'If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his
cross daily and follow Me.'--_Our Lord_.
'Now the siege was long, and many a fierce attempt did the enemy make
upon the town, and many a shrewd brush did some of the townsmen meet with
from the enemy, especially Captain Self-denial, to whose care both Ear-
gate and Eye-gate had been intrusted. This Captain Self-denial was a
young man, but stout, and a townsman in Mansoul. This young captain,
therefore, being a hardy man, and a man of great courage to boot, and
willing to venture himself for the good of the town, he would now and
then sally out upon the enemy; but you must think this could not easily
be done, but he must meet with some sharp brushes himself, and, indeed,
he carried several of such marks on his face, yea, and some on some other
parts of his body.' Thus, Bunyan. I shall now go on to-night to offer
you some annotations and some reflections on this short but excellent
history of young Captain Self-denial.
1. Well, to begin with, this Captain Self-denial was still a young man.
'And, now, it comes into my mind, said Goodman Gains after supper, I will
tell you a story well worth the hearing, as I think. There were two men
once upon a time that went on pilgrimage; the one began when he was young
and the other began when he was old. The young man had strong
corruptions to grapple with, whereas the old man's corruptions were
decayed with the decays of nature. The young man trod his steps as even
as did the old one, and was every way as light as he; who, now, or which
of them, had their graces shining clearest, since both seemed to be
alike? Why, the young man's, doubtless, answered Mr. Honest. For that
which heads against the greatest opposition gives best demonstration that
it is strongest. A young man, therefore, has the advantage of the
fairest discovery of a work of grace within him. And thus they sat
talking till the break of day.'
Now, I have taken up Captain Self-denial to-night because the young men
and I are to begin a study to-night to which I was first attracted
because it taught me lessons about myself, and about self-denial, and
thus about both a young man's and an old man's deepest and most
persistent corruptions--lessons such as I have never been taught in any
other school. In all my philosophical, theological, moral, and
experimental reading, so to describe it, I have never met with any school
of authors for one moment to be compared with the great evangelical
mystics, especially when they treat of self, self-love, self-denial, the
daily cross, and all suchlike lessons. Take the great doctrinal and
experimental Puritans, such as John Owen, Thomas Goodwin, Richard Baxter,
John Howe, and Jonathan Edwards, and add on to them the greatest and best
mystics, such as Jacob Behmen, Thomas A Kempis, Francis Fenelon, Jeremy
Taylor, Samuel Rutherford, Robert Leighton, and William Law, and you will
have the profoundest, the most complete, the most perfect, and, I will
add, the most fascinating and enthralling of spiritual teaching in all
the world. And I will be bold enough to promise you that if you will but
join our Young Men's Class to-night, and will buy and read our mystical
books, and will resolve to put in practice what you hear and read in the
class, I will promise you, I say, that by the end of our short session
you will not only be ten times more open and hospitably-minded men, but
also ten times more spiritually-minded men, ten times more Christ-like
men, and with your joy in Christ and His joy in you all but full.
2. The Captain Self-denial was a young man, and he was also a townsman
in Mansoul. Young Self-denial and one other were all of Emmanuel's
captains who were townsmen in Mansoul. All his other captains Emmanuel
had brought with him; but the Captains Self-denial and Experience were
both born and reared to their full manhood in that besieged city. 'A
townsman.' How much there is for us all in that one word! How much
instruction! How much encouragement! How much caution and correction!
Our greatest grace; our most essential and indispensable grace; our most
experimental and evidential grace; that grace, indeed, without which all
our other graces are but specious shows and painted surfaces of graces;
that grace into which our Lord here gathers up all our other graces;--that
greatest of graces cannot be imputed, imported, or introduced; it must be
born, bred, exercised, reared up to its full maturity, and sent forth to
fight and to conquer, and all within the walls of its own native town; in
short, our self-denial must have its beginning and middle and end in our
own heart. Antinomians there were, as our Puritan fathers nicknamed all
those persons who glorified Christ by letting Him do all things for them,
both His own things and their things too, both their justification and
their sanctification too. And there are many good but ill-instructed men
among ourselves who have just this taint of that old heresy cleaving to
them still--this taint, namely, that they are tempted to carry over the
suretyship and substitutionary work of Christ into such regions, and to
carry it to such lengths in those regions, as, practically, to make
Christ to minister to their soft and sinful living, and to their excuse
and indulgence of themselves. I will put it squarely and plainly to some
of my very best friends here to-night. Is it not the case, now, that you
do not like this direction into which this text, and the truth of this
text, are now travelling? Is it not so that you shift back in your seat
from the approaching cross? Is it not the very and actual fact that you
have secret ways of sin, secret habits of self-indulgence in your body
and in your soul, in your mind and in your heart, secret sins that you
mantle over with the robe of Christ's righteousness? His spotless and
imputed righteousness? In your present temper you would have disliked
deeply the Sermon on the Mount had you heard it; and I see you shaking
your head over your Sabbath-day dinner at this text when it was first
spoken. Lay this down for a law, all my brethren,--a New Testament and a
never-to-be-abrogated law,--that the best and the safest religion for you
is that way of religion that is hardest on your pride, on your
self-importance, on your self-esteem, as well as on your purse and on
your belly. You are not likely to err by practising too much of the
cross. You may very well have too much of the cross of Christ preached
to you, and too little of your own. Why! did not Christ die for me? you
indignantly say. Yes; so He did. But only that you might die too. He
was crucified, and so must you be crucified every day before one single
drop of His sin-atoning blood shall ever be wasted on You. Be not
deceived: the cross is not mocked; for only as a man nails himself, body
and soul, to the cross every day shall he ever be saved from sin and
death and hell by means of it. And, exactly as a man denies himself--no
more and no less--his appetites, his passions, his thoughts and words and
deeds, every day and every hour of every day, just so much shall He who
searches our hearts and sees us in secret, acknowledge us, both every day
now, and at the last day of all.
3. This same Captain Self-denial, his history goes on, was stout, he was
an hardy man also, and a man of great courage. Stout and hardy and of
great courage at home, that is; in his own mind and heart, soul and body,
that is. Young Captain Self-denial was a perfect hero at saying No! and
at saying No! to himself. It is a proverb that there is nothing so
difficult as to say that monosyllable. And the proverb is Scripture
truth if you try to say No! to yourself. It takes the very stoutest of
hearts, the most noble, the most manly, the most soldierly, and the most
saintly of hearts to say No! to itself, and to keep on saying No! to
itself to the bitter end of every trial and temptation and opportunity. I
remember reading long ago a page or two of a medical man's diary. And in
it he made a confession and an appeal I have never forgot; though, to my
loss, I have not always acted upon it. He said that for many years he
had never been entirely well. He had constant headaches and depressions,
and it was seldom that he was not to some extent out of sorts. But, all
the time, he had a shrewd guess within himself as to what was the matter
with him. He felt ashamed to confess it even to himself that he over-ate
himself every day at table; till, at last, summoning up all divine and
human help, he determined that, however hungry he was, and however
savoury the dish was, and however excellent the wine was, he would never
either ask for or accept a second helping. And this was his testimony,
that from that stout and hardy day he grew better in health daily; 'my
head became clear, my eye bright, my complexion pure, my mind and
feelings were redeemed from all clouds and depressions. And to-day I am
a younger man at fifty than I was at thirty.' Now, if just saying No! to
himself and to the waiter at table did work such a new birth in a
confirmed gourmand of middle life, what would it not have wrought for him
had he carried his answer stoutly and courageously through all the other
parts of his body and soul?--as perhaps he did. Perhaps, having tasted
the sweet beginnings of salvation, he carried his short and sure regimen
through. If he has done so, let him give us his full autobiography. What
a blessed, what a priceless book it would be!
4. Stout Captain Self-denial was commanded to begin his life as an
officer in Emmanuel's army by taking especial watch over Ear-gate and Eye-
gate; and at our last accounts of our abstemious doctor he had only got
the length of Mouth-gate. But having begun so well with those three
great outposts of the soul, if those two trusty officers only held on,
and played the man courageously enough, they would soon be promoted to
still more important, still more central, and, if more difficult and
dangerous, then also much more honourable and remunerative posts.
Appetite, deep and deadly as its evils are, is, after all, only an
outwork of the soul; and the same sharp knife that the epicure and the
sot in all their stages must put to their throat, that same knife must be
made to draw blood in all parts of their mind and their heart, in their
will and in their imagination, till a perfect chorus of self-denials
rings like noblest martial music through all the gates, and streets, and
fortresses, and strongholds, and very palaces and temples of the soul. I
shall here stand aside and let the greatest of the English mystics speak
to you on this present point. 'When we speak of self-denial,' he says,
in his _Christian Perfection_, 'we are apt to confine it to eating and
drinking: but we ought to consider that, though a strict temperance be
necessary in these things, yet that these are the easiest and the
smallest instances of self-denial. Pride, vanity, self-love,
covetousness, envy, and other inclinations of the like nature call for a
more constant and a more watchful self-denial than the appetites of
hunger and thirst. And till we enter into this course of universal self-
denial we shall make no progress in real piety, but our lives will be a
ridiculous mixture of I know not what; sober and covetous, proud and
devout, temperate and vain, regular in our forms of devotion and
irregular in all our passions, circumspect in little modes of behaviour
and careless and negligent of tempers the most essential to piety. And
thus it will necessarily be with us till we lay the axe to the root of
the tree, till we deny and renounce the whole corruption of our nature,
and resign ourselves up entirely to the Spirit of God, to think and speak
and act by the wisdom and the purity of religion.'
5. Stout as Captain Self-denial was, and notable alarms and some brisk
execution as he did upon the enemy, yet he must meet with some brushes
himself; indeed, he carried several of the marks of such brushes on his
face as well as on some other parts of his body. If I had read in his
history that Young Captain Self-denial had left his mark upon his
enemies, I would have said, Well done, and I would have added that I
always expected as much. But it is far more to my purpose to read that
he had not always got himself off without wounds that left lasting scars
both where they were seen of all, and where they were seen and felt only
by Self-denial himself. And not Self-denial only, but even Paul, in our
flesh, and with like passions with us, had the same experience and has
left us the same record. 'I keep my body under': so our emasculated
English version makes us read it. But the visual image in the masterly
original Greek is not so mealy-mouthed. I box and buffet myself day and
night, says Paul. I play the truculent tyrant over a lewd and lazy
slave. I hit myself blinding blows on my tenderest part. I am ashamed
to look at myself in the glass, for all under my eyes I am black and
blue. If David, after the matter of Uriah, had done that to himself, and
even more than that, we would not have wondered; we would have expected
it, and we would have said, It is no more than we would have done
ourselves. But that a spotless, gentle, noble soul like Paul should so
have mangled himself,--that quite dumfounders us. If Paul, then, who,
touching the righteousness which is in the law, was blameless, had to
handle himself in that manner in order to keep himself blameless, shall
any young man here hope to escape temptation without such blows at
himself as shall leave their mark on him all his days? Nay, not only so,
but after Self-denial had thus exercised himself and subdued himself,
still his enemy sometimes got such an advantage over him as left him as
his history here describes him. All which is surely full of the most
excellent heartening to all who read, in earnest and for an example, his
fine history.
6. The last and crowning exploit of our matchless captain was to
capture, and execute, and quarter, and hang up on a gallows at the market-
cross, the head and the hands and the feet of his oldest, most sworn, and
most deadly enemy, one Self-love. So stout and so insufferable was our
captain in the matter of Self-love that when it was proposed by some of
his many influential friends and high-in-place relations in the city that
the judgment of the court-martial on Self-love should be deferred, our
stout soldier with the cuts on his face and in some other parts of his
body stood up, and said that the city and the army must make up their
mind either to relieve him of his sword, hacked and broken off as it was,
or else to execute the law upon Self-love on the spot. I will lay down
my commission this very day, he said, with an extraordinary indignation.
Many rich men in the city, and many men deep in the King's service,
muttered mutinous things when their near relative was hurried to the open
cause-way, but by that time the soldiers of Self-denial's company had
brained Self-love with the butts of their muskets. And it was the stand
that our captain made in the matter of Self-love that at last lifted the
young soldier where many had felt he should have been lifted long ago.
From that day he was made a lord, a military peer, and an adviser of the
crown and the crown officers in all the deepest counsels concerning
Mansoul. Only, with the cloak and the coronet of Self-denial the present
history all but comes to an end. For, before the outcast remains of Self-
love had mouldered to their dust on the city gate, the King's chariot had
descended into the street, had ascended up to the palace at the head of
the street, and a new age of the city life had begun, the full history of
which has yet to be told.
Remain behind, then, and begin with us to-night, all you young men. You
cannot begin this lifelong study and this lifelong pursuit of self-denial
too early. For, even if you begin to read our books and to practise our
discipline in your very boyhood, when you are old men and very saints of
God you will feel that your self-love is still so full of life and power,
that your self-denial has scarcely begun. Ah, me! men: both old and
young men. Ah, me! what a life's task set us of God it is to make us a
new heart, to cleanse out an unclean heart, to lay in the dust a proud
heart, and to keep a heart at all times, and in all places, and toward
all people, with all diligence! Who is sufficient for these things?
'Now was Christian somewhat in a maze. But at last, when every man
started back for fear, Christian saw a man of a very stout countenance
come up to him that sat there with the inkhorn to write, saying, Set down
my name, sir! At which there was a pleasant voice heard from those that
were within, even of those who walked upon the top of that place, saying,
"Come in, come in:
Eternal glory thou shalt win."
Then Christian smiled, and said: I think, verily, that I know the meaning
of all this now.'