MEDITATION
'As he thinketh in his heart, so is he.'--_A Proverb_.
It was a truly delightful sight to see old Mr. Meditation and his only
son, our little Think-well, out among the woods and hedgerows of a summer
afternoon. Little Think-well was the son of his father's old age. That
dry tree used to say to himself that if ever he was intrusted with a son
of his own, he would make his son his most constant and his most
confidential companion all his days. And so he did. The eleventh of
Deuteronomy had become a greater and greater text to that childless man
as he passed the mid-time of his days. 'Therefore,' he used to say to
himself, as he walked abroad alone, and as other men passed him with
their children at their side--'Therefore ye shall teach them to your
children, speaking of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when
thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down and when thou risest up.
And thou shalt write them upon the doorposts of thine house and upon thy
gates.' And thus it was that, as the little lad grew up, there was no
day of all the seven that he so much numbered and waited for as was that
sacred day on which his father was free to take little Think-well by the
hand and lead him out to talk to him. 'No,' said an Edinburgh boy to his
mother the other day--'No, mother,' he said, 'I have no liking for these
Sunday papers with their poor stories and their pictures. I am to read
the Bible stories and the Bible biographies first.' He is not my boy. I
wish my boys were all like him. 'And Plutarch on week-days for such a
boy,' I said to his mother. How to keep a decent shred of the old
sanctification on the modern Sabbath-day is the anxious inquiry of many
fathers and mothers among us. My friend with her manly-minded boy, and
Mr. Meditation with little Think-well had no trouble in that matter.
'And once I said,
As I remember, looking round upon those rocks
And hills on which we all of us were born,
That God who made the Great Book of the world
Would bless such piety;--
Never did worthier lads break English bread:
The finest Sunday that the autumn saw,
With all its mealy clusters of ripe nuts,
Could never keep those boys away from church,
Or tempt them to an hour of Sabbath breach,
Leonard and James!'
Think-well and that mother's son.
Old Mr. Meditation, the father, was sprung of a poor but honest and
industrious stock in the city. He had not had many talents or
opportunities to begin with, but he had made the very best of the two he
had. And then, when the two estates of Mr. Fritter-day and Mr. Let-good-
slip were sequestered to the crown, the advisers of the crown handed over
those two neglected estates to Mr. Meditation to improve them for the
common good, and after him to his son, whose name we know. The steps of
a good man are ordered of the Lord, and He delighteth in his way. I have
been young and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken,
nor his seed begging bread.
Now, this Think-well old Mr. Meditation had by Mrs. Piety, and she was
the daughter of the old Recorder. 'I am Thy servant,' said Mrs. Piety's
son on occasion all his days--'I am Thy servant and the son of Thine
handmaid.' And at that so dutiful acknowledgment of his a long
procession of the servants of God pass up before our eyes with their
sainted mothers leaning on the arms of their great sons. The Psalmist
and his mother, the Baptist and his mother, our Lord and His mother, the
author of the Fourth Gospel and his mother, Paul's son and successor in
the gospel and his mother and grandmother, the author of _The
Confessions_ and his mother; and, in this noble connection, I always
think of Halyburton and his good mother. And in this ennobling
connection you will all think of your own mother also, and before we go
any further you will all say, I also, O Lord, am Thy servant and the son
of Thine handmaid. 'Fathers and mothers handle children differently,'
says Jeremy Taylor. And then that princely teacher of the Church of
Christ Catholic goes on to tell us how Mrs. Piety handled her little
Think-well which she had borne to Mr. Meditation. After other things,
she said this every night before she took sleep to her tired eyelids,
this: 'Oh give me grace to bring him up. Oh may I always instruct him
with diligence and meekness; govern him with prudence and holiness; lead
him in the paths of religion and justice; never provoking him to wrath,
never indulging him in folly, and never conniving at an unworthy action.
Oh sanctify him in his body, soul, and spirit. Let all his thoughts be
pure and holy to the Searcher of hearts; let his words be true and
prudent before men; and may he have the portion of the meek and the
humble in the world to come, and all through Jesus Christ our Lord!' How
could a son get past a father and a mother like that? Even if, for a
season, he had got past them, he would be sure to come back. Only, their
young Think-well never did get past his father and his mother.
There was not so much word of heredity in his day; but without so much of
the word young Think-well had the whole of the thing. And as time went
on, and the child became more and more the father of the man, it was seen
and spoken of by all the neighbours who knew the house, how that their
only child had inherited all his father's head, and all his mother's
heart, and then that he had reverted to his maternal grandfather in his
so keen and quick sense of right and wrong. All which, under whatever
name it was held, was a most excellent outfit for our young gentleman.
His old father, good natural head and all, had next to no book-learning.
He had only two or three books that he read a hundred times over till he
had them by heart. And as he sighed over his unlettered lot he always
consoled himself with a saying he had once got out of one of his old
books. The saying of some great authority was to this effect, that 'an
old and simple woman, if she loves Jesus, may be greater than our great
brother Bonaventure.' He did not know who Bonaventure was, but he always
got a reproof again out of his name. Think-well, to his father's immense
delight, was a very methodical little fellow, and his father and he had
orderly little secrets that they told to none. Little secret plans as to
what they were to read about, and think about, and pray about on certain
days of the week and at certain hours of the day and the night. You must
not call the father an old pedant, for the fact is, it was the son who
was the pedant if there was one in that happy house. The two intimate
friends had a word between them they called _agenda_. And nobody but
themselves knew where they had borrowed that uncouth word, what language
it was, or what it meant. Only in the old man's tattered pocket-book
there were things like this found by his minister after his death.
Indeed, in a museum of such relics this is still to be read under a glass
case, and in old Mr. Meditation's ramshackle hand: 'Monday, death;
Tuesday, judgment; Wednesday, heaven; Thursday, hell; Friday, my past
life back to my youth; Saturday, the passion of my Saviour; Lord's day,
creation, salvation, and my own.--M.' And then, on an utterly illegible
page, this: 'Jesus, Thy life and Thy words are a perpetual sermon to me.
I meditate on Thee all the day. Make my memory a vessel of election. Let
all my thoughts be plain, honest, pious, simple, prudent, and charitable,
till Thou art pleased to draw the curtain and let me see Thyself, O
Eternal Jesu!' If I had time I could tell you more about Think-well's
quaint old father. But the above may be better than nothing about the
rare old gentleman.
A great authority has said--two great authorities have said in their
enigmatic way, that a 'dry light is ever the best.' That may be so in
some cases and to some uses, but nothing can be more sure than this, that
the light that little Think-well got from his father's head was
excellently drenched in his mother's heart. The sweet moisture of his
mother's heart mixed up beautifully with his father's drier head and made
a fine combination in their one boy as it turned out. Her minister,
preaching on one occasion on my text for to-night, had said--and she had
such a memory for a sermon that she had never forgotten it, but had laid
it up in her heart on the spot--'As the philosopher's stone,' the old-
fashioned preacher had said, 'turns all metals into gold, as the bee
sucks honey out of every flower, and as the good stomach sucks out some
sweet and wholesome nourishment out of whatever it takes into itself, so
doth a holy heart, so far as sanctified, convert and digest all things
into spiritual and useful thoughts. This you may see in Psalm cvii. 43.'
And in her plain, silent, hidden, motherly way Mistress Piety adorned her
old minister's doctrine of the holy heart that he was always preaching
about, till she shared her soft and holy heart with her son, as his
father had shared his clear and deep, if too unlearned, head.
We have one grandmother at least signalised in the Bible; but no
grandfather, so far as I remember. But amends are made for that in the
_Holy War_. For Think-well would never have been the man he became had
it not been for the old Recorder, his grandfather on his mother's side.
Some superficial people said that there was too much severity in the old
Recorder; but his grandson who knew him best, never said that. He was
the best of men, his grandson used to stand up for him, and say, I shall
never forget the debt I owe him. It was he who taught me first to make
conscience of my thoughts. Indeed, as for my secret thoughts, I had
taken no notice of them till that summer afternoon walk home from church,
when we sat down among the bushes and he showed me on the spot the way.
And I can say to his memory that scarce for one waking hour have I any
day forgotten the lesson. The lesson how to make a conscience, as he
said, of all my thoughts about myself and about all my neighbours. Such,
then, were Think-well's more immediate ancestors, and such was the
inheritance that they all taken together had left him.
Think-well! Think-well! My brethren, what do you think, what do you
say, as you hear that fine name? I will tell you what I think and say.
If I overcome, and have that white stone given to me, and in that stone a
new name written which no man shall know saving he that receiveth it; and
if it were asked me here to-night what I would like my new name to be, I
would say on the spot, Let it be THINK-WELL! Let my new name among the
saved and the sanctified before the throne be THINK-WELL! As, O God, it
will be the bottomless pit to me, if I am forsaken of Thee for ever to my
evil thoughts. Send down and prevent it. Stir up all Thy strength and
give commandment to prevent it. Do Thou prevent it. For, after I have
done all,--after I have made all my overt acts blameless, after I have
tamed my tongue which no man can tame--all that only the more throws my
thoughts into a very devil's garden, a thicket of hell, a secret swamp of
sin to the uttermost. How, then, am I ever to attain to that white stone
and that shining name? And that in a world of such truth that every
man's name and title there shall be a strict and true and entirely
accurate and adequate description and exposition of the very thoughts and
intents and imaginations of his heart? How shall I, how shall you, my
brethren, ever have 'Think-well' written on our forehead?--Well, with God
all things are possible. With God, with a much meditating mind, and a
true and humble and tender heart, and a pure conscience, a conscience
void of offence, working together with Him--He, with all these
inheritances and all these environments working together with Him, will
at last enable us, you and me, to lift up such a clear and transparent
forehead. But not without our constant working together. We must
ourselves make head, and heart, and, especially, conscience of all our
thoughts--for a long lifetime we must do that. The _Ductor Dubitantium_
has a deep chapter on 'The Thinking Conscience.' And what a reproof to
many of us lies in the mere name! For how much evil-thinking and evil-
speaking we have all been guilty of through our unthinking conscience and
through a zeal for God, but a zeal without knowledge. Look back at the
history of the Church and see; look back at your own history in the
Church and see. Yes, make conscience of your thoughts: but let it first
be an instructed conscience, a thinking conscience, a conscience full of
the best and the clearest light. And then let us also make ourselves a
new heart and a new spirit, as Ezekiel has it. For our hearts are
continually perverting and polluting and poisoning our thoughts. That is
a fearful thing that is said about the men on whom the flood soon came.
You remember what is said about them, and in explanation and
justification of the flood. God saw, it is said, that every imagination
of the thoughts of their hearts was evil, and only evil continually.
Fearful! Far more fearful than ten floods! O God, Thou seest us. And
Thou seest all the imaginations of the thoughts of our hearts. Oh give
us all a mind and a heart and a conscience to think of nothing, to fear
nothing, to watch and to pray about nothing compared with our thoughts.
'As for my secret thoughts,' says the author of the _Holy War_ and the
creator of Master Think-well--'As for my secret thoughts, I paid no
attention to them. I never knew I had them. I had no pain, or shame, or
guilt, or horror, or despair on account of them till John Gifford took me
and showed me the way.' And then when John Bunyan, being the man of
genius he was,--as soon as he began to attend to his own secret thoughts,
then the first faint outline of this fine portrait of Think-well began to
shine out on the screen of this great artist's imagination, and from that
sanctified screen this fine portrait of Think-well and his family has
shined into our hearts to-night.