"But the fearful [literally, the timid and the cowardly] shall have
their part in the second death."--_Revelation xxi_.
No sooner had Secret bidden Christiana farewell than she began with all
her might to make ready for her great journey. "Come, my children, let
us pack up and begone to the gate that leads to the Celestial City, that
we may see your father and be with him, and with his companions, in
peace, according to the laws of that land." And then: "Come in, if you
come in God's name!" Christiana called out, as two of her neighbours
knocked at her door. "Having little to do at home this morning," said
the elder of the two women, "I have come across to kill a little time
with you. I spent last night with Mrs. Light-mind, and I have some good
news for you this morning." "I am just preparing for a journey this
morning," said Christiana, packing up all the time, "and I have not so
much as one moment to spare." You know yourselves what Christiana's
nervousness and almost impatience were. You know how it upsets your good
temper and all your civility when you are packing up for a long absence
from home, and some one comes in, and will talk, and will not see how
behindhand and how busy you are. "For what journey, I pray you?" asked
Mrs. Timorous, for that was her visitor's name. "Even to go after my
good husband," the busy woman said, and with that she fell a-weeping. But
you must read the whole account of that eventful morning in Christiana's
memoirs for yourselves till you have it, as Secret said, by
root-of-heart. On the understanding that you are not total strangers to
that so excellently-written passage I shall now venture a few
observations upon it.
1. Well, to begin with, Mrs. Timorous was not a bad woman, as women went
in that town and in that day. Her companions,--her gossips, as she would
have called them,--were far worse women than she was; and, had it not
been for her family infirmity, had it not been for that timid,
hesitating, lukewarm, and half-and-half habit of mind which she had
inherited from her father, there is no saying what part she might have
played in the famous expedition of Christiana and Mercy and the boys. Her
father had been a pilgrim himself at one time; but he had now for a long
time been known in the town as a turncoat and a temporary, and all his
children had unhappily taken after their father in that. Had her father
held on as he at one time had begun--had he held on in the face of all
fear and all danger as Christiana's noble husband had done--to a
certainty his daughter would have started that morning with Christiana
and her company, and would have been, if a timid, easily scared, and
troublesome pilgrim, yet as true a pilgrim, and made as welcome at last,
as, say, Miss Much-afraid, Mr. Fearing, and Mr. Ready-to-halt were made.
But her father's superficiality and shakiness, and at bottom his warm
love of this world and his lukewarm love of the world to come, had
unfortunately all descended to his daughter, till we find her actually
reviling Christiana on that decisive morning, and returning to her dish
of tea and tittle-tattle with Mrs. Bats-eyes, Mrs. Inconsiderate, Mrs.
Light-mind, and Mrs. Know-nothing.
2. The thing that positively terrified Mrs. Timorous at the very thought
of setting out with Christiana that morning was that intolerable way in
which Christiana had begun to go back upon her past life as a wife and a
mother. Christiana could not hide her deep distress, and, indeed, she
did not much try. Such were the swarms of painful memories that her
husband's late death, the visit of Secret, and one thing and another had
let loose upon Christiana's mind, that she could take pleasure in nothing
but in how she was to escape away from her past life, and how she could
in any way mend it and make up for it where she could not escape from it.
"You may judge yourself," said Mrs. Timorous to Mrs. Light-mind, "whether
I was likely to find much entertainment with a woman like that!" For,
Mrs. Timorous too, you must know, had a past life of her own; and it was
that past life of hers all brought back by Christiana's words that
morning that made Mrs. Timorous so revile her old friend and return to
the society we so soon see her with. Now, is not this the case, that we
all have swarms of evil memories that we dare not face? There is no
single relationship in life that we can boldly look back upon and fully
face. As son or as daughter, as brother or as sister, as friend or as
lover, as husband or as wife, as minister or as member, as master or as
servant--what swarms of hornet-memories darken our hearts as we so look
back! Let any grown-up man, with some imagination, tenderness of heart,
and integrity of conscience, go back step by step, taking some time to
it,--at a new year, say, or a birthday, or on some such suitable
occasion: let him go over his past life back to his youth and
childhood--and what an intolerable burden will be laid on his heart
before he is done! What a panorama of scarlet pictures will pass before
his inward eye! What a forest of accusing fingers will be pointed at
him! What hissing curses will be spat at him both by the lips of the
living and the dead! What untold pains he will see that he has caused to
the innocent and the helpless! What desolating disappointments, what
shipwrecks of hope to this man and to that woman! What a stone of
stumbling he has been to many who on that stone have been for ever broken
and lost! What a rock of offence even his mere innocent existence, all
unknown to himself till afterwards, has been! Swarms, said Christiana.
Swarms of hornets armed, said Samson. And many of us understand what
that bitter word means better than any commentator on Bunyan or on Milton
can tell us. One of the holiest men the Church of England ever produced,
and one of her best devotional writers, used to shut his door on the
night of every first day of the week, and on his knees spread out a
prayer which always contained this passage: "I worship Thee, O God, on my
face. I smite my breast and say with the publican, God be merciful to me
a sinner; the chief of sinners; a sinner far above the publican. Despise
me not--an unclean worm, a dead dog, a putrid corpse. Despise me not,
despise me not, O Lord. But look upon me with those eyes with which Thou
didst look upon Magdalene at the feast, Peter in the hall, and the thief
on the cross. O that mine eyes were a fountain of tears that I might
weep night and day before Thee! I despise and bruise myself that my
penitence is not deeper, is not fuller. Help Thou mine impenitence, and
more and more pierce, rend, and crush my heart. My sins are more in
number than the sand. My iniquities are multiplied, and I have no
relief." Perish your Puritanism, and your prayer-books too! I hear some
high-minded and indignant man saying. Perish your Celestial City and all
my desire after it, before I say the like of that about myself! Brave
words, my brother; brave words! But there have been men as blameless as
you are, and as brave-hearted over it, who, when the scales fell off
their eyes, were heard crying out ever after: O wretched man that I am!
And: Have mercy on me, the chief of sinners! And so, if it so please
God, will it yet be with you.
3. "Having had little to do this morning," said Mrs. Timorous to Mrs.
Light-mind, "I went to give Christiana a visit." "Law," I read in his
most impressive Life, "by this time was well turned fifty, but he rose as
early and was as soon at his desk as when he was still a new,
enthusiastic, and scrupulously methodical student at Cambridge." Summer
and winter Law rose to his devotions and his studies at five o'clock, not
because he had imperative sermons to prepare, but because, in his own
words, it is more reasonable to suppose a person up early because he is a
Christian than because he is a labourer or a tradesman or a servant. I
have a great deal of business to do, he would say. I have a hardened
heart to change; I have still the whole spirit of religion to get. When
Law at any time felt a temptation to relax his rule of early devotion, he
again reminded himself how fast he was becoming an old man, and how far
back his sanctification still was, till he flung himself out of bed and
began to make himself a new heart before the servants had lighted their
fires or the farmers had yoked their horses. Shame on you, he said to
himself, to lie folded up in a bed when you might be pouring out your
heart in prayer and in praise, and thus be preparing yourself for a place
among those blessed beings who rest not day and night saying, Holy, Holy,
Holy. "I have little to do this morning," said Mrs. Timorous. "But I am
preparing for a journey," said Christiana. "I have now a price put into
my hand to get gain, and I should be a fool of the greatest size if I
should have no heart to strike in with the opportunity."
4. Another thing that completely threw out Christiana's idle visitor and
made her downright angry was the way she would finger and kiss and read
pieces out of the fragrant letter she held in her hand. You will
remember how Christiana came by that letter she was now so fond of.
"Here," said Secret, "is a letter I have brought thee from thy husband's
King." So she took it and opened it, and it smelt after the manner of
the best perfume; also it was written in letters of gold. "I advise
thee," said Secret, "that thou put this letter in thy bosom, that thou
read therein to thy children until you have all got it by root-of-heart."
"His messenger was here," said Christiana to Mrs. Timorous, "and has
brought me a letter which invites me to come." And with that she plucked
out the letter and read to her out of it, and said: "What now do you say
to all that?" That, again, is so true to our own life. For there is
nothing that more distastes and disrelishes many people among us than
just that we should name to them our favourite books, and read a passage
out of them, and ask them to say what they think of such wonderful words.
Samuel Rutherford's _Letters_, for instance; a book that smells to some
nostrils with the same heavenly perfume as Secret's own letter did. A
book, moreover, that is written in the same ink of gold. Ask at
afternoon tea to-morrow, even in so-called Christian homes, when any of
the ladies round the table last read, and how often they have read,
_Grace Abounding, The Saint's Rest, The Religious Affections, Jeremy
Taylor, Law, a Kempis, Fenelon_, or such like, and they will smile to one
another and remark after you are gone on your strange taste for
old-fashioned and long-winded and introspective books. "Julia has buried
her husband and married her daughters, and since that she spends her time
in reading. She is always reading foolish and unedifying books. She
tells you every time she sees you that she is almost at the end of the
silliest book that ever she read in her life. But the best of it is that
it serves to dispose of a good deal of her spare time. She tells you all
romances are sad stuff, yet she is very impatient till she can get all
she can hear of. Histories of intrigue and scandal are the books that
Julia thinks are always too short. The truth is, she lives upon folly
and scandal and impertinence. These things are the support of her dull
hours. And yet she does not see that in all this she is plainly telling
you that she is in a miserable, disordered, reprobate state of mind. Now,
whether you read her books or no, you perhaps think with her that it is a
dull task to read only religious and especially spiritual books. But
when you have the spirit of true religion, when you can think of God as
your only happiness, when you are not afraid of the joys of eternity, you
will think it a dull task to read any other books. When it is the care
of your soul to be humble, holy, pure, and heavenly-minded; when you know
anything of the guilt and misery of sin, or feel a real need of
salvation, then you will find religious and truly spiritual books to be
the greatest feast and joy of your mind and heart." Yes. And then we
shall thank God every day we live that He raised us up such helpers in
our salvation as the gifted and gracious authors we have been speaking
of.
5. "The further I go the more danger I meet with," said old Timorous,
the father, to Christian, when Christian asked him on the Hill Difficulty
why he was running the wrong way. "I, too, was going to the City of
Zion," he said; "but the further on I go the more danger I meet with."
And, in saying that, the old runaway gave our persevering pilgrim
something to think about for all his days. For, again and again, and
times without number, Christian would have gone back too if only he had
known where to go. Go on, therefore, he must. To go back to him was
simply impossible. Every day he lived he felt the bitter truth of what
that old apostate had so unwittingly said. But, with all that he kept
himself in his onward way till, dangers and difficulties, death and hell
and all, he came to the blessed end of it. And that same has been the
universal experience of all the true and out-and-out saints of God in all
time. If poor old Timorous had only known it, if he had only had some
one beside him to remind him of it, the very thing that so fatally turned
him back was the best proof possible that he was on the right and the
only right way; ay, and fast coming, poor old castaway, to the very city
he had at one time set out to seek. Now, it is only too likely that
there are some of my hearers at this with it to-night, that they are on
the point of giving up the life of faith, and hope, and love, and holy
living; because the deeper they carry that life into their own hearts the
more impossible they find it to live that life there. The more they aim
their hearts at God's law the more they despair of ever coming within
sight of it. My supremely miserable brother! if this is any consolation
to you, if you can take any crumb of consolation out of it, let this be
told you, that, as a matter of fact, all truly holy men have in their
heart of hearts had your very experience. That is no strange and unheard-
of thing which is passing within you. And, indeed, if you could but
believe it, that is one of the surest signs and seals of a true and
genuine child of God. Dante, one of the bravest, but hardest bestead of
God's saints, was, just like you, well-nigh giving up the mountain
altogether when his Greatheart, who was always at his side, divining what
was going on within him, said to him--
"Those scars
That when they pain thee most then kindliest heal."
"The more I do," complained one of Thomas Shepard's best friends to him,
"the worse I am." "The best saints are the most sensible of sin," wrote
Samuel Rutherford. And, again he wrote, "Sin rages far more in the godly
than ever it does in the ungodly." And you dare not deny but that Samuel
Rutherford was one of the holiest men that ever lived, or that in saying
all that he was speaking of himself. And Newman: "Every one who tries to
do God's will"--and that also is Newman himself--"will feel himself to be
full of all imperfection and sin; and the more he succeeds in regulating
his heart, the more will he discern its original bitterness and guilt."
As our own hymn has it:
"They who fain would serve Thee best
Are conscious most of wrong within."
Without knowing it, Mrs. Timorous's runaway father was speaking the same
language as the chief of the saints. Only he said, "Therefore I have
turned back," whereas, first Christian, and then Christiana his widow,
said, "Yet I must venture!"
And so say you. Say, I must and I will venture! Say it; clench your
teeth and your hands and say it. Say that you are determined to go on
towards heaven where the holy are--absolutely determined, though you are
quite well aware that you are carrying up with you the blackest, the
wickedest, the most corrupt, and the most abominable heart either out of
hell or in it. Say that, say all that, and still venture. Say all that
and all the more venture. Venture upon God of whom such reassuring
things are said. Venture upon the Son of God of whom His Father is
represented as saying such inviting things. Venture upon the cross.
Survey the wondrous cross and then make a bold venture upon it. Think
who that is who is bleeding to death upon the cross, and why? Look at
Him till you never afterwards can see anything else. Look at God's
Eternal, Divine, Well-pleasing Son with all the wages of sin dealt out to
Him, body and soul, on that tree to the uttermost farthing. And, devil
incarnate though you indeed are, yet, say, if that spectacle does not
satisfy you, and encourage you, and carry your cowardice captive.
Venture! I say, venture! And if you find at last that you have ventured
too far--if you have sinned and corrupted yourself beyond redemption--then
it will be some consolation and distinction to you in hell that you had
out-sinned the infinite grace of God, and had seen the end of the
unsearchable riches of Christ. Timid sinner, I but mock thee, therefore
venture! Fearful sinner, venture! Cowardly sinner, venture. Venture
thyself upon thy God, upon Christ thy Saviour, and upon His cross.
Venture all thy guilt and all thy corruption taken together upon Christ
hanging upon His cross, and make that tremendous venture now!