Bunyan Characters Volume Iii Part 6

Mr. Desires-awake dwelt in a very mean cottage in Mansoul. There were two very mean cottages in Mansoul, and those two cottages stood beside one another and leaned upon one another and held one another up. Mr.

Desires-awake dwelt in the one of those cottages and Mr. Wet-eyes in the other. And those two mendicant men were wont to meet together for secret prayer, when Mr. Desires-awake would put a rope upon his head, while Mr.

Wet-eyes would not be able to speak for wringing his hands in tears all the time. Many a time did those two meanest and most despised of men deliver that city, according to the proverb of the Preacher: Wisdom is better than strength, and the words of wisdom are to be heard in secret places, where wisdom is far better than weapons of war. Why should I not do all for them and the best I can? said Mr. Desires-awake when the men of Mansoul came to him in their extremity. I will even venture my life again for them at the pavilion of the Prince. And accordingly this mean man put his rope upon his head, as was his wont, and went out to the Prince's tent and asked the reformades if he might see their Master. Then the Prince, coming to the place where the pet.i.tioner lay on the ground, demanded what his name was and of what esteem he was in Mansoul, and why he, of all the mult.i.tudes of Mansoul, was sent out to His Royal tent on such an errand. Then said the man to the Prince standing over him, he said: Oh let not my Lord be angry; and why inquirest Thou after the name of such a dead dog as I am? Pa.s.s by, I pray Thee, and take not notice of who I am, because there is, as Thou very well knowest, so great a disproportion between Thee and me. For my part, I am out of charity with myself; who, then, should be in love with me? Yet live I would, and so would I that my townsmen should; and because both they and myself are guilty of great transgressions, therefore they have sent me, and I have come in their names to beg of my Lord for mercy. Let it please Thee, therefore, to incline to mercy; but ask not who Thy servant is. All this, and how Mr. Desires-awake and Mr. Wet-eyes sped in their pet.i.tion, is to be read at length in the Holy History. And now let us take down the key that hangs in our author's window and go to work with it on the sweet mystery of Mr. Desires-awake.

1. Well, then, to begin with, this poor man's name need not delay us long seeking it out. In shorter time, and with surer success than I could give you the dictionary root of his name, if you will look within you will all see the visual image of this poor man's name in your own heart. For our hearts are all as full as they can hold of all kinds of desires; some good and some bad, some asleep and some awake, some alive and some dead, some raging like a hundred hungry lions, and some satisfied as a sleeping child. Well, then, this mean man was called Mr.

Desires-awake, and what his desires were awake after and set upon we have already seen in his head-dress and heard in his prayer. His house, on the other hand, will not be so well known. For it was less a house than a hut--a hut hidden away out of sight and back behind Mr. Wet-eyes' hut.

Mr. Desires-awake's cottage was so mean and meagre that no one ever came to visit him unless it was his next-door neighbour. They never left their cottages, those two poor men, unless it was to see one another; or, strange to tell, unless it was to go out at the city gate to see and to speak with their Prince. And at such times their venturesomeness both astonished themselves and amused their Prince. Sometimes he laughed to see them back at his door again; but more often he wept to see and hear them; all which made the guards of his pavilion to wonder who those two strange men might be. And thus it was that if at any long interval of time any of the men of the city desired to see Mr. Desires-awake, he was sure to be found at the pavilion door of his Prince, or else in his neighbour's cottage, or else at home in his own. From year's end to year's end you might look in vain for either of those two poor men in the public resorts of Mansoul. When all the town was abroad on holidays and fair-days and feast-days, those two mean men were then closest at home.

And when the booths of the town were full of all kinds of wares and merchandise, and all the greens in the town were full of games, and plays, and cheats, and fools, and apes, and knaves, only those two penniless men would abide shut up at home. At home; or else together they would go to a market-stance set up by their Prince outside the walls where one was stationed to stand and to cry: 'Ho! every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money. Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which satisfieth not? Incline your ear and come to me; hear, and your soul shall live.' And sometimes the Prince would go out in person to meet the two men with nothing to pay, and would Himself say to them, I counsel thee to buy of Me gold tried in the fire, and white raiment, and anoint thine eyes with eye-salve, till the two men, Mr. Desires-awake and Mr. Wet-eyes, would go home to their huts laden with their Prince's free gifts and royal bounties.

2. But, with all that, Mr. Desires-awake never went out to his Prince's pavilion till he had again put his rope upon his head. And, however laden with royal presents he ever returned to his mean cottage, he never laid aside his rope. He ate in his rope, he slept in his rope, he visited his next-door neighbour in his rope, till the only instruction he left behind him was to bury him in a ditch, and be sure to put his rope upon his head. The men and the boys of the town jeered at Mr. Desires- awake as he pa.s.sed up their streets in his rope, and the very mothers in Mansoul taught their children in arms to run after him and to cry, Go up, thou roped head! Go up, thou roped head! We be free men, the men of the town called after him; and we never were in bondage to any man'. Out with him; out with him! He is beside himself. Much repentance hath made him mad! But through all that Mr. Desires-awake was as one that heard them not. For Mr. Desires-awake was full of louder voices within. The voices within his bosom quite drowned the babel around him. The voices within called him far worse names than the streets of the city ever called him; till all he could do was to draw his rope down upon his head and press on again to the Prince's pavilion. You understand about that rope, my brethren, do you not? Mr. Desires-awake's continual rope? In old days when a guilty man came of his own accord to the judge to confess himself deserving of death, he would put a rope upon his head. And that rope as much as said to the judge and to all men--the miserable man as good as said: This is my desert. This is the wages of my sin. I justify my judge. I judge myself. I hereby do myself to death. And it was this that so angered the happy holiday-makers of Mansoul. For they forgave themselves. They justified themselves. They put a high price upon themselves. Humiliation and sorrow for sin was not in all their thoughts; and they hated and hunted back into his hut the humble man whose gait and garb always reminded them of their past life and of their latter end. But for all they could do, Mr. Desires-awake would wear his rope. My soul chooseth strangling rather than sin, he would say. My sin hath found me out, he would say; I hate myself, he would say, because of my sin. I condemn and denounce myself. I hang myself up with this rope on the accursed tree. And thus it was that while other men were crucifying their Prince afresh, Mr. Desires-awake was crucifying himself with and after his Prince. And thus it was that while the men and the women of the town so hated and so mocked Mr. Desires-awake, his Prince so loved and so honoured him.

3. 'Oh let not my Lord be angry; and why inquirest Thou after the name of such a dead dog as I am?' said Desires-awake to his Prince. 'Behold, now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord which am but dust and ashes,' said Abraham. 'If I wash myself with snow water, and make my hands never so clean, yet shalt thou plunge me into the ditch, and mine own clothes shall abhor me,' said Job. 'My wounds stink and are corrupt; my loins are filled with a loathsome disease, and there is no soundness in my flesh,' said David. 'But we are all as an unclean thing,' said Isaiah, 'and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.' 'I am the chief of sinners,' said the apostle. 'Hold your peace; I am a devil and not a man,' said Philip Neri to his sons. 'I am a sinner, and worse than the chief of sinners, yea, a guilty devil,' said Samuel Rutherford. 'I hated the light; I was a chief--the chief of sinners,' said Oliver Cromwell. 'I was more loathsome in my own eyes than a toad,' said John Bunyan. 'Sin and corruption would as naturally bubble out of my heart as water would bubble out of a fountain. I could have changed hearts with anybody. I thought none but the devil himself could equal me for wickedness and pollution of mind.' 'O Despise me not,' said Bishop Andrewes, 'an unclean worm, a dead dog, a putrid corpse. The just falleth seven times a day; and I, an exceeding sinner, seventy times seven. Me, O Lord, of sinners chief, chiefest, and greatest.' And William Law, 'An unclean worm, a dead dog, a stinking carca.s.s. Drive, I beseech Thee, the serpent and the beast out of me. O Lord, I detest and abhor myself for all these my sins, and for all my abuse of Thine infinite mercy.' From all this, then, you will see that this dead dog of ours with the rope upon his head was no strange sight at Emmanuel's pavilion. And you and I shall still be in the same saintly succession if we go continually with his words in our mouth, and with his instrument in our hands and on our heads.

4. 'The Prince to whom I went,' said Mr. Desires-awake, 'is such a one for beauty and for glory that whoso sees Him must ever after both love and fear Him. I, for my part,' he said, 'can do no less; but I know not what the end will be of all these things.' What made Mr. Desires-awake say that last thing was that when he was prostrate in his prayer the Prince turned His head away, as if He was out of humour and out of patience with His pet.i.tioner; while, all the time, the overcome Prince was weeping with love and with pity for Desires-awake. Only that poor man did not see that, and would not have believed that even if he had seen it. 'I cannot tell what the end will be,' said Desires-awake; 'but one thing I know, I shall never be able to cease from both loving and fearing that Prince. I shall always love Him for His beauty and fear Him for His glory.' Can you say anything like that, my brethren? Have you been at His seat with sackcloth, and a rope, and ashes, and tears, and prayers, like Abraham, and David, and Isaiah, and Paul, and John Bunyan, and Bishop Andrewes? And, whatever may be the end, do you say that henceforth and for ever you must both love and fear that Prince? 'Though He slay me,' said Job, 'yet I shall both love and trust Him.' Well, the Prince is the Prince, and He will take both His own time and His own way of taking off your rope and putting a chain of gold round your neck, and a new song in your mouth, as He did to Job. There may be more weeping yet, both on your side and on His before He does that; but He will do it, and He will not delay an hour that He can help in doing it. Only, do you continue and increase to love His beauty, and to fear His glory. And that of itself will be reward and blessing enough to you. Nay, once you have seen both His beauty and His glory, then to lie a dog under His table, and to beg at His door with a rope on your head to all eternity would be a glorious eternity to you. Samuel Rutherford said that to see Christ through the keyhole once in a thousand years would be heaven enough for him. Christ wept in heaven as Rutherford wrote that letter in Aberdeen, and if you make Him weep in the same way He will soon make you to laugh too. He will soon make you to laugh as Samuel Rutherford and Mr. Desires-awake are laughing now. Only, my brethren, answer this--Are your desires awakened indeed after Jesus Christ? You know what a desire is. Your hearts are full to the brim of desires. Well, is there one desire in a day in your heart for Christ? In the mult.i.tude of your desires within you, what share and what proportion go out and up to Christ? You know what beauty is. You know and you love the beauty of a child, of a woman, of a man, of nature, of art, and so on. Do you know, have you ever seen, the ineffable beauty of Christ? Is there one saint of G.o.d here,--and He has many saints here--is there one of you who can say with David in the text, One thing do I desire? There should be many so desiring saints here; for Christ's beauty is far better and far fairer, far more captivating, far more enthralling, and far more satisfying to us than it could be to David. Shall we call you Desires- awake, then, after this? Can you say--do you say, One thing do I desire, and that is no thing and no person, no created beauty and no earthly sweetness, but my one desire is for G.o.d: to be His, and to be like Him, and to be for ever with Him? Then, it shall soon all be. For, what you truly desire,--all that you already are; and what you already are,--all that you shall soon completely and for ever be. Whom have I in heaven but Thee? And there is none upon earth that I desire beside Thee. My flesh and my heart faileth; but G.o.d is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever.

'As for me,' says the great-hearted, the hungry-hearted Psalmist, 'I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with Thy likeness.' One would have said that David had all that heart could desire even before he fell asleep. For he had a throne, the throne of Israel, and a son, a son like Solomon to sit upon it. A long life also, full to the brim of all kinds of temporal and spiritual blessings. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits; who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases; who redeemeth thy life from destruction; who crowneth thee with loving-kindness and tender mercies; who satisfieth thy mouth with good things, so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle's.

All that, and yet not satisfied! O David! David! surely Desires-awake is thy new name! One of our own poets has said:--

'All thoughts, all pa.s.sions, all delights, Whatever stirs this mortal frame, All are but ministers of Love, And feed His sacred flame.'

Now, if that is true, as it is true, even of earthly and ephemeral love, how much more true is it of the love that is in the immortal soul of man for the everlasting G.o.d? And what a blessed life that already is when all things that come to us--joy and sorrow, good and evil, nature and grace, all thoughts, all pa.s.sions, all delights--are all but so many ministers to our soul's desire after G.o.d, after the Divine Likeness and for the Beatific Vision.

'Oh! Christ, He is the Fountain, The deep sweet Well of Love!

The streams on earth I've tasted, More deep I'll drink above; There, to an ocean fulness, His mercy doth expand; And glory--glory dwelleth In Emmanuel's land.'

CHAPTER XIX--MR. WET-EYES

'Oh that my head were waters!'--_Jeremiah_.

'Tears gain everything.'--_Teresa_.

Now Mr. Desires-awake, when he saw that he must go on this errand, besought that they would grant that Mr. Wet-eyes might go with him. Now this Mr. Wet-eyes was a near neighbour of Mr. Desires-awake, a poor man, and a man of a broken spirit, yet one that could speak well to a pet.i.tion; so they granted that he should go with him. Wherefore the two men at once addressed themselves to their serious business. Mr. Desires- awake put his rope upon his head, and Mr. Wet-eyes went with his hands wringing together. Then said the Prince, And what is he that is become thy companion in this so weighty a matter? So Mr. Desires-awake told Emmanuel that this was a poor neighbour of his, and one of his most intimate a.s.sociates. And his name, said he, may it please your most excellent Majesty, is Wet-eyes, of the town of Mansoul. I know that there are many of that name that are naught, said he; but I hope it will be no offence to my Lord that I have brought my poor neighbour with me.

Then Mr. Wet-eyes fell on his face to the ground, and made this apology for his coming with his neighbour to his Lord:--

'Oh, my Lord,' quoth he, 'what I am I know not myself, nor whether my name be feigned or true, especially when I begin to think what some have said, and that is that this name was given me because Mr. Repentance was my father. But good men have sometimes bad children, and the sincere do sometimes beget hypocrites. My mother also called me by this name of mine from my cradle; but whether she said so because of the moistness of my brain, or because of the softness of my heart, I cannot tell. I see dirt in mine own tears, and filthiness in the bottom of my prayers. But I pray Thee (and all this while the gentleman wept) that Thou wouldst not remember against us our transgressions, nor take offence at the unqualifiedness of Thy servants, but mercifully pa.s.s by the sin of Mansoul, and refrain from the magnifying of Thy grace no longer.' So at His bidding they arose, and both stood trembling before Him.

1. 'His name, may it please your Majesty, is Wet-eyes, of the town of Mansoul. I know, at the same time, that there are many of that name that are naught.' Naught, that is, for this great enterprise now in hand. And thus it was that Mr. Desires-awake in setting out for the Prince's pavilion besought that Mr. Wet-eyes might go with him. Mr. Desires-awake felt keenly how much might turn on who his companion was that day, and therefore he took Mr. Wet-eyes with him. David would have made a most excellent a.s.sociate for Mr. Desires-awake that day. 'I am weary with my groaning; all the night make I my bed to swim; I water my couch with my tears.' And again, 'Rivers of waters run down mine eyes, because they keep not Thy law.' This, then, was the only manner of man that Mr.

Desires-awake would stake his life alongside of that day. 'I have seen some persons weep for the loss of sixpence,' said Mr. Desires-awake, 'or for the breaking of a gla.s.s, or at some trifling accident. And they cannot pretend to have their tears valued at a bigger rate than they will confess their pa.s.sion to be when they weep. Some are vexed for the dirtying of their linen, or some such trifle, for which the least pa.s.sion is too big an expense. And thus it is that a man cannot tell his own heart simply by his tears, or the truth of his repentance by those short gusts of sorrow.' Well, then, my brethren, tell me, Do you think that Mr. Desires-awake would have taken you that day to the pavilion door?

Would his head have been safe with you for his a.s.sociate? Your a.s.sociates see many gusts in your heart. Do they ever see your eyes red because of your sin? Did you ever weep so much as one good tear-drop for pure sin? One true tear: not because your sins have found you out, but for secret sins that you know can never find you out in this world? And, still better, do you ever weep in secret places not for sin, but for sinfulness--which is a very different matter? Do you ever weep to yourself and to G.o.d alone over your incurably wicked heart? If not, then weep for that with all your might, night and day. No mortal man has so much cause to weep as you have. Go to G.o.d on the spot, on every spot, and say with Bishop Andrewes, who is both Mr. Desires-awake and Mr. Wet- eyes in one, say with that deep man in his _Private Devotions_, say: 'I need more grief, O G.o.d; I plainly need it. I can sin much, but I cannot correspondingly repent. O Lord, give me a molten heart. Give me tears; give me a fountain of tears. Give me the grace of tears. Drop down, ye heavens, and bedew the dryness of my heart. Give me, O Lord, this saving grace. No grace of all the graces were more welcome to me. If I may not water my couch with my tears, nor wash Thy feet with my tears, at least give me one or two little tears that Thou mayest put into Thy bottle and write in Thy book!' If your heart is hard, and your eyes dry, make something like that your continual prayer.

2. 'A poor-man,' said Mr. Desires-awake, about his a.s.sociate. 'Mr. Wet- eyes is a poor man, and a man of a broken spirit.' 'Let Oliver take comfort in his dark sorrows and melancholies. The quant.i.ty of sorrow he has, does it not mean withal the quant.i.ty of sympathy he has, and the quant.i.ty of faculty and of victory he shall yet have? Our sorrow is the inverted image of our n.o.bleness. The depth of our despair measures what capability and height of claim we have to hope. Black smoke, as of Tophet, filling all your universe, it can yet by true heart-energy become flame, and the brilliancy of heaven. Courage!'

'This is the angel of the earth, And she is always weeping.'

3. 'A poor man, and a man of a broken spirit, and yet one that can speak well to a pet.i.tion.' Yes; and you will see how true that eulogy of Mr.

Wet-eyes is if you will run over in your mind the outstanding instances of successful pet.i.tioners in the Scriptures. As you come down the Old and the New Testaments you will be astonished and encouraged to find how prevailing a fountain of tears always is with G.o.d. David with his swimming bed; Jeremiah with his head waters; Mary Magdalene over His feet with her welling eyes; Peter's bitter cry all his life long as often as he heard a c.o.c.k crow, and so on. So on through a mult.i.tude whose names are written in heaven, and who went up to heaven all the way with inconsolable sorrow because of their sins. They took words and turned to the Lord; but,--better than the best words,--they took tears, or rather, their tears took them. The best words, the words that the Holy Ghost Himself teacheth, if they are without tears, will avail nothing. Even inspired words will not pa.s.s through; while, all the time, tears, mere tears, without words, are omnipotent with G.o.d. Words weary Him, while tears overcome and command Him. He inhabits the tears of Israel.

Therefore, also, now, saith the Lord, turn ye unto Me with all your heart, and with weeping and with mourning. And rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your G.o.d, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth Him of the evil. It is the same with ourselves. Tears move us. Tears melt us. We cannot resist tears. Even counterfeit tears, we cannot be sure that they are not true. And that is the main reason why our Lord is so good at speaking to a pet.i.tion. It is because His whole heart, and all the moving pa.s.sions of His heart, are in His intercessory office. It is because He still remembers in the skies His tears, His agonies, and cries. It is because He is entered into the holiest with His own tears as well as with His own blood. And it is because He will remain and abide before the Father the Man of Sorrows till our last pet.i.tion is answered, and till G.o.d has wiped the last tear from our eyes. When He was in the coasts of Caesarea-Philippi, our Lord felt a great curiosity to find out who the people thereabouts took Him to be. And it must have touched His heart to be told that some men had insight enough to insist that He was the prophet Jeremiah come back again to weep over Jerusalem.

He is Elias, said some. No; He is John the Baptist risen from the dead, said others. No, no; said some men who saw deeper than their neighbours.

His head is waters, and His eyes are a fountain of tears. Do you not see that He so often escapes into a lodge in the wilderness to weep for our sins? No; He is neither John nor Elijah; He is Jeremiah come back again to weep over Jerusalem! And even an apostle, looking back at the beginning of our Lord's priesthood on earth, says that He was prepared for His office by prayers and supplications, and with strong crying and tears. From all that, then, let us learn and lay to heart that if we would have one to speak well to our pet.i.tions, the Man of Sorrows is that one. And then, as His remembrancers on our behalf, let us engage all those among our friends who have the same grace of tears. But, above all, let us be men of tears ourselves. For all the tears and all the intercessions of our great High Priest, and all the importunings of our best friends to boot, will avail us nothing if our own eyes are dry. Let us, then, turn back to Bishop Andrewes's prayer for the grace of tears, and offer it every night with him till our head, like his, is holy waters, and till, like him, we get beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.

4. 'Clear as tears' is a Persian proverb when they would praise their purest spring water. But Mr. Wet-eyes has from henceforth spoiled the point of that proverb for us. 'I see,' he said, 'dirt in mine own tears, and filthiness in the bottom of my prayers.' Mr. Wet-eyes is hopeless.

Mr. Wet-eyes is intolerable. Mr. Wet-eyes would weary out the patience of a saint. There is no satisfying or pacifying or ever pleasing this morbose Mr. Wet-eyes. The man is absolutely insufferable. Why, prayers and tears that the most and best of G.o.d's people cannot attain to are spurned and spat upon by Mr. Wet-eyes. The man is beside himself with his tears. For, tears that would console and a.s.sure us for a long season after them, he will weep over them as we scarce weep over our worst sins.

His closet always turns all his comeliness to corruption. He comes out of his closet after all night in it with his psalm-book wrung to pulp, and with all his righteousnesses torn to filthy rags; till all men escape Mr. Wet-eyes' society--all men except Mr. Desires-awake. I will go out on your errand now, said Mr. Desires-awake, if you will send Mr. Wet-eyes with me. And thus the two twin sons of sorrow for sin and hunger after holiness went out arm in arm to the great pavilion together, Mr. Desires- awake with his rope upon his head, and Mr. Wet-eyes with his hands wringing together. Thus they went to the Prince's pavilion. I gave you a specimen of one of Mr. Wet-eyes' prayers in the introduction to this discourse, and you did not discover much the matter with it, did you? You did not discover much filthiness in the bottom of that prayer, did you? I am sure you did not. Ah! but that is because you have not yet got Mr.

Wet-eyes' eyes. When you get his eyes; when you turn and employ upon yourselves and upon your tears and upon your prayers his always-wet eyes,--then you will begin to understand and love and take sides with this inconsolable soul, and will choose his society rather than that of any other man--as often, at any rate, as you go out to the Prince's pavilion door.

5. 'Mr. Repentance was my father, but good men sometimes have bad children, and the most sincere do sometimes beget great hypocrites. But, I pray Thee, take not offence at the unqualifiedness of Thy servant.'

Take good note of that uncommon expression, 'unqualifiedness,' in Mr. Wet- eyes' confession, all of you who are attending to what is being said. Lay 'unqualifiedness' to heart. Learn how to qualify yourselves before you begin to pray. In his fine comment on the 137th Psalm, Matthew Henry discourses delightfully on what he calls 'deliberate tears.' Look up that raciest of commentators, and see what he there says about the deliberate tears of the captives in Babylon. It was the lack of sufficient deliberation in his tears that condemned and alarmed Mr. Wet- eyes that day. He felt now that he had not deliberated and qualified himself properly before coming to the Prince's pavilion. Do not take up your time or your thoughts with mere curiosities, either in your Bible or in any other good book, says A Kempis. Read such things rather as may yield compunction to your heart. And again, give thyself to compunction, and thou shalt gain much devotion thereby. Mr. Wet-eyes, good and true soul, was afraid that he had not qualified himself enough by compunctious reading and self-recollection. The sincere, he sobbed out, do often beget hypocrites! 'Our hearts are so deceitful in the matter of repentance,' says Jeremy Taylor, 'that the masters of the spiritual life are fain to invent suppletory arts and stratagems to secure the duty.'

Take not offence at the lack of all such suppletory arts and stratagems in thy servant, said poor Wet-eyes. All which would mean in the most of us: Take not offence at my rawness and ignorance in the spiritual life, and especially in the life of inward devotion. Do not count up against me the names and the numbers and the prices of my poems, and plays, and novels, and newspapers, and then the number of my devotional books.

Compare not my outlay on my body and on this life with my outlay on my soul and on the life to come. Oh, take not mortal offence at the shameful and scandalous unqualifiedness of Thy miserable servant. My father and my mother read the books of the soul, but they have left behind them a dry-eyed reprobate in me! Say that to-night as you look around on the grievous famine of the suppletory arts and stratagems of repentance and reformation in your heathenish bedroom.

Spiritual preaching; real face to face, inward, verifiable, experimental, spiritual preaching; preaching to a heart in the agony of its sanctification; preaching to men whose whole life is given over to making them a new heart--that kind of preaching is scarcely ever heard in our day. There is great intellectual ability in the pulpit of our day, great scholars.h.i.+p, great eloquence, and great earnestness, but spiritual preaching, preaching to the spirit--'wet-eyed' preaching--is a lost art.

At the same time, if that living art is for the present overlaid and lost, the literature of a deeper spiritual day abides to us, and our spiritually-minded people are not confined to us, they are not dependent on us. Well, this is the Communion week with us yet once more. Will you not, then, make it the beginning of some of the suppletory arts and stratagems of the spiritual life with yourselves? I cannot preach as I would like on such subjects, but I can tell you who could, and who, though dead, yet speak by their immortal books. You have the wet-eyed psalms; but they are beyond the depth of most people. Their meaning seems to us on the surface, and we all read and sing them, but let us not therefore think that we understand them. I cannot compel you to read the books, and to read little else but the books, that would in time, and by G.o.d's blessing, lead you into the depths of the psalms; but I can wash my hands so far in making their names so many household words among my people. The _Way to Christ_, the _Imitation of Christ_, the _Theologia Germanica_, Tauler's _Sermons_, the _Mortification of Sin_, and _Indwelling Sin in Believers_, the _Saint's Rest_, the _Holy Living and Dying_, the _Privata Sacra_, the _Private Devotions_, the _Serious Call_, the _Christian Perfection_, the _Religious Affections_, and such like.

All that, and you still unqualified! All that, and your eyes still dry!

CHAPTER XX--MR. HUMBLE THE JURYMAN, AND MISS HUMBLE-MIND THE SERVANT-MAID

'Learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart.'--_Our Lord_.

'Be clothed with humility.'--_Peter_.

'G.o.d's chiefest saints are the least in their own eyes.'--_A Kempis_.

'Without humility all our other virtues are but vices.'--_Pascal_.

'Humility does not consist in having a worse opinion of ourselves than we deserve.'--_Law_.

'Humility lies close upon the heart, and its tests are exceedingly delicate and subtle.'--_Newman_.

Our familiar English word 'humility' comes down to us from the Latin root _humus_, which means the earth or the ground. Humility, therefore, is that in the mind and in the heart of a man which is low down even to the very earth. A humble-minded man may not have learning enough to know the etymology of the name which best describes his character, but the divine nature which is in him teaches him to look down, to walk meekly and softly, and to speak seldom, and always in love. For humility, while it takes its lowly name from earth, all the time has its true nature from heaven. Humility is full of all meekness, modesty, submissiveness, teachableness, sense of inability, sense of unworthiness, sense of ill- desert. Till, with that new depth and new intensity that the Scriptures and religious experience have given to this word, as to so many other words, humility, in the vocabulary of the spiritual life, has come to be applied to that low estimate of ourselves which we come to form and to entertain as we are more and more enlightened about G.o.d and about ourselves; about the majesty, glory, holiness, beauty, and blessedness of the divine nature, and about our own unspeakable evil, vileness, and misery as sinners. And, till humility has come to rank in Holy Scripture, and in the lives and devotions of all G.o.d's saints, as at once the deepest root and the ripest fruit of all the divine graces that enter into, and, indeed, const.i.tute the life of G.o.d in the heart of man.

Humility, evangelical humility, sings Edwards in his superb and seraphic poem the _Religious Affections_,--evangelical humility is the sense that the true Christian has of his own utter insufficiency, despicableness, and odiousness, a sense which is peculiar to the true saint. But to compensate the true saint for this sight and sense of himself, he has revealed to him an accompanying sense of the absolutely transcendent beauty of the divine nature and of all divine things; a sight and a sense that quite overcome the heart and change to holiness all the dispositions and inclinations and affections of the heart. The essence of evangelical humility, says Edwards, consists in such humility as becomes a creature in himself exceeding sinful, but at the same time, under a dispensation of grace, and this is the greatest and most essential thing in all true religion.

1. Well, then, our Mr. Humble was a juryman in Mansoul, and his name and his nature eminently fitted him for his office. I never was a juryman; but, if I were, I feel sure I would come home from the court a far humbler man than I went up to it. I cannot imagine how a judge can remain a proud man, or an advocate, or a witness, or a juryman, or a spectator, or even a policeman. I am never in a criminal court that I do not tremble with terror all the time. I say to myself all the time,--there stands John Newton but for the preventing grace of G.o.d. 'I will not sit as a judge to try General Boulanger, because I hate him,'

said M. Renault in the French Senate. Mr. Humble himself could not have made a better speech to the bench than that when his name was called to be sworn. Let us all remember John Newton and M. Renault when we would begin to write or to speak about any arrested, accused, found-out man.

Let other men's arrests, humiliations, accusations, and sentences only make us search well our own past, and that will make us ever humbler and ever humbler men ourselves; ever more penitent men, and ever more prayerful men.

2. And then Miss Humble-mind, his only daughter, was a servant-maid.

There is no office so humble but that a humble mind will not put on still more humility in it. What a lesson in humility, not Peter only got that night in the upper room, but that happy servant-maid also who brought in the bason and the towel. Would she ever after that night grumble and give up her place in a pa.s.sion because she had been asked to do what was beneath her to do? Would she ever leave that house for any wages? Would she ever see that bason without kissing it? Would that towel not be a holy thing ever after in her proud eyes? How happy that house would ever after that night be, not so much because the Lord's Supper had been inst.i.tuted in it, as because a servant was in it who had learned humility as she went about the house that night. Let all our servants hold up their heads and magnify their office. Their Master was once a servant, and He left us all, and all servants especially, an example that they should follow in His steps. Peter, whose feet were washed that night, never forgot that night, and his warm heart always warmed to a servant when he saw her with her bason and her towels, till he gave her half a chapter to herself in his splendid First Epistle. 'Servants, be subject,' he said, till his argument rose to a height above which not even Paul himself ever rose. Servant-maids, you must all have your own half-chapter out of First Peter by heart.

3. But I have as many students of one kind or other here to-night as I have maid-servants, and they will remember where a great student has said that knowledge without love but puffeth a student up. Now, the best knowledge for us all, and especially so for a student, is to know himself: his own ignorance, his own foolishness, his blindness of mind, and, especially, his corruption of heart. For that knowledge will both keep him from being puffed up with what he already knows, and it will also put him and keep him in the way of knowing more. Self-knowledge will increase humility, and all the past masters both of science and of religion will tell him that humility is the certain note of the true student. You who are students all know _The Advancement of Learning_, just as the servants sitting beside you all know the second chapter of First Peter. Well, your master Verulam there tells you, and indeed on every page of his, that it is only to a humble, waiting, childlike temper that nature, like grace, will ever reveal up her secrets. 'There is small chance of truth at the goal when there is not a childlike humility at the starting-post.' Well, then, all you students who would fain get to the goal of science, make the Church of Christ your starting-post.

Come first and come continually to the Christian school to learn humility, and then, as long as your talents, your years, and your opportunities hold out, both truth and goodness will open up to you at every step. Every step will be a goal, and at every goal a new step will open up. And G.o.d's smile and G.o.d's blessing, and all good men's love and honour and applause will support and reward you in your race. And, humble-minded to the truth herself, be, at the same time, humble-minded toward all who like yourself are seeking to know and to do the truth. A lately deceased student of nature was a pattern to all students as long as he waited on truth in his laboratory; and even as long as he remained at his desk to tell the world what he and other students had discovered in their search. But when any other student in his search after truth was compelled to cross that hitherto so exemplary student, he immediately became as insolent as if he had been the greatest boor in the country.

Till, as he spat out scorn at all who differed from him we always remembered this in A Kempis--'Surely, an humble husbandman that serveth G.o.d is better than a proud philosopher that, neglecting himself, laboureth to understand the course of the heavens. It is great wisdom and perfection to esteem nothing of ourselves, and to think always well and highly of others.' Students of arts, students of philosophy, students of law, students of medicine, and especially, students of divinity, be humble men. Labour in humility even more than in your special science. Humility will advance you in your special science; while, all the time, and at the end of time, she will be more to you than all the other sciences taken together. And since I have spoken of A Kempis, take this motto for all your life out of A Kempis, as the great and good Fenelon did, and it will guide you to the goal: _Ama nescia et pro nihilo reputari_.