'There is a lion in the way.'--The Slothful Man.
'I must venture.'--Christian.
'I at any rate must venture,' said Christian to Timorous and Mistrust.
'Whatever you may do I must venture, even if the lions you speak of
should pull me to pieces. I, for one, shall never go back. To go back
is nothing but death; to go forward is fear of death and everlasting life
beyond it. I will yet go forward.' So Mistrust and Timorous ran down
the hill, and Christian went on his way. George Offor says, in his notes
on this passage, that civil despotism and ecclesiastical tyranny so
terrified many young converts in John Bunyan's day, that multitudes
turned back like Mistrust and Timorous; while at the same time, many like
Bunyan himself went forward and for a time fell into the lion's mouth.
Civil despotism and ecclesiastical tyranny do not stand in our way as
they stood in Bunyan's way--at least, not in the same shape: but every
age has its own lions, and every Christian man has his own lions that
neither civil despots nor ecclesiastical tyrants know anything about.
Now, who or what is the lion in your way? Who or what is it that fills
you with such timorousness and mistrust, that you are almost turning back
from the way to life altogether? The fiercest of all our lions is our
own sin. When a man's own sin not only finds him out and comes roaring
after him, but when it dashes past him and gets into the woods and
thickets before him, and stands pawing and foaming on the side of his
way, that is a trial of faith and love and trust indeed. Sometimes a
man's past sins will fill all his future life with sleepless
apprehensions. He is never sure at what turn in his upward way he may
not suddenly run against some of them standing ready to rush out upon
him. And it needs no little quiet trust and humble-minded resignation to
carry a man through this slough and that bottom, up this hill and down
that valley, all the time with his life in his hand; and yet at every
turn, at every rumour that there are lions in the way, to say, Come lion,
come lamb, come death, come life, I must venture, I will yet go forward.
As Job also, that wonderful saint of God, said, 'Hold your peace, let me
alone that I may speak, and let come on me what will. Wherefore do I
take my flesh in my teeth and put my life in my hand? Though He slay me,
yet will I trust in Him. He also shall be my salvation; for an hypocrite
shall not come before Him.'
One false step, one stumble in life, one error in judgment, one outbreak
of an unbridled temperament, one small sin, if it is even so much as a
sin, of ignorance or of infirmity, will sometimes not only greatly injure
us at the time, but, in some cases, will fill all our future life with
trials and difficulties and dangers. Many of us shall have all our days
to face a future of defeat, humiliation, impoverishment, and many
hardships, that has not come on us on account of any presumptuous
transgression of God's law so much as simply out of some combination of
unfortunate circumstances in which we may have only done our duty, but
have not done it in the most serpent-like way. And when we are made to
suffer unjustly or disproportionately all our days for our error of
judgment or our want of the wisdom of this world, or what not, we are
sorely tempted to be bitter and proud and resentful and unforgiving, and
to go back from duty and endurance and danger altogether. But we must
not. We must rather say to ourselves, Now and here, if not in the past,
I must play the man, and, by God's help, the wise man. I must pluck
safety henceforth out of the heart of the nettle danger. Yes, I made a
mistake. I did what I would not do now, and I must not be too proud to
say so. I acted, I see now, precipitately, inconsiderately, imprudently.
And I must not gloom and rebel and run away from the cross and the lion.
I must not insist or expect that the always wise and prudent man's reward
is to come to me. The lion in my way is a lion of my own rearing; and I
must not turn my back on him, even if he should be let loose to leap on
me and rend me. I must pass under his paw and through his teeth, if need
be, to a life with him and beyond him of humility and duty and
quiet-hearted submission to his God and mine.
Then, again, our salvation itself sometimes, our true sanctification,
puts on a lion's skin and not unsuccessfully imitates an angry lion's
roar. Some saving grace that up till now we have been fatally lacking in
lies under the very lip of that lion we see standing straight in our way.
God in His wisdom so orders our salvation, that we must work out the best
part of it with fear and trembling. Right before us, just beside us,
standing over us with his heavy paw upon us, is a lion, from under whose
paw and from between whose teeth we must pluck and put on that grace in
which our salvation lies. Repentance and reformation lie in the way of
that lion; resignation also and humility; the crucifixion of our own
will; the sacrifice of our own heart; in short, everything that is still
lacking but is indispensable to our salvation lies through that den of
lions. One man here is homeless and loveless; another is childless;
another has a home and children, and much envies the man who has neither;
one has talents there is no scope for; another has the scope, but not the
sufficient talent; another must now spend all his remaining life in a
place where he sees that anger and envy and jealousy and malevolence will
be his roaring lions daily seeking to devour his soul. There is not a
Christian man or woman in this house whose salvation, worth being called
a salvation, does not lie through such a lion's thicket as that. Our
Lord Himself was a roaring lion to John the Baptist. For the Baptist's
salvation lay not in his powerful preaching, but in his being laid aside
from all preaching; not in his crowds increasing, but in his Successor's
crowds increasing and his decreasing. The Baptist was the greatest born
of woman in that day, not because he was a thundering preacher--any
ordinary mother in Israel might have been his mother in that: but to
decrease sweetly and to steal down quietly to perfect humility and self-
oblivion,--that salvation was reserved for the son of Elisabeth alone. I
would not like to say Who that is champing and pawing for your blood
right in your present way. Reverence will not let me say Who it is.
Only, you venture on Him.
'Yes, I shall venture!' said Christian to the two terrified and
retreating men. Now, every true venture is made against risk and
uncertainty, against anxiety and danger and fear. And it is just this
that constitutes the nobleness and blessedness of faith. Faith sells all
for Christ. Faith risks all for eternal life. Faith faces all for
salvation. When it is at the worst, faith still says, Very well; even if
there is no Celestial City anywhere in the world, it is better to die
still seeking it than to live on in the City of Destruction. Even if
there is no Jesus Christ,--I have read about Him and heard about Him and
pictured Him to myself, till, say what you will, I shall die kissing and
embracing that Divine Image I have in my heart. Even if there is neither
mercy-seat nor intercession in heaven, I shall henceforth pray without
ceasing. Far far better for me all the rest of my sinful life to be
clothed with sackcloth and ashes, even if there is no fountain opened in
Jerusalem for sin and uncleanness, and no change of raiment. Christian
protested that, as for him, lions and all, he had no choice left. And no
more have we. He must away somewhere, anywhere, from his past life. And
so must we. If all the lions that ever drank blood are to collect upon
his way, let them do so; they shall not all make him turn back. Why
should they? What is a whole forest full of lions to a heart and a life
full of sin? Lions are like lambs compared with sin. 'Good morning! I
for one must venture. I shall yet go forward.' So Mistrust and Timorous
ran down the hill, and Christian went on his way.
So I saw in my dream that he made haste and went forward, that if
possible he might get lodging in the house called Beautiful that stood by
the highway side. Now, before he had gone far he entered into a very
narrow passage which was about a furlong off from the porter's lodge, and
looking very narrowly before him as he went, he espied two lions in the
way. Then was he afraid, and thought also to go back, for he thought
that nothing but death was before him. But the porter at the lodge,
whose name was Watchful, perceiving that Christian made a halt, as if he
would go back, cried unto him, saying, 'Is thy strength so small? Fear
not the lions, for they are chained, and are only placed there for the
trial of faith where it is, and for the discovery of those who have none.
Keep the midst of the path and no hurt shall come to thee.' Yes, that is
all we have to do. Whatever our past life may have been, whatever our
past sins, past errors of judgment, past mistakes and mishaps, whatever
of punishment or chastisement or correction or instruction or
sanctification and growth in grace may be under those lions' skins and
between their teeth for us, all we have got to do at present is to leave
the lions to Him who set them there, and to go on, up to them and past
them, keeping always to the midst of the path. The lions may roar at us
till they have roared us deaf and blind, but we are far safer in the
midst of that path than we would be in our own bed. Only let us keep in
the midst of the path. When their breath is hot and full of blood on our
cheek; when they paw up the blinding earth; when we feel as if their
teeth had closed round our heart,--still, all the more, let us keep in
the midst of the path. We must sometimes walk on a razor-edge of fear
and straightforwardness; that is the only way left for us now. But,
then, we have the Divine assurance that on that perilous edge no hurt
shall come to us. 'Temptations,' says our author in another place, 'when
we meet them at first, are as the lion that roared upon Samson; but if we
overcome them, the next time we see them we shall find a nest of honey in
them.' O God, for grace and sense and imagination to see and understand
and apply all that to our own daily life! O to be able to take all that
home to-night and see it all there; lions and runaways, venturesome
souls, narrow paths, palaces of beauty, everlasting life and all! Open
Thou our eyes that we may see the wonderful things that await us in our
own house at home!
'Things out of hope are compassed oft with venturing.'
So they are; and so they were that day with our terrified pilgrim. He
made a venture at the supreme moment of his danger, and things that were
quite out of all hope but an hour before were then compassed and ever
after possessed by him. Make the same venture, then, yourselves
to-night. Naught venture, naught have. Your lost soul is not much to
venture, but it is all that Christ at this moment asks of you--that you
leave your lost soul in His hand, and then go straight on from this
moment in the middle of the path: the path, that is, as your case may be,
of purity, humility, submission, resignation, and self-denial. Keep your
mind and your heart, your eyes and your feet, in the very middle of that
path, and you shall have compassed the House Beautiful before you know.
The lions shall soon be behind you, and the grave and graceful damsels of
the House--Discretion and Prudence and Piety and Charity--shall all be
waiting upon you.