PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
Bunyan Characters (2nd Series)
Whyte, Alexander, 1836-1921 · 86,217 words · 109 reading sections
Ignorance
Transcribed from the 1894 Oliphant Anderson and Ferrier edition by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk BUNYAN CHARACTERS--SECOND SERIES Lectures delivered in St. George's Free Church Edinburgh By Alexander Whyte, D.D. "I was alive without the law once."--_Paul_. "I was now a brisk talker also myself in the matt…
1,051 wordsSECTION 2Ignorance
Now (what think you?), was it not a very bold thing in John Bunyan, whose own descent was of such a low and inconsiderable generation, his father's house being of that rank that is meanest and most despised of all the families in the land--was it not almost too bold in such a clown to take such a gentleman-scholar as S…
1,007 wordsSECTION 3Ignorance
And then, as a consequence, being wholly ignorant of his own corruption and condemnation in the sight of God, this miserable man must remain ignorant and outside of all that God has done in Christ for corrupt and condemned men. "I believe that Christ died for sinners and that I shall be justified before God from the cu…
775 wordsSECTION 4Little-Faith
"Methinks in this God speaks, No tinker hath such power." "O thou of little faith."--_Our Lord_. Little-Faith, let it never be forgotten, was, all the time, a good man. With all his mistakes about himself, with his sad misadventure, with all his loss of blood and of money, and with his whole after-lifetime of dolefu…
743 wordsSECTION 5Little-Faith
"What Adam did amiss, Turned to our endless bliss; O happy sin, which to atone, Drew Filial God to leave His throne." And John Calvin, the soberest of men, supports Augustine, the most impulsive of men, in saying the same thing. All things which happen to the saints are so overruled by God that what the world regar…
867 wordsSECTION 6Little-Faith
But, to proceed,--the thing was this. At this passage there comes down from Broadway-gate a lane called Dead-Man's-lane, so called because of the murders that are commonly done there. And this Little-Faith going on pilgrimage, as we now do, chanced to sit down there and fell fast asleep. Yes; the thing was this: This g…
745 wordsSECTION 7Little-Faith
Most unfortunately there was no good Samaritan with his beast on the road that day to take the half-dead man to an inn. And thus it was that Little-Faith was left to lie in his blood till there was almost no more blood left in him. Till at last, coming a little to himself, he made a shift to scrabble on his way. When h…
699 wordsSECTION 8Little-Faith
It would have been far more becoming and far more profitable if Christian and Hopeful, instead of falling out of temper and calling one another bad names over the sad case of Little-Faith, had tried to tell one another why that unhappy pilgrim's faith was so small, and how both their own faith and his might from that d…
621 wordsSECTION 9The Flatterer
"A man that flattereth his neighbour spreadeth a net for his feet."--_The Wise Man_. Both Ignorance and Little-Faith would have had their revenge and satisfaction upon Christian and Hopeful had they seen those two so Pharisaical old men taken in the Flatterer's net. For it was nothing else but the swaggering pride of…
794 wordsSECTION 10The Flatterer
All good literature, both sacred and profane, both ancient and modern, is full of the Flatterer. Let me not, protests Elihu in his powerful speech in the book of Job, let me not accept any man's person; neither let me give flattering titles unto man, lest in so doing my Maker should soon take me away. And the Psalmist …
685 wordsSECTION 11The Flatterer
"The worth of these three kingdoms I defy To lure me to the baseness of a lie; And of all lies (be that one poet's boast), The lie that flatters I abhor the most." Now, praise, which is one of the best and sweetest things in human life, so soon passes over into flattery, which is one of the worst things, that somet…
744 wordsSECTION 12The Flatterer
If you would be a man at all, not to speak of a Christian man, starve this appetite till you have quite extirpated it. You will never be safe from it as long as it stirs within you. Extirpate it! Extirpate it! You will never know true self-respect and you will never deserve to know it, till you have wholly extirpated y…
611 wordsSECTION 13Atheist
" . . . without God [literally, atheists] in the world."--_Paul_. "Yonder is a man with his back toward Zion, and he is coming to meet us. So he drew nearer and nearer, and at last came up to them. His name was Atheist, and he asked them whither they were going? We are going to the Mount Zion, they answered. Then Athe…
809 wordsSECTION 14Atheist
1. One thing the life-long admiration of John Bunyan's books has helped to kindle and burn into my mind and my imagination is this: What a universe of things is the heart of man! Were there nothing else in the heart of man but all the places and all the persons and all the adventures that John Bunyan saw in his sleep, …
1,221 wordsSECTION 15Atheist
"Fool, said my Muse to me, look in thy heart and write." And John Bunyan looked into his own deep and holy heart, and out of it he composed this incident of Atheist. 3. It may not be out of place at this point to look for a moment at some of the things that agitate, stir up, and make the secret atheism of our hearts …
689 wordsSECTION 16Atheist
When the church and her ministers, when the Scriptures and their anomalies, and when the faults and failings of Christian men are made the subject of mockery and laughter, the reverence, the fear, the awe, the respect that all enter so largely into religion, and especially into the religion of young people, is too easi…
443 wordsSECTION 17Hopeful
"We are saved by hope."--_Paul_ Up till the time when Christian and Faithful passed through Vanity Fair on their way to the Celestial City, Hopeful was one of the most light- minded men in all that light-minded town. By his birth, and both on his father's and his mother's side, Hopeful was, to begin with, a youth of a…
848 wordsSECTION 18Hopeful
What were the things, asked Christian of his young companion, that first led you to leave off the vanities of the fair and to think to be a pilgrim? Many things, replied Hopeful. Sometimes if I did but meet a good man in the street. Or if mine head began unaccountably, or mine heart, to ache. Or if some one of my compa…
692 wordsSECTION 19Hopeful
Then, again, no one can read Hopeful's remarkable history without discovering this about him, that he showed best in adversity and distress, just as he showed worst in deliverance and prosperity. It is a fine lesson in Christian hope to descend into Giant Despair's dungeon and hear the older pilgrim groaning and the yo…
666 wordsSECTION 20Hopeful
To kindle then, to quicken, and to anchor your hope, my brethren, may I have God's help to speak for a little longer to your hearts concerning this neglected grace! For, what is hope? Hope is a passion of the soul, wise or foolish, to be ashamed of or to be proud of, just according to the thing hoped for, and just acco…
922 wordsSECTION 21Hopeful
And then, as if to justify that hope, there always come with it such sanctifying influences and such sure results. The hope that you are one day to awaken in the Divine likeness will make you lie down on your bed every night in self-examination, repentance, prayer, and praise. The hope that your eyes are one day to see…
253 wordsSECTION 22Temporary
"They are they, which, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and have no root, which for a while believe, and in time of temptation fall away."--_Our Lord_. "Well, then, did you not know about ten years ago one Temporary in your parts who was a forward man in religion? Know him! replied the other. Yes. For my h…
859 wordsSECTION 23Temporary
2. Guilt, again, Hopeful went on, and to meditate terror, are so grievous to most men, that they rather choose such ways as will but harden their hearts still more and more. You all know what it is to meditate terror? "Thine heart shall meditate terror," says the prophet, "when thou sayest to thyself, who among us shal…
892 wordsSECTION 24Temporary
3. But even where the consciences of such men are occasionally awakened, proceeds Hopeful, in his so searching discovery of Temporaries, yet their minds are not changed. There you are pretty near the business, replied his fellow; for the bottom of all is, for want of a change of their mind and will. Now, one would have…
874 wordsSECTION 25Temporary
Now, to conclude with a word of admission, and, bound up with it, a word of encouragement. After all that has been said, I fully admit that we are all Temporaries to begin with. We all cool down from our first heat in religion. We all halt from our first spurt. We all turn back from faith and from duty and from privile…
484 wordsSECTION 26Secret
"The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him."--_David_. A truly religious life is always a secret life: it is a life hid, as Paul has it, with Christ in God. The secret of the Lord, says the Psalmist, is with them that fear Him. And thus it is that when men begin to fear God, both their hearts and their lives a…
962 wordsSECTION 27Secret
2. And from that day a long succession of secret providences began to enter Christiana's life, till, as time went on, her whole life was filled full of secret providences. And not her present life only, but her discoveries of God's secret providences towards her and hers became retrospective also, till both her own par…
669 wordsSECTION 28Secret
"God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform; He plants His footsteps in the sea, And rides upon the storm. "Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take, The clouds ye so much dread Are big with mercy, and shall break In blessings on your head. "Blind unbelief is sure to err, And scan his work in vain; God…
918 wordsSECTION 29Secret
5. But perhaps the best and most infallible evidence we can have of the truth of our religion in this life is in the steady increase of our secret sinfulness. Christiana had no trouble with her own wicked heart so long as she was a woman of a wicked life. But directly she became a new creature, her heart began to swarm…
714 wordsSECTION 30Mrs. Timorous
6. The half cannot be told of the guilt and the corruption, the pain and the shame and the manifold misery of secret sin; but all that will be told, believed, and understood by all men long before the full magnificence of their sanctification, and the superb transcendence of their blessedness, will even begin to be des…
806 wordsSECTION 31Mrs. Timorous
2. The thing that positively terrified Mrs. Timorous at the very thought of setting out with Christiana that morning was that intolerable way in which Christiana had begun to go back upon her past life as a wife and a mother. Christiana could not hide her deep distress, and, indeed, she did not much try. Such were the …
765 wordsSECTION 32Mrs. Timorous
3. "Having had little to do this morning," said Mrs. Timorous to Mrs. Light-mind, "I went to give Christiana a visit." "Law," I read in his most impressive Life, "by this time was well turned fifty, but he rose as early and was as soon at his desk as when he was still a new, enthusiastic, and scrupulously methodical st…
936 wordsSECTION 33Mrs. Timorous
5. "The further I go the more danger I meet with," said old Timorous, the father, to Christian, when Christian asked him on the Hill Difficulty why he was running the wrong way. "I, too, was going to the City of Zion," he said; "but the further on I go the more danger I meet with." And, in saying that, the old runaway …
947 wordsSECTION 34Mercy
"Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy."--_Our Lord_. The first time that we see Mercy she is standing one sunshine morning knocking along with another at Christiana's door. And all that we afterwards hear of Mercy might be described as, A morning call and all that came of it; or, How a godly matron le…
738 wordsSECTION 35Mercy
1. Well, then, to begin with, there was something quite queen-like, something absolutely commanding, about Christiana's look and manner, as well as about all she said and did that morning. Mercy's morning companion had all the advantages that dress and equipage could give her; while Christiana stood in the middle of th…
686 wordsSECTION 36Mercy
3. Before Mrs. Timorous was well out of the door, Mercy had already plucked off her gloves, and hung up her morning bonnet on a nail in the wall, so much did her heart heave to help the cumbered widow and her fatherless children. "If thou wilt, I will hire thee," said Christiana, "and thou shalt go with me as my servan…
1,139 wordsSECTION 37Mercy
5. John Bunyan must be held responsible for the strong dash of romance that he so boldly throws into Mercy's memoirs. But I shall postpone Mr. Brisk and his love-making and his answer to another lecture. I shall not enter on Mercy's love matters here at all, but shall leave them to be read at home by those who like to …
459 wordsSECTION 38Mr. Brisk
"Be ye not unequally yoked."--_Paul_. There were some severe precisians in John Bunyan's day who took the objection to the author of the _Pilgrim's Progress_ that he sometimes laughed too loud. "One may (I think) say, both he laughs and cries, May well be guessed at by his watery eyes. Some things are of that natur…
1,039 wordsSECTION 39Mr. Brisk
"Now, Mercy was of a fair countenance, and, therefore, all the more alluring." But her fair countenance was really no temptation to her. "Sit still, my daughter," said Naomi to Ruth in the Old Testament. And it was entirely Mercy's maidenly nature to sit still. Even before she had come to her full womanhood under Chris…
682 wordsSECTION 40Mr. Brisk
"Well," said Mercy proudly, "if nobody will have me, I will die a maid, or my conditions shall be to me as a husband. For I cannot change my nature, and to have one that lies cross to me in this,--that I purpose never to admit of as long as I live." By this time, though she is still little more than a girl, Mercy had h…
718 wordsSECTION 41Mr. Brisk
But some every whit as good women as Mercy was have purposed as nobly and as firmly as Mercy did, and yet have wakened up, when it was too late, to find that, with all their high ideals, and with all their prudence, their husband is not in himself, and is not to them, what they at one time felt sure he would be. Mercy …
374 wordsSECTION 42Mr. Skill
"The vine of Sodom."--_Moses_. With infinite delicacy John Bunyan here tells us the sad story of Matthew's sore sickness at the House Beautiful. The cause of the sore sickness, its symptoms, its serious nature, and its complete cures are all told with the utmost plainness; but, at the same time, with the most exquisit…
745 wordsSECTION 43Mr. Skill
1. Now, on this almost too closely veiled case I shall venture to remark, in the first place, that multitudes of boys grow up into young men, and go out of our most godly homes and into a whole world of temptation without due warning being given them as to where they are going. "I do marvel that none did warn him of it…
1,437 wordsSECTION 44Mr. Skill
4. As he went on pounding and preparing his well-approved pill, the (at the bottom of his heart) kind old leech talked encouragingly to the mother and to her sick son, and said: "Come, come; after all, do not he too much cast down. Had we lived in the days of the old medicine, I would have been compounding a purge out …
765 wordsSECTION 45Mr. Skill
6. "Pray, sir, make me up twelve boxes of them; for if I can get these, I will never take other physic." "These same pills," he replied, "are good also to prevent diseases as well as to cure when one is sick. But, good woman, thou must take these pills no other way but as I have prescribed; for if you do, they will do …
267 wordsSECTION 46The Shepherd Boy
"He humbled Himself."--_Paul_. "Now as they were going along and talking, they espied a boy feeding his father's sheep. The boy was in very mean clothes, but of a very fresh and well-favoured countenance, and as he sat by himself he sang. Hark, said Mr. Greatheart, to what the shepherd boy saith. So they hearkened and…
727 wordsSECTION 47The Shepherd Boy
He that is down, needs fear no fall. The whole scenery of the surrounding valley is set before us in that single eloquent stanza. The sweet-voiced boy sits well off the wayside as he sings his song to himself. He looks up to the hill-tops that hang over his valley, and every shining tooth of those many hill-tops has f…
803 wordsSECTION 48The Shepherd Boy
I am content with what I have, Little be it, or much: And, Lord, contentment still I crave, Because thou savest such. The only thing this sweet singer is discontented with is his own contentment. He will not be content as long as he has a shadow of discontent left in his heart. And how blessed is such holy disconte…
715 wordsSECTION 49The Shepherd Boy
Take this test for one, then. Explain this text to me: Phil. ii. 3--"In lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than himself." Explain and illustrate that. Not from a commentary, but straight out from your own heart. What does your heart make of that scripture? Does your heart turn away from that scripture almos…
748 wordsSECTION 50The Shepherd Boy
And, then, how any man with a man's heart in his bosom for a single day can escape being the chief of sinners, and consequently the humblest of men for all the rest of his life on earth, passes my comprehension! How a spark of pride can live in such a hell as every human heart is would be past belief, did we not know t…
345 wordsSECTION 51Old Honest
"An honest heart."--_Our Lord_. Next tell them of Old Honest, who you found With his white hairs treading the pilgrim's ground; Yea, tell them how plain-hearted this man was, How after his good Lord he bare his cross: Perhaps with some grey head this may prevail, With Christ to fall in love, and sin bewail. You …
888 wordsSECTION 52Old Honest
1. Now, let us try to learn two or three lessons to-night from Old Honest, his history, his character, and his conversation. And, to begin with, let all those attend to Old Honest who are slow in the uptake in the things of religion. O fools and slow of heart! exclaimed our Lord at the two travellers to Emmaus. And thi…
829 wordsSECTION 53Old Honest
2. In the second place,--on this fine old pilgrim's birth and boyhood and youth. The apostle says that there is no real difference between one of us and another; and what he says on that subject must be true. No; there is really no difference compared with the Celestial City whether a pilgrim is born in Stupidity, in D…
662 wordsSECTION 54Old Honest
3. At the same time, honesty is not holiness; and no one knew that better than did this honest old saint. When any one spoke to Old Honest about his blameless youth, the look in his eye made them keep at arm's- length as he growled out that without holiness no man shall see God! Writing from Aberdeen to John Bell of He…
709 wordsSECTION 55Old Honest
5. "Then it came to pass a while after that there was a post in the town that inquired for Mr. Honest. So he came to his house where he was, and delivered to his hands these lines, Thou art commanded to be ready against this day seven night, to present thyself before thy Lord at His Father's house. And for a token that…
463 wordsSECTION 56Mr. Fearing
"Happy is the man that feareth alway."--_Solomon_ For humour, for pathos, for tenderness, for acute and sympathetic insight at once into nature and grace, for absolutely artless literary skill, and for the sweetest, most musical, and most exquisite English, show me another passage in our whole literature to compare wi…
1,105 wordsSECTION 57Mr. Fearing
2. It was a sight to see poor Mr. Fearing at the wicket gate. "Knock, and it shall be opened unto you." He read the inscription over the gate a thousand times, but every time he read it his slough-filled heart said to him, Yes, but that is not for such as you. Pilgrim after pilgrim came up the way, read the writing, kn…
757 wordsSECTION 58Mr. Fearing
4. "Dumpish at the House Beautiful" is his biographer's not very respectful comment on the margin of the history. There were too many merry-hearted damsels running up and down that house for Mr. Fearing. He could not lift his eyes but one of those too-tripping maidens was looking at him. He could not stir a foot but he…
784 wordsSECTION 59Mr. Fearing
5. As to the Hill Difficulty, that was no stick at all to Mr. Fearing; and as for the lions, he pulled their whiskers and snapped his fingers in their dumfoundered faces. For you must know that Mr. Fearing's trouble was not about such things as these at all; his only fear was about his acceptance at last. He beat Mr. G…
1,001 wordsSECTION 60Mr. Fearing
7. "But when he was come at the river where was no bridge, there, again, Mr. Fearing was in a heavy case. Now, he said, he should be drowned for ever, and so never see that Face with comfort that he had come so many miles to behold. And here also I took notice of what was very remarkable; the water of that river was lo…
493 wordsSource & rights
Public domain in the USA; original historical text digitized by Project Gutenberg.
Project Gutenberg source record →
Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.