OBSTINATE

'Be ye not as the mule.'--David.

Little Obstinate was born and brought up in the City of Destruction. His

father was old Spare-the-Rod, and his mother's name was Spoil-the-Child.

Little Obstinate was the only child of his parents; he was born when they

were no longer young, and they doted on their only child, and gave him

his own way in everything. Everything he asked for he got, and if he did

not immediately get it you would have heard his screams and his kicks

three doors off. His parents were not in themselves bad people, but, if

Solomon speaks true, they hated their child, for they gave him all his

own way in everything, and nothing would ever make them say no to him, or

lift up the rod when he said no to them. When the Scriptures, in their

pedagogical parts, speak so often about the rod, they do not necessarily

mean a rod of iron or even of wood. There are other ways of teaching an

obstinate child than the way that Gideon took with the men of Succoth

when he taught them with the thorns of the wilderness and with the briars

thereof. George Offor, John Bunyan's somewhat quaint editor, gives the

readers of his edition this personal testimony:--'After bringing up a

very large family, who are a blessing to their parents, I have yet to

learn what part of the human body was created to be beaten.' At the same

time the rod must mean something in the word of God; it certainly means

something in God's hand when His obstinate children are under it, and it

ought to mean something in a godly parent's hand also. Little

Obstinate's two parents were far from ungodly people, though they lived

in such a city; but they were daily destroying their only son by letting

him always have his own way, and by never saying no to his greed, and his

lies, and his anger, and his noisy and disorderly ways. Eli in the Old

Testament was not a bad man, but he destroyed both the ark of the Lord

and himself and his sons also, because his sons made themselves vile, and

he restrained them not. God's children are never so soft, and sweet, and

good, and happy as just after He restrains them, and has again laid the

rod of correction upon them. They then kiss both the rod and Him who

appointed it. And earthly fathers learn their craft from God. The

meekness, the sweetness, the docility, and the love of a chastised child

has gone to all our hearts in a way we can never forget. There is

something sometimes almost past description or belief in the way a

chastised child clings to and kisses the hand that chastised it. But

poor old Spare-the-Rod never had experiences like that. And young

Obstinate, having been born like Job's wild ass's colt, grew up to be a

man like David's unbitted and unbridled mule, till in after life he

became the author of all the evil and mischief that is associated in our

minds with his evil name.

In old Spare-the-Rod's child also this true proverb was fulfilled, that

the child is the father of the man. For all that little Obstinate had

been in the nursery, in the schoolroom, and in the playground--all that,

only in an aggravated way--he was as a youth and as a grown-up man. For

one thing, Obstinate all his days was a densely ignorant man. He had not

got into the way of learning his lessons when he was a child; he had not

been made to learn his lessons when he was a child; and the dislike and

contempt he had for his books as a boy accompanied him through an

ignorant and a narrow-minded life. It was reason enough to this so

unreasonable man not to buy and read a book that you had asked him to buy

and read it. And so many of the books about him were either written, or

printed, or published, or sold, or read, or praised by people he did not

like, that there was little left for this unhappy man to read, even if

otherwise he would have read it. And thus, as his mulish obstinacy kept

him so ignorant, so his ignorance in turn increased his obstinacy. And

then when he came, as life went on, to have anything to do with other

men's affairs, either in public or in private life, either in the church,

or in the nation, or in the city, or in the family, this unhappy man

could only be a drag on all kinds of progress, and in obstacle to every

good work. Use and wont, a very good rule on occasion, was a rigid and a

universal rule with Obstinate. And to be told that the wont in this case

and in that had ceased to be the useful, only made him rail at you as

only an ignorant and an obstinate man can rail. He could only rail; he

had not knowledge enough, or good temper enough, or good manners enough

to reason out a matter; he was too hot-tempered for an argument, and he

hated those who had an acquaintance with the subject in hand, and a self-

command in connection with it that he had not. 'The obstinate man's

understanding is like Pharaoh's heart, and it is proof against all sorts

of arguments whatsoever.' Like the demented king of Egypt, the obstinate

man has glimpses sometimes both of his bounden duty and of his true

interest, but the sinew of iron that is in his neck will not let him

perform the one or pursue the other. 'Nothing,' says a penetrating

writer, 'is more like firm conviction than simple obstinacy. Plots and

parties in the state, and heresies and divisions in the church alike

proceed from it.' Let any honest man take that sentence and carry it

like a candle down into his own heart and back into his own life, and

then with the insight and honesty there learned carry the same candle

back through some of the plots and parties, the heresies and schisms of

the past as well as of the present day, and he will have learned a lesson

that will surely help to cure himself, at any rate, of his own remaining

obstinacy. All our firm convictions, as we too easily and too fondly

call them, must continually be examined and searched out in the light of

more reading of the best authors, in the light of more experience of

ourselves and of the world we live in, and in that best of all light,

that increasing purity, simplicity, and sincerity of heart alone can

kindle. And in not a few instances we shall to a certainty find that

what has hitherto been clothing itself with the honourable name and

character of a conviction was all the time only an ignorant prejudice, a

distaste or a dislike, a too great fondness for ourselves and for our own

opinion and our own interest. Many of our firmest convictions, as we now

call them, when we shall have let light enough fall upon them, we shall

be compelled and enabled to confess to be at bottom mere mulishness and

pride of heart. The mulish, obstinate, and proud man never says, I don't

know. He never asks anything to be explained to him. He never admits

that he has got any new light. He never admits having spoken or acted

wrongly. He never takes back what he has said. He was never heard to

say, You are right in that line of action, and I have all along been

wrong. Had he ever said that, the day he said it would have been a white-

stone day both for his mind and his heart. Only, the spoiled son of

Spare-the-Rod never said that, or anything like that.

But, most unfortunately, it is in the very best things of life that the

true mulishness of the obstinate man most comes out. He shows worst in

his home life and in the matters of religion. When our Obstinate was in

love he was as sweet as honey and as soft as butter. His old friends

that he used so to trample upon scarcely recognised him. They had

sometimes seen men converted, but they had never seen such an immediate

and such a complete conversion as this. He actually invited correction,

and reproof, and advice, and assistance, who had often struck at you with

his hands and his feet when you even hinted at such a thing to him. The

best upbringing, the best books, the best preaching, the best and most

obedient life, taken all together, had not done for other men what a

woman's smile and the touch of her hand had in a moment done for this

once so obstinate man. He would read anything now, and especially the

best books. He would hear and enjoy any preacher now, and especially the

best and most earnest in preaching. His old likes and dislikes,

prejudices and prepossessions, self-opinionativeness and

self-assertiveness all miraculously melted off him, and he became in a

day an open-minded, intelligent, good-mannered, devout-minded gentleman.

He who was once such a mule to everybody was now led about by a child in

a silken bridle. All old things had passed away, and all things had

become new. For a time; for a time. But time passes, and there passes

away with it all the humility, meekness, pliability, softness, and

sweetness of the obstinate man. Till when long enough time has elapsed

you find him all the obstinate and mulish man he ever was. It is not

that he has ceased to love his wife and his children. It is not that.

But there is this in all genuine and inbred obstinacy, that after a time

it often comes out worst beside those we love best. A man will be

affable, accessible, entertaining, the best of company, and the soul of

it abroad, and, then, instantly he turns the latch-key in his own door he

will relapse into silence, and sink back into utter boorishness and

bearishness, mulishness and doggedness. He swallows his evening meal at

the foot of the table in silence, and then he sits all night at the

fireside with a cloud out of nothing on his brow. His sunshine, his

smile, and his universal urbanity is all gone now; he is discourteous to

nobody but to his own wife. Nothing pleases him; he finds nothing at

home to his mind. The furniture, the hours, the habits of the house are

all disposed so as to please him; but he was never yet heard to say to

wife, or child, or servant that he was pleased. He never says that a

meal is to his taste or a seat set so as to shelter and repose him. The

obstinate man makes his house a very prison and treadmill to himself and

to all those who are condemned to suffer with him. And all the time it

is not that he does not love and honour his household; but by an evil law

of the obstinate heart its worst obstinacy and mulishness comes out among

those it loves best.

But, my brethren, worse than all that, we have all what good Bishop Hall

calls 'a stone of obstination' in our hearts against God. With all his

own depth and clearness and plain-spokenness, Paul tells us that our

hearts are by nature enmity against God. Were we proud and obstinate and

malicious against men only it would be bad enough, and it would be

difficult enough to cure, but our case is dreadful beyond all description

or belief when our obstinacy strikes out against God. We know as well as

we know anything, that in doing this and in not doing that we are going

every day right in the teeth both of God's law and God's grace; and yet

in the sheer obstinacy and perversity of our heart we still go on in what

we know quite well to be the suicide of our souls. We are told by our

minister to do this and not to do that; to begin to do this at this new

year and to break off from doing that; but, partly through obstinacy

towards him, reinforced by a deeper and subtler and deadlier obstinacy

against God, and against all the deepest and most godly of the things of

God, we neither do the one nor cease from doing the other. There is a

sullenness in some men's minds, a gloom and a bitter air that rises up

from the unploughed, undrained, unweeded, uncultivated fens of their

hearts that chills and blasts all the feeble beginnings of a better life.

The natural and constitutional obstinacy of the obstinate heart is

exasperated when it comes to deal with the things of God. For it is then

reinforced with all the guilt and all the fear, all the suspicion and all

the aversion of the corrupt and self-condemned heart. There is an

obdurateness of obstinacy against all the men, and the books, and the

doctrines, and the precepts, and the practices that are in any way

connected with spiritual religion that does not come out even in the

obstinate man's family life.

John Bunyan's Obstinate, both by his conduct as well as by the etymology

of his name, not only stands in the way of his own salvation, but he does

all he can to stand in the way of other men setting out to salvation

also. Obstinate set out after Christian to fetch him back by force, and

if it had not been that he met his match in Christian, _The Pilgrim's

Progress_ would never have been written. 'That can by no means be,' said

Christian to his pursuer, and he is first called Christian when he shows

that one man can be as obstinate in good as another man can be in evil.

'I never now can go back to my former life.' And then the two obstinate

men parted company for ever, Christian in holy obstinacy being determined

to have eternal life at any cost, and Obstinate as determined against it.

The opening pages of _The Pilgrim's Progress_ set the two men very

graphically and very impressively before us.

As to the cure of obstinacy, the rod in a firm, watchful, wise, and

loving hand will cure it. And in later life a long enough and close

enough succession of humble, yielding, docile, submissive,

self-chastening and thanksgiving acts will cure it. Reading and obeying

the best books on the subjugation and the regulation of the heart will

cure it. Descending with Dante to where the obstinate, and the

embittered, and the gloomy, and the sullen have made their beds in hell

will cure it. And much and most agonising prayer will above all cure it.

'O Lord, if thus so obstinate I,

Choose Thou, before my spirit die,

A piercing pain, a killing sin,

And to my proud heart run them in.