CHRISTIANA

"Honour widows that are widows indeed."--_Paul_.

We know next to nothing of Christiana till after she is a widow indeed.

The names of her parents, and what kind of parents they were, the schools

and the boarding-schools to which they sent their daughter, her school

companions, the books she read, if she ever read any books at all, the

amusements she was indulged in and indulged herself in--on all that her

otherwise full and minute biographer is wholly silent. He does not go

back beyond her married life; he does not even go back to the beginning

of that. The only thing we are sure of about Christiana's early days is

that she was an utterly ungodly woman and that she married an utterly

ungodly man. "Have you a family? Are you a married man?" asked Charity

of Christian in the House Beautiful. "I have a wife and four small

children," he replied. "And why did you not bring them along with you?"

Then Christian wept, and said: "Oh, how willingly would I have done it;

but they were all utterly averse to my going on pilgrimage." "But you

should have talked to them," said Charity, "and have endeavoured to have

shown them the danger of being behind." "So I did," answered Christian.

"And did you pray to God that He would bless your counsel to them?" "Yes,

and with much affection; for you must think that my wife and poor

children were very dear unto me." "But what could they say for

themselves why they came not?" "Why, my wife was afraid of losing the

world, and my children were given over to the foolish delights of youth;

so what with one thing and what with another, they left me to wander in

this manner alone."

But what her husband's conversion, good example, and most earnest

entreaties could not all do for his worldly wife, that his sudden death

speedily did. And thus it is that both Christiana's best life, all our

interest in her, and all our information about her, dates, sad to say,

not from her espousal, nor from her marriage day, nor from any part of

her married life, but from her husband's death. Her maidenhood has no

interest for us; all our interest is fixed on her widowhood. This work

of fiction now in our hands begins where all other works of fiction end;

for in the life of religion, you must know, our best is always before us.

Well, scarcely was her husband dead when Christiana began to accuse

herself of having killed him. To take her own bitter words for it, the

most agonising and remorseful thoughts about her conduct to her husband

stung her heart like so many wasps. Ah yes! A wasp's sting is but a

blade of innocent grass compared with the thoughts that have stung us all

as we recalled what we said and did to those who are now no more. There

are graves in the churchyard we dare not go near. "I have sinned away

your father!" she cried, as she threw herself on the earth at the feet of

her astounded children. "I have sinned away your father and he is gone!"

And yet there was no mark of a bullet and no gash of a knife on his dead

body, and no chemistry could have extracted one grain of arsenic or of

strychnine out of his blood. But there are many ways of taking a man's

life besides those of poison or a knife or a gunshot. Constant fault-

finding, constant correction and studied contempt before strangers, total

want of sympathy and encouragement, gloomy looks, rough remarks, all

blame and never a word of praise, things like these between man and wife

will kill as silently and as surely as poison or suffocation. Look at

home, my brethren, and ask yourselves what you will think of much of your

present conduct when it has borne its proper fruit. "Upon this came into

her mind by swarms all her unkind, unnatural, and ungodly carriages to

her dear friend, which also clogged her conscience and did load her with

guilt. It all returned upon her like a flash of lightning, and rent the

caul of her heart asunder." "That which troubleth me most," she would

cry out, "is my churlish carriages to him when he was under distress. I

am that woman," she would cry out and would not be appeased--"I am that

woman that was so hardhearted as to slight my husband's troubles, and

that left him to go on his journey alone. How like a churl I carried

myself to him in all that! And so guilt took hold of my mind," she said

to the Interpreter, "and would have drawn me to the pond!"

A minister's widow once told me that she had gone home after hearing a

sermon of mine on the text, "What profit is there in my blood?" and had

destroyed a paper of poison she had purchased in her despair on the

previous Saturday night. It was not a sermon from her unconscious

minister, but it was far better; it was a conversation that Christiana

held with her four boys that fairly and for ever put all thought of the

pond out of their mother's remorseful mind. "So Christiana," as we read

in the opening of her history--"so Christiana called her sons together

and began thus to address herself unto them: My sons, I have, as you may

perceive, been of late under much exercise in my soul about the death of

your father. My carriages to your father in his distress are a great

load on my conscience. Come, my children, let us pack up and be gone to

the gate, that we may see your father and be with him, according to the

laws of that land." I like that passage, I think, the best in all

Christiana's delightful history--that passage which begins with these

words: "So she called her children together." For when she called her

children together she opened to them both her heart and her conscience;

and from that day there was but one heart and one conscience in all that

happy house. I was walking alone on a country road the other day, and as

I was walking I was thinking about my pastoral work and about my people

and their children, when all at once I met one of my people. My second

sentence to him was: "This very moment I was thinking about your sons.

How are they getting on?" He quite well understood me. He knew that I

was not indifferent as to how they were getting on in business, but he

knew that I was alluding more to the life of godliness and virtue in

their hearts and in their characters. "O sir," he said, "you may give

your sons the skin off your back, but they will not give you their

confidence!" So had it been with Christian and his sons. He had never

managed, even in his religion, to get into the confidence of his sons;

but when their mother took them into her agonised confidence, from that

day she was in all their confidences, good and bad. You who are in your

children's confidences will pray in secret for my lonely friend with the

skin off his back, will you not? that he may soon be able to call his

sons together so as to start together on a new life of family love, and

family trust, and family religion. That was a fine sight. Who will make

a picture of it? This widow indeed at the head of her family council-

table, and Matthew at the foot, and James and Joseph and Samuel all in

their places. "Come, my children, let us pack up that we may see your

father!" Then did her children burst into tears for joy that the heart

of their mother was so inclined.

From that first family council let us pass on to Christiana's last

interview with her family and her other friends. Her biographer

introduces her triumphant translation with this happy comment on the

margin: "How welcome is death to them that have nothing to do but die!"

Well, that was exactly Christiana's case. She had so packed up at the

beginning of her journey; she had so got and had so kept the confidences

of all her sons; she had seen them all so married in the Lord, and thus

so settled in a life of godliness and virtue; she had, in short, lived

the life of a widow indeed, till, when the post came for her, she had

nothing left to do but just to rise up and follow him. His token to her

was an arrow with a point sharpened with love, let easily into her heart,

which by degrees wrought so effectually with her that at the time

appointed she must be gone. We have read of arrows of death sharpened

sometimes with steel and sometimes with poison; but this arrow, shot from

heaven, was sharpened to a point with love. Indeed, that arrow, or the

very fellow of it, had been shot into Christiana's heart long ago when

she stood at that spot somewhat ascending where was a cross and a

sepulchre; and, especially, ever since the close of Greatheart's great

discourse on pardon by deed. For the hearing of that famous discourse

had made her exclaim: "Oh! Thou loving One, it makes my heart bleed to

think that Thou shouldest bleed for me! Oh! Thou blessed One, Thou

deservest to have me, for Thou hast bought me! Thou deservest to have me

all, for Thou hast paid for me ten thousand times more than I am worth!"

Now it was with all that love working effectually in her heart that

Christiana called for her children to give them her blessing. And what a

comfort it was to her to see them all around her with the mark of the

kingdom on their foreheads, and with their garments white. "My sons and

my daughters," she said, "be you all ready against the time His post

calls for you." Then she called for Mr. Valiant-for-truth, and entreated

him to have an eye on her children, and to speak comfortably to them if

at any time he saw them faint. And then she gave Mr. Standfast her ring.

"Behold," she said, as Mr. Honest came in--"Behold an Israelite indeed,

in whom is no guile!" Then Mr. Ready-to-halt came in, and then Mr.

Despondency and his daughter Much-afraid, and then Mr. Feeble-mind. Now

the day drew on that Christiana must be gone. So the road was full of

people to see her take her journey. But, behold! all the banks beyond

the river were full of horses and chariots which were come down from

above to accompany her to the City gates, so she came forth and entered

the river with a beckon of farewell to those that followed her to the

river-side. The last word she was heard to say here was, "I come, Lord,

to be with Thee, and to bless Thee."

But with all this, you must not suppose that this good woman, this mother

in Israel, had forgotten her grandchildren. She would sooner have

forgotten her own children. But she was too good a woman to forget

either. For long ago, away back at the river on this side the Delectable

Mountains, she had said to her four daughters--I must tell you exactly

what she has said: "Here," she said, "in this meadow there are cotes and

folds for sheep, and an house is built here also for the nourishing and

bringing up of those lambs, even the babes of those women that go on

pilgrimage. Also there is One here who can have compassion and that can

gather these lambs with His arm and carry them in His bosom. This Man,

she said, will house and harbour and succour the little ones, so that

none of them shall be lacking in time to come. This Man, if any of them

go astray or be lost, He will bring them again, He will bind up that

which was broken, and will strengthen them that are sick. So they were

content to commit their little ones to that Man, and all this was to be

at the charge of the King, and so it was as a hospital to young children

and orphans."

And now I shall sum up my chief impressions of Christiana under the three

heads of her mind, her heart, and her widowhood indeed.

1. The mother of Christian's four sons was a woman of real mind, as so

many of the maidens, and wives, and widows of Puritan England and

Covenanting Scotland were. You gradually gather that impression just

from being beside her as the journey goes on. She does not speak much;

but, then, there is always something individual, remarkable, and

memorable in what she says. I have a notion of my own that Christiana

must have been a reader of that princely Puritan, John Milton. And if

that was so, that of itself would be certificate enough as to her

possession of mind. There is always a dignity and a strength about her

utterances that make us feel sure that she had always had a mind far

above her neighbours, Mrs. Bat's-eyes, Mrs. Light-mind, and Mrs. Know-

nothing. The first time she opens her mouth in our hearing she lets fall

an expression that Milton had just made famous in his _Samson_--

"Ease to the body some, none to the mind

From restless thoughts, that like a deadly swarm

Of hornets armed no sooner found alone,

But rush upon me thronging, and present

Times past, what once I was, and what am now."

Nor can I leave this point without asserting it to you that no church and

no school of theology has ever developed the mind as well as sanctified

the heart of the common people like the preaching of the Puritan pulpit.

Matthew Arnold was not likely to over-estimate the good that Puritanism

had done to England. Indeed, in his earlier writings he sometimes went

out of his way to lament the hurt that the Puritan spirit had done to

liberality of life and mind in his native land. But in his riper years

we find him saying: "Certainly," he says, "I am not blind to the faults

of the Puritan discipline, but it has been an invaluable discipline for

that poor, inattentive, and immoral creature, man. And the more I read

history and the more I see of mankind, the more I recognise the value of

the Puritan discipline." And in that same Address he "founded his best

hopes for that so enviable and unbounded country in which he was

speaking, America, on the fact that so many of its millions had passed

through the Puritan discipline." John Milton was a product of that

discipline on the one hand, as John Bunyan was on the other. Christiana

was another of its products in the sphere of the family, just as Matthew

Arnold himself had some of his best qualities out of the same fruitful

school.

2. Her heart, her deep, strong, tender heart, is present on every page

of Christiana's noble history. Her heart keeps her often silent when the

water in her eyes becomes all the more eloquent. When she does let her

heart utter itself in words, her words are fine and memorable. As, for

one instance, after Greatheart's discourse on redemption. "O Mercy, that

thy father and mother were here; yea, and Mrs. Timorous also. Nay, I

wish with all my heart now that here was Madam Wanton, too. Surely,

surely, their hearts would be affected, nor could the fear of the one,

nor the powerful lusts of the other, prevail with them to go home again,

and to refuse to become good pilgrims." But it was not so much what she

said herself that brought out the depth and tenderness of Christiana's

heart, it was rather the way her heart loosened other people's tongues.

You must all have felt how some people's presence straitens your heart

and sews up your mouth. While there are other people, again, whose

simple presence unseals your heart and makes you eloquent. We ministers

keenly feel that both in our public and in our private ministrations.

There are people in whose hard and chilling presence we cannot even say

grace as we should say it. Whereas, we all know other people, people of

a heart, that is, whose presence somehow so touches our lips that we

always when near them rise far above ourselves. Christiana did not speak

much to her guides and instructors and companions, but they always spoke

their best to her, and it was her heart that did it.

3. And then a widow indeed is just a true and genuine widow; a widow not

in her name and in her weeds only, but still more in her deep heart, in

her whole life, and in her garnered experience. "Honour widows that are

widows indeed. Now, she that is a widow indeed and desolate, trusteth in

God, and continueth in supplications and in prayers night and day. Well

reported of for good works; if she have brought up children, if she have

lodged strangers, if she have washed the saints' feet, if she have

relieved the afflicted, if she have diligently followed every good work."

These are the true marks and seals and occupations of a widow indeed. And

if she has had unparalleled trials and irreparable losses, she has her

corresponding consolations and compensations. For she has a freedom to

go about and do good, a liberty and an experience that neither the

unmarried maiden nor the married wife can possibly have. She can do

multitudes of things that in the nature of things neither of them can

attempt to do. Things that would be both unseemly and impossible for

other women to say or to do are both perfectly seemly and wholly open for

her to say and to do. Her widowhood is a sacred shield to her. Her

sorrow is a crown of honour and a sceptre of authority to her. She is

consulted by the young and the inexperienced, by the forsaken and by the

forlorn, as no other human being ever is. She has come through this

life, and by a long experience she knows this world and the hearts that

fill it and make it what it is. A widow indeed can show a sympathy, and

give a counsel, and speak with a weight of wisdom that one's own mother

cannot always do. All you who by God's sad dispensation are now clothed

in the "white and wimpled folds" of widowhood, let your prayer and your

endeavour day and night be that God would guide and enable you to be

widows indeed. And, if you do, you shall want neither your occupation

nor your honour.