CONVICTION OF SIN.
The 'Pilgrim's Progress' is the history of the struggle of human
nature to overcome temptation and shake off the bondage of sin, under
the convictions which prevailed among serious men in England in the
seventeenth century. The allegory is the life of its author cast in an
imaginative form. Every step in Christian's journey had been first
trodden by Bunyan himself; every pang of fear and shame, every spasm
of despair, every breath of hope and consolation, which is there
described, is but a reflexion as on a mirror from personal experience.
It has spoken to the hearts of all later generations of Englishmen
because it came from the heart; because it is the true record of the
genuine emotions of a human soul; and to such a record the emotions of
other men will respond, as one stringed instrument vibrates
responsively to another. The poet's power lies in creating sympathy;
but he cannot, however richly gifted, stir feelings which he has not
himself known in all their intensity.
Ut ridentibus arrident ita flentibus adflent
Humani vultus. Si vis me flere dolendum est
Primum ipsi tibi.
The religious history of man is essentially the same in all ages. It
takes its rise in the duality of his nature. He is an animal, and as
an animal he desires bodily pleasure and shrinks from bodily pain. As
a being capable of morality, he is conscious that for him there exists
a right and wrong. Something, whatever that something may be, binds
him to choose one and avoid the other. This is his religion, his
religatio, his obligation, in the sense in which the Romans, from whom
we take it, used the word; and obligation implies some superior power
to which man owes obedience. The conflict between his two dispositions
agitates his heart, and perplexes his intellect. To do what the
superior power requires of him, he must thwart his inclinations. He
dreads punishment, if he neglects to do it. He invents methods by
which he can indulge his appetites, and finds a substitute by which he
can propitiate his invisible ruler or rulers. He offers sacrifices; he
institutes ceremonies and observances. This is the religion of the
body, the religion of fear. It is what we call superstition. In his
nobler moods he feels that this is but to evade the difficulty. He
perceives that the sacrifice required is the sacrifice of himself. It
is not the penalty for sin which he must fear, but the sin itself. He
must conquer his own lower nature. He must detach his heart from his
pleasures, and he must love good for its own sake, and because it is
his only real good; and this is spiritual religion or piety. Between
these two forms of worship of the unseen, the human race has swayed to
and fro from the first moment in which they learnt to discern between
good and evil. Superstition attracts, because it is indulgent to
immorality by providing means by which God can be pacified. But it
carries its antidote along with it, for it keeps alive the sense of
God's existence; and when it has produced its natural effects, when
the believer rests in his observances and lives practically as if
there was no God at all, the conscience again awakes. Sacrifices and
ceremonies become detested as idolatry, and religion becomes
conviction of sin, a fiery determination to fight with the whole soul
against appetite, vanity, self-seeking, and every mean propensity
which the most sensitive alarm can detect. The battle unhappily is
attended with many vicissitudes. The victory, though practically it
may be won, is never wholly won. The struggle brings with it every
variety of emotion, alternations of humility and confidence,
despondency and hope. The essence of it is always the same--the effort
of the higher nature to overcome the lower. The form of it varies from
period to period, according to the conditions of the time, the
temperament of different people, the conception of the character of
the Supreme Power, which the state of knowledge enables men to form.
It will be found even when the puzzled intellect can see no light in
Heaven at all, in the stern and silent fulfilment of moral duty. It
will appear as enthusiasm; it will appear as asceticism. It will
appear wherever there is courage to sacrifice personal enjoyment for a
cause believed to be holy. We must all live. We must all, as we
suppose, in one shape or other give account for our actions; and
accounts of the conflict are most individually interesting when it is
an open wrestle with the enemy; as we find in the penances and
austerities of the Catholic saints, or when the difficulties of belief
are confessed and detailed, as in David's Psalms, or in the Epistles
of St. Paul. St. Paul, like the rest of mankind, found a law in his
members warring against the law which was in his heart. The problem
presented to him was how one was to be brought into subjection to the
other, and the solution was by 'the putting on of Christ.' St. Paul's
mind was charged with the ideas of Oriental and Greek philosophy then
prevalent in the Roman Empire. His hearers understood him, because he
spoke in the language of the prevailing speculations. We who have not
the clue cannot, perhaps, perfectly understand him; but his words have
been variously interpreted as human intelligence has expanded, and
have formed the basis of the two great theologies which have been
developed out of Christianity. The Christian religion taught that evil
could not be overcome by natural human strength. The Son of God had
come miraculously upon earth, had lived a life of stainless purity,
and had been offered as a sacrifice to redeem men conditionally from
the power of sin. The conditions, as English Protestant theology
understands them, are nowhere more completely represented than in the
'Pilgrim's Progress.' The Catholic theology, rising as it did in the
two centuries immediately following St. Paul, approached probably
nearer to what he really intended to say.
Catholic theology, as a system, is a development of Platonism. The
Platonists had discovered that the seat of moral evil was material
substance. In matter, and therefore in the human body, there was
either some inherent imperfection, or some ingrained perversity and
antagonism to good. The soul so long as it was attached to the body
was necessarily infected by it; and as human life on earth consisted
in the connection of soul and body, every single man was necessarily
subject to infirmity. Catholic theology accepted the position and
formulated an escape from it. The evil in matter was a fact. It was
explained by Adam's sin. But there it was. The taint was inherited by
all Adam's posterity. The flesh of man was incurably vitiated, and if
he was to be saved a new body must be prepared for him. This Christ
had done. That Christ's body was not as other men's bodies was proved
after his resurrection, when it showed itself independent of the
limitations of extended substance. In virtue of these mysterious
properties it became the body of the Corporate Church into which
believers were admitted by baptism. The natural body was not at once
destroyed, but a new element was introduced into it, by the power of
which, assisted by penance and mortification, and the spiritual food
of the Eucharist, the grosser qualities were gradually subdued, and
the corporeal system was changed. Then body and spirit became alike
pure together, and the saint became capable of obedience, so perfect
as not only to suffice for himself, but to supply the wants of others.
The corruptible put on incorruption. The bodies of the saints worked
miracles, and their flesh was found unaffected by decay after hundreds
of years.
This belief so long as it was sincerely held issued naturally in
characters of extreme beauty; of beauty so great as almost to
demonstrate its truth. The purpose of it, so far as it affected
action, was self-conquest. Those who try with their whole souls to
conquer themselves find the effort lightened by a conviction that they
are receiving supernatural assistance; and the form in which the
Catholic theory supposed the assistance to be given was at least
perfectly innocent. But it is in the nature of human speculations,
though they may have been entertained at first in entire good faith,
to break down under trial, if they are not in conformity with fact.
Catholic theology furnished Europe with a rule of faith and action
which lasted 1500 years. For the last three centuries of that period
it was changing from a religion into a superstition, till, from being
the world's guide, it became its scandal. 'The body of Christ' had
become a kingdom of this world, insulting its subjects by the
effrontery of its ministers, the insolence of its pretensions, the
mountains of lies which it was teaching as sacred truths. Luther
spoke; and over half the Western world the Catholic Church collapsed,
and a new theory and Christianity had to be constructed out of the
fragments of it.
There was left behind a fixed belief in God and in the Bible as His
revealed word, in a future judgment, in the fall of man, in the
atonement made for sin by the death of Christ, and in the new life
which was made possible by His resurrection. The change was in the
conception of the method by which the atonement was imagined to be
efficacious. The material or sacramental view of it, though it
lingered inconsistently in the mind even of Luther himself, was
substantially gone. New ideas adopted in enthusiasm are necessarily
extreme. The wrath of God was held to be inseparably and eternally
attached to every act of sin, however infirm the sinner. That his
nature could be changed, and that he could be mystically strengthened
by incorporation with Christ's body in the Church was contrary to
experience, and was no longer credible. The conscience of every man,
in the Church or out of it, told him that he was daily and hourly
offending. God's law demanded a life of perfect obedience, eternal
death being the penalty of the lightest breach of it. No human being
was capable of such perfect obedience. He could not do one single act
which would endure so strict a scrutiny. All mankind were thus
included under sin. The Catholic Purgatory was swept away. It had
degenerated into a contrivance for feeding the priests with money, and
it implied that human nature could in itself be renovated by its own
sufferings. Thus nothing lay before the whole race except everlasting
reprobation. But the door of hope had been opened on the cross of
Christ. Christ had done what man could never do. He had fulfilled the
law perfectly. God was ready to accept Christ's perfect righteousness
as a substitute for the righteousness which man was required to
present to him, but could not. The conditions of acceptance were no
longer sacraments or outward acts, or lame and impotent efforts after
a moral life, but faith in what Christ had done; a complete
self-abnegation, a resigned consciousness of utter unworthiness, and
an unreserved acceptance of the mercy held out through the Atonement.
It might have been thought that since man was born so weak that it was
impossible for him to do what the law required, consideration would be
had for his infirmity; that it was even dangerous to attribute to the
Almighty a character so arbitrary as that He would exact an account
from his creatures which the creature's necessary inadequacy rendered
him incapable of meeting. But the impetuosity of the new theology
would listen to no such excuses. God was infinitely pure, and nothing
impure could stand in his sight. Man, so long as he rested on merit of
his own, must be for ever excluded from his presence. He must accept
grace on the terms on which it was held out to him. Then and then only
God would extend his pity to him. He was no longer a child of wrath:
he was God's child. His infirmities remained, but they were constantly
obliterated by the merits of Christ. And he had strength given to him,
partially, at least, to overcome temptation, under which, but for that
strength, he would have fallen. Though nothing which he could do could
deserve reward, yet he received grace in proportion to the firmness of
his belief; and his efforts after obedience, imperfect though they
might be, were accepted for Christ's sake. A good life, or a constant
effort after a good life, was still the object which a man was bound
to labour after. Though giving no claim to pardon, still less for
reward, it was the necessary fruit of a sense of what Christ had done,
and of love and gratitude towards him. Good works were the test of
saving faith, and if there were no signs of them, the faith was
barren: it was not real faith at all.
This was the Puritan belief in England in the seventeenth century. The
reason starts at it, but all religion is paradoxical to reason. God
hates sin, yet sin exists. He is omnipotent, yet evil is not overcome.
The will of man is free, or there can be no guilt, yet the action of
the will, so far as experience can throw light on its operation, is as
much determined by antecedent causes as every other natural force.
Prayer is addressed to a Being assumed to be omniscient, who knows
better what is good for us than we can know, who sees our thought
without requiring to hear them in words, whose will is fixed and
cannot be changed. Prayer, therefore, in the eye of reason is an
impertinence. The Puritan theology is not more open to objection on
the ground of unreasonableness than the Catholic theology or any other
which regards man as answerable to God for his conduct. We must judge
of a creed by its effects on character, as we judge of the
wholesomeness of food as it conduces to bodily health. And the creed
which swept like a wave through England at that time, and recommended
itself to the noblest and most powerful intellects, produced also in
those who accepted it a horror of sin, an enthusiasm for justice,
purity, and manliness, which can be paralleled only in the first age
of Christianity. Certainly there never was such a theory to take man's
conceit out of him. He was a miserable wretch, so worthless at his
best as to deserve everlasting perdition. If he was to be saved at
all, he could be saved only by the unmerited grace of God. In himself
he was a child of the devil; and hell, not in metaphor, but in hard
and palpable fact, inevitably waited for him. This belief, or the
affectation of this belief, continues to be professed, but without a
realisation of its tremendous meaning. The form of words is repeated
by multitudes who do not care to think what they are saying. Who can
measure the effect of such a conviction upon men who were in earnest
about their souls, who were assured that this account of their
situation was actually true, and on whom, therefore, it bore with
increasing weight in proportion to their sincerity?
With these few prefatory words, I now return to Bunyan. He had begun
to go regularly to church, and by Church he meant the Church of
England. The change in the constitution of it, even when it came, did
not much alter its practical character in the country districts. At
Elstow, as we have seen, there was still a high place; there was still
a liturgy; there was still a surplice. The Church of England is a
compromise between the old theology and the new. The Bishops have the
apostolical succession, but many of them disbelieve that they derive
any virtue from it. The clergyman is either a priest who can absolve
men from sins, or he is a minister as in other Protestant communions.
The sacraments are either means of grace, or mere outward signs. A
Christian is either saved by baptism, or saved by faith, as he pleases
to believe. In either case he may be a member of the Church of
England. The effect of such uncertain utterances is to leave an
impression that in defining such points closely, theologians are
laying down lines of doctrines about subjects of which they know
nothing, that the real truth of religion lies in what is common to the
two theories, the obligation to lead a moral life; and to this
sensible view of their functions the bishops and clergy had in fact
gradually arrived in the last century, when the revival of what is
called earnestness, first in the form of Evangelicalism, and then of
Anglo-Catholicism, awoke again the old controversies.
To a man of fervid temperament suddenly convinced of sin, incapable of
being satisfied with ambiguous answers to questions which mean life or
death to him, the Church of England has little to say. If he is quiet
and reasonable, he finds in it all that he desires. Enthusiastic ages
and enthusiastical temperaments demand something more complete and
consistent. The clergy under the Long Parliament caught partially the
tone of the prevailing spirit. The reading of the 'Book of Sports' had
been interdicted, and from their pulpits they lectured their
congregations on the ungodliness of the Sabbath amusements. But the
congregations were slow to listen, and the sports went on.
One Sunday morning, when Bunyan was at church with his wife, a sermon
was delivered on this subject. It seemed to be especially addressed to
himself, and it much affected him. He shook off the impression, and
after dinner he went as usual to the green. He was on the point of
striking at a ball when the thought rushed across his mind, Wilt thou
leave thy sins and go to Heaven, or have thy sins and go to hell? He
looked up. The reflection of his own emotion was before him in visible
form. He imagined that he saw Christ himself looking down at him from
the sky. But he concluded that it was too late for him to repent. He
was past pardon. He was sure to be damned, and he might as well be
damned for many sins as for few. Sin at all events was pleasant, the
only pleasant thing that he knew, therefore he would take his fill of
it. The sin was the game, and nothing but the game. He continued to
play, but the Puritan sensitiveness had taken hold of him. An
artificial offence had become a real offence when his conscience was
wounded by it. He was reckless and desperate.
'This temptation of the devil,' he says, 'is more usual among poor
creatures than many are aware of. It continued with me about a month
or more; but one day as I was standing at a neighbour's shop-window,
and there cursing and swearing after my wonted manner, there sate
within the woman of the house and heard me, who, though she was a
loose and ungodly wretch, protested that I swore and cursed at such a
rate that she trembled to hear me. I was able to spoil all the youths
in a whole town. At this reproof I was silenced and put to secret
shame, and that too, as I thought, before the God of Heaven. I stood
hanging down my head and wishing that I might be a little child that
my father might learn me to speak without this wicked sin of swearing,
for, thought I, I am so accustomed to it that it is vain to think of a
reformation.'
These words have been sometimes taken as a reflection on Bunyan's own
father, as if he had not sufficiently checked the first symptoms of a
bad habit. If this was so, too much may be easily made of it. The
language in the homes of ignorant workmen is seldom select. They have
not a large vocabulary, and the words which they use do not mean what
they seem to mean. But so sharp and sudden remorse speaks remarkably
for Bunyan himself. At this time he could have been barely twenty
years old, and already he was quick to see when he was doing wrong,
to be sorry for it, and to wish that he could do better. Vain the
effort seemed to him, yet from that moment 'he did leave off swearing
to his own great wonder,' and he found 'that he could speak better and
more pleasantly than he did before.'
It lies in the nature of human advance on the road of improvement,
that, whatever be a man's occupation, be it handicraft, or art, or
knowledge, or moral conquest of self, at each forward step which he
takes he grows more conscious of his shortcomings. It is thus with his
whole career, and those who rise highest are least satisfied with
themselves. Very simply Bunyan tells the story of his progress. On his
outward history, on his business and his fortunes with it, he is
totally silent. Worldly interests were not worth mentioning. He is
solely occupied with his rescue from spiritual perdition. Soon after
he had profited by the woman's rebuke, he fell in 'with a poor man
that made profession of religion and talked pleasantly of the
Scriptures.' Earnestness in such matters was growing common among
English labourers. Under his new friend's example, Bunyan 'betook him
to the Bible, and began to take great pleasure in reading it,' but
especially, as he admits frankly (and most people's experience will
have been the same), 'especially the historical part; for as for St.
Paul's Epistles and Scriptures of that nature, he could not away with
them, being as yet ignorant of the corruption of his nature, or of the
want and worth of Jesus Christ to save him.'
Not as yet understanding these mysteries, he set himself to reform his
life. He became strict with himself in word and deed. 'He set the
Commandments before him for his way to Heaven.' 'He thought if he
could but keep them pretty well he should have comfort.' If now and
then he broke one of them, he suffered in conscience; he repented of
his fault, he made good resolutions for the future and struggled to
carry them out. 'His neighbours took him to be a new man, and
marvelled at the alteration.' Pleasure of any kind, even the most
innocent, he considered to be a snare to him, and he abandoned it; he
had been fond of dancing, but he gave it up. Music and singing he
parted with, though it distressed him to leave them. Of all
amusements, that in which he had most delighted had been in ringing
the bells in Elstow church tower. With his bells he could not part all
at once. He would no longer ring himself: but when his friends were
enjoying themselves with the ropes, he could not help going now and
then to the tower door to look on and listen; but he feared at last
that the steeple might fall upon him and kill him. We call such
scruples in these days exaggerated and fantastic. We are no longer in
danger ourselves of suffering from similar emotions. Whether we are
the better for having got rid of them, will be seen in the future
history of our race.
Notwithstanding his struggles and his sacrifices, Bunyan found that
they did not bring him the peace which he expected. A man can change
his outward conduct, but if he is in earnest he comes in sight of
other features in himself which he cannot change so easily; the
meannesses, the paltrinesses, the selfishnesses which haunt him in
spite of himself, which start out upon him at moments the most
unlocked for, which taint the best of his actions and make him loathe
and hate himself. Bunyan's life was now for so young a person a model
of correctness; but he had no sooner brought his actions straight than
he discovered that he was admiring and approving of himself. No
situation is more humiliating, none brings with it a feeling of more
entire hopelessness. 'All this while,' he says, 'I knew not Christ,
nor grace, nor faith, nor hope, and had I then died my state had been
most fearful. I was but a poor painted hypocrite, going about to
establish my own righteousness.'
Like his own Pilgrim, he had the burden on his back of his conscious
unworthiness. How was he to be rid of it?
'One day in a street in Bedford, as he was at work in his calling, he
fell in with three or four poor women sitting at a door in the sun
talking about the things of God.' He was himself at that time 'a brisk
talker' about the matters of religion, and he joined these women.
Their expressions were wholly unintelligible to him. 'They were
speaking of the wretchedness of their own hearts, of their unbelief,
of their miserable state. They did contemn, slight, and abhor their
own righteousness as filthy and insufficient to do them any good. They
spoke of a new birth and of the work of God in their hearts, which
comforted and strengthened them against the temptations of the Devil.'
The language of the poor women has lost its old meaning. They
themselves, if they were alive, would not use it any longer. The
conventional phrases of Evangelical Christianity ring untrue in a
modern ear like a cracked bell. We have grown so accustomed to them as
a cant, that we can hardly believe that they ever stood for sincere
convictions. Yet these forms were once alive with the profoundest of
all moral truths; a truth not of a narrow theology, but which lies at
the very bottom of the well, at the fountain-head of human morality;
namely, that a man who would work out his salvation must cast out
self, though he rend his heart-strings in doing it; not love of
self-indulgence only, but self-applause, self-confidence, self-conceit
and vanity, desire or expectation of reward; self in all the subtle
ingenuities with which it winds about the soul. In one dialect or
another, he must recognise that he is himself a poor creature not
worth thinking of, or he will not take the first step towards
excellence in any single thing which he undertakes.
Bunyan left the women and went about his work, but their talk went
with him. 'He was greatly affected.' 'He saw that he wanted the true
tokens of a godly man.' He sought them out and spoke with them again
and again. He could not stay away; and the more he went the more he
questioned his condition.
'I found two things,' he says, 'at which I did sometimes marvel,
considering what a blind ungodly wretch but just before I was; one a
great softness and tenderness of heart, which caused me to fall under
the conviction of what, by Scripture, they asserted; the other a great
bending of my mind to a continual meditating on it. My mind was now
like a horse-leech at the vein, still crying Give, give; so fixed on
eternity and on the kingdom of heaven (though I knew but little), that
neither pleasure, nor profit, nor persuasion, nor threats could loosen
it or make it let go its hold. It is in very deed a certain truth; it
would have been then as difficult for me to have taken my mind from
heaven to earth, as I have found it often since to get it from earth
to heaven.'
Ordinary persons who are conscious of trying to do right, who resist
temptations, are sorry when they slip, and determine to be more on
their guard for the future, are well contented with the condition
which they have reached. They are respectable, they are right-minded
in common things, they fulfil their every-day duties to their
families and to society with a sufficiency for which the world speaks
well of them, as indeed it ought to speak; and they themselves
acquiesce in the world's verdict. Any passionate agitation about the
state of their souls they consider unreal and affected. Such men may
be amiable in private life, good neighbours, and useful citizens; but
be their talents what they may, they could not write a 'Pilgrim's
Progress,' or ever reach the Delectable Mountains, or even be
conscious that such mountains exist.
Bunyan was on the threshold of the higher life. He knew that he was a
very poor creature. He longed to rise to something better. He was a
mere ignorant, untaught mechanic. He had not been to school with
Aristotle and Plato. He could not help himself or lose himself in the
speculations of poets and philosophers. He had only the Bible, and
studying the Bible he found that the wonder-working power in man's
nature was Faith. Faith! What was it? What did it mean? Had he faith?
He was but 'a poor sot,' and yet he thought that he could not be
wholly without it. The Bible told him that if he had faith as a grain
of mustard seed, he could work miracles. He did not understand
Oriental metaphors; here was a simple test which could be at once
applied.
'One day,' he writes, 'as I was between Elstow and Bedford, the
temptation was hot upon me to try if I had faith by doing some
miracle. I must say to the puddles that were in the horse-pads, "be
dry," and truly at one time I was agoing to say so indeed. But just as
I was about to speak, the thought came into my mind: Go under yonder
hedge first and pray that God would make you able. But when I had
concluded to pray, this came hot upon me, that if I prayed and came
again and tried to do it, and yet did nothing notwithstanding, then
be sure I had no faith but was a castaway and lost. Nay, thought I, if
it be so, I will never try it yet, but will stay a little longer. Thus
was I tossed between the Devil and my own ignorance, and so perplexed
at some times that I could not tell what to do.'
Common sense will call this disease, and will think impatiently that
the young tinker would have done better to attend to his business. But
it must be observed that Bunyan was attending to his business, toiling
all the while with grimed hands over his pots and kettles. No one ever
complained that the pots and kettles were ill-mended. It was merely
that being simple-minded, he found in his Bible that besides earning
his bread he had to save or lose his soul. Having no other guide he
took its words literally, and the directions puzzled him.
He grew more and more unhappy--more lowly in his own eyes--
'Wishing him like to those more rich in hope'--
like the women who were so far beyond him on the heavenly road. He was
a poet without knowing it, and his gifts only served to perplex him
further. His speculations assumed bodily forms which he supposed to be
actual visions. He saw his poor friends sitting on the sunny side of a
high mountain refreshing themselves in the warmth, while he was
shivering in frost and snow and mist. The mountain was surrounded by a
wall, through which he tried to pass, and searched long in vain for an
opening through it. At last he found one, very straight and narrow,
through which he struggled after desperate efforts. 'It showed him,'
he said, 'that none could enter into life but those who were in
downright earnest, and unless they left the wicked world behind them,
for here was only room for body and soul, but not for body and soul
and sin.' The vision brought him no comfort, for it passed away and
left him still on the wrong side: a little comfortable self-conceit
would have set him at rest. But, like all real men, Bunyan had the
worst opinion of himself. He looked at his Bible again. He found that
he must be elected. Was he elected? He could as little tell as whether
he had faith. He knew that he longed to be elected, but 'the Scripture
trampled on his desire,' for it said, 'It is not of him that willeth,
or of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy;' therefore,
unless God had chosen him his labour was in vain. The Devil saw his
opportunity; the Devil among his other attributes must have possessed
that of omnipresence, for whenever any human soul was in straits, he
was personally at hand to take advantage of it.
'It may be that you are not elected,' the tempter said to Bunyan. 'It
may be so indeed,' thought he. 'Why then,' said Satan, 'you had as
good leave off and strive no farther; for if indeed you should not be
elected and chosen of God, there is no talk of your being saved.'
A comforting text suggested itself. 'Look at the generations of old;
did any ever trust in the Lord and was confounded?' But these exact
words, unfortunately, were only to be found in the Apocrypha. And
there was a further distressing possibility, which has occurred to
others besides Bunyan. Perhaps the day of grace was passed. It came on
him one day as he walked in the country that perhaps those good people
in Bedford were all that the Lord would save in those parts, and that
he came too late for the blessing. True, Christ had said, 'Compel them
to come in, for yet there is room.' It might be 'that when Christ
spoke those words,' He was thinking of him--him among the rest that
he had chosen, and had meant to encourage him. But Bunyan was too
simply modest to gather comfort from such aspiring thoughts. Be
desired to be converted, craved for it, longed for it with all his
heart and soul. 'Could it have been gotten for gold,' he said, 'what
would I not have given for it. Had I had a whole world it had all gone
ten thousand times over for this, that my soul might have been in a
converted state. But, oh! I was made sick by that saying of Christ:
"He called to Him whom He would, and they came to Him." I feared He
would not call me.'
Election, conversion, day of grace, coming to Christ, have been pawed
and fingered by unctuous hands for now two hundred years. The bloom is
gone from the flower. The plumage, once shining with hues direct from
heaven, is soiled and bedraggled. The most solemn of all realities
have been degraded into the passwords of technical theology. In
Bunyan's day, in camp and council chamber, in High Courts of
Parliament, and among the poor drudges in English villages, they were
still radiant with spiritual meaning. The dialect may alter; but if
man is more than a brief floating bubble on the eternal river of time;
if there be really an immortal part of him which need not perish; and
if his business on earth is to save it from perishing, he will still
try to pierce the mountain barrier. He will still find the work as
hard as Bunyan found it. We live in days of progress and
enlightenment; nature on a hundred sides has unlocked her storehouses
of knowledge. But she has furnished no 'open sesame' to bid the
mountain gate fly wide which leads to conquest of self. There is still
no passage there for 'body and soul and sin.'