Thackeray says that _The Peerage_ is the Family Bible of every true-born
Englishman. Every genuine Englishman, he tells us, teaches that sacred
book diligently to his children. He talks out of it to them when he sits
in the house and when he walks by the way. He binds it upon his
children's hands, and it is as a frontlet between their eyes. He writes
its names upon the doorposts of his house, and makes pictures out of it
upon his gates. Now, John Bunyan was a born Englishman in his liking for
a family tree. He had no such tree himself--scarcely so much as a
bramble bush; but, all the same, let the tinker take his pen in hand, and
the pedigrees and genealogies of all his pilgrims are sure to be set
forth as much as if they were to form the certificates that those
pilgrims were to hand in at the gate.
Feeble-mind, then, was of an old, a well-rooted and a wide-spread race.
The county of Indecision was full of that ancient stock. They had
intermarried in-and-in also till their small stature, their whitely look,
the droop of their eye, and their weak leaky speech all made them to be
easily recognised wherever they went. It was Feeble-mind's salvation
that Death had knocked at his door every day from his youth up. He was
feeble in body as well as in mind; only the feebleness of his body had
put a certain strength into his mind; the only strength he ever showed,
indeed, was the strength that had its roots in a weak constitution at
which sickness and death struck their dissolving blows every day. To
escape death, both the first and the second death, any man with a
particle of strength left would run with all his might; and Feeble-mind
had strength enough somewhere among his weak joints to make him say, "But
this I have resolved on, to wit, to run when I can, to go when I cannot
run, and to creep when I cannot go. As to the main, I am fixed!"
2. At the Wicket Gate pilgrim Feeble-mind met with nothing but the
kindest and the most condescending entertainment. It was the gatekeepers
way to become all things to all men. The gatekeeper's nature was all in
his name; for he was all Goodwill together. No kind of pilgrim ever came
wrong to Goodwill. He never found fault with any. Only let them knock
and come in and he will see to all the rest. The way is full of all the
gatekeeper's kind words and still kinder actions. Every several pilgrim
has his wager with all the rest that no one ever got such kindness at the
gate as he got. And even Feeble-mind gave the gatekeeper this
praise--"The Lord of the place," he said, "did entertain me freely.
Neither objected he against my weakly looks nor against my feeble mind.
But he gave me such things as were necessary for my journey, and bade me
hope to the end." All things considered, that is perhaps the best praise
that Goodwill and his house ever earned. For, to receive and to secure
Feeble-mind as a pilgrim--to make it impossible for Feeble-mind to
entertain a scruple or a suspicion that was not removed beforehand--to
make it impossible for Feeble-mind to find in all the house and in all
its grounds so much as a straw over which he could stumble--that was
extraordinary attention, kindness, and condescension in Goodwill and all
his good-willed house. "Go on, go on, dear Mr. Feeble mind," said
Goodwill giving his hand to Mr. Fearing's nephew, "go on: keep your
feeble mind open to the truth, and still hope to the end!"
3. "As to the Interpreter's House, I received much kindness there." That
is all. But in that short speech I think there must he hid no little
shame and remorse. No words could possibly be a severer condemnation of
Feeble-mind than his own two or three so irrelevant words about the
Interpreter's house. No doubt at all, Feeble-mind received kindness
there; but that is not the point. That noble house was not built at such
cost, and fitted up, and kept open all the year round, and filled with
fresh furniture from year to year, merely that those who passed through
its significant rooms might report that they had received no rudeness at
the hands of the Interpreter. "'Come,' said the Interpreter to Feeble-
mind, 'and I will show thee what will be profitable to thee.' So he
commanded his man to light the candle and bid Feeble-mind follow him. But
it was all to no use. Feeble-mind had neither the taste nor the capacity
for the significant rooms. Nay, as one after another of those rich rooms
was opened to him, Feeble-mind took a positive dislike to them. Nothing
interested him; nothing instructed him. But many things stumbled and
angered him. The parlour full of dust, and how the dust was raised and
laid; Passion and Patience; the man in the iron cage; the spider-room;
the muck-rake room; the robin with its red breast and its pretty note,
and yet with its coarse food; the tree, green outside but rotten at the
heart,--all the thanks the Interpreter took that day for all that from
Feeble-mind was in such speeches as these: You make me lose my head. I
do not know where I am. I did not leave the town of Uncertain to be
confused and perplexed in my mind with sights and sounds like these. Let
me out at the door I came in at, and I shall go back to the gate.
Goodwill had none of these unhappy rooms in his sweet house!" Nothing
could exceed the kindness of the Interpreter himself; but his house was
full of annoyances and offences and obstructions to Mr. Feeble-mind. He
did not like the Interpreter's house, and he got out of it as fast as he
could, with his mind as feeble as when he entered it; and, what was
worse, with his temper not a little ruffled.
And we see this very same intellectual laziness, this very same downright
dislike at divine truth, in our own people every day. There are in every
congregation people who take up their lodgings at the gate and refuse to
go one step farther on the way. A visit to the Interpreter's House
always upsets them. It turns their empty head. They do not know where
they are. They will not give what mind they have to divine truth, all
you can do to draw them on to it, till they die as feeble-minded, as
ignorant, and as inexperienced as they were born. They never read a
religious book that has any brain or heart in it. The feeble _Lives_ of
feeble-minded Christians, written by feeble-minded authors, and published
by feeble-minded publishers,--we all know the spoon-meat that multitudes
of our people go down to their second childhood upon. Jonathan Edwards--a
name they never hear at home, but one of the most masculine and seraphic
of interpreters--has a noble discourse on The Importance and Advantage of
a thorough Knowledge of Divine Truth. "Consider yourselves," he says,
"as scholars or disciples put into the school of Christ, and therefore be
diligent to make proficiency in Christian knowledge. Content not
yourselves with this, that you have been taught your Catechism in your
childhood, and that you know as much of the principles of religion as is
necessary to salvation. Let not your teachers have cause to complain
that while they spend and are spent to impart knowledge to you, you take
little pains to learn. Be assiduous in reading the Holy Scriptures. And
when you read, observe what you read. Observe how things come in.
Compare one scripture with another. Procure and diligently use other
books which may help you to grow in this knowledge. There are many
excellent books extant which might greatly forward you in this knowledge.
There is a great defect in many, that through a lothness to be at a
little expense, they provide themselves with no more helps of this
nature." Weighty, wise, and lamentably true words.
"Mundanus," says William Law, "is a man of excellent parts, and clear
apprehension. He is well advanced in age, and has made a great figure in
business. He has aimed at the greatest perfection in everything. The
only thing which has not fallen under his improvement, nor received any
benefit from his judicious mind, is his devotion; this is just in the
same poor state it was when he was six years of age, and the old man
prays now in that little form of words which his mother used to hear him
repeat night and morning. This Mundanus that hardly ever saw the poorest
utensil without considering how it might be made or used to better
advantage, has gone on all his life long praying in the same manner as
when he was a child; without ever considering how much better or oftener
he might pray; without considering how improvable the spirit of devotion
is, how many helps a wise and reasonable man may call to his assistance,
and how necessary it is that our prayers should be enlarged, varied, and
suited to the particular state and condition of our lives. How poor and
pitiable is the conduct of this man of sense, who has so much judgment
and understanding in everything but that which is the whole wisdom of
man!" How true to every syllable is that! How simple-looking, and yet
how manly, and able, and noble! We close our young men's session with
Law and Butler to-night, and I cannot believe that our session with those
two giants has left one feeble mind in the two classes; they were all
weeded out after the first fortnight of the session; though, after all is
done, there are still plenty left both among old and young in the
congregation. Even Homer sometimes nods; and I cannot but think that
John Bunyan has made a slip in saying that Feeble-mind enjoyed the
Interpreter's House. At any rate, I wish I could say as much about all
the feeble minds known to me.
4. The Hill Difficulty, which might have helped to make a man of Feeble-
mind, saw a laughable, if it had not been such a lamentable, spectacle.
For it saw this poor creature hanging as limp as wet linen on the back of
one of the Interpreter's sweating servants. Your little boy will explain
the parable to you. Shall I do this? or, shall I rather do that? asks
Feeble-mind at every stop. Would it be right? or, would it be wrong?
Shall I read that book? Shall I go to that ball? Shall I marry that
man? Tell me what to do. Give me your hand. Take me up upon your back,
and carry me over this difficult hill. "I was carried up that," says
poor Feeble-mind, "by one of his servants."
5. "The one calamity of Mr. Feeble-mind's history," says our ablest
commentator on Bunyan, "was the finest mercy of his history." That one
calamity was his falling into Giant Slay-good's hands, and his finest
mercy was his rescue by Greatheart, and his consequent companionship with
his deliverer, with Mr. Honest, and with Christiana and her party till
they came to the river. You constantly see the same thing in the life of
the Church and of the Christian Family. Some calamity throws a weak,
ignorant, and immoral creature into close contact with a minister or an
elder or a Christian visitor, who not only relieves him from his present
distress, but continues to keep his eye upon his new acquaintance,
introduces him to wise and good friends, invites him to his house, gives
him books to read, and keeps him under good influences, till, of a weak,
feeble, and sometimes vicious character, he is made a Christian man, till
he is able for himself to say, It was good for me to be afflicted; the
one calamity of my history has been my best mercy!
6. Feeble-mind, I am ashamed to have to admit, behaved himself in a
perfectly scandalous manner at the house of Gaius mine host. He went
beyond all bounds during those eventful weeks. Those weeks were one long
temptation to Feeble-mind--and he went down in a pitiful way before his
temptation. Two marriages and two honeymoons, with suppers and dances
every night, made the old hostelry like very Pandemonium itself to poor
Feeble-mind. He would have had Matthew's and James's marriages conducted
next door to a funeral. Because he would not eat flesh himself, he
protested against Gaius killing a sheep. "Man," said old Honest, almost
laying his quarterstaff over Feeble-mind's shoulders--"Man, dost thou
think because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?"
"I shall like no laughing," said Feeble-mind; "I shall like no gay
attire; I shall like no unprofitable questions." I think it took some
self-conceit to refuse to sit at table beside Christiana because of her
gay attire. And I hope Mercy did not give up dressing well, even after
she was married, to please that weak-minded old churl. And as to
unprofitable questions--we are all tempted to think that question
unprofitable which our incapacity or our ignorance keeps us silent upon
at table. We think that topic both ill-timed and impertinent and unsafe
to which we are not invited to contribute anything. "I am a very
ignorant man," he went on to say; and, if that was said in any humility,
Feeble-mind never said a truer word. "It is with me as it is with a weak
man among the strong, or as with a sick man among the healthy, or as a
lamp despised in the thought of him that is at ease." All which only
brought Greatheart out in his very best colours. "But, brother," said
the guide, "I have it in commission to comfort the feeble-minded, and to
support the weak. You must needs go along with us; we will wait for you,
we will lend you our help, we will deny ourselves of some things, both
opinionative and practical, for your sake; we will not enter into
doubtful disputations before you; we will be made all things to you
rather than that you shall be left behind."
7. The first thing that did Mr. Feeble-mind any real good was his being
made military guard over the women and the children while the men went
out to demolish Doubting Castle. _Quis custodiet_? you will smile and
say when you hear that. Who shall protect the protector? you will say.
But wait a little. Greatheart knew his business. For not only did
Feeble-mind rise to the occasion, when he was put to it; but, more than
that, he was the soul of good company at supper-time that night. "Jocund
and merry" are the very words. Yes; give your feeble and fault-finding
folk something to do. Send them to teach a class. Send them down into a
mission district. Lay a sense of responsibility upon them. Leave them
to deal with this and that emergency themselves. Cease carrying them on
your back, and lay weak and evil and self-willed people on their back.
Let them feel that they are of some real use. As Matthew Arnold says,
Let the critic but try practice, and you will make a new man of him. As
Greatheart made of Feeble-mind by making him mount guard over the
Celestial caravan while the fighting men were all up at Doubting Castle.
8. "Mark this," says Mr. Feeble-mind's biographer on the early margin of
his history, lest we should be tempted to forget the good parts of this
troublesome and provoking pilgrim--"Mark this." This, namely, which
Feeble-mind says to his guide. "As to the main, I thank Him that loves
me, I am fixed. My way is before me, my mind is beyond the river that
has no bridge, though I am, as you see, but of a feeble mind." And that
leads us with returning regard and love to turn to the end of his
history, where we read: "After this Mr. Feeble-mind had tidings brought
him that the post sounded his horn at his chamber door. Then he came in
and told him, saying, I am come to tell thee that thy Master hath need of
thee, and that in very little time thou must behold His face in
brightness. Then Mr. Feeble-mind called for his friends, and told them
what errand had been brought to him, and what token he had received of
the truth of the message. As for my feeble mind he said, that I shall
leave behind me, for I shall have no need of that in the place whither I
go. Nor is it worth bestowing upon the poorest pilgrim. Wherefore, when
I am gone, I desire that you would bury it in a dung-hill. This done,
and the day being come in which he was about to depart, he entered the
river as the rest. His last words were, Hold out, faith and patience! So
he went over to the other side."