'Search me, O God, and know my heart.'--_David_.
'Let a man examine himself.'--_Paul_.
'Look to yourselves.'--_John_.
'Know thyself.'--_Apollo_.
The year 1668 saw the publication of one of the deepest books in the
whole world, Dr. John Owen's _Remainders of Indwelling Sin in Believers_.
The heart-searching depth; the clear, fearless, humbling truth, the
intense spirituality, and the massive and masculine strength of John
Owen's book have all combined to make it one of the acknowledged
masterpieces of the great Puritan school. Had John Owen's style been at
all equal to his great learning, to the depth and the grasp of his mind,
and to the lofty holiness of his life, John Owen would have stood in the
very foremost and selectest rank of apostolical and evangelical
theologians. But in all his books Owen labours under the fatal drawback
of a bad style. A fine style, a style like that of Hooker, or Taylor, or
Bunyan, or Howe, or Leighton, or Law, is such a winning introduction to
their works and such an abiding charm and spell. The full title of Dr.
Owen's great work runs thus: _The Nature, Power, Deceit, and Prevalency
of the Remainders of Indwelling Sin in Believers_--a title that will tell
all true students what awaits them when they have courage and enterprise
enough to address themselves to this supreme and all-essential subject.
Fourteen years after the publication of Dr. Owen's epoch-making book,
John Bunyan's _Holy War_ first saw the light. Equal in scriptural and in
experimental depth, as also in their spiritual loftiness and intensity,
those two books are as different as any two books, written in the same
language, and written on the same subject, could by any possibility be.
John Owen's book is the book of a great scholar who has read the Fathers
and the Schoolmen and the Reformers till he knows them by heart, and till
he has been able to digest all that is true to Scripture and to
experience in them into his rich and ripe book. A powerful reasoner, a
severe, bald, muscular writer, John Owen in all these respects stands at
the very opposite pole to that of John Bunyan. The author of the _Holy
War_ had no learning, but he had a mind of immense natural sagacity,
combined with a habit of close and deep observation of human life, and
especially of religious life, and he had now a lifetime of most fruitful
experience as a Christian man and as a Christian minister behind him;
and, all that, taken up into Bunyan's splendid imagination, enabled him
to produce this extraordinarily able and impressive book. A model of
English style as the _Holy War_ is, at the same time it does not attain
at all to the rank of the _Pilgrim's Progress_; but then, to be second to
the _Pilgrim's Progress_ is reward and honour enough for any book. Let
all genuine students, then, who would know the best that has been written
on experimental religion, and who would preach to the deepest and
divinest experience of their best people, let them keep continually
within their reach John Owen's _Temptation_, his _Mortification of Sin in
Believers_, his _Nature and Power of Indwelling Sin_, and John Bunyan's
_Holy War made for the Regaining of the Metropolis of this World_.
Well, then, as He who dwells on high would have it, there was one whose
name was Mr. Prywell, a great lover of Mansoul. And he, as his manner
was, did go listening up and down in Mansoul to see and hear, if at any
time he might, whether there was any design against it or no. For he was
always a jealous man, and feared some mischief would befall it, either
from within or from some power without. Mr. Prywell was always a lover
of Mansoul, a sober and a judicious man, a man that was no tattler, nor a
raiser of false reports, but one that loves to look into the very bottom
of matters, and talks nothing of news but by very solid arguments. And
then, after our historian has told us some of the eminent services that
Mr. Prywell was able to perform both for the King and for the city, he
goes on to tell us how the captains determined that public thanks should
be given by the town of Mansoul to Mr. Prywell for his so diligent
seeking of the welfare of the town; and, further, that, forasmuch as he
was so naturally inclined to seek their good, and also to undermine their
foes, they gave him the commission of Scoutmaster-general for the good of
Mansoul. And Mr. Prywell managed his charge and the trust that Mansoul
had put into his hands with great conscience and good fidelity; for he
gave himself wholly up to his employ, and that not only within the town,
but he also went outside of the town to pry, to see, and to hear. Now,
that being so, it may interest and perhaps instruct you to-night to look
for a little at some of the features and at some of the feats of the
Scoutmaster-general of the Holy War, Mr. Prywell, of the town of Mansoul.
1. 'Well, now, as He who dwells on high would have it, there was one
whose name was Mr. Prywell, a great lover of the town of Mansoul.' In
other words: self-observation, self-examination, strict, jealous,
sleepless self-examination, is of God. Our God who searches our hearts
and tries our reins would have it so. And if He does not have it so in
us, our souls are not as our God would have them to be. 'Bunyan employs
_pry_,' says Miss Peacock in her excellent notes, 'in a more favourable
sense than it now bears. As, for instance, it is said in another part of
this same book that the men of Mansoul were allowed to _pry_ into the
words of the Holy Ghost and to expound them to their best advantage.
Honest anxiety for the welfare of his fellow-townsmen was Mr. Prywell's
chief characteristic. _Pry_ is another form of _peer_--to look narrowly,
to look closely.' And God, says John Bunyan, would have it so.
2. 'A great lover of Mansoul,' 'always a lover of Mansoul'; again and
again that is testified concerning Mr. Prywell. It was not love for the
work that led Mr. Prywell to give up his days and his nights as his
history tells us he did. Mr. Prywell ran himself into many dangerous
situations both within and without the city, and he lost himself far more
friends than he made by his devotion to his thankless task. But
necessity was laid upon him. And what held him up was the sure and
certain knowledge that his King would have that service at his hands.
That, and his love for the city, for the safety and the deliverance of
the city,--all that kept Mr. Prywell's heart fixed. Am I therefore your
enemy? he would say to some who would have had it otherwise than the King
would have it. But it is a good thing to be zealously affected in a work
like mine, he would say, in self-defence and in self-encouragement. And
then, though not many, there were always some in the city who said, Let
him smite me and it shall be a kindness; let him reprove me and it shall
be an excellent oil which shall not break my head. It was in Mansoul
with Mr. Prywell as it was in Kidderminster with Richard Baxter, when
some of his people said to one another, 'We will take all things well
from one that we know doth entirely love us.' 'Love them,' said
Augustine, 'and then say anything you like to them.' Now, that was Mr.
Prywell's way. He loved Mansoul, and then he said many things to her
that a false lover and a flatterer would never have dared to say.
3. Then, as the saying is, it goes without saying that 'Mr. Prywell was
always a jealous man.' Great lovers are always jealous men, and Mr.
Prywell showed himself to be a great lover by the great heat of his
jealousy also. 'Vigilant,' says the excellent editress again; 'cautious
against dishonour, reasonably mistrustful--low Latin _zelosus_, full of
zeal. "And he said, I have been very jealous for the Lord God of
hosts."' Now, it so happened that some of Mr. Prywell's most private and
not at all professional papers--papers evidently, and on the face of
them, connected with the state of the spy's own soul--came into my hands
as good lot would have it just the other night. The moth-eaten chest was
full of his old papers, but the pieces that took my heart most were, as
it looked to me, actually gnashed through with his remorseful teeth, and
soaked and sodden past recognition with his sweat and his tears and his
agonising hands. But after some late hours over those remnants I managed
to make some sense to myself out of them. There are some parts of the
parchments that pass me; but, if only to show you that this arch-spy's so
vigilant jealousy was not all directed against other people's bad hearts
and bad habits, I shall copy some lines out of the old box. 'Have I
penitence?' he begins without any preface. 'Have I grief, shame, pain,
horror, weariness for my sin? Do I pray and repent, if not seven times a
day as David did, yet at least three times, as Daniel? If not as
Solomon, at length, yet shortly as the publican? If not like Christ, the
whole night, at least for one hour? If not on the ground and in ashes,
at least not in my bed? If not in sackcloth, at least not in purple and
fine linen? If not altogether freed from all, at least from immoderate
desires? Do I give, if not as Zaccheus did, fourfold, as the law
commands, with the fifth part added? If not as the rich, yet as the
widow? If not the half, yet the thirtieth part? If not above my power,
yet up to my power?' And then over the page there are some illegible
pencillings from old authors of his such as this from Augustine: 'A good
man would rather know his own infirmity than the foundations of the earth
or the heights of the heavens.' And this from Cicero: 'There are many
hiding-places and recesses in the mind.' And this from Seneca: 'You must
know yourself before you can amend yourself. An unknown sin grows worse
and worse and is deprived of cure.' And this from Cicero again: 'Cato
exacted from himself an account of every day's business at night'; and
also Pythagoras,
'Nor let sweet sleep upon thine eyes descend
Till thou hast judged its deeds at each day's end.'
And this from Seneca again: 'When the light is removed out of sight, and
my wife, who is by this time aware of my practice, is now silent, I pass
the whole of my day under examination, and I review my deeds and my
words. I hide nothing from myself: I pass over nothing.' And then in
Mr. Prywell's boldest and least trembling hand: 'O yes! many shall come
from the east and the west and shall sit down with Abraham and Isaac and
Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, when many of the children of the kingdom
shall be cast out. O yes.' Now, this 'O yes!' Miss Peacock tells us, is
the Anglicised form of a French word for our Lord's words, Take heed how
ye hear!
4. 'A sober and a judicious man' it is said of Mr. Prywell also. To a
certainty that. It could not be otherwise than that. For Mr. Prywell's
office, its discoveries and its experiences, would sober any man. 'I am
sprung from a country,' says Abelard, 'of which the soil is light, and
the temper of the inhabitants is light.' So was it with Mr. Prywell to
begin with. But even Abelard was sobered in time, and so was Mr.
Prywell. Life sobered Abelard, and Mr. Prywell too; life's crooks and
life's crosses, life's duties and life's disappointments, especially Mr.
Prywell. 'The more narrowly a man looks into himself,' says A Kempis,
'the more he sorroweth.' Not sober-mindedness alone comes to him who
looks narrowly into himself, but great sorrow of heart also. And if you
are not both sobered in your mind and full of an unquenchable sorrow in
your heart, O yes! attend to it, for you are not yet begun to be what God
would have you to be. Dr. Newman, with all his mistakes and all his
faults, was a master in two things: his own heart and the English
language. And in writing home to his mother a confidential letter from
college on his birthday, he confides to her that he often 'shudders at
himself.' 'No,' he answered to his mother's fears and advices about food
and air and exercise: 'No, I am neither nervous, nor in ill-health, nor
do I study too much. I am neither melancholy, nor morose, nor austere,
nor distant, nor reserved, nor sullen. I am always cheerful, ready and
eager to join in any merriment. I am not clouded with sadness, nor
absent in mind, nor deficient in action. No; take me when I am most
foolish at home and extend mirth into childishness; yet all the time I am
shuddering at myself.' There spake the future author of the immortal
sermons. There spake a mind and a heart that have deepened the minds and
the hearts of Christian men more than any other influence of the century;
a mind and a heart, moreover, that will shine and beat in our best
literature and in our deepest devotion for centuries to come. You must
all know by this time another classical passage from the pen of another
spiritual genius in the Church of England, that greatly gifted church.
Let me repeat it to illustrate how sober-mindedness and great sorrow of
heart always come to the best of men. 'Let any man consider that if the
world knew all that of him which he knows of himself; if they saw what
vanity and what passions govern his inside, and what secret tempers sully
and corrupt his best actions; and he would have no more pretence to be
honoured and admired for his goodness and wisdom than a rotten and
distempered body is to be loved and admired for its beauty and
comeliness. 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 passions,
their uneasinesses, hatreds, envies, and vexations made known to the
world. And shall pride be entertained in a heart thus conscious of its
own miserable behaviour?' No wonder that Mr. Prywell was sober-minded!
No wonder that Dr. Newman shuddered at himself! And no wonder that
William Law chose strangling and the pond rather than that any other man
should see what went on in his heart!
5. And as if all that were not enough, and more than enough, to commend
Mr. Prywell to us--to our trust, to our confidence, and to our
imitation--his royal certificate continues, 'One that looks into the very
bottom of matters, and talks nothing of news, but by very solid
arguments.' The very bottom of matters--that is, the very bottom of his
own and other men's hearts. Mr. Prywell counts nothing else worth a wise
man's looking at. Let fools and children look at the painted and
deceitful surface of things, but let men, men of matters, and especially
men of divine matters, look only at their own and other men's hearts. The
very bottom of all matters is there. All wars, all policies, all
debates, all disputes, all good and all evil counsels, all the much weal
and all the multitudinous woe of Mansoul--all have their bottom in the
heart; in the heart of God, or in the heart of man, or in the heart of
the devil. The heart is the root of absolutely every matter to Mr.
Prywell. He would not waste one hour of any day, or one watch of any
night, on anything else. And it was this that made him both the
extraordinarily successful scout he was, and the extraordinarily sober
and thoughtful and judicious man he was. O yes, my brethren, the bottom
of matters, when you take to it, will work the same change in you. 'Two
things,' says one who had long looked at his own matters with Mr.
Prywell's eyes--'two things, O Lord, I recognise in myself: nature, which
Thou hast made, and sin, which I have added.' My brethren, that
recognition, that discovery in yourselves, when it comes to you, will
sober you as it has sobered so many men before you: when it comes to you,
that is, about yourselves. That discovery made in yourselves will make
you deep-thinking men. It will make common men and unlearned men among
you to be philosophers and theologians and saints. It will work in you a
thoughtfulness, a seriousness, a depth, an awe, a holy fear, and a great
desire that will already have made you new creatures. When, in examining
yourselves and in characterising yourselves, you come on what some clear-
eyed men have come on in themselves, and what one of them has described
as 'the diabolical animus of the human mind'--when you make that
discovery in yourselves, that will sober you, that will humble you and
fill you full of remorse and compunction. And if in God's grace to you,
that were to begin to be wrought in you this week, there would be one, at
any rate, eating of that bread next Lord's day, and drinking of that cup
as God would have it.
6. 'A man that is no tattler, nor raiser of false reports, and that
talks nothing of news, but by very solid arguments.' Mr. Prywell was
more taken up with his own matters at home, far more than the greatest
busybodies are with other men's matters abroad. His name, I fear, will
still sound somewhat ill in your ears, but I can assure you all the ill
for you lies in the sound. Mr. Prywell would not hurt a hair of your
head: the truth is, he does not know whether there is a hair on your head
or no. This man's name comes to him and sticks to him, not because he
pries into your affairs, for he does not, and never did, but because he
is so drawn down into his own. Mr. Prywell has no eye for your windows
and he has no ear for your doors. If your servant is a leaky slave,
Prywell, of all your neighbours, has no ear for his idle tales. This man
is no eavesdropper; your evil secrets have only a sobering and a
saddening and a silencing effect upon him. Your house might be full of
skeletons for anything he would ever discover or remember. The beam in
his own eye is so big that he cannot see past it to speak about your
small mote. 'The inward Christian,' says A Kempis, 'preferreth the care
of himself before all other cares. He that diligently attendeth to
himself can easily keep silence concerning other men. If thou attendest
unto God and unto thyself, thou wilt be but little moved with what thou
seest abroad.' At the same time, Mr. Prywell was no fool, and no coward,
and no hoodwinked witness. He could tell his tale, when it was demanded
of him, with such truth, and with such punctuality, and on such ample
grounds, that a conviction of the truth instantly fell on all who heard
him. 'Sirs,' said those who heard him break silence, 'it is not
irrational for us to believe it,' with such solid arguments and with such
an absence of mere suspicion and of all idle tales did he speak. On one
occasion, on a mere 'inkling,' he woke up the guard; only, it was so true
an inkling that it saved the city. But I cannot follow Mr. Prywell any
further to-night. How he went up and down Mansoul listening; how he kept
his eyes and his ears both shut and open; what splendid services he
performed in the progress, and specially toward the end, of the war; how
the thanks of the city were voted to him; how he was made Scoutmaster-
general for the good of the town of Mansoul, and the great conscience and
good fidelity with which he managed that great trust--all that you will
read for yourselves under this marginal index, 'The story of Mr.
Prywell.'
Now, my brethren, as the outcome of all that, we must all examine
ourselves as before God all this week. We must wait on His word and on
His providences while they examine us all this week. We must pry well
into ourselves all this week. Come, let us compel ourselves to do it.
Let us search and try our ways all this week as we shall give an account.
Let us ask ourselves how many Communion tables we have sat at, and at how
many more we are likely to sit. Let us ask why it is that we have got so
little good out of all our Communions. Let us ask who is to blame for
that, and where the blame lies. Let us go to the bottom of matters with
ourselves, and compel ourselves to say just what it is that is the cause
of God's controversy with us. What vow, what solemn promise, made when
trouble was upon us, have we completely cast behind our back? What about
secret prayer? At what times, for what things, and for what people do we
in secret pray? What about secret sin? What is its name, and what does
it deserve, and what fruit are we already reaping out of it? What is our
besetting sin, and what steps do we take, as God knows, to crucify it? Do
we love money too much? Do we love praise too much? Do we love eating
and drinking too much? Does envy make our heart a very hell? Let us
name the man we envy, and let us keep our Communion eye upon him. Let us
mix his name with all the psalms and prayers and sermons of this
Communion season. Or is it diabolical ill-will? Or is it a wicked
tongue against an unsuspecting friend? Let us examine ourselves as Paul
did, as Prywell did, and as God would have us do it, and we shall
discover things in ourselves so bad that if I were to put words on them
to-night, you would stop your ears in horror and flee out of the church.
Let a man see himself at least as others see him; and then he will be led
on from that to see himself as God sees him; and then he will judge
himself so severely as that he shall not need to be judged at the
Judgment Day, and will condemn himself so sufficiently as that he shall
not be condemned with a condemned world at the last.