The Works of John Bunyan, vol 1 - John Bunyan (best self help books to read TXT) 📗

or the sap will not be conveyed from the root to the branch; and I say, this must be done by a wound. The Lord opened the heart of Lydia, as a man openeth the stock to graft in the scions, and so the word was let into her soul, and so the word and her heart cemented, and became one (Acts 16:14).

Why is Christ bid to gird his sword upon his thigh? and why must he make his arrows sharp, and all, that the heart may with this sword and these arrows be shot, wounded, and made to bleed? Yea, why is he commanded to let it be so, if the people would bow and fall kindly under him, and heartily implore his grace without it?

(Psa 45; 55:3,4). Alas! men are too lofty, too proud, too wild, too devilishly resolved in the ways of their own destruction; in their occasions, they are like the wild asses upon the wild mountains; nothing can break them of their purposes, or hinder them from ruining of their own precious and immortal souls, but the breaking of their hearts.

Why is a broken heart put in the room of all sacrifices which we can offer to God, and a contrite spirit put in the room of all offerings, as they are, and you may see it so, if you compare the text with that verse which goes before it; I say, why is it counted better than all, were they all put together, if any one part or if all external parts of worship, were they put together, could be able to render the man a sound and a rightly made new creature without it? ‘A broken heart, a contrite spirit, God will not despise’; but both thou, and all thy service, he will certainly slight and reject, if, when thou comest to him, a broken heart be wanting; wherefore here is the point, Come broken, come contrite, come sensible of, and sorry for thy sins, or thy coming will be counted no coming to God aright; and if so, consequently thou wilt get no benefit thereby.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] This is beautifully and most impressively described in the Pilgrim’s Progress, when the bitter feelings of poor Christian under convictions of sin, alarm his family and put it quite ‘out of order.’—Ed.

[2] This quotation is from the Genevan or Puritan version of the Bible.—Ed.

[3]. ‘Fish-whole’ is a very striking and expressive term, highly illustrative of the feelings and position of David when he was accosted by the prophet. The word ‘whole’ is from the Saxon, which language abounded in Bunyan’s native county of Bedford—first introduced by an ancient colony of Saxons, who had settled there.

It means hale, hearty, free from disease, as a fish is happy in its native element—‘They that are WHOLE, need not a physician, but they that are sick,’ Luke 5:31. David had no smitings of conscience for his cruelty and enormous guilt; he was like a ‘fish whole,’ in the full enjoyment of every providential blessing; while, spiritually, he was dead in sin. God loved and pitied him, and sent a cunning angler. Nathan the prophet there in the bait, which David eagerly seized; the hook entered his conscience, and he became as a fish wounded, and nigh unto death.—Ed.

[4] The words of Tindal are, ‘The sacrifice of God is a troubled sprete, a broken and a contrite hert, O God, shalt thou not despise.’

The same Hebrew word occurs in the original, both as to the spirit and the heart. Bunyan is quite right in preferring our authorised version of this verse. Coverdale, Tindal, Taverner, and Cranmer, all agree. The Genevan uses ‘a contrite spirit,’ and the Bishops ‘a mortified spirit.’—Ed.

[5] No one could speak more feelingly upon this subject than our author. He had been in deep waters—in soul-harrowing fear, while his heart—hard by nature—was under the hammer of the Word.—‘My soul was like a broken vessel. O, the unthought of imaginations, frights, fears, and terrors, that are affected by a thorough application of guilt, yielded to desperation!’ Like the man that had his dwelling among the tombs.—Grace Abounding, No. 186.

[6] The Christian, if he thinks of possessing good motions, joins with such thoughts his inability to carry them into effect. ‘When I would do good, evil is present with me.’ How different is this to the self-righteous Ignorance, so vividly pictured in the Pilgrim’s Progress:—

‘Ignor.—I am always full of good motions that come into my mind, to comfort me as I walk.

Chris.—What good motions? pray tell us.

Ignor.—Why, I think of God and heaven.

Chris.—So do the devils and damned souls!’

The whole of that deeply interesting dialogue illustrates the difficulty of self-knowledge, which can only be acquired by the teaching of the Holy Spirit.

[7] ‘All to brake’; an obsolete mode of expression for ‘altogether broke.’—Ed.

[8] ‘Orts’; an obsolete word in England, derived from the Anglo-Saxon.

Any worthless leaving or refuse. It is thus used by Shakespeare in his Troylus and Cresida, act 5, s. 2:—

‘The fractions of her faith, orts of her love: The fragments, scraps, the bits and greasy relics Of her ore-eaten faith.’—Ed.

[9] This is in exact agreement with the author’s experience, which he had published twenty-two years before, under the title of Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners,—‘I was more loathsome in my own eyes than was a toad, and I thought I was so in God’s eyes too.

Sin and corruption, I said, would as naturally bubble out of my heart as water would out of a fountain. I thought that none but the devil himself could equal me for inward wickedness and pollution of mind.’ A sure sign that God, as his heavenly Father, was enlightening his memory by the Holy Spirit.—Ed.

[10] This account of the author’s interview with a pious, humble woman, is an agreeable episode, which relieves the mind without diverting it from the serious object of the treatise. It was probably an event which took place in one of those pastoral visits which Bunyan was in the habit of making, and which, if wisely made, so endears a minister to the people of his charge. Christ and a crust is the common saying to express the sentiment that Christ is all in all. The pitcher has reference to the custom of pilgrims in carrying at their girdle a vessel to hold water, the staff having a crook by which it was dipped up from a well or river.—Ed.

[11] However hard, and even harsh, these terms may appear, they are fully justified; and with all the author’s great ability and renown, he has the grace of humility to acknowledge that, by nature and practice, he had been the biggest of fools.—Ed.

[12] Man must be burnt out of the stronghold in which he trusted.

‘Saved, yet so as by fire.’ ‘Baptized with the Holy Ghost, even fire.’ ‘His word is as a fire.’ Reader, the work of regeneration and purification is a trying work; may each inquire, Has this fire burnt up my wood, hay, stubble?—Ed.

[13] To ‘daff’ or ‘doff’; to do off or throw aside—used by Shakespeare, but now obsolete,—

Where is his son,

The nimble-footed madcap, Prince of Wales, And his comrades, that daft the world aside And let it pass?—Ed.

[14] ‘Sin will at first, just like a beggar, crave One penny or one halfpenny to have; And if you grant its first suit, ‘twill aspire From pence to pounds, and so will still mount higher To the whole soul!’—Bunyan’s Caution Against Sin.—Ed.

[15] This is faithful dealing. How many millions of lies are told to the All-seeing God, with unblushing effrontery, every Lord’s day—when the unconcerned and careless, or the saint of God, happy, most happy in the enjoyment of Divine love, are led to say, ‘Have mercy upon us miserable sinners.’—Ed.

[16] ‘In grain’ is a term used in dyeing, when the raw material is dyed before being spun or wove; the colour thus takes every grain, and becomes indelible. So with sin and folly; it enters every grain of human nature.—Ed.

[17] These frightful exhibitions, by drawing a criminal from Newgate to Tyburn to be executed, were of common occurrence until the reign of George III, when such numbers were put to death that it was found handier for the wholesale butchery to take place at Newgate, by a new drop, where twenty or thirty could be hung at once!! When will such brutalizing exhibitions cease?—Ed.

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PAUL’S DEPARTURE AND CROWN;

OR,

AN EXPOSITION UPON 2 TIM. IV. 6-8

ADVERTISEMENT BY THE EDITOR

How great and glorious is the Christian’s ultimate destiny—a kingdom and a crown! Surely it hath not entered into the heart of man to conceive what ear never heard, nor mortal eye ever saw? the mansions of the blest—the realms of glory—‘a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.’ For whom can so precious an inheritance be intended? How are those treated in this world who are entitled to so glorious, so exalted, so eternal, and unchangeable an inheritance in the world to come? How do the heirs to immortality conduct themselves in such a prospect? An inheritance sure and certain—an absolute reversion which no contingency can possibly affect. All these are inquiries of the deepest interest—the most solemn importance. Above all, when we inquire as to our personal title to the heavenly mansions—Am I one of the heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ?—most intensely should this question agitate the soul, when we reflect that, unless we are entitled to this inestimable reversion, we must be plunged into the most awful, the most irretrievable and external torments! There is no middle way—no escape from hell, but by going to heaven. Is heaven reserved only for the noble and the learned, like Paul? God forbid! but, on the contrary, we hear the voice of the divinity proclaiming, ‘Not many wise men after the flesh—not many mighty—not many noble.’

‘Thus saith the Lord, Heaven is my throne, the earth my footstool.’

He looketh upon the high and low—the learned and the noble—the mighty princes and the unlettered labourer; and then makes this wondrous declaration—‘To this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word.’ The world will treat such humble ones as it treated the Lord of life and glory, with scorn, contempt, insult, robbery—death. They bear all with patience—return good for evil—are the followers of him who went about doing good—are known as living epistles, because they have been with Christ; they daily enjoy his guidance and protection, and in their desires after conformity to his image, they breathe the atmosphere of heaven. This is what the heir of glory strives after; but, alas! he has to encounter an evil heart, an ensnaring world, and the reproaches and revilings of his fellow-men, aided by satanic influence. Can we wonder, then, that he who is thus besieged, and believes that his work is finished, should, with Paul, be ready to depart and receive his rich inheritance?

The lapse of time affects not the strong consolations of hope; as it was with Paul, so Bunyan felt. His longings after the heavenly manna abounded when the cold hand of death pressed upon his brow; his desire was ‘to be dissolved, and to be with Christ’; when his course of temple and relative duty was run, he waited for the messenger from the celestial city to conduct him home. Christian, are you actively engaged in fulfilling the duties of your course?

or, in the humble hope that your course is accomplished, are you patiently waiting the heavenly messenger? If the Christian’s state is one of trial now, it was much more so in former times. We can have very little idea of the feelings of a dissenter from the religion of the