'Oh that my head were waters!'--_Jeremiah_.
'Tears gain everything.'--_Teresa_.
Now Mr. Desires-awake, when he saw that he must go on this errand,
besought that they would grant that Mr. Wet-eyes might go with him. Now
this Mr. Wet-eyes was a near neighbour of Mr. Desires-awake, a poor man,
and a man of a broken spirit, yet one that could speak well to a
petition; so they granted that he should go with him. Wherefore the two
men at once addressed themselves to their serious business. Mr. Desires-
awake put his rope upon his head, and Mr. Wet-eyes went with his hands
wringing together. Then said the Prince, And what is he that is become
thy companion in this so weighty a matter? So Mr. Desires-awake told
Emmanuel that this was a poor neighbour of his, and one of his most
intimate associates. And his name, said he, may it please your most
excellent Majesty, is Wet-eyes, of the town of Mansoul. I know that
there are many of that name that are naught, said he; but I hope it will
be no offence to my Lord that I have brought my poor neighbour with me.
Then Mr. Wet-eyes fell on his face to the ground, and made this apology
for his coming with his neighbour to his Lord:--
'Oh, my Lord,' quoth he, 'what I am I know not myself, nor whether my
name be feigned or true, especially when I begin to think what some have
said, and that is that this name was given me because Mr. Repentance was
my father. But good men have sometimes bad children, and the sincere do
sometimes beget hypocrites. My mother also called me by this name of
mine from my cradle; but whether she said so because of the moistness of
my brain, or because of the softness of my heart, I cannot tell. I see
dirt in mine own tears, and filthiness in the bottom of my prayers. But
I pray Thee (and all this while the gentleman wept) that Thou wouldst not
remember against us our transgressions, nor take offence at the
unqualifiedness of Thy servants, but mercifully pass by the sin of
Mansoul, and refrain from the magnifying of Thy grace no longer.' So at
His bidding they arose, and both stood trembling before Him.
1. 'His name, may it please your Majesty, is Wet-eyes, of the town of
Mansoul. I know, at the same time, that there are many of that name that
are naught.' Naught, that is, for this great enterprise now in hand. And
thus it was that Mr. Desires-awake in setting out for the Prince's
pavilion besought that Mr. Wet-eyes might go with him. Mr. Desires-awake
felt keenly how much might turn on who his companion was that day, and
therefore he took Mr. Wet-eyes with him. David would have made a most
excellent associate for Mr. Desires-awake that day. 'I am weary with my
groaning; all the night make I my bed to swim; I water my couch with my
tears.' And again, 'Rivers of waters run down mine eyes, because they
keep not Thy law.' This, then, was the only manner of man that Mr.
Desires-awake would stake his life alongside of that day. 'I have seen
some persons weep for the loss of sixpence,' said Mr. Desires-awake, 'or
for the breaking of a glass, or at some trifling accident. And they
cannot pretend to have their tears valued at a bigger rate than they will
confess their passion to be when they weep. Some are vexed for the
dirtying of their linen, or some such trifle, for which the least passion
is too big an expense. And thus it is that a man cannot tell his own
heart simply by his tears, or the truth of his repentance by those short
gusts of sorrow.' Well, then, my brethren, tell me, Do you think that
Mr. Desires-awake would have taken you that day to the pavilion door?
Would his head have been safe with you for his associate? Your
associates see many gusts in your heart. Do they ever see your eyes red
because of your sin? Did you ever weep so much as one good tear-drop for
pure sin? One true tear: not because your sins have found you out, but
for secret sins that you know can never find you out in this world? And,
still better, do you ever weep in secret places not for sin, but for
sinfulness--which is a very different matter? Do you ever weep to
yourself and to God alone over your incurably wicked heart? If not, then
weep for that with all your might, night and day. No mortal man has so
much cause to weep as you have. Go to God on the spot, on every spot,
and say with Bishop Andrewes, who is both Mr. Desires-awake and Mr. Wet-
eyes in one, say with that deep man in his _Private Devotions_, say: 'I
need more grief, O God; I plainly need it. I can sin much, but I cannot
correspondingly repent. O Lord, give me a molten heart. Give me tears;
give me a fountain of tears. Give me the grace of tears. Drop down, ye
heavens, and bedew the dryness of my heart. Give me, O Lord, this saving
grace. No grace of all the graces were more welcome to me. If I may not
water my couch with my tears, nor wash Thy feet with my tears, at least
give me one or two little tears that Thou mayest put into Thy bottle and
write in Thy book!' If your heart is hard, and your eyes dry, make
something like that your continual prayer.
2. 'A poor-man,' said Mr. Desires-awake, about his associate. 'Mr. Wet-
eyes is a poor man, and a man of a broken spirit.' 'Let Oliver take
comfort in his dark sorrows and melancholies. The quantity of sorrow he
has, does it not mean withal the quantity of sympathy he has, and the
quantity of faculty and of victory he shall yet have? Our sorrow is the
inverted image of our nobleness. The depth of our despair measures what
capability and height of claim we have to hope. Black smoke, as of
Tophet, filling all your universe, it can yet by true heart-energy become
flame, and the brilliancy of heaven. Courage!'
'This is the angel of the earth,
And she is always weeping.'
3. 'A poor man, and a man of a broken spirit, and yet one that can speak
well to a petition.' Yes; and you will see how true that eulogy of Mr.
Wet-eyes is if you will run over in your mind the outstanding instances
of successful petitioners in the Scriptures. As you come down the Old
and the New Testaments you will be astonished and encouraged to find how
prevailing a fountain of tears always is with God. David with his
swimming bed; Jeremiah with his head waters; Mary Magdalene over His feet
with her welling eyes; Peter's bitter cry all his life long as often as
he heard a cock crow, and so on. So on through a multitude whose names
are written in heaven, and who went up to heaven all the way with
inconsolable sorrow because of their sins. They took words and turned to
the Lord; but,--better than the best words,--they took tears, or rather,
their tears took them. The best words, the words that the Holy Ghost
Himself teacheth, if they are without tears, will avail nothing. Even
inspired words will not pass through; while, all the time, tears, mere
tears, without words, are omnipotent with God. Words weary Him, while
tears overcome and command Him. He inhabits the tears of Israel.
Therefore, also, now, saith the Lord, turn ye unto Me with all your
heart, and with weeping and with mourning. And rend your heart, and not
your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God, for He is gracious and
merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth Him of the
evil. It is the same with ourselves. Tears move us. Tears melt us. We
cannot resist tears. Even counterfeit tears, we cannot be sure that they
are not true. And that is the main reason why our Lord is so good at
speaking to a petition. It is because His whole heart, and all the
moving passions of His heart, are in His intercessory office. It is
because He still remembers in the skies His tears, His agonies, and
cries. It is because He is entered into the holiest with His own tears
as well as with His own blood. And it is because He will remain and
abide before the Father the Man of Sorrows till our last petition is
answered, and till God has wiped the last tear from our eyes. When He
was in the coasts of Caesarea-Philippi, our Lord felt a great curiosity
to find out who the people thereabouts took Him to be. And it must have
touched His heart to be told that some men had insight enough to insist
that He was the prophet Jeremiah come back again to weep over Jerusalem.
He is Elias, said some. No; He is John the Baptist risen from the dead,
said others. No, no; said some men who saw deeper than their neighbours.
His head is waters, and His eyes are a fountain of tears. Do you not see
that He so often escapes into a lodge in the wilderness to weep for our
sins? No; He is neither John nor Elijah; He is Jeremiah come back again
to weep over Jerusalem! And even an apostle, looking back at the
beginning of our Lord's priesthood on earth, says that He was prepared
for His office by prayers and supplications, and with strong crying and
tears. From all that, then, let us learn and lay to heart that if we
would have one to speak well to our petitions, the Man of Sorrows is that
one. And then, as His remembrancers on our behalf, let us engage all
those among our friends who have the same grace of tears. But, above
all, let us be men of tears ourselves. For all the tears and all the
intercessions of our great High Priest, and all the importunings of our
best friends to boot, will avail us nothing if our own eyes are dry. Let
us, then, turn back to Bishop Andrewes's prayer for the grace of tears,
and offer it every night with him till our head, like his, is holy
waters, and till, like him, we get beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for
mourning, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.
4. 'Clear as tears' is a Persian proverb when they would praise their
purest spring water. But Mr. Wet-eyes has from henceforth spoiled the
point of that proverb for us. 'I see,' he said, 'dirt in mine own tears,
and filthiness in the bottom of my prayers.' Mr. Wet-eyes is hopeless.
Mr. Wet-eyes is intolerable. Mr. Wet-eyes would weary out the patience
of a saint. There is no satisfying or pacifying or ever pleasing this
morbose Mr. Wet-eyes. The man is absolutely insufferable. Why, prayers
and tears that the most and best of God's people cannot attain to are
spurned and spat upon by Mr. Wet-eyes. The man is beside himself with
his tears. For, tears that would console and assure us for a long season
after them, he will weep over them as we scarce weep over our worst sins.
His closet always turns all his comeliness to corruption. He comes out
of his closet after all night in it with his psalm-book wrung to pulp,
and with all his righteousnesses torn to filthy rags; till all men escape
Mr. Wet-eyes' society--all men except Mr. Desires-awake. I will go out
on your errand now, said Mr. Desires-awake, if you will send Mr. Wet-eyes
with me. And thus the two twin sons of sorrow for sin and hunger after
holiness went out arm in arm to the great pavilion together, Mr. Desires-
awake with his rope upon his head, and Mr. Wet-eyes with his hands
wringing together. Thus they went to the Prince's pavilion. I gave you
a specimen of one of Mr. Wet-eyes' prayers in the introduction to this
discourse, and you did not discover much the matter with it, did you? You
did not discover much filthiness in the bottom of that prayer, did you? I
am sure you did not. Ah! but that is because you have not yet got Mr.
Wet-eyes' eyes. When you get his eyes; when you turn and employ upon
yourselves and upon your tears and upon your prayers his always-wet
eyes,--then you will begin to understand and love and take sides with
this inconsolable soul, and will choose his society rather than that of
any other man--as often, at any rate, as you go out to the Prince's
pavilion door.
5. 'Mr. Repentance was my father, but good men sometimes have bad
children, and the most sincere do sometimes beget great hypocrites. But,
I pray Thee, take not offence at the unqualifiedness of Thy servant.'
Take good note of that uncommon expression, 'unqualifiedness,' in Mr. Wet-
eyes' confession, all of you who are attending to what is being said. Lay
'unqualifiedness' to heart. Learn how to qualify yourselves before you
begin to pray. In his fine comment on the 137th Psalm, Matthew Henry
discourses delightfully on what he calls 'deliberate tears.' Look up
that raciest of commentators, and see what he there says about the
deliberate tears of the captives in Babylon. It was the lack of
sufficient deliberation in his tears that condemned and alarmed Mr. Wet-
eyes that day. He felt now that he had not deliberated and qualified
himself properly before coming to the Prince's pavilion. Do not take up
your time or your thoughts with mere curiosities, either in your Bible or
in any other good book, says A Kempis. Read such things rather as may
yield compunction to your heart. And again, give thyself to compunction,
and thou shalt gain much devotion thereby. Mr. Wet-eyes, good and true
soul, was afraid that he had not qualified himself enough by compunctious
reading and self-recollection. The sincere, he sobbed out, do often
beget hypocrites! 'Our hearts are so deceitful in the matter of
repentance,' says Jeremy Taylor, 'that the masters of the spiritual life
are fain to invent suppletory arts and stratagems to secure the duty.'
Take not offence at the lack of all such suppletory arts and stratagems
in thy servant, said poor Wet-eyes. All which would mean in the most of
us: Take not offence at my rawness and ignorance in the spiritual life,
and especially in the life of inward devotion. Do not count up against
me the names and the numbers and the prices of my poems, and plays, and
novels, and newspapers, and then the number of my devotional books.
Compare not my outlay on my body and on this life with my outlay on my
soul and on the life to come. Oh, take not mortal offence at the
shameful and scandalous unqualifiedness of Thy miserable servant. My
father and my mother read the books of the soul, but they have left
behind them a dry-eyed reprobate in me! Say that to-night as you look
around on the grievous famine of the suppletory arts and stratagems of
repentance and reformation in your heathenish bedroom.
Spiritual preaching; real face to face, inward, verifiable, experimental,
spiritual preaching; preaching to a heart in the agony of its
sanctification; preaching to men whose whole life is given over to making
them a new heart--that kind of preaching is scarcely ever heard in our
day. There is great intellectual ability in the pulpit of our day, great
scholarship, great eloquence, and great earnestness, but spiritual
preaching, preaching to the spirit--'wet-eyed' preaching--is a lost art.
At the same time, if that living art is for the present overlaid and
lost, the literature of a deeper spiritual day abides to us, and our
spiritually-minded people are not confined to us, they are not dependent
on us. Well, this is the Communion week with us yet once more. Will you
not, then, make it the beginning of some of the suppletory arts and
stratagems of the spiritual life with yourselves? I cannot preach as I
would like on such subjects, but I can tell you who could, and who,
though dead, yet speak by their immortal books. You have the wet-eyed
psalms; but they are beyond the depth of most people. Their meaning
seems to us on the surface, and we all read and sing them, but let us not
therefore think that we understand them. I cannot compel you to read the
books, and to read little else but the books, that would in time, and by
God's blessing, lead you into the depths of the psalms; but I can wash my
hands so far in making their names so many household words among my
people. The _Way to Christ_, the _Imitation of Christ_, the _Theologia
Germanica_, Tauler's _Sermons_, the _Mortification of Sin_, and
_Indwelling Sin in Believers_, the _Saint's Rest_, the _Holy Living and
Dying_, the _Privata Sacra_, the _Private Devotions_, the _Serious Call_,
the _Christian Perfection_, the _Religious Affections_, and such like.
All that, and you still unqualified! All that, and your eyes still dry!