Bunyan Characters Volume Iii Part 7

4. But of all the men in the whole world it is ministers who should simply, as Peter says, be clothed with humility, and that from head to foot. And, first as divinity students, and then as pastors and preachers, we who are ministers have advantages and opportunities in this respect quite peculiar and private to ourselves. For, while other students are spending their days and their nights on the ancient cla.s.sics of Greece and Rome, the student who is to be a minister is buried in the Psalms, in the Gospels, and in the Epistles. While the student of law is deep in his commentaries and his cases, the student of divinity is deep in the study of experimental religion. And while the medical student is full of the diseases of animals and of men, the theological student is absorbed in the holiness of the divine nature, and in the plague of the human heart, and, especially, he is drowned deeper every day in his own.

And he who has begun a curriculum like that and is not already putting on a humility beyond all other men had better lose no more time, but turn himself at once to some other way of making his bread. The word of G.o.d and his own heart,--yes; what a sure school of evangelical humility to every evangelically-minded student is that! And, then, after that, and all his days, his congregational communion-roll and his visiting-book.

Let no minister who would be found of G.o.d clothed and canopied over with humility ever lose sight of his communion-roll and pastoral visitation- book. I defy any minister to keep those records always open before him and yet remain a proud man, a self-respecting, self-satisfied, self-righteous man. For, what secret histories of his own folly, neglect, rashness, offensiveness, hot-headedness, self-seeking, self-pleasing vanity, now puffed up over one man, now cast down and full of gloom over another, what self-flattery here, and what resentment and retaliation there; and so on, as only his own eyes and his Divine Master's eye can read between every diary line. What shame will cover that minister as with a mantle when he thinks what the Christian ministry might be made, and then takes home to himself what he has made it! Let any minister shut himself in with his communion-roll and his visiting- book before each returning communion season, and there will be one worthy communicant at least in the congregation: one who will have little appet.i.te all that week for any other food but the broken Body and the shed Blood of his Redeemer. But these are professional matters that the outside world has nothing to do with and would not understand. Only, let all young men who would have evangelical humility absolutely secured and sealed to them,--let them come and be ministers. Just as all young men who would have any satisfaction in life, any sense of work well done and worthy of reward, any taste of a goal attained and an old age earned, let them take to anything in all this world but the evangelical pulpit and its accompanying pastorate.

5. But humility is not a grace of the pulpit and the pastorate only. It is not those who are separated by the Holy Ghost to study the word of G.o.d and their own hearts all their life long only, who are called to put on humility. All men are called to that grace. There is no acceptance with G.o.d for any man without that grace. There is no approach to G.o.d for any man without it. All salvation begins and ends in it. Would you, then, fain possess it? Would you, then, fain attain to it? Then let there be no mystery and no mistake made about it. Would any man here fain get down to that deep valley where G.o.d's saints walk in the sweet shade and lie down in green pastures? Well, I warrant him that just before him, and already under his eye, there is a flight of steps cut in the hill, which steps, if he will take them, will, step after step, take him also down to that bottom. The whole face of this steep and slippery world is sculptured deep with such submissive steps. Indeed, when a man's eyes are once turned down to that valley, there is nothing to be seen anywhere in all this world but downward steps. Look whichever way you will, there gleams out upon you yet another descending stair. Look back at the way you came up. But take care lest the sight turns you dizzy. Look at any spot you once crossed on your way up, and, lo! every foot-print of yours has become a descending step. You sink down as you look, broken down with shame and with horror and with remorse. There are people, some still left in this world, and some gone to the other world, people whom you dare not think of lest you should turn sick and lose hold and hope.

There are places you dare not visit: there are scenes you dare not recall. Lucifer himself would be a humble angel with his wings over his face if he had a past like yours, and would often enough return to look at it. And, then, not the past only, but at this present moment there are people and things placed close beside you, and kept close beside you, and you close beside them, on divine purpose just to give you continual occasion and offered opportunity to practise humility. They are kept close beside you just on purpose to humiliate you, to cut out your descending steps, to lend you their hand, and to say to you: Keep near us. Only keep your eye on us, and we will see you down! And then, if you are resolute enough to look within, if you are able to keep your eye on what goes on in your own heart like heart--beats, then, already, I know where you are. You are under all men's feet. You are ashamed to lift up your eyes to meet other men's eyes. You dare not take their honest hands. You could tell Edwards himself things about humiliation now that would make his terribly searching and humbling book quite tame and tasteless.

Come, then, O high-minded man, be sane, be wise. If you were up on a giddy height, and began to see that certain death was straight and soon before you, what would you do? You know what you would do. You would look with all your eyes for such steps as would take you safest down to the solid ground. You would welcome any hand stretched out to help you.

You would be most attentive and most obedient and most thankful to any one who would a.s.sure you that this is the right way down. And you would keep on saying to yourself--Once I were well down, no man shall see me up here again. Well, my brethren, humiliation, humility, is to be learned just in the same way, and it is to be learned in no other way. He who would be down must just come down. That is all. A step down, and another step down, and another, and another, and already you are well down. A humble act done to-day, a humble word spoken to-morrow; humiliation after humiliation accepted every day that you would at one time have spurned from you with pa.s.sion; and then your own vile, hateful, unbearable heart-all that is ordained of G.o.d to bring you down, down to the dust; and this last, your own heart, will bring you down to the very depths of h.e.l.l. And thus, after all your other opportunities and ordinances of humility are embraced and exhausted, then the plunges, the depths, the abysses of humility that G.o.d will open up in your own heart will all work in you a meetness for heaven and a ripeness for its glory, that shall for ever reward you for all that degradation and shame and self-despair which have been to you the sure way and the only way to everlasting life.

CHAPTER XXI--MASTER THINK-WELL, THE LATE AND ONLY SON OF OLD MR.

MEDITATION

'As he thinketh in his heart, so is he.'--_A Proverb_.

It was a truly delightful sight to see old Mr. Meditation and his only son, our little Think-well, out among the woods and hedgerows of a summer afternoon. Little Think-well was the son of his father's old age. That dry tree used to say to himself that if ever he was intrusted with a son of his own, he would make his son his most constant and his most confidential companion all his days. And so he did. The eleventh of Deuteronomy had become a greater and greater text to that childless man as he pa.s.sed the mid-time of his days. 'Therefore,' he used to say to himself, as he walked abroad alone, and as other men pa.s.sed him with their children at their side--'Therefore ye shall teach them to your children, speaking of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down and when thou risest up.

And thou shalt write them upon the doorposts of thine house and upon thy gates.' And thus it was that, as the little lad grew up, there was no day of all the seven that he so much numbered and waited for as was that sacred day on which his father was free to take little Think-well by the hand and lead him out to talk to him. 'No,' said an Edinburgh boy to his mother the other day--'No, mother,' he said, 'I have no liking for these Sunday papers with their poor stories and their pictures. I am to read the Bible stories and the Bible biographies first.' He is not my boy. I wish my boys were all like him. 'And Plutarch on week-days for such a boy,' I said to his mother. How to keep a decent shred of the old sanctification on the modern Sabbath-day is the anxious inquiry of many fathers and mothers among us. My friend with her manly-minded boy, and Mr. Meditation with little Think-well had no trouble in that matter.

'And once I said, As I remember, looking round upon those rocks And hills on which we all of us were born, That G.o.d who made the Great Book of the world Would bless such piety;-- Never did worthier lads break English bread: The finest Sunday that the autumn saw, With all its mealy cl.u.s.ters of ripe nuts, Could never keep those boys away from church, Or tempt them to an hour of Sabbath breach, Leonard and James!'

Think-well and that mother's son.

Old Mr. Meditation, the father, was sprung of a poor but honest and industrious stock in the city. He had not had many talents or opportunities to begin with, but he had made the very best of the two he had. And then, when the two estates of Mr. Fritter-day and Mr. Let-good- slip were sequestered to the crown, the advisers of the crown handed over those two neglected estates to Mr. Meditation to improve them for the common good, and after him to his son, whose name we know. The steps of a good man are ordered of the Lord, and He delighteth in his way. I have been young and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.

Now, this Think-well old Mr. Meditation had by Mrs. Piety, and she was the daughter of the old Recorder. 'I am Thy servant,' said Mrs. Piety's son on occasion all his days--'I am Thy servant and the son of Thine handmaid.' And at that so dutiful acknowledgment of his a long procession of the servants of G.o.d pa.s.s up before our eyes with their sainted mothers leaning on the arms of their great sons. The Psalmist and his mother, the Baptist and his mother, our Lord and His mother, the author of the Fourth Gospel and his mother, Paul's son and successor in the gospel and his mother and grandmother, the author of _The Confessions_ and his mother; and, in this n.o.ble connection, I always think of Halyburton and his good mother. And in this enn.o.bling connection you will all think of your own mother also, and before we go any further you will all say, I also, O Lord, am Thy servant and the son of Thine handmaid. 'Fathers and mothers handle children differently,'

says Jeremy Taylor. And then that princely teacher of the Church of Christ Catholic goes on to tell us how Mrs. Piety handled her little Think-well which she had borne to Mr. Meditation. After other things, she said this every night before she took sleep to her tired eyelids, this: 'Oh give me grace to bring him up. Oh may I always instruct him with diligence and meekness; govern him with prudence and holiness; lead him in the paths of religion and justice; never provoking him to wrath, never indulging him in folly, and never conniving at an unworthy action.

Oh sanctify him in his body, soul, and spirit. Let all his thoughts be pure and holy to the Searcher of hearts; let his words be true and prudent before men; and may he have the portion of the meek and the humble in the world to come, and all through Jesus Christ our Lord!' How could a son get past a father and a mother like that? Even if, for a season, he had got past them, he would be sure to come back. Only, their young Think-well never did get past his father and his mother.

There was not so much word of heredity in his day; but without so much of the word young Think-well had the whole of the thing. And as time went on, and the child became more and more the father of the man, it was seen and spoken of by all the neighbours who knew the house, how that their only child had inherited all his father's head, and all his mother's heart, and then that he had reverted to his maternal grandfather in his so keen and quick sense of right and wrong. All which, under whatever name it was held, was a most excellent outfit for our young gentleman.

His old father, good natural head and all, had next to no book-learning.

He had only two or three books that he read a hundred times over till he had them by heart. And as he sighed over his unlettered lot he always consoled himself with a saying he had once got out of one of his old books. The saying of some great authority was to this effect, that 'an old and simple woman, if she loves Jesus, may be greater than our great brother Bonaventure.' He did not know who Bonaventure was, but he always got a reproof again out of his name. Think-well, to his father's immense delight, was a very methodical little fellow, and his father and he had orderly little secrets that they told to none. Little secret plans as to what they were to read about, and think about, and pray about on certain days of the week and at certain hours of the day and the night. You must not call the father an old pedant, for the fact is, it was the son who was the pedant if there was one in that happy house. The two intimate friends had a word between them they called _agenda_. And n.o.body but themselves knew where they had borrowed that uncouth word, what language it was, or what it meant. Only in the old man's tattered pocket-book there were things like this found by his minister after his death.

Indeed, in a museum of such relics this is still to be read under a gla.s.s case, and in old Mr. Meditation's ramshackle hand: 'Monday, death; Tuesday, judgment; Wednesday, heaven; Thursday, h.e.l.l; Friday, my past life back to my youth; Sat.u.r.day, the pa.s.sion of my Saviour; Lord's day, creation, salvation, and my own.--M.' And then, on an utterly illegible page, this: 'Jesus, Thy life and Thy words are a perpetual sermon to me.

I meditate on Thee all the day. Make my memory a vessel of election. Let all my thoughts be plain, honest, pious, simple, prudent, and charitable, till Thou art pleased to draw the curtain and let me see Thyself, O Eternal Jesu!' If I had time I could tell you more about Think-well's quaint old father. But the above may be better than nothing about the rare old gentleman.

A great authority has said--two great authorities have said in their enigmatic way, that a 'dry light is ever the best.' That may be so in some cases and to some uses, but nothing can be more sure than this, that the light that little Think-well got from his father's head was excellently drenched in his mother's heart. The sweet moisture of his mother's heart mixed up beautifully with his father's drier head and made a fine combination in their one boy as it turned out. Her minister, preaching on one occasion on my text for to-night, had said--and she had such a memory for a sermon that she had never forgotten it, but had laid it up in her heart on the spot--'As the philosopher's stone,' the old- fas.h.i.+oned preacher had said, 'turns all metals into gold, as the bee sucks honey out of every flower, and as the good stomach sucks out some sweet and wholesome nourishment out of whatever it takes into itself, so doth a holy heart, so far as sanctified, convert and digest all things into spiritual and useful thoughts. This you may see in Psalm cvii. 43.'

And in her plain, silent, hidden, motherly way Mistress Piety adorned her old minister's doctrine of the holy heart that he was always preaching about, till she shared her soft and holy heart with her son, as his father had shared his clear and deep, if too unlearned, head.

We have one grandmother at least signalised in the Bible; but no grandfather, so far as I remember. But amends are made for that in the _Holy War_. For Think-well would never have been the man he became had it not been for the old Recorder, his grandfather on his mother's side.

Some superficial people said that there was too much severity in the old Recorder; but his grandson who knew him best, never said that. He was the best of men, his grandson used to stand up for him, and say, I shall never forget the debt I owe him. It was he who taught me first to make conscience of my thoughts. Indeed, as for my secret thoughts, I had taken no notice of them till that summer afternoon walk home from church, when we sat down among the bushes and he showed me on the spot the way.

And I can say to his memory that scarce for one waking hour have I any day forgotten the lesson. The lesson how to make a conscience, as he said, of all my thoughts about myself and about all my neighbours. Such, then, were Think-well's more immediate ancestors, and such was the inheritance that they all taken together had left him.

Think-well! Think-well! My brethren, what do you think, what do you say, as you hear that fine name? I will tell you what I think and say.

If I overcome, and have that white stone given to me, and in that stone a new name written which no man shall know saving he that receiveth it; and if it were asked me here to-night what I would like my new name to be, I would say on the spot, Let it be THINK-WELL! Let my new name among the saved and the sanctified before the throne be THINK-WELL! As, O G.o.d, it will be the bottomless pit to me, if I am forsaken of Thee for ever to my evil thoughts. Send down and prevent it. Stir up all Thy strength and give commandment to prevent it. Do Thou prevent it. For, after I have done all,--after I have made all my overt acts blameless, after I have tamed my tongue which no man can tame--all that only the more throws my thoughts into a very devil's garden, a thicket of h.e.l.l, a secret swamp of sin to the uttermost. How, then, am I ever to attain to that white stone and that s.h.i.+ning name? And that in a world of such truth that every man's name and t.i.tle there shall be a strict and true and entirely accurate and adequate description and exposition of the very thoughts and intents and imaginations of his heart? How shall I, how shall you, my brethren, ever have 'Think-well' written on our forehead?--Well, with G.o.d all things are possible. With G.o.d, with a much meditating mind, and a true and humble and tender heart, and a pure conscience, a conscience void of offence, working together with Him--He, with all these inheritances and all these environments working together with Him, will at last enable us, you and me, to lift up such a clear and transparent forehead. But not without our constant working together. We must ourselves make head, and heart, and, especially, conscience of all our thoughts--for a long lifetime we must do that. The _Ductor Dubitantium_ has a deep chapter on 'The Thinking Conscience.' And what a reproof to many of us lies in the mere name! For how much evil-thinking and evil- speaking we have all been guilty of through our unthinking conscience and through a zeal for G.o.d, but a zeal without knowledge. Look back at the history of the Church and see; look back at your own history in the Church and see. Yes, make conscience of your thoughts: but let it first be an instructed conscience, a thinking conscience, a conscience full of the best and the clearest light. And then let us also make ourselves a new heart and a new spirit, as Ezekiel has it. For our hearts are continually perverting and polluting and poisoning our thoughts. That is a fearful thing that is said about the men on whom the flood soon came.

You remember what is said about them, and in explanation and justification of the flood. G.o.d saw, it is said, that every imagination of the thoughts of their hearts was evil, and only evil continually.

Fearful! Far more fearful than ten floods! O G.o.d, Thou seest us. And Thou seest all the imaginations of the thoughts of our hearts. Oh give us all a mind and a heart and a conscience to think of nothing, to fear nothing, to watch and to pray about nothing compared with our thoughts.

'As for my secret thoughts,' says the author of the _Holy War_ and the creator of Master Think-well--'As for my secret thoughts, I paid no attention to them. I never knew I had them. I had no pain, or shame, or guilt, or horror, or despair on account of them till John Gifford took me and showed me the way.' And then when John Bunyan, being the man of genius he was,--as soon as he began to attend to his own secret thoughts, then the first faint outline of this fine portrait of Think-well began to s.h.i.+ne out on the screen of this great artist's imagination, and from that sanctified screen this fine portrait of Think-well and his family has s.h.i.+ned into our hearts to-night.

CHAPTER XXII--MR. G.o.d'S-PEACE, A GOODLY PERSON, AND A SWEET-NATURED GENTLEMAN

'Let the peace of G.o.d rule in your hearts,--the peace of G.o.d that pa.s.seth all understanding.'--_Paul_.

John Bunyan is always at his very best in allegory. In some other departments of work John Bunyan has had many superiors; but when he lays down his head on his hand and begins to dream, as we see him in some of the old woodcuts, then he is alone; there is no one near him. We have not a few greater divines in pure divinity than John Bunyan. We have some far better expositors of Scripture than John Bunyan, and we have some far better preachers. John Bunyan at his best cannot open up a deep Scripture like that prince of expositors, Thomas Goodwin. John Bunyan in all his books has nothing to compare for intellectual strength and for theological grasp with Goodwin's chapter on the peace of G.o.d, in his sixth book in _The Work of the Holy Ghost_. John Bunyan cannot set forth divine truth in an orderly method and in a built-up body like John Owen.

He cannot Platonize divine truth like his Puritan contemporary, John Howe. He cannot soar high as heaven in the beauty and the sweetness of gospel holiness like Jonathan Edwards. He has nothing of the philosophical depth of Richard Hooker, and he has nothing of the vast learning of Jeremy Taylor. But when John Bunyan's mind and heart begin to work through his imagination, then--

'His language is not ours.

'Tis my belief G.o.d speaks; no tinker hath such powers.'

1. In the beginning of his chapter on 'Speaking peace,' Thomas Goodwin tells his reader that he is going to fully couch all his intendments under a metaphor and an allegory. But Goodwin's reader has read and re- read the great chapter, and has not yet discovered where the metaphor and the allegory came in and where they went out. But Bunyan does not need to advertise his reader that he is going to couch his teaching in his imagination.

'But having now my method by the end, Still, as I pulled it came: and so I penned It down; until at last it came to be For length and breadth the bigness that you see.'

The Blessed Prince, he begins, did also ordain a new officer in the town, and a goodly person he was. His name was Mr. G.o.d's-peace. This man was set over my Lord Will-be-will, my Lord Mayor, Mr. Recorder, the subordinate preacher, Mr. Mind, and over all the natives of the town of Mansoul. Himself was not a native of the town, but came with the Prince from the court above. He was a great acquaintance of Captain Credence and Captain Good-hope; some say they were kin, and I am of that opinion too. This man, as I said, was made governor of the town in general, especially over the castle, and Captain Credence was to help him there.

And I made great observation of it, that so long as all things went in the town as this sweet-natured gentleman would have them go, the town was in a most happy condition. Now there were no jars, no chiding, no interferings, no unfaithful doings in all the town; every man in Mansoul kept close to his own employment. The gentry, the officers, the soldiers, and all in place, observed their order. And as for the women and the children of the town, they followed their business joyfully. They would work and sing, work and sing, from morning till night; so that quite through the town of Mansoul now nothing was to be found but harmony, quietness, joy, and health. And this lasted all the summer. I shall step aside at this point and shall let Jonathan Edwards comment on this sweet-natured gentleman and his heavenly name. 'G.o.d's peace has an exquisite sweetness,' says Edwards. 'It is exquisitely sweet because it has so firm a foundation on the everlasting rock. It is sweet also because it is so perfectly agreeable to reason. It is sweet also because it riseth from holy and divine principles, which, as they are the virtue, so are they the proper happiness of man. This peace is exquisitely sweet also because of the greatness of the good that the saints enjoy, being no other than the infinite bounty and fulness of that G.o.d who is the Fountain of all good. It is sweet also because it shall be enjoyed to perfection hereafter.' An enthusiastic student has counted up the number of times that this divine word 'sweetness' occurs in Edwards, and has proved that no other word of the kind occurs so often in the author of _True Virtue_ and _The Religious Affections_. And I can well believe it; unless the 'beauty of holiness' runs it close. Still, this sweet-natured gentleman will continue to live for us in his government and jurisdiction in Mansoul and in John Bunyan even more than in Jonathan Edwards.

2. 'Now Mr. G.o.d's-peace, the new Governor of Mansoul, was not a native of the town; he came down with his Prince from the court above.' 'He was not a native'--let that attribute of his be written in letters of gold on every gate and door and wall within his jurisdiction. When you need the governor and would seek him at any time or in any place in all the town and cannot find him, recollect yourself where he came from: he may have returned thither again. John Bunyan has couched his deepest instruction to you in that single sentence in which he says, 'Mr. G.o.d's-peace was not a native of the town.' John Bunyan has gathered up many gospel Scriptures into that single allegorical sentence. He has made many old and familiar pa.s.sages fresh and full of life again in that one metaphorical sentence. It is the work of genius to set forth the wont and the well known in a clear, simple, and at the same time surprising, light like that. There is a peace that is native and natural to the town of Mansoul, and to understand that peace, its nature, its grounds, its extent, and its range, is most important to the theologian and to the saint. But to understand the peace of G.o.d, that supreme peace, the peace that pa.s.seth all understanding,--that is the highest triumph of the theologian and the highest wisdom of the saint. The prophets and the psalmists of the Old Testament are all full of the peace that G.o.d gave to His people Israel. My peace I give unto you, says our Lord also. Paul also has taken up that peace that comes to us through the blood of Christ, and has made it his grand message to us and to all sinful and sin- disquieted men. And John Bunyan has shown how sure and true a successor of the apostles of Christ he is, just in his portrait of this sweet-natured gentleman who was not a native of Mansoul, but who came from that same court from which Emmanuel Himself came. And it is just this outlandishness of this sweet-natured gentleman; it is just this heavenly origin and divine extraction of his that makes him sometimes and in some things to surpa.s.s all earthly understanding. 'I am coming some day soon,' said a divinity student to me the other Sabbath night, 'to have you explain and clear up the atonement to me.' 'I shall be glad to see you,' I said, 'but not on that errand.' No. Paul himself could not do it. Paul said that the atonement and the peace of it pa.s.sed all his understanding. And John Bunyan says here that not the Prince only, but his officer Mr. G.o.d's-peace also, was not native to the town of Mansoul, but came straight down from heaven into that town--and what can the man do who cometh after two kings like Paul and Bunyan? I have not forgotten my Edwards where he says that the exquisite sweetness of this peace is perfectly agreeable to reason. As, indeed, so it is. And yet, if reason will have a clear and finished and all-round answer to all her difficulties and objections and fault-findings, I fear she cannot have it here. The time may come when our reason also shall be so enlarged, and so sanctified, and so exalted, that she shall be able with all saints to see the full mystery of that which in this present dispensation pa.s.seth all understanding. But till then, only let G.o.d's peace enter our hearts with G.o.d's Son, and then let our hearts say if that peace must not in some high and deep way be according to the highest and the deepest reason, since its coming into our hearts has produced in our hearts and in our lives such reasonable, and right, and harmonious, and peaceful, and every way joyful results.

3. Governor G.o.d's-peace had not many in the town of Mansoul to whom he could confide all his thoughts and with whom he could consult. But there were two officer friends of his stationed in the town with whom he was every day in close correspondence, viz., the Captain Credence and the Captain Good-hope. Their so close intimacy will not be wondered at when it is known that those three officers had all come in together with Emmanuel the Conqueror. Those three young captains had done splendid service, each at the head of his own battalion, in the days of the invasion and the conquest of Mansoul, and they had all had their present t.i.tles, and privileges, and lands, and offices, patented to them on the strength of their past services. The Captain Credence had all along been the confidential aide-de-camp and secretary of the Prince. Indeed, the Prince never called Captain Credence a servant at all, but always a friend. The Prince had always conveyed his mind about all Mansoul's matters first to Captain Credence, and then that confidential captain conveyed whatever specially concerned G.o.d's-peace and Good-hope to those excellent and trusty soldiers. Credence first told all matters to G.o.d's- peace and then the two soon talked over Good-hope to their mind and heart. Some say that the three officers, Credence, G.o.d's-peace, and Good- hope, were kin, adds our historian, and I, he adds, am of that opinion too. And to back up his opinion he takes an extract out of the Herald's College books which runs thus: 'Romans, fifteenth and thirteenth: Now, the G.o.d of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost.' Some say the three officers were of kin, and I am of that opinion too.

4. On account both of his eminent services and his great abilities, the Prince saw it good to set Mr. G.o.d's-peace over the whole town. And thus it was that the governor's jurisdiction extended and held not only over the people of the town, but also over all the magistrates and all the other officers of the town, such as my Lord Will-be-will, my Lord Mayor, Mr. Recorder, Mr. Mind, and all. It needed all the governor's authority and ability to keep his feet in his office over all the other rulers of the town, but by far his greatest trouble always was with the Recorder.

Old Mr. Conscience, the Town Recorder, had a very difficult post to hold and a very difficult part to play in that still so divided and still so unsettled town. What with all those murderers and man-slayers, thieves and prost.i.tutes, skulkers and secret rebels, on the one hand, and with Governor G.o.d's-peace and his so unaccountable and so autocratic ways, on the other hand, the Recorder's office was no sinecure. All the misdemeanours and malpractices of the town,--and they were happening every day and every night,--were all reported to the Recorder; they were all, so to say, charged home upon the Recorder, and he was held responsible for them all; till his office was a perfect laystall and cesspool of all the sc.u.m and corruption of the town. And yet, in would come Governor G.o.d's-peace, without either warning or explanation, and would demand all the Recorder's papers, and proofs, and affidavits, and what not, it had cost him so much trouble to get collected and indorsed, and would burn them all before the Recorder's face, and to his utter confusion, humiliation, and silence. So autocratic, so despotic, so absolute, and not-to-be-questioned was Governor G.o.d's-peace. The Recorder could not understand it, and could barely submit to it; my Lord Mayor could not understand it, and his clerk, Mr. Mind, would often oppose it; but there it was: Mr. Governor G.o.d's-peace was set over them all.

5. But the thing that always in the long-run justified the governors.h.i.+p of Mr. G.o.d's-peace, and reconciled all the other officers to his supremacy, was the way that the city settled down and prospered under his benignant rule. All the other officers admitted that, somehow, his promotion and power had been the salvation of Mansoul. They all extolled their Prince's far-seeing wisdom in the selection, advancement, and absolute seat of Mr. G.o.d's-peace. And it would ill have become them to have said anything else; for they had little else to do but bask in the sun and enjoy the honours and the emoluments of their respective offices as long as Governor G.o.d's-peace held sway, and had all things in the city to his own mind. Now, it was on all hands admitted, as we read again with renewed delight, that there were no jars, no chiding, no interferings, no unfaithful doings in the town of Mansoul; but every man kept close to his own employment. The gentry, the officers, the soldiers, and all in place, observed their orders. And as for the women and children, they all followed their business joyfully. They would work and sing, work and sing, from morning till night, so that quite through the town of Mansoul now nothing was to be found but harmony, quietness, joy, and health. What more could be said of any governors.h.i.+p of any town than that? The Heavenly Court itself, out of which Governor G.o.d's-peace had come down, was not better governed than that. Harmony, quietness, joy, and health. No; the New Jerusalem itself will not surpa.s.s that.

'And this lasted all that summer.'

CHAPTER XXIII--THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH OF MANSOUL, AND MR. CONSCIENCE ONE OF HER PARISH MINISTERS

'The Highest Himself shall establish her.'--_David_.

The princes of this world establish churches sometimes out of piety and sometimes out of policy. Sometimes their motive is the good of their people and the glory of G.o.d, and sometimes their sole motive is to b.u.t.tress up their own Royal House, and to have a clergy around them on whom they can count. Prince Emmanuel had His motive, too, in setting up an establishment in Mansoul. As thus: When this was over, the Prince sent again for the elders of the town and communed with them about the ministry that He intended to establish in Mansoul. Such a ministry as might open to them and might instruct them in the things that did concern their present and their future state. For, said He to them, of yourselves, unless you have teachers and guides, you will not be able to know, and if you do not know, then you cannot do the will of My Father.

At this news, when the elders of Mansoul brought it to the people, the whole town came running together, and all with one consent implored His Majesty that He would forthwith establish such a ministry among them as might teach them both law and judgment, statute and commandment, so that they might be doc.u.mented in all good and wholesome things. So He told them that He would graciously grant their requests and would straightway establish such a ministry among them.

Now, I will not enter to-night on the abstract benefits of such an Establishment. I will rather take one of the ministers who was presented to one of the parishes of Mansoul, and shall thus let you see how that State Church worked out practically in one of its ministers at any rate.

And the preacher and pastor I shall so take up was neither the best minister in the town nor the worst; but, while a long way subordinate to the best, he was also by no means the least. The Reverend Mr. Conscience was our parish minister's name; his people sometimes called him The Recorder.

1. Well, then, to begin with, the Rev. Mr. Conscience was a native of the same town in which his parish church now stood. I am not going to challenge the wisdom of the patron who appointed his protege to this particular living; only, I have known very good ministers who never got over the misfortune of having been settled in the same town in which they had been born and brought up. Or, rather, their people never got over it. One excellent minister, especially, I once knew, whose father had been a working man in the town, and his son had sometimes a.s.sisted his father before he went to college, and even between his college sessions, and the people he afterwards came to teach could never get over that. It was not wise in my friend to accept that presentation in the circ.u.mstances, as the event abundantly proved. For, whenever he had to take his stand in his pulpit or in his pastorate against any of their evil ways, his people defended themselves and retaliated on him by reminding him that they knew his father and his mother, and had not forgotten his own early days. No doubt, in the case of Emmanuel and Mansoul and its minister, there were counterbalancing considerations and advantages both to minister and people; but it is not always so; and it was not so in the case of my unfortunate friend.

Forasmuch, so ran the Prince's presentation paper, as he is a native of the town of Mansoul, and thus has personal knowledge of all the laws and customs of the corporation, therefore he, the Prince, presented Mr.