, all ye that fear G.o.d, and I will tell you what He hath done for my soul. Yes, come on, and from this day all your days on earth, and all the days of eternity, you will thank G.o.d for John Bunyan and his _Holy War_ and his Ill-pause. Make your selection, then, for your new axe. Attack some one sin at this so auspicious season. Swear before G.o.d, and unknown to all men--swear sure death, and that without any more delay, to that selected sin. Never once, all your days, do that sin again. Determine never once to do it again. Determine that by prayer, by secret, and at the same time outspoken, prayer on your knees. Determine it by faith in the cleansing blood and renewing spirit of Jesus Christ. Determine it by fear of instant death, and by sure hope of everlasting life. Determine it by reasons, and motives, and arguments, and encouragements known to no- one but yourself, and to be suspected by no human being. Name the doomed sin. Denounce it. Execrate it. Execute it. Draw a line across your short and uncertain life, and say to that besetting and presumptuous sin, Hitherto, and no further! Do not say you cannot do it. You can if you only will. You can if you only choose. And smiting down that one sin will loosen and shake down the whole evil fabric of sin. Breaking but that one link will break the whole of Satan's snare and evil fetter. Here is A Kempis's forest of vices out of which he hewed down one every year.

Restless l.u.s.t, outward senses, empty phantoms, always longing to get, always sparing to give, careless as to talk, unwilling to sit silent, eager for food, wakeful for news, weary of a good book, quick to anger, easy of offence at my neighbour, and too ready to judge him, too merry over prosperity, and too gloomy, fretful, and peevish in adversity; so often making good rules for my future life, and coming so little speed with them all, and so on. And, in facing even such a terrible thicket as that, let not even an old man absolutely despair. At forty, at sixty, at threescore and ten, let not an old penitent despair. Only take axe in hand and see if the sun does not stand still upon Gibeon, and the moon in the valley of Ajalon till you have avenged yourself on your enemies. And always when you stop to wipe your brow, and to whet the edge of your axe, and to wet your lips with water, keep on saying things like those of another great sinner deep in his thicket of vice, say this: O G.o.d, he said, Thou hast not cut off as a weaver my life, nor from day even to night hast Thou made an end of me. But Thou hast vouchsafed to me life and breath even to this hour from childhood, youth, and hitherto even unto old age. He holdeth our soul in life, and suffereth not our feet to slide, rescuing me from perils, sicknesses, poverty, bondage, public shame, evil chances; keeping me from perishing in my sins, and waiting patiently for my full conversion. Glory be to Thee, O Lord, glory to Thee, for Thine incomprehensible and unimaginable goodness toward me of all sinners far and away the most unworthy. The voices and the concert of voices of angels and men be to Thee; the concert of all thy saints in heaven and of all Thy creatures in heaven and on earth; and of me, beneath their feet an unworthy and wretched sinner, Thy abject creature; my praise also, now, in this day and hour, and every day till my last breath, and till the end of this world, and then to all eternity, where they cease not saying, To Him who loved us, Amen!

CHAPTER XIII--MR. PENNY-WISE-AND-POUND-FOOLISH, AND MR.

GET-I'-THE-HUNDRED-AND-LOSE-I'-THE-SHIRE

'For, what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?'--_Our Lord_.