PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
Bunyan Characters (1st Series)
Whyte, Alexander, 1836-1921 · 79,334 words · 95 reading sections
Introductory
Transcribed from the 1893 Oliphant Anderson and Ferrier edition by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk BUNYAN CHARACTERS: FIRST SERIES BEING LECTURES DELIVERED IN ST. GEORGE'S FREE CHURCH EDINBURGH BY ALEXANDER WHYTE, D.D. 'The express image' [Gr. 'the character'].--Heb. 1. 3. The word 'character' occurs only o…
850 wordsSECTION 2Introductory
We shall see, as we proceed, how this and that character in Bunyan was formed and deformed. But let us ask in this introductory lecture if we can find out any law or principle upon which all our own characters, good or bad, are formed. Do our characters come to be what they are by chance, or have we anything to do in t…
790 wordsSECTION 3Introductory
It is not in the great tragedies of life only that character is tested and strengthened and consolidated. No man who is not himself under God's moral and spiritual instruments could believe how often in the quietest, clearest, and least tempestuous day he has the chance and the call to say, Yea, Lord, Thy will be done.…
852 wordsSECTION 4Evangelist
'Do the work of an evangelist.'--Paul to Timothy. On the 1st of June 1648 a very bitter fight was fought at Maidstone, in Kent, between the Parliamentary forces under Fairfax and the Royalists. Till Cromwell rose to all his military and administrative greatness, Fairfax was generalissimo of the Puritan army, and that …
762 wordsSECTION 5Evangelist
The first minister whose words were truly blessed of God for our awakening and conversion has always a place of his own in our hearts. We all have some minister, some revivalist, some faithful friend, or some good book in a warm place in our heart. It may be a great city preacher; it may be a humble American or Irish r…
803 wordsSECTION 6Evangelist
Having set Christian fairly on the way to the wicket gate, Evangelist leaves him in order to seek out and assist some other seeker. But yesterday he had set Faithful's face to the celestial city, and he is off now to look for another pilgrim. We know some of Christian's adventures and episodes after Evangelist left him…
880 wordsSECTION 7Evangelist
Well, Evangelist remains Evangelist still. Only, without losing any of his sweetness and freeness and fulness of promise, he adds to that some solemn warnings and counsels suitable now, as never before, to these two pilgrims. If one may say so, he would add now such moral treatises as Butler's _Sermons_ and _Serious Ca…
719 wordsSECTION 8Obstinate
'My sons, you have heard the truth of the gospel, that you must through many tribulations enter the Kingdom of God. When, therefore, you are come to the Fair and shall find fulfilled what I have here related, then remember your friend; quit yourselves like men, and commit the keeping of your souls to your God in well-d…
1,394 wordsSECTION 9Obstinate
But, most unfortunately, it is in the very best things of life that the true mulishness of the obstinate man most comes out. He shows worst in his home life and in the matters of religion. When our Obstinate was in love he was as sweet as honey and as soft as butter. His old friends that he used so to trample upon scar…
910 wordsSECTION 10Obstinate
John Bunyan's Obstinate, both by his conduct as well as by the etymology of his name, not only stands in the way of his own salvation, but he does all he can to stand in the way of other men setting out to salvation also. Obstinate set out after Christian to fetch him back by force, and if it had not been that he met h…
293 wordsSECTION 11Pliable
'He hath not root in himself.'--Our Lord. With one stroke of His pencil our Lord gives us this Flaxman-like outline of one of his well-known hearers. And then John Bunyan takes up that so expressive profile, and puts flesh and blood into it, till it becomes the well-known Pliable of _The Pilgrim's Progress_. We call t…
1,200 wordsSECTION 12Pliable
So much, then,--not enough, nor good enough--for our Lord's swift stroke at the heart of His hearers. But let us now pass on to Pliable, as he so soon and so completely discovers himself to us under John Bunyan's so skilful hand. Look well at our author's speaking portrait of a well-known man in Bedford who had no root…
1,026 wordsSECTION 13Pliable
'Glad I am, my good companion,' said Pliable, after the passage about the cherubim and the seraphim, and the golden crowns and the golden harps, 'it ravishes my very heart to hear all this. Come on, let us mend our pace.' This is delightful, this is perfect. How often have we ourselves heard these very words of challen…
668 wordsSECTION 14Help
'I was brought low, and He helped me.'--David. The Slough of Despond is one of John Bunyan's masterpieces. In his description of the slough, Bunyan touches his highest water-mark for humour, and pathos, and power, and beauty of language. If we did not have the English Bible in our own hands we would have to ask, as Lo…
723 wordsSECTION 15Help
Our pilgrim did not have such a good crossing as Mr. Fearing. Whether it was that the discharge from the city was deeper and fouler, or that the day was darker, or what, we are not told, but both Christian and Pliable were in a moment out of sight in the slough. They both wallowed, says their plain-spoken historian, in…
685 wordsSECTION 16Help
'Let no man, then, count me a fable maker, Nor made my name and credit a partaker Of their derision: what is here in view, Of mine own knowledge I dare say is true.' Sometimes, as with Christian at the slough, a man's way in life is all slashed up into sudden ditches and pitfalls out of the sins of his youth. His s…
728 wordsSECTION 17Help
Now, as might have been expected, there is a great deal said about all kinds of help in the Bible. After the help of God, of which the Bible and especially the more experimental Psalms are full, this fine name is then applied to many Scriptural persons, and on many Scriptural occasions. The first woman whom God Almight…
890 wordsSECTION 18Mr. Worldly-Wiseman
'Wise in this world.'--Paul. Mr. Worldly-Wiseman has a long history behind him on which we cannot now enter at any length. As a child, the little worldling, it was observed, took much after his secular father, but much more after his scheming mother. He was already a self-seeking, self-satisfied youth; and when he bec…
1,104 wordsSECTION 19Mr. Worldly-Wiseman
Mr. Worldly-Wiseman became positively eloquent and impressive and all but convincing as he went so graphically and cumulatively over all the sorrows that attended on the way to which this pilgrim was now setting his face. But, staggering as it all was, the man in rags and slime only smiled a sad and sobbing smile in an…
992 wordsSECTION 20Mr. Worldly-Wiseman
The wit and the humour and the satire of the rest of the scene must be fully enjoyed over the great book itself. The village named Morality, hard by the hill; that judicious man Legality, who dwells in the first house you come at after you have turned the hill; Civility, the pretty young man that Legality hath to his s…
930 wordsSECTION 21Goodwill, The Gatekeeper
'Goodwill.'--Luke 2. 14. 'So in process of time Christian got up to the gate. Now there was written over the gate, _Knock_, _and it shall be opened unto you_. He knocked, therefore, more than once or twice, saying, May I now enter here? when at last there came a grave person to the gate, named Goodwill, who asked him …
1,099 wordsSECTION 22Goodwill, The Gatekeeper
Not that his great gravity, with all the causes of it, ever made him a melancholy, a morose, a despairing, or even a desponding man. Far from that. The man of sorrows Himself sometimes rejoiced in spirit. Not sometimes only, but often He lifted up His heart and thanked His Father for the work His Father had given Him t…
1,599 wordsSECTION 23Goodwill, The Gatekeeper
Goodwill said all that in order to direct and to comfort the pilgrim; but that was not all that this good man said with that end. For, when Christian asked him if he could not help him off with his burden that was upon his back, he told him: 'As to thy burden, be content to bear it until thou comest to the place of del…
724 wordsSECTION 24The Interpreter
'An interpreter, one among a thousand.'--Elihu. We come to-night to the Interpreter's House. And since every minister of the gospel is an interpreter, and every evangelical church is an interpreter's house, let us gather up some of the precious lessons to ministers and to people with which this passage of the _Pilgrim…
655 wordsSECTION 25The Interpreter
2. And besides being built on the very best spot in all the land for its owner's purposes, every several room in that great house was furnished and fitted up for the entertainment and instruction of pilgrims. Every inch of that capacious and many-chambered house was given up to the delectation of pilgrims. The public r…
699 wordsSECTION 26The Interpreter
The significant rooms of that divine house instruct us also that all the lessons requisite for our salvation are not to be found in any one scripture or in any one sermon, but that all that is required by any pilgrim or any company of pilgrims should all be found in every minister's ministry as he leads his flock on fr…
884 wordsSECTION 27The Interpreter
4. And then with a sly stroke at us old ministers, our significant author points out to us how much better furnished the Interpreter's House was by the time Christiana and the boys visited it compared with that early time when Christian was entertained in it. Our pilgrim got far more in the Interpreter's House of delig…
707 wordsSECTION 28The Interpreter
6. 'Here have I seen things rare and profitable, . . . Then let me be Thankful, O good Interpreter, to thee.' Sydney Smith, with his usual sagacity, says that the last vice of the pulpit is to be uninteresting. Now, the Interpreter's House had this prime virtue in it, that it was all interesting. Do not our children…
391 wordsSECTION 29Passion
'A man subject to like passions as we are.'--James 5. 17. That was a very significant room in the Interpreter's House where our pilgrim saw Passion and Patience sitting each one in his chair. Passion was a young lad who seemed to our pilgrim to be much discontented. He was never satisfied. He would have all his good t…
1,029 wordsSECTION 30Passion
'On life's vast ocean diversely we sail, Reason the card, but passion is the gale.' And not Elijah only, as James says, and not Paul and Barnabas only, as they themselves said, were men of like passions with ourselves, but our Lord Himself was a man of like passions with us also. He took to Himself a true body, full …
940 wordsSECTION 31Passion
And if self-love is the fruitful mother of all our passions, then sensuality is surely her eldest son. Indeed, so shallow are we, and so shallow are our words, that when we speak of sinful passion most men instantly think of sensuality. There are so many seductive things that appeal to our appetites, and our appetites …
733 wordsSECTION 32Passion
Now, from all this let us lay it to heart that our sanctification and salvation lie in our mastery over all these and over many other passions that have not even been named. He is an accepted saint of God, who, taking his and other people's rags to God's mercy every day, every day also in God's strength grapples with, …
664 wordsSECTION 33Patience
'In your patience possess ye your souls.' (Revised Version: 'In your patience ye shall win your souls.')--Our Lord. 'I saw moreover in my dream that the Interpreter took the pilgrim by the hand, and had him into a little room, where sate two little children, each one in his chair. The name of the eldest was Passion a…
998 wordsSECTION 34Patience
What a beautiful, instructive, and even impressive sight it is to see a nurse patiently cherishing her children! How she has her eye and her heart at all their times upon them, till she never has any need to lay her hand upon them! Passion has no place in her little household, because patience fills all its own place a…
770 wordsSECTION 35Patience
3. 'Is patient with the bad' is one of the tributes of praise that is paid in the fine paraphrase to that heart that is full of the same love that is in God. A patient love to the unjust and the evil is one of the attributes and manifestations of the divine nature, as that nature is seen both in God and in all genuinel…
715 wordsSECTION 36Patience
5. And, then,--it is a sufficiently startling thing to say, but--we must learn to be patient with God also. All our patience, and all the exercises of it, if we think aright about it, all run up in the long-run into patience with God. But there are some exercises of patience that have to do directly and immediately wit…
825 wordsSECTION 37Simple, Sloth, And Presumption
'I saw moreover in my dream that Passion seemed to be much discontent, but Patience was very quiet. Then Christian asked, What is the reason of the discontent of Passion? The Interpreter answered, The governor of them would have him stay for his best things till the beginning of the next year; but he will have them all…
554 wordsSECTION 38Simple
Let us shake up Simple first and ask him what it was that laid him so soon and in such a plight and in such company in this bottom. It was not that which from his name we might at first think it was. It was not the weakness of his intellects, nor his youth, nor his inexperience. There is danger enough, no doubt, in all…
731 wordsSECTION 39Sloth
Sloth had a far better head than Simple had; but what of that when he made no better use of it? There are many able men who lie all their days in a sad bottom with the irons of indolence and inefficiency on their heels. We often envy them their abilities, and say about them, What might they not have done for themselves…
672 wordsSECTION 40Presumption
The greatest theologian of the Roman Catholic Church has made an induction and classification of sins that has often been borrowed by our Protestant and Puritan divines. His classification is made, as will be seen, on an ascending scale of guilt and aggravation. In the world of sin, he says, there are, first, sins of i…
718 wordsSECTION 41Presumption
Dr. Thomas Goodwin says somewhere that the worm that dieth not only comes to its sharpest sting and to its deadliest venom when it is hatched up under gospel light. The very light of nature itself greatly aggravates some of our sins. The light of our early education greatly aggravates others of our sins. But nothing wo…
274 wordsSECTION 42The Three Shining Ones At The Cross
'Salvation shall God appoint for walls.'--Isaiah. John Bunyan's autobiography, _Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners_, is the best of all our commentaries on _The Pilgrim's Progress_, and again to-night I shall have to fall back on that incomparable book. 'Now, I saw in my dream that the highway up which Christian …
872 wordsSECTION 43The Three Shining Ones At The Cross
The application of all that is surely self-evident. For our way in a holy life is always closely fenced up. It is far oftener a lonely way than otherwise. And the steepness, sternness, and loneliness of our way are all aggravated by the remembrance of our past sins and follies. They still, and more and more, lie upon o…
916 wordsSECTION 44The Three Shining Ones At The Cross
The third Shining One then came forward and set a mark on the forehead of this happy man. And it was a most ancient and a most honourable mark. For it was the same redeeming mark that was set by Moses upon the foreheads of the children of Israel when the Lord took them into covenant with Himself at the Passover in the …
981 wordsSECTION 45Formalist And Hypocrisy
But, as was said at the beginning, the _Grace Abounding_ is the best of all our commentaries on _The Pilgrim's Progress_. As thus here also: 'Now had I an evidence, as I thought, of my salvation from heaven, with many golden seals thereon, all hanging in my sight. Now could I remember this manifestation and that other …
735 wordsSECTION 46Formalist And Hypocrisy
A formalist is not yet a hypocrite exactly, but he is ready now and well on the way at any moment to become a hypocrite. As soon now as some temptation shall come to him to make appear another and a better man than he really is: when in some way it becomes his advantage to seem to other people to be a spiritual man: wh…
1,483 wordsSECTION 47Formalist And Hypocrisy
Now, the first step to the cure of all such hypocrisy, and to the salvation of our souls, is to know that we are hypocrites, and to know also what that is in which we are most hypocritical. Well, there are two absolutely infallible tests of a true hypocrite,--tests warranted to unmask, expose, and condemn the most fini…
674 wordsSECTION 48Formalist And Hypocrisy
Dr. Pusey says somewhere that the perfect hypocrite is the man who has the truth of God in his mind, but is without the love of God in his heart. 'Truth without love,' says that saintly scholar, 'makes a finished Pharisee.' Now we Scottish and Free Church people believe we have the truth, if any people on the face of t…
349 wordsSECTION 49Timorous And Mistrust
'There is a lion in the way.'--The Slothful Man. 'I must venture.'--Christian. 'I at any rate must venture,' said Christian to Timorous and Mistrust. 'Whatever you may do I must venture, even if the lions you speak of should pull me to pieces. I, for one, shall never go back. To go back is nothing but death; to go fo…
818 wordsSECTION 50Timorous And Mistrust
Then, again, our salvation itself sometimes, our true sanctification, puts on a lion's skin and not unsuccessfully imitates an angry lion's roar. Some saving grace that up till now we have been fatally lacking in lies under the very lip of that lion we see standing straight in our way. God in His wisdom so orders our s…
692 wordsSECTION 51Timorous And Mistrust
So I saw in my dream that he made haste and went forward, that if possible he might get lodging in the house called Beautiful that stood by the highway side. Now, before he had gone far he entered into a very narrow passage which was about a furlong off from the porter's lodge, and looking very narrowly before him as h…
671 wordsSECTION 52Prudence {1}
'Let a man examine himself.'--Paul. Let a man examine himself, says the apostle to the Corinthians, and so let him eat of that bread and drink of that cup. And thus it was, that before the pilgrim was invited to sit down at the supper table in the House Beautiful, quite a number of most pointed and penetrating questio…
702 wordsSECTION 53Prudence {1}
Let a man examine himself, said Paul. What about your inward and sinful cogitations? asked Prudence. How long shall thy vain thoughts lodge within thee? demanded the bold prophet. Now, my brethren, what have you to say to that particular accusation? Do you know what vain thoughts are? Are you at all aware what multitud…
707 wordsSECTION 54Prudence {1}
And, then, we who are true pilgrims, are of all men the most miserable, on account of that 'failing,' that rankling sting in our hearts, when any of our friends has more of this world's possessions, honours, and praises than we have, that pain at our neighbour's pleasure, that sickness at his health, that hunger for wh…
650 wordsSECTION 55Prudence {1}
'But,' replied Prudence, 'do you not find sometimes as if those things were vanquished which at other times are your perplexity?' 'Yes, but that is but seldom; but they are to me golden hours in which such things happen to me.' 'Can you remember by what means you find your annoyances at times as if they were vanquished…
489 wordsSECTION 56Charity
'I will walk within my house with a perfect heart.'--David. There can be nobody here to-night so stark stupid as to suppose that the pilgrim had run away from home and left his wife and children to the work- house. There have been wiseacres who have found severe fault with John Bunyan because he made his Puritan pilgr…
843 wordsSECTION 57Charity
But, especially, said Charity, as your boys grew up--I think you said that you had four boys and no girls?--well, then, all the more, as they grew up, you should have taken occasion to talk to them about yourself. Did your little boy never petition you for a story about yourself; and as he grew up did you never confide…
1,225 wordsSECTION 58Charity
Why, then, with such a father and with such makable boys, why was this household brought so near everlasting shipwreck? It was the mother that did it. In one word, it was the wife and the mother that did it. It was the mistress of the house who wrought the mischief here. She was a poor woman, she was a poor man's wife,…
674 wordsSECTION 59Shame
Have you a family? Are you a married man? Or, if not, do you hope one day to be? Then attend betimes to what Charity says to Christian in the House Beautiful, and not less to what he says back again to her. 'Whosoever shall be ashamed of Me, and of My words, of him shall the Son of Man be ashamed, when He shall come …
750 wordsSECTION 60Shame
Religion altogether, but especially all personal religion, said Shame to Faithful, is an unmanly business. There is a certain touch of smallness and pitifulness, he said, in all religion, but especially in experimental religion. It brings a man into junctures and into companionships, and it puts offices and endurances …
1,209 wordsSource & rights
Public domain in the USA; original historical text digitized by Project Gutenberg.
Project Gutenberg source record →
Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.