PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
Bunyan Characters (3rd Series)
Whyte, Alexander, 1836-1921 · 83,958 words · 102 reading sections
Chapter I--The Book
Transcribed from the 1895 Oliphant, Anderson and Ferrier edition by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk BUNYAN CHARACTERS--THIRD SERIES Lectures Delivered in St. George's Free Church Edinburgh By Alexander Whyte, D.D. '--the book of the wars of the Lord.'--_Moses_. John Bunyan's _Holy War_ was first published i…
748 wordsSECTION 2Chapter I--The Book
It gives by far its noblest interest to Dante's noble book that we have Dante himself in every page of his book. Dante is taken down into Hell, he is then led up through _Purgatory_, and after that still up and up into the very Paradise of God. But that hell all the time is the hell that Dante had dug and darkened and …
1,018 wordsSECTION 3Chapter I--The Book
And now take these three forewarnings and precautions. 1. First:--All who come here on these coming Sabbath evenings will not understand the _Holy War_ all at once, and many will not understand it at all. And little blame to them, and no wonder. For, fully to understand this deep and intricate book demands far more mi…
707 wordsSECTION 4Chapter Ii--The City Of Mansoul And Its Cinque Ports
'Set down my name, sir,' said a man of a very stout countenance to him who had the inkhorn at the outer gate. At which those who walked upon the top of the palace broke out in a very pleasant voice, 'Come in, come in; Eternal glory thou shalt win.' We have no longer, after what we have come through, any such stoutne…
981 wordsSECTION 5Chapter Ii--The City Of Mansoul And Its Cinque Ports
And then, as for the wall of the city, hear our excellent historian's own words about that. 'The wall of the town was well built,' so he says. 'Yea, so fast and firm was it knit and compact together that, had it not been for the townsmen themselves, it could not have been shaken or broken down for ever. For here lay th…
1,205 wordsSECTION 6Chapter Ii--The City Of Mansoul And Its Cinque Ports
But, my brethren, lay this well, and as never before, to heart--this, namely, that when you thus begin to keep any gate for Christ, your King and Captain and Better-self,--Ear-gate, or Eye-gate, or Mouth-gate, or any other gate--you will have taken up a task that shall have no end with you in this life. Till you begin …
263 wordsSECTION 7Chapter Iii--Ear-Gate
'Take heed what ye hear.'--_Our Lord in Mark_. 'Take heed how you hear.'--_Our Lord in Luke_. This famous town of Mansoul had five gates, in at which to come, out at which to go, and these were made likewise answerable to the walls--to wit, impregnable, and such as could never be opened nor forced but by the will and…
662 wordsSECTION 8Chapter Iii--Ear-Gate
2. One would almost think that the scornful apostle had the Garden of Eden in his eye when he speaks so bitterly to Timothy of a class of people who are cursed with 'itching ears.' Eve's ears itched unappeasably for the devil's promised secret; and we have all inherited our first mother's miserable curiosity. How eager…
668 wordsSECTION 9Chapter Iii--Ear-Gate
4. As we work our way through the various developments and vicissitudes of the Holy War we shall find Ear-gate in it and in ourselves passing through many unexpected experiences; now held by one side and now by another. And we find the same succession of vicissitudes set forth in Holy Scripture. If you pay any attentio…
876 wordsSECTION 10Chapter Iv--Eye-Gate
Take heed what you hear, and take heed how you hear. 'Mine eye affecteth mine heart.'--_Jeremiah_. 'Think, in the first place,' says the eloquent author of the _Five Gateways of Knowledge_, 'how beautiful the human eye is. The eyes of many of the lower animals are, doubtless, very beautiful. You must all have admired…
879 wordsSECTION 11Chapter Iv--Eye-Gate
1. Turning then, to the prophets and proverb-makers of Israel, and then to the New Testament for the true teaching on the eye, I come, in the first place, on that so pungent saying of Solomon that 'the eyes of a fool are in the ends of the earth.' Look at that born fool, says Solomon, who has his eyes and his heart com…
909 wordsSECTION 12Chapter Iv--Eye-Gate
3. 'Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee.' Now, if you wish both to preserve your eyes, and to escape the everlasting fires at the same time, attend to this text. For this is almost as good as plucking out your two eyes; indeed, it is almost the very same thing. Solomon shall sp…
877 wordsSECTION 13Chapter Iv--Eye-Gate
5. And then there is the Pauline eye. An eye, however, that Job would have shared with Paul and with the Corinthian Church had the patriarch been privileged to live in our New Testament day. Ever since the Holy Ghost with His anointing oil fell on us at Pentecost, says the apostle, we have had an eye by means of which …
637 wordsSECTION 14Chapter V--The King'S Palace
'The palace is not for man, but for the Lord God.'--_David_. 'Now, there is in this gallant country a fair and delicate town, a corporation, called Mansoul: a town for its building so curious, for its situation so commodious, for its privileges so advantageous, that I may say of it, there is not its equal under the wh…
792 wordsSECTION 15Chapter V--The King'S Palace
2. For fame and for state a palace, while for strength it might be called a castle. In sufficiently ancient times the king's palace was always a castle also. David's palace on Mount Zion was as much a military fortress as a royal residence; and King Priam's palace was the protection both of itself and of the whole of t…
885 wordsSECTION 16Chapter V--The King'S Palace
4. And for largeness a place so copious as to contain all the world. Over against the word 'copious' Bunyan hangs for a key, Ecclesiastes third and eleventh; and under it Miss Peacock adds this as a note--'_Copious_, spacious. Old French, _copieux_; Latin, _copiosus_, plentiful.' The human heart, as we have already rea…
809 wordsSECTION 17Chapter V--The King'S Palace
'O come to my heart, Lord Jesus, There is room in my heart for Thee. 5. 'Madame,' said a holy solitary to Madame Guyon in her misery--'Madame, you are disappointed and perplexed because you seek without what you have within. Accustom yourself to seek for God in your own heart and you will always find Him there.' From…
623 wordsSECTION 18Chapter Vi--My Lord Willbewill
--'to will is present with me.'--_Paul_ There is a large and a learned literature on the subject of the will. There is a philosophical and a theological, and there is a religious and an experimental literature on the will. Jonathan Edwards's well-known work stands out conspicuously at the head of the philosophical and…
1,051 wordsSECTION 19Chapter Vi--My Lord Willbewill
2. Let that, then, suffice for this man's name and nature, and let us look at him now when his name and his nature have both become evil; that is to say, when Willbewill has become Illwill. You can imagine; no, you cannot imagine unless you already know, how evil, and how set upon evil, Illwill was. His whole mind, we …
1,016 wordsSECTION 20Chapter Vi--My Lord Willbewill
3. But, bad enough as all that is, the half has not been told, and never will be told in this life. Butler has a passage that has long stumbled me, and it stumbles me the more the longer I live and study him and observe myself. 'Resentment,' he says, in a very deep and a very serious passage--'Resentment being out of t…
904 wordsSECTION 21Chapter Vi--My Lord Willbewill
5. 'Now, if I do that I would not,' adds the apostle, extricating himself and giving himself fair-play and his simple due among all his misery and self-accusation--'Now, if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.' Or, again, as William Law has it: 'All our natural evil ceases to …
755 wordsSECTION 22Chapter Vii--Self-Love
'This know, that men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, unthankful, without natural affection, truce-breakers, false accusers, traitors, heady, high-minded: from all such turn away.'--_Paul_. 'Pray, sir, said Academicus, tell me more plainly just what this self of ours actually is. Self…
1,064 wordsSECTION 23Chapter Vii--Self-Love
2. 'Self-love has made us all malicious,' says John Calvin. We are Calvinists, were we to call any man master. But we are to call no man master, and least of all in the matters of the heart. Every man must be his own philosopher, his own moralist, and his own theologian in the matters of the heart. He who has a heart i…
653 wordsSECTION 24Chapter Vii--Self-Love
3. 'Myself is my own worst enemy,' says Abbe Grou. That is to say, we may have enemies who hate us more than we hate ourselves, and enemies who would hurt us, if they could, as much as we hurt ourselves; but the Abbe's point is that they cannot. And he is right. No man has ever hurt me as I have hurt myself. There are …
935 wordsSECTION 25Chapter Vii--Self-Love
5. 'Oh that I were free, then, of myself,' wrote Samuel Rutherford from Aberdeen in 1637 to John Ferguson of Ochiltree. 'What need we all have to be ransomed and redeemed from that master-tyrant, that cruel and lawless lord, ourself! Even when I am most out of myself, and am best serving Christ, I have a squint eye on …
732 wordsSECTION 26Chapter Vii--Self-Love
2. Old Mr. Prejudice. Now, there is a golden passage in Jonathan Edwards's _Diary_ that all old men should lay well to heart and conscience. 'I observe,' Edwards enters, 'that old men seldom have any advantage of new discoveries, because these discoveries are beside a way of thinking they have been long used to. Resolv…
768 wordsSECTION 27Chapter Vii--Self-Love
4. Old, angry, and ill-conditioned. Ill-conditioned is an old-fashioned word almost gone out of date. But, all the same, it is a very expressive, and to us to-night a quite indispensable word. An ill-conditioned man is a man of an in-bred, cherished, and confirmed ill- nature. His heart, which was a sufficiently bad he…
1,031 wordsSECTION 28Chapter Vii--Self-Love
6. 'It is the work of a philosopher,' says Addison in one of his best _Spectators_, 'to be every day subduing his passions and laying aside his prejudices.' We are not philosophers, but we shall be enrolled in the foremost ranks of philosophy if we imitate such philosophers in their daily work, as we must do and shall …
614 wordsSECTION 29Chapter Ix--Captain Anything
'I am made all things to all men . . . I please all men in all things.'--_Paul_ Captain Anything came originally from the ancient town of Fair-speech. Fair-speech had many royal bounties and many special privileges bestowed upon it, and Captain Anything and his family had come to many titles and to great riches in t…
686 wordsSECTION 30Chapter Ix--Captain Anything
2. 'What religion is he of?' asks Dean Swift. 'He is an Anythingarian,' is the answer, 'for he makes his self-interest the sole standard of his life and doctrine.' And Archbishop Leighton, a very different churchman from the bitter author of the _Polite Conversations_, is equally contemptuous toward the self-seeker in …
672 wordsSECTION 31Chapter Ix--Captain Anything
4. 'I am made all things to all men, and I please all men in all things.' One would almost think that was Captain Anything himself, in a frank, cynical, and self-censorious moment. But if you will look it up you will see that it was a very different man. The words are the words of Anything, but the heart behind the wor…
877 wordsSECTION 32Chapter Ix--Captain Anything
Well, now, I gather out of all that this great lesson: that it is, to begin with, a mere matter of temperament, or what William Law would call a mere matter of complexion and sensibility, whether, to begin with, a man is hard, and dry, and narrow, and stiff, and proud, and scornful, and cruel; or again, whether he is s…
798 wordsSECTION 33Chapter X--Clip-Promise
' . . . the promise made of none effect.'--_Paul_ Toward the end of the thirteenth century Edward the First, the English Justinian, brought a select colony of artists from Italy to England and gave them a commission to execute their best coinage for the English Mint. Deft and skilful as those artists were, the work th…
976 wordsSECTION 34Chapter X--Clip-Promise
The grace of God is like a bullion mass of purest gold, and then Jesus Christ is the great ingot of that gold, and then Moses, and David, and Isaiah, and Hosea, and Paul, and Peter, and John are the inspired artists who have commission to take both bullion and ingot, and out of them to cut, and beat, and smelt, and sha…
911 wordsSECTION 35Chapter X--Clip-Promise
3. 'Go out,' said the Lord of Mansoul, 'and apprehend Clip-Promise and bring him before me.' And they did so. 'Go down to Edinburgh to-night, and go to the door of such and such a church, and, as he comes out arrest Clip-the-Commandments, for he has heard My word all this day again but will not do it.' Where would you …
1,196 wordsSECTION 36Chapter Xi--Stiff Mr. Loth-To-Stoop
6. But I see I must clip off my last point with you, which was to tell you what you already know only too well, and that is, what terrible shears a bad conscience is armed with, and what havoc she makes at all ages of a poor sinner's Bible. But you can spare that head. You can preach on that text to yourselves far bett…
789 wordsSECTION 37Chapter Xi--Stiff Mr. Loth-To-Stoop
2. And then our so truthful and so fertile author goes on to give us Loth-to-stoop as a half-saved sinner; a sinner, that is, trying to make his own terms with God about his full salvation. Through three most powerful pages we see stiff old Loth-to-stoop engaged in beating down God's unalterable terms of salvation, and…
651 wordsSECTION 38Chapter Xi--Stiff Mr. Loth-To-Stoop
3. And speaking of A Kempis, and having lately read some of his most apposite chapters, such as that on the Holy Fathers and that on Obedience and Subjection, leads me on to look at Loth-to-stoop when he enters the sacred ministry, as he sometimes does. When a half-converted, half-subdued, half-saved sinner gets himsel…
852 wordsSECTION 39Chapter Xii--That Varlet Ill-Pause, The Devil'S Orator
'I made haste and delayed not.'--_David_. John Bunyan shall himself introduce, describe, and characterise this varlet, this devil's ally and accomplice, this ancient enemy of Mansoul, whose name is Ill-pause. Well, this same Ill-pause, says our author, was the orator of Diabolus on all difficult occasions, nor took Di…
1,381 wordsSECTION 40Chapter Xii--That Varlet Ill-Pause, The Devil'S Orator
3. 'I was always pleased,' says Calvin, 'with that saying of Chrysostom, "The foundation of our philosophy is humility"; and yet more pleased with that of Augustine: "As," says he, "the rhetorician being asked, What was the first thing in the rules of eloquence? he answered, Pronunciation; what was the second? Pronunci…
858 wordsSECTION 41Chapter Xii--That Varlet Ill-Pause, The Devil'S Orator
4. 'We seldom overcome any one vice perfectly,' complains A Kempis. And, again, 'If only every new year we would root out but one vice.' Well, now, what do you say to that, my true and very brethren? What do you say to that? Here we are, by God's grace and long-suffering to usward, near the end of another year, another…
926 wordsSECTION 42Chapter Xii--That Varlet Ill-Pause, The Devil'S Orator
CHAPTER XIII--MR. PENNY-WISE-AND-POUND-FOOLISH, AND MR. GET-I'-THE-HUNDRED-AND-LOSE-I'-THE-SHIRE 'For, what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?'--_Our Lord_. This whole world is the penny, and our own souls are the pound. This whole world is the hundred, while heaven itsel…
651 wordsSECTION 43Chapter Xii--That Varlet Ill-Pause, The Devil'S Orator
Then, again, the narrowness, the partiality, the sickliness, and the squeamishness of our consciences,--all that makes us to be too often penny-wise and pound-foolish in our religious life. A well-instructed, thoroughly wise, and well-balanced conscience is an immense blessing to that man who has purchased such a consc…
941 wordsSECTION 44Chapter Xii--That Varlet Ill-Pause, The Devil'S Orator
'He hath in sooth good cause for endless grief, Who, for the love of thing that lasteth not, Despoils himself for ever of THAT LOVE.' 3. 'What also if we join with those two another two of ours, Mr. Sweet- world and Mr. Present-good, namely, for they are two men full of civility and cunning. Let these engage in this…
684 wordsSECTION 45Chapter Xii--That Varlet Ill-Pause, The Devil'S Orator
Let us bend all our strength and all our wit to this, went on Lucifer, to make their castle a warehouse instead of a garrison. Let us set ourselves and all our allies, he explained to the duller-witted among the devils, to make their hearts a shop,--some of them, you know, are shopkeepers; a bank,--some of them are ban…
497 wordsSECTION 46Chapter Xiv--The Devil'S Last Card
'Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light'--_Paul_. Wodrow has an anecdote in his delightful _Analecta_ which shall introduce us into our subject to-night. Mr. John Menzies was a very pious and devoted pastor; he was a learned man also, and well seen in the Popish and in the Arminian controversies. And to t…
811 wordsSECTION 47Chapter Xiv--The Devil'S Last Card
3. And then, as if to make our salvation a very hyperbole of impossibility, the all but almighty power of indwelling sin comes in. Have you ever tried to break loose from the old fetter of an evil habit? Have you ever said on a New Year's Day with Thomas A Kempis that this year you would root that appetite,--naming it,…
1,166 wordsSECTION 48Chapter Xiv--The Devil'S Last Card
6. After offering a sufficient ministry to Mansoul, and that, too, at his own proper cost and charge, Diabolus undertook also to see that the absolute necessity of a reformation should be preached and pressed from the pulpit he set up. Now, reformation is all good and necessary, in its own time and place and order, but…
821 wordsSECTION 49Chapter Xiv--The Devil'S Last Card
One thing there is that I must have preached continually in all my pulpits and expounded and illustrated and enforced in all my lectureships, said Emmanuel, and that is, my new example and my new law of _motive_. My own motives always made me in all I said and did to be well-pleasing in My Father's eyes, and at any cos…
435 wordsSECTION 50Chapter Xv--Mr. Prywell
'Search me, O God, and know my heart.'--_David_. 'Let a man examine himself.'--_Paul_. 'Look to yourselves.'--_John_. 'Know thyself.'--_Apollo_. The year 1668 saw the publication of one of the deepest books in the whole world, Dr. John Owen's _Remainders of Indwelling Sin in Believers_. The heart-searching depth; t…
870 wordsSECTION 51Chapter Xv--Mr. Prywell
1. 'Well, now, as He who dwells on high would have it, there was one whose name was Mr. Prywell, a great lover of the town of Mansoul.' In other words: self-observation, self-examination, strict, jealous, sleepless self-examination, is of God. Our God who searches our hearts and tries our reins would have it so. And if…
929 wordsSECTION 52Chapter Xv--Mr. Prywell
'Nor let sweet sleep upon thine eyes descend Till thou hast judged its deeds at each day's end.' And this from Seneca again: 'When the light is removed out of sight, and my wife, who is by this time aware of my practice, is now silent, I pass the whole of my day under examination, and I review my deeds and my words. …
751 wordsSECTION 53Chapter Xv--Mr. Prywell
5. And as if all that were not enough, and more than enough, to commend Mr. Prywell to us--to our trust, to our confidence, and to our imitation--his royal certificate continues, 'One that looks into the very bottom of matters, and talks nothing of news, but by very solid arguments.' The very bottom of matters--that is…
950 wordsSECTION 54Chapter Xv--Mr. Prywell
Now, my brethren, as the outcome of all that, we must all examine ourselves as before God all this week. We must wait on His word and on His providences while they examine us all this week. We must pry well into ourselves all this week. Come, let us compel ourselves to do it. Let us search and try our ways all this wee…
423 wordsSECTION 55Chapter Xvi--Young Captain Self-Denial
'If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me.'--_Our Lord_. 'Now the siege was long, and many a fierce attempt did the enemy make upon the town, and many a shrewd brush did some of the townsmen meet with from the enemy, especially Captain Self-denial, to whose care bo…
1,306 wordsSECTION 56Chapter Xvi--Young Captain Self-Denial
3. This same Captain Self-denial, his history goes on, was stout, he was an hardy man also, and a man of great courage. Stout and hardy and of great courage at home, that is; in his own mind and heart, soul and body, that is. Young Captain Self-denial was a perfect hero at saying No! and at saying No! to himself. It is…
837 wordsSECTION 57Chapter Xvi--Young Captain Self-Denial
5. Stout as Captain Self-denial was, and notable alarms and some brisk execution as he did upon the enemy, yet he must meet with some brushes himself; indeed, he carried several of the marks of such brushes on his face as well as on some other parts of his body. If I had read in his history that Young Captain Self-deni…
738 wordsSECTION 58Chapter Xvii--Five Pickt Men
Remain behind, then, and begin with us to-night, all you young men. You cannot begin this lifelong study and this lifelong pursuit of self-denial too early. For, even if you begin to read our books and to practise our discipline in your very boyhood, when you are old men and very saints of God you will feel that your s…
1,116 wordsSECTION 59Chapter Xvii--Five Pickt Men
Well on toward the end of the war, the Captain Credence had so acquitted himself that he was summoned one day to the Prince's quarters, when the following colloquy ensued: 'What hath my Lord to say to His servant?' And then, after a sign or two of favour, it was said to him: 'I have made thee lieutenant over all the fo…
789 wordsSECTION 60Chapter Xvii--Five Pickt Men
3. 'The third was that valiant captain, the Captain Charity. His standard-bearer was Mr. Pitiful, and for his scutcheon he had three naked orphans embraced in his bosom; and he also had ten thousand men at his feet.' O Charity! O valiant and pitiful Charity! Divine-natured and heavenly-minded Charity! When wilt thou co…
745 wordsSource & rights
Public domain in the USA; original historical text digitized by Project Gutenberg.
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Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.