'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; Passion 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 glass. 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 glass 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 God. 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 God. 'That is a great stoop for a
sinner to have to take,' says our apostolic author in another classical
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
assure 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 God about his full salvation. Through three most
powerful pages we see stiff old Loth-to-stoop engaged in beating down
God'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 God from the throne of God 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 God 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.
God 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 pass 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 God.' 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 God'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 noble
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 assistant 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 passed 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 hitherto 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 ennobles 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 nobility as well as with ultimate success
and lasting honour.