"Happy is the man that feareth alway."--_Solomon_
For humour, for pathos, for tenderness, for acute and sympathetic insight
at once into nature and grace, for absolutely artless literary skill, and
for the sweetest, most musical, and most exquisite English, show me
another passage in our whole literature to compare with John Bunyan's
portrait of Mr. Fearing. You cannot do it. I defy you to do it.
Spenser, who, like John Bunyan, wrote an elaborate allegory, says: It is
not in me. Take all Mr. Fearing's features together, and even
Shakespeare himself has no such heart-touching and heart-comforting
character. Addison may have some of the humour and Lamb some of the
tenderness; but, then, they have not the religion. Scott has the insight
into nature, but he has no eye at all for grace; while Thackeray, who, in
some respects, comes nearest to John Bunyan of them all, would be the
foremost to confess that he is not worthy to touch the shoe-latchet of
the Bedford tinker. As Dr. Duncan said in his class one day when telling
us to read Augustine's Autobiography and Halyburton's:--"But," he said,
"be prepared for this, that the tinker beats them all!" "Methinks," says
Browning, "in this God speaks, no tinker hath such powers."
Now, as they walked along together, the guide asked the old gentleman if
he knew one Mr. Fearing that came on pilgrimage out of his parts. "Yes,"
said Mr. Honest, "very well. He was a man that had the root of the
matter in him; but he was one of the most troublesome pilgrims that ever
I met with in all my days." "I perceive you knew him," said the guide,
"for you have given a very right character of him." "Knew him!"
exclaimed Honest, "I was a great companion of his; I was with him most an
end. When he first began to think of what would come upon us hereafter,
I was with him." "And I was his guide," said Greatheart, "from my
Master's house to the gates of the Celestial City." "Then," said Mr.
Honest, "it seems he was well at last." "Yes, yes," answered the guide,
"I never had any doubt about him; he was a man of a choice spirit, only
he was always kept very low, and that made his life so burdensome to
himself and so troublesome to others. He was, above many, tender of sin;
he was so afraid of doing injuries to others that he would often deny
himself of that which was lawful because he would not offend." "But
what," asked Honest, "should be the reason that such a good man should be
all his days so much in the dark?" "There are two sorts of reasons for
it," said the guide; "one is, the wise God will have it so: some must
pipe and some must weep. Now, Mr. Fearing was one that played upon this
base. He and his fellows sound the sackbut, whose notes are more doleful
than the notes of other music are. Though, indeed, some say that the
base is the ground of music. And, for my part, I care not at all for
that profession that begins not with heaviness of mind. The first string
that the musician usually touches is the base when he intends to put all
in tune. God also plays upon this string first when He sets the soul in
tune for Himself. Only, here was the imperfection of Mr. Fearing, that
he could play upon no other music but this till toward his latter end."
1. Take Mr. Fearing, then, to begin with, at the Slough of Despond.
Christian and Pliable, they being heedless, did both fall into that bog.
But Mr. Fearing, whatever faults you may think he had--and faults, too,
that you think you could mend in him--at any rate, he was never heedless.
Everybody has his fault to find with poor Mr. Fearing. Everybody blames
poor Mr. Fearing. Everybody can improve upon poor Mr. Fearing. But I
will say again for Mr. Fearing that he was never heedless. Had Peter
been on the road at that period he would have stood up for Mr. Fearing,
and would have taken his judges and would have said to them, with some
scorn--Go to, and pass the time of your sojourning here with something of
the same silence and the same fear! Christian's excuse for falling into
the Slough was that fear so followed him that he fled the next way, and
so fell in. But Mr. Fearing had no such fear behind him in his city as
Christian had in his. All Mr. Fearing's fears were within himself. If
you can take up the distinction between actual and indwelling sin,
between guilt and corruption, you have already in that the whole key to
Mr. Fearing. He was blamed and counselled and corrected and pitied and
patronised by every morning-cloud and early-dew neophyte, while all the
time he lived far down from the strife of tongues where the root of the
matter strikes its deep roots still deeper every day. "It took him a
whole month," tells Greatheart, "to face the Slough. But he would not go
back neither. Till, one sunshiny morning, nobody ever knew how, he
ventured, and so got over. But the fact of the matter is," said the
shrewd-headed guide, "Mr. Fearing had, I think, a slough of despond in
his own mind; and a slough that he carried everywhere with him." Yes,
that was it. Greatheart in that has hit the nail on the head. With one
happy stroke he has given us the whole secret of poor Mr. Fearing's life-
long trouble. Just so; it was the slough in himself that so kept poor
Mr. Fearing back. This poor pilgrim, who had so little to fear in his
past life, had yet so much scum and filth, spume and mire in his present
heart, that how to get on the other side of that cost him not a month's
roaring only, but all the months and all the years till he went over the
River not much above wet-shod. And, till then, not twenty million cart-
loads of wholesome instructions, nor any number of good and substantial
steps, would lift poor Mr. Fearing over the ditch that ran so deep and so
foul continually within himself. "Yes, he had, I think, a slough of
despond in his mind, a slough that he carried everywhere with him, or
else he never could have been the man he was." I, for one, thank the
great-hearted guide for that fine sentence.
2. It was a sight to see poor Mr. Fearing at the wicket gate. "Knock,
and it shall be opened unto you." He read the inscription over the gate
a thousand times, but every time he read it his slough-filled heart said
to him, Yes, but that is not for such as you. Pilgrim after pilgrim came
up the way, read the writing, knocked, and was taken in; but still Mr.
Fearing stood back, shaking and shrinking. At last he ventured to take
hold of the hammer that hung on the gate and gave with it a small rap
such as a mouse might make. But small as the sound was, the Gatekeeper
had had his eye on his man all the time out of his watch-window; and
before Mr. Fearing had time to turn and run, Goodwill had him by the
collar. But that sudden assault only made Mr. Fearing sink to the earth,
faint and half-dead. "Peace be to thee, O trembling man!" said Goodwill.
"Come in, and welcome!" When he did venture in, Mr. Fearing's face was
as white as a sheet. You would have said that an officer had caught a
thief if you had seen poor Mr. Fearing hiding his face, and the
Gatekeeper hauling him in. And not all the entertainment for which the
Gate was famous, nor all the encouragement that Goodwill was able to
speak, could make terrified Mr. Fearing for once to smile. A more hard-
to-entertain pilgrim, all the Gate declared when he had gone, they had
never had in their hospitable house.
3. "So he came," said the guide, "till he came to our House; but as he
behaved himself at the Gate, so he did at my Master the Interpreter's
door. He lay about in the cold a good while before he would adventure to
call. Yet he would not go back neither. And the nights were cold and
long then. At last I think I looked out of the window, and perceiving a
man to be up and down about the door, I went out to him, and asked what
he was; but, poor man, the water stood in his eyes. So I perceived what
he wanted. I went in, therefore, and told it in the house, and we showed
the thing to our Lord. So He sent me out again to entreat him to come
in, but I dare say I had hard work to do it. At last he came in, and I
will say that for my Lord, He carried it wonderful lovingly to Mr.
Fearing. There were but a few good bits at the table, but some of it was
laid upon his trencher." In this way the guide tells us his first
introduction to Mr. Fearing, and how Mr. Fearing behaved himself in the
Interpreter's House. For instance, in the parlour full of dust, when the
Interpreter said that the dust is original sin and inward corruption, you
would have thought that the Interpreter had stabbed poor Mr. Fearing to
the heart, so did he break out and weep. Before the damsel could come
with the pitcher, Mr. Fearing's eyes alone would have laid the dust, they
were such a fountain of tears. When he saw Passion and Patience, each
one in his chair--"I am that child in rags," said Mr. Fearing; "I have
already received all my good things!" Also, at the wall where the fire
burned because oil was poured into it from the other side, he perversely
turned that fire also against himself. And when they came to the man in
the iron cage, you could not have told whether the miserable man inside
the cage or the miserable man outside of it sighed the loudest. And so
on, through all the significant rooms. The spider-room overwhelmed him
altogether, till his sobs and the beating of his breast were heard all
over the house. The robin also when gobbling up spiders he made an
emblem of himself, and the tree that was rotten at the heart,--till the
Interpreter's patience with this so perverse pilgrim was fairly worn out.
So the Interpreter shut up his significant rooms, and had this so
troublesome pilgrim into his own chamber, and there carried it so
tenderly to Mr. Fearing that at last he did seem to have taken some
little heart of grace. "And then we," said Greatheart, "set forward, and
I went before him; but the man was of few words, only he would often sigh
aloud."
4. "Dumpish at the House Beautiful" is his biographer's not very
respectful comment on the margin of the history. There were too many
merry-hearted damsels running up and down that house for Mr. Fearing. He
could not lift his eyes but one of those too-tripping maidens was looking
at him. He could not stir a foot but he suddenly ran against a talking
and laughing bevy of them. There was one thing he loved above
everything, and that was to overhear the talk that went on at that season
in that house about the City above, and about the King of that City, and
about His wonderful ways with pilgrims, and the entertainment they all
got who entered that City. But to get a word out of Mr. Fearing upon any
of these subjects,--all the king's horses could not have dragged it out
of him. Only, the screen was always seen to move during such
conversations, till it soon came to be known to all the house who was
behind the screen. And the talkers only talked a little louder as the
screen moved, and took up, with a smile to one another, another and a yet
more comforting topic.
The Rarity Rooms also were more to Mr. Fearing than his necessary food.
He would be up in the morning and waiting at the doors of those rooms
before the keepers had come with their keys. And they had to tell him
that the candles were to be put out at night before he would go away. He
was always reading, as if he had never read it before, the pedigree of
the Lord of the Hill. Moses' rod, Shamgar's goad, David's sling and
stone, and what not--he laughed and danced and sang like a child around
these ancient tables. The armoury-room also held him, where were the
swords, and shields, and helmets, and breast-plates, and shoes that would
not wear out. You would have thought you had your man all right as long
as you had him alone among these old relics; but, let supper be ready,
and the house gathered, and Mr. Fearing was as dumpish as ever. Eat he
would not, drink he would not, nor would he sit at the same table with
those who ate and drank with such gladness. I remembered Mr. Fearing at
the House Beautiful when I was present at a communion season some time
back in Ross-shire. The church was half full of Mr. Fearing's close
kindred that communion morning. For, all that the minister himself could
do, and all that the assisting minister could do--no! to the table those
self-examined, self-condemned, fear-filled souls would not come. The two
ministers, like Mr. Greatheart's Master, carried it wonderful lovingly
with those poor saints that day; but those who are in deed, and not in
name only, passing the time of their sojourning here in fear--they cannot
all at once be lifted above all their fears, even by the ablest action
sermons, or by the most wise and tender table-addresses. And, truth to
tell, though you will rebuke me all the way home to-night for saying it,
my heart sat somewhat nearer to those old people who were perhaps a
little too dumpish in their repentance and their faith and their hope
that morning, than it did to those who took to the table with a light
heart. I know all your flippant cant about gospel liberty and against
Highland introspection, as you call it--as well as all your habitual
neglect of a close and deep self-examination, as Paul called it; but I
tell you all to-night that it would be the salvation of your soul if you
too worked your way up to every returning Lord's table with much more
fear and much more trembling. Let a man examine himself, Saxon as well
as Celt, in Edinburgh as well as in Ross-shire, and so let him eat of
that flesh and drink of that blood. "These pills," said Mr. Skill, "are
to be taken three at a time fasting in half a quarter of a pint of the
tears of repentance; these pills are good to prevent diseases, as well as
to cure when one is sick. Yea, I dare say it, and stand to it, that if a
man will but use this physic as he should, it will make him live for
ever. But thou must give these pills no other way but as I have
prescribed; for, if you do, they will do no good." "Then he and I set
forward," said the guide, "and I went before; but my man was of but few
words, only he would often sigh aloud."
5. As to the Hill Difficulty, that was no stick at all to Mr. Fearing;
and as for the lions, he pulled their whiskers and snapped his fingers in
their dumfoundered faces. For you must know that Mr. Fearing's trouble
was not about such things as these at all; his only fear was about his
acceptance at last. He beat Mr. Greatheart himself at getting down into
the Valley of Humiliation, till the guide was fain to confess that he
went down as well as he ever saw man go down in all his life. This
pilgrim cared not how mean he was, so he might be but happy at last. That
is the reason why so many of God's best saints take so kindly and so
quietly to things that drive other men mad. You wonder sometimes when
you see an innocent man sit down quietly under accusations and insults
and injuries that you spend all the rest of your life resenting and
repaying. And that is the reason also that so many of God's best saints
in other ages and other communions used to pursue evangelical humility
and ascetic poverty and seclusion till they obliterated themselves out of
all human remembrance, and buried themselves in retreats of silence and
of prayer. Yes, you are quite right. A garment of sackcloth may cover
an unsanctified heart; and the fathers of the desert did not all escape
the depths of Satan and the plague of their own heart. Quite true. A
contrite heart may be carried about an applauding city in a coach and
six; and a crucified heart may be clothed in purple and fine linen, and
may fare sumptuously every day. A saint of God will sometimes sit on a
throne with a more weaned mind than that with which Elijah or the Baptist
will macerate themselves in the wilderness. Every man who is really set
on heaven must find his own way thither; and he who is really intent on
his own way thither will neither have the time nor the heart to throw
stones at his brother who thinks he has discovered his own best way. All
the pilgrims who got to the City at last did not get down Difficulty and
through Humiliation so well as Mr. Fearing did; nor was it absolutely
necessary that they should. It was not to lay down an iron-fast rule for
others, but it was only to amuse the way with his account of Mr. Fearing,
that the guide went on to say: "Yes, I think there was a kind of sympathy
betwixt that valley and my man. For I never saw him better in all his
pilgrimage than when he was in that valley. For here he would lie down,
embrace the ground, and kiss the very flowers that grew in this valley.
He would now be up every morning by break of day, tracing and walking to
and fro in that valley."
6. Now, do you think you could guess how Mr. Fearing conducted himself
in Vanity Fair? Your guess is important to us and to you to-night; for
it will show whether or no John Bunyan and Mr. Greatheart have spent
their strength for nought and in vain on you. It will show whether or no
you have got inside of Mr. Fearing with all that has been said; and thus,
inside of yourself. Guess, then. How did Mr. Fearing do in Vanity Fair,
do you think? To give you a clue, recollect that he was the timidest of
souls. And remember how you have often been afraid to look at things in
a shop window lest the shopkeeper should come out and hold you to the
thing you were looking at. Remember also that you are the life-long
owners of some things just because they were thrown at your head.
Remember how you sauntered into a sale on one occasion, and, out of sheer
idleness and pure fun, made a bid, and to your consternation the
encumbrance was knocked down to your name; and it fills up your house to-
day till you would give ten times its value to some one to take it away
for ever out of your sight. Well, what was it that those who were so
shamelessly and so pesteringly cadging about places, and titles, and
preferments, and wives, and gold, and silver, and such like--what was it
they prevailed on this poor stupid countryman to cheapen and buy? Do you
guess, or do you give it up? Well, Greatheart himself was again and
again almost taken in; and would have been had not Mr. Fearing been
beside him. But Mr. Fearing looked at all the jugglers, and cheats, and
knaves, and apes, and fools as if he would have bitten a firebrand. "I
thought he would have fought with all the men of the fair; I feared there
we should have both been knock'd o' th' head, so hot was he against their
fooleries." And then--for Greatheart was a bit of a philosopher, and
liked to entertain and while the away with tracing things up to their
causes--"it was all," he said, "because Mr. Fearing was so tender of sin.
He was above many tender of sin. He was so afraid, not for himself only,
but of doing injury to others, that he would deny himself the purchase
and possession and enjoyment even of that which was lawful, because he
would not offend." "All this while," says Bunyan himself, in the eighty-
second paragraph of _Grace Abounding_, "as to the act of sinning I was
never more tender than now. I durst not take a pin or a stick, though
but so big as a straw, for my conscience now was sore and would smart at
every touch. I could not now tell how to speak my words for fear I
should misplace them." "The highest flames," says Jeremy Taylor in his
_Life of Christ_, "are the most tremulous."
7. "But when he was come at the river where was no bridge, there, again,
Mr. Fearing was in a heavy case. Now, he said, he should be drowned for
ever, and so never see that Face with comfort that he had come so many
miles to behold. And here also I took notice of what was very
remarkable; the water of that river was lower at this time than ever I
saw it in all my life, so he went over at last not much above wet-shod."
Then said Christiana, "This relation of Mr. Fearing has done me good. I
thought nobody had been like me, but I see there was some semblance
betwixt this good man and I, only we differed in two things. His
troubles were so great that they broke out, but mine I kept within. His
also lay so hard upon him that he could not knock at the houses provided
for entertainment, but my trouble was always such that it made me knock
the louder." "If I might also speak my heart," said Mercy, "I must say
that something of him has also dwelt in me. For I have ever been more
afraid of the lake, and the loss of a place in Paradise, than I have been
of the loss of other things. Oh! thought I, may I have the happiness to
have a habitation there: 'tis enough though I part with all the world to
win it." Then said Matthew, "Fear was one thing that made me think that
I was far from having that within me that accompanies salvation; but if
it was so with such a good man as he, why may it not also go well with
me?" "No fears, no grace," said James. "Though there is not always
grace where there is fear of hell; yet, to be sure, there is no grace
where there is no fear of God." "Well said, James," said Greatheart;
"thou hast hit the mark, for the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom;
and, to be sure, they that want the beginning have neither middle nor
end." But we shall here conclude our discourse of Mr. Fearing after we
have sent after him this farewell:--
"It is because
Then thou didst fear, that now thou dost not fear.
Thou hast forestalled the agony, and so
For thee the bitterness of death is past.
Also, because already in thy soul
The judgment is begun. That day of doom,
One and the same for this collected world--
That solemn consummation for all flesh,
Is, in the case of each, anticipate
Upon his death; and, as the last great day
In the particular judgment is rehearsed,
So now, too, ere thou comest to the Throne,
A presage falls upon thee, as a ray
Straight from the Judge, expressive of thy lot.
That calm and joy uprising in thy soul
Is first-fruit to thy recompense,
And heaven begun."