UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 QIF S X OF" 
 
 Mrs. SARAH P. WALS WORTH. 
 
 Received October, 1894. 
 ^Accessions No . JlTb'J <? - Class No . 
 
UHJ7BRSIT7 
 
Lil'c Studies. 
 
 f=r -' " v 
 
 "and its .sign of the Rising Sun." 
 
LIFE-STUDIES: 
 
 OK, 
 
 o to to It i ir t 
 
 ILLTTSTBATED IN THE BIOGRAPHIES OP 
 
 BUNYAN, TERSTEEGEN, MONTGOMERY, 
 PERTHES, AND MRS. WINSLOW. 
 
 I 
 
 BY THE 
 
 KEY. JOHN BAILLIE, 
 
 M 7 
 
 AUTHOR OF " MEMOIRS OF HEWIT8ON," "ADELAIDE NEWTON," ETC. 
 
 4 He hungereth to feed on facts." 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 ROBERT CARTER & BROTHERS. 
 No. 530 BROADWAY. 
 
 1860.^ 
 
 JTr 0? 
 
 TJHIVERS; 
 
 
B3 
 
 STEBEOTYPEDBY S. B. THOMSON, PRINTED BY 
 
 THOMAS B. SMITH, BINDER, E.O.JENKINS 
 
 82 A 84 Beeknmn-etreet. 82 & 84 Beekman-st. 26 Frankfort-st. 
 

 PREFACE. 
 
 How TO LIVE how to dispose worthily of that 
 one life which is all wherewith each of us has to faco 
 Eternity is confessedly the gravest problem which 
 a sane man can be called to solve. 
 
 A lump of salt is dissolved in a basin of water ; 
 the salt is gone, but its savor has reached the remot- 
 est atom in the basin. Our ONE LIFE is like that 
 lump of salt : gradually it is melting away, and in a 
 brief season it will be gone ; but its savor will reach 
 the remotest hour in the Eternity to come. 
 
 How is this ONE LIFE to be lived? Where is' the 
 POWER which shall carry me victoriously through its 
 struggle 1 It will not do to take me to the monk's 
 pillar, or to the hermit's cell you must show me 
 how to' go up to life's battle, and to go through it, 
 erect and unharmed. 
 
 It was a fable of the ancients, that the 'god who 
 presided over each river had his residence in a cavern 
 at its source. Is not the fable an intense realitv in 
 
IV PREFACE. . 
 
 each man's course ? Is not the presiding power of 
 each man's life at its source ? It is of no use to 
 deliver homilies about the beauty of virtue or of 
 self- sacrifice, or about the vanity of this passing 
 scene ; men go from such homilies, complacently as 
 before, to their worldliness or to their sins. There is 
 one power, and only one, which can energize the 
 heart. And it is the purpose of this book to call 
 up certain scenes where that power put forth its 
 strength. 
 
 " I want," said a young corporal one day to Hed- 
 ley Vicars, " to have more of Jesus in this life? 
 CHRIST CRUCIFIED is not a mere fund in reserve a 
 kind of " extreme unction" to teach men how to 
 die ; it is the lever which is to move the life. 
 
 The savage, in certain regions, is said to have a 
 belief that the spirit of every enemy he slays passes 
 into his own bosom giving to his heart new cour- 
 age, and to his arm new power ; and therefore his 
 one watchword is " Slay, slay, slay !" Is it not 
 true that each new victory we gain over sin, is a new 
 accession of moral power ? To retire from life's con- 
 flicts, is only to keep the passion in abeyance ; to 
 meet the' temptation and to overcome, is that by 
 which alone we "live." 
 
 The Christian athletes here sketched are marked 
 
PREFACE. V 
 
 by varying idiosyncrasies ; but they all fought man- 
 fully the good fight, and they all have gotten tho 
 victory. God's grace " is manifold ;" and it may 
 comfort and stimulate the wrestlers in the various 
 places of the field to know that others occupied the 
 post before them, and " stood in the evil day." 
 
 For the facts in the following Biographies, we are 
 indebted chiefly to existing Memoirs. And we shall 
 feel thankful if the sketches here given lead to a 
 more earnest study of the models themselves. 
 
6 o n f e rj f s. 
 i. 
 
 SC |j * (000 Solbier: 
 JOHN BUM VAN, 
 
 II. 
 
 |} * Christian laborer: 
 Gh RHARD T E RSTE EGEN, 
 
 III. 
 
 |j* Christian Pan of Betters: 
 JAMES MONTGOMERY, 
 
 IV. 
 
 ^e pan of Business: 
 FREDERICK PERTH ES, 
 
 V. 
 
 Ij (ftljristian Pother: 
 MRS, MARY WIINSLOW, 
 
I. 
 
 JOHN BTJNYAN. 
 
 1 Faith may rise into miracles of might" 
 
"All my springs are in THEE." Ps. Ixxxvii. 7. 
 
" Be this, then, a lesson to thy soul, that thou reckon 
 
 nothing worthless. 
 
 Because thou heedest not its use, nor knowest the 
 virtues thereof." 
 
 BUN Y AN is his own Pilgrim embodied into life. 
 " God," says he, in the preface to his Autobiogra- 
 phy, " did not play in tempting of me ; neither did 
 I play when I sank as into the bottomless pit 
 when the pangs of hell caught hold upon me : 
 wherefore," he adds, " I may not play in relating of 
 them, but be plain and simple, and lay down the 
 thing as it was." His " fears, and doubts, and sad 
 months," were " as the head of Goliath in his hand ;" 
 and the very sight and remembrance of them, like 
 Goliath's sword to David, "did preach forth God's 
 deliverance to him." . 
 
 There may fall upon these pages the eye of some 
 tainting " soldier of Jesus Christ," whose heart will 
 take new courage as he communes with this stalwart 
 warrior. 
 
CHAPTEE I. 
 
 "My thoughts are working like a busy flame, 
 tin til their cockatrice they hatch and bring." 
 
 The wayside village The young tinker Book of Sports Visions- 
 Apprehensions Hair-breadth escapes A parallel The adder The 
 militiaman Marriage. 
 
 IN one of our wayside English villages, with its 
 rustic cross, and its Maypole, and its sign of the 
 " Rising Sun," there might be seen, some two cen- 
 turies ago, of an evening on the village green, a band 
 of roystering lads, intent on certain rude sport. The 
 soul of the frolic is a broad-shouldered, brawny 
 youth, with piercing eye and massive forehead 
 born a tinker, but evidently shaped by Nature as a 
 future " king of men." The village is Elstow, in Bed- 
 fordshire, and the young tinker is JOHN BUNYAN. 
 
 The times are loose it is the age of James and of 
 his " Book of Sports ;" and the villagers, young and old, 
 u singing and saying very devoutly" once or even twice 
 a day at church on Sunday, li retain" most content- 
 edly " their wicked life." Our youthful hero falls in 
 with the prevailing way oaths on the green, and a 
 devout "Amen" in the Sunday-pew. "It was my 
 delight," he tells us, " to be led captive by the devil 
 1* 
 
6 THE GOOD SOLDIER: 
 
 at his will. I had few equals, both for cursing, swear- 
 ing, lying, and blaspheming the holy name of God." 
 And these are no mere momentary ebullitions, 
 settled and rooted was I in these things," says he, 
 " that they became a kind of second nature to me." 
 
 But it is not all sunshine. Even in his ninth or 
 tenth year he is scared with fearful dreams and 
 ions. Often, after " spending this and the other day 
 in sin," he is "greatly afflicted, while asleep, with 
 the apprehensions of devils and wicked spirits, com- 
 ing to draw him away with them." And his waking 
 hours are haunted with " the thoughts of the fearful 
 torments of hell-fire." " Oh, that I were a devil !" lu 
 will whisper to himself, " for it were better to be a 
 tormentor, than to be tormented myself!" 
 
 Awakened suddenly one night in his hammock by 
 a violent sea which has broken over the crazy ship, 
 a sailor-lad, hastening up the " companion," is met 
 half-way by the captain, shouting " Bring a knife 
 with you the ship is going down 1" Returning for 
 the knife, he is succeeded on the ladder by another, 
 who, the moment he reaches the deck, is washed 
 overboard. There is no time to lament him ; and all 
 hands labor at the pump, expecting every moment 
 to be the last. As the day brightens, and the sea 
 calms down a litttle, the lad endeavors, with an ill- 
 disguised uneasiness, to cheer one of the sailors with 
 the prospect that in a few days this distress will serve 
 them " to talk of over a glass of wine." " No," re- 
 plies the other, with tears in his eyes ; " it is too late 
 
JOHN BUNYAN. 7 
 
 now." But, after other four-and -twenty hours of 
 pumping, the peril passes by, and another of his 
 " deaths oft" is over. The lad is the future John 
 Newton, of Olney. 
 
 Bunyan also, in these days of his ungodliness, has 
 many hair's-breadth escapes. Once, " falling into a 
 creek of the sea," he "hardly escapes drowning." 
 Another time he is precipitated from a boat into the 
 Ouse ; but " mercy preserves him alive." On a third 
 occasion, being in the field with one of his compan- 
 ions, an adder chances to pass over the highway ; 
 and, " having a stick in his hand," he " strikes her 
 over the back ;" the animal is " stunned," and he 
 " forces open her mouth with his stick, and plucks 
 her sting out with his fingers." And still another 
 escape he mentions. Now, in his seventeenth year, 
 and having enlisted as a soldier during the civil war, 
 he is " drawn out to go to the siege of Leicester," 
 and is just on the eve of starting, when one of the 
 company desires to go in his room. " He took my 
 place," says he ; " and coming to the siege, as he 
 stood sentinel, he was shot in the head with a mus- 
 ket-bullet, and died." 
 
 . But these "judgments mixed with mercy" do not 
 " awaken his soul to righteousness." He " sins still, 
 and grows more and more rebellious against God, 
 and careless of his own salvation." 
 
 A few years pass over ; and he leaves the army, 
 and gets married. " Though we came together," he 
 tells us, " as poor as poor might be, not having so 
 
8 THE GOOD SOLDIER. 
 
 much household stuff as a dish or spoon betwixt us 
 both, yet this she had for her part 'The Plain 
 Man's Pathway to Heaven,' and ' The Practice of 
 Piety,' which her father had left her when he died." 
 These two volumes are read, and re-read ; and an- 
 other bock is read the " living epistle" of her godly 
 father's life. The result is, " a desire to reform his 
 vicious life, and to fall in very eagerly with the re- 
 ligion of the times." 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 " Full of rebellion, I would die, 
 Or fight, or travel, or deny 
 That thou hast aught to do with me. 
 
 Oh, turn my heart ! 
 It is thy highest art 
 To captivate strongholds to thee." 
 
 Superstition New awakening " Game at cat" The voice from hea- 
 ven "Too late" The reproof Legal workings Self-complacency 
 The church-bells Strivings The three poor saints Living epistles 
 " Dwelt alone" Evangelist. 
 
 " MAN," it has been said, " with sinuous ease, es- 
 capes from lie to lie." Earnest hitherto in worldliness, 
 the tinker is now scarcely less earnest in " credulities 
 of weakness." At church " with the foremost," he is 
 u overrun with a spirit of superstition," adoring with 
 great devotion "the high-place, priest, clerk, vest- 
 ment, service, and what else ;" counting all things 
 holy that are therein contained, and especially the 
 priest and clerk most happy, and, without doubt, 
 greatly blessed, because they are servants, and are 
 principal, in the holy temple, to do His work therein." 
 
 Cowper has written 
 
 " For though the Pope has lost his interest here, 
 And pardons are not sold as once they were, 
 No papist's more desirous -to compound 
 Than some grave sinners upon English ground." 
 
10 THE GOOD SOLDIER: 
 
 Banyan's whole soul is now intent on this work. 
 So strong in a little while does the feeling grow 
 upon him, that, does he but " see a priest though 
 never so sordid and debauched in his lift*," he will 
 u find his spirit fall under him, reverence him, and 
 knit unto him ; yea, for the love he bears unto them, 
 supposing them the ministers of God, he feols as if 
 he could lie down at their feet, and be trampled on 
 by them ; their name, their garb, and work, do so 
 intoxicate and bewitch him." 
 
 Once more, however, he is awakened to a crush- 
 ing sense of sin. All this while, he has " kept ironi 
 considering, that, what religion soever he follows, 
 sin will damn him unless he be 'found in Christ.'" 
 But one day a sermon on Sabbath-breaking startles 
 him ; he " falls in his conscience under it," and goes 
 home " with a great burden upon his spirit." 
 
 The " trouble" threatens to " benumb the sinews 
 of his best delights ;" but, before he was well dined, 
 it begins to wear off, and that evening he is at his 
 old sport on the village green, " solacing himself 
 therewith." The arrow, however, is not gone. He 
 is '* in the midst of a game of Cat," and is just about 
 to u strike it a second blow from the hole," when 
 suddenly a voice darts from heaven into his soul say- 
 ing, " Wilt thou leave thy sins and go to heaven, or 
 have thy sins and go to hell ?" At this he is " put to 
 an exceeding maze," the Lord Jesus seeming to 
 u look down upon him from heaven in hot displeas- 
 ure." llis heart sinks within him. It is now " too 
 
JOHN BUNYAN. 11 
 
 late for him to look after heaven." Christ will never 
 forgive him ; and, concluding he may " as well be 
 damned for many sins as for few," he " rushes despe- 
 rately to his sport again," fearing lest he should die 
 before he gets his " fill of sin." 
 
 One of our poets has described "sin's round," 
 thus : 
 
 " My words take fire from my inflamed thoughts, 
 Which spit it forth like the Sicilian hell." 
 
 Standing one afternoon at a neighbor's shop-window, 
 he begins to " curse and swear and play the mad- 
 man" after such a fashion, that the woman of the 
 house, overhearing him, comes out, and, though her- 
 self " a very loose and ungodly wretch," protests that 
 it "makes her tremble to hear him." "You're 
 enough," she adds, " to spoil all the youth of the 
 town, if they come but in your company." At this 
 reproof he is "silenced;" and he hangs down his 
 head, u wishing with all his heart he were a little 
 child again, that his father might teach him to speak 
 without swearing." 
 
 The swearing is now abandoned, so that " it is a 
 wonder to himself to observe it." And the conver- 
 sation of " one poor man," who " did talk pleasantly 
 of the Scriptures," leads him to "his BiM<?," which 
 he " begins to take great pleasure in reading, espe- 
 cially the historical part thereof;" though, "as for 
 Paul's Epistles and such-like Scriptures," he " can- 
 not away with them being as yet ignorant, either 
 
12 THE GOOD SOLDIER: 
 
 of the corruptions of his nature, or of the want and 
 worth of Jesus Christ to save him." 
 
 A new enterprise now engages him. U I fell," 
 says he, " to some outward reformation, both in my 
 words and in my life, and did set the commandments 
 before me for my way to heaven ; which command- 
 ments I also did strive to keep, and, as I thought, 
 did keep them pretty well sometimes, and then I 
 would have comfort ; yet now and then {should break 
 one, and so afflict my conscience : but then I would 
 repent, and say I was sorry for it, and would promise 
 God to do better next time, and there get help again ; 
 for then I thought I pleased God as well as any 
 man in England." 
 
 This process continues for about a year, all which 
 time his neighbors " take him to be a very godly 
 man a new and religious man, manvllinir much to 
 see such great and famous alteration in his life and 
 manners." And great is his self-complacency as he 
 hears the people's comments on him. " Now," says 
 he, " they began to praise, to commend, and to speak 
 well of me, both to my face and behind my back. 
 Now I was, as they said, become godly ; now I was 
 become a right honest man. But oh ! when I un- 
 derstood those were their words and opinions of me, 
 it pleased me mighty well. For, though as yet I 
 was nothing but a poor painted hypocrite, yet I 
 loved to be talked of as one that was truly godly. I 
 was proud of my godliness." 
 
 But the conscience is not at rest. He has " taken 
 
JOHN BUNYAN. 13 
 
 much delight in ringing the church bells ;" but now 
 he " begins to think, How if one of them should 
 fall?" For safety, he first " chooses to stand under 
 a main beam which lay athwart the steeple ;" but 
 " then," says he, " I thought again should the bell 
 fall with a swing, it might first hit the wall, and 
 then, rebounding upon me, might kill me, for all 
 this beam. r He next " stands in the steeple-door," 
 thinking now he is safe enough ; for, if the bell 
 should fall, he can " slip out behind those thick 
 walls." But standing there one day, " it comes into 
 his head, How if the steeple itself should fall ?" And 
 " this thought continually so shakes his mind, that 
 he dares not stand at the steeple-door any longer, but 
 is forced to flee." 
 
 These are real, not imaginary fears. " Poor wretch 
 that I was," he says, "I was all this while going 
 about to establish my own righteousness ; and I had 
 perished therein, had not God in mercy showed me 
 more of my state by nature. If I had died thus, my 
 state had been most fearful." 
 
 A better day, however, is now to dawn. Saunter- 
 ing, one morning, along a street in Bedford, in pur- 
 suit of his calling as a tinker, he stumbles upon 
 " three or four poor women sitting at a door, in the 
 sun, talking of the things of God." John stands still, 
 and listens. " Their talk is about a new birth, the 
 work of God in their hearts, as also how they were 
 convinced of their miserable state by nature ; they 
 tell how God has visited their souls with His love ia 
 2 
 
14 THE GOOD SOLDIER: 
 
 the Lord Jesus ; moreover, they reason of the sug- 
 gestions and temptations of Satan, and tell to each 
 other by what means they have been afflicted, and 
 how they were borne up under his assaults. They 
 also discourse of their own wretchedness of heart, 
 and of their unbelief, contemning, slighting, and ab- 
 horring their own righteousness, as filthy and insuffi- 
 cient to do them any good." 
 
 This is a new region to him. " I heard," says he, 
 " but understood not ; for they were far above, out 
 of my reach." And yet there is something about 
 these humble Christians which bespeaks an intense 
 reality. u Methought," says Bunyan, " they spake as 
 if joy did make them speak ; they spake with such 
 pleasantness of Scripture language, and with such 
 appearance of grace in all they said, that they were 
 to me as if they had found a new world as if they 
 were ' people that dwelt alone.' " 
 
 The result is, a harrowing of soul such as he has 
 not yet known. His heart " begins to shake ;" for 
 he sees that, in all his thoughts " about religion and 
 salvation," the new birth has never entered into his 
 mind. He goes to his employment, but his heart 
 " tarries with them ;" and often he " makes it his 
 business to be going again and again into their com- 
 pany," being greatly affected with their words, both 
 because he has been convinced by them that he 
 " wants the tokens of a truly godly man," and also 
 because they have taught him " the happy and 
 blessed condition of him that is such an one." 
 
JOHN BUNYAN. 15 
 
 These three poor saints are his "Evangelist," at 
 once deepening his convictions of sin, and pointing 
 him hopefully to the wicket-gate and to the cross. 
 " A very great softness and tenderness of heart," he 
 says, u now came upon me, so that it lay like a horse- 
 leech at the vein, still crying out, ' Give, give !' I 
 was so fixed on eternity, that neither pleasures, nor 
 profits, nor persuasions, nor threats, could loose me or 
 make me let go my hold." 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 "Hast thou seen the ripening rosebud reach the beauty of the flower? 
 Marked the summer cloud-streaks gather till they bring the drench- 
 ing shower ?" 
 
 The grey dawn " Read Bible with new eyes" The sunken rock 
 Test of faith The miracle Waking vision The mountain Two 
 sides The narrow gap Temptations "Elected?" "Day of grace 
 past ?" Yet room Broad seal of heaven. 
 
 HERBERT, in one of his Odes, has written 
 
 " Of what an easy, quick access, 
 My blessed Lord, art thou ! how suddenly 
 
 May our requests thine ear invade ! 
 If I but lift mine eyes, my suit is made : 
 Thou canst no more not hear, than thou canst die." 
 
 And Bunyan is, one day, to comprehend this truth, 
 and to delineate it with a matchless pathos in the 
 scene at the Cross. But, as yet, it is only the grey 
 dawn of day. 
 
 The dawn, however, is gradually brightening ; and 
 from the Word the cheering beams shine. " Now, 
 me thought," he says, " I looked into the Bible with 
 new eyes, and read as I never read before ; and 
 especially the epistles of Paul were sweet and pleas- 
 ant to me." He is " never out of the Bible, either 
 by reading or by meditation still crying out to 
 
JOHN BUNYAN. 17 
 
 God, that he may know the truth, and the way to 
 heaven and glory." 
 
 Like many earnest souls at this stage, he is driven 
 upon the rocks of inward frames. This always " is 
 running in his mind. * But how if I want faith ? how 
 
 O ' 
 
 can I tell I have faith ?' " Travelling one afternoon 
 from Elstow to Bedford, " the temptation is hot" 
 upon him to say to " the puddles in the horsepads, 
 ' Be dry ;' and to the dry places, ' Be you puddles !' " 
 If he can work the miracle, it will prove he " has 
 faith indeed." But, just as he is about to speak, the 
 thought comes into his mind, " But go under yon- 
 der hedge and pray first, that God would make you 
 able." And another thought " comes hot" upon him 
 " What if I pray, and try to do it, and yet do 
 nothing, notwithstanding ? then to be sure I have no 
 faith, but am a castaway, and am lost." 
 
 Grotesque as this appears, is it not in substance 
 the method adopted by " fearful" souls to ascertain 
 their standing before God ? They do not command 
 the " puddles" to become dry ground, or wait for 
 the " troubling" of the Bethesda pool ; but do not 
 they look into the " waters" of their own inward 
 frames, and, according as these waters are " troubled" 
 or stagnant, are not they joyous or joyless ? 
 
 A kind of waking vision opens to him a glimpse 
 of the way of life. The poor saints of Bedford he 
 sees one day as if on the sunny side of some high 
 mountain, refreshing themselves with the pleasant 
 beams of the sun ; while he himself is shivering and 
 
18 THE GOOD SOLDIER: 
 
 shrinking in the cold, afflicted with frost, snow, and 
 dark clouds. " Methought, also," he says, " betwixt 
 me and them I saw a wall, which did compass about 
 this mountain. Now, through this wall, my soul did 
 greatly desire to pass concluding that, if 1 could, I 
 would even go into the midst of them, and there also 
 comfort myself with the heat of their sun." But is 
 there a way through the wall ? After a long search, 
 at last he discovers "a narrow gap, like a little door- 
 way, very straight, and narrow." He labors to get 
 in, but in vain even until he is " well-nigh quite 
 beat out." At length, with great striving, he at first 
 gets in his head, and then, " by a sideling striving," 
 his " shoulders, and his whole body." Exceeding 
 glad, he goes and sits down in the midst of them, and 
 so is "comforted with the light and heat of their sun." 
 
 o 
 
 The vision is thus " made out" to him : The 
 mountain is the living Church ; the sun which shone 
 upon it, " the comfortable shining of God's merciful 
 face on them that are therein ;" the wall is that which 
 t: does make separation betwixt the Christians and 
 the world ;" and the gap in the wall is " Jesus Christ, 
 the way to God the Father 4 I am the way, and the 
 truth, and the life ; no man cometh to the Father 
 but by me.' " And, " forasmuch as the passage was 
 wonderful narrow," it shows him that none can enter 
 life but those who are in downright earnest, and un- 
 less also they leave that wicked world behind them ; 
 for here is only room for body and soul, but not for 
 body, and soul, and sin. 
 
JOHN BUNYAN. 19 
 
 Still he does not personally " sit in the sunshine." 
 One temptation besets him, and then another, and 
 another. " Am I elected ?" at times so " offends and 
 discourages" him, that, though he is " in a flame to 
 find the way to heaven and glory, and though noth- 
 ing can beat him off," he is " as if the very strength 
 of his body also were taken away by the force and 
 power thereof." 
 
 u You had as good leave off," whispers Satan to 
 him one day, " and strive no further ; for if, indeed, 
 you should not be elected and chosen of God, there 
 is no hope of your being saved ; ' for it is not of him 
 that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God 
 that showeth mercy.' " 
 
 Driven to his wits 1 end, he is " ready to sink where 
 he is, with faintness of mind." But one night, as he 
 is now " quite giving up the ghost of all his hopes 
 of ever attaining life," the thought occurs to him 
 " Begin at the beginning of Genesis, and read to the 
 end of the Revelation, and see if you can find that 
 there were ever any that trusted in the Lord and 
 were confounded." That thought "doth still oft- 
 times," he says, " shine before my face." 
 
 Another temptation tries him " How if the day 
 of grace should now be past and gone ? How if you 
 have overstood the time of mercy?" He goes up 
 and down, bemoaning his sad condition, counting 
 himself " far worse than a thousand fools for standing 
 off thus long, and spending so many years in sin." 
 " Oh !" he cries, " that I had turned sooner ! Oh, 
 
20 THE GOOD SOLDIER I 
 
 that I turned seven years ago !'* For many days he 
 is " vexed with this fear," until he is " scarce able to 
 take one step more." At length, however, these 
 words break in upon his mind " Compel them to 
 come in, that my house may be filled ;" and u yet the; e 
 is room." There must still be place enough in heaven 
 for him ; for did not the Lord Jesus, in speaking 
 these words, think individually of him ? This he 
 " verily believes." And the comfort is the greater, 
 that the Lord should have thought of him so long 
 ago, and should have spoken those words on purpose 
 for his sake. 
 
 And another temptation besets him to " return 
 again to his old ways." But one thought at such 
 moments always outweighs every other "that sound 
 sense of death, and of the day of judgment, which 
 abides, as it were, continually in his view." 
 
 Is it not the want of this " sound sense of a com- 
 ing judgment" which encumbers the Church with so 
 many loiterers, and so many lookers-back ? 
 
 " I sum up half mankind, 
 And add two-thirds to the remaining halfj 
 And find the total of their hopes and fears 
 Dreams, empty dreams." 
 
 The Church in Sodom consisted of four members : 
 of these how many were true souls ? 
 
 The goodly tents of Israel grow gradually more 
 attractive in his eyes. How " lovely" now is " every 
 one that he thinks to be converted, whether man or 
 
JOHN BUNYAN. 21 
 
 woman ! They shine ; they walk like a people who 
 carry the broad seal of heaven about them." Christ 
 " called unto Him whom He would." Never does 
 he read of any whom Christ called but he presently 
 wishes " Would I had been in their clothes ! would 
 I had been born Peter ! would I had been born 
 John ! or, would I had been by and had heard Him, 
 when He called them ! how would I have cried, * 
 Lord, call me also !' " 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 " Hast thou watched the dawn of sunlight brighten into perfect day? 
 Seen the rippled waves of ocean lashed to surf, and foam, and spray ?* 
 
 The Bedford centurion The escape The gaming-table "Great 
 peace" The pastor Interviews Two wonders Inward pollution 
 The cross" My love" Best. 
 
 THERE lived at that time in Bedford a minister of 
 God's Word, who had passed through a strange bap- 
 tism. Originally a major in the army, and a devoted 
 royalist, he had been apprehended with eleven others, 
 and been sentenced to death. It is the eve of the 
 fatal day, and his sister comes in to bid him a last 
 farewell. The guard is asleep, and his companions 
 are intoxicated. " Why not," she whispers, as she 
 enters the cell, " escape instantly for your life ?" 
 Cautiously stealing his way out, he lies concealed for 
 three days in the bottom of a great ditch, and then 
 flies in disguise to London. 
 
 After a while, returning to Bedford, he bethinks 
 him of venturing upon the practice of physic. One 
 night, at the gaming-table, having lost a considerable 
 sum, he is plunged into the most horrible profane- 
 ness, raging at the providence of God, and threaten- 
 ing to put an end to his life. He gains his OWD 
 
JOHN BUNYAN. 23 
 
 chamber ; and, as lie sits solitary and in despair, a 
 sentence catches his eye, in a book lying open on the 
 table. Conscience is smitten, and for a month he 
 has no rest. But at length the way of forgiveness 
 through the atoning blood of Christ comes home to 
 him so sweetly and so forcefully, that his whole soul 
 is filled with joy and peace ; so that, for " five years 
 together, he never loses for one hour the comfortable 
 light of God's countenance." 
 
 Like Saul of Tarsus, he " assays to join himself to 
 the disciples ;" but so notorious has been his enmity 
 to serious godliness, and also so exceedingly vile his 
 life, that only a warm attachment and a naturally 
 bold spirit secured for him a place in their fellow- 
 ship. Beginning, however, bye and bye to speak 
 the Word of God at first in private, and afterwards 
 more publicly John Gifford is attended with so re- 
 markable a blessing, that the people with one consent 
 choose him as their pastor ; and he gives himself up 
 to serve them in the Gospel of His Son. 
 
 Among- the humble flock of this true minister are 
 
 o 
 
 the " three poor women." Breaking his mind one 
 day to these saints, Bunyan is named by them to Mr. 
 Gifford. After a private interview with him, he in- 
 vites him repeatedly to his house, to hear him "'con- 
 fer with others about the dealings of God with their 
 souls." The result is, a deeper conviction of "the 
 vanity and inward wretchedness of his wicked heart" 
 his inward exercises being only " as a clog on the 
 leg of a bird, to hinder it from flying." 
 
24 THE GOOD SOLDIER: 
 
 Yet the case is not so desperate as to himself it 
 seems. 
 
 " Fractures well cured, make us more strong." 
 
 lie who has been " breaking" these " bones" is pre- 
 paring for the troubled man a firm and lasting joy. 
 But Satan does not willingly let go such a prey. 
 The tinker is like the child brought to Christ, who, 
 " while he was yet coming to Him, was thrown down 
 by the devil, and also so rent and torn by him that 
 he lay and wallowed, foaming." 
 
 Drawing nearer into God's own light, he sees 
 things now more in their true proportions. Two 
 things especially often make him wonder. The one 
 is, .when he finds " old people hunting after the things 
 of this life, as if they should live here always ;" the 
 other is, when he sees " professors much distressed 
 and cast down when they meet with outward losses." 
 " Lord, thought I, what ado is here about such little 
 things as these ! What seeking after carnal things 
 by some, and what grief in others for the loss of 
 them !" 
 
 And another reality which grows more vivid to 
 him is his " original and inward pollution." He " sees 
 it at a dreadful rate ;" it is always " putting itself 
 forth within him," and he " has the guilt of it to 
 amazement." He feels as if none but the devil him- 
 self could " equalize him for inward wickedness and 
 pollution of mind;" sin and corruption as naturally 
 bubble out of his heart as water out of a fountain 
 
JOHN BUN Y AN. 25 
 
 He is " more loathesome in bis own eyes than a toad ;" 
 and he " thinks he is so in God's eyes, too." And 
 yet " this sight and sense of terror of his own wick- 
 edness he is afraid to let go quite off his mind ;" for 
 he finds that, " unless guilt of conscience be taken off 
 in the right way, that is, by the blood of Christ," a 
 man " grows rather worse for the loss of his trouble 
 of mind." 
 
 But God's " comforting time" is now come. 
 
 " Sweeten at length this bitter bowl, 
 
 Which thou hast poured into my soul: 
 Thy wormwood turn to health ; winds to fair weather." 
 
 Now in sight of the Cross, he begins to lift up hope- 
 fully and expectingly this prayer. 
 
 One day, in the humble meeting, a preacher is 
 discoursing most tenderly of Christ's grace to sinners. 
 Bunyan is there ; and two simple words* fix them- 
 selves in his mind, and reach his bleeding heart. 
 
 ' O 
 
 " What !" he thinks, " / loved by Him when loveless ! 
 loved without a cause ! loved, though despised by 
 the world ! loved, when tempted and self-destroyed !" 
 And as he saunters homewards, the words u twenty 
 times together kindle in his spirit," until, "waxing 
 stronger and warmer," they "begin to make him 
 look up." 
 
 Days pass on, and the "Word over and over 
 again makes this joyful noise within his soul 
 * Thou art my love ; thou art my love ; and nothing 
 
 * " My love." Song of Sol., iv. 1. , 
 3 
 
26 /THE GOOD SOLDIER. 
 
 shall separate thee from my love.'" His heart is 
 now " filled full of comfort and hope ;" now he u can 
 believe that his sins will be for<riven him." And so 
 
 o 
 
 taken is he with the love and mercy of God, that he 
 feels as if he " could speak of it to the very crows 
 which sit upon the ploughed land by the wayside, 
 were they capable to understand him." 
 
 It is the " pilgrim" gazing at the Crucified, until 
 his burden sinks into the open grave, and until the 
 tear of lowly thankfulness glistens in his beaming 
 And now he can sin with his own Pilrim 
 
 " Thus far did I oorae laden with my sin ; 
 Nor could aught ease the burden I was in 
 Till I came hither : what a place is this 1 
 Must here be the beginning of my bliss ? 
 Must here the burden fall from off my back ? 
 Must here the strings that bound it to me crack ? 
 Blest cross ! blest sepulchre I blest rather be 
 The MAN that there was put to shame for mel" 
 
CHAPTEK V. 
 
 " Sin being gone, oh ! fill the place, 
 And keep possession, as with thy grace." 
 
 The house Beautiful and the conflict Apoliy on " A very great 
 storm"" A thousand pounds for a tear " " Alone, alone !" 
 "I will cool you" The sword "A good word" "A sweet 
 glance" A wayside musing Fireside message Eight mind 
 Faithful Mr. Gilford" Former and latter rain." 
 
 " THE Church militant," it has been said, " inherits 
 the condition of Jesus Christ." It endures His con- 
 flict ; otherwise it is not the Church. 
 
 And each member of the body has the same con- 
 flict ; so that, if suddenly the Church were reduced 
 to one living person, " nothing would be changed 
 but the number" that one individual would "fill 
 up that which is behind of his afflictions." The 
 same conflict, therefore, awaits Christ's good soldier. 
 In Christ's afflictions, what feature more marked than 
 His conflict with the tempter ! 
 
 Before the Pilgrim met Apoliy on, he had been 
 " harnessed from head to foot" with armor. Bunyan 
 himself is less fully girded. 
 
 A presentiment, indeed, of coming peril is not 
 wanting. " About a week or a fortnight after this," 
 he tells us, " I was much followed by that Scripture, 
 
28 THE GOOD SOLDIER : 
 
 * Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have 
 you ;' and sometimes it would sound as loud within 
 me, yea, and as it were call so strongly after me, 
 that once, above all the rest, I turned my head over 
 my shoulder, thinking verily that some one behind 
 had called me. It came, as I have thought since, 
 to stir me up to prayer and watchfulness to ac- 
 quaint me that a cloud and a storm were coming 
 down upon me." 
 
 But he " understands it not." And so, ere long, 
 " a very great storm" does come down. Deep calls 
 to deep ; darkness seizes upon him ; blasphemous 
 suggestions " do so overweigh his heart, both with 
 their number, continuance, and fiery force, that he 
 feels as if God has given him up to them, to be car- 
 ried away by them as by a mighty whirlwind." 
 
 The temptation lasts " about a year." Fearing at 
 times that he may have committed the sin against 
 the Holy Ghost, he " envies the condition of the dog 
 and of the toad;" counting "the estate of everything 
 that God has made far better than this dreadful state 
 of mind." His heart, too, is so " exceeding hard, that, 
 if he should give a thousand pounds for a tear, he 
 cannot shed one; no, nor sometimes scarce desire 
 to shed one." Some he sees, who can mourn and 
 lament their sin ; others who can rejoice and bless 
 God for Christ ; and others again, who can quietly 
 talk of and gladly remember the Word of God : but 
 he himself is only in the " storm and tempest," and 
 there, as he thinks, alone 
 
JOHN BUNYAN. 29 
 
 " Alone, alone in the world alone ; 
 Pacing the desert wild." 
 
 And yet not alone ! The devil will be u continu- 
 ally at him in time of prayer, to have done to 
 break off." " Make haste," he will whisper to him ; 
 " you have prayed enough ; and stay no longer." 
 
 At other times, "when laboring to compose his 
 wandering thoughts and to fix them upon God," he 
 will " with great force distract and confound him, 
 by presenting to his fancy the most silly and trifling 
 objects." 
 
 An4 again, when he " has some strong and heart- 
 affecting apprehensions of God," his heart " putting 
 itself forth with inexpressible groanings," Satan will 
 come to him, saying " You are very hot for mercy ; 
 but I will cool you this frame shall not last always. 
 Many have been as hot as you for a spirt ; but I have 
 quenched their zeal." 
 
 At that he will remember some who have " fallen 
 off," and will begin to tremble lest he should " do so 
 too." 
 
 " But I am so glad that this has come into my 
 mind : I will watch, and take what care I can." 
 
 "Ah ! though you do," Satan whispers, "I shall 
 be too hard for you ; I will cool you insensibly, by 
 degrees, by little and little. What care I, though I 
 be seven years in chilling your heart, if I can do it 
 at last ? Continual rocking will lull a crying child 
 asleep : I will ply it close but I will have my end ac- 
 complished. Though you be burning hot at present, 
 3* 
 
30 THE GOOD SOLDIER: 
 
 I can pull you from this fire ; I shall have you coli 
 before it be long." 
 
 Grasping his sword, the brave warrior exclaims : 
 " I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor 
 angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things 
 present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, 
 nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us 
 from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our 
 Lord." <; And now," he says, " I hoped that long 
 life would not destroy me, nor make me miss of 
 heaven." 
 
 *The " fiery darts" still fly thick around him. One 
 day, sitting in a neighbor's house, he " says in his 
 mind ' What ground have I to think that I, who 
 have been so vile and abominable, shall ever inherit 
 eternal life ?' But suddenly that word comes upon 
 him, * What shall we say to these things ? if God be 
 for us, who can be against us V " Another day " a 
 sweet glance" surprises him, from the text, " He hath 
 made Kim to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that 
 we might be made the righteousness of God in 
 Him." And, again, a " fragrant breeze" freshens his 
 drooping spirit, in the words, " Because I live, ye 
 shall live also." Still these words are but "hints, 
 touches, short visits ; though very sweet when pres- 
 ent ;" only, they " last not, but, like Peter's sheet, 
 of a sudden are caught up from him to heaven 
 again." 
 
 The " visits," however, grow at once more frequent 
 and less transient. 
 
JOHN BUNYAN. 3] 
 
 One day, as he is travelling into the country, and 
 is musing on the enmity which is in his heart to God, 
 that Scripture comes into his mind " He hath made 
 peace by the blood of His cross." " I was made to 
 see," he says, " both again and again, that God and 
 my soul were friends by His blood ; yea, I saw that 
 the justice of God, and my sinful soul, could embrace 
 and kiss each other, through His blood. This was a 
 good day to me ; I hope I shall never forget it." 
 
 Another day, he is sitting by the fire in his house, 
 oppressed with a sense of his natural wretchedness ; 
 and " the Lord brings to him that Scripture * Foras- 
 much, then, as the children are partakers of flesh 
 and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the 
 same, that through death He might destroy him that 
 had the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver 
 them who through fear of death were all their life- 
 time subject to bondage.'" And " the glory of the 
 words is so weighty" on him, that he is " both once 
 and twice ready to swoon ;" yet " not with grief and 
 trouble, but with solid joy and peace." 
 
 Thus, for the time, does the Lord " more fully and 
 graciously discover Himself" to him, and, indeed, 
 " quite deliver him, not only from the guilt which by 
 these temptations has been laid upon his conscience, 
 but also from the filth thereof;" for " the temptation 
 is removed, and he is put into his right mind again." 
 
 In the earnest pastor of the humble flock at Bed- 
 ford, Bunyan now finds at his side another " Faith- 
 ful." " At this time," he tells us, " I sat under the 
 
32 THE GOOD SOLDIER. 
 
 ministry of holy Mr. Gifford, whose teaching by 
 God's grace was much for my stability." It is pre- 
 cisely such teaching as he at this season needs. 
 u That man made it much his business," he says, " to 
 deliver the people of God from all those hard and 
 unsound tests, which by nature we are prone to. He 
 would bid us take special heed that we took not any 
 truth upon trust, as from this, or that, or any other 
 man or men, but cry mightily unto God that He 
 vvould convince us of the reality thereof, and would 
 set us down therein by His own Spirit in the holy 
 Word ; ' for,' said he, ' if you do otherwise, when 
 temptations come strongly upon you, you, not hav- 
 ing received them with evidence from heaven, will 
 find you want that help and strength now to resist, 
 which once you thought you had.' " This is " as 
 seasonable to his soul as the former and latter rain 
 in their season :" wherefore he prays, that, in " nothing 
 which pertains to God's glory and to his own eternal 
 happiness, will He suffer him to be without the con- 
 firmation thereof from heaven;" for now he "sees 
 clearly, there is an exceeding difference betwixt the 
 notion of the flesh and blood, and the revelation of 
 God in heaven also a great difference betwixt that 
 faith which is feigned and according to man's wis*- 
 dom, and that which comes from a man's being bom 
 thereto of God." 
 
CHAPTEE VI. 
 
 " His beams shall cheer my breast ; and both so twine, 
 Till even His beams sing, and iny music shine." 
 
 Cowper The balm " Led from truth to truth" Nothing at second- 
 hand Tne only Teacher Assurance A scene at Erfurth Luther 
 and Bunyan Fears within A pattern Temptation. 
 
 THE poet Cowper was not uttering an unfelt joy, 
 when he wrote 
 
 " Scripture is the only cure of woe. 
 That field of promise, how it flings abroad 
 Its odor o'er the Christian's thorny road ! 
 The soul, reposing on assured relief, 
 Feels herself happy amidst all her grief." 
 
 Bunyan now, with a kindred joy, ponders, day by 
 day, the sacred page. " Oh ! how my soul," he says, 
 " was led from truth to truth ! There was not any- 
 thing which I then cried to God to make known to 
 me but He was pleased to do it for me I mean, not 
 one part of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus but I was 
 orderly led into it." 
 
 And he adds " Methought I was as if I had seen 
 Him born as if I had seen Him grow up as if I 
 had seen Him walk through this world from the 
 cradle to the cross, to which also when He came, I 
 
34 THE GOOD SOLDIER: 
 
 saw how gently He gave Himself to be nailed on it 
 for my sins and wicked doing. I have seen also as 
 if He had leaped out of the grave's mouth, for joy 
 that He wa^ risen again and had got the conquest 
 over our dreadful foes, saying, ' I ascend unto my 
 Father and your Father, and to my God and your 
 God.' I have likewise in the spirit seen Him a Man 
 on the right hand of God the Father for me, and 
 have seen the manner of His coming from heaven to 
 judge the world with glory." 
 
 Bunyan takes nothing at second-hand. If ever a 
 man's faith was " established, not in the wisdom of 
 men, but in the power of God," it is his. " Truly in 
 those days," he writes, "let men say what they 
 would, unless I had it with evidence from heaven, 
 all was nothing to me I counted myself not set 
 down in any truth of God. It would be too long to 
 tell in particular how God did set me down in all the 
 things of Christ, and how He did, that He might 
 do so, lead me into His words ; yea, and also how 
 He did open them unto me, and make them shine 
 before me, and cause them dwell with me, talk with 
 me, and comfort me over and over. Oh, friends, cry 
 to God to reveal Jesus Christ unto you; there is 
 none teacheth like Him." 
 
 Herbert once wrote : 
 
 ''Why do I languish thus, drooping and dull, 
 
 As if I were all of earth ? 
 Oh 1 give me quickness, that I may with mirth 
 Praise theo brim-fall.'' 
 
JOHN BUNYAN. 35 
 
 The seer of Bedford, also, growing in heavenliness, 
 feels how imperfect and " in part" is all here. Often 
 does he "long and desire that the last day were 
 come, that he may be for ever inflamed with the 
 sight and joy and communion with Him whose head 
 was crowned with thorns, whose face was spit upon, 
 and body broken, and soul made an offering, for our 
 sins." For, " whereas before," he says, " I lay con- 
 tinually trembling at the mouth of hell now, me- 
 thought, I was got so far therefrom that, when I 
 looked back, I could scarce discern it. And, oh ! 
 thought I, that I were fourscore years old now, that 
 I might die quickly, that my soul might be gone to 
 rest !" 
 
 In the town of Erfurth, a century previous, there 
 might have been seen, in the library of its Augus- 
 tiniari monastery, a grave earnest man, poring for 
 days and weeks together over a Bible chained to a 
 reading-desk, and hitherto a sealed book. It is 
 Martin Luther, inquiring of God, " What shall I do 
 to be saved ?" Deep and mysterious are the strug- 
 gles in that strong heart. But light arises ; and 
 masses, austerities, bead-rolls, penances, strivings, 
 frames, " weighed and found wanting," give place 
 to the righteousness of Jesus, bestowed as a free 
 gift, and received by faith alone. Taught his theol- 
 ogy thus at the feet of Christ, the monk goes forth 
 among his fellows, uttering in tones of thunder the 
 great secret of his own joyous hope. 
 
 Bunyan is "greatly longing to see some ancient 
 
36 THE GOOD SOLDIER. 
 
 godly man's experience," when " God casts into his 
 hand one day a book so old that it is ready to fall 
 piece from piece if he but turn it over." The book 
 is " Luther on the Galatians." " Perusing it but a 
 little way," he "finds his own condition so largely 
 and so profoundly handled, that the book might have 
 been written out of his heart." " Besides," says he, 
 " it doth most gravely debate of the rise of these 
 temptations, namely, blasphemy, desperation, and the 
 like ; showing that the law of Moses as well as 
 the devil, death, and hell linth a very great hand 
 therein." " The which at first is very strange" to 
 him ; but, " considering and watching," he " finds it 
 so indeed." 
 
 Bunyan and Luther were cast in moulds not un- 
 like ; and the period when they met noL in per- 
 sonal, indeed, but in mutual and spiritual converse 
 may be regarded as the era which gave to Banyan's 
 practical theology its type of broad common-sense, 
 and of plain-spoken dealing with the human con- 
 science and the human heart. " Of particulars 
 here," he says, expressing his own sense of his 
 deep sympathy with the great Reformer, " I intend 
 nothing ; only this, methinks, I must let fall before 
 all men I do prefer this book of Martin Luther 
 upon the Galatians (excepting the Holy Bible) before 
 all the books which ever I have seen, as most fit for 
 a wounded conscience." 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 "And now, inethinks, I am where I began 
 
 Seven years ago ; one vogue and vein, 
 
 One air of thought usurps my brain. 
 
 I did toward Canaan draw ; but now I am 
 
 Brought back to the Eed Sea, the sea of shame." 
 
 " I gave to Hope a watch of mine ; but he 
 An anchor gave to me." 
 
 Luther His conflicts and triumphs Face to face with Satan Bun- 
 yan "Sell Him" Wrestlings A stroke Gleam of light New 
 struggles Not content The " flesh" and the " spirit" The unpar- 
 donable sin "False opinions" Satan's aim Sunny gleams "Fly- 
 ing fits" The voice " No use praying" " Ancient Christian" The 
 settle An echo A mill-post at his back Self-dedication. 
 
 LUTHER oftentimes so vivid were his heart ex- 
 periences seems to stand before us in actual face- 
 to-face conflict with Satan. At one moment, he 
 puts him to flight with a joyous hymn of praise ; 
 whilst, at another, he dares him to write, at the bot- 
 tom of a catalogue of his sins, the Scripture" The 
 blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin" and 
 the tempter disappears. Not less vivid are Bunyarrs 
 wrestlings with the arch-fiend. 
 
 Scarcely lias the Lord " set him down so sweetly, 
 in the faith of His holy Gospel," and he has felt his 
 " affections cleaving to Christ," and his love to Him 
 4 
 
88 THE GOOD SOLDIER : 
 
 "as hot as fire" when "the tempter comes upon 
 him" with a temptation " more grievous and dread- 
 ful" than he has yet known. The temptation is, " to 
 sell and part with this most blessed Christ to ex*- 
 change Him for the things of this life, for any 
 thing." 
 
 For the space of a year, the suggestion follows 
 him continually, so that he is not rid of it one day 
 in a month, and at times not one hour in many days 
 together, except when he is asleep. " Sell Christ for 
 this," whispers the tempter, as he is " eating his food, 
 stooping for a pin, chopping a stick, or casting 
 his eye to look upon any object ;" " sell Christ for 
 that ; sell Him, sell Him !" Sometimes it will run in 
 his thoughts, " not so little as a hundred times to- 
 gether, l Sell Him, sell Him, sell Him !' " whilst " for 
 whole hours together, he is forced to stand as contin- 
 ually leaning and forcing his spirit, lest haply, before 
 lie is aware, there arise in his heart some wicked 
 thought which may consent thereto." And, not- 
 withstanding, " the tempter at times succeeds in 
 persuading him he has consented ;" whereupon he is 
 " as one tortured upon a rack for whole days to- 
 gether." 
 
 A After a while he recovers the shock ; but again 
 the temptation to consent " puts him into such fear," 
 that, by " the very force of his mind in laboring to 
 gainsay and resist this wickedness, his body is put 
 into action or motion by ways of pushing or thrust- 
 ing with his hands or elbows" the " destroyer" still 
 
JOHN BUNYAN. 39 
 
 saying, " Sell Him !" and the tried man still answer- 
 ing, until he scarce well knows where he is or how 
 to be composed again "I will not, I will not, I will 
 not ! no, not for thousands, thousands, thousands of 
 worlds !" The " reckoning" is, to make sure that, in 
 the midst of these assaults, he does not set too low a 
 value on Him. 
 
 On other occasions, the tempter appears as an 
 angel of light "dragging him into bondage." At 
 these seasons, he will " not let him eat his food at 
 quiet ;" but, " forsooth, when he is set at the table at 
 his meat, he must go hence to pray he must leave 
 his food, now, and just now so counterfeit holy, 
 also, would this devil be." 
 
 " Now I am at meat," he will " say in himself," at 
 such moments, u let me make an end." 
 
 " No, you must do it now, or you will displease 
 God and despise Christ." 
 
 And then he will feel " as guilty, because he has 
 not obeyed a temptation of the devil, as if he had 
 broken the law of God indeed." 
 
 The reader will remember Christian's " dreadful 
 fall," when Apollyon, " gathering up close" to him, 
 " had almost pressed him to death." One morning, 
 Bunyan is lying awake, harassed by " the wickecr 
 suggestion still running in his mind, as fast as a man 
 could speak, l Sell Him, sell Him, sell Him, sell 
 Him !' " and " in his mind he. is answering, at least 
 twenty times together ' No, no, not for thousands, 
 thousands, thousands !' " when, at last, " after much 
 
40 THE GOOD SOLDIER: 
 
 striving, even until he is almost out of breath," he 
 feels this thought pass through his heart, " Let Him 
 go if He will ;" and he thinks also that he " feels his 
 heart freely consent thereto." The battle seems lost; 
 and " down he falls, as a bird shot from the top of a 
 tree, into great guilt and fearful despair." Hastening 
 out of bed, he "goes moping into the field" where, 
 for the space of two hours, he is "like a man bereft 
 of life past all recovery, and bound over to eternal 
 punishment." 
 
 And yet he " concludes, with great indignation 
 both against his heart and against all assaults, how 
 he would rather be torn in pieces than be found a 
 consenter thereto." In spite of his self-condemna- 
 tory reasonings his heart is true and loyal. 
 
 The " new man" is of God, and cannot act against 
 God ; the "-old man" is of the devil, and cannot act 
 for God. It is Jacob and Esau struggling together 
 in the same womb. The " flesh" is essentialy hellish 
 and devilish ; the " spirit" is as essentially heavenly 
 and divine. Hence the struggle and the victory : 
 what is of God must encounter Satan's enmity, and 
 must also overcome. " I write unto you, young 
 men," says John, "because ye have overcome the 
 ^wicked one." The tempter was not finally beaten 
 back ; but each new conflict ended in a new triumph. 
 Such a triumph is awaiting Bunyan ; but, this time, 
 it is not till after a protracted fight. 
 
 The fear " tears and rends" him " Have I com- 
 mitted the unpardonable sin ?" And this though 
 
JOHN BUNYAN. 41 
 
 presents itself "How loathsome shall I be to the 
 saints at the day of judgment !" Scarcely can he 
 see a good man, whom he believes to have a good 
 conscience, but, " he feels his heart tremble at him 
 while he is in his presence." And then this " Oh, 
 what a glory in walking with God ! and what a 
 mercy to have a good conscience before Him !" 
 
 Again ; he is tempted to " content himself by re- 
 ceiving some false opinions ;" as, that there is no 
 such thing as a day of judgment, or a resurrection ; 
 the tempter suggesting that, " even though these 
 things should be true, it would be a present relief 
 not to believe them." But, as he listens to this lie, 
 he " sees judgment and the judge" at the very door, 
 " as if they were come already." And the lesson he 
 learns is, that " Satan will use any means to keep 
 the soul from Christ;" an "awakened frame of 
 spirit" being that which he hates ; and " security, 
 blindness, darkness, and error" being his " very king- 
 dom and habitation." 
 
 Yet gleams of sunshine flit across these dark 
 scenes. This Scripture "rushes" upon him "He 
 hath received gifts for men, even for the rebellious." 
 "Am not I a rebel?" he asks himself; "and then 
 why not for rne ?" And such cases as David, Peter, 
 Solomon, Manasseh, comfort him ; for, " though all 
 the sins of these saints, and of other great offenders 
 were put together in one, and though his own sins 
 were bigger than all, cannot the blood which had 
 
42 THE GOOD SOLDIER: 
 
 virtue enough in it to wash away their sins, wash 
 away his also ?" 
 
 On another occasion, he is " fleeing from God as 
 from the face of a dreadful judge." But, " in these 
 flying fits," this Scripture calls after him u I have 
 blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and 
 as a cloud thy sins ; return unto me, for I have re- 
 deemed thee." It cries aloud with a very great 
 voice, so that he " makes a little stop, and, as it were, 
 iooks over his shoulder behind him to see if he cannot 
 discern that the God of grace follows him with a par- 
 don in his hand." 
 
 One day, as he is " walking to and fro in a good 
 man's shop," again bowed down by the fear of hav- 
 ing committed the unpardonable sin, and praying in 
 his heart that, if his sin do differ from that against 
 the Holy Ghost, the Lord will show it to him 
 " suddenly there is, as if there rushed in at the win- 
 dow, the noise of wind upon him, but very pleasant ; 
 and as if he heard a voice speaking, 4 Didst thou ever 
 refuse to be justified by the blood of Christ ?' " In an 
 instant, his "whole life of profession" is opened to 
 him ; and he sees that designedly he has not, and 
 his " heart answers groaningly, No." Light comes, 
 and a calm silence stilling the tumult of "those 
 thoughts which, like masterless hell-hounds, have 
 roared and bellowed, and made so hideous a noise 
 within him." 
 
 Another temptation, however, tries him. Can he 
 have the face once more to go to the feet of that 
 
JOHN BUNYAN. 43 
 
 Saviour against whom he has so vilely sinned ? Oh 
 the shame which now attends him, when he thinks 
 of going to God by prayer ! " It is no use your 
 prayers," whispers Satan ; " for God is weary of you 
 and of your unbelief, in not going up to possess the 
 land." The man is stunned. " Oh ! who knows," 
 says he, " how hard a thing I found it to come to 
 God in prayer!" But, whilst "pinched very sore," 
 he thinks he can but die ; and, so, pray he will and 
 must even though it should once be written, " Such 
 an one died at the foot of Christ in prayer." 
 
 At this crisis, harassed and perplexed by every 
 passing wind, he breaks his mind to "an ancient 
 Christian," telling him he is afraid he has sinned the 
 sin against the Holy Ghost. " I think so, too," is 
 the reply. This is " cold comfort ;" but he is relieved 
 on finding that, though a gracious man, he is " a 
 stranger to much combat with the devil." So he 
 hies him back once more to God again, beseeching 
 mercy there. 
 
 But a strange cloud still shrouds God's face. He 
 thinks of Jesus of His " grace, goodness, love, kind- 
 ness, gentleness, meekness, death, blood, promises, 
 and blessed exhortations, comforts, and consolations ;" 
 but all this " goes to his soul like a sword," for the 
 thought comes, "Ay, this is the Jesus, the loving 
 Saviour, whom I have parted with ; and oh, what I 
 have lost !" 
 
 One day, in this troubled mood, he is pacing the 
 streets of a neighboring town when, ready to sink, 
 
44 THE GOOD SOLDIER I 
 
 he sits down upon a " settle," and " falls into a very 
 deep pause" about his sin. " Methiuks," says he, as 
 he lifts up his head after a long musing, " that sun 
 grudges to give me light ; and those stones in the 
 street, and tiles on the houses, band themselves 
 against me." And, heaving a heavy sigh, he adds, 
 " How can God comfort such a wretch ?" 
 
 A sunbeam, however, once more penetrates his 
 soul. " This sin of thine," an echo seems to answer, 
 " is not unto death." It is as if he " had suddenly 
 been raised out of the grave," and he exclaims 
 " Lord, how couldst thou find out such a word as 
 this ?" For he is "filled with admiration at the fitness 
 and the unexpectedness of the sentence, and at the 
 tightness of the timing of it, and at the power, and 
 sweetness, and light, and glory, which has come with 
 it." His sin, he now thinks, is pardonable ; and great 
 is the "easement" to his mind it is a release " from his 
 former bonds, and a shelter from his former storms." 
 
 For two days that sentence " stands like a mill- 
 post at his back." But by and by it begins to leave 
 him, and to " withdraw its supportation" from him ; 
 and so, again he finds himself on his knees under his 
 " old fears," and crying " O Lord, I beseech thee, 
 show me that thou hast loved me with everlasting 
 love." Scarcely has the cry gone forth, when, like 
 an echo, there returns upon him u I have loved thee 
 with an everlasting love." He goes to bed in quiet ; 
 also, when he awakes next morning, it is fresh upon 
 nis soul, and he " believes it." 
 
JOHN BUNYAN. 45 
 
 Leaving once more the ashes and the " pots" among 
 which he has been lying, he soars aloft into the soul's 
 proper rest and home 
 
 " On steady wings sails through the immense abyss, 
 Plucks amaranthine joys from bowers of bliss." 
 
 And the " love and affection" which now again 
 "burn within him toward his Lord and Saviour," 
 work " such a strong and hot desire of revengement 
 upon himself for the abuse which he has done to Him, 
 that, had he a thousand gallons of blood within his 
 veins, he feels he could freely spill it all at His com- 
 mand, and at His feet." And such a passage as this 
 stimulates him " There is forgiveness with thee, 
 that thou mayest be feared ;" for it is " thus made 
 out" to him that the great God doth set so high an 
 esteem on the love of His poor creatures, that, rather 
 than go without their love, He will pardon their 
 transgressions. And then another word is u fulfilled 
 on him" "They shall be ashamed and confounded, 
 and never open their mouths any more, because of 
 their shame ; when I am pacified toward them for all 
 that they have done, saith the Lord God." And thus 
 his soul at this time and, as he then thinks, for ever 
 is " set at liberty from being afflicted with his for- 
 mer guilt and amazement." 
 
CHAPTEE VIII. 
 
 " I got me flowers to strew THY way ; 
 I got me boughs off many a tree." 
 
 Heart-ache-Deep gulf" Yet I will pray" "Clapping on.the back"- 
 "Able" "For thee" "A grace-giver" Napoleon " Has left Him" 
 A calm Christ in heaven Brainerd Love. 
 
 " SECURITY," it has been said, " is the greatest of 
 our dangers." To this peril, certainly, Bunyan is 
 not exposed. His Christian life hitherto has been 
 one continuous conflict ; nor is the battle yet over. 
 
 Many weeks have not passed when again his 
 " heart begins to ache," lest he " meet with disap- 
 pointment at last." And he sets himself most dil- 
 igently to examine his former comfort, fearing that 
 one who has sinned so grievously against light may 
 be shut out from all right to peace and joy. " Re- 
 joice not, O Israel, for joy, as other people" startles 
 him ; for, though there is cause of rejoicing for those 
 who " hold to Jesus," has not he cut himself off by 
 liis transgressions, and left himself " neither foot-hold 
 nor hand-hold among all the stays and props in the 
 precious Word of life ?" And so again he "sinks 
 into a gulf, as a house whose foundation is destroyed," 
 the darkness brooding over him for many months. 
 
JOHN BUNYAN. 47 
 
 One day, the thought occurs to him " Men ought 
 always to pray and not to faint." But no sooner 
 has he set himself with new earnestness to this exer- 
 cise than the tempter " lays at him very sore," saying 
 " Neither the mercy of God, nor yet the blood of 
 Christ, does at all concern you, nor can help you for 
 your sin ; therefore it is vain to pray." 
 
 " Yet, T will pray," he secretly says to himself. 
 
 " But your sin is unpardonable." 
 
 " Well, I will pray." 
 
 " It is to no boot." 
 
 " But I will pray." 
 
 And, going upon his knees, he says " Lord, Satan 
 tells me that neither thy mercy nor Christ's blood is 
 sufficient to save my soul : Lord, shall I honor thee 
 most by believing thou wilt and canst? or him, by 
 believing thou neither wilt nor canst ? Lord. I 
 
 O 7 
 
 would fain honor thee by believing thou wilt and 
 canst." Scarcely has he spoken, when it seems as 
 if " some one was clapping him on the back," saying 
 " O man, great is thy faith." 
 
 Another day, after continuing from the morning 
 till about seven or eight at night, " again much un- 
 der this question, ' Whether the blood of Christ is 
 sufficient to save his soul,' " suddenly, as he is 
 quite worn out w r ith fear, these words " sound within 
 his heart, l He is able.' " " Methought," says he, 
 " this word ' able' was spoke loud to me ; it showed 
 a great word ; it seemed to be writ in great letters, 
 and gave such a jostle to my fear and doubt as I 
 
48 THE GOOD SOLDIER : 
 
 never had from that time, all my life, either before or 
 after." 
 
 Yet, even this bright gleam is of short duration. 
 A fortnight after, his sky is again overcast, and he is 
 crying 
 
 " Whither away, delight ? 
 Thou cam'st but now ; wilt thou so soon depart 
 And give me up to-night ?" 
 
 But now the sun returns more speedily. One morn- 
 ing, as he is on his knees, that word " darts in" upon 
 him " My grace is sufficient." A short time before, 
 the same word " could not come near his soul with 
 comfort," so that he had " thrown down his book in 
 a pet ;" but now it is " not large enough" for him 
 it is as if it " had arms of grace so wide" that it 
 could " enclose, not him only, but many more be- 
 sides." A few weeks elapse, and the thought occurs 
 " But is this grace for me ?" He has left out " for 
 thee ;" and, once more, he is in the fearful pit. One 
 evening however, as he is in a meeting of God's peo- 
 ple, full of sadness and terror, suddenly there " break 
 in" upon him, with great power, and three times to- 
 gether, the words " My grace is sufficient for thec ; 
 my grace is sufficient for thee ; my grace is sufficient 
 lor thee." And, " oh ! methought," says he, " that 
 every word was a mighty word unto me ; as i my,' 
 and i grace, 7 and i sufficient,' and ' for thee ;' they 
 were then, and sometimes are still, far bigger than 
 others be." 
 
JOHN BUN! AN. 49 
 
 With touching pathos a poet has written, con- 
 cerning the soul's inner struggles 
 
 " I struck the board, and cried, c No more ! 
 
 I will abroad. 
 
 What ! shall I ever sigh and pine ? 
 My lines and life are free ; free as the road, 
 Loose as the wind, as large as store. 
 
 Shall I still be in suit ? 
 Have I no harvest, but a thorn 
 To let me blood ; and not restore 
 What I have lost, with cordial fruit ? 
 Sure, there was wine, 
 Before my sighs did dry it ; there was corn, 
 
 Before my tears did drown it. 
 Is the year only lost to me ? 
 
 Have I no bays to crown it ? 
 No flow'rs, no garlands gay ? all blasted ? 
 
 All wasted ? 
 
 Not so, my heart ! but there is fruit ; 
 And thou hast hands. 
 Away, take heed 1 
 I will abroad. 
 Call in thy death's head there. Tie up thy fears. ' " 
 
 The time is now at hand when this great soul is to 
 go forth in giant-might, " the joy of the Lord" his 
 " strength." And, led by a way which he knows 
 not, he is struggling onwards to his sure rest. u I 
 was," says he, on the occasion last named, " as 
 though I had seen the Lord Jesus look down from 
 heaven through the tiles upon me ;" and it sends him 
 home mourning, his heart broken and " filled full of 
 
 joy." 
 
 6 
 
50 THE GOOD SOLDIER '. 
 
 " Christ," said Martin Luther, " is not a new law- 
 giver, but only a grace-giver." Bunyan now grasps 
 more and more firmly this truth. One day, in a 
 troubled agitation of his spirit about " Esau's birth- 
 right," and about his own likeness to him in surren- 
 dering it, he appeals to God to bring the conflict to 
 an issue by confronting with it His own grace. In- 
 stantly the " two Scriptures bolt" upon him, and they 
 work and struggle strongly in him for a while, until 
 at last " that about Esau's birthright begins to wax 
 weak, and withdraw, and vanish, and this about the 
 sufficiency of grace prevails with peace and joy." 
 As he is " in a muse" about this, that Scripture 
 " comes in upon him," " Mercy rejoiceth over judg- 
 ment." This is " a wonderment" to him ; yet he 
 does not doubt it is of God, for " the word of the 
 law and of wrath must give place to the word of life 
 and of grace." 
 
 One day, at St. Helena, Napoleon was contrasting 
 the force of Christianity with all other forces known 
 among men. " Alexander," said he, " Ca3sar, Charle- 
 magne, and myself, founded empires ; but on what 
 foundation did we rest the creations of our genius ? 
 Upon force. Jesus Christ founded an empire upon 
 love ; and, at this hour, millions of men would die 
 for Him." And, turning to Bertrand, he added, still 
 resting upon this fact " If you do not perceive that 
 Jesus Christ is God, I did wrong to appoint you gen- 
 eral." It is this divine characteristic of the Saviour 
 which Bunyan, in spite of all Satan's wiles and even 
 
JOHN BUN Y AN. 51 
 
 by means of them, is now day by day realizing more 
 vividly. 
 
 One evening, that Scripture " most sweetly visits" 
 his soul " Him that cometh unto me, I will in no 
 wise cast out." " Oh ! the comfort," says he, " which 
 
 had from that word, ' In no wise !' As if He had 
 said, ' By no means, for nothing whatsoever which 
 you may have done.' " 
 
 " But," whispers Satan to him, " greatly laboring 
 to pull" it from him, " Christ did not mean you, or 
 such as you." 
 
 " Nay, but here is in these words no such excep- 
 tion ; i him that comes' l him' any * him ;' ' Him 
 that cometh unto me, I will in no wise cast out.' " 
 
 " And so," he writes, " if ever Satan and I did 
 strive for any word of God in all my life, it was for 
 this good word of Christ ; he at one end, and I at 
 the other. Oh, what work we made ! It was for 
 this in John, I say, that we did so tug and strive ; he 
 pulled and I pulled ; but, God be praised, I overcame 
 him ; I got sweetness from it." 
 
 Another day, " notwithstanding all these helps," 
 he is still perplexed with the thought " But have 
 you not, like Esau, sold Him 3" 
 
 u Well, suppose I have ; does not that mean, c I 
 have freely left the Lord Jesus Christ to his choice, 
 whether He will be my Saviour or no?' for the 
 wicked suggestion is, ' Let Him go, if He will.' But 
 He tells me, i I will never leave thee, nor forsake 
 thee.' " 
 
52 THE GOOD SOLDIER: 
 
 " Yes, but thou has left Him." 
 
 " But / will not leave thee." 
 
 He thanks God, and takes courage. Those Scrip. 
 tures which once he wished out of the Bible, now 
 look " not so grimly" at him as he thought they did. 
 Election and sovereignty now shine as the very glory 
 of grace. 
 
 After these storms, a sweet calm settles down upon 
 his soul, and he sings : 
 
 " King of Griory, King of Peace, 
 
 I will love thee. 
 
 And, that love may never cease, 
 I will move thee. 
 
 Thou hast granted my request ; 
 
 Thou hast heard me. 
 Thou didst note my working breast : 
 
 Thou hast spared me. 
 
 Though my sins against me cried, 
 
 Thou didst clear me ; 
 And, alone, when they replied, 
 
 Thou didst hear me." 
 
 True, " some drops" now and then fall upon him ; 
 but it is only " the hinder part of the tempest" the 
 thunder is gone beyond him. 
 
 One morning, as he is " passing into the field, and 
 that, too, with some dashes on his conscience, fearing 
 lest all be not right" this Scripture comes upon his 
 heart, " Thy righteousness is in heaven." 
 
 " There," he exclaims, looking upward, " with the 
 
JOHN BUKYAN. 53 
 
 eye of his soul," and beholding Jesus Christ at God's 
 right hand, u there is my righteousness ! Wherever 
 I am, and whatever I am doing, God can never say, 
 He does not see my righteousness ; for it is just be- 
 fore Him, and that continually." 
 
 Thus he sees that it is not his own good frame 
 of heart which makes his righteousness better, nor 
 his bad frame that makes it worse ; for his righteous-- 
 ness is Jesus Christ Himself "the same yesterday, 
 to-day, and for ever." And although, on going home 
 and searching the Scriptures, he does not find these 
 exact words, " Thy righteousness is in heaven," yet 
 that other word comes before him " He is made of 
 God unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, 
 and redemption ;" by which word he " sees the other 
 sentence true." 
 
 Now do his "chains fall off his legs indeed." 
 Brainerd describes his enlargement as a fixed and 
 steadfast contemplation of God in Christ the thought 
 of his own peace or comfort, or even existence, 
 scarcely entering his mind. Such also is Bunyan's 
 experience at this season. " Oh ! methought," he 
 says, " Christ ! Christ ! there was nothing but Christ 
 that was before my eyes. I was now for looking upon 
 this and the other benefits of Christ apart, as of His 
 blood, burial, or resurrection, but considering Him 
 as a whole Christ ! as Him in whom all these, and 
 all other His virtues, relations, offices, and operations, 
 met together, and that He sat on the right hand of 
 God in heaven." 
 
 5 
 
54 THE GOOD SOLDIER. 
 
 Love is life. God is love ; and to dwell in God is 
 to dwell in love. Love is the very atmosphere which 
 God breathes ; and the moment the Divine nature is 
 communicated to a man in the new birth, the same 
 atmosphere is breathed. Hence it comes to pass 
 that the "new man," by a necessity of his nature, 
 loves. " It i-s when we love," says Vinet, " that our 
 salvation is realized. Love lends to the light of our 
 lamp its liveliest and brightest beams. Faith and 
 hope are of value, only because they conduct to love ; 
 and the soul would dispense with believing and hop- 
 ing, if, without hoping and believing, it were possible 
 to love." Bunyan now has reached this heavenly 
 iandiug-place, from which Satan by his wiles has so 
 long sought to intercept him. " The Lord," says he, 
 " did lead me into the mystery of union with the Son 
 of God that I was joined to Him that I was flesh 
 of His flesh, and bone of His bone." And then he 
 sees that, if Christ and he are one, Christ's righteous- 
 ness is his, Christ's merits his, Christ's victory also 
 his. " Now," says he, " could I see myself in heaven 
 and on earth at once ; in heaven by my Christ, by 
 my Head, by my righteousness and life ; though on 
 earth by my body or person." He is risen with 
 Christ, and he knows it ; he is a partaker of His 
 resurrection-life ; and the result is, his affections are 
 set upon things above, and upon Him who is above. 
 
CHAPTEE IX. 
 
 " "Where am I now? Is this the love and care 
 Of Jesus for the men that pilgrims are ? 
 Thus to provide ! that I should be forgiven! 
 And dwell already the next door to heaven 1" 
 
 The house Beautiful The salutation Aspirations Foretastes- 
 Church at Bedford The Supper Shadow of death " Sickness 
 doubled 1 ' " Greatly pinched" " A turn" " Got on high" 
 Alleyne. 
 
 " WHO can tell how joyful this man was when he 
 had gotten his roll again ? for this roll was the as- 
 surance of his life and of acceptance at the desired 
 haven." So wrote Bunyan, many years afterwards, 
 describing in his Allegory this stage in his own 
 "progress." And now, nimbly mounting the rest 
 of the hill, and passing unharmed the chained though 
 roaring lions, he is entertained in the " house Beau- 
 tiful" by its grave and comely inmates. 
 
 It was a touching salutation with which the way- 
 farer was welcomed " She smiled, but the water 
 stood in her eyes." The pilgrim was there victo- 
 rious, but he bore the scars of conflict. 
 
 And how yearningly did he long for holier and 
 closer fellowship than this place of tears and of 
 shadows gives! u What is it," said Prudence, 
 
56 THE GOOD SOLDIER: 
 
 " which makes you so desirous to go to Mount 
 Zion ?'* "Why, there," he replied, "I hope to see 
 Him alive that did hang dead on the cross; and 
 there I hope to be rid of all those things which, to 
 this day, are an annoyance to me: there, they say, 
 there is no death ; and there I shall dwell with such 
 company as I like best. For, to tell you the truth, 
 I love Him because I was by him eased of my bur- 
 den ; and I am weary of my inward sickness. I 
 would fain be where I shall die no more, and with 
 the company who shall continually cry, * Holy, holy, 
 holy F " 
 
 But until that bright land should be reached, 
 pleasant foretastes were vouchsafed. 
 
 " Do you not find sometimes," asked one of the 
 inmates of the palace, " as if those things were van- 
 quished, which at other times are your perplexity ?" 
 
 "Yes," said Christian; "and 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 van- 
 quished ?" 
 
 " Yes, when I think of what I saw at the Cross, 
 that will do it ; and when I look at my broidered 
 coat, that will do it ; also when I look into the roll, 
 that I carry in my bosom, that will do it ; and when 
 my thoughts wax warm about whither I am going, 
 that will do it." 
 
 Bunyan's " house Beautiful" is the humble church 
 at Bedford. "After I had propounded to them," 
 
JOHN BUNYAN. 5 7 
 
 says he, "my desire to walk in the order and ordi- 
 nances of Christ with them, and was also admitted 
 by them ; while I thought of that blessed ordinance 
 of Christ, which was his last supper with His disci- 
 ples before his death that Scripture, ' Do this in 
 remembrance of me,' was made a very precious word 
 to me ; for by it the Lord did come down upon my 
 conscience with the discovery of His death for my 
 sins, and, as I then felt, did as if He plunged me in 
 the virtue of the same." 
 
 Scarcely has he joined the Church, when he is 
 " suddenly and violently seized" with " something 
 inclining to a consumption ;" insomuch that he 
 " thinks he cannot live." 
 
 Taken thus into the "valley of the shadow of 
 death," he is brought face to face with " the innume- 
 rable company of his sins and transgressions," his 
 " deadness, dulness, and coldness in his holy duties ; 
 his wanderings of heart, his wearisomeness in all 
 good things, his want of love to God, to His way, 
 and to His people : and " with this at the end of 
 all 'Are these the fruits of Christianity ? are these 
 the tokens of a blessed man ?'" 
 
 His " sickness is doubled" upon him ; for now he 
 is "sick in his inward man" his soul is clogged 
 with guilt. And, to add to his distress, his " former 
 experience of God's goodness is taken quite out of 
 his mind, and hid as if it had never been nor seen." 
 " It seemed once more," says he, " as if all was over 
 with me, my soul being greatly pinched betwixt 
 
58 THE GOOD SOLDIER I 
 
 these two considerations 'Live I must not, die I 
 dare not.' Now I sunk in my spirits, and was giv- 
 ing up all for lost." 
 
 One day, however, as he is walking up and down 
 in his house, " as a man in a most woeful state," this 
 Scripture takes hold of his heart " Ye are justified 
 freely by His grace, through the redemption which 
 is in Christ Jesus." And, " O ! what a turn" it makes 
 upon him ! It is as if a voice had said to him 
 
 " Poor man ! where art thou now ? thy day is night. 
 Good man, be not cast down, thou yet art right ; 
 Thy way to Heaven lies by the gates of Hell ; 
 Cheer up, hold out, with thee it shall go well." 
 
 Not more joyful was the pilgrim that morning, 
 as he emerged from the dismal valley, than is Bun- 
 yan at this new glimpse of his heavenly standing 
 and rest. He is " as one awaked out of some trou- 
 blesome sleep and dream." 
 
 " Behold, my Son is by me," God seems to say to 
 him through that Scripture ; " and upon Him I 
 look, and not on thee, and shall deal with thee ac- 
 cording as I am pleased with Him." Now he u is 
 got on high," and he sees himself " within the arms 
 of grace and mercy ;" and, though he was " before 
 afraid to think of a dying hour," yet now he " cries, 
 4 Let me die !' " 
 
 Alleyne once wrote " Oh ! what a shame that 
 ever we should live as if GOD were not enough for 
 us, without anything else !" Bunyan now is to enter 
 
JOHN BUNYAN. 59 
 
 on a course which shall " declare plainly" what God 
 is to him. " At this time," says he, " I saw more in 
 these words, i heirs of God,' than ever I shall be able 
 to express while I live in this world. * Heirs of God !' 
 God Himself is the portion of the saints. This I saw 
 and wondered at, but cannot tell what I saw." But 
 his life is to tell his earnest labors, and his calm 
 patience, and his heroic self-denial.* 
 
 * Following Bunyan's own order, we have somewhat ante- 
 dated the latter part of these temptations. His first two 
 years of preaching preceded his full establishment in the 
 joy and peace of the Gospel 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 * He yearned once more on men." 
 
 God's vessels" Thrust forth 1 ' First preaching His " orders' 1 The 
 honey and the lion Bowels of pity Divine signature Sccno in 
 churchyard The student Yearnings Self-love and its refuges 
 "Not many fathers" Fruits " Our joy" " The net" Homely 
 Saxon Genial soul " Pleading with men." 
 
 A HOLY man of God once uttered this aspira- 
 tion : 
 
 " Wherefore I dare not, I, put forth my hand 
 
 To hold the ark ; although it seems to shake, 
 Through the old sins and new doctrines of our land, 
 Only since God doth often vessels make, 
 Of lowly matter, for high uses meet 
 
 I throw me at His feet. 
 There will I lie ; until my Maker seek 
 For some mean stuff, whereon to show His skill : 
 Then is my time." 
 
 Like all true laborers in God's harvest, Bunyan is 
 " thrust forth" by the Divine hand. 
 
 The intimation comes through the little company 
 of saints at Bedford. It is after he " has been five 
 or six years awakened," and, has tk seen both the 
 want and the worth of Jesus Christ, and has been 
 
JOHN BUNYAN. 61 
 
 enabled to venture his soul upon Him," that " some 
 of the most able among them for judgment and holi- 
 ness of life," " perceiving that God had counted him 
 worthy to understand something of His will in His 
 holy and blessed Word," and had given him utter- 
 ance in some measure to express to others for edifi- 
 cation the things which he had seen, " desire him, 
 with much earnestness, to take in hand, in one of 
 the meetings, to speak a word of exhortation to 
 them." The proposal " does much dash and abash 
 his spirit ;" though at length he consents, " in two 
 several assemblies (but in private) twice to discover 
 his gift amongst them." 
 
 The tinker has no " orders," such as colleges and 
 ecclesiastics confer ; but He who has called him to 
 His feet, and has forgiven him all his sins, gives him 
 His commission " Go and preach to every crea- 
 ture." And the mouth which He has opened, who 
 may dare to shut ? " The people," says Bunyan, 
 referring to the two occasions just named, " not only 
 seemed to be, but did frequently protest, as in the 
 sight of the great God, that they were both affected 
 and comforted ; and they gave thanks to the Father 
 of mercies for the grace bestowed on me." 
 
 He next " accompanies these men when they go 
 forth into the neighboring villages" where, though 
 as yet he does not venture to " make use of his gift 
 in an open way," he yet " sometimes speaks a word 
 of admonition, 7 ' to the great joy and edification of 
 souls. And no wonder souls are gladdened. His 
 
 
62 THE GOOD SOLDIER: 
 
 lips distil the " honey which he has taken out of the 
 carcass of a lion." " I have eaten thereof," he says, 
 alluding to the manner in which God has educated 
 him by his peculiar inward trials and temptations, 
 " and have been much refreshed thereby. Tempta- 
 tions, when we meet them at first, are as the lion 
 that roared upon Samson ; but, if we overcome them, 
 we shall find a nest of honey within them." He has 
 overcome ; and, more than conqueror, he brings from 
 the spoiler fatness. 
 
 Now, in his twenty-eighth year, he is set apart by 
 the Church, with fasting and prayer, to " the more 
 ordinary and public preaching of the Word." Feel- 
 ing in his mind " evidently" a " secret pricking for- 
 ward thereto," though " with great fear and trembling 
 at the sight of his own weakness," he " does set to 
 the work." And He who " openeth and none shut- 
 teth," gives him for a season a door of utterance, 
 "wide and effectual" to his heart's content. The 
 people flock into Bedford by hundreds and by thou- 
 sands, to hear the tinker and his burning message. 
 
 Trained for his mission in God's own school, his 
 hands have been taught to war, and his fingers to 
 fight. "I thank God," says he, "He gives unto me 
 some measure of bowels and pity for the people's 
 souls, which also does put me forward to labor with 
 great diligence and earnestness, to find out such a 
 word as may, if God will bless it, lay hold of and 
 awakon the conscience." And howpiteouslyhe pleads 
 with the awakened ! 
 
JOHN BUNYAN. 63 
 
 ;l Arise, sad heart ! if them dost not withstand, 
 
 Christ's resurrection thine may be. 
 Do not, by hanging down, break from the hand, 
 Which, as it riseth, raiseth thee. 
 Arise, arise 1 
 And with His burial-linen dry thine eyes, 
 
 Christ left His grave-clothes, that we might, when grief 
 Draws tears or blood, not want a handkerchief." 
 
 And not unblest are his gracious words. " The 
 good Lord," says he, " had respect to the desire of 
 His servant ; for I had not preached long before 
 some began to be touched and be greatly afflicted in 
 their minds at the apprehension of the greatness of 
 their sin, and of their need of Jesus Christ. At first, 
 he cannot believe that God should speak by him to 
 the heart of any man, " still counting himself un- 
 worthy." The divine signature to the work, how- 
 ever, is too real to be mistaken ; and though he still 
 " puts it from him that they should be awakened by 
 him, he begins to conclude that it may be so, that 
 God has owned such a foolish one." He now, there- 
 fore, has joy ; the very tears of the awakened both 
 solacing and encouraging him. And these things 
 are another argument to him, that God has called 
 him to this work, and stands by him in it. 
 
 One summer evening, in a rustic parish in Cam- 
 bridgeshire, a thoughtless under-graduate is riding 
 along the highway, when his attention is arrested 
 by a gathering of people assembled in a church- 
 yard. On a gravestone stands a plain working- 
 
64 THE GOOD SOLDIER: 
 
 man, addressing the vast crowd. Every eye is fixed 
 intently on the speaker ; and a strange solemnity 
 still as the grave over which he stands pervades 
 the motley group. 
 
 " What is this ?" whispers the student, scarcely 
 able to catch the ear, for a moment, of a lad who 
 hangs on the outskirts of the crowd. 
 
 " It's the Bedford tinker," replies the lad, in a 
 tone of impatience, as if marvelling at such a ques- 
 tion. 
 
 The student dismounts, and listens for a few mo- 
 ments, a sneer curling on his lip. But, as the 
 preacher proceeds, the lip begins to quiver, and 
 the tear to tremble in his eye ; it is the u deer 
 hit of the archer." A year or two later, and the 
 mocking gownsman is a bold preacher of Christ. 
 
 Richard Baxter, in his "Reformed Pastor," puts 
 this question " Is it not the great and lamentable 
 sin of the ministers of the Gospel, that they are not 
 fully devoted to God, and give not up themselves 
 and all that they have to the carrying on of the 
 blessed work which they have undertaken?" If 
 ever a preacher avoided this sin, it was Bunyan. 
 " When I have been preaching," he says, " I thank 
 God my heart hath often, all the time of this and 
 of the other exercise, with great earnestness cried 
 to God that He would make the Word effectual to 
 the salvation of the soul still being grieved lest 
 the enemy should take the Word away from the con- 
 science, and so it should become unfruitful." And 
 
JOHN BUNYAN. 65 
 
 he adds : "When I have done the exercise, it hath 
 gone to my heart to think the Word should now fall 
 as rain on stony places still wishing from my heart, 
 4 Oh! that they who have heard mo speak this day 
 did but see, as I do, what sin, death, hell, and the 
 curse of God is ; and also what the grace, and love, 
 and mercy of God is, through Christ, to men in such 
 a case as they are, who are yet estranged from Him !' 
 And, indeed, I did often say in my heart before the 
 Lord, l That if to be hanged up presently before their 
 eyes would be a means to awaken them, and to confirm 
 them in the truth, I gladly should be contented.' " 
 
 And he is " unto God a sweet savour of Christ." 
 " I have been," says he, " in my preaching, espe- 
 cially when I have been engaged in the doctrine of 
 life by Christ without works, as if an angel of God 
 had stood by at my back to encourage me." And, 
 again : " It pleased me nothing to see people drink 
 in opinions, if they seemed ignorant of Jesus Christ 
 and of the worth of their own salvation of sound 
 conviction for sin, especially for unbelief of a heart 
 set on fire to be saved by Christ, with strong breath- 
 ings after a sanctified soul. That it was which de- 
 lighted me ; those were the souls I counted blessed." 
 
 " Self-love," writes Isaac Taylor, " finds much ali- 
 ment in the argument which is to end in showing 
 that another a former guide has been the cause 
 of whatever is blameworthy in the disciple." Bunyan 
 is too intent on his great errand to give to the con- 
 science any such shelter. His one enemy is sin ; 
 6* 
 
66 THE GOOD SOLDIER: 
 
 and, in taking the field against that enemy, he finds 
 in every conscience a judge ready to pronounce a 
 sentence of immediate self-condemnation. " I never 
 care," he says, " to meddle with things which are 
 controverted, especially things of the lowest nature ; 
 I let them alone, because I see that they engender 
 strife, and because neither in the doing of them, nor 
 in the leaving them undone, do they commend us 
 to God to be His. I see my work before me does 
 run into another channel, even to carry an awakening 
 word ; to that, therefore, I do stick and adhere." 
 And he adds "It pleases me much to contend 
 with great earnestness for the word of faith and the 
 remission of sins by the sufferings and death of 
 Jesus." 
 
 It was Paul's complaint of the Church at Corinth, 
 that, though not without abundance of " instructors 
 in Christ," they had " not many fathers." Bunyan 
 " never can be satisfied, unless some fruits do appear 
 in his work." u If I be fruitless," says he, " it matters 
 not who commends me ; but if I be fruitful, I care 
 not who condemns." And again : " I have counted 
 it as if I had goodly buildings and lordships in those 
 places where my children were born ; my heart hath 
 been so wrapped up in the glory of this excellent 
 work, that I count myself more blessed and honored 
 of God by this than if He had made me the emperor 
 of the Christian world, or the lord of all the glory of 
 the earth, without it. Oh! these words, 4 He that 
 converteth a soul from the error of his way doth save 
 
JOHN BUNYAN. 67 
 
 a soul from death :' * He that winneth souls is wise ;' 
 4 For, what is our hope, our joy, our crown of rejoic- 
 ing ? Are not even ye in the presence of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ at His coming ?' " 
 
 It is at His word that he " lets down the net." " I 
 have observed," says he, " that where I have had a 
 work to do for God, I have had first, as it were, the 
 going of God upon my spirit to desire I might preach 
 there : I have also observed, that such and such souls 
 in particular have been strongly set upon my heart, 
 and I stirred up to wish for their salvation ; and that 
 these very souls have, after this, been given me as 
 the fruits of my ministry." And he adds : " I have 
 observed that a word, cast in by the bye, hath done 
 more execution in a sermon, than all that was spoken 
 besides. Sometimes also, when I have thought 
 
 ' o 
 
 I did no good, then I did the most of all ; and at 
 other times, when I thought I should catch them, I 
 have fished for nothing." 
 
 It is thus that " for about the space of five years" 
 this true minister labors, night and day for souls. 
 " How much learning," said Leighton one day to 
 some of his clergy, " is required to make these things 
 plain !" The " tinker has no learning from human 
 schools ; but he has sat at Christ's feet, and has 
 learned of HIM." And this, with his homely Saxon 
 and his genial soul, opened a way for him into the 
 hearts and understandings at once of the rude coun- 
 try bumpkin, and of the refined and accomplished 
 graduate. Like his own picture in the house of the 
 
68 THE GOOD SOLDIER. 
 
 Interpreter, his eye is lifted up to heaven, the best 
 of books is in his hand, the law of truth is written 
 upon his lips, the world is behind his back, a crown 
 of gold hangs over his head, and he stands pleading 
 with men 
 
 " As meek as the man Moses, and withal 
 As in Agrippa's presence Paul" 
 
CHAPTEK XI. 
 
 u These walls and bars cannot a prison make ; 
 The free-born soul enjoys its liberty : 
 These clods of earth it may incaptivate 
 Whilst heavenly minds are conversant, on high 
 Hanging the fields of bless' d eternity." 
 
 The ancient prison Howard Banyan's ring A scene at Samsell 
 The warrant The "close" The "Forlorn hope" The prayer The 
 constable The parting The Justice-room "What arms?" The 
 bond The " mittimus" The Judas-kiss To prison. 
 
 IN the town of Bedford, on one of the central piers 
 of the rude bridge across the Ouse, there stood, in 
 those days, an ancient prison. A century later, it 
 was visited by Howard, who found the felons, men 
 and women, associated together in a court not wider 
 than fourteen feet, and at night huddled into two 
 dungeons sunk within the piers only one court for 
 debtors and for felons, and no apartment for the 
 jailor. The visit of Howard was its death-warrant ; 
 for, in a few more years, it was razed to the ground. 
 In removing the floor of one of the dungeons, the 
 workmen discovered Bunyan's ring. 
 
 How came he there ? Had the tinker lapsed 
 into his old ways, and merited a felon's brand ? 
 
70 THE GOOD SOLDIER I 
 
 It is a winter evening ; and we are in the kitchen 
 of a farm-steading, adjoining the village of Harling- 
 ton, in Bedfordshire. After the labors of the day, 
 the rustics are gathering, grand-dames and children, 
 old men and maidens each countenance lighted 
 with an unwonted gladness, as if a joy not often 
 tasted were in store. It is Bunyan who is coming 
 to preach the Word, arid to speak a word in season 
 to the weary. 
 
 And yet a strange restlessness pervades the little 
 gathering ; for some mysterious whisperings are abroad 
 that a " warrant" is out, to silence the preacher and 
 to hurry him off to jail. As the darkness conies on, 
 certain suspicious visitors have been seen prowling 
 stealthily about, as if watching for some expected 
 prey. And now that the place is filling, the farmer, 
 grown somewhat timorous, is conferring with his wife 
 and with one of the shrewder neighbors, whether 
 they had not better separate and warn their friend 
 not to come out to-night. 
 
 But there he is ! All rise to welcome him, and 
 his manly face has a radiant smile for all. 
 
 " Oh ! Mr. Bunyan," whispers the master, hurry- 
 ing up to him with an agitated, anxious air, " there's 
 a warrant out against you ; the officers are about ; 
 and we must separate at once, or you will be seized 
 and imprisoned." 
 
 " What ?" says Bunyan, with the bold, decisive 
 tone of a man who has counted the cost ; " I will 
 not stir, neither will I have the meeting dismissed 
 
JOHN BUNYAN. . , 
 
 for this. Come, be of good cheer ; let us not be 
 daunted ; our cause is good, we need not be ashamed 
 of it : to preach God's Word is so good a work that 
 \ve shall be well rewarded if we suffer for that." 
 
 Before beginning, however, he " walks into the 
 close," to lay the matter calmly before his God. " I 
 have showed myself," is his quiet soliloquy, as he 
 confers with his brave spirit, " hearty and courageous 
 in my preaching, and have, blessed be grace, made 
 it my business to encourage others ; therefore, if I 
 should now run and make an escape, it will be of a 
 very ill savor in the country. For, what will my 
 weak and newly-converted brethren think of it ? but 
 that I was not as strong in deed as I was in word. 
 Also, if I should run now that there is a warrant out 
 for me, may not I make them afraid to stand when 
 only great words are spoken to them ? Besid es, 
 since God of His mercy would have me go upon 
 the forlorn hope, might not my flight be a dis- 
 couragement to the whole body that may follow 
 after ? And further, might not the world take oc- 
 casion, at my cowardliness, to blaspheme the Gos- 
 pel, and have some ground to suspect worse of me 
 and of my profession than I deserve ?" His mind 
 made up and stayed on his God, he returns into the 
 house, " with a full resolution to keep the meeting," 
 and to " see the utmost of what they can say or do 
 unto him. For, blessed be the Lord," he adds, *' I 
 know of no evil which I have said or done." 
 
 The preacher enters. All fall upon their knees. 
 
f THE GOOD SOLDIER I 
 
 <nd, oh ! how each heart pours itself out before the 
 Lord ! 
 
 " Of what supreme, almighty power, 
 Is thy great arm which spans the East, and West, 
 
 And tacks the centre to the sphere I 
 By it, do all things live their measur'd hour ; 
 We cannot ask the thing which is not there." 
 
 And will He not restrain this wrath of man, and 
 shield His servant ? 
 
 Scarcely have they risen from their knees, and 
 opened their Bibles and the text been announced, 
 " Dost thou believe on the Son of God ?" (so fitting 
 a preparative for those stern trials which are at 
 hand ; for the words were the balm applied by the 
 Master to the torn heart of that despised castaway),* 
 when " the constable and the justice's man" come 
 in, and, presenting the warrant, demand that he 
 shall follow them. 
 
 " But stay," says Bunyan, turning again to the 
 startled company, " one parting word." The officers 
 are silent, and he proceeds " We are prevented, you 
 see, of our opportunity to speak and to bear the 
 Word of God, and are like to suffer for the same. 
 But be not discouraged, my dear brethren ; it is a 
 mercy to suffer upon so good account. We might 
 have been apprehended as thieves or murderers, or 
 for other wickedness ; but, blessed be God, it is not 
 so we suffer as Christians for well-doing, and wo, 
 had better be the persecuted than tbe persecutors." 
 * John, LS-. 34. 
 
JOHN BUNYAN. 73 
 
 " We must away," shouts the constable, interrupt- 
 ing him. And the humble gathering rise, following 
 their beloved teacher with their tears. 
 
 The scene changes; and we are in the Justice- 
 room at Bedford. It is the time of the Restoration ; 
 and England's noblest sons are paying the penalty 
 of patriotism and of Christian steadfastness, at the 
 beck of a dissolute court and of a sycophant magis- 
 tracy. A fitting tool is found at Bedford, in the 
 person of Justice Wingate^ 
 
 " What has he done ?" is his interrogatory, as the 
 constable conducts his prisoner into court : " where 
 were they met ? what had they with them ?" mean- 
 ing, what arms ? 
 
 " I found him at Samsell ; there were no arms, 
 but they had Bibles ; and the prisoner was just be- 
 ginning to preach." 
 
 u Well, prisoner," rejoins the Justice, gruffly, 
 turning to Bunyan, " what say you ? why don't you 
 keep to your calling ? You are breaking the law." 
 
 " I go to these places," says he, respectfully but 
 firmly, "to instruct, the people, and to counsel them 
 to forsake their sins and close in with Christ, lest 
 they miserably perish ; and I find I can without 
 confusion both follow my calling and preach the 
 Word." 
 
 u What !" exclaims the justice in a chafe, and 
 losing his self-possession; "but I'll break the neck 
 of your meetings. That I will." 
 
 44 It may be so," says Bunyan, calmly. 
 
74 THE GOOD SOLDIER: 
 
 " Produce your sureties, or you must go to jail." 
 
 Two friends stand forward, and give bail for his 
 appearance at the sessions the justice adding 
 " And remember, you are bound to keep him from 
 preaching ; if he preaches your bonds are forfeited." 
 
 " Then I shall break them," interposes Bunyan ; 
 "for I shall not leave speaking the Word of God 
 to counsel, comfort, exhort, and teach the people 
 among* whom I come. And I thought this to be a 
 work that had no hurt in it, but was worthy rather 
 of commendation than of blame." 
 
 " I tell you, if they will not be so bound, your 
 mittimus must be made, and you shall go to prison." 
 
 At last the order is made out, and the constable 
 leads him off. A crowd lias gathered, as the news has 
 got abroad ; and we join it as it convoys him along. 
 
 " Stay !" whisper two " brethren," who have just 
 come up in breathless haste, and are addressing the 
 constable with an air of authority, " we must go back 
 to the Justice." And, as Bunyan and the officers 
 slowly return, the two friends joined by a third, 
 hasten forward to the Justice's house. 
 
 " If you will just say a few words," whispers one 
 of them to Bunyan, running out from the house to 
 meet him, " it will be all right, and you shall be re- 
 leased." 
 
 " If the words are such," he replies, " as may be 
 said with a good conscience, I shall ; otherwise, I 
 cannot." And as he enters, he " lifts up his heart to 
 God for light and strength, to be kept, that he ma>' 
 
JOHN BUNYAN. 75 
 
 not do anything which shall either dishouer Him, or 
 wrong his own soul, or be a grief or discourage- 
 ment to any inclining after the Lord Jesus Chiist." 
 
 It is the old policy, tried sixteen centimes before 
 with the fisherman " Speak no more in this name." 
 Affecting great kindness, a new personage appears 
 on the scene, and accosts " Bunyan with such seem- 
 ing affection as if he would have leaped on his neck 
 and kissed him." 
 
 " If you will but promise," says this new meddler, 
 fawningly, " to call the people no more together, you 
 shall have your liberty to go home ; for my brother 
 is very loath to send you to prison, if you will but 
 be ruled." 
 
 " Sir," said Bunyan, " pray what do you mean by 
 calling the people together? My business is not 
 anything among them, when they are come together, 
 but to exhort them to look after the salvation of their 
 souls, that they may be saved." 
 
 " There are none but a company of poor, simple, 
 ignorant people come to hear you. Will you prom- 
 ise that you will not call them together any more ?" 
 
 " The foolish and the ignorant have most need of 
 teaching. I durst not leave off the work which God 
 has called me to." 
 
 The Justice and his friend, after conferring in an 
 adjoining room, once more repeat the demand ; but 
 Bunyan is not to be moved. "Then he must go to 
 prison," says Mr. Foster, addressing the Justice ; " and 
 the sooner the others follow him, the better." 
 
76 THE GOOD SOLDIER. 
 
 " Thus we parted," writes Bunyan. " And verily, 
 as I was going forth of the door, I had much ado to 
 forbear saying to them that I carried the peace of 
 God along with me; but I held my peace, and, 
 blessed be the Lord, went away to prison with 
 God's comfort in my poor soul." 
 
 It is on November 12, 1660, and in his thirty- 
 second year. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 "They departed from the presence of the council, rejoicing that 
 they were counted worthy to suffer shame for His name." Acts, v. 41. 
 
 " Ay 1 call it holy ground, 
 
 The spot where first they trod ! 
 They left unstained what they had found^ 
 Freedom to worship God." 
 
 The " Den" Gate of heaven Home-affections Bitterest pang " My 
 poor blind one"" Must do it 1 ' Indictment Felon's dock The 
 Justices Examination "Canting" Sentence "Home to prison" 
 Prison-Rhymes " Much content." 
 
 HE is now in the " Den ;" but it is the gate of 
 heaven to him. " I never in my life," says he, " had 
 so great an inlet into the Word as now. Those 
 Scriptures which I saw nothing in before, are made 
 in this place and state to shine upon me. Jesus 
 Christ also was never more real or apparent than 
 now : here I have seen and felt Him indeed." 
 
 Bunyan has a heart for home-affections. One of 
 our poets has written of the domestic hearth 
 
 "0 happy lot, and hallowed even as the joy of angels, 
 Where the golden chain of godliness is entwined with the 
 roses of love !" 
 
 Such a home has Bunyan ; and the bitterest pang of 
 
 7* 
 
78 THE GOOD SOLDIER: 
 
 this hour is the rude disruption of its lowly joys. 
 44 The parting with my wife and poor children," he 
 says, " hath often been to me, in this place, as the 
 pulling the flesh from my bones, and that not only 
 because I am somewhat too fond of these great 
 mercies, but also because I should often have 
 brought to mind the many hardships, miseries, and 
 wants that my poor family was like to meet with, 
 should I be taken from them, especially my poor 
 blind child, who lay nearer my heart than all be- 
 side. Oh ! the thoughts of the hardship I thought 
 my poor blind one might go under, would break my 
 heart in pieces." 
 
 Often, often does this thought rend his sensitively 
 tender heart. " Poor child !" he whispers to him- 
 self, in the solitude of that dismal dungeon, " what 
 sorrow art thou like to have for thy portion in this 
 world ! Thou must be beaten, must beg, must suffer 
 hunger, cold, nakedness, and a thousand calamities, 
 though I cannot now endure the wind should blow 
 upon thee." 
 
 But, " recalling himself," he " ventures them all 
 with his God ;" " though it goeth to the quick," 
 he adds, " to leave them." This is his infirmity 
 though a noble one, and not displeasing to the Lord. 
 " Oh ! I saw in this condition," says he, " I was as a 
 man who was pulling down his house upon the head 
 of his wife and children : yet, thought I, I must do 
 it I must do it ; and now I thought on those two 
 milch-kine which were to carry the ark of God into 
 
JOHN BUNT AN. 79 
 
 another country, and to leave their calves behind 
 them." 
 
 After seven weeks' confinement, he is indicted 
 before the quarter-sessions. Let us take our place 
 at the felon's side it is good to be in such com- 
 panionship. 
 
 It is a cold winter morning in January :* but the 
 people are up betimes; for many warm hearts are 
 there, each man wishing that he himself might have 
 " that preferment," and whispering like his own Pil- 
 grim when Faithful was. in the dock at Vanity Fair 
 
 " Now, brother, play the man, speak for thy God, 
 Fear not the wicked's malice, nor the rod : 
 Speak boldly, man ! the truth is on thy side ; 
 Die for it, and to life in triumph ride." 
 
 The " Hate-goods," too, are there, in the shape of 
 some half-dozen justices, " in order to his condemna- 
 tion." As they take their seats, a strange terror 
 seems to seize them, as if themselves consciously 
 the culprits before another tribunal, whose decisions 
 are already foreshadowed in the heart's dark ahani- 
 bers. And that felon, they feel involuntarily, is, in 
 truth, beyond their jurisdiction. No heavenly halo 
 is there, to proclaim his real citizenship ; but the 
 calm, sublime repose with which he abides his 
 doom the poor ministers of Satan quail before it 
 and tremble. 
 
 The indictment is read. " My Lord," said the 
 * 1661. 
 
80 THE GOOD SOLDIER: 
 
 accuser, at, the trial of Faithful, " this man, notwith- 
 standing his plausible name, is one of the vilest men 
 in our country. He neither regardeth princes nor 
 people, law nor custom, but doth all that he can to 
 possess all men with certain of his disloyal notions, 
 which he in the general calls principles of faith and 
 holiness. And, in particular, I heard him once my- 
 self affirm that Christianity and the customs of our 
 town of Vanity were diametrically opposite, and 
 could not be reconciled. By which saying, my 
 lord, he doth at once not only condemn all our 
 laudable doings, but us in the doing of them." 
 This other Faithful is charged as follows : " That 
 John Bunyan, of the town of Bedford, laborer, hath 
 devilishly and perniciously abstained from coming 
 to church to hear divine service, and is a common 
 upholder of several unlawful meetings and conventi- 
 cles, to the great disturbance and distraction of 
 the good subjects of this kingdom, contrary to the 
 laws of our sovereign lord the king." And, having 
 read the charge, the clerk asks, " What say you to 
 this ?" 
 
 "As to the first part of it," answers Bunyan, U I 
 am a common frequenter of the Church of God, and 
 also, by grace, a member with the people over whom 
 Christ is the Head." 
 
 " But do you come to church 3" interposes the 
 presiding justice; "you know what I mean ; to the 
 parish church, to hear diviue service?" 
 
 " No, I do not." 
 
JOHN BUNYAN. 81 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "Because I do not find it commanded in the 
 Word of God." 
 
 " We are commanded to pray." 
 
 " But not by the Common Prayer-book." 
 
 " How then ?" 
 
 u With the Spirit. As the Apostle saith, ' I will 
 pray with the Spirit, and with the understanding.' " 
 
 " But we may pray with the Spirit, and with 
 understanding, and with the Common Prayer-book 
 also." 
 
 " Sir, the Scripture saith, that * it is the Spirit thnt 
 helpeth our infirmities ; for we know not what we 
 should pray for as we ought ; but the Spirit itself 
 maketh intercession for us.' Mark, it cloth not say 
 the Common Prayer-book teacheth us how to pray, 
 but the Spirit. And it is the Spirit that 4 helpeth 
 our infirmities,' saith the Apostle ; he doth not say 
 it is the Common Prayer-book." 
 
 "At this," he says, "they were set." And he 
 added : " But yet, notwithstanding, they that have 
 a mind to use it, they have liberty ; that is, I would 
 not keep them from it but, for our parts, we can 
 pray to God without it. Blessed be His name !" 
 
 " Who is your God ? Beelzebub ?" exclaims a Mr. 
 No-good, sneeringly. "You are possessed with a 
 devil." 
 
 " Blessed be the Lord for it," replies Bunyan, tak- 
 ing no notice of the taunt, and secretly asking the 
 Lord to forgive it ; " we are encouraged to meet to- 
 
82 THE GOOD SOLDIER: 
 
 gether, and to pray, and to exhort one another ; for 
 we have had the comfortable presence of God among 
 us, for ever blessed be His holy name !" 
 
 " This is pedlar's French : you must leave off }~our 
 canting." 
 
 " It is lawful for me, and such as I am, to preach 
 the Word of God." 
 
 "Prove it." 
 
 " By this Scripture ' As every man hath received 
 the gift, even so let him minister the same unto an- 
 other, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. 
 If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of 
 
 God; " 
 
 " I am not so well versed in Scripture as to dis- 
 pute ; but we cannot wait upon you any longer. 
 You confess the indictment, do you not ?" 
 
 " This I confess we have had many meetings to- 
 gether, both to pray to God, and to exhort one an- 
 other ; and we have had the sweet, comforting pres- 
 ence of the Lord among us for our encouragement, 
 blessed be His name : therefore I confess myself 
 guilty, and no otherwise." 
 
 " Then hear your judgment : * You must be had 
 back again to prison, and there lie for three months 
 following : and, at three months' end, if you do not 
 submit to go to church to hear divine service, and 
 leave your preaching, yon must be banished the 
 realm : And if, after such a day as shall be appointed 
 you to be gone, you shall be found in this realm, or 
 be found to come over again without special license 
 
JOHN BUNYAN. 83 
 
 from the king, you must stretch by the neck for it, 
 I tell you plainly.' Jailor, have him away !" 
 
 " As to this matter," says Bunyan, boldly, as he 
 rises to leave the dock, " I am at a point with you ; 
 for, if I were out of prison to-day, I would preach 
 the gospel again to-morrow, by the help of God." 
 
 And all honor to thee, thou good confessor ! This 
 shall be remembered one day, when the Lord is dis- 
 tributing His crowns. 
 
 We rise, and follow him to the " den." And he 
 enters it with a calm mien ; for ANOTHER is there, 
 whose approving smile is more to him than all hu- 
 man frowns. " I can truly say," he writes, " and I 
 bless the Lord Jesus Christ for it, that my heart was 
 sweetly refreshed in the time of my examination, and 
 also afterwards at my returning to the prison ; so 
 that I found Christ's words more than bare trifles, 
 where He saith, ' He will give you a mouth and wis- 
 dom, which all your adversaries shall not be able to 
 gainsay nor resist,' and, that i His peace no man tak- 
 eth from us.' " 
 
 And there he kneels in his " prison-home," his 
 spirit not bound, but enlarged into a new heavenliness 
 by Him who knows how to vouchsafe to His tried 
 confessors, even here, divinely-solacing compensations. 
 " Verily, at my return," he says, " I did meet my 
 God sweetly in the prison again, comforting of me, 
 and satisfying of me that it was His mind and will 
 that I should be there." And, in some of his rude 
 rhymes, he writes : 
 
84 THE GOOD SOLDIER. 
 
 " For though men keep my outward man 
 
 Within their locks and bars, 
 
 Yet, by the faith of Christ, I can 
 
 Mount higher than the stars. 
 
 "Tis not the baseness of this state 
 
 Doth hide us from God's face ; 
 He frequently, both soon and late, 
 
 Doth visit us with grace. 
 
 "We change our drossy dust for gold, 
 
 From death to life we fly ; 
 We let go shadows, and take hold 
 
 Of immortality. 
 
 These be the men that God doth count 
 
 Of high and noble mind ; 
 These be the men that do surmount 
 
 What you in nature find. 
 
 They conquer, when they thus do fall ; 
 
 They kill when they do die ; 
 They overcome then most of all, 
 
 And get the victory." 
 
 In those " prison-rhymes" the martyr learns to sing 
 praises unto God " continuing, through grace, with 
 much content." "I have had sweet sights," says he, 
 " of the forgiveness of my sins in this place, and of 
 my being with Jesus in another world. Oh, the 
 ' Mount Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem, the innumer- 
 able company of angels, and God the Judge of all, 
 and the spirits of just men made perfect, and Jesus, 
 have been sweet unto me in this place. I have seen 
 that here, which I am persuaded I shall never, while 
 in this world, be able to express." 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 " Stone- walls do not a prison make, 
 
 Nor iron -bars a cage ; 
 Minds innocent and quiet take 
 That for a hermitage." 
 
 The palace and the prison The cell The lamp The " Pilgrim' 1 
 The prison court The preacher The "three Jews" Christ a fel- 
 low-prisoner The " tagged laces" The visitor The sealed eye- 
 ballsThe Clerk of the Peace The conference. 
 
 "WHILE the body is in a palace," says Foster, 
 alluding to Peter's enchainment in the dungeon, and 
 to the angel's visit, "the soul may be in prison; 
 whereas, while his body was in a prison, his soul was 
 as in a palace. And, even externally, he was soon to 
 have such attendance there, as the dwellers in royal 
 and imperial mansions have not." Angelic ministry 
 is suspended now ; but he who is with us as the 
 Comforter has a thousand methods of making the 
 wrath of man to praise Him. 
 
 Look into that cell ! That Bible on the rude table, 
 and that Concordance, and that book of Martyrs ; 
 and that feeble sunbeam, struggling through the 
 grated window ; and that dim lamp, after the sun- 
 beam, has gone; and that undimmed orb shining so 
 brilliantly in the confessor's happy soul ! by these 
 8 
 
 '*) *' WMB ' 
 
80 THE GOOD SOLDIER: 
 
 the felon is to speak to all time. " In the prison,** 
 is the testimony of Charles Doe, who visited him, 
 " he wrote, not only l Grace Abounding,' i The Holy 
 City,' and other precious treatises, but also * the Pil- 
 grim's Progress, First Part.' This I had from his own 
 mouth. What," he adds, " hath the devil or his agents 
 got by putting our great gospel-minister in prison?" 
 
 Quitting for a moment the little cell, we go with 
 him into the prison-court. <k Imagination," wrote 
 Howard, visiting the place in after-years, " can 
 hardly realize the miseries of fifty or sixty pious men 
 and women, taken from a place of worship, and in- 
 carcerated in such dungeons with felons as was 
 the case while Bunyan was a prisoner. How justly 
 did the poor pilgrim call it a * certain den !' " But 
 what scene is this which meets us, as we enter the 
 court? "When I visited him in prison," says the 
 eye-witness already quoted, Charles Doe, " there 
 were about sixty Dissenters besides himself, and 
 two eminent Dissenting ministers, by which means 
 the prison was very much crowded; yet, in the 
 midst of all that hurry which so many new-comers 
 occasioned, I have heard Mr. Bunyan both preach 
 and pray with that mighty spirit of faith and plero- 
 phory of Divine assistance which has made me 
 stand and wonder." 
 
 Describing the three confessors in the furnace at 
 Babylon, Foster has written : " They were seen act- 
 ually associated with a Being that belonged not to 
 the earth. That space of fire was as a tract of an- 
 
JOHN BUNYAN. 87 
 
 other world. They could have no wish to come 
 forth. It was the sublimest, most delightful re- 
 gion they had ever dwelt in yet. In their state of 
 feeling, that burning floor was preferable to the mar- 
 ble pavement of the monarch's superbest palace." 
 And is not the "den" of Bedford transformed, by 
 the same Divine alchemy, into the very pavilion of 
 God ? "I never knew," says Bunyan, " what it was 
 for God to stand by me at all turns, and at every 
 offer of Satan to afflict me, as I have found since I 
 came in hither; insomuch that I have often said, 
 1 Were it lawful, I could pray for greater trouble, for 
 the greater comfort's sake.' " And again : " I have 
 been able to * laugh at destruction,' and to fear nei- 
 ther the horse nor his rider." 
 
 " Oh, happy he who doth possess 
 Christ for a fellow-prisoner, who doth glad 
 "With heavenly sunbeams gaols that are most sad !" 
 
 But we return with him into the cell. It is near 
 sunset ; and, with the fading light, how earnestly he 
 labors at those " tagged laces," to finish the " gross" 
 for the day ! A gentle knock at the door announces 
 the expected visitor. It is his little blind daughter, 
 come for the day's work, from which the desolate 
 family are to obtain their precarious pittance.* And, 
 
 * " In prison," says Mr. Wilson, the Baptist minister, who 
 was his fellow-prisoner, " I have been witness that his own 
 hands ministered to his, and to his family's necessities, mak- 
 ing many hundred gross of long-tagged laces, to fill up the 
 vacancies of his time." 
 
88 THE GOOD SOLDIER: 
 
 oh, how pleasant to him are the moments which this 
 dear child is suffered to pass in the cell ! Clasping 
 her to his bosom, the manly confessor, whom no 
 menances can browbeat, and from whom no suffer- 
 ings can extort a sigh, is dissolved in a flood of ten- 
 derness as he gazes nightly on this child ! And how 
 yearningly he prays, as they kneel side by side upon 
 the stone floor ! These eye-balls are sealed ; but the 
 heart's eye let the light shine there ! 
 
 The three months have now elapsed, and a visitor 
 of another kind is announced. It is the "Clerk of 
 the Peace," sent from the justices to demand his 
 " subrnittance." 
 
 " I am come," says he, " to tell you, that it is 
 desired you submit yourself to the laws of the land ; 
 or else at the next sessions it will go worse with you, 
 even to be sent away out of the nation, or else worse 
 than that." 
 
 Not discomposed by the significant intimation, the 
 confessor replies : " I desire to demean myself in 
 the world as becometh both a man and a Chris- 
 tian." 
 
 " But you must submit to the law of the land, and 
 leave off those meetings which you were wont to 
 have ; for the statute-law is directly against it, and 
 I am sent to you by the justices to tell you that they 
 do intend to prosecute the law against you, if you 
 submit not." 
 
 u Sir, I conceive that the law by which I am in 
 prison at this time was made against those who, 
 
JOHN BUNYAN. 89 
 
 designing to do evil in their meetings, made the 
 exercise of religion a pretext to cover their wicked- 
 ness. It doth not forbid the private meetings of 
 those who plainly and simply make it their only end 
 to worship the Lord, and to exhort one another to 
 edification." 
 
 " Well, I don't profess to be a man that can dis- 
 pute ; but, neighbor Bunyan, I would have you 
 submit yourself. You may exhort your neighbor 
 in private discourse, so be you do not call together an 
 assembly of people. It is your private meetings that 
 the law is against." 
 
 " Sir, if I may do good to one by my discourse, 
 why not to two ? And if to two, why not to four ? 
 And if to four, why not to eight ? And so on." 
 
 " But you may only do harm, by seducing people : 
 you are, therefore, denied your meeting so many 
 together, lest you should do harm." 
 
 " And yet you say the law tolerates me to dis- 
 course with my neighbor ! Surely there is no law 
 tolerates me to seduce any one : therefore, if I may 
 by the law discourse with one, surely it is to do him 
 good ; and if I, by discoursing, may do good to one, 
 surely by the same law I may do good to many." 
 
 " The law doth expressly forbid your private meet- 
 ings, therefore they are not to be tolerated." 
 
 u But when I see that the Lord, through grace, 
 hath in some measure blessed my labor, I dare not 
 but exercise for the good of the people that gift which 
 God hath given me." 
 
 8* 
 
90 THE GOOD SOLDIER. 
 
 " What if you should forbear a while, and sit still 
 till you see further how things will go ?" 
 
 " Sir, Wickliffe saith that he which leaveth off 
 preaching and hearing of the Word of God for fear 
 of excommunication of men, he is already excom- 
 municated of God, and shall in the last day be 
 counted a traitor to Christ." 
 
 " Well, neighbor Bunyan, but indeed I would wish 
 you seriously to consider of these things between this 
 and the quarter-sessions, and to submit yourself. 
 You may do much good if you continue still in the 
 land ; but, alas ! what benefit will it be to your 
 friends, or what good can you do to them, if you 
 should be sent away beyond the seas into Spain, 01 
 Constantinople, or some other remote part of the 
 world ? Pray, be ruled." 
 
 " Indeed, sir," interposes the jailor, " I hope he 
 will be ruled." 
 
 "I shall desire," says Bunyan, "in all godliness 
 and honesty, to behave myself in the nation whilst I 
 am in it. And, if I must be so dealt withal as you 
 say, I hope God will help me to bear what they shall 
 lay upon me." 
 
 The visitor seems awe-stricken, and he rises to 
 leave, Bunyan thanking him for his " civil and meek 
 discoursing" with him. The felon is left alone ; and, 
 as the door closes, he lifts this aspiration " Oh ! 
 that we might meet in heaven !" 
 
CHAPTEE XIV. 
 
 44 8<<5k a good wife of thy God ; for she is the best gift of His provi- 
 dence. 
 
 They that love early become like-minded : 
 They grow up leaning on each other, as the olive and the vine. 1 ' 
 
 Coronation-festival Amnesty "Suing out a pardon" Christiana 
 The cell The Swan-chamber Sir Matthew Hale The petitioner 
 "Clapped him up" "It is recorded" "Four small children" "A 
 tinker" " God hath owned him" The tears Roman Catacombs 
 Prison joys Dark clouds and bright. 
 
 IT is the Coronation-festival of the Second Charles. 
 The nation's heart is stunned ; the fevered era of the 
 Commonwealth has given place to a collapse; and 
 the rollicking Court, mad with joy, has few thoughts 
 for the good confessors whom it has consigned to 
 the dungeons. 
 
 But coronations must have amnesties ; and there- 
 fore the semblance of a pardon is vouchsafed. Bun- 
 yan and his fellows are allowed a year for " suing" 
 the royal clemency ; so that for twelve months the 
 sentence of " banishment or of hanging" is held in 
 suspense. 
 
 In his homely rhymes, Bunyan describes Chris- 
 tiana and her boys thus : 
 
 "Tell them that they have left their house and home ; 
 Are turned pilgrims seek a world to come ; 
 
92 THE GOOD SOLDIER: 
 
 That they have met with hardships in the way, 
 That they do meet with troubles night and day; 
 And how they still 
 Refuse this world, to do their Father's will" 
 
 The words touch the tenderest chord in the holy 
 seer's heart. For, let us enter the cell again, and 
 who is this at his side one morning, bending so in- 
 tently over a paper which Bunyan is writing on the 
 little deal table ? 
 
 It is the Midsummer assizes ; and his devoted wife, 
 just returned from a fruitless journey on foot to Lon- 
 don, is concerting the plea with which she shall ap- 
 pear before the judges, and is committing it with him 
 to the Lord. 
 
 The judges have arrived, and are seated one after- 
 noon in the " Swan Chamber," with " many justices 
 and gentry." Beneath the ermine of one of them 
 there beats a heart not unresponsive to the sighs of 
 God's saints. Early arrested in a career of sin, Sir 
 Matthew Hale has been drawn to Christ's feet, and 
 knows no higher joy than to wash them with his 
 tears. " With abashed face and a trembling heart," 
 the noble woman " ventures into their presence," to 
 " try what she can do with them for her husband's 
 liberty before they go forth of the town." 
 
 " My lord," she says, addressing Hale, whose mild 
 and gentle mien seems to intimate that he is not an 
 enemy, " I make bold to come to your lordship, to 
 know what may be done with my husband." 
 
 " I would do," replies the judge, " both you and 
 
JOHN BUNYAN. 93 
 
 him the best good I can : but they have taken that 
 for a conviction which thy husband spoke at the ses- 
 sions ; and, unless there be something done to undo 
 that, I fear I can do thee no good." 
 
 " My lord, he is kept unlawfully in prison ; they 
 clapped him up before there was any proclamation 
 against the meetings ; the indictment also is false : 
 besides, they never asked him whether he was guilty 
 or no ; neither did he confess the indictment." 
 
 " My lord," interposes one of the justices, " he was 
 lawfully convicted." 
 
 "Nay," says the bold woman; "for, when they 
 said to him, Do you confess the indictment ? he said 
 only this, that he had been at several meetings where 
 they had preaching the Word and prayer, and that 
 they had God's presence among them." 
 
 " What !" exclaims the other judge, very angrily, 
 as if his conscience was not at ease, " you think we 
 can do what we list ! Your husband is a breaker of 
 the peace, and is convicted by the law." 
 
 " Bring me the statute-book," whispers Hale, aside, 
 to one of the officers. 
 
 " My lord," shouts another of the justices, as if 
 afraid that Hale would thwart their malice, " ho was 
 lawfully convicted ; it is recorded it is recorded." 
 " As if," adds Bunyan, narrating the scene as he had 
 it from his wife, " it must of necessity be true, because 
 it was recorded. With which words he often endea- 
 vored to stop her mouth, having no other argument 
 to convince her but i it is recorded it is recorded.' " 
 
94 THE GOOD SOLDIER I 
 
 " If it be," she replies, it is false." 
 
 " Will your husband leave preaching ?" asks Judge 
 Twisdon. " If he will do so, then send for him." 
 
 " My lord, he dares not leave preaching as long as 
 he can speak." 
 
 " See here," says Twisdon ; " what should we talk 
 any more about such a fellow ?. Must he do what he 
 lists ? He is a breaker of the peace." 
 
 " My lord, he desires to live peaceably, and to 
 follow his calling, that his family may be maintained : 
 and, moreover, I have four small children that can- 
 not help themselves, one of which is blind, and we 
 have nothing to live upon but the charity of good 
 people." 
 
 " Alas, poor woman !" says Hale, in a tone of deep 
 sympathy, turning round to his brother-judge. 
 
 " You make poverty your cloak," rejoins Twisdon : 
 " moreover, I understand he is maintained better by 
 running up and down a-preaching, than by following 
 his calling." 
 
 " What is his calling ?" asks Hale again, very 
 mildly. 
 
 " A tinker, my lord," shout some half-dozen voices, 
 eagerly ; u a tinker !" 
 
 " Yes," she replies ; " and because he is a tinker, 
 and a poor man, therefore he is despised, and cannot 
 have justice." 
 
 " Since they have taken," says Hale, gravely, 
 but somewhat sadly, " what thy husband spake for 
 a conviction, thou must either apply thyself to 
 
JOHN BUNYAN. 95 
 
 the king, or sue out his pardon, or get a writ of 
 error." 
 
 " My lord," exclaims Justice Chester, alarmed at 
 Hale's counsel, " he will preach, and do what he 
 lists." 
 
 " He preacheth nothing but the Word of God," she 
 
 " He preach the Word of God !" says Judge Twis- 
 don, rising in great rage as if he would have struck 
 her ; " he runneth up and down, and doeth harm." 
 
 u No, my lord, it is not so ; God hath owned him, 
 and done much good by him." 
 
 " God ! His doctrine is the doctrine of the devil." 
 
 "My lord, when the righteous Judge shall appear 
 it will be known that his doctrine is not the doctrine 
 of the devil." 
 
 " Do not mind her," says Twisdon, hastily, turning 
 to Hale, " but send her away." 
 
 "I am sorry," rejoins Hale, addressing her very 
 kindly, " that I can do thee no good : thou must do 
 one of those three things aforesaid namely, either 
 apply thyself to the king, or sue out his pardon, or 
 get a writ of error; but a writ of error will be 
 cheapest.' 1 
 
 Bursting into tears not so much for their hard- 
 heartedness against her and her husband as for " the 
 sad account which such poor creatures will have to 
 give "at the coming of the Lord" she quits the 
 chamber and hastens back to the prison to report 
 her ill success. " They will not call for you," she 
 
96 THE GOOD SOLDIER: 
 
 says, " and they will not remit the sentence." And, 
 with that, they calmly kneel, appealing to a higher 
 tribunal, and patiently waiting God's time. 
 
 Like the early confessors of the Roman Catacombs, 
 scarcely a word escapes from Bunyan's lips or pen to 
 intimate his prison-privations ; only the bright hope 
 is seen. " What gladness" we have him writing, 
 for example, amidst the gloominess of that dismal 
 cell 
 
 "What gladness shall possess our heart, 
 
 "When we shall see these things I 
 What light and life in every part, 
 
 Rise like eternal springs I 
 blessed face ! holy grace ! 
 
 When shall we see this day ? 
 Lord, fetch us to this goodly place, 
 We humbly to thee pray. 
 
 Thus, when in heavenly harmony 
 
 These blessed saints appear, 
 Adorned with grace and majesty, 
 
 What gladness will be there ! 
 Thus shall we see, thus shall we be, 
 
 Oh, would the day were come 1 
 Lord Jesus, take us up to Thee, 
 
 To this desired home." 
 
 Before his imprisonment, " for not so little as a 
 year together," he " could seldom go to prayer but 
 this sentence or sweet petition, to be * strengthened 
 with all might, according to his glorious power, 
 unto all patience and long-suffering with joyfulness,' 
 would, as it were, thrust itself into his mind, and 
 
JOHN BUN Y AN. 97 
 
 persuade him that if ever he should go through 
 long-suffering he must have patience, especially if he 
 would endure it joyfully." And the prayer is not 
 unanswered now. " When God makes the bed," he 
 writes one day from his cell, with its straw couch, 
 " he must needs be easy that is cast thereon ; a 
 blessed pillow hath that man for his head, though to 
 all beholders it is hard as a stone." And, another 
 day, sending to his brethren of the Church at Bed- 
 ford his " Grace Abounding" " a drop of that honey 
 which he has taken from the carcass of the lion," he 
 says : " I have eaten thereof myself, and am much 
 refreshed thereby. The Philistines understand me 
 not." And a while later : " Now is my heart full 
 of comfort. I would not have been without this trial 
 for much ; I am comforted every time I think of it, 
 and I hope I shall bless God for ever for the teach- 
 ings I have had by it." And, still later, he sums up 
 all in one weighty line 
 
 " Dark clouds bring water, when the bright bring none." 
 9 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 1 A man hath the tiller in his hand, and may steer against the cur- 
 rent" 
 
 44 The being that is master of himself, bendeth events to his will." 
 
 The prison " School of the cross" What makes a martyr " Flail of 
 tribulation" " Market for the soul" The turnkey A visitor The 
 detective The Pilgrim The church-meeting Call The "milk 
 and honey" Compensation. 
 
 TEN long years have now passed in the dismal 
 " den." " The school of the cross," says he, " is the 
 school of light, and lets us see more of God's mind." 
 Let us enter the cell once more, and listen to his 
 heavenly converse. 
 
 " It is not every suffering," he says to a visitor, 
 one day, " that makes a man a martyr, but suffering 
 for the Word of God after a right manner ; to wit, 
 in that holy, humble, meek manner which the Word 
 of God requireth." 
 
 " I have often thought," rejoins the other, " that 
 the best of Christians are found in the worst times." 
 
 " Yes ; and I have thought again," says Bunyan, 
 " that one reason why we are not better is, because 
 God purges us no more. Noah and Lot, who so 
 
JOHN BUNYAN. 99 
 
 holy as they in the time of their afflictions? and 
 yet % who so idle as they in the time of their pros- 
 perity ?" 
 
 " What is it," enquires the visitor, " which makes 
 people so troubled about their afflictions ?" 
 
 " They are too much addicted to the pleasures of 
 this life ; and so they cannot endure that which 
 makes a separation between them. The Lord useth 
 the flail of tribulation to separate the chaff from the 
 wheat." 
 
 Another day we join him, and find him pleading 
 with a visitor, thus : " To be truly sensible of sin, is, 
 to sorrow for displeasing of God to be afflicted that 
 He is displeased by us, more than that He is dis- 
 pleased with us." 
 
 "But how may I get this penitence ? for my heart 
 is so hard." 
 
 " The death of Christ gives us the best discovery 
 of ourselves in what condition we were, that noth- 
 ing could help us but that ; and also the most clear 
 discovery of the dreadful nature of our sins. For, if 
 sin be such a dreadful thing as to wring the heart of 
 the Son of God, how shall a poor wretched sinner be 
 able to bear it?" 
 
 It is the Lord's day, and we are with him in the 
 cell once more. " Have a special care," he is saying, 
 with a smile of holy joy caught from the holy day, 
 " to sanctify this blessed festival. Make it the market 
 for thy soul ; let the whole day be spent in prayer or 
 meditation ; lay aside the affairs of the other parts 
 
100 THE GOOD SOLDIER: 
 
 of the week ; let the sermon thou hast heard be con 
 verted into prayer." 
 
 And, not in individual parleys only, but in wider 
 colloquies, he finds, in these years, a door of utter- 
 ance opened. For, He who gave Joseph favor in the 
 sight of his Egyptian gaoler, has touched the heart 
 of the Bedford turnkey, so that his prisoner enjoys 
 stolen hours of fellowship with the brethren at their 
 place of meeting, " exhorting them to be steadfast in 
 their faith of Jesus Christ." It is recorded of the 
 imprisoned confessors of Madeira, that their keeper 
 would give them leave of absence for many hours, 
 on no other security than their parole. The Bedford 
 prisoner is even allowed on one occasion to " go to see 
 the Christians of London." The visit, however, is 
 scarcely over, when the rumor gets wind among the 
 bishops that the gaoler is inexcusably lax ; and an 
 officer is dispatched from London to visit the prison. 
 
 That night Bunyan is out on leave. It is late ; 
 for the hours have slipped quickly past, as he enjoys 
 a stolen hour of his children's prattle and of his wife's 
 devoted affection. " I must away," he suddenly ex- 
 claims, interrupting the joyous moment ; " I got 
 leave to stay out to-night, but I think I had better 
 return." Basing that instant, he hastens back ; the 
 gaoler remarking, as he opens the prison-door, that 
 rather than come so late, he had better have waited 
 till the morning. 
 
 A quarter of an hour elapses; and the iron knocker 
 rattles, till the old rickety building reels again. It 
 
JOHN BUNT AN. 101 
 
 is the detective from London, arrived on his un- 
 gracious errand. 
 
 " Are all the prisoners safe ?" he asks, in a tone of 
 authority, as the gaoler cautiously opens the gate. 
 
 " Yes," replies the turnkey, with a peculiar em- 
 phasis, like one who feels he can safely make a clean 
 breast of it. 
 
 " Is John Bunyan safe ?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Let me see him." 
 
 Bunyan is summoned, and is eyed from head to 
 foot. The officer is crest-fallen, and leaves chagrined 
 and chafed. 
 
 " Well," says the gaoler to him, as he conducts 
 him back to the cell, with a strange awe upon his 
 spirit " you may go out again just when you think 
 proper ; for you know when to return better than I 
 can tell you." 
 
 And there he is! That hardened; and those 
 gloomy walls ; and that earthen jug ; and those 
 coarse garments ; and that calm, joyous soul. It is 
 here the " Dreamer," 
 
 " "Writing of the way 
 And race of saints, 
 Falls suddenly into an allegory 
 About their journey, and the way to glory.**' 
 
 And such an allegory ! 
 
 "This book, it chalketh out before thine eyes 
 The man that seeks the everlasting prize ; 
 9* 
 
102 THE GOOD SOLDIER: 
 
 It shows you whence he comes, whither he goes : 
 What he leaves undone, and what he does ; 
 It also shows you how he runs and runs, 
 Till he unto the gate of glory comes." 
 
 And who shall tell how many souls, now redeemed, 
 owe to the voice which issued from that cell their 
 everlasting all ? " This book," writes its author again 
 in his "Apology," as if possessing a presentiment 
 of its mission, 
 
 " This book will make a traveller of thee, 
 If by its counsel thou wilt ruled be : 
 It will direct thee to the Holy Land, 
 If thou wilt its directions understand ; 
 Yea, it will make the slothful active be, 
 The blind also delightful things to see. 
 Then read my fancies : they will stick like burs, 
 And may be, to the helpless, comforters." 
 
 And how divinely the mission has been fulfilled, a 
 coming " day" alone shall reveal. 
 
 It is the eleventh year of the imprisonment ; and 
 we meet him one evening in the twilight on the 
 bridge leading to the town. Into the rooms of a 
 humble dwelling, situate in a back street, are crowded 
 a company of grave, holy men, waiting for the ex- 
 pected visitor and for his heavenly message. Bunyan 
 comes in ; and a greeting welcomes him, such as only 
 suffering saints can give. "I now once again," says 
 he, after they have lifted their hearts to Him who 
 nears the sigh of the prisoner, " that you may see 
 my soul hath fatherly care and desire after your 
 
JOHN BUNYAN. 103 
 
 spiritual and everlasting welfare, as before from the 
 top of Shenir and Hermon, so now fron the lions' 
 den, and from the mountain of the leopards,* do 
 look yet after you all, greatly desiring to see your 
 safe arrival into the desired haven." And, as he 
 proceeds with the heavenly unction peculiar to such 
 seasons, and feels the very breath, as it were, of 
 Jesus to be on their souls, he bids them adieu, saying 
 "I thank God for the grace and mercy, and 
 knowledge of Christ our Saviour, which He hath 
 bestowed upon you, with abundance of faith and 
 love ; for your hungerings and thirstings after 
 further acquaintance with the Father, in the Son; 
 for your tenderness of heart, your trembling at sin, 
 your sober and holy deportment also, before both 
 God and men. They are a great refreshment to 
 me, for i you are my glory and joy.' " 
 
 The holy GifFord, by this time, has been taken to 
 his rest; and the Church is waiting for another pas- 
 tor, who shall teach them the good way of the Lord. 
 It is a cold winter night in December (1671); and 
 the people are gathered, in the belief that He who 
 " holds in his right hand the seven stars" has indi- 
 cated the choice which will meet His sanction. " At 
 a full assembly of the Church," is the record in the 
 minutes still extant, *' after much seeking of the Lord 
 by prayer, the congregation do with joint consent 
 call forth and appoint our brother John Bunyan to 
 the pastoral office." An hour elapses ; and the pris- 
 * Cant., v. 8. 
 
104 THE GOOD SOLDIER. 
 
 oner of Jesus Christ" arrives, on another of his kindly 
 errands. The choice is announced ; and, as the re- 
 cord again runs, " he, accepting thereof, gives himself 
 up to serve Christ and His Church in this charge, 
 and receives from the elders the right hand of fellow- 
 ship, after having preached fifteen years." Commend- 
 ed to the Lord and to the word of His grace, the 
 pastor, as he rises, says "My dear children, the 
 milk and honey are beyond this wilderness. God be 
 merciful to you, and grant that you be not slothful 
 to go in and possess the land." He returns to the 
 " den," but " with much content, through grace." 
 Yes, thou brave confessor, thou art not forsaken 
 or out of mind. 
 
 " Justice hath her balances ; 
 Another world can compensate for all ; 
 Tne daily martyrdom of patience shall not be wanting of * 
 reward." 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 "Paul's love of Christ, and steadiness unbribed, 
 Were copied close in him, and well transcribed." 
 
 " Speaks, with plainness art could never mend, 
 What simplest minds can soonest comprehend." 
 
 Scene in the Channel The bankrupt merchant The landing Court 
 of St. James's The audience "Six poor Quakers" Owen and the 
 tinker The petition Liberation The "motto" The meeting 
 Scene in London The appeal Fellowship The Shibboleth. 
 
 OFF Brighton, then a fishing village, a boat is seen 
 one night, making for the coast of France. On board 
 is a mysterious stranger, very restless and very 
 wretched, whom the sailors believe to be a bankrupt 
 merchant, in hot haste to escape the bailiffs. One 
 eye has recognized him ; and the bankrupt trembles 
 from head to foot, until a side-whisper from the mate 
 assures him that he is safe in his hands. After a 
 rough passage, they reach the opposite coast off Fe* 
 camp : faithful to his word, the mate rows his pas- 
 senger ashore ; and, in shoal water, he carries him 
 on his shoulders to the land. 
 
 Twenty years elapse, and the mate finds himself 
 at St. James's, in the audience-chamber of Charles II. 
 He has just returned from the West Indies, after a 
 
106 THE GOOD SOLDIER. 
 
 long absence; and, hearing that multitudes of his 
 brethren of the " Society of Friends" are in prison 
 for conscience' sake he has agreed to intercede for 
 them with the king, whom he has never seen since 
 they parted that morning on the shore. 
 
 " Ah !" exclaims his majesty, instantly recognizing 
 his deliverer, " why have not you come to claim your 
 reward ?" 
 
 " I have been rewarded enough, Sire, with the sat- 
 isfaction of having saved life." 
 
 " Is there any favor I can grant you ?" 
 
 " Sire, I ask nothing for myself, but for my poor 
 friends, that you should set them at liberty, as I did 
 your majesty !" 
 
 " I will release any six you name." 
 
 " What !" says the sailor, bluntly, " six poor Quak- 
 ers for a king's ransom !" 
 
 " Come back another day," says the king, kindly, 
 " and we shall see what can be done." 
 
 The liberations begin ; and another voice is lifted 
 at Court in behalf of another prisoner. 
 
 " How," said Charles, a year or two after this, one 
 day, to Dr. John Owen, " can a learned man like you 
 sit down to hear a tinker prate ?" 
 
 "May it please your majesty," answered Owen, 
 "could I have the tinker's abilities for preaching, 
 most gladly should I relinquish all my learning." 
 
 Whilst the tinker is yet in prison, Owen has read 
 some of his wonderful treatises, and has heard of his 
 godly ways. A hint reaches Bedford, that a new 
 
JOHN BUNYAN. 107 
 
 petition to the king may not now be fruitless. A 
 week or two pass ; and, sitting in council, Ms majesty 
 has before him a certificate from the Sheriff in Bed- 
 fords) (ire, that Bunyan's only crime is " nonconfor- 
 mity." It is the day to issue the royal deed of pardon, 
 opening the prisons to four hundred and seventy* 
 one Quakers, and to about a score of Baptists and 
 Independents. And to the bede-roll is added the 
 name of John Bunyan. It is on May 17, 1672. 
 
 The u den" is exchanged for a humble cottage ; 
 and, to supply the wants of his family, he combines 
 for a time with his pastoral work the trade of a 
 brazier. " Love not the world," is his remark one 
 day to a friend ; " for it is a moth in a Christian's 
 life." His own simple habits are a daily commentary 
 upon that weighty counsel. 
 
 The tinker's words are eagerly sought after by 
 hungering and thirsting souls. Whilst his friends 
 are erecting a large place of worship, the earnest 
 man is to be seen, like the Master, going everywhere, 
 from house to house, " teaching and preaching." 
 And, at its opening, it is " so thronged that, though 
 it is very spacious, many are constrained to stay 
 without, every one striving to partake of his instruc- 
 tions." 
 
 It is a cold winter morning in London ; and we 
 hasten along in the dim dawn, the oil-lamps still 
 casting their feeble glimmer on a stream of working- 
 men, unusually soon astir and plainly bent on some 
 engrossing errand. We fall into the stream, and are 
 
108 THE GOOD SOLDIER: 
 
 carried with it into a capacious chapel, which, though 
 it is not yet seven o'clock, is already filled to over- 
 flowing, with an audience rarely seen on a working- 
 day in such a place. A few minutes pass ; and a 
 broad-shouldered, cliff-browed countryman is strug- 
 gling, amidst a buzz of whispers, up the pulpit-stair. 
 He rises ; and as he utters, in his sturdy vernacular, 
 his burning appeals, it is " to astonishment, as if an 
 angel or an apostle had touched the people's souls 
 with a coal of holy fire from the altar."* 
 
 Another time, it is the Sabbath ; and only a single 
 day's notice has been given of his visit to town. We 
 repair to the spot it is the " Town's end Meeting- 
 house," holding between one and two thousand per- 
 sons. The doors are scarcely opened, when the 
 anxious multitude pour in, " half being fain to go 
 back again for want of room." The preacher " him- 
 self is fain, at a back-door, to be pulled almost over 
 people to get up-stairs to his pulpit." And oh, how 
 he pleads with these souls ! " I have been vile my- 
 self," he says, " but have obtained mercy ; and I 
 would have my companions in sin to partake of 
 mercy too. A great sinner, when converted, seems a 
 booty to Jesus Christ. He gets by saving such an 
 one : why, then, should both Jesus lose his glory and 
 the sinner lose his soul, at once, and that for want 
 of an invitation ? Come, pardon and a part in heaven 
 and in glory cannot be hurtful to you ! Manasseh 
 was a bad man, and Magdalene was a bad woman ; 
 * The authority is the Rev. Charles Doe, who was present. 
 
JOHN BUNYAN. 109 
 
 to say nothing of the thief upon the cross or of the 
 murderers of Christ: yet they obtained mercy; 
 Christ willingly received them. And do you think," 
 he proceeds, as every eye is fixed intently and an 
 awful stillness pervades the vast concourse, " that 
 those, once so bad, now in heaven, repent them 
 there because they left their sins for Christ when 
 they were in this world? 1 cannot believe but that 
 you think they have verily got the best of it. Why, 
 sinners, do you likewise ! Christ, at heaven's gate, 
 says to you, t Come hither !' and the devil, at the 
 gate of hell, does call you to 'come' to him. Sin- 
 ners ! what say you ? whither will you go ? Do not 
 go into the fire ; there you will be burned. Do not 
 let Jesus lose His longing, since it is for your salva- 
 tion; but come to Him and live." And, closing 
 with another of his touching appeals, the tear-drop 
 already stealing down many a rough check, he adds: 
 "One word more, and so I have done. Sinner, 
 here thou dost hear of love ; prithee, do not provoke 
 it by turning it into wantonness. He that dies for 
 slighting love, sinks deepest into hell, and will there 
 be tormented by the remembrance of that evil, more 
 than by the deepest cogitation of all his sins. Take 
 heed, therefore ; do not make love thy tormentor, 
 sinner ! Farewell !" 
 
 We return with him to Bedford ; and how meekly 
 and lovingly he goes in and out amongst his simple 
 flock ! " To seek yourself in this life," is his observa- 
 tion, one day, " is to be lost." Too intensely has he 
 10 
 
110 THE GOOD SOLDIER. 
 
 been refined in the Lord's furnace, to be a self-seek- 
 ing man now. 
 
 " That which before was darkened clean 
 With bushy groves, pricking the looker's eye, 
 Vanishes away when faith does change the scene, 
 
 And now appears a glorious sky." 
 
 And right joyous is the fellowship of the saints in 
 this tried church. " Church-fellowship, rightly man- 
 aged," says he, " is the glory of all the world. No 
 place, no community, no fellowship is adorned and 
 bespangled with those beauties, as is a church rightly 
 knit together to their Head, and lovingly serving one 
 another." And such a fellowship meets us here. 
 All who have " spiritual communion with Christ" 
 are welcomed to the table of their common Lord, 
 every detail being " left to private judgment." The 
 light is too heavenly, and the love too genuine, to 
 give place to any human shibboleth. " Consider," is 
 the affectionate counsel with which he closes his last 
 sermon to them, " that the holy God is your Father ; 
 and let this oblige you to live like the children of 
 God, that you may look your Father in the face an 
 other day." 
 
CHAPTEE XVII. 
 
 " Jerusalem, niy happy home I 
 
 Name ever dear to me I 
 When shall my labors have an end, 
 In joy, and peace, and thee?" 
 
 The midnight-lamp Writings The furrow The great morrow- -Tho 
 "blind one" More than half away The ark of God Argyle 
 Eumbold Evil time The peacemaker Illness " Black river" 
 Beulah Dying words Heaven "Feels the bottom" Beatifical 
 vision" How to pray Ague Longing "Mortal garments'" 
 " The city" A look in at the glory. 
 
 AT the little upper-window of that lowly cottage in 
 Bedford is to be seen, of an evening, a faint light, 
 casting athwart the curtain a dark, deep shadow, as 
 if of a man in deep thought. It is Bunyan, with 
 his Bible, and his glowing heart, and his rnagic pen, 
 " sequestering" himself to his " beloved work of set- 
 ting forth the glories of Immanuel." Night after 
 night, his studies are protracted far into the morning ; 
 for he does not serve the Lord with that which costs 
 him nothing. Within the sixteen years which elapse 
 betwixt his liberation and his death, that midnight- 
 lamp witnesses the production* of not fewer than 
 forty-five separate works. During the day his hours 
 are occupied with his beloved flock, and with his 
 evangelistic wanderings. 
 
112 THE GOOD SOLDIER: 
 
 His iron frame is not what it has been. The 
 twelve years in the " den" have left their traces, in a 
 tread less elastic, and in a brow more furrowed, though 
 not less serene. And his abundant labors since have 
 not arrested the course of the furrow's deepening line. 
 It is the seed-corn of a great to-morrow which he 
 handles, and he may not trifle with his errand. 
 
 And one trial visits him, which goes deeper into 
 his soul than all the rest. It is " that poor blind 
 one," smitten by the icy ringer of death. It is said 
 of the Swiss, by one of our poets, that 
 
 " The loud torrent and the whirlwind's roar, 
 But bind him to his native mountains more." 
 
 To this afflicted child because of the very rugged- 
 ness of her lot her father's heart has clung with a 
 most peculiar love. She is sick now ; and this other 
 self, as she lies there so faint, seems to prostrate him 
 at her side. Day after day, night after night, the 
 harrowed father watches. But she is gone ! And, 
 oh ! what a blank ! " In all these dead," says Vinet, 
 "we ourselves die. A part of our life, and of our 
 heart, is buried in each of these tombs.'* The stroke 
 Bunyan never recovers. It seems as if already he 
 were more than half away. 
 
 His spirit, too, is trembling for the ark of God. 
 The apostate James has been imbruing his hands in 
 the blood of God's holiest saints. Argyle has fallen 
 on the scaffold, " thanking God that He has support- 
 ed him wonderfully." And Ruinbold has fallen at 
 
JOHN BUNYAN. 113 
 
 his side, " blessing God's holy name" that He has 
 " given him grace to adhere to His cause in an evil 
 day," and declaring, that, " if every hair of his head 
 were a man, he would in that quarrel venture them 
 all." "Deliverance," indeed, according to the almost 
 prophetic words of Argyle, pronounced in his closing 
 hours, " is to come in very suddenly ;" but the cloud 
 is as yet dark overhead, unrelieved by any silver 
 lining. 
 
 In the town of Reading there resides a family bit- 
 terly opposed to the work of God. The eldest son 
 has been at Cambridge, and, hearing of the great 
 preacher, has gone one night to listen. Arrested by 
 the Word, he has returned to his home " a new man." 
 The father, greatly offended, has determined to disin- 
 herit him. Day by day the estrangement grows 
 more painful. At length the thought occurs " Will 
 not my spiritual father come and mediate ? And his 
 prayers will not they avail ?" 
 
 Bunyan sets out for Reading ; and, having earned 
 the blessing of the peacemaker, he reaches London 
 on his way home. A drenching rain upon the road 
 has brought on fits of shivering; and he is taken 
 seriously ill. 
 
 From the first, a presentiment seizes him that he is 
 nearing the " black river." Calling for pen, ink, and 
 paper, he addresses to his dear flock a few sentences 
 of parting tenderness. " Thus have I written to you," 
 says he, " before I die, to provoke you to faith and 
 holiness, and to love one another when I am deceased 
 10* 
 
114 THE GOOD SOLDIER: 
 
 and shall be in Paradise, as through grace I comfort- 
 ably believe." 
 
 Already the air of Beulah surrounds him with its 
 fragrant breezes. " In heaven," says he to one kind 
 friend who has come to visit him, "we shall find 
 blessings in their purity, without any ingredient to 
 embitter with everything to sweeten it." And to 
 another : " Oh ! who is able to conceive the inex- 
 pressible, inconceivable joys that are there ? None 
 but they who have tasted them." And another day 
 thus : " How will the heavens echo for joy when the 
 bride, the Lamb's wife shall come to dwell with her 
 Husband for ever !" 
 
 Fever comes on ; and, in a few more days, the 
 " earthly house," enfeebled by so many labors, shall 
 be "dissolved." But his earnest spirit "feels the 
 bottom, and it is good." And so, with 
 
 "A heart at leisure from itself," 
 
 he calmly utters, as from the river's farther bank, sun- 
 dry parting counsels. 
 
 " If you would be better satisfied," says he, " what 
 the beatifical vision means, my request is, that you 
 would live holily, and go and see." 
 
 " Christ," says he, on another occasion, " is the 
 desire of all nations, the joy of angels, the delight of 
 the Father : what solace, then, must the soul be filled 
 with, that hath the possession of Him to all eter- 
 nity !" 
 
 And again : " Before you enter into prayer, ask 
 
JOHN BUNYAN. 115 
 
 thy soul these questions : To what end, O my soul : 
 art thou retired into this place ? Art thou come to 
 converse with the Lord in prayer ? Is thy business 
 slight ? Is it not concerning the welfare of thy soul 3" 
 
 In these last hours, this closet-fellowship again and 
 again he urges. " Pray often," he says, one morning 
 with great earnestness ; " pray often, for prayer is a 
 shield to the soul, a sacrifice to God, and a scourge 
 for Satan." And an hour or two later: "The spirit 
 of prayer is more precious than thousands of gold 
 and silver." And again, thus : " In thy closet, con- 
 sider that thou art but dust and ashes, and He the 
 great God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who 
 1 clothes Himself with light as with a garment ;' that 
 thou art a vile sinner, and He a holy God ; that thou 
 art but a crawling worm, and He the omnipotent Crea- 
 tor." And still again : " When thou prayest, rather 
 let thy heart be without words than thy words with- 
 out heart. And, remember," he adds emphatically, 
 " either prayer will make thee cease from sin, or sin 
 will certainly entice thee to cease from prayer." 
 
 The ague grows more alarming ; and, once and 
 again, in the intervals of its feverish paroxysms, his 
 eye is lifted upward, and the whisper is breathed 
 "Oh! to depart and to be with Christ! far, far 
 better !" A few more hours, and the longing is 
 granted ; he " leaves behind him in the river" his 
 " mortal garment ;" and from the humble dwelling 
 in Snowhill his great spirit is wafted upwards, to 
 " the city beyond the clouds." 
 
116 THE GOOD SOLDIER. 
 
 It is on the last day of August, 1688, and in the 
 sixtieth year of his age. 
 
 Reader! look in for a moment after him into 
 that glory whither he is gone. See ! the city shines 
 like the sun ; its streets are paved with gold ; and in 
 them walk many men with crowns on their heads, 
 palms in their hands, and golden harps to praise 
 withal. And yonder he is ! the wayworn tinker 
 not wayworn now ! The bells of the city ring again 
 he is " with the Lord" for ever ! 
 
 " Servant of G-od, well done 1 
 
 Rest from thy loved employ I 
 The battle 's fought, the victory won, 
 Enter thy Master's joy I" 
 
II. 
 
 C If c Christian ST a b o r t r 
 
 GERHARD TERSTEEGEN. 
 
 44 Man is all weakness ; there is no such thing 
 
 As prince or king. 
 His arm is short ; yet, with a sling, 
 He may do more." 
 
'' Let us not be weary in well doing ; for in due season we 
 shall reap, if we faint not." Gal. vl 9. 
 
" Flowers, that with one scarlet gleam 
 Cover a hundred leagues, and seem 
 To set the hills on fire." 
 
 u WHEN a tired laborer," says Foster, " can repose 
 upon laying aside his work, that is something. But 
 can the Christian laborer ? How would a soldier, 
 who had deserted in battle, look at his arms ?" 
 GERHARD TERSTEEGEN is reposing now; but his 
 battle is fought, his work of service is done. 
 
 Reader ! here is a life-study which we invite you 
 to ponder. And may you have grace to go and do 
 likewise ! Rest comes after victory : your final vic- 
 tory is not yet. 
 
 And take courage ! The " Well done !" will be 
 pronounced " in due season ;" and, when it comes, 
 you will not deem it late. 
 
CEAPTEE I. 
 
 w As in the tulip's folded root 
 
 Are stem, leaf, bud, and blossom found ; 
 So youth and age, hope's flower and fruit 
 
 The man within the infant bound 
 Throbbed to break loose, but throbbed in vain, 
 Till, link by link, time loosed the chain." 
 
 Birth Early struggles Studies Earnest nature Apprenticeship- 
 Scene in the forest Awakening The moonlight and the sunlight 
 
 BORN in the principality of Moers, in 1697, the 
 youngest of a family of two daughters and six sons, 
 and losing his father while yet a child, GERHARD was 
 early summoned to that energetic self-reliance which 
 gives tone and force to the will. At school he studied 
 earnestly the Greek, and Hebrew, and Latin tongues; 
 until, in his fourteenth year, at the close of his course, 
 he pronounced an oration in Latin verse with such 
 ecldt, that a magistrate of his native town urged his 
 mother to allow her son to devote himself entirely to 
 study. But, destined from the first to a mercantile 
 life, he was bound, in his fifteenth year, an apprentice 
 to his brother-in-law in Mulheim, for a term of four 
 years. 
 
 " That man is to be pitied," said the Reporter of 
 the Young Men's Christian Association of Paris, at 
 
6 THE CHRISTIAN LABORER: 
 
 the recent meeting of Young Men's Associations in 
 that capital, " who lias never felt enthusiasm who 
 carries beneath a youthful breast a heart prematurely 
 old." And he added : " Christianity does not fear 
 enthusiasm it purifies and exalts it. What do I 
 say ? It alone preserves it ; it alone keeps intact 
 sheltered from the contamination of the world that 
 fruitful source of generous devotion which has its 
 deepest seat in the human soul." Tersteegen's was 
 a nature which could not waste itself in mere ennui. 
 A fire was there which must burn. Unsanctified, it 
 will blaze in a consuming ambition a restless world- 
 liness : touched from heaven, it will become the 
 lambent flame on the golden altar, wafting upward 
 the fragrant incense, a sweet savor before the Lord. 
 
 At the age of sixteen, and whilst an apprentice 
 at Mtilheim, he was first brought face to face with 
 the great question of his salvation. On his way, one 
 day, through a deep forest to a neighboring town, he 
 was seized with a sudden illness, which seemed to 
 threaten immediate death. Retiring out of the road 
 to a secluded spot, he fell on his knees, beseeching 
 God to spare him until he should be better prepared 
 to enter eteruity. The pain left him as suddenly as 
 it had come ; and from that hour began his groping 
 after the heavenly light. 
 
 " An ungodly man," we find him saying, long 
 afterwards, " is one who is detached from God, and 
 cleaves to himself and the creature : a godly man is 
 one who is detached from himself aud the creature, 
 
GERHARD TERSTEEGEN. 7 
 
 aiid adheres to God with all affection.". And he 
 adds : " The sole basis of this godliness is an essen- 
 tial union to Christ Jesus ; and the godliness itself 
 is the new life which springs from it, therefore em- 
 phatically called in Scripture, ' Godliness in Christ* 
 Jesus.' " In search of that godliness his earnest 
 spirit was now darkly feeling its way. 
 
 The loving Saviour had wounded him. " My 
 carnal nature," he tells us, " would gladly have ex- 
 pelled the thought from my mind, atfcl would have 
 had me live, the day through, as before, free, and 
 jovial, and merry ; but there had fallen upon my 
 heart such a ourden as I could not get rid of I felt 
 my sins, my wants, my danger. It was the love of 
 Christ which constrained me to feel thus ; although 
 my soul as yet knew nothing of this love, but was 
 only conscious of wrath and condemnation." 
 
 For many days, the light around him was but as 
 the moonlight paleness and dimness. " God leaves 
 us," he wrote afterwards, referring to that season of 
 groping, "to exert all our strength, and to weary 
 ourselves, and to become faint, as it were, by our 
 own attempts after holiness and righteousness, in 
 order that we may come weary and heavy laden to 
 Jesus." Tersteegen's earnest nature drew him into 
 a rigid self-denial ; such as, coarse apparel ; coarser 
 fare, consisting of flour, milk and water, and partaken 
 of only once a-day ; together with the humblest pos- 
 sible lodging. In this way he sought rest ; but, by 
 seeking it out of Christ, he was " only adding (he 
 
8 THE CHRISTIAN LABORER. 
 
 tells us) day by day to his burden." It was like 
 dragging a lifeless corpse, or a man in a swoon : 
 wliat labor is needed to remove him only a few feet 
 from the place where he fell down ! 
 At last, in his twentieth year, the sunlight rose. 
 The loving Saviour, who had wounded him, now 
 drew near to heal. " He took me by the hand," he 
 says, " drew me away from perdition's yawning gulf 
 directed my eye to Himself, and, instead of the 
 well-deserved pit of hell, opened to me the unfathom- 
 able abyss of His loving heart." 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 "Love is a sweet idolatry, enslaving all the soul: 
 A mighty spiritual force." 
 
 Augustine " For thyself " Dedication^Eibbon-making " Artless 
 humility" Daily routine Living sacrifice " Perfectly at ease in 
 God" Closet fellowship. 
 
 IT was a favorite saying of Augustine " Thou, O 
 Lord, hast created us for Thyself ; and our heart is 
 restless until it rests in Thee." With a character- 
 istic intenseness, Tersteegen now made this rest his 
 own. "I thank God," we find him writing, "that 
 He has permitted me to live so long as to enable me 
 to become acquainted with Him." And twenty- 
 seven years later, he says, referring to this great 
 crisis " God graciously called me out of the world, 
 and granted me the desire to belong to Him, and to 
 be willing to follow Him. I long for an eternity, 
 that I may suitably glorify Him for it." And, de- 
 scribing the same deliverance, he wrote, in lines 
 generally ascribed to Wesley, but really Tersteegen's, 
 thus : 
 
 " Thou hidden love of God, whose height, 
 Whose depth, unfathomed, no man knows 1 
 
10 THE CHRISTIAN LABORER: 
 
 I see from far thy beauteous light, 
 
 Inly I sigh for thy repose ; 
 My heart is pained, nor can it be 
 At rest, till it find rest in Thee. 
 
 Thy secret voice invites me still 
 
 The sweetness of thy yoke to prove ; 
 And fain I would ; but, though my will 
 
 Seems fixed, yet wide my passions rove- 
 Yet hindrances strew all the way ; 
 I aim at Thee, yet from Thee stray. 
 
 'Tis mercy all, that Thou hast brought 
 My mind to seek its peace hi Thee ; 
 
 Yet while I seek but find Thee not, 
 No peace my wandering soul shall see. 
 
 Oh, when shall all my wanderings end, 
 
 And all my steps to Jesus tend ? 
 
 My own endeavors are in vain ; 
 
 From self-attempts Love turns away; 
 A gaze too ardent gives her pain* 
 
 And will not suffer her to stay. 
 Mine eyes against each object close, 
 And bring me, Love, to thy repose. 
 
 Each moment draw from earth away 
 My heart, that lowly waits thy call ; 
 
 Speak to my inmost soul, and say, 
 ' I am thy Love, thy God, thy AUT 
 
 To feel thy power, to hear thy voice, 
 
 To taste thy love, be all my choice." 
 
 Service now took another hue. " Thou, God, seest 
 me !" was henceforth his master- thought. And that 
 God was his Father, with whom he felt himself at 
 * Song, vi. 5 
 
GERHARD TERSTEEGEN. 11 
 
 home. " I knew," he says, " that God saw all that 
 passed within me ; I, therefore, laid open my inmost 
 soul to this Sun of righteousness, to be enlightened, 
 warmed and renovated by its beams." 
 
 " Can these be thy people," he exclaimed one day, 
 " who serve thee only occasionally with their lips, 
 and thine enemies daily in their hearts ?" Tersteegen 
 himself, delivered from the fear which hath bondage, 
 was a follower of the Lord as a dear child. " I am 
 the Lord's," he wrote about this time to a friend. 
 " Having surrendered myself to Him, I belong to 
 Him, with all that I am, and no longer to myself: 
 by this I must abide, or else I must make as solemn 
 a revocation as my previous surrender from which 
 may the Lord preserve me ! I am His, I repeat, and 
 God regards me as such." And he added, in one of 
 his touching stanzas : 
 
 "Is there a thing beneath the sun 
 
 That strives with Thee my heart to share ? 
 Ah I tear it thence, and reign alone, 
 The Lord of every motion there." 
 
 Fearing the distractions of a more engrossing mer- 
 cantile life, he was led, soon after the expiry of his 
 term of apprenticeship, to adopt the humble trade 
 of a ribbon maker. After laboring from five in the 
 morning till nine in the evening, he would steal out 
 quietly to visit the sick and the needy in some back 
 alley of the town, sharing with them his scanty earn- 
 ings, and telling them of the Friend of sinners. 
 
12 THE CHRISTIAN LABORER : 
 
 " Bear one another's burdens," he used to say, " both 
 of body and soul, as if they were your own. Be ever 
 ready to serve one another gladly and in artless hu- 
 mility, and to wash one another's feet (so to speak), 
 or in the meanest and most laborious offices." 
 
 This "artless humility" how precious a grace! 
 Tersteegen was daily learning to be " clothed" with 
 it. " Do not think so much," he said to a friend one 
 day, unfolding the method of exercising it, " upon 
 denying yourselves, upon being faithful, or upon liv- 
 ing holily and strictly ; but only seek to love, hunger 
 after love, exercise yourselves in love. Love is always 
 exercising self-denial, without tasting its bitterness, 
 and almost without ever thinking of it. Think only 
 how you may love Christ how you may love Him 
 more cordially than ever ; and do every thing to 
 gratify and satisfy His love." 
 
 In 1725 he associated with himself in his trade a 
 young man named Sommer, who was desirous of ac- 
 quiring the art of ribbon- making. His season of sol- 
 itude had been peculiarly pleasant to him. " I can- 
 not express," he tells us, " how happy I was during 
 the time I lived alone. I often thought that no mon- 
 arch on earth could live so contentedly as I did." 
 And now that he had exchanged, somewhat reluct- 
 antly, the solitude for the society of his friend, 
 nothing could be more beautiful than the daily 
 routine beneath that lowly roof. Rising in the 
 morning at five, after their secret devotions, the 
 friends sang together a hymn, and read a little of 
 
GERHARD TERSTEEGEN. 13 
 
 the Word. Coffee followed ; then a brief prayer ; 
 and both proceeded quietly to work. At eleven they 
 rested ; and, after separating for an hour for the pur- 
 pose of prayer, they dined together, and resumed 
 their labor at one. At six in the evening they were 
 at liberty, when they again spent an hour in private 
 meditation and prayer. The remainder of the even- 
 ing was spent in labors of love, either at the desk or 
 in the dwellings of the poor. 
 
 Even his commonest occupations had acquired a 
 new dignity in his eyes they were a part of his daily 
 " living sacrifice." " The love of Christ," we find him 
 saying on one occasion, "enters voluntarily into all 
 our concerns ; it will, and must, have its hand, not 
 only in the greatest, but even in the smallest things. 
 By love all these trifles may become truly great, and 
 a means of serving God. He that (so to speak) picks 
 up a bit of straw from the ground, from love to 
 Christ, performs a great work." 
 
 And by the same love his frequent bodily suffer- 
 ings were transformed into willing sacrifices. One 
 day, as he lay in bed very ill, and a friend was bid- 
 ding him what both thought might be a last farewell, 
 Tersteegen said, with a pleasant smile, " I am per- 
 fectly at ease in God : I find him in every way all 
 sufficient: I can enter eternity to-night with com- 
 fort." And another day he said, " How many let 
 their courage fail when they see that Jesus distri- 
 butes, not bread and wine only, but also crosses !" 
 Tersteegeu's whole life was a life of cross-bearing ; 
 
14 THE CHRISTIAN LABORER. 
 
 but he bore them joyfully, knowing that He who 
 distributes crosses now, will, ere long, distribute 
 crowns. 
 
 And the same love made his closet so pleasant. 
 " Solitude," he would say, " is the school of god- 
 liness. You are called think what grace ! to 
 social converse with God." And again, "To be 
 emptied of eveiything to be alone with God in the 
 spiiit, at rest and in silence, giving place to God 
 and things divine, from which alone result truth, 
 and strength, and life, and salvation ; how dear to 
 me are the times I can spare for that purpose !" 
 Reader! is your closet a pleasant place to you? 
 What you are upon your knees, that is the real man. 
 
CHAPTEK III. 
 
 "Straightway they forsook their nets, and followed HIM." 
 
 " Not slothful he, though seeming unemployed, 
 And censured oft as useless." 
 
 A.n awakening Indian backwoods Madeira "Very hungry" His 
 trade The cottage Its " consecration 1 ' His one theme " A naked 
 infant 1 ' The corrective Where to get Theology Payson Luther. 
 
 IN 1727 there was a great awakening in the 
 neighborhood of Miilheim. A. friend, who for some 
 time had noted Tersteegen's so singular progress in 
 the divine life, urged him to speak to the awakened. 
 But, distrusting his own powers, he hesitated to open 
 his lips in a public assembly. " I would rather hide 
 myself from all the world," he said, " than let myself 
 be seen or heard." The Lord, however, was saying 
 to him, " Say not, I am a child ; for thou shalt go to 
 all that I shall send thee; and whatsoever I com- 
 mand thee thou shalt speak." At length Tersteegen 
 yielded. And such words ! To the whole-hearted 
 they were as barbed arrows, and to the wounded as 
 an excellent oil. 
 
 Instinctively discerning in him a heart of intensest 
 sympathy, the people resorted to him from every 
 quarter, seeking his counsel and his consolations. 
 
16 THE CHRISTIAN LABORER I 
 
 Brainerd tells us, in his Diary, that, when the Divine 
 Spirit was working among the Indians, he could 
 scarcely get an hour's rest so earnest were the 
 people for the bread of life. In Madeira, during the 
 awakening there, the Portuguese used to travel over- 
 night many miles; and an expression which we re- 
 member Hewitson once told us they were in the 
 habit of using when they came to him, was, " We 
 are very hungry." So also was it with Tersteegen 
 at Miilbeim. "The awakening," we find him 
 writing, u occasions me many visits. I am obliged 
 to devote myself, almost from morning till evening, 
 to converse with people, either individually or col- 
 lectively. I feel I must spend and be spent. It 
 were a small thing to put health and even life itself 
 into the scale, in order to fulfil the good pleasure of 
 God." 
 
 With increasing bodily weakness, aggravated by 
 his nightly studies and watchings, he soon found 
 himself driven to the alternative, either of declining 
 the greater part of these visits, or of giving up his 
 employment. Many generous offers had been made 
 to him by friends who saw that the Lord was calling 
 him to this spiritual work. One, a merchant, had 
 proffered him an annuity for life ; another, a Dutch 
 gentleman, had with tears urged his acceptance of a 
 bond for 10,000 florins; whilst a third, a Christian 
 lady whom he had never seen, had in her will ap- 
 pointed him her executor over a property of 40,000 
 ilorius, on condition of his taking whatever he needed. 
 
GERHARD TERSTEEGEN. 17 
 
 But these offers, and many others besides, he had 
 declined. It was only when disabled by weakness 
 from manual labor, that he at length consented to 
 accept the love-offerings of a few very special friends. 
 And, his moderate wants thus supplied, he gave his 
 little surplus to the poor followers of Jesus. 
 
 Tersteegen did not shrink from labor. " Your un- 
 dertaking some external employment," he once wrote 
 to a friend, " is needful for you and well-pleasing to 
 God. The idea which some have, that all is tempo- 
 ral and transient, and therefore useless, merely arises 
 from the disrelish and gloom of the constitution. 
 We were driven out of Paradise by sin ; and, accord- 
 ing to God's wise arrangement, we must now till the 
 thistly ground as a penance, and for our amendment, 
 and be exercised in the performance of things so 
 worthless. It would be folly to doubt on the sub- 
 ject. We ought not, however, to burden ourselves 
 too heavily, but do all that we do to the Lord ; they 
 will then, not only not be prejudicial to our spirit, 
 but advantageous to it: so that, by this simple in- 
 tention of doing all things, whether little or great, to 
 the Lord and from love to Him, even the smallest 
 things become important, and earth is turned into 
 gold." Tersteegen might still have continued at his 
 trade, and he would have transformed its engrossing 
 cares into a heavenly discipline ; but the same sin- 
 gle-hearted dedication to God, which would have 
 kept him at his ribbon-making, if such had seemed 
 to be the divine leaning, now constrained him to cast 
 2* 
 
18 THE CHRISTIAN LABORER: 
 
 himself into the new and less certain mode of life to 
 which plainly circumstances were calling him. 
 
 And such is the befitting way for those who are 
 " not their own." One disciple the Lord needs as a 
 Christian tradesman ; another as a Christian mer- 
 chant ; a third as an evangelist ; a fourth as a 
 prisoner in the dungeon ; a fifth as a martyr at the 
 stake. Each man, in deciding his work, is a law to 
 himself, provided always he is " under law to Christ." 
 The general rule is, to abide in the calling in which 
 His grace found us. The exception to the rule is, 
 for Peter to leave his nets, and Levi his desk, and 
 William Carey his lasts. Tersteegen found himself 
 in the latter category ; and joyously he " went out, 
 not knowing whither he went." One thing, how- 
 ever, he did know the Lord was on before him. 
 
 A friend died, and he rented his little cottage. 
 There he welcomed the many strangers who resorted 
 to him in increasing numbers, from all quarters, to 
 hear at his lips the Word of Life. It thus became 
 known, and is known to this day, as " The Pilgrims' 
 Cottage." 
 
 The " consecration" of the cottage (as Tersteegen 
 called it) was a touching scene. Hoffman, its former 
 possessor, had requested him on his death-bed to 
 assemble some friends a few days after his decease, 
 and give thanks for his happy departure. At two 
 hours' notice, one hundred and fifty people gathered ; 
 and Tersteegen was compelled to address them. A 
 deep emotion pervaded the meeting the Word 
 
GERHARD TERSTEEGEN. 19 
 
 " came with power." It was a true consecration of 
 his humble dwelling the Lord Himself was there. 
 
 And other scenes, not less affecting, were wit- 
 nessed there from week to week. " There is still, 
 God be thanked," he writes, some time afterwards, 
 " a great awakening and stir among the people here : 
 for some weeks together, from morning to night, 
 they were compelled to wait one for another, to have 
 an opportunity of speaking with me. Many were 
 obliged to return five or six times, before a quarter 
 of an hour could be found to converse with me alone ; 
 and I have occasionally had ten, twenty, and even 
 thirty anxious souls with me at the same time." 
 
 In these communings his one theme was Christ. 
 " Me thinks," he once wrote, " it would be an inex- 
 pressible consolation to me, if, in my dying hour, 
 and when I shall have to appear in the presence of 
 God, I could once more proclaim to all the world that 
 God alone is the Fountain of Life ; and that there 
 is no other way to find and enjoy Him than the life 
 hid with Christ in God, opened out to us in the 
 death of the Saviour." And on another occasion he 
 wrote : " The power and the riches of the merits of 
 the blood of Jesus are seldom recognized in the man- 
 ner in which they ought to be." Tersteegen so re- 
 cognized it ; it was his own life and it must be 
 the life, he knew, of these anxious souls. " It was 
 once whispered in my heart," he used to say, 
 " 4 Come like a naked infant, and then my bosom 
 shall receive thee.'" And another favorite expres- 
 
20 THE CHRISTIAN LABORER! 
 
 sion was, " I have obvious motives for forsaking my- 
 self, and letting myself drop, that I may be found 
 alone in Jesus." Taught thus personally, how could 
 he but speak to these souls the things which he had 
 seen and heard? 
 
 This is the true corrective for all the husks, alike 
 of a religionised philosophy and of a dry barren 
 orthodoxy. "I everywhere find," says Tersteegen, 
 " a hunger among the people : the customary food 
 no longer suffices them." Yes, and so is it now. 
 Souls " hungering after righteousness" must have 
 Christ, " the living bread," or perish. The stricken 
 conscience must have rest in Christ's blood ; the 
 vacant heart must have rest in Christ's person. No 
 more can a hungry stomach be satisfied by the per- 
 fumes of a beautiful flower, than an awakened sinner 
 can be satisfied with any thing short of Christ. 
 When, a century ago, in England, Whitefield, and 
 Wesley, and Grimshaw, and Fletcher, and Harris, 
 and Romaine, went forth on their errand of love to 
 sinners they all, though taught in different human 
 schools, found their theology to be practically one. 
 The reason was, they all were now sitting at Christ's 
 feet, and received at His hand the living bread for 
 those perishing souls. A poor lifeless orthodoxy, 
 however zealously embraced, finds itself, in such 
 scenes, a mere galvanized "body of death." And 
 a brother, who in colder times was suspected as 
 heretical, stands forth, in spite of himself, a true 
 apostle of Jesus. It is not disputings we want in 
 
GERHARD TERSTEEGEN. 21 
 
 these days ; it is not angry warrings ; it is awakened 
 souls, trembling consciences, " pricked" hearts. We 
 want to " hear the sound of a going in the tops of 
 the mulberry-trees ;" and then we shall go up and 
 " smite the host," " for then shall the Lord go 
 out before us." Payson tells us that he got his 
 theology " upon his knees ;" and Luther tells us he 
 got his in the furnace of affliction. It is when alone 
 with God, in " the entering in of the cave," not amid 
 the tearing "wind," and "earthquake," and "fire" 
 of human wranglings, that we receive the teachings 
 of the " still small voice." 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 "Will not God impart His light 
 To them that ask it ? Freely 'tis His joy, 
 His glory, His nature to impart.'' 
 
 New fields Barmen People in tears The Barn Illness The 
 Mayor u Iletire into a hovel" Inquirers The poor widow 
 The little boy The student Books and the new birth The 
 decision. 
 
 NEW fields opened for his sickle. A message 
 came from some awakened souls in a neighboring 
 principality, desiring him to come and visit them. 
 Distrustful as ever of himself and of his own ways, 
 we find him committing himself to the Lord, thus : 
 "Jesus! I entrus tmyself nakedly, blindly, and en- 
 tirely unto thee, assenting willingly to my own no- 
 thingness, and desiring, in the ardess carelessness of 
 faith, to live and die with thee, and in thee." And 
 again : " Rather let me suffer a thousand afflictions 
 with God, than walk in my own way, even were it 
 in the smallest degree." And yet again : " I am 
 myself a poor, ignorant infant, and neither know nor 
 possess anything except in the Lord, and have no 
 control over what belongs to another." 
 
 " To the upright," it is written, " there ariseth 
 light in the darkness." To this upright soul the 
 
GERHARD TERSTEEGEN. 23 
 
 light soon shone. He went to Barmen, and the 
 Lord went with him. So deeply moved were the 
 people under the Word, that he found it difficult 
 (he tells us) to remain firm in the midst of many 
 tears. Wherever he went, the people surrounded 
 him from morning till night. " I found myself," he 
 says, " once a few miles distant from a certain place ; 
 but I was waited for on the way, and conducted into 
 a barn, where I found about twenty persons, most 
 of whom were unknown to me, and were desirous of 
 hearing the Word. The Lord supports me, both in 
 body and soul, and to appearance at least vouch- 
 safes His blessing." 
 
 On one of these occasions, a touching incident 
 occurred. His excessive labors having brought on a 
 severe cold aggravated by fever, and an almost 
 total loss of voice he was mounting his horse one 
 morhrng, about eight, to return home, when he was 
 arrested by some five-and-twenty earnest inquirers, 
 some of whom had travelled several miles to see 
 him. And, at another place on the way, such was 
 the thirst for the Word, that the people assembled to 
 the number of three or four hundred, ''filling the 
 house to the very door, and placing ladders against 
 the windows in order to hear." The mayor of the 
 little town, like some of our greater authorities 
 nearer at home, attempted to arrest the work ; but 
 Tersteegen stood firm. " I wrote," says the lowly 
 man, " a pretty sharp letter to him, representing to 
 him how inconsistently he would act if he prohibited 
 
24 THE CHRISTIAN LABORER '. 
 
 assemblies of this nature, and at the same time per- 
 mitted quack-doctors, mountebanks, gaming-houses, 
 and taverns, and asking him how he expected to re- 
 flect upon these things on his death-bed. The 
 mayor," he adds, u as well as the other magistrates, 
 gave way, and acknowledged that I was right." 
 
 Returning home, he found the anxiety as great as 
 ever. Himself almost ashamed that God should take 
 into His hand an instrument so unworthy, he would 
 still have shrunk from the great work. " I have 
 need," we find him saying to a friend, who was com- 
 mending him for his untiring zeal, " I have need to 
 retire into a hovel, to weep over my sins." And 
 again : " O God, thou seest that I know myself to 
 be but a poor, weak, and helpless infant." But ne- 
 cessity was laid upon him, and he labored on. " Last 
 Thursday, at eight o'clock," he writes, " when I had 
 scarcely risen from my bed, and that with difficulty, 
 in order to answer a letter which I had received by 
 express, I was told that a whole troop of country 
 people were entering the house, anxious to speak 
 with me ; and before half an hour elapsed, nearly 
 fifty had assembled. I spoke to them on Isa. Iv. 10 ; 
 and, whilst speaking, a powerful emotion manifested 
 itself amongst the auditory, and afterwards I suffered 
 some, who were in great anxiety about their souls, to 
 converse with me in private." So earnest on these 
 occasions were his words, so clear and so tender his 
 exhibition of Christ, and so endued withal with 
 power from on high, that the inquirers rarely failed 
 
GERHARD TERSTEEGEN. 25 
 
 to obtain real peace. " You have no need," he used 
 to say, " to have recourse with so much anxiety to 
 such a poor creature us I am for advice. You have 
 the best guide and Teacher unspeakably near you." 
 Tersteegen, like the Baptist, was continually saying, 
 " HE must increase I must decrease." 
 
 Most affecting scenes were continually occurring. 
 There was present one day a poor widow, who had 
 lived a most ungodly life. As the Word was spoken, 
 she was suddenly wounded with a sense of sin. At 
 the close, she came to him in a state of dreadful agi- 
 tation, and "began, unsolicitedly," says Tersteegen, 
 " to confess her sins to me, which, I acknowledge, 
 were very great. As she seemed to be in such de- 
 spair," he adds, " I encouraged her to tell me all that 
 lay upon her mind, assuring her I would keep it 
 secret. 4 What !' said she, ' keep it secret ! Tell it 
 to the whole world ! I am not afraid of l*eing dis- 
 graced in the opinion of mankind. I would gladly 
 bear the severest torments, and am willing to be con- 
 sumed even to a skeleton, if I may onty find favor in 
 the sight of God.' " 
 
 Another day, a little boy about eleven years of 
 age. was brought by his mother, who had herself re- 
 cently found Christ, to hear the story of the Cross. 
 With great kindliness he spoke to him of sin, and of 
 wrath, and of the atoning Saviour ; and, taking him 
 by the hand at parting, he asked him if he would 
 not that day cast in his lot with Jesus. " He see.med 
 to wish," wrote Tersteegen afterwards, " not to hear 
 
26 THE CHRISTIAN LABORER'. 
 
 me. However, on reaching home, he said to his 
 mother, ' The devil wanted to hinder me from attend- 
 ing to what Tersteegen said ; but yet I have heard 
 every word very well, and resisted the devil.' And, 
 since that time, the boy is become very silent, and 
 goes often alone into the fields, or elsewhere, where 
 he can conceal himself, to pray, and weeps in secret 
 over his sins in such a manner that even his father, 
 who was before opposed to the truth, appears to bo 
 much affected and struck by it." Among the Indi.-ms, 
 Brainerd tells us that little children were frequently 
 thus arrested. On one ocaasion, he says, several, 
 " not more than six or seven ye.'irs old," were " brought 
 into deep distress." And " it was apparent," he adds, 
 " that they were not merely frighted with seeing the 
 general concern, but were made sensible of their dan- 
 ger, of the badness of their hearts, and (as some of 
 them expressed it) of their i misery without Christ.' " 
 So was it under the word? of Tersteegen. " Children 
 of twelve, or fourteen y<ars old," he writes, "are 
 awakened." Fathers ! mothers ! what are you doing 
 for your children's souls ! Children ! what are you 
 doing for your own ? 
 
 A student was awakened one day as he was speak- 
 ing to a little company at Duisburg. The young 
 man, engrossed with his books and his studies, had, 
 with a name to live, been living without God and 
 without Christ. " A man," said Tersteegen that 
 evening, " who retains his previous habits and infirmi- 
 ties from one year to another, has great cause to con- 
 
GERHARD TERSTEEGEN. 27 
 
 sider whether he be not a tree without life a branch 
 which is not in the vine. What are all our virtues, 
 and all our piety, unless fellowship with Jesus lie at 
 the bottom of it ?" The words went to the student's 
 conscience he was stung ivith intense alarm. An- 
 other evening, he hung on the preacher's lips as he 
 was setting forth the marvels of God's grace. " Be- 
 hold," said he " and oh ! that every eye was really 
 opened to see it ! behold how God loves us in Christ, 
 and how tenderly He loves us ! How ought all 
 those to be ashamed, who represent God as a tyrant 
 and a misanthrope ! There is no wrath in God, ex- 
 cept against sin." The young man decided to come 
 that night with his sin to Jesus, and to lay it on Him, 
 and to leave it on Him. And, finding peace at His 
 feet, he went about everywhere, " calling the people 
 to repentance." Young man ! have you found peace ? 
 Then, what are you doing to publish abroad among 
 perishing men the glad tidings of great joy ? 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 ** Zealously go forward with integrity, and God will bless thy 
 faith ; 
 
 For that, feeble as thou art, there is with thee a mighty Con- 
 queror, 
 
 Thy friend, the same for ever, yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow. 
 
 That friend, changeless as eternity, Himself shall make thee 
 friends 
 
 Of those thy foes transformed, yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow." 
 
 * Speak with thy God" Prayer and the tempter A little heaven 
 Sect and party Genial sympathies "Thy neighbor" Maxims on 
 self-denial Where we live, and how we live Fellowships " Eter- 
 nal love" Labors. 
 
 AMIDST all these labors, Tersteegen took heed most 
 scrupulously to his own soul. " Speak with none so 
 gladly," he used to say, " as with thy God." And 
 any engagement, even in itself holy, which gave his 
 soul a disrelish for HIM, he felt to be a snare. " Let 
 us accustom ourselves," he wrote on one occasion to 
 a friend, who had sought his counsel on this matter, 
 " the whole day long, and even whilst in business, to 
 the Lord's presence, and seek, in simple faith, to make 
 ourselves known to Him, and to become intimate 
 with Him in our hearts : but," he added, u we must 
 have a frequent seclusion in order to this sweet and 
 prayerful exercise of recollection and retiring to God 
 
GERHARD TERSTEEGEN. 29 
 
 in our hearts." Yes, young man ! if, with Nehemiah 
 before the king, you are to lift up your heart to God in 
 the crisis of each day's emergencies, you must retire 
 with Nehemiah into your closet each day, and there 
 live for some time alone with Him. " A soul without 
 prayer," wrote Tersteegen on another occasion, " is 
 like a solitary sheep without a shepherd. The tempt- 
 er sees it, and lures it away into his snare." 
 
 Next to his God, there were none whose society 
 Tersteegen loved so well as the saints. " He is lovely 
 in Himself," he would say, " an^l lovely in His chil- 
 dren." And the more he saw of Christ in any saint, 
 the more his heart was drawn to him. 
 
 u How few there are," he remarked one day, 
 " whose fellowship is really a spiritual advantage to 
 us ! I can often grieve like a child to see some, even 
 pious people, trifle so much, and not employ their 
 time better." With such he felt little in common. 
 But place him amongst a few brethren who were 
 really devoted to God, and it seemed to him like a 
 little foretaste of heaven. His eye glistened, and his 
 words dropped fatness. 
 
 Tersteegen lived too near the Lord to set much 
 store by sect or by party. " I ask not whence they 
 come," he would say, u but whither they are going." 
 He loved the saints in spite of their defects ; and, if 
 a defect or an error in a brother was to be corrected, 
 he handled it so lovingly that, whether surrendered 
 or no, the sin was felt to be there. " Let us extin- 
 guish the fire," he would say, " but with water" 
 3* 
 
30 THE CHRISTIAN LABORER : 
 
 Tersteegen was singularly human of warm affec- 
 tions and of a genial heart. " I do not like," he 
 would say, " the indifference of a Stoic, but would 
 willingly participate in the joys and the sorrows of 
 /ny brethren." One day, in a family which he often 
 visited, he was speaking a few words of consolation 
 on the removal of one of its members, who had been 
 very dear to him. As he spoke, he broke off ab- 
 ruptly tears hindering further utterance. " How 
 could you be so childish as to weep ?" said some one 
 to him afterwards. " Well," he answered, " perhaps 
 it was childish ; but believe me, I feel more and 
 more depressed in the world, when those who are 
 so wholly devoted to God take their departure from it." 
 
 "Love thy neighbor as thyself," is the Lord's 
 command. Notwithstanding our constant faults and 
 shortcomings, we still care for ourselves. Do we still 
 care for our neighbor, and love him, notwithstanding 
 his errors and deficiencies ? Few men ever loved 
 their neighbors as themselves with a steadfastness and 
 a patience like Tersteegen's. " Thiuk no ill of thy 
 brother," he would say; "judge not; be not hasty; 
 put the best construction upon everything." And 
 again : " Love those who do not walk in all things 
 as thou dost ; let every one go his own way ; what 
 is that to thee? Follow Jesus." 
 
 And nothing could be more wise and considerate 
 than the counsels he addressed to the troubled and 
 the distressed. "We must not prescribe," we find 
 him saying to one, u too many laws of self-denial for 
 
GERHARD TERSTEEGEJf. 3l 
 
 peculiarities, but leave grace to counteract them, had 
 chiefly insist upon a complete surrender of the heart." 
 And to another, thus : " You must not be too scru- 
 pulous in your devotional exercises : good children do 
 what is given them to perform, as well as they are 
 able, and are desirous of improving every day. May 
 filial love govern you in all things ! The picking 
 up of a straw with an intention to please God, is of 
 greater value in His sight, than the removal of moun- 
 tains without such intention." 
 
 And, on another occasion : " Your happiness or 
 unhappiness does not depend upon the house, but 
 upon the state of mind. When it is well within, all 
 is well. Consent sincerely to your nothingness ami 
 misery, and submit to be found such as you are ; the 
 Lord is then with you, and will break your fetters." 
 And again : " I repeat it is not the houses : inwardly 
 wrong, all wrong ; inwardly well, all well everything 
 and everywhere well. It is alike to the Lord where 
 we live, but not how we live. A royal palace is too 
 narrow for him who lives to himself; and a little cot- 
 tage is large and beautiful to him who lives to the 
 Lord." 
 
 To a friend who was in danger of another snare, 
 he said one day : "Avoid all unnecessary intercourse 
 with those 'who make great pretensions to reason. 
 Suffer not yourself to be detached from simplicity in 
 Christ, by any pretence of superior knowledge and 
 wisdom. Nature seeks room, and avoids confinement. 
 The poor and simple life of Jesus is offensive to scorn- 
 
32 THE CHRISTIAN LABORER I 
 
 ful reason, which sophisticates until it has found a 
 convenient middle way which just terminates in a 
 point with the broad way. With respect to us, let 
 us be affectionate children ; dying, praying, loving 
 shall be our wisdom. Let reason scorn us as long as 
 she pleases ; we shall see who fares the most peace- 
 ably, and to whom the heavenly Father will reveal 
 His mysteries." 
 
 And a growing brotherliness drew him nearer and 
 nearer to fellow-pilgrims. " If we only detach our- 
 selves more from all secondary things and notions," 
 he writes, indirectly indicating his own way in this 
 matter, " and exercise ourselves in that which is alone 
 needful, seeking how we may be truly faithful, in dy- 
 ing to the world and to all false life, and in remaining 
 near to God in simplicity of heart our spirits then 
 flew together, as of themselves, in delightful unanimity 
 and unity. In this way eternal love delights to dwell 
 among us, and to bless us, as the dew which falls on 
 Hermon ; and we evermore deeply experience the 
 unknown blessings which are to be enjoyed in the 
 true fellowship of the saints. Seeing that we have 
 cast out the world, and the world has cast us out 
 let us therefore give each other the hand, and, as 
 strangers and pilgrims, brotherly and courageously 
 go forward, in one mind and spirit, to the happy land 
 of inward and eternal fellowship with God in Christ 
 Jesus." 
 
 The earnest man continued his labors. " Since 
 my last," we find him writing, April 9, 1751, u the 
 
GERHARD TERSTEEGEN. 33 
 
 people scarcely ever let me rest. I try occasionally 
 to withdraw myself by force ; but it is of no avail. 
 Last Sunday, I had scarcely risen from my bed, when 
 I was obliged to address more than sixty persons, 
 who had thronged into the house, which I accord- 
 ingly did from Matt., xxv. 5. After I had done 
 speaking, I had to converse with various individuals 
 until evening. And yesterday morning, after I had 
 passed the whole night in a fever, at least two hun- 
 dred and fifty people assembled in the corn-loft and 
 in the room adjoining, to whom I spoke, with* the 
 Lord's gracious assistance, from Gal., i. 35. I have 
 also been obliged to speak this morning, early, with- 
 out knowing of it a quarter of an hour before. But 
 now I feel myself quite exhausted. I spoke to-day 
 on the last words of the Lord Jesus, ' It is finished !' 
 and comforted myself with the hope that my toils 
 and troubles would also soon be finished." 
 
CHAPTEE VI. 
 
 44 Affliction then is ours ; 
 "We are the trees whom shaking fastens more, 
 
 While blustering winds destroy the wanton bowers, 
 And ruffle all their curious knots and store." 
 
 The Furnace " Self-made heroes 1 ' Lessons in the fire The "one 
 thing" Last address The wood New sufferings Reproaches 
 Backsliders The angels' praise, and Job's" Something noble." 
 
 THE Lord was refining him in His furnace-fire. 
 " Up to the present moment," he writes, March 20, 
 1753, "I can scarcely use my head or my eyes, and 
 my hand trembles very much ; the little rest I have 
 had, owing to the concourse of people, may have 
 been the principal occasion of it. I cannot think 
 what the people seek from such a poor creature. A 
 short time ago, a person totally unknown to me, but 
 a true Nathanael, came nearly two hundred miles on 
 foot, in bad weather, to visit me ; but who, on such 
 occasions, can withdraw himself entirely ?" 
 
 And these trials and labors were not unblest to 
 him. " If we have already tasted and experienced 
 much," he said, one day, in the autumn of 1755, 
 " and have passed through many trials, the result 
 ought to be a lovely, artless, and childlike spirit." 
 
GERHARD TERSTEEGEN. 35 
 
 And another day he said : " The Lord lets us feel 
 our weakness in the season of trial, in order that we 
 may be no self-made heroes, but creep the more help- 
 lessly into His strength, and that He may be all 
 things and alone in us." And another day, a friend 
 was remarking how much trouble God had in bring- 
 ing up His children. " Yes," said Tersteegen, u and 
 ii\ bringing them down !" These were the lessons 
 which the mellowed saint was learning in the fires. 
 
 And another lesson which, amidst his incessant 
 labors and deep trials, he was learning was, the 
 necessity of waiting upon God and of checking the 
 restless and impatient u flesh." *' When we cease to 
 care and labor," he would say, "then God begins, 
 and will be all in our nothingness." And again : 
 " Our Lord Jesus was silent and kept Himself con- 
 cealed for thirty years, in order that, by His exam- 
 pie, He might inspire us with a fondness for a truly 
 retired life; and scarcely did He spend four years 
 in a public manner. It is a seciot but common 
 temptation of the enemy, and a subtle device of the 
 flesh, by which the tempter would allure us from the 
 only thing needful, and weaken our strength by the 
 multiplicity of the objects in which we engage." 
 And, on another occasion, thus : " All you have to 
 do, is to love Christ, to abide in Him, and you shall 
 bear much fruit. Does the branch of the vine find 
 it difficult to bear sweet grapes ? Is it necessary to 
 compel it to do so, by commanding, threatening, and 
 rough usage ? Oh, no ; the whole process takes place 
 
36 THE CHRISTIAN LABORER I 
 
 very quietly, easily, and naturally ; the branch merely 
 abides in the vine, and imbibes its* precious sap, and 
 then it flourishes and bears fruit without any further 
 trouble. It is thus that we ought also to act." 
 
 It was in the spring of 1756 that, for the last 
 time, he addressed the assembled people. So many 
 had come together, that he was obliged to fill with 
 his voice five or six rooms of his house. The bow, 
 so long stretched, was at length broken. From that 
 day, he was unable to do more than take an occa- 
 sional short ride into the country, or saunter into a 
 neighboring wood, where, in company with a few 
 friends who had come from a distance to see him, he 
 would enjoy a simple repast, savored with the salt 
 of his own meek and heavenly converse. 
 
 New sufferings came on him. His whole life had 
 been little else than one painful illness ; but now the 
 furnace was heated seven times. " A week ago," he 
 writes, " I was attacked by catarrh in the head causing 
 such acute pain, night and day, that my head throbbed 
 convulsively every moment." And again : " On 
 Friday morning before Whitsuntide, in writing an 
 urgent letter, I was seized with a trembling from 
 head to foot. In the evening I was attacked by 
 fever, and by a pain in the limbs so acute that I 
 knew not where to put myself." And another time : 
 " I have an eruption over my whole body, and my 
 back is so sore that my shirt adheres to it." And 
 during these latter years his stomach was so weak 
 that he had a repugnance to every sort of food. " I 
 
GERHARD TERSTEEGEN. 37 
 
 am always sorry," he would say, " when my dinnei 
 is brought up, for the lightest food causes me much 
 difficulty and pain." 
 
 Added to these trials were sufferings of another 
 kind. One blamed him for doing too much, another 
 for doing too little ; a third, envying him for his gifts? 
 spoke evil of his work. And, of all his griefs, none 
 penetrated his soul so deeply as the unholy walk of a 
 disciple. " Oh, what a load of anxiety and care," he 
 exclaimed on one such occasion, accompanying the 
 words with a mournful sigh, " do those occasion 
 me, who, divinely called, yet walk unfaithfully before 
 the Lord ! It gives me so much pain, that I am 
 often obliged to throw myself on my face before 
 God." 
 
 But he was made " more than conqueror, through 
 Him that loved him." "Is it anything wonderful," 
 he said to a friend, who came to him one evening in 
 great distress of spirit, " that the angels praise God ?" 
 " No," replied the sufferer ; " for if we were in their 
 place, we should do likewise." "That is also my 
 opinion," rejoined Tersteegen; "but when Job 
 praised God whilst sitting in the ashes, that was 
 something noble, and his praise pleased Him better 
 than that of angels." Such praise he himself was 
 offering now, in his own " great fight of afflictions.' 
 4 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 ** Pass along, pilgrim of life, go to thy grave unfearing." 
 
 'Breathing of the holy soul" Sinking into Christ The sick child 
 " Gladly \\ i uk" "Always poor" Going Homo Death-bed " Thou 
 all, I nothing" Conclusion " Entirely God's." 
 
 A HOLY man once said, writing to a deeply tried 
 friend " How blessed, that, when the soul is in a 
 holy frame, the exertion of prayer is so little felt as 
 not to oppress even the languishing body ! The 
 natural breathing of the holy soul is prayer, which 
 enters into the ears of the Father." And another 
 departed saint, at the time sorely pressed by weak- 
 ness, said : " We can sink into Christ, though we 
 cannot rise to Him." Gerhard was tasting this joy. 
 " On account of the weakness of my head," he writes, 
 " I am often unable to think either of God or of my 
 own soul; but I know that 'God is' that He is 
 the great, the good, the ever-blessed God. The mere 
 recollection of this is unspeakable rest to me." And 
 again : " Just as a sick child upon its mother's lap 
 causes the pain it feels to be understood only by the 
 moving -expression of its eyes so endure in the 
 presence of God, simply looking up to Him." 
 
GERHARD TERSTEEGEN. 39 
 
 As he hastened onward, the simplicities of faith 
 grew more and more precious to him. " Our life," 
 he remarked one day, " is an infancy and commence- 
 ment of an eternal life." And it seemed as if, in in- 
 fancy of heart, he was daily gaining more distinctly 
 the lineaments of the " little child," who alone can 
 enter the kingdom. " I am like a poor man," he 
 writes, u who has nothing in reserve, and would be 
 always like a poor child, who desires neither to know 
 nor to possess anything." And another day : " I feel 
 I must do nothing, and desire nothing ; and, letting 
 God do what seemeth Him good, be as a child, con- 
 tented." And again : " I am gladly weak, in order 
 not to run without God that His glory and power 
 may be perfected in my nothingness." And once 
 again : " I am lost in adoration when I reflect that 
 God has selected such a way to eternal glory as takes 
 away everything from the creature, and gives it all 
 to God, and, consequently, sweetly compels us to 
 cleave most closely to Him to abide and live in 
 Him and upon Him and to continue always poor, 
 that we may in reality possess all things a way for 
 children, hut only for naked children a way which 
 the wise overlook." And, in one feature of his trials, 
 this growing childlikeness solaced his heart peculiar- 
 ly. " Seek to become," said he one day to a friend, 
 desiring to comfort him with the abundant consola- 
 tion with which he himself had been comforted of 
 God, " seek to become inwardly a little innocent 
 child, that finds fault with nothing, and lets all the 
 
40 THE CHRISTIAN LABORER : 
 
 world act and speak of it, even in its presence, -*s 
 they please, without once regarding it, or letting it- 
 self be troubled by it," 
 
 " The end of all our lamentations is going home." 
 So said Tersteegen one day in the spring of 1769, 
 and that home he was now speedily to enter. To- 
 wards the end of March, he was seized with an asth- 
 ma, which obliged him to sit forty -seven hours to- 
 gether in his aim-chair, sometimes leaning back- 
 wards for a few minutes on the chair, and then again 
 forward on a cushion upon the table. Friend after 
 friend came in ; and, whilst they were overwhelmed 
 at the sight of agony so acute, he spoke to each, ac- 
 cording to their peculiar circumstances, in a manner 
 so edifying and so comforting that they were all 
 affected even to tears. " Oh, sister, the way is a good 
 way," he said to one ; " follow the Lamb with cheer- 
 fulness whithersoever He leads you." And to an- 
 other : " I commend you, through grace, to the love 
 of Jesus ! Let the present moment induce you to sur- 
 render yourself entirely to our dearest Saviour." And 
 to a third : u Ask His grace, like the woman of Cana : 
 ask it without regard to temporal things, which are 
 of less value than is generally supposed. What a 
 happiness it is, when obliged to part with them, to 
 have a gracious God in Christ !" And to a fourth 
 he whispered : " Outwardly very weak, but inwardly 
 overflowing with love !" 
 
 On the morning of April 2, the pain somewhat 
 abated; and, during all that day, he had successive 
 
GERHARD TERSTEEGEN. 41 
 
 fits of slumber, deepening and lengthening as night 
 drew on. " Yes, Amen !" he said, as he awoke out 
 of one of them ; " Thou all ! I nothing I" And at 
 another waking moment, " O God ! Jesus ! 
 sweet Jesus !" They were his last whispers ; and at 
 two in the morning of the 3rd April, he passed up- 
 ward into His presence, to wait with Him for " that 
 day." 
 
 A life like this is its own interpreter. Who will 
 arise and follow Tersteegen, as he followed Christ ? 
 
 " Oh, how seldom," he once exclaimed, " do we 
 meet with those who are entirely God's ! Alas ! on 
 every side we see scarcely anything but dead bones, 
 dead hearts, dead formalists, dead words, dead works, 
 a dead walk, dead worship!" Were Tersteegen 
 amongst us, would he have any reason to utter the 
 same lamentation ? 
 
 Reader ! you yourself best know whether you are 
 now ENTIRELY God's. You that are hesitating to be 
 wholly on the Lord's side ; ft oh, that we could per- 
 suade you how willingly the Lord would become to 
 you " your treasure, your portion, your all !" It is 
 not head-notions, however captivating, which will 
 here avail you. " Nature finds it easier," said Ter- 
 steegen, on one occasion, u to amuse herself with ideas, 
 than to suffer and to die." Your religion must have 
 power in it, not only to carry you along the path of 
 sunshine, but to carry you up to cross-bearing, and 
 through it. And, if you are to have this power, you 
 
42 THE CHRISTIAN LABORER. 
 
 must get it at the BLOOD you must be accepted in 
 your crucified and risen Lord. Are you so accepted ? 
 Is the blood on your conscience ? 
 
 And then, if accepted in Christ, what are you do- 
 ing for Him ? " Keep this truth," said Tersteegen 
 one day to a Christian young man, " firmly and nn- 
 shakenly, with the help of God that your heart, and 
 inmost love, belong wholly, undividedly, and eternally, 
 to God alone ; and remain devoted to Him, come 
 what may. Regard Him as I do, as your only treas- 
 ure, comfort, support, and salvation ; and you shall 
 experience peace and blessedness wherever and how- 
 soever you may be, both now and for ever." Yes, 
 grasp that truth grasp it firmly and you are gird- 
 ed for all labor and for all trial. 
 
III. 
 
 Ctje Christian Han of Alters 
 
 JAMES MONTGOMERY. 
 
 " The love of Nature, and the power 
 
 To read her glowing page ; 
 The pleasures of each passing hour, 
 
 In youth, or riper age ; 
 The buoyant, bounding pulse of health ; 
 
 The strength for duty's task ; 
 Bright thoughts, and garnered mental wealth 
 
 More than thy soul didst ask ; 
 These are the gifts of God Rejoice ! rejoice I" 
 
* The hope of better things to come. 
 
 Of higher joys in store; 
 The vision of a brighter home, 
 
 Where change shall vex no more ; 
 All that the present brings to thee 
 
 Of blessings in their bloom ; 
 All that the great Eternity 
 
 Can yield beyond the tomb ; 
 These are the gifts of God Rejoice 1 rejoice \ r 
 
" A soul redeemed demands a life of praise ; 
 Hence the complexion of his future days." 
 
 IT is recorded of Count Zinzendorf, that in his 
 boyhood he would sometimes write a little note to 
 his Saviour, telling Him how his heart felt toward 
 Him v and would throw it out of the window in the 
 hope that He might find it. And in his manhood, 
 casting aside the boyish romance as to the channel 
 of the fellowship, but realizing even more intensely 
 the fellowship itself he would often, in his missionary 
 travels, be found diverging into some solitary path, 
 that he might converse more unreservedly with 
 Jesus, speaking to Him face to face, as if He were 
 personally at his side. 
 
 JAMES MONTGOMERY " learned Christ" in the same 
 simple, heart-touching school. " Whatever we did," 
 he writes, referring to his ten-years' residence at the 
 Moravian Seminary of Fulnec, " was done for the 
 sake of Jesus Christ, whom we were taught to re- 
 
46 THE CHRISTIAN MAN OF LETTERS. 
 
 gard in the amiable and endearing light of a Friend 
 and Brother." The Gospel, as the glad tidings of 
 God's wondrous love to sinners, is comprehended 
 only by the heart; for only love can comprehend 
 love. It is such a religion of the heart which we 
 are now to contemplate, in the Christian Bard whose 
 name we have just pronounced. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 " When we sported in that merry sunshine of our life, 
 Sadness a stranger to the heart, 'and cheerfulness its gay in-habi- 
 tant." 
 
 The Moravian settlement Its Founder "A hardy worker 1 ' The 
 father The lad behind the plough The birth-place The voyage 
 "The faith of that child 1 ' The missionary Fulnec The sunshine 
 "That tincture 1 ' The poetic fire The "Coal ass 1 ' The hedge- 
 Stolen interviews School-days Wakefulness Epic The prayer. 
 
 ABOUT the middle of last century, in a rustic spot. 
 in the county of Antrim, there was founded a Mo- 
 ravian settlement of earnest, praying men who, 
 awakened by the same divine visitation as had stir- 
 red the stagnant waters by the hand of Wesley and 
 of Whitefield, used to traverse all the surrounding 
 country, preaching in simple fervor the message of 
 grace. " He was truly a great soul," said Whitefield, 
 on one occasion, speaking of John Cennick, the 
 founder of the Settlement, and its presiding spirit 
 " one of those ' weak' things' which God hath chosen 
 to confound the strong. Such a hardy worker with 
 his hands, and such a hearty preacher at the same 
 time, I have scarce known. All call him a second 
 Bunyan." 
 
48 THE CHRISTIAN MAN OF LETTERS '. 
 
 There comes one day to a village-preaching, where 
 this " second Bunyan" is holding forth the Word of 
 life, a young man of the neighborhood who earns his 
 daily bread by hard field labor. John Montgomery is 
 observed to be unusually grave that evening, as the 
 preacher proclaims his simple but telling message. 
 Moved into anxiety, and, by and bye, finding rest at 
 the feet of Jesus, he enters the ministry ; and, after 
 divers wanderings in England and in Germany under 
 the guidance of his Moravian brethren, he ultimately 
 settles in the town of Irvine, a sea-port on the western 
 coast of Scotland, having previously married, in 
 1768, an estimable member of the little community 
 in Antrim, who is destined to be the mother of 
 JAMES MONTGOMERY. 
 
 Some dozen miles distant, on a small farm owned 
 by his father, there might be seen in those years, 
 " whistling behind the plough," a rustic lad, who was 
 already beginning to feel those poetic inspirations 
 which were one day to immortalize " the land of 
 Burns." In the humble dwelling of the Moravian 
 pastor still extant in Irvine as a weaver's shop is 
 ushered into the world, on November 4, 1771, an- 
 other bard, who is to sweep his lyre to a more 
 heavenly symphony. 
 
 Returning a few years afterwards to Ireland, his 
 parents send him in his sixth year to Fulnec, near 
 Leeds, in Yorkshire, to be trained after the fashion 
 of the Brethren. On the voyage across there arises 
 a terrific storm, which so agitates the captain that 
 
JAMES MONTGOMERY. 49 
 
 he gives up all for lost. " I would give," says he to 
 John Montgomery, after the crisis has passed, " a 
 thousand pounds for the faith of that child." It 
 is the youthful poet to whom he points ; for the 
 child has sat all through the tempest calm and 
 composed, as if a more than mortal faith already 
 possessed his heart. " I was, as might be expected," 
 remarked Montgomery long afterwards, alluding to 
 the scene, "afraid at first; but my father told me 
 to trust in the Lord Jesus, who saved the apostles 
 on the water. I did so, and felt composed." In 
 1783, John Montgomery proceeds as a Missionary 
 to the West Indies ; and his son is left at Fulnec, 
 with a patrimony more enriching than gold or than 
 broad acres the blessing of the self-denying disci- 
 ple's God. 
 
 On a pleasant eminence, some six miles from 
 Leeds once surrounded by a desert of rough moor- 
 land, but now the centre of a tract of richly cultivated 
 soil stands a range of buildings, known to this day 
 as the hamlet or " settlement" of Fulnec. Though ex- 
 posed in winter to a biting wind, which comes sweep- 
 ing up the valley from the south it is delightful in 
 summer, the sun seeming to repose on the side of the 
 hill, and in front of the Seminary. Those genial 
 sunbeams, like Bunyan's " sunny side of the hill" 
 in his waking dream of the three saints of Bedford, 
 are but shadows of a brighter sunshine within. 
 James Montgomery, in his riper years, always 
 lingered in fond remembrance over that scene. 
 5 
 
50 THE CHRISTIAN MAN OF LETTERS! 
 
 u Hither," we have him writing, in his " Departed 
 Days," 
 
 " From this my native clime, 
 The hand that leads Orion forth, 
 And wheels Arcturus round the north, 
 
 Brought me in life's exulting prime. 
 
 Blest be that hand ! it is the hand of GOD." 
 
 What law and custom ordain elsewhere, is done here 
 as an act of Christian sacrifice. Work, play, study, 
 recreation, going out and coming in, rising up and 
 lying down all is perfumed with " that tincture, 
 ' For thy sake,' " which 
 
 " Makes drudgery divine." 
 
 It is within these walls that our poet first joyously 
 lifts a prayer, which a protracted life of service is 
 never to rob of its fragrance 
 
 " Teach me, my God and King, 
 
 In all things thee to see ; 
 And, what I do in any thing, 
 To do it as for thee." 
 
 The earliest scintillation of the poetic fire is 
 kindled by hearing one of the masters one day, 
 under a hedge, read Blair's " Grave." u Driven like 
 a coal-ass" through the Latin and Greek grammars, 
 distinguished for nothing but indolence, and always 
 asleep when he ought to be awake, he listens to the 
 master's recitation that day with an ecstasy which 
 fires his whole soul though, before the rehearsal is 
 
JAMES MONTGOMERY. 51 
 
 half over, his companions are already all asleep. " If 
 ever I become a poet," is his secret whispering to 
 himself, " I will write something like this." Like the 
 child born inland,' whom Wordsworth describes as 
 listening to the shell's low murmuring sound of its 
 native sea, it seems as if on that summer day, whilst 
 the future poet sits beneath the shade of that hedge, 
 the music of the spheres is awakening for the first 
 time the kindred harmonies of his genius. 
 
 Books are his daily, hourly joy. The forbidden, 
 however, rather than the sanctioned and authorised, 
 are chiefly coveted. " All mankind," we find him 
 writing, " are made of the same clay : my curiosity 
 is insatiate ; and the pains which are taken to con 
 ceal certain things from us, only makes us more 
 anxious to explore them." The favorites, in those 
 stolen interviews, are the great English poets. With 
 these, up to the age of thirteen, he is almost entirely 
 unacquainted though he has already filled a little 
 volume with his own sacred rhymes. A habit is 
 contracted in those school-days, which remains with 
 him to old age. He will frequently retire to rest 
 with a half-finished poem on his mind, resolving not 
 to close his eyes till it is completed. This wakeful- 
 ness, he tells us, so grew upon him, that for many 
 years he never enjoyed one peaceful night. 
 
 At the age of fifteen, he conceives the idea of an 
 epic poem, to be entitled " Alfred ;" commencing 
 with the Anglo-Saxon hero in his disguise of a 
 peasant in the Isle of Athelney, and proceeding to 
 
52 THE CHRISTIAN MAN OF LETTERS. 
 
 exhibit a scene in heaven the Almighty upon a 
 throne looking down in pity on the ruins of England, 
 when suddenly there appear in His presence the 
 spirits of a host of Englishmen who have just per- 
 ished in battle, bewailing the condition of their 
 country, and imploring God to deliver it. The 
 idea is truly a " boyish daring ; but it is the daring 
 of a boy of genius." The epic, however, is not exe- 
 cuted ; for, whilst his soaring wing is trimming 
 itself for such flights, his heart will be arrested 
 by such words as these, in the Moravian Litany 
 " Keep us, our dear Lord and God, from untimely 
 projects, from all loss of our glory in Thee, from un- 
 happily becoming great." 
 
CHAPTEE II. 
 
 "Away! 'Tis time my journey were begun." 
 
 44 Whether is it better with the many to follow a beaten track, 
 Or by eccentric wanderings to cull unheeded sweets ?" 
 
 The setting out" A business" The village inn The visitor Went- 
 worth The "store" "No vulgar boy" The missionary Life's 
 battle London Goldsmith " The Row" The '" sixpenny volume 1 ' 
 The presentiment. 
 
 IT is the desire of the Brethren that young Mont- 
 gomery shall devote himself to the ministry ; but a 
 habit of abstraction, gradually withdrawing him from 
 exact studies into that excursive freedom through 
 which minds like his are ordinarily ushered into 
 their future, at length induces his teachers to seek 
 for him some other line of service. Accordingly, it 
 is resolved to " put him to a buisiness, at least for a 
 time." For a year and a half, he stands behind the 
 counter of a " Fine-Bread Baker" in Mirfield, a village 
 near Fulnec feeling, like Foster at the loom, " a 
 stranger in the place," but dissevered finally from 
 that sacred calling to which his parents, ten years 
 before, had devoted him. With little to occupy him, 
 and craving, like some pent-up flower, another ele- 
 5* 
 
54 THE CHRISTIAN MAN OF LETTERS I 
 
 ment of life he breaks loose one morning, deter- 
 mined 
 
 " To view 
 The world, which yet by fame alone he knew." 
 
 With three shillings and sixpence in his pocket, and 
 with a suit of old clothes on his person (for, though 
 he has just got a new suit from his master, he leaves 
 them behind, not thinking his services have merited 
 them), and \vith a single change of linen here he 
 is, at the age of sixteen, with the world all before 
 him, and his spirit at last free. 
 
 That night he rests at Doncaster, and the next in a 
 village near Wentworth, the seat of Earl Fitzwilliam. 
 As he sits in the humble inn, wearied and downcast, 
 a lad comes in, and, seeing him with his little bun- 
 dle, enters into friendly converse. " My father," says 
 he, " keeps an establishment at a village not far off; 
 and as he is wanting an assistant just now, probably 
 you may suit him." The wanderer is thankful ; and 
 the next day he repairs to Wath, and engages him- 
 self to this new master. Writing to his friends at 
 Fulnec, and also to his late employer at Mil-field, he 
 obtains a warm recommendation from them, coupled 
 with an affectionate entreaty on the part of the latter 
 to return to his service. Meanwhile he ventures into 
 Wentworth Park with the hope of meeting its noble 
 owner, and of presenting to him a copy of his verses. 
 Scarcely has he entered the domain, when Lord Fitz- 
 william comes up on horseback, and, affably accept- 
 ing the proffered gift, and reading the verses on the 
 
JAMES MONTGOMERY. 55 
 
 spot, presents their author with a guinea the first 
 patronage and the first profit which his poetry lias 
 yet received. At a future day, he is to be welcomed 
 there us the honored Christian poet. 
 
 Behind the counter in a " General Store" in the 
 rustic village of Wath, is to be seen a slender youth, 
 about the age of eighteen, serving with a scrupulous 
 fidelity from morning to night the simple villagers, 
 who find in that universal repository the flour, the 
 sugar, the tea, the cloth, the shoes, the hardware, the 
 all of their humble homes. But there is something 
 about the lad which even their eye can detect a 
 certain grave though tfulness which, as he paces the 
 street on some business-errand, will suggest the whis- 
 per " Surely he is no vulgar boy." Of an evening, 
 he saunters to a neighboring village, where the sta- 
 tioner's shop of the district finds in the youthful poet 
 a stated visitor. Into no other ear can his longing 
 spirit pour its irrepressible aspirations. 
 
 But though at Wath he meets no mental sympa- 
 thy, his heart is too full of the love of Jesus not to 
 spread abroad in his humble dwelling the fragrance 
 of His name. A prayer remains which he wrote for 
 his master's sick wife, and which indicates indirectly 
 and very affectingly the tone of his own inner life. 
 U O Father of Eternity !" is one of its impressive sen- 
 tences, " we adore thy undeserved love in giving up 
 thine only Son out of thy bosom to be a sacrifice for 
 us, when we were aliens to God and rebels against 
 our Creator. We thank thee for His hard, uncomfort- 
 
56 THE CHRISTIAN MAN OF LETTERS ! 
 
 able birth in a stable among the beasts ; for His mer- 
 itorious life ; for His watching and fasting, His pray- 
 ing and preaching* ; for His every action, every thought, 
 every word. For us lie agonized in the garden of 
 Gethsemanc ; for us His blessed head was crowned 
 with piercing thorns His sacred back was ploughed 
 with scourges ; for us lie was spit upon, buffeted, 
 abused, blasphemed. The flaming sword of Justice 
 was quenched in His heart and blood ; and Mercy 
 opened the gates of Paradise to us His redeem <;<!. 
 May He see in us the travail of His soul !" 
 
 " Nature," says Lord Bacon, in one of his Essays, 
 " is often hidden, sometimes overcome, but never ex- 
 tinguished." James Montgomery, in the "Fine- 
 Bread Baker's" at Mil field, and in the " General 
 Store" at Wath, seems in as fair a way for having his 
 poet-nature extinguished as one is able well to con- 
 ceive. But man is led by a way which he knows not ; 
 and often it is not till after many uncouth experiments 
 that his destiny is at length reached. Our poet's 
 next trial of life's buffetings is in London. His friend 
 the bookseller of Swinton, having forwarded to a bib- 
 liopole of the " Row" a manuscript volume of his po- 
 etry, the youthful author in a few clays follows lite- 
 rally, like the pilgrim-father of Mesopotamia, "not 
 knowing whither he goes." 
 
 Washington Irving, describing Goldsmith's first 
 essay in the same direction, speaks of him as launched 
 on the great metropolis, or rather as drifting about 
 its streets, at night, in the gloomy month of Feb- 
 
JAMES MONTGOMERY. 57 
 
 ruary, with but a few halfpence in his pocket the 
 deserts of Arabia not more dreary and inhospitable 
 than tho streets of London at such a time, and to a. 
 stranger in such a plight. The young Moravian has 
 a heavenly compass in his hand, which poor Oliver 
 never knew ; but scarcely less friendless does he feel 
 in that vast wilderness. The magnate of the Row 
 gives him a humble situation in his shop Gold- 
 smith's first refuge was among "the beggars of Axe 
 Lane ;" but, like Oliver and his rejected " tragedy," 
 Montgomery finds no patron for his prized volume 
 of verse. Recommended to turn his hand to prose, 
 he hies him, one morning, with a production entitled 
 u Simple Sammy," to a publisher whose special voca- 
 tion is " Books, bound and gilt, at one half penny." It 
 is his first prose- work, and is to be a sixpenny volume ; 
 but Marshall put him off, saying as he leaves " You 
 can write better than this, you are more fit to write 
 for men than for children." A few more essays, 
 scarcely more successful and the disappointed youth 
 is on his way back to Wath again, but feeling within 
 him an inextinguishable presentiment that one day 
 he shall 
 
 "Strike the lyre 
 To nobler themes." 
 
CHAPTEK III. 
 
 '* From the soul itself there must be sent 
 A sweet and potent voice, of its own birth, 
 Of all sweet sounds the life and element." 
 
 The missionary's grave The slave " Son of a missionary 1 ' Solitary 
 hours '* A clerk" Sheffield First fibre Patriotism The " Iris" 
 Castle of York His "den" The Muses Discipline Pensive lyre 
 " A farewell blessing" Sympathies The little dog. 
 
 IN a grove of tamarinds, in the island of Barba- 
 does, a humble tablet meets you it is a missionary's 
 grave ; and, in a secluded spot in the neighboring 
 island of Tobago, there lie the remains of another 
 good confessor, who, sixteen months before, had been 
 summoned to her heavenly home. They are the 
 earthly resting-places of John and Mary Montgomery, 
 the parents of our youthful wanderer. 
 
 Arriving in the West Indies in 1784, they had 
 entered buoyantly, amidst a population of slave-own- 
 ers, and slave-drivers, and slaves, upon the blessed 
 office of making known the glad tidings of the lib- 
 erty which maketh free. The negroes they had 
 found so sunk and degraded, that the message of life 
 was but coldly welcomed. " O that I knew but one 
 soul in Tobago truly concerned for his salvation," the 
 
JAMES MONTGOMERY. 59 
 
 missionary had written, after being some time in the 
 island u how should I rejoice !" 
 
 "By Satan more than man enthralled," 
 
 the negro would not listen. 
 
 At length Mary Montgomery is seized with fever. 
 On the fifth day, the physician expresses some anx- 
 iety. " Are you going to leave me alone on this 
 island ?" says the missionary. " Indeed I should 
 wish to remain longer with you," replies his dying 
 wife, " knowing how much you want my assistance ; 
 but the Lord's will be done." " But if it should 
 please Him to call you home," he says tenderly, 
 u can you go with full confidence into His presence 
 as a ransomed sinner?" "0 yes," is the immediate 
 rejoinder ; " He indeed knows my weakness and un- 
 worthiness, but He knows also that my whole re- 
 liance is upon His death and merits, by which I, a 
 poor sinful creature, have been redeemed ; and I am 
 assuredly convinced that I shall be with Him alway." 
 Two days afterwards, she calmly falls asleep in Jesus, 
 a minister of the Church of England who is present 
 exclaiming, " God is truly present here !" 
 
 " From lip to lip, from heart to heart, 
 Passed the few parting words ' We part !' 
 But echoed back, though unexpressed, 
 'We meet again !' rose in each breast." 
 
 The meeting is not long postponed. A year 
 later, John Montgomery also is called away. " They 
 
60 THE CHRISTIAN MAN OF LETTERS! 
 
 finished well," said the poet one day, long afterwards, 
 the tear of filial tenderness rolling down his manly 
 face. "-I am the son of a missionary," was his re- 
 mark on another occasion, as he appeared on a mis- 
 sionary platform. And, indicating how truly he had 
 caught that missionary spirit which elevates a man 
 above the littleness of sects and of isms into tho 
 purer and loftier region of God's own light, he 
 added: "I know but of one mission the mission 
 of the Son of God the propagation of our common 
 Christianity throughout the world by Christian mis- 
 sionaries of every denomination." 
 
 The tidings reach him during his second sojourn 
 at Wath ; and deeply do they move his affectionate 
 heart. Again in the service of his old employer, 
 and his chief occupation the delivery of goods and 
 the collecting of accounts in the surrounding country 
 he luxuriates in the solitude of the grassy lanes, 
 indulging his poetic fancies, and enjoying a graver 
 and a holier fellowship than mortal heart can furnish. 
 But another field is now to open. 
 
 In one of his rounds, he takes up for a moment 
 a Sheffield newspaper, when his eye falls on an ad- 
 vertisement from a house in want of a " clerk." It 
 is " a Printer, Bookseller, and Auctioneer;" and, 
 after sundry preliminaries, Montgomery is engaged. 
 Entering Sheffield in April, 1792, and now in his 
 twenty-first year, he finds in the home of his new em- 
 ployer, Mr. Gales, the first fibre fixed by which he is 
 to be firmly rooted during his remaining sixty years. 
 
JAMES MONTGOMERY. 61 
 
 At this period, the whole country is stirred to 
 its depths by the political agitation originating in 
 the French Revolution. A fervid spirit like Mont- 
 gomery's, especially in such a scene as Sheffield, 
 is not likely to escape the contagion. At a vast as- 
 semblage of several thousand persons, convened in 
 February, 1794, by the "Friends of Peace and of 
 Reform/' a hymn of his is suno- in full chorus, 
 three of its stanzas runiiino- thus : 
 
 o 
 
 " 0. Thou, whose awful word can bind 
 The roaring waves, the raging wind ; 
 Mad tyrants tame, break down the high, 
 "Whose haughty foreheads beat the sky ; 
 
 Make bare thine arm, great King of kings ! 
 That arm alone salvation brings ; 
 That wonder-working arm which broke 
 From Israel's neck the Egyptian yoke. 
 
 Burst every dungeon, every chain ; 
 Givo injured slaves their right again : 
 Let truth prevail, let discord cease ; 
 Speak and the world shall smile in peace." 
 
 Drawn into this vortex of political excitement, not 
 by a mere unbridled passion for change, but by a 
 generous patriotism, which, like charity, beginning 
 at home, goes forth from that centre everywhere in 
 search of objects whom it may love and bless he is 
 not the man either to be browbeaten by threats, or 
 to be cajoled by tempting bribes. Accordingly, no 
 sooner has his employer been compelled by stress 
 of weather to quit the helm, than our poet starts a 
 6 
 
62 THE CHRISTIAN MAN OF LETTERS I 
 
 new enterprise in the shape of the " Sheffield Iris" 
 a weekly newspaper, to which for years to come the 
 energies of his vigorous mind are to be dedicated. 
 
 Whatever Montgomery does, he does courageously 
 and well. In those days of political excitement, an 
 earnest spirit like the editor of the " Iris" is not 
 likely to go unscathed. In 1705, he is sentenced 
 to three months' imprisonment for uttering words 
 which in calmer times would have secured him a 
 niche among his country's most leal-hearted and 
 worthiest citizens. Accordingly, whilst " cheerfully 
 resigning himself to suffering," he enters the Castle 
 of York, " not blushing for his intentions." A human 
 verdict may pronounce him " Guilty ;" but it cannot 
 make him guilty. " I do feel," he writes from the 
 prison ; " but I will not sink. Though all the world 
 should forsake me, this consolation can never fail me, 
 that the great Searcher of hearts, whose eye watches 
 over every atom of the universe, knows every secret 
 intention of my soul ; and when, at the bar of eternal 
 justice, this cause shall again be tried, I do indulge 
 the humble hope that His approving voice shall con- 
 firm the verdict which I feel His finger has written 
 upon my conscience." A second time not long 
 after his liberation he is indicted for libel, and is 
 found guilty ; and a second time he is incarcerated at 
 York, his conscience still unburdened. A few weeks 
 before the six months' imprisonment expires, he for- 
 wards from his " den" to the " Iris" some verses, in 
 which he writes : 
 
Lii'o Studies. 
 
 SHEFFIELD MANOR LODGE. 
 Previous to the Storm of March 2, 1793. 
 
JAMES MONTGOMERY. 63 
 
 " Blest with freedom unconfined, 
 
 Dungeons cannot hold the soul: 
 "Who can chain the immortal mind? 
 None but He who spans the pole 1" 
 
 And again, thus : 
 
 " I know and 'tis my proudest boast, 
 That conscience is itself a host : 
 While this inspires my swelling breast 
 Let all forsake me I'm at rest ! 
 Ten thousand deaths in every nerve 
 I'd rather suffer than deserve /" 
 
 But, notwithstanding these valorous contendings 
 and patient endurances, he does not feel at home in 
 politics ; his mission is poetry. " In early life," he 
 remarked, one day, long afterwards, " I sometimes 
 dipped into political controversy ; but politics be- 
 come more and more disagreeable to me ; I enter no 
 further into them than my duty, as an editor of a 
 newspaper, compels me to do : frequently do I wish 
 I had nothing to do with them." And on another 
 occasion: "Surely never was moon-struck lunatic 
 more vexatiously haunted by the foul fiend than I 
 have been through every nook and alley of life by 
 the Muses!" The Manor-Lodge, an ancient build- 
 ing, since removed, was a favorite haunt in his 
 meditative hours ; and it was here that many of his 
 earlier poems were conceived or constructed. 
 
 And his inner life is passing through a disci- 
 pline, tempering his poetic genius into thot calm 
 pensiveness which is to be the characteristic tone of 
 
64 THE CHRISTIAN MAN OF LETTERS I 
 
 his lyre. "In no situation of life" wo find him 
 writing from Scarborough, where, after " the narrow 
 circumferance of a prison," he enjoys for a few weeks 
 " the boundless immensity of the ocean" " have I 
 ever met with unmixed happiness. But shadow 
 relieves the glare of light; the bitter corrects the 
 sweet ; and solicitude softens the tone of bliss. And, 
 issuing some months later, in a collected form, a 
 series of poetical effusions which have appeared in 
 the "Iris" during his imprisonment he speaks of 
 them as " composed in bitter moments" " the tran- 
 scripts of melancholy feelings" " the warm effusions 
 of a bleeding heart." The subdued, chastened bro- 
 kenness of his spirit, is indicated in some simple lines 
 sent by him to his brother at this period, in reply to 
 a request made, after a long silence, as the latter is 
 leaving Fulnec for the original Moravian settlement 
 in Ireland : 
 
 " A blessing, brother, ere we part, 
 
 A farewell blessing you require ; 
 Oh, if there lives in this cold heart 
 
 One spark of all our Father's fire : 
 That spark, an humble sacrifice, 
 
 In prayer for you I send above 
 'Twill bring a blessing from the skies, 
 
 The blessing of THE GOD OF LOVE."* 
 
 And the discipline is quickening his sympathies 
 for the distressed. "As a token of God's remem- 
 brance," he writes, with a rare tenderness and de- 
 * October 15, 1804. 
 
JAMES MONTGOMERY. 65 
 
 livery, to a humble friend who is suffering from loss 
 of health and of employment, " I have enclosed a 
 five-pound Bank of England note, which I hope will 
 be seasonable and servicable to you in your present 
 low estate. Accept it, Henry ; not from me, but 
 from Him who, though He was rich, yet for our 
 sakes became poor, and, by suffering all the ills of 
 poverty (for He had not whereon to lay His head), 
 sanctified them to His people. For His sake, and in 
 His name, receive it ; for His sake, and in His 
 name, I send it. I assure yon, my dear friend, that 
 I feel far more pleasure in being, on this occasion, 
 the minister of His bounty to you, than I could pos- 
 sibly derive from any other disposal of this small 
 sum, which I considered to be as sacredly your 
 property, from the moment when He put it into my 
 heart to send it, as it had been mine before." 
 
 A little incident of another kind reveals the genial 
 warmth of his tender nature. "The little dog," he 
 writes, describing a visit he has just paid to the 
 " place of his captivity" at York, " who forsook his 
 friends and amily in the city to come and live with 
 me, happened to be in the yard with his master 
 when I entered ; he recognized me in a moment, 
 sprang into my arms, and almost devoured me with 
 joy." The canine instinct is a trusty interpreter of 
 a kind, loving nature. 
 
 ' O 
 
 7* 
 
CHAPTEK IV. 
 
 * But the scene has changed too quickly ; darkness has become the 
 
 shroud : 
 Satan has prevailed to try thee, to encompass thee with cloud." 
 
 Nnpoleon The moon and the laurel Lady Huntingdon "Man's 
 chief end" Indecision Fitful gleams Lights and shadows "A 
 coal from the altar" The " Wanderer in Switzerland" His " apos- 
 tasy" Grave thoughts Brighter day The prism New poem 
 Besetting sin" A new thing in the earth" The Lord's Table 
 Fulnec. 
 
 ALLUDING one day to Napoleon's passage of the 
 Alps with his army and artillery, Montgomery char- 
 acterized it as "worthy of the daring genuis of M 
 man who would scale the battlements of the moon 
 to gather a leaf of laurel." The poet himself has 
 sought, for many days, the laurel-leaf with what he 
 calls "a mad ambition;" and a "burning fever" 
 it has been to him. But there is dawning on him 
 now, after a season of backsliding, a brighter and 
 more joyous morning; and its returning light is re- 
 vealing to his heart a juster estimate of life's great 
 business. " Man's chief end" so runs the empha- 
 tic formula of Christian duty, which, suddenly start- 
 ing into her memory one day, awoke the late Count- 
 ess of Huntingdon out of her dream of self-pleasing, 
 
JAMES MONTGOMERY. ()7 
 
 " is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him for ever ;"* and 
 these magic words stimulated her to a life of self- 
 denial. James Montgomery, now awakening as from 
 a trance, begins anew to gird up his loins for the 
 Christian race. Ct It is hard," we find him writing, 
 in March 1807, " to renouoce the world and all those 
 pleasures which the world deems not only innocent, 
 but useful and commendable ; and yet, methinks, 
 that Christianity requires the sacrifice of them." Not 
 willing to take up his cross and follow the despised 
 and rejected Man of Sorrows through poverty, re- 
 proach and tribulation, he yet feels the guilt of inde- 
 cision hanging heavy on his heart, and outweighing 
 all those little joys for which he is unwilling to relin- 
 quish the world. But a "cheering ray of hope, of 
 Christian hope," will break at times through "the 
 pagan darkness" of his mind, " opening heaven to 
 his desiring view;" and the period is now come, 
 when that cheering ray is to be more than a fitful, 
 fiickering visitant. " my friend," he exclaims, de- 
 scribing to a correspondent the return of a brighter 
 season, " how does my heart expand, my soul aspire !" 
 Yet painfully fitful still are those gleams of sun- 
 shine. At times, he will trace with his poetic pencil 
 the lights and shadows of the scene, thus : 
 
 " There is a winter in my soul, 
 The winter of despair ; 
 
 * The words occur at the opening of the Westminster 
 Shorter Catechism, which she had been taught in her early 
 youth. 
 
68 THE CHRISTIAN MAN OF LETTERS: 
 
 when shall Spring its rage control ? 
 
 When shall the Snowdrop blossom there? 
 Cold gleams of comfort sometimes dart 
 A dawn of glory on my heart, 
 
 But quickly pass away : 
 Thus Northern-lights the gloom adorn, 
 And give the promise of a morn 
 
 That never turns to day!" 
 
 And again, he will write, in the way of apology foi 
 not sending to a friend a " methodistical hymn" 
 " I seldom dare to touch holy things. My lips and 
 my heart want purifying with a- coal from the altar." 
 Then the cloud will brighten once more ; and he 
 will rejoice, though tremblingly, in the hope of final 
 deliverance from his besetting sin despair ; " for it is 
 a sin," lie will add, "to despair when God proclaims 
 Himself to be Love despair gives Him the lie." 
 
 This condition of heart it was, which gave its pen- 
 sive tone to the poem which he now published under 
 the title of " The Wanderer in Switzerland," and 
 which at once placed him in the front rank of the 
 poets of his age. But the arrow is infixed too deeply 
 in the heart of the awakened backslider, to suffer him 
 to be lulled again, even by Fame's syren strain, into 
 any repose save that calm rest which is found at 
 Christ's own feet. And such rest, after his protracted 
 wanderings, he is now once more to enjoy ; " sitting 
 down under His shadow indeed with great delight." 
 
 These years, preceding 1806, he used to describe 
 as the period of his " apostacy." Not that he had 
 
JAMES MONTGOMERY. 69 
 
 lapsed into any outward immorality ; but business, 
 and bustle, and exciting scenes had insensibly drawn 
 him away from his former habits of godliness, until 
 holiness had lost its " beauty," and his spiritual sensi- 
 bilities their fine edge. But He who once said " I 
 will restore that which the caterpillar hath eaten," is 
 now drawing near to him in tender mercy ; and, 
 though the eminence to which he has risen as a poet 
 imperils his returning brokenness of spirit, the poetic 
 laurel is not to adorn a vain-glorious brow, but to be 
 consecrated to God as a part of his daily " living sac- 
 rifice." 
 
 Grave and earnest are the thoughts which now 
 possess him. " Here I am," we have him saying, for 
 example ; u and what I am finally here, I must for 
 ever be." And again 
 
 "I stir the ashes of my mind, 
 And here and there a sparkle find, 
 That leaps into a moment's light, 
 Then dwindles down again in night. 
 Yet burns a fire within my breast, 
 Which cannot quench, and will not rest : 
 for a sudden, secret rent, 
 In this hard heart to give it vent ! 
 for a gale of heavenly breath, 
 To quicken life again from death !" 
 
 And another day, alluding to, a visit to Sheffield 
 by Henry Steinhaur and sixteen pupils from Fulnec, 
 most of them introduced into the school by Mont- 
 gomery himself, he says : " Who knows what eternal 
 
70 THE CHRISTIAN MAN OF LETTERS I 
 
 consequences may result from so many boys and girls 
 hearing the simple Gospel of ' Christ crucified' 
 preached faithfully to them among the Brethren. It 
 warms my cold, and melts my hard heart, sometimes, 
 \vhen I think that I may thus, accidentally, have been 
 the cause of promoting the everlasting welfare of 
 some of my fellow-creatures in this neighborhood, 
 where I came an outcast, and in which I have lived 
 a stranger." 
 
 Montgomery has " a temper made for happiness ;" 
 and though, for a time, it has worn a somewhat som- 
 bre hue, it begins to brighten under the genial beams 
 of that Sun of righteousness which now again shines 
 -.low 11 upon him. Writing to his brother, who has 
 been bereaved of a beloved child, he ministers the 
 comfort wherewith he himself has now been comfort- 
 ed of God, thus : " This providence of God you both 
 feel has drawn you nearer to Him ; and, the nearer 
 you have been drawn to Him, have you not been the 
 more strengthened, and comforted, and submissive to 
 His will, till, at length, you had no will of your own, 
 :md were enabled to rejoice amidst your affliction, in 
 the hope of the glory which shall hereafter be re- 
 vealed ?" And, in God's light seeing light, he is 
 learning to assign to things God's own proportions 
 God's great things growing great, and God's little 
 things little. " In the Bible Society," said he, one 
 day, in November 1813, at a large meeting in Shef- 
 field for the formation of a Methodist Missionary So- 
 ciety, " all names and distinctions of sects are blend- 
 
JAMES MONTGOMERY. 71 
 
 ed till they are lost, like the prismatic colors, in a 
 ray of pure and perfect light : in the Missionary 
 work, though divided, they are not discordant ; but, 
 like the same colors, displayed and harmonized in 
 the rainbow, they form an arch of glory ascending 
 on the one hand from earth to heaven, and on tho 
 other descending from heaven to earth a bow of 
 promise, a covenant of peace, a sign that the storm 
 of wrath is passing away, and the Sun of righteous- 
 ness with healing in his wings breaking forth on all 
 nations." 
 
 Another poem now issues from his pen "The 
 World before the Flood ;" and the fresh fame which 
 it brings to him he feels to be a new temptation. 
 u How worse than worthless," he writes to the Rev. Dr. 
 Raffles, " how profane, were the exercise of my powers 
 on sacred and solemn themes for my own glory ! Yet 
 such is the deceitfulness of the human heart, that in 
 its holiest offerings (I speak from the experience of 
 mine), it cannot forget itself arid its own merits, nor 
 help being pleased in the eyes of man to divide with 
 its Maker that glory which its language ascribes to 
 Him. This is the peculiarly-besetting sin of poets as 
 well as of preachers : I said sin, though I should 
 have said temptation ; for it is impossible to avoid 
 the temptation, but it is possible to avoid the sin by 
 continually watching unto prayer against it." 
 
 It is a touching utterance which one of our poets 
 has given to the heart's longings in certain of its 
 phases : 
 
72 THE CHRISTIAN MAN OF LETTERS I 
 
 "Behold, Thy dust doth stir; 
 It moves, it creeps, it aims at Theo. 
 Wilt Thou defer 
 To succor me, 
 Thy pile of dust, wherein each crumb 
 
 Says 'Come?'" 
 And again, thus : 
 
 " Lord JESU, hear my heart ! 
 Which hath been broken now so long, 
 That every part 
 Hath got a tongue. 
 Thy beggars grow ; rid them away, 
 To-day. 
 
 My love, my sweetness, hear ! 
 By these Thy feet, at which my heart 
 Lies all the year, 
 Pluck out thy dart : 
 
 And heal my troubled breast, which cries, 
 Which dies " 
 
 James Montgomery, though still sad and downcast 
 in moments of self-inspection, is already enjoying 
 unconsciously the light and the life of God. The 
 man who has learned on his knees to crucify that 
 besetting " temptation," is once more in confidence 
 at the feet of the Crucified, " begging himself rich." 
 At a Missionary festival, held in Sheffield (May, 
 1814), he spoke with great fervor. "The Lord," 
 said he, " has created c a new thing in the earth' 
 the disciples of Christ not only loving as brethren, 
 but those who from some difference of opinion before 
 acted separately, now uniting in one purpose to pro- 
 
JAMES MONTGOMERY. 73 
 
 mote their Master's cause among men." And, very 
 solemnly be added : " There is danger in running 
 with the multitude to do evil, when, amidst the con- 
 tagion of example, and the tumult of publicity, tlu; 
 sinner seems to lose his personal responsibility in the 
 crowd, and the guilt, divided among thousands, ap- 
 pears to attach to none, though, in truth, it attaches 
 to each as if each acted alone ! There is danger also 
 in running with the multitude to do good danger 
 in trying to escape from ourselves among the people 
 of God. We may have a name among Christians ; 
 we may be affected by the external solemnity of 
 divine worship ; we may delight in the joy and 
 animation of mee lings like this ; and yet be devoid 
 of the spirit and power of godliness." At the close 
 of the festival he was persuaded so far to overcome 
 his anxieties as to sit down with the assembled 
 friends and brethren at the Lord's Table. And, 
 when it was over, he was not ashamed to write in 
 the "Iris" concerning it: "It was a season of 
 
 o 
 
 humble and holy joy, such as will be remembered 
 even in heaven with gratitude." The words were 
 evidently the expression of his own personal thanks- 
 giving. At the end of the year he was formally re- 
 admitted into the Moravian fellowship at Fulnec, 
 rejoicing once again to " devote himself to the Lord 
 and to His people." 
 
 7 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 " The best of all the ' well-doings' on this gloomy planet. Angela 
 themselves can be doing nothing better, wherever they are at work ; 
 though they work in a grander style than mortals." FOSTER^ 
 
 A yearning "Greatest and best work" The " proxy 1 ' " Wherefore 
 this waste T Greenland " Civilize and Christianize" The savage 
 Cowper " My Father" Nature and its God Wordsworth. 
 
 IN one of his sonnets, George Herbert thus articu- 
 lates the Christian heart's desire, the Christian's mis- 
 sionary yearnings : 
 
 " Lord, I will mean and speak thy praise, 
 
 Thy praise alone ! 
 My busy heart shall spin it all my days." 
 
 And again : 
 
 " Wherefore I sing. Yet, since my heart, 
 
 Though pressed, runs thin ; 
 Oh, that I might some other hearts convert, 
 
 And so take up at use good store ; 
 That to thy chests there might be coming in 
 Both all my praise, and more 1" 
 
 With James Montgomery the missionary enterprise 
 now takes its place as " the greatest and the best 
 work in the world the work of God himself." 
 
JAMES MONTGOMERY. 75 
 
 " Pray, do not disappoint me," he writes, urging 
 the attendance of a speaker at a missionary meet- 
 ing ; " I am not alone in this request ; I am the 
 proxy of six hundred millions of pagans and how 
 many Jews, Mahometans, and Christians, verily I 
 know not." 
 
 And, some months later, in a literary Review, he 
 writes : " It is a fact awfully illustrative of the es- 
 sential depravity of the heart, that, while the greatest 
 energies of the greatest minds the utmost means 
 of the most enlightened nations are, more or less, 
 continually exercised in achieving the destruction of 
 their species and the desolation of nature, the labors 
 of the missionary are by numbers treated as visionary, 
 and by others deemed expensive." And he adds : 
 " In Greenland alone a country overlooked by all 
 the philanthropists of Europe, except by a few Danish 
 or Moravian missionaries more good has been done 
 to mankind, and, certainly, more glory given to God, 
 than has been directly accomplished by all the wars 
 of Christendom, from the days of Gustavus Adolphus 
 to those of Napoleon Buonaparte." 
 
 His clear head and sound heart give to his trum- 
 pet a not uncertain sound. " The wisdom of man," 
 he writes, " says, * first civilize barbarians, and then 
 Christianize them ;' and the wisdom of man has 
 proved itself ' foolishness' in every experiment of the 
 kind which it has made, though it must be confessed 
 that it has been too prudent or too selfish to make 
 many. The wise counsel of God is very different 
 
70 THE CHRISTIAN MAN OF LETTERS! 
 
 No motives less powerful than conviction of sin, fear 
 of hell, faith in Christ as a Saviour, His love shed 
 abroad in their hearts, and the hope of everlasting 
 life, can command attention from fierce, obstinate, 
 sensual savages, to plans of civilization much less 
 wean them from their roving, indolent, cruel habits, 
 aud make them stationary, social, self-denying 
 beings." And, urging the necessity of a consecra- 
 tion of every energy to the work, he adds : " We 
 are commanded to love the Lord our God supremely, 
 and to serve Him only ; it follows that we must 
 serve Him in the same manner as we love Him 
 with all our heart, and soul, and mind, and strength 
 with all our corporeal and intellectual faculties, 
 with all our affections, and all our attainments." 
 
 Cowper, in his " Task," speaking of " the free- 
 man whom the truth makes free," has written : 
 
 " He looks abroad into the varied field 
 Of Nature, and, though poor perhaps, compared 
 With those whose mansions glitter in his sight, 
 Calls the delightful scenery all his own. 
 His are the mountains, and the valleys his, 
 And the resplendent rivers. His to enjoy 
 With a propriety that none can feel, 
 But who, with filial confidence inspired, 
 Can lift to heaven an unpresumptuous eye, 
 And, smiling, say * My Father made them all !' " 
 
 Only by the CROSS can a sinner ascend to God : 
 then, having reached Him, and found Him recon- 
 ciled, the sinner descends to God's Nature. Mont- 
 
JAMES MONTGOMERY. 7Y 
 
 gomery had an exquisite eye for the beauties of crea- 
 tion ; and nothing grieves him now so much as to 
 find a poetic interpreter of these beauties standing in 
 Nature's Temple as her priest, and bringing in his 
 hand a Cain-like offering. In a critical review of 
 Wordsworth's " Excursion," after the most generous 
 appreciation of its real merits as a "work which 
 would live," he boldly, though with tenderness, 
 places him at the Gospel-bar, thus : " The love of 
 Nature is the purest, the most sublime, and the 
 sweetest emotion of the mind, of which the senses 
 are the ministers ; yet the love of Nature alone can- 
 not ascend from earth to heaven, conducting us, as by 
 the steps of Jacob's ladder, to the love of God ; nor 
 can it descend from heaven to earth, leading us, by 
 similar gradations, to the universal love of man; 
 otherwise, it had not been necessary for Him, who 
 * thought it not robbery to be equal with God,' to 
 take upon Himself ' the form of a servant,' and die 
 4 the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to 
 God' by HIMSELF." 
 
 Cowper's maxim is one never to be forgotten : 
 
 "Acquaint thyself with God, if thou wouldst taste 
 
 His works." 
 "So reads be Nature, whom the lamp of Truth 
 
 Illuminates." 
 
 7* 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 " Man in society is like a flower 
 Blown in its native bed; 'tis there alono 
 His faculties, expatided in full bloom, 
 Shine out there only reach their proper us< 
 
 Instinct "Love in the Spirit" "Feeble in Splendor" Plying the 
 oar The Iris A scene Holding the candle The Sunday School 
 The little group Prayer Greenland ; Privations and self-denial 
 Appeal Wild Arab Compassion Public affairs Holy walk- 
 Robert Hall Vicarious sacrifice Christ's divinity " Songs of 
 Sion." 
 
 VINET has somewhere said, that the attachment 
 which does not become " a love in the Spirit" is to 
 be classed with those instincts which mail shares 
 with the lower animals. Montgomery's heart, now 
 warmed and purified by the grace of Christ, expands 
 year by year into a wider, and intenser, and more 
 Christ-like love. After "enjoying the holy commu- 
 nion" at Fuluec, and, though " staggering sometimes 
 in bearing the cross up the rugged steep of Calvary," 
 yet " borne up by the right hand of Him whom he 
 has accompanied there" he goes forth into the 
 midst of his fellows, his face shining with a certain 
 divine halo, and speaks to them thus : " What is the 
 bond of this Association ? Love Christian love 
 
JAMES MONTGOMERY. 79 
 
 the love of God shed abroad in our hearts, and en- 
 dearing us to each other. This love is not like gold, 
 which, being expanded under the hammer, exchanges 
 solid weight for feeble splendor ! It is not like 
 w..t.T, spilled out of a vessel, and spreading over a 
 lar<re superficies, but promptly absorbed into the 
 earth, or exhaled into the atmosphere. No 
 
 u * Love is a spirit, all compact with fire ; 
 Love is a spirit, and will to heaven aspire:' 
 
 Yes ; and, in proportion as it rises above, it spreads 
 below, increasing in splendor and intensity precisely 
 according to its elevation and diffusion." 
 
 Though the turmoil of politics grows less and less 
 congenial to him, he continues manfully to ply the 
 oar. "Politics," he writes in September, 1816, "I 
 hate with so perfect a hatred, that I meddle with 
 them no more than I can help. And, if I could dis- 
 pose of my newspaper for its value, I should rejoice 
 to be at peace from them, at least with my hands 
 and my head, for ever. Meanwhile, however, I shall 
 not disguise my sentiments, whenever it seems my 
 duty to avow them." And, in announcing, some 
 months later, the accession of a partner, he adds : 
 " The independence of character which this journal 
 has ever maintained, through evil report and good re- 
 port, shall never be forfeited, whatever other changes 
 may take place in the editor's years, in his person, or 
 in his circumstances so long as he has the fear of 
 God before his eye, and the love of his country in 
 
80 THE CHRISTIAN MAN OF LETTERS I 
 
 his heart. Engaged in an enterprise, honorable, 
 but hazardous we are determined, to the best of 
 our knowledge and ability, to do our duty : if we 
 succeed, well ; if we fail, we have done our duty ; 
 millions succeed with doing less who can do 
 more ?" 
 
 One day in a public meeting in Sheffield, there 
 stands upon the platfor^m an aged woman of sixty, 
 reading a chapter of the New Testament. She has 
 begun her alphabet a few months previously in a 
 Sunday-school; and, " with spectacles on nose," she 
 plies her task before the assembly a kind, joyous 
 face " cheek by jowl" with hers, for she needs a can- 
 dle to be held up to her as she slowly, but surely, 
 deciphers the words of life. " It has been my lot, at 
 various periods," says James Montgomery, as the 
 venerable dame resumes her seat, " to be exposed to 
 the effects of malicious slander and detraction, and 
 to the still more dangerous temptations of praise and 
 flattery ; out never, during my whole life, have I felt 
 myself so deeply humbled, or so honorably exalted, 
 as during the time I have held the light for my ven- 
 erable sister, and have listened to her voice. She has 
 read the words of eternal life, which are able to make 
 her, as well as every one else who heard them, \\ise 
 unto salvation. You will naturally ask, 'Why do 
 not I become myself a Sunday-school teacher?' I 
 have no doubt I could adduce reasons tthieh would 
 satisfy you ; but I must honestly confess that they do 
 not so fully satisfy myself." From that day the poet 
 
JAMES MONTGOMERY. 81* 
 
 takes his place as a religious instructor in the Red- 
 Hill Sunday-school. 
 
 A Christian poet has described prayer as 
 
 "A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear." 
 And, again, he calls it 
 
 " God's breath in man returning to his birth : 
 
 The soul's blood : 
 The land of spices ; something understood." 
 
 Week after week, in that lowly room, is Montgom- 
 ery to be found on his knees, amidst those poor girls 
 and boys, praying with a fervor, and a simplicity, 
 and a confiding affection, which not seldom melt to 
 tears the little group of pupils. And, if the veil could 
 be lifted which conceals from all eyes save ONE the 
 closet and its lonely exercises, the same heart would 
 be seen in a very peculiar nearness of converse with 
 Him who delights to dwell with the man who is " of 
 a humble and a contrite spirit." 
 
 Greenland, with its " icy mountains," was at this 
 period the scene of a missionary self-denial such as 
 modern days have rarely witnessed. Resolved to do 
 the work of evangelists among its degraded people, 
 at whatever cost of personal sacrifice the Moravian 
 brethren did not hesitate to eat seal's flesh, and to 
 prepare with train-oil their scanty stock of oatmeal. 
 A crisis of destitution has overtaken the natives, and 
 Montgomery publishes in Sheffield an appeal in 'their 
 behalf. "The wild Arab in the desert," says he, in 
 his own graphic and touching way, " sitting down to 
 
82 THE CHRISTIAN MAN OF LETTERS: 
 
 his meal of black bread and salt, nevertheless, gives 
 God thanks, and, before he begins, calls aloud to any 
 lumgry wretch who may be within hearing, to come 
 and partake with him. In Britain, where thousands 
 sit down every day at plentiful tables, so far as his 
 voice may be heard through the circuit of this paper, 
 the present advocate of Greenland widows and or- 
 phans would remind the truly charitable of the words 
 of their Redeemer, when he had counselled those who 
 made feasts to l call the poor, the maimed, the lame, 
 the blind' ' they cannot recompense thee, but thou 
 shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just.' " 
 In the space of three weeks, and within the com- 
 paratively limited circle of the readers of the u Iris," 
 the appeal produced 130/. ; and, in acknowledging 
 it, the poet wrote : "These gifts have been altogether 
 voluntary, in the best sense of the term ; they have 
 been such as the givers could not withhold, from the 
 impulses of genuine pity. The purest produce of the 
 olive is the oil which distills freely from the gentlest 
 pressure of its fruit ; the most precious juice of the 
 grape is that which flows from the thick clusters 
 heaped abundantly together, without any other com- 
 pulsion than their own ripe weight and bursting ful- 
 ness. The wine and oil which 'the dear English 
 people' have thus poured into the wounds of the poor 
 Greenlanders, perishing by the wayside, are the purest 
 and most precious of their kind." The lips which so 
 speak have been touched by the seraphim with a live 
 coal from the brazen altar. A noble poem, entitled 
 
JAMES MONTGOMERY. . 83 
 
 " Greenland," and published the same year, proves 
 still further how deeply engraven on his heart are 
 the missionary sympathies of his divine Master. 
 
 Public events necessarily continue to occupy a 
 large share of his thoughts ; and no easy task does 
 he find it at once to uphold popular rights and to 
 moderate the popular zeal. But, in the midst of all 
 the turmoil and the excitement, he is enabled to main- 
 tain the fervor and the simplicity of his Christian 
 walk. "Your letter," we find him writing to an old 
 schoolfellow John Edwards, of Derby, a correspon- 
 dent of Wordsworth and of Coleridge, "pleased and 
 affected me much, as the first I had received from 
 any one, except Brother Ramftler, belonging to the 
 Brethren, since my re-admission. I hope that hence- 
 forth we shall be brothers in heart as well as in 
 name and profession brothers by our common rela- 
 tionship to our only Lord and Master, whose poor 
 disciples it is our calling and election to be. May it 
 be the first and last concern of our souls to make 
 these sure, and to love and seek other things only in 
 reference or in subordination to them! for all our 
 temporal duties and affections may be so sanctified, 
 that we may remain in the world without being of 
 the world, through that liberty wherewith Christ 
 makes His people free." 
 
 One day, in the summer of 1822, he is listening 
 to Robert Hall. The preacher's subject is Christ's 
 vicarious sacrifice. Speaking of the rarity of such 
 sacrifice, he utters a thought which Montgomery 
 
84 THE CHRISTIAN MAN OF LETTERS! 
 
 greatly relishes. " He wished," is the poet's re- 
 mark afterwards to a friend, " to impress his audi- 
 tory with the importance of Christ's death, as an 
 event standing alone in the annals of the world, 
 without a parallel, agreeably to that passage of 
 Scripture, 'For scarcely for a righteous man will 
 one die; yet peradventure for a good man some 
 would even dare to die. But God commendeth His 
 love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, 
 Christ died for us.' Then it was that he burst 
 forth, first employing the word monument, and then 
 column ; next trying the weaker word plain, till at 
 length he rushed upon champaign when away he 
 went, and bore us away with him, contemplating the 
 sacrificial death of the Saviour as l a single monu- 
 ment, a column standing in the champaign and wil- 
 derness of the universe, inscribed with characters 
 found on none other !' " And, on the same occasion, 
 our poet gives utterance to an article of his heart's 
 creed, which ever formed the very corner-stone of 
 all his hopes as a sinner. "It is the Divinity of 
 Christ," he continues, " which stamps the sacrifice 
 of His humanity with infinite importance. These 
 were admirably connected by Mr. Hall ; and they 
 must be really connected by us. For my part, I 
 cannot conceive in what any alleged efficacy of the 
 atoning sacrifice of Christ could consist, abstracted 
 from His Godhead ; and the opposers of the one 
 very consistently, because necessity is laid upon them 
 relinquish the other. The doctrines stand or fall 
 
JAMES MONTGOMERY. 85 
 
 with each other ; and, before Socinians can hope to 
 get rid of the Divinity of Christ, they must burn the 
 Bible and even then would that doctrine be seen 
 rising out of the ashes of the imperishable Word of 
 truth." 
 
 Alas ! it is not professed Socinians only who are 
 lapsing into this twofold error. Scarcely a man 
 amongst the rejectors of the sacrificial sense of 
 Christ's atoning death, who are so rife at this day, 
 continues beyond a few years to uphold His Divinity. 
 And the transition is simple and easy. The denier 
 of the necessity of a divine Saviour to atone, passes 
 of necessity to the denial of the fact of a divine 
 Saviour at all. Montgomery clings to the doctrine 
 of a Substitutory Atonement, as the very sheet- 
 anchor of his faith. 
 
 In his " Songs of Sion," published about this pe- 
 riod, he strings his sweet lyre to the same heavenly 
 melody. " It is far from popular," said he one day 
 to a friend, who was inquiring if the book was making 
 its way, " to become the champion of the Cross, even 
 in this way ; but it must be an honor to any poet to 
 furnish words in which sincere Christians may ap- 
 propriately express their joys and sorrows, their hopes 
 and their fears." 
 
 8 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 " Dress and undress thy soul. Mark the decay 
 
 <>\vth of it. 
 In l.rirf, acquit thce bravely ; play the ni.-m." 
 
 An hero in humble life One talent" How d ' V" A-slck- 
 
 ti.-d -II. -art. ii"t dldi-r A traveller In: ] :nent 
 
 Ovution -" Humble under all that glory" Triumph r truth. 
 
 THERE lived in those days, in a ImmU room in 
 Sheflield, a Christian shoemaker, who, after calling 
 one evening on Montgomery for a subscription "in 
 aid of one of those many works of mercy in which 
 he was engaged," was suddenly summoned, a day or 
 two afterwards, to his heavenly rest. Samuel Hill 
 was very poor so poor that he could not always 
 afford to pay t<> a 'I'racit Society, of which he was a 
 innnhcr, his subscription of six shillings a-year ; but 
 so rich was ho in faith, so ripe in religious experi- 
 f, and so mighty in prayer, that Montgomery 
 us, that, for the sake of being presi-rit at the 
 s.,r.i'iy's monthly private meeting for prayer, he 
 many a lime, notwithstanding his constitutional in- 
 dolence and weakness, "left his warm bed on a cold 
 winter's morning.'' "I declare to you," is his r6- 
 inark at the first meeting after the shoemaker's sud- 
 
JAMES MONTGOMERY. 87 
 
 den departure from this life, " that I never stood in 
 the presence of any man with such trembling as I 
 used to feel beside that humble individual. Let the 
 weather be as cold as it would, our hearts were sure 
 to be warmed here. O God! I thought Ihoii hast 
 given to that man perhaps only one talent ; but how 
 does he use it ?" And on the evening of his inter- 
 ment the poet adds, in another assembly : " Could 
 I now be reinstated in the heyday of youth, with the 
 promise of fifty additional years of life, in which I 
 might enjoy all and more than all the honors I have 
 received from man since the period when I first set 
 up in my heart that vain and delusive idol of human 
 applause, whic.li I have so long and so intensely wor- 
 shipped at the peril of my soul I say, rather than 
 voluntarily incur the dreadful risks arising from the 
 repetition of such popular praise as even I have expe- 
 rienced, I would prefer to occupy that grave in which 
 the remains of our friend are now for their first night 
 sleeping, ' in sure and certain hope of the resurrec- 
 tion to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ.' " 
 An incident like this reveals, as in the light of a sun- 
 beam, that growing lowliness which adorns him in 
 these ripening \ 
 
 Another glimpse into his inner life occurs on one 
 of those Scenes of tender friendship which his genial 
 heart and warm spiritual sensibilities so often bright- 
 ens. "I sometimes returned from vi.iting you," he 
 writes one d-iy in January, 1823, to a dear friend, 
 who has been unexpectedly restored to convalescence, 
 
88 THE CHRISTIAN MAN OF LETTERS I 
 
 " with feelings as if we had parted for the last time 
 in this world. On those occasions, however, I wept 
 rather for myself than for you, fearing that, when my 
 heart and flesh should fail, I might not have that 
 clear, simple, scriptural confidence and hope though 
 humble, full of immortality which I saw, and re- 
 joiced to see, in you. * So might I live, so may I 
 die, in the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and 
 gave Himself for me!' was the constant prayer 
 with which I closed your door. You had been pe- 
 culiarly endeared by our frequent association in the 
 most delightful labors in the cause of Him whose 
 service is perfect freedom; and therefore I thought 
 I had a right I will not call it a claim to be 
 peculiarly interested in your sufferings and in your 
 consolations. Thanks be to God, the latter now 
 abound." 
 
 A glimpse of a different kind we have in a letter 
 of this period thus : " You may think that I forget 
 you, because I so seldom tell you on paper that I 
 remember you, both with gratitude and esteem, for 
 many kindnesses shown to me, especially in former 
 days; but the truth is, that my letter- writing age is 
 gone by never to return unless youth, the season 
 for correspondence, comes back again. That, how- 
 ever, cannot be : childhood, I believe, does sometimes 
 pay a second visit to man youth, never. The heart, 
 however, when it is right, is always young, and 
 knows neither decay nor coolness: I cannot boast 
 of mine in other respects ; but assuredly, in the in- 
 
JAMES MONTGOMERY. 89 
 
 
 
 tegrity of its affections, it has not grown a moment 
 older these five-and-t\venty years." 
 
 One evening, in July 1825, a traveller from New 
 York paid a brief visit to our poet, and published 
 afterward his impressions of him. Introduced into 
 a parlor 5n which is " a table set for tea," the stranger 
 soon finds himself at home. " The poet," he wrote, 
 describing the interview, " is now at the age of fifty- 
 four. In his person he is slender and delicate, rather 
 below the common size. His complexion is light, 
 with a Roman nose, high forehead, slightly bald, and 
 a clear eye, not unfroquently downcast, betraying a 
 modest degree of diffidence. In his manners, the au- 
 thor manifests all that mildness, amiable simplicity ? 
 and kindness of heart, so conspicuous in his writings. 
 His flow of conversation is copious, easy, and per- 
 fectly free from affectation. His sentiments and 
 opinions on all subjects of remark were expressed 
 with decision and frankness, but at the same time 
 with a becoming modesty. His language is polished 
 and select, betraying occasionally the elevation of 
 poetry, but exempt from any appearance of pedantry. 
 While the merits of all his cotemporaries were freely 
 discussed, and the meed of discriminating praise lib- 
 erally awarded to each, not the slightest allusion was 
 made to his own productions, although they are quite 
 as much read in our country as those of any other 
 living poet. It would have been a breach of polite- 
 ness in me to have told him how many generous 
 sentiments he has instilled, and how many hearts he 
 8* 
 
90 THE CHRISTIAN MAN OF LETTERS: 
 
 
 
 has made better, beyond the Atlantic. He appears 
 to be universally respected and beloved in the place 
 of his residence." 
 
 In the autumn of this year, the poet finally surren- 
 ders into other hands the " Iris," on which he has ex- 
 pended so many years of toil, and through whose 
 columns he has given forth to the world so many 
 earnest and noble thoughts. "From the first mo- 
 ment," are his farewell words, " that I became the 
 director of a public journal, I took my own ground ; 
 I have stood on it through many years of changes ; 
 and I rest by it this day, as having afforded me a 
 shelter through the far greater portion of my life, 
 and yet offering me a grave when I shall no longer 
 have a part in anything which is done under 
 the sun. And this was my ground a plain deter- 
 mination, come wind or sun, come fire or flood, to 
 do what was right. I lay stress on the purpose, not 
 on the performance ; for this was the polar star to 
 which my compass pointed, though with considerable 
 4 variation of the needle.' " 
 
 Montgomery's religion is a sterling thing, mould- 
 ing his whole commercial transactions, and regulat- 
 ing his whole life. And now, retiring from public 
 life, he receives from his fellow-townsmen, through 
 the lips of their chairman, Lord Milton, a verdict of 
 approval, which draws forth from him these words : 
 " There is a splendid Italian sonnet by Giovanni- 
 battista Zappi, on Judith returning to Bethulia, with 
 the head of Holofernes in one hand and the sword 
 
JAMES MONTGOMERY. 91 
 
 which had smitten it off in the other. The popu- 
 lace hailed her at the gates, through the streets, and 
 from the roofs, as the deliverer of her native city ; 
 the maidens pressed around, to kiss her garment, 
 ' but not her hand ;' while a hundred of the sons of 
 the prophets went before, proclaiming her achieve- 
 ment, and foretelling her glory ' from the sun's rising 
 to his rest.' The poet adds 
 
 " * Stavasi tutta umile in tanta gloria.' 
 
 There is an untranslatable idiom in the original, 
 which gives exquisite point to the idea ; but the 
 simple meaning may suffice us 
 
 " * She was humble under all that glory.* 
 
 And this is the frame of mind which becomes me 
 on the present occasion. Since I came to this town, 
 I have stood through many a fierce and bitter storm ; 
 and I wrapt the mantle of pride tighter and tighter 
 about my bosom, the heavier and harder the blast 
 beat upon me : nay, when I was prostrate in the 
 dust, without strength to rise, or a friend powerful 
 enough to raise me, I still clung to my pride, or, 
 rather, my pride clung to me, like the venomed robe 
 of Hercules, not to be torn away but at the expense 
 of life itself. However haughtily I may have earned 
 myself in later trials or conflicts, the warmth and 
 sunshine of this evening, within these walls, compel 
 me irresistibly, because willingly, to cast off every in- 
 cumbrance, to lay my pride at your feet, and stand 
 
92 THE CHRISTIAN MAN OF LETTERS. 
 
 before you modestly, yet uprightly in the garment of 
 humility." 
 
 Such is the attitude of all "true men." He who 
 in his closet was heard whispering " I have in my- 
 self no might. O God, help mo, Amen. O G 1 
 help me, Amen !" met the remonstrances of timid 
 friends with this resolve "Though there were as 
 many devils in Worms as there are tiles on the 
 houses, I would enter the mouth of this Behemoth." 
 
 " Erect before his fellows ; on his knees before God." 
 
 This ovation of Montgomery's was hailed by his 
 Christian friends as something more than a mere 
 personal triumph. "Your muse," wrote one of 
 them, " hns been persecuted for righteousness' sake ; 
 and, after having passed through much tribulation, 
 she now appears, like the saints before the throne, 
 clothed in wliite raiment, and holding in her hand 
 the emblematic p:ilrn. I have contemplated the 
 honors with which you have been arrayed as the 
 fruits of a victory, a glorious victory, in which the 
 whole Christian world should participate. It is the 
 triumph of truth, and virtue, and piety, over error 
 and vice and impiety." 
 
OHAPTEE VIII. 
 
 "Thy lamp, mysterious Word! 
 "Which whoso sees, no longer wanders lost, 
 With intellects bemazed in endless doubt, 
 But runs the road of wisdom." 
 
 Mellowed heavenliness House of mourning" The price of wealth" 
 His " moderation" " Lake School" Offence of the Cross " Too 
 vile" Heaven's joys A welcome Indian backwoods Advancing 
 years" Working materials" Mount Sion An aspiration. 
 
 NOTWITHSTANDING these outward honors, his inner 
 life is acquiring daily a more chastened mellowness. 
 " Oh, it is a blessing, beyond all the mere enjoyment 
 of good things under the sun," we find him writing 
 to his nieces in the summer of 1826, " to know that 
 we are sinners, and that Christ came into the world 
 to save sinners. I entreat you, my dear, dear nieces, 
 that you will employ some portions a little at a 
 time of every day in reading the New Testament, 
 especially the four Gospels, and more particularly 
 that of St. John, in which you will find refreshment 
 for your minds when they are languid, comfort for 
 your spirits when they are troubled, and peace for 
 your souls when you are willing to hear what your 
 Saviour has done and suffered for you. And pray, 
 each for yourself, that God would bless you and fulfil 
 
94 THE CHRISTIAN MAN OF LETTERS I 
 
 in you every purpose of His mercy, for which He has 
 sent your present trials ; and if you can find freedom, 
 pray together in your own simple langu:i<re, and 
 your prayers will be answered, for the Holy Spirit 
 will help your infirmities." 
 
 And the same mellowed spirit would indicate its 
 heavenly tastes in such utterances as these : " I take 
 your offer very kindly, and should have been very 
 happy to avail myself of your hospitality, had I been 
 at liberty to visit York during the musical festival ; 
 but duty calls me another way. I must go to the 
 house of suffering though I cannot call it the house 
 of mourning, because there is joy and hope in tribu- 
 lation there." 
 
 And, in another direction, thus : " I am not rich 
 I never took the means to be so ; I have often 
 said that I could not afford to pay the price of wealth, 
 and that, as there was neither a law of nature nor an 
 Act of Parliament to compel me to bejoine rich, I 
 would not sell all my peace of mind, nor consume 
 my time, in gathering what I might never enjoy. I 
 do not despise money ; I love it as much as any man 
 ought to do, and perhaps something more at particu- 
 lar times: but a small provision is enough for my 
 few wants, and the Lord has made that provision for 
 me. I owe it all to Him ; I cannot say that my 
 skill, or industry, or merit of any kind, has acquired 
 it : I have received it as a free gift at His hands ; 
 and to Him I would consecrate it, and every other 
 talent, as an unprofitable servant at the best, and too 
 
JAMES MONTGOMERY. 95 
 
 often as a slothful and wicked one." It is a fitting 
 commentary upon these words, that, when the writer 
 sold his paper for 400, he allowed the money 
 (which was considered a very moderate price for 
 the paper) to remain in the purchaser's hands in- 
 tending, should the paper not succeed in strange 
 hands, to remit the whole sum agreed upon for copy- 
 right. If every disciple of Christ " made his modera- 
 tion known unto all men" as unmistakeably as James 
 Montgomery, the Christian name would not have its 
 fair escutcheon stained in these days with so many 
 grievous blots. 
 
 It was the failing of Wordsworth and of all the 
 u Lake School," that their poetry ignored the pecu- 
 liar doctrines of the Gospel, and especially man's 
 total depravity. Montgomery, as he advances in 
 years and in the divine life, instead of modifying 
 his earlier belief respecting our fallen nature, is 
 constrained to darken the picture even into a deeper 
 hue. For example, in a new poem, called " Pelican 
 Island," which appeared in the autumn of 1827, we 
 find him apostrophising man thus : 
 
 " Man, in the imago of his Maker formed ; 
 Man, to the image of his tempter fallen 1 
 I saw him sunk in loathsome degradation, 
 A naked, fierce, ungovernable savage, 
 Companion to the brutes; himself more brutal." 
 
 u It is the ' offence of the Cross,' " was the poet's re- 
 mark one day to a friend, who was mentioning a 
 complaint of a critic that he had made man " too 
 
96 THE CHRISTIAN MAN OF LETTERS '. 
 
 vile." " Any direct allusion to the state of the poor 
 heathen their barbarity and immorality on the one 
 hand, or their religious experience and their hopes 
 of salvation on the other is generally unpalatable : 
 I have long had to endure a good deal for my senti- 
 ments on these points, as well from the open pity as 
 from the secret contempt of some of my readers." 
 
 Hastening onwards to the Celestial City, his soul 
 seems oftentimes rapt into a very peculiar fellowship 
 with its holy joys. "Prayer," for example, is his 
 remark on one occasion, " is not only the sublimest 
 expression of the Church on earth, but there seems 
 to be something very like prayer among the souls 
 of the martyrs in heaven itself 'How long, Lord, 
 holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our 
 blood on them that dwell on the earth !' " 
 
 And, on another occasion, addressing, on her birth- 
 day, a friend under whose roof he is sojourning on 
 one of his brief occasional tours on behalf of the 
 Bible Society, he writes : 
 
 " "When suffering life Shall end its strife 
 
 In death's serene repose ; 
 Be Sabbath rest On Jesu's breast, 
 
 Its everlasting close ; 
 Your daily cross may you lay down, 
 To gain an everlasting crown 1" 
 
 And, welcoming home a beloved friend who, 
 during an absence of five years, has, on a mission- 
 ary errand, circumnavigated the globe : " May you 
 long enjoy the blessing of a heart right in the sight 
 
JAMES MONTGOMERY. V. 
 
 of God, which shall render all his His dispensations, 
 afflictive or joyous, right in your sight ! This is the 
 Christian's secret of happiness ; may you ever be in 
 possession of it in this world of trials, where faith is 
 perpetually put to proof, and often staggers, not ;it 
 the promises only, but at the wisdom and goodness 
 of God, from our frailty and ignorance in judging of 
 His works and ways !" 
 
 And, on still another occasion, referring to Brain- 
 erd in the Indian backwoods, and to his suffering and 
 solitude, he reveals indirectly his own heavenly tone 
 of soul, thus : " Was there at such times, on the 
 face of the inhabited earth, an object lovelier in the 
 sight of heaven, than that lonely man, in the depths 
 of immense forests, reading the words of eternal life 
 for himself, or pouring out his soul, amidst the 
 silence of the desert, in prayer for the salvation of 
 the heathen ? Yes, there was an object yet lovelier 
 the same man, after he had been thus hidden in the 
 secret pavilion of the Most High, coming forth from 
 j^- under the wings of the Almighty to teach wondering 
 savages among whom God was unknown and Christ 
 was not named, the lessons which he had learned in 
 his retirement. Brainerd, thus occupied, presented 
 a spectacle to the eyes of angels which they might 
 behold with delight, and even long to be partakers 
 with him in the honor and felicity of ministering to 
 those heirs of salvation." 
 
 Advancing years are beginning to tell upon his 
 never very robust frame. " I have not been able to 
 
98 THE CHRISTIAN MAN OF LETTERS. 
 
 accept," we find him writing, March 16, 1830, to the 
 secretary of the Manchester Wesleyan Missionary 
 Committee, u one invitation of this kind, though I have 
 had many not because my heart has changed, but 
 / am not even the man that I was : the bruised reed 
 rows weaker and weaker with handling, and the 
 smoking flax dimmer and dimmer with blowing 
 upon, while the ashes scatter to the wind." And, 
 on another occasion, he says : " I sometimes seem 
 to myself quite worn out, or so fast wearing, as if, 
 atom by atom, I were falling into dust ; thought, 
 feeling, fancy, memory, invention, fear, hope, affec- 
 tion all exhausted : and yet there are working ma- 
 terials and working power in me which eternity can- 
 not exhaust." 
 
 But his Christian zeal and boldness freshen into 
 new fragrance. At a local festival, attended by a 
 host of political and literary celebrities, he rose to 
 acknowledge the cordial words of Lord Morpeth 
 (now Earl of Carlisle) who, in proposing his health, 
 had spoken of " the genius and virtues of the hard, 
 who, having scaled the height of Parnassus, had, 
 with equal success, directed his poetical footsteps 
 toward the holier elevation of Mount Sion." " And 
 I am not ashamed," were Montgomery's closing 
 words in reply, " in this festive meeting to say, with 
 reference to that place which has been the subject 
 of my later themes God grant we may all meet 
 there V' 
 
CHAPTEE IX. 
 
 44 If we could see below 
 The sphere of virtue and each shining grace, 
 
 As plainly as that above doth show ; 
 This were the better sky, the brighter place. 
 
 God hath made stars the fire 
 To set off virtues ; griefs to set off sinning. 11 
 
 Heaven Thanksgiving Marah Songs in wilderness A trial Fresh 
 dawning of life Apostolic look Communion of Holy Ghost Green 
 old age 4 ' Heaven in his eye" Manner of life Simplicity State- 
 pension Sir Walter Scott A Contrast 44 Stroke of fate" Sunset 
 and sunrise A 44 translation." 
 
 IN heaven, the saint, walking in God's own imme- 
 diate light, shall interpret perfectly the (as yet) in- 
 distinct hieroglyphics by which now he reads God's 
 leadings; and the hallelujah which celebrates them 
 shall be one of unmingled thanksgiving u Just and 
 true are all thy ways, thou King of saints." Of 
 all those leadings, none shall seem so blessed as the 
 sojournings at Marah and in Baca. 
 
 " I scarce believed, 
 Till grief did tell me roundly, that I lived." 
 
 James Montgomery, now nearing heaven in spirit, is 
 already singing in the wilderness some of heaven's 
 melodies of praise. "Though it is true," we find 
 
100 THE CHRISTIAN MAN OF LETTERS! 
 
 him writing to a friend at this period, ll that certain 
 exceedingly great and bitter disappointments of my 
 hopes and schemes in former life left a burthen and a 
 gloom which have never ceased to make the remain- 
 der of my way mo;e or less dreary, yet I dare not 
 say at this hour, much as I lament many things wlilc'i 
 I have done, that I wish anything which I have suf- 
 fered in the ccurso of providence, and which has not 
 befallen me from my own fault, had not happened. 
 Miserable I ir.ay have been made by such evaits as 
 we usually call misfortunes ; but that I should have 
 been less so, if they had not been permitted to re- 
 mind me that here is not my rest, I dare not even 
 suppose, much less assert. I have actually lived long 
 enough to see that some of the most afflictive of these 
 were the means of preserving me from far greater 
 evils. I see wisdom, and goodness, and mercy, 
 guarding and guiding me, and overruling, for my 
 good, things which almost broke my heart when 
 they came upon me, and which seemed at the mo- 
 ment to cut off hope altogether." 
 
 What words can utter the accession of strength 
 and of calm joy, which a tutorage in the truly 
 heavenly art of " in erery iking giving thanks" brings 
 to life's daily conflicts and labors and cross-bearings ? 
 " Then do those powers, which work for grief, / 
 Enter thy pay, 
 And day by day, 
 Labor thy praise and my relief: 
 With care and courage building me, 
 Till I reach heaven, and much more THEE." 
 
JAMES MONTGOMERY. 101 
 
 One of his sorest trials at this period is "an op- 
 pression and an obstruction in all the faculties of 
 mind and body," which often brings with it " a cloud 
 which falls in no showers of refreshment, but seems 
 to stagnate in the heavens, and to chill and darken 
 his very soul." But " natural feeling" will again " be- 
 gin to creep along his nerves, and to quicken his 
 whole frame ;" and existence, from being a burthen 
 which he dares not lay down, but finds harder to 
 carry as the length of the way to the grave grows 
 shorter, will once more become a delight, and, with 
 returning bodily vigor, a fresh " dawning of life and 
 warmth of reviving hope rouses him to new exertion." 
 These seasons of gloom, however, have their own so- 
 lacement. " I am not aware," we find him writing, 
 September 23, 1833, "that you are much tried in 
 this peculiar way ; but you cannot expect to escape 
 entirely this thorn in the flesh, otherwise you will 
 never have the perfect manifestation that His t grace 
 is sufficient for you, and His strength made perfect 
 in weakness.' By any way by every way which 
 He is pleased to appoint, may He purify you y . till, 
 like gold seven times passed through the fire, you are 
 meet to receive the ineffaceable stamp of His image 
 and superscription!" 
 
 Now, " three-score years, and one," he has gathered 
 upon him an air of almost apostolic sanctity. It is 
 not unusual for him,, for example, to commence a 
 platform-address at a missionary meeting, thus i "The 
 grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of 
 
102 THE CHRISTIAN MAN OF LETTERS : 
 
 and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, be with us all. 
 Amen." On another occasion, alluding to those same 
 words, he remarks : " I have no more doubt of t the 
 communion of the Holy Ghost' than I have of * the 
 grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,' or of ' the love of 
 the Father ;' but I do not enjoy it as I ought, as I 
 might, and as I pray daily that I may." It is because 
 he is gradually realizing more intensely the Spirit's 
 indwelling, that his outward walk, and even person, 
 are contracting a more heavenly hue. Like that 
 u hope" of which the poet so beautifully sings, he 
 almost literally, 
 
 " With uplifted foot, set free from earth, 
 Pants for the place of his ethereal birth, 
 And crowns the soul, while yet a mourner here, 
 "With wreaths like those triumphant spirits wear." 
 
 A friend who was with him one morning in a 
 large circle, when Montgomery was invited to lead 
 the devotions, felt " the fervor, the simplicity, and the 
 sweetness" of his breathings, as if already foretastes 
 of heaven. 
 
 But it is only in momentary moods that the bur- 
 then of the mortal coil oppresses him. " Montgom- 
 ery is now," wrote a Sheffield friend, in August 1835, 
 " not only a poet in full possession of fame, and com- 
 manding the most extensive circle of readers that any 
 poet can vboast, but he is justly appreciated as a good 
 man, of extraordinary capabilities, by his townsmen, 
 and the country at large ; and Nature, as if seconding 
 the tardy justice of man in redeeming the past, has 
 
JAMES MONTGOMERY. 103 
 
 rendered him the very youngest man of his years 
 ever beheld, for had lie not been known to the world 
 as a poet thirty years, we really think he might at 
 this time pass for thirty such is the slightness of 
 his figure, the elasticity of his step, the smoothness 
 of his fair brow, the mobility arid playfulness of his 
 features when in conversation. This circumstance, it 
 is true, makes a great difference ; the lighting up of 
 Montgomery's eye in the moment when he is warmed 
 by his subject, or induced to smile to others, is abso- 
 lutely electrical." But it is 
 
 "Heaven in his eye," 
 
 which gives to him the choicest charm to those, 
 at least, who can discern that peculiar characteristic. 
 
 Nothing could be more simple than our poet's 
 manner of life. " With the world, as to its goods 
 and luxuries," writes the same friend, " he has nothing 
 to do ; but with its sorrows, ignorance, and want, he 
 is continually engaged ; and, when Sir Robert Peel, 
 to his own immortal honor, marked the sense which 
 himself and his countrymen entertained of Montgom- 
 ery's merit, by placing him on the Civil List for a 
 pension of 150Z. a year, he only added to his power 
 of benefitting his fellow-creatures, for of personal in- 
 dulgence in expenditure he has unquestionably no 
 idea." 
 
 One afternoon, in the autumn of 1836, Montgom- 
 ery is sitting with a friend, poring with intense emo- 
 tion over an album which a daughter of Wordsworth 
 
104 THE CHRISTIAN MAN OF LETTERS. 
 
 lias forwarded to Sheffield for a contribution from his 
 pen. The page on which the friends are gazing so 
 intently, is an autograph-sonnet, by Sir Walter Scott. 
 Tremulously penned in the minstrel's last days, and 
 with some of the lines unfinished, it has a melancho- 
 ly tone about it which painfully affects his heart. 
 4 ' Here," is his remark to Mr. Holland, as he closes 
 the book, " we have almost the last written testimony 
 of one of the most active and vigorous minds of the 
 age, made in the very prospect of death ; and yet 
 there is not the slightest allusion to the promises of 
 the Gospel, or to the prospects of the Christian : but, 
 instead, an equivocal allusion to ' enduring the stroke 
 of fate.' J ' It is Montgomery's own happier lot, to be 
 hastening onward to life's earthly " bourne" under a 
 joyous hope. " May the Lord compensate him," he 
 writes- this year to a friend, solacing a bereaved disci- 
 ple, " in that way which to infinite wisdom and eter- 
 nal goodness shall seem best, for the removal to His 
 own glorious presence of her whom, for a brief but 
 lovely season, He permitted to be at his side as a 
 life-companion, at a time when her life was so far 
 spent, that its twilight on earth, while he walked 
 amidst its sweetness, was to herself the dawning of 
 immortality as sunset to us in the East, is sunrise 
 to them in the West! It was a sudden 'translation' 
 (because, like Enoch, she ' walked with God') to the 
 kingdom of glory and of bliss, of peace and assurance 
 for ever, from sin, sorrow, and death." 
 
UHAPTEE X. 
 
 " I would rejoice for all that thou hast given, 
 
 In Christ to me, 
 For grace, and peace, and gladdening hope of heaven, 
 
 Not bought, but free." 
 
 Voltaire's death- bed The " Encyclopaedists 1 ' " Wretched glory!" 
 Scott's death-bed Sheffield poet Earthly laurel A crown of glory 
 " Natives" ' At home" A bereavement fc ' Passed on" Dickson 
 of Irvine " Strive to steal away" The Cross New bereavement 
 "Not here"" Died for me" Thankfulness. 
 
 IT is recorded of Voltaire, that on his death-bed he 
 was visited by D'Alembert and some twenty others 
 of the French "philosophers," but that, as they 
 crowded one after another into the apartment, he 
 cast on them a bitter reproachful look, and exclaimed 
 " Retire ! It is you that have brought me to my 
 present state ! Begone ! I could have done without 
 you all, but you could not exist without me ; and 
 what a wretched glory have you procured me !" 
 And, as they withdrew, and lingered about the pas- 
 sago, they could hear him alternately cursing and 
 supplicating God, and then in a plaintive tone crying 
 out" Oh, Christ ! Oh, Jesus Christ !" It is said of 
 poor Walter Scott that his death-bed was scarcely less 
 appalling. Genius unsanctified was his ruiu, and, 
 
106 THE CHRISTIAN MAN OF LETTERS: 
 
 though not to be classed with the Frenchman as an 
 open blasphemer, he is reported to have died in the 
 most heart-stricken horror. The poet of fheffield is 
 not ashamed of Christ and of his cross. From the 
 time," was the remark of the Rev. J. Angell James 
 at a missionary meeting held that year at Birming- 
 ham, "that the distinguished individual who has ad- 
 dressed us baptized his muse at the Christian font, 
 and made her a member, not of any section of the 
 Christian community, but of the whole Catholic 
 Church he has never written a line over which 
 truth or holiness might blush, or which charity might 
 not love to own." And therefore, when death ap- 
 proaches, and plucks the earthly laurel from his 
 brow, the Destroyer of death is there with a better 
 laurel the " crown of glory, which fadeth not 
 away." Like " the man in the picture," he con- 
 tinues meanwhile to live as an earnest, self-denying 
 happy pilgrim that crown of glory hanging over 
 his head. " There is another country," he writes one 
 day this autumn to a friend in New York, with whom 
 he has enjoyed some pleasant interviews during a 
 recent visit to this country, " of which all, of every 
 land on earth, who are born of God, become by that 
 very fact natives even a heavenly country : there ma v 
 we, and all we have known in the flesh, as of one 
 spirit with us in the Lord, find ourselves at home, 
 and for ever with Him, at the end of our pilgrim- 
 age!" 
 
 The following winter a bereavement visits him, 
 
JAMES MONTGOMERY. 107 
 
 which lifts his heart nearer than ever to his heavenly 
 home. " One light," we find him writing, " which 
 has long cheered, and, I may say, accompanied m 
 through one-third of my way of life, is now gone out 
 no, no, not out ; it has passed on before through 
 the shadow of death into the splendor of eternity : 
 but I shall miss it ; and, oh ! how many more whom 
 its mild beams were wont to bless will miss it, too ! 
 But the Lord liveth He gave, and He has taken 
 away blessed be His name ! To none but him 
 would we have surrendered it." 
 
 Like all who have been drawn into a close fellowship 
 with the Lord, Montgomery is learning to lean with 
 a fresh simplicity of faith upon the arm of his be- 
 loved Lord. Alluding one day to the authorship of 
 the hymn, "Jerusalem, my happy home" he de- 
 scribes the writer as " a man of God indeed," add- 
 ing : " His last words, in answer to an inquiry con- 
 cerning the hope that was in him in the hour of 
 death, were these * I have taken all my good deeds, 
 and all my bad ones, and have thrown them together 
 in one heap, and have fled from them to the " foot 
 of the Cross for mercy."' Oh, my dear friend what a 
 confession of faith ! Let us go and do likewise, that 
 at our departure we may be enabled, through Al 
 mighty grace, to leave the same testimony behind us." 
 
 And he does go and do likewise. " I strive to 
 steal away," says he, " from this poor world's busi- 
 ness, to sit with Mary at the Master's feet my con- 
 stant prayer being to have the mind and the power 
 
1 08 THE CHRISTIAN MAN OF LETTERS I 
 
 to ' choose the better part,' and to attend to the * one 
 thing needful,' without entirely neglecting the many 
 things which are necessary." And, on another 
 occasion : " I feel my place of safety to be that to 
 which I do know I am permitted to come the foot 
 of the Cross." 
 
 Another bereavement, touching him to the quick, 
 reveals, indirectly, yet even more affectingly, the 
 same simple and joyous faith. It is one of three sis- 
 ters, who have lived under the same roof with him 
 " more than forty years." He writes : 
 
 " She went as calmly as at eve 
 
 A cloud in sunset melts away, 
 While blending lights and shadows weave 
 The winding-sheet of dying day. 
 
 No ; the day dies not ; round the globe 
 
 It holds its flight o'er land or main : 
 Morn, noon, and evening are its robe, 
 
 And solemn night its flowing train. 
 
 So when to us she seemed to die, 
 
 And left a shadow in her shroud, 
 'Twas but the glory passing by, 
 
 And darkness gathering round a cloud. 
 
 "We gazed upon the earthly prison 
 
 From which the enfranchised soul had fled ; 
 ' She is not here, for she is risen ; 
 Seek not the living with the dead.' 
 
 For, by no sophistry beguiled, 
 
 She loved the Gospel's joyful sound : 
 
 Beceived it as a little child, 
 
 And in her heart its sweetness found." 
 
JAMES MONTGOMERY. 109 
 
 And a year later, alluding to a venerable disciple, 
 who had unexpectedly been raised up from what 
 seemed to be his dying bed, he writes : " The turn- 
 ing-point of his disease seemed to occur on the 
 Saturday before Easter. He said then, To-day I 
 am seventy-seven years old, and yesterday my Sa- 
 viour died for me.' Oh, my dear friend ! though 
 you do not call a certain day Good Friday, you 
 love to remember, on that day and every other day 
 of the three hundred and sixty-five, that wonderful 
 event (which the annals of the whole creation cannot 
 parallel) which so many Christians commemorate on 
 that day ; and I know that the most cheering, ani- 
 mating, glorious, heart-breaking, heart-healing re- 
 flection which can come upon you at any time, in 
 any circumstances, is the thought of our suffering 
 friend Koberts, when you can say with him, 'My 
 Saviour died for me !' He did, He did ; and He 
 died for me, too ; then let us live to Him live 
 wholly to Him that when we die as soon we 
 must we may die unto the Lord, and that, where 
 He is, we may thenceforth ever be." 
 
 And, referring to the death of the " Martyr of Er- 
 romanga," he adds : " Alas ! for us the removal of 
 Mr. Williams : I cannot say, Alas ! for him. But his 
 death, like Samson's (in the reverse of the nature of 
 its issue), must surely be the means of more life, 
 faith, zeal, and labor, in the missionary cause, than 
 has yet been shown." 
 
 Link after link is being severed which binds him 
 10 
 
110 THE CHRISTIAN MAN OF LETTERS! 
 
 to this vale of tears. In the spring of 1841 he loses 
 a beloved brother beloved at once in the flesh and 
 in the Lord. A pastor of the United Brethren, he 
 " found grace," writes the poet, " to prove himself a 
 good and faithful servant, through long labors, and 
 longer sufferings, and he now has entered the joy of 
 his Lord at the age of sixty-five years." " There were 
 yet visible in his countenance," he adds, after taking 
 a last look at the corpse, " some traces of that placid 
 resignation which had always marked it in life the 
 lingering twilight which followed the shining of that 
 Sun of righteousness amidst which the spirit had 
 passed into a better world." 
 
 It was a longing of a poet in another age 
 
 " Thou that hast given so much to me, 
 Give one thing more a grateful heart 1" 
 
 And again, thus: 
 
 " Wherefore I cry, and cry again ; 
 And in no quiet canst thou be, 
 Till I a thankful heart obtain 
 Ofthee: 
 
 Not thankful, when it pleaseth me ; 
 As if thy blessings had spare days : 
 But such a heart, whose pulse may be 
 Thy praise!" 
 
 In the brother he has lost, nothing affects our poet 
 so tenderly as his " childlike, humble, fervent expres- 
 sions of thankfulness." And no grace does the sur- 
 
JAMES MONTGOMERY. Ill 
 
 vivor continue himself to cultivate so anxiously. 
 " Among the i thousand thousand precious gifts,' " 
 we find him writing to a friend, " which, during that 
 long period of changes and trials, of mercies and 
 chastenings, you have received of God's free bounty, 
 in providence and in grace, I am sure you feel that 
 4 not the leas? is that one which Addison so emphati- 
 cally records in his admirable hymn, 
 
 " * A grateful heart to taste those gifts of joy.' 
 
 Ah ! indeed, without that, all the temporal and 
 spiritual benefits with which the good Lord daily 
 loadeth His people would be bestowed by Him in 
 vain, or would be remembered only in judgment 
 against them. In that tremendous summing-up of 
 the sins of the heathen world in which the world 
 called Christian is hardly less criminal contained in 
 the first chapter of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, 
 there is a very remarkable clause, ver. 21 : * Because, 
 when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, 
 neither were thankful? " 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 ""Pis but to touch a harp with riven strings, 
 
 To faltering lays ; 
 
 And yet to Thee r my God, my spirit brings 
 Its song of praise. 
 
 Teach me aright to bless Thee for a love 
 Which knows no change ; 
 
 A care which, every hour, 1, wondering, prove 
 So great, so strange 1" 
 
 Visit to Scotland "Welcome " The Christian poet"" Name of Je- 
 sus" Visit to birth-place The cottage Failing strength "Snowa 
 of age" Sunset " A solitary unit" "Lonelier than loneliness" 
 "Absent from the body" The two horizons Paralysis Eightieth 
 birth-day Past and future Three travellers at " the Mount" Last 
 evening" Shock of corn fully ripe" Gathered to the garner. 
 
 IN the autumn of 1841, "for the first time after a 
 lapse of three-score years," Montgomery " appears on 
 his native soil," at a missionary meeting in Glasgow, 
 and is hailed with a singular enthusiasm. "Lofty 
 powers of genius," says the now deceased Dr. Ward- 
 law, in introducing him, " unconsecrated to the praise 
 of that God by whom they were bestowed, have al- 
 ways appeared to me like lamps of pure oil gleaming 
 in the midst of sepulchral darkness and corruption ; 
 but we rejoice to know that these powers have been- 
 devoted by our friend to the service of God and to 
 
JAMES MONTGOMERY. 113 
 
 the promotion of all that is connected with the pres- 
 ent and everlasting happiness of mankind. We re- 
 joice, therefore,, in having him among us ; and we re- 
 joice because we regard him as a Christian poet, and 
 one belonging to our own land. When first I had 
 the happiness of becoming acquainted with him per- 
 9 sonally, I found him, I may be allowed to say, in the 
 most unpoetical place it was possible for a poet to oc- 
 cupy in the very centre of the dark, dusky, smoky 
 town of Sheffield ; and it seemed to me as if he had 
 chosen that particular place to illustrate the words, 
 4 E fumo dare lucem /' He has now changed his 
 residence he is now on 4 The Mount,' the very place 
 where a poet ought to be. 
 
 "But he is now among us," the speaker adds, 
 " in another capacity. He is the son of missionary 
 parents^ and that is no small honor of missionary 
 parents, too, who, after having submitted so terrible 
 calamities, sleep, as the poet has told us, where the 
 sun 
 
 " * Shines without a shadow on their graves/ 
 
 I cannot help being struck with that line, not only 
 from the fact which it states, that his parents sleep 
 under a vertical sun, but because associated with 
 that fact is the pleasing thought that all is light over 
 that hallowed spot, far away, 
 
 " ' Where rest the ashes of the sainted dead.' " 
 
 Montgomery is deeply affected by the cordiality 
 of his welcome to Scotland. " I feel it," says he, 
 10* 
 
114 THE CHRISTIAN MAN OF LETTERS'. 
 
 "to be a high and humbling privilege to be per- 
 mitted to meet you, and to make my public appear- 
 ance as your countryman, in a place where, in one of 
 the first sentences of our opening prayer, the name 
 of Jesus was mentioned. That is the name in which 
 we meet ; that is the name which is peculiarly 
 preached as ' Jesus Christ, and Him crucified' as 
 the only hope, the only ground of the hope, of salva- 
 tion for perishing sinners." 
 
 A day or two afterwards he visits Irvine, where 
 the corporation awaits his arrival and makes him a 
 burgess of the ancient and royal burgh. " I cannot 
 say more," he himself writes, describing the scene, 
 " than that the heart of all Irvine seemed to be 
 moved on the occasion ; and every soul in it, old and 
 young, rich and poor, to ' hail' me to my birth-place. 
 My heart was moved almost beyond feeling by the 
 overpowering kindness which oppressed it, and by 
 the overflowing gratitude which could scarcely find 
 vent in words or in tears." One incident affects him 
 more than all the rest his visit to the humble cot- 
 tage where first he drew breath, his father's chapel, 
 now converted into a workshop, and strangers sitting 
 beside the hearth which once was his mother's ; but 
 the birth-place is not forgotten there fixed in the 
 wall is a small tablet, intimating that in that lowly 
 cottage was born " James Montgomery, the poet." 
 
 Not long after this Northern tour, a feebleness 
 of health returns, and with it, at intervals, such an 
 arrestment on his whole mental energies as makes 
 
JAMES MONTGOMERY. 115 
 
 him feel " as if in the course of an irrevocable de- 
 cline." It is in allusion to this, that at a meeting in 
 Sheffield at the close of 1842, he quotes from his 
 " Pelican Island" the affecting couplet 
 
 " No snow falls lighter than the snow of age ; 
 And none lies heavier, for it never melts." 
 
 And some time later, using another figure, and refer- 
 ring to another symptom, he writes : " The feeble 
 and diseased state of my hands seems to paralyse all 
 my faculties ; and the difficulty and pain of writing 
 makes the process so languid, that such thoughts and 
 feelings as I have, in the effort of composition, effer- 
 vesce and exhale before I embody them in fit words. 
 There is as much music in the fiddle as ever ; but the 
 hand has lost power over the bow, and cannot call 
 the spirit out." 
 
 The poet's remaining years are like the calm set- 
 ting of a summer's sun, 
 
 " Sinking down in its tranquillity." 
 
 Another of " four friends," whom once he apostro- 
 phised so touchingly in one of his sweetest sonnets, 
 is removed ; and Montgomery is " left a solitary 
 unit." " Four and twenty years ago," he writes, 
 alluding to the new bereavement, " towards the 
 close of the ' Pelican Island,' I said 
 
 " * The world grows darker, lonelier, and more silent, 
 As I go down into the vale of years.' 
 
116 THE CHRISTIAN MAN OF LETTERS : 
 
 You will understand this better four and twenty 
 years hence, and also find out that there is some 
 thing to a living man darker than darkness, *more 
 lonely than loneliness, more silent than silence. 
 What is that? The space in our eye, our ear, and 
 our mind, which the presence of a friend once filled, 
 and which imagination itself cannot now fill. Infi- 
 nite space, invisible, inaudible, dimensionless, is not 
 more inapprehensible than that remembered range 
 in which to us he lived, moved, and had a being. 
 ' Absent from the body' is a far different separation 
 from that which the earth's diameter interposes be- 
 tween two breathing, conscious beings, each present 
 with himself and contemporary with the other, but 
 as utterly beyond personal communication as the 
 living with the dead, or as the dwellers in the dust, 
 each resting in his bed, side by side." 
 
 And as his earthly horizon is thus yearly con- 
 tracting, and the horizon of his eternity is expand- 
 ing its brightening circle, a " tremblingly-alive agi- 
 tation," incident now to all public appearances, with- 
 draws him into the comparative privacy befitting his 
 advanced years. Young, in his " Night Thoughts," 
 describes the soul at such a time, as 
 
 " Walking thoughtful on the silent, solemn shore 
 Of that vast ocean she must sail so soon." 
 
 In 1849, Montgomery has a slight threatening of 
 paralysis, which leaves upon his mien a yet graver 
 and more heavenly solemnity. He recovers ; but 
 
JAMES MONTGOMERY. 117 
 
 " how faded ! how infirm !" is the involuntary ob- 
 servation of his townsmen as he once more appears 
 out of doors. And, a year or two later, he writes : 
 " An eightieth birth-day can occur once only, once 
 in a life, though this were prolonged to the age of 
 Methuselah ; and, having now reached the last mile- 
 stone distinctly marked on the pilgrimage (Ps. xc. 10) 
 from the cradle to the grave, beyond which there is 
 no track except over stumbling-stones and among 
 pitfalls, to the end of all things on earth, I am neces- 
 sarily looking onward and backward, around and 
 within me, to ascertain where I am, what I am, and 
 whither I am going. Of the past, I may say, ' Good- 
 ness and mercy have followed me all the days of my 
 life ; and of the future, my heart's desire and prayer 
 is, that I may, in my last hour, have the blessed hope 
 in me to realise the fulfilment of the remaining clause 
 of the text (Ps. xxxiii. 6), ' I will dwell in the house 
 of the Lord for ever.' " 
 
 One afternoon, in the summer of 1853, three travel- 
 lers from America call at " The Mount." " Scarcely 
 had I entered," writes one of them, " when the venera- 
 ble bard stepped from his library into the hall, and re- 
 ceived us with a greeting which went to my heart." 
 u You were known in our country," remarks one of 
 the strangers, after they are seated in the parlor, 
 " and loved before we were born." " Few men," says 
 another of them, " have lived, as you have, to hear 
 the verdict of posterity." " Yes," replies the poet, 
 " I have survived nearly all my contemporaries." 
 
118 THE CHRISTIAN MAN OF LETTERS I 
 
 And " this led," says the visitor, " to a religious con- 
 versation, in which he spoke of that peaceful but 
 trembling hope he had, that he should soon enter 
 upon the promised rest ; his lips quivered, his voice 
 broke, and big tears dropped from his eyes, as he 
 spoke of his unworthiness to be accepted, but of his 
 trust in the Saviour, whose grace is sufficient for the 
 chief of sinners. We rose to take leave, and, as we 
 shook hands in silence, Edwards repeated one of the 
 poet's own stanzas from ' The Grave 7 
 
 " ' There is a calm for those that weep, 
 A rest for weary pilgrims found.' 
 
 And he had strength to say, ' I hope we shall meet 
 in heaven ;' and, following us to the door, bade us an 
 affectionate farewell." 
 
 The weary, but not unjoyous, pilgrim is now to 
 "find" his "rest." 
 
 A fortnight previous, he is proposing to revisit 
 once more the loved scene of his boyhood at Fulnec. 
 " I should have indeed been happy," he writes to his 
 niece, explaining an unexpected hindrance, " to make 
 an Easter campaign, and especially to spend another 
 Maundy-Thursday, which then was (I may frankly 
 own it) to me the happiest day in the year ; the even- 
 ing reading in the chapel, of our Saviour's agony and 
 bloody sweat in the garden of Gethsemane, was al- 
 most always a season of holy humbling, and affecting 
 sympathy of my soul with his, who then was wont to 
 make His presence felt." 
 
JAMES MONTGOMERY. 119 
 
 Into that presence he is now speedily welcomed, to 
 walk no longer by faith, but by sight. One evening 
 it is Saturday, April 29, 1854 he hands to Miss 
 Gales the Family Bible, saying, " Sarah, you must 
 read !" And, after himself leading the family devo- 
 tions with an unusual tremulousness of voice, but 
 with a heavenly pathos, he retires to rest at his usual 
 hour. In the morning he is worse ; but in a few 
 hours he revives, so that it seems as if he once 
 more may rally. At half-past three, however, as he 
 lies quietly asleep, his attendant observes in his 
 countenance a sudden and startling change. The 
 clay is there ; but the man himself is away. Like 
 " a shock of corn fully ripe," he is already gathered 
 into the heavenly garner. 
 
 " death! what art thou? strange and solemn Alchymist, 
 Elaborating life's elixirs from these clayey crucibles ! 
 death ! what art thou ? antitype of Nature's marvels, 
 The seed and dormant chrysalis bursting into energy and 
 
 glory! 
 
 Pass along, pilgrim of life I go to thy grave unfearing ; 
 The terrors are but shadows now, that haunt the vale of 
 
 Death." 
 
IV. 
 
 If HI a n of 8 n s i n t s : 
 
 FREDERICK PERTHES. 
 
 " Placed for his trial on this bustling stage, 
 From thoughtless youth to ruminating age." 
 
 >l Some men make gain a fountain, whence proceeds 
 A stream of liberal and heroic deeds." 
 
Lite Studies. 
 
 HAMBURGH. 
 
CHAPTEK I. 
 
 u Custom is most perfect, when it beginneth in young years: this 
 we call education, which is, in effect, but an early custom." LORD 
 BACON. 
 
 Hamburgh "The king of booksellers 1 ' His cradle An orphan Boy- 
 ish tastes School Leipzig " Too shy" The apprentice New 
 home Discipline Frost-bitten The attic-chamber Frederika 
 Apprenticeship to life. 
 
 IN the busy town of Hamburgh, some sixty years 
 since, there might be seen, in a book-shop in one 
 of the busiest of its streets, a slender, but firmly-knit 
 German, whose genial heart draws around him the 
 sympathies, as his energetic decision iir business se- 
 cures the respect, of the most worthy of its citizens. 
 " Little Perthes," they will say, " has the most manly 
 spirit of us all." " He is the king of booksellers," re- 
 marks one day the historian Niebuhr. And another 
 writes : " Perthes is a man to whom I feel marvel- 
 lously attracted : I could not withdraw my eyes from 
 him the charm of his outward appearance I could 
 not but regard as the true expression of his inner na- 
 ture." 
 
 This soul so firm, yet so delicately strung has 
 been reared amidst rude storms. 
 1* 
 
THE MAN OF BUSINESS! 
 
 Born at Eudolfstadt, April 21, 1772, FREDERICK 
 PERTHES finds himself, at the early age of seven, a 
 solitary orphan. A maternal uncle kind, but poor 
 welcomes the boy to his humble home. Till the 
 age of fourteen, his chief mental food is such books 
 as u Don Quixote," and some quarto volumes of 
 Travels, which captivate his boyish fancy, but nearly 
 unnerve his native energy of intellect. Two years 
 spent at the close of that period at school leave him 
 in possession of little more than the store of miscella- 
 neous ideas and fancies gathered at his own hand in 
 his passionate zest for reading. 
 
 In his fourteenth year, resolved that, come what 
 may, he and his beloved books must be companions 
 through life, he sets out for Leipzig book-fair in 
 search of a master. The tall, gaunt figure of the 
 bookseller, to whom the printer of his native town, 
 who has him in charge, conducts him, so alarms the 
 boy, that, not being able to utter a word, he is pro- 
 nounced to be " too shy for the book-trade." After 
 some tossings to and fro, he is at last engaged by 
 another ; but " he must go home for a year he is 
 too delicate yet for work." 
 
 On September, 11, 1787, he arrives again in Leip- 
 zig to begin life's earnest struggle. The youthful 
 apprentice though welcomed kindly enough in his 
 new home especially by Frederika, one of his mas- 
 ter's daughters, a girl of twelve, who has the art of 
 " driving away his fancies and whims" finds the 
 discipline and labor not a little trying. Beginning 
 
FREDERICK PERTHES. 7 
 
 work in the morning at seven, he is on his feet till 
 eight at night, with an interval of half an hour at 
 mid-day for dinner ; and, during his first winter, he 
 has to stand so long on the cold stone-flags, collect- 
 ing orders, that his feet are frost-bitten ; and for nine 
 weeks he lies in his bed in his little attic-chamber. 
 This is stern training ; but, like the stormy blast 
 which fixes the rising oak more firmly in the soil, it 
 inures his spirit for the sharper struggles which are 
 yet before him. 
 
 The years of apprenticeship, however, are not an 
 unmixed misery. His vivacious and kindly temper- 
 ament turns them into " happy years of earnest striv- 
 ing." They expire in 1793 ; and he betakes himself 
 to a wider and more congenial sphere in Hamburgh 
 his apprenticeship to the book-trade finished, but 
 not his apprenticeship to life. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 * Can a life thus spent 
 Lead to the bliss she promises the wise, 
 Detach the soul from earth, and speed her to the skies ? M 
 
 Inner life Moral martyrdom " A philosopher' 1 Human perfectil il- 
 ity "My dignity" 1 The dark shadow The struggle Longings 
 "A friend" The seven Swabians Goethe Schiller "Enthusiasm 
 in me" Sunday-trips " A necessity" Three friends " Ve^ge of 
 destruction." 
 
 IN these early years, Perthes knows but little of 
 the struggles of the inner life. Shrinking sensitively 
 from all impurity and coarseness, he has found him- 
 self, among his fellow-apprentices of Leipzig, a sort 
 of martyr ; for " men here," he wrote, " must live 
 like others, or make up their minds to be persecu- 
 ted." But his spiritual cravings have not yet in- 
 tenseness enough to rise above the earth. The order 
 of the day in Germany for all young men is " philo- 
 sophy." Perthes must be in his turn a " philoso- 
 pher ;" and deeply does he study the favorite books 
 of the day, till at last, in his nineteenth year, after 
 poring for months during his hours of leisure over 
 a translation of Cicero " De Officiis," he believes he 
 has found true satisfaction." 
 
FREDERICK PERTHES. 9 
 
 His ideas, it may be supposed, as to his real rela- 
 tion to God, are of a kind the most crude and ro- 
 mantic. Kegarding life as " a vast institution of the 
 Creator for leading individuals, and the whole human 
 race, to an ever-increasing perfection" he does not 
 believe in evil, since every occurrence is only fitted 
 to improve us. And he writes : " I frequently be- 
 lieve that I can say with deep conviction, and with 
 honesty, that, in the struggle after perfection, I have 
 made some progress. Often have I had bright hours, 
 when, conscious of my dignity as a human being, and 
 meditating on the perfection of God and of His works, 
 I enjoyed a foretaste of my destiny." But, not sel- 
 dom, a dark shadow disturbs this pleasant dream. 
 " My principles," he writes to his uncle, " are so in- 
 terwoven with my whole being, that I have no power 
 to think of myself as without them ; but, as to al- 
 lowing them to actuate my life, that is quite another 
 matter. I should be a hypocrite, if I were to tell 
 you that they had been the never-failing guide of my 
 conduct. Now passion triumphs ; now habit ; again 
 a constitutional levity, which is quite at variance with 
 the results of my reflection ; and then I find that 
 perfection cannot be reached by a bound, but must 
 be slowly and painfully worked out." 
 
 Mounting the hill Difficulty without having first 
 got rid of his burden, no wonder he finds the task 
 a painful one. " I must, indeed, struggle hard," he 
 writes, " if I am to expel from my heart all that dis- 
 turbs my peace ; for, alas ! when I feel tranquil, 
 
10 THE MAN OF BUSINESS I 
 
 it is but the sleep of evil inclinations, which are 
 gathering strength for a more violent outburst 
 Ah ! my want of firmness, and my hot blood, often 
 destroy in one hour what it has been the labor of 
 weeks to build up; and then I am the victim of a 
 remorse, which is not soon succeeded by the unre- 
 proaching self-possession of a heart at peace with 
 itself." And he adds : " How often have I, with 
 tears, deplored my perverseness, when, after some 
 steadfast resolution to cling to the good, I have fallen, 
 because too weak to overcome some passion !" 
 
 But this disquiet is not a heart-piercing thing. 
 " You see, dear uncle," he will write, as if sporting 
 with these convictions, " that I have made a good 
 beginning ; for the being dissatisfied with myself is 
 a sure proof of this." And the methods he takes 
 of calming his disquietude indicate the same fact. 
 There is a void, and it caused him discomfort ; but 
 he is content to fill it with the creature. " The most 
 earnest wish of my heart," we find him writing, " is 
 to have a friend to whom I might freely unbosom 
 myself, who would strengthen me when I am weak, 
 and encourage me when I begin to despair : but, 
 alas ! I find no such friend, and yet I feel an irresist- 
 ible necessity to unburden my heart ; and so over- 
 powering is this longing, that I could press every 
 man to my breast, and say, * Thou, too, art God's 
 image.' " There is a heart into which all his long- 
 ings, and aspirations, and sorrows may be poured 
 the heart of HIM who, when here on earth, never cut 
 
FREDERICK PERTHES. 11 
 
 short one tale of woe, or blighted with a cold frown 
 one rising hope ; but that heart Perthes does not yet 
 know, nor is he earnest enough as yet to seek it. 
 
 To various lower fellowships his frank open nature 
 successively clings. One is the sprightly, joyous girl, 
 who so often has cheered him in his lonely hours. 
 " She is still most kind to me," he writes ; " she 
 knows how, by a few words, to comfort ine when I 
 am troubled and depressed." Another is, the inti- 
 macy formed at this period with seven young Swa- 
 bians young men of great mental activity and high 
 moral character, in whose society he now spends all 
 his leisure hours, giving him his first enjoyment of 
 youth's springy activities. " Never," says he, " have 
 I had such pleasant, heart-quickening hours, as now 
 in the society of my beloved new friends. The mo- 
 ment I enter, I read my welcome in their eyes." 
 And another attraction which these Swabians have 
 for him, is the introduction they give him to the 
 friendship of such men as Goethe, Herder, and 
 Schiller. 
 
 To Frederick's intellect these latter fellowships are 
 like the morning sun rising on the closed petals of 
 the flowers. " When I saw other young men of my 
 own age," he writes, " setting about everything with 
 a sort of sprightliness which I never could command 
 I was grieved at heart, because I was convinced 
 that nothing great or noble could be accomplished 
 without ardor or vivacity. But now I feel that there 
 is enthusiasm in me." And, as he is leaving Leip- 
 
12 THE MAN OP BUSINESS: 
 
 zig, he adds : " I am astonished at the transforma- 
 tion I have undergone. I have had seasons of trial, 
 but they have brought forth much good. My mind 
 has here begun to develope itself, and to apprehend 
 the greatness of humanity." 
 
 But there is nothing in all this to subdue the 
 guilty sinner. " How highly," we find him writing, 
 with a kind of pagan searedness of conscience, " is 
 man still favored by the gods ! how love exudes 
 from me at every pore !" And again : " I have 
 just returned from a solitary walk, which has done 
 me much good ; I was penetrated by the glory of 
 Nature ; certainly I never was better in soul than 
 now. Dearest brother, be it what it may that now 
 inspires me God, Nature, Heart do not grudge it 
 me, but rather rejoice with me." 
 
 And the joys he seeks are of the earthly kind, in 
 which only such a heart can rest. Working at his 
 business the half of each alternate Sunday, the re- 
 mainder is devoted to the most trivial and unholy 
 engagements. " Thirty of us," he writes, describing 
 one of his Sunday pleasure-trips, " ladies and gentle- 
 men some old, some young floated yesterday down 
 the Elbe, to the sound of kettle-drums and trumpets, 
 and enjoyed ourselves to the full." And, on holi- 
 days, the theatre, concerts, and masquerades, present 
 to him the most pleasurable attractions. 
 
 A gracious Lord, however, does not suffer him to 
 go wholly to sleep. " I have tasted," he writes, two 
 years after he had settled in Hamburgh, " the in 
 
FREDERICK PERTHES. 13 
 
 toxicating pleasures of a world, in which all is colli- 
 sion and opposition : I have had my experiences ; 
 but I am not the better for them, and not to become 
 better is to become worse." 
 
 Once and again, he repeats the endeavor to find a 
 resting-place in intellectual joys. " My heart," he 
 says, " yearns for the society of cultivated men. Such 
 society is a necessity for me ; and I must compass it, 
 unless I am to sink entirely." And Hamburgh af- 
 fords not a little of such society ; his rising energy 
 in the publishing trade gradually opening it up to 
 him. " I am now," he writes, for example, " enjoy- 
 ing to the uttermost all that a quick and ardent sen- 
 sibility can enjoy. I have found three friends, full 
 of talent and heart, of pure and upright minds, and 
 distinguished by great and varied culture. When 
 they saw my striving after the good, and my love for 
 the beautiful when they perceived how I sought 
 and endeavored they gave me their friendship ; and 
 oh, how happy I now am ! I am like a fish thrown 
 from the dry land into the water." And, at these 
 moments, he will write in self- complacency, thus : 
 " It does one so much good when one can come be- 
 fore God and say, ' Thou, O God, knowest that I am 
 good.' " 
 
 But, at other moments, the illusion vanishes. " I 
 am still too often," he will write, " the slave of passion 
 and of habit. And again : " Every frail old man, 
 whose appearance indicates inward tranquillity, is an 
 object of envy to me ; a thousand times a day I wish 
 2 
 
14 THE MAN OF BUSINESS. 
 
 myself in his place, though involving the extinction 
 of all the pleasures of youth. I would fain possess 
 that cold-blooded calm that dullness of nerve, if I 
 could thereby be set free from this struggle betwixt 
 passion and duty, which drives me to the verge of 
 destruction." 
 
CHAPTEK III. 
 
 " Let thy tossed mind anchor upon HIM." 
 
 The dawn Sin and conscience The mirage " Trainer-in-chief" 
 Play of nerves The virtuous ideal " Internal anxiety" " A pool 
 sinner" The Sin-Forgiver The God-man" Centre of my being" 
 German subtleties God reduced to man's level, not God become 
 man Goethean paganism The victory" Eeligious certainty." 
 
 A NEW light now begins to dawn. " It was through 
 the consciousness of SIN, in the forms of sensuality 
 and pride," he wrote, many years afterwards, referring 
 to this turning-point of his inner life, " that I came to 
 recognize my need of redemption, and the truth of 
 God's revelation in Christ. Whoever disdains this 
 way," he added, " will, if he be intellectual, wander 
 through speculation and mystic symbolism to panthe- 
 ism ; or, if he be superficial, will take the convenient 
 way of progress to perfection, Jesus of Nazareth be- 
 ing the trainer-in-chief." 
 
 One day, a friend who has already been taught the 
 more excellent way, whispers to him "Perthes! 
 your present love of good is a mere play of nerves, 
 which assumes the appearance of a nobler passion, 
 but is merely the result of a sensitive and susceptible 
 temperament." " Ah ! you are right," replies Fred- 
 erick; "you have exactly hit my case: for, even 
 
16 THE MAN OF BUSINESS I 
 
 when all else is lulled to sleep, the spirit of evil, I 
 find, is ever wakeful." 
 
 The root of the evil is daily growing more appa- 
 rent. " It is so difficult," he writes, " to continue 
 good, and so much more difficult to become better, 
 that it has often occurred to me to doubt whether we 
 were born good." And to another : " So long as I 
 believed that our improvement was dependent merely 
 on the rectification of our understanding, and that 
 men must necessarily become better and happier as 
 they became more enlightened, the future perfection 
 of our race upon earth appeared probable to me ; but 
 now that daily experience shows me the fallibility of 
 the wisest of men shows rue men whose theories of 
 life are unimpeachable, given up to the practice of 
 vice I have lost all faith in the realization of this 
 virtuous ideal. If our evil deeds flowed from wrong 
 principles, our errors might then be traced back to 
 misconceptions, and we might improve as these were 
 rectified. But can a more enlightened understanding 
 strengthen the feeble will, restore the unsound heart, 
 or change the unnatural and artificial into nature and 
 simplicity ? Nay, assuredly ; goodness is no neces- 
 sary result of enlightenment of mind this may, in- 
 deed, eradicate follies, but not a single vice." 
 
 Another friend, whom he meets at this period, 
 speaks to him of " sin as itself the cause of our de- 
 parture from God." Sin, therefore, must be pardoned 
 before there can be any confiding fellowship with 
 Him. " Salvation," says his friend to him, " is to be 
 
FREDERICK PERTHES. 17 
 
 found, not in feelings listening to the voice of God 
 within, but in the historical fact of the Redemption, 
 and in its converting power on the heart of man." 
 
 But still he " timidly draws back" from the Cross. 
 Indeed the Cross, even as a doctrine, is as yet but 
 dimly comprehended. "My internal anxiety,' 1 he 
 writes, " calls for some one who in my stead may 
 give satisfaction ; and undefined feelings come across 
 me, which seek after a God who, as man, has felt the 
 agonies of man. I have leaned," he adds, " on many 
 a staff which has given way, and have seen many a 
 star fall from heaven." 
 
 A better " staff" now is in store for him. " I am 
 a poor sinner" we find him writing one day, " in 
 myself helpless and comfortless." And, on another 
 occasion : " Again and again, the all-important ques- 
 tion recurs Can God forgive sin ? and will He ? He 
 who does not understand the full force of this ques- 
 tion does not know himself."' Perthes sees his sin, 
 and he begins to see the Sin-For giver. 
 
 Still there is not peace. " The time/' says he to a 
 friend one day, u when these facts are to become vital 
 to me, and the measure of their vitality, depends on 
 the grace of God." But his soul is now too earnest 
 to suffer this conviction to lull him into a stupid re- 
 pose. "I want," he says, on another occasion, giving 
 utterance to his heart's intense longing, " I want to 
 grasp the uncreated Son of the Father as in reality 
 my God. I want this God-man to become the very 
 centre of my being." 
 
 2* 
 
18 THE MAN OF BUSINESS : 
 
 In Germany at that time, as in England at this 
 day, Christianity is paraded by certain thinkers in a 
 certain subtle philosophic guise, which, to a mind 
 like Perthes', has not a little attraction. Talking 
 glibly of the " mysteries of godliness," they affect 
 familiarity with a literally personal God, and compla- 
 cently boast of their growing assimilation to His 
 earthly life of self-sacrifice. But the Christ they 
 worship is not God become man, but God reduced 
 to man's level ; and the God they worship is, not 
 the just and holy Lawgiver, magnifying his law in 
 the Cross, but an indulgent and feeble father, who, 
 forgetting the claims of law, has retired from the 
 seat of justice, and has begun to " clear the guilty." 
 Perthes, however, must have sin HIS sin -forgiven'; 
 else no peace, no rest. " For my part," he says, " I en- 
 tertain a sort of horror for the mode in which the great 
 mystery of godliness is treated in these circles ; they 
 insist on being so very comfortable, so much at home 
 with their religion." 
 
 And of one of them, Jean Paul, he writes : " He 
 longs indeed for truth, and for a settled faith ; and 
 yet he cannot abstain from representing the God- 
 man as a mere creature of human imagination." 
 And, on another occasion, resolving into a mere 
 paganism this deceitful perversion of the only real 
 Gospel, he says : " In Winkelmann's Letters I find 
 the Goethean Paganism more beautifully and forcibly 
 developed than anywhere else, as the opposite pole 
 of Christianity, The one is all nature; and every 
 
FREDERICK PERTHES. 19 
 
 creature, as if self-created, is to stand only on its own 
 feet man is to enjoy all things, and to resist or en- 
 dure all unavoidable evil, with a strength whose 
 origin is in himself; the other is a free-gift investi- 
 ture all given by grace and received by love. Hea- 
 thenism and Christianity exhaust everything; and 
 that which lies between, call it by what name you 
 please, is a mere inconsistent fragment mere patch- 
 work and vanity resulting either in despondency or 
 in pride." 
 
 The victory comes at last. " How," we find him 
 writing to a friend, in the spring of 1805, "can I 
 ever sufficiently thank you, who have been the 
 means of giving a fixed direction to my longings ? 
 It is through, you that I have attained to the reli- 
 gious certainty which 1 now enjoy, and shall enjoy 
 throughout eternity." And, years afterward, he 
 thus describes the way by which he reached it : 
 " My trouble on account of selfishness and impurity 
 drove me to seek reconciliation with the God before 
 whom I trembled. Christianity was not forced upon 
 me, but I upon Christianity ; I was thrown by an 
 inward necessity into the arms of the Saviour." 
 And he adds : " For him who in the anguish of 
 his heart, cries out, ' I am a miserable sinner,' and 
 stretches out his arms to the Saviour for him, I 
 say, ' Christ died.' How closely then is faith in the 
 Redeemer allied with a realization of one's own sin- 
 fulness !" He has reached the landing-place, and is 
 safe. 
 
CHAPTEK IV. 
 
 * Each breath is burdened with a bidding, and every minute hath ita 
 mission. 1 ' 
 
 Born to turn the wheel Life's battle New aim Book-trade Caro- 
 line "Not drift away from the world" "Guiding angel" Life- 
 heroism War Home broken up Patriot heart " Great, because 
 in evil times" " I can pray now." 
 
 PERTHES is not a mystic, gauging frames and feel- 
 ings. " I am more than ever persuaded," he writes, 
 " that my destiny is an active, masculine career 
 that I am a man born to turn my own wheel, and that 
 of others, with energy." And right manfully he turns 
 it on many a trying scene. " How can I ever thank 
 you !" he writes to the friend already indicated ; 
 " you it is who have strengthened my young heart, 
 and have opened up for me a new moral career." 
 Up to this time he has mistaken a planet (as he ex- 
 presses it) for the polar star the aurora borealis for 
 the dawn of the coming day. The battle of life now 
 is to be fought with other weapons ; and he fights it 
 not in vain. 
 
 When he first entered on the book-trade it was as 
 the means of a mere livelihood, and ultimately of ac- 
 quiring an independence. But now he is possessed 
 
FREDERICK PERTHES. 21 
 
 with a conviction so intense of its bearing on the 
 people's entire intellectual life, that the mere question 
 of gain has henceforth scarcely any weight with him. 
 " I know," says he, one day, " that the book-trade, 
 can be managed mechanically, and as a way merely 
 of making money just as I see, among priests, and 
 professors, and generals, some who, in giving their 
 services, think only of their daily bread. But a shud- 
 der comes over me, when I find booksellers make 
 common cause with a crew of scribbers who hire out 
 tlieir wits for stabling and provender. Germany is 
 deluged with wretched publications, and will be de- 
 livered from this plague only when the booksellers 
 shall care more for honor than for gold." 
 
 And his zeal does not evaporate in vain regrets or 
 reproaches. u Dear Campe," we find him writing to 
 a brother in trade, " in order to bring about all that 
 is possible and desirable, let us first see that we our- 
 selves are, what we ought to be ; let us also increase 
 our knowledge, and strive as much as possible to win 
 for our opinions friends and advocates among the 
 young people of our own standing. There are now 
 five of us ; and what may not five accomplish, if 
 only they are in earnest ? Let each strive to diffuse 
 a high tone over his peculiar circle ; let each seek 
 out some choice spirits; and, if we persevere, and 
 God favor us, what may we not achieve ?" He pro- 
 ceeds, with characteristic energy, to carry his thoughts 
 into action ; and few men ever accomplished so great 
 a work. 
 
22 THE MAN OP BUSINESS I 
 
 Turning aside for an interval from the tumult and 
 throng of business, he finds, in the daughter of the 
 distinguished Claudius, " a help from above such as 
 his soul required" one in whom are " peace and 
 stability, devotion and truth." "My Caroline," he 
 writes, " makes me unspeakably happy She is pious, 
 faithful, true-hearted, and submissive ; her inward 
 course she shapes for herself, and pursues it with a 
 steady step." And to herself, on one of his business- 
 journeys : " Can you, then, believe that my restless 
 labors, my activity and energy, can be detrimental to 
 you? Rather let us thank God that He enables me 
 to take pleasure in things which might have been to 
 me a burden and a weariness. Believe me, I under- 
 stand your present feelings thoroughly. While you 
 lived in your father's house, you maintained a con- 
 stant walk with God. You had had but one thought, 
 and but one path. But then your walk with God 
 was the walk of a child who knew sin and the world, 
 and life, not at all, or only by name. Now, however, 
 simply because you are in the world, this condition 
 must be disturbed. Would you live apart from 
 everything ? No, we are not to drift away from the 
 world. God demands not the sacrifice of natural 
 ties, but the submission of our will to His. The sor- 
 row and annoyances which may be our lot in the 
 world where He has placed us, we should bear with 
 inward tranquillity, rather than seek to escape from 
 them." 
 
 These are wise counsels, and they are not lost upon 
 
FREDERICK PERTHES. 23 
 
 her. " Caroline does not find life easy," he writes at 
 a later period to a friend ; " in spite of her cairn 
 temper, and her rich and lively fancy, she feels it 
 hard to have to do with the ever-changing and finite 
 things of the world and of time. And yet, when I 
 see her holding fast by her inward life in spite of the 
 annoyances which the tumult and distractions of her 
 daily existence too often cause her, and also fulfilling 
 the outward duties of her position in a manner so 
 self-denying, kind, and noble, she imparts strength to 
 me, and becomes truly my guiding angel. Her lofty 
 spirit, her life-heroism, her humility of bearing, her 
 pure piety, constitute the happiness and blessing of 
 my life." 
 
 The war breaks up his pleasant home. Ham- 
 burgh is for months in the hands of the French ; 
 and, with a true patriot-heart, he forsakes all rather 
 than be a slave. Most trying hardships follow ; but 
 Perthes stands firm. "May God enable me to do 
 what is right without exultation," writes the brave 
 man, as the trial is at its height : " I will preserve 
 my integrity ; I will look upon my fatherland with a 
 good conscience, and will return to our city with an 
 open countenance and head erect." 
 
 Seldom has a family been overtaken by a calamity 
 more stern. " There are season s," he writes to his 
 wife, who has fled with the children for safety to 
 Gotha, " in which the whole weight of the anxieties 
 which await us in the future, and of the sorrow which 
 is involved in the present, presses heavily upon me. 
 
24 THE MAN OF BUSINESS I 
 
 Your task is, indeed, a hard one ; but mine is not 
 light. Have patience ; be calm and self-possessed, 
 my beloved Caroline : trust to my sense and pru- 
 dence, and leave the event to God. I trust to youi 
 wisdom, your energy, your affection ; and I pray 
 God to give you what you want, and that is tran- 
 quillity." And in another letter : " Thank God that 
 you, my darlings, and my only earthly treasures, are 
 well. Dear Caroline, what a vast wilderness the 
 world becomes when man has no home ! The sight 
 of little children always brings tears into my eyes." 
 
 But Perthes breasts the surge nobly. "Ought 
 we not feel ourselves great," he says, one day, " just 
 because we are born in such evil times ?" But it is 
 not Roman greatness. " What the highest greatness 
 is without love," he remarks, on another occasion, 
 " we may see in the devil." That greatness Perthes 
 covets no more ; but the crisis proves him truly 
 great. " God will help me," he writes ; " I dare not 
 leave what I have undertaken. It is my business to 
 lift up my voice for truth and justice as opportunity 
 offers, and to show that the will of God is not alto- 
 gether forgotton, in spite of the sinfulness and weak- 
 ness which everywhere impede its clear and perfect 
 recognition. That in times such as these, when the 
 struggle betwixt good and evil, truth and falsehood, 
 \s so fierce, a man cannot hope to achieve anything 
 without risking much that, in order to do homage 
 to truth and right, a man must be ready to give up 
 heart, and life, and fortune, and estate that, my 
 
FREDERICK PERTHES. 25 
 
 noble wife, you know as well as I. I have courage, 
 and energy, and moderate desires ; and I am at peace 
 with God, and with myself. I can pray now as I 
 never prayed before, and I pray much. My much- 
 loved Caroline, take courage and be calm ; God will 
 help you, and me also." Perthes' Christianity is not 
 a hot-house plant it can brave and can outlive the 
 storm. 
 
 3 
 
CHAPTEE V. 
 
 " If I have more to spin, 
 The wheel shall go." 
 
 German mind Erratic tendencies Perthes 1 " plough" New era in 
 publishing Claudius "Tried wrestlers" Unselfish in business 
 Social sympathies "Family Egotism" 1 Neighborly Loving and 
 being loved Battle of youth past Heart not old " Truth and 
 Spirit-love" Christian phrases " Breath of the age" " Organ- 
 grinders." 
 
 THE war has ended ; and his desolated home is re- 
 stored, and his business is once more resumed. Not 
 content with half-measures, he sees that the time is 
 come for giving to the book-trade of Germany a fresh 
 impulse ; and right well does he fulfil his mission in 
 the momentous era which, during the next twenty 
 or thirty years, marks the German mind. Scarce a 
 single peril besets the faith, at the hands of his er- 
 ratic countrymen, which Perth es does not hasten at 
 once to meet. " I have the gift," we find him writ- 
 ing, respecting one of his great publishing enterprises, 
 " of uniting the dispersed, bringing the distant near 
 together, and tuning any discord of heart and mind 
 amongst right-feeling men. This is the plough I 
 have ploughed with, all my life." And he does not 
 miss his mark. The undertaking obtains the cordial 
 
FREDERICK PERTHES. 27 
 
 adherence of the leading minds of the day. A new 
 era dawns on the publishing business of Continental 
 Europe. 
 
 " It does a wrestling man good," says he, on one 
 occasion, alluding to a picture of Claudius which he 
 has been hanging up in his room, " to be surrounded 
 constantly by tried wrestlers." Not memorials only 
 of departed wrestlers, but living athletes in life's great 
 struggle, does he always seek to gather round him. 
 " Remember," is one of his maxims, " you are not 
 alone in the world," And worthily does he fulfil the 
 maxim in his own daily life. Not selfishly jealous of 
 rival competitors, but aiming only to multiply the 
 channels of blessing, he initiates into his own great 
 thoughts one and another, and another, in whom his 
 eagle eye discerns a capacity to rise to greatness. 
 " The majority of men are common-place," he writes, 
 " and carry on their calling in a common-place way, 
 whether it be spiritual, or worldly, mercantile or mil- 
 itary." 
 
 If all Christians were like Perthes, the name of 
 Christ would be less often blasphemed in the count- 
 ing-house and in the busy mart. "We have now, 
 dear brother," are his words to one of those men, 
 who have owed to him so much, " worked together 
 for a quarter of a century, carrying on one and the 
 same concern in troublous times. Not once have we 
 taken different views as to ' meum and tuum ;' not 
 for one moment during, all these years have we ever 
 felt it possible to waver in our mutual confidence. 
 
28 THE MAN OF BUSINESS I 
 
 Let us thank God that at the hour of parting that 
 confidence is as firm and pure as it has been during 
 our long-associated life." 
 
 Thomas Chalmers often notes in his "Diary" a 
 tendency to " hide himself from his own flesh." A 
 warmer or more genial heart ^never throbbed within 
 a human bosom ; and yet he needed to set a daily 
 watch upon his spirit, lest he should be pleasing him- 
 self by shutting himself up in his study y or in the 
 privacy of home, instead of going out among his fel- 
 lows, or welcoming them to his social board. Perthes 
 is continually watching, and stimulating others to 
 watch, against this snare. "Do not shut up your 
 house from your friends," he writes to one of his 
 married daughters "it is perilous, and leads to 
 family-egotism, and brings its own punishment. 
 Communicate freely with others, and show that do- 
 mestic happiness does not estrange you from them. 
 The earth is God's house, and we may not live only 
 to ourselves. I know that you will not let any needy 
 person whom you can help go empty away; but 
 neighbors and acquaintances wish to talk of their af- 
 fairs, their joys and sorrows, and those of their 
 friends, and nothing is so offensive as cold reserve, as 
 though we were beings of a superior nature, able to 
 live, and suffer, and rejoice alone." And to his wife, 
 during her residence in Gotha : " Only make the at- 
 tempt ; let your heart speak in truth and confidence, 
 and you will find that what comes from the heart 
 goes to the heart ; you will be met more than half 
 
FREDERICK PERTHES. 29 
 
 way, for the necessity of loving and being loved is 
 common to us all." 
 
 His sun is now past its meridian ; but bis heart 
 does not grow old. " The battle of youth," we find 
 him writing, "is over and gone, and evening is at 
 hand. Time may blunt the nerves, and stiffen the 
 limbs, but it has no power over love, which is the life 
 of men the core of their personality. Despite my 
 half-century, I feel no diminution of love." 
 
 And this freshness of the heart gives to him an 
 ever-freshening zest for truth. " Love," we find him 
 writing, " is the sum-total of life ; and it is only ac- 
 cording to our measure of it, that we are accessible 
 to truth. Man has part in the eternal, only in so 
 far as he cherishes in himself the Divine Spirit- 
 love." 
 
 Nothing is so perilous to the soul as familiarity 
 with evangelical phrases, coupled with deadness of 
 heart. Never in any age was this peril more menac- 
 ing than in our own. One day Perthes, warning a 
 young man in whom he feels a deep concern, writes : 
 " The hurry, characteristic of our age, appears in the 
 development of its religious life. Dangers which, 
 years ago, it would have been ridiculous to think of, 
 are already at hand. Our youth, who have any spir- 
 itual life, complain of Rationalism as cold and barren, 
 and make use of Christian phrases, and an orthodox 
 Biblical terminology, which the breath of the age 
 not the Holy Ghost has blown in their way without, 
 however, being convinced of their own sins, or long- 
 3* 
 
30 THE MAN OF BUSINESS. 
 
 ing for deliverance from them, or humbly accepting 
 justification by faith. The spirit of the age may, in- 
 deed, imbue a generation with Christian doctrine; 
 but Christian faith can arise only from that sense of 
 need for deliverance from sin which makes a man 
 stretch out his arms in humble supplication. Chris- 
 tian knowledge without Christian faith is a danger- 
 ous thing, both for the individual and for a people." 
 " Organ-grinders" he used* to designate those re- 
 tailers of Bible-terms and evangelical phrases " a 
 weariness to themselves and to others." And is not 
 the Church groaning at this hour beneath the bur- 
 den of such ? Cant utterances, but no commanding 
 power is not that the caterpillar which is devouring 
 the freshness of the trees in the Lord's garden ? 
 God ! arise, and renew our waste places. Hast not 
 hath said, " I will restore that which the caterpillar 
 thou eaten ?" 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 "Such ar one seemeth as superior to the native instability of crea- 
 
 That he d'oeth he doeth as a God, and men will marvel at his cour- 
 age." 
 
 "Fi"ht to the end" " Only figure among ciphers" Neander Strauss 
 Salvation of souls"" Energy" A model for publishers-Gotha 
 -Secularism-His son at college-A snare-Besser-Consolations- 
 Yearnings " A dark web." 
 
 EARNESTLY does Perthes continue to ply his voca- 
 tion. " To withdraw one's self entirely from contact 
 with the world," he writes to his son, urging on him 
 his own healthful religious life, " is impossible under 
 the conditions of time and space. But, if the attempt 
 to lead an exclusively inner life be hopeless, we have 
 the comfort of knowing that such a life is not or- 
 dained of God, but devised by man's own deluded 
 will. We may, indeed, with the loftiest sentiments 
 and the sublimest ideas, imagine it ; but we are de- 
 ceived by Satan. Behind the lofty sentiment lurks 
 sloth, which hopes for the crown without the con- 
 flict; and behind the sublime idea lurks pride, 
 which, in its independence of the world, would fain 
 assume Divinity. We can do nothing but fight 
 to the end. If we have conquered the grosser and 
 
32 THE MAN OF BUSINESS! 
 
 ruder forms of temptation, we have hourly to guard 
 against more subtle and gentle attacks. This world 
 is not made for rest after victory : fight on, love, and 
 trust God's grace." 
 
 Bacon remarks somewhere, that " he who plots to 
 be the only figure among ciphers, is the decay of a 
 whole age." It is not among ciphers that Frederick 
 Perthes takes so marked a place. The leading 
 minds of the age owe to him a directing energy. " I 
 think," we find him writing, for example, regarding 
 the method adopted by some Germans to confront 
 the infidel Strauss, " our divines might have shown a 
 greater respect for themselves than they have done 
 in encountering Strauss. They have simply taken up 
 their position in the arena of scientific theology, which 
 is common to him and them whereas they, whose 
 vocation it is to defend the truths insulted, might 
 well have manifested indignation against the man 
 who con amore and audaciously routs about among 
 the events and truths on which the whole Christian 
 world believes its eternal salvation to depend." And, 
 writing to the great Neander, he says : " I do not 
 think that much would be gained by discovering 
 scientifically the weak points of Strauss, Vatke, and 
 the like. When it is merely science against science, 
 I tremble for theology. The matter on hand is, not 
 the solution of a scientific problem, but the salvation 
 of souls. Whoever would make the saving truths 
 of revelation his own, or would lead others to them, 
 must start from facts coming within his own imme- 
 
FREDERICK PERTHES. 33 
 
 diate knowledge. The depravity of all mankind ; 
 sin'; our double nature (after conversion) ; wrest- 
 ling, weakness, and death in every individual ; and 
 the ardent longing of the whole man for deliverance 
 from such evils ; these are facts, and they form 
 a basis for faith in the salvation revealed by Scrip- 
 ture. To every one in whose soul God has estab- 
 lished such a basis of faith, the life of Jesus and of 
 the apostles becomes the keystone of the world's his- 
 tory, even scientifically regarded; and it was this 
 evolution of sacred history from facts within our im- 
 mediate ken which I meant, when expressing my joy 
 that, in addition to your critical history, you contem- 
 plated also a positive treatment of primitive Chris- 
 tianity." 
 
 Perthes is not the man to suffer this flood of de- 
 structive error to go forth over the land unchecked. 
 " A miscellaneous rabble," he writes, " are now rifling 
 Strauss' works, with a view to their popular interpre- 
 tation and universal diffusion. A sharp eye should 
 be kept on them, as they evidently have high intel- 
 lect at command. Whoever, like me, has seen par- 
 ties rise and fall during half a century, is not startled 
 at the up-blazing of a meteor. Straussism, however, 
 may become a power for ten years ; just because in 
 ten years the devil can destroy many souls, it is not 
 to be overlooked." These words reveal the secret 
 of his many trade-undertakings ; he is not a mere 
 panderer to the taste even of the really religious, 
 hoping thereby to make money; he lives for a 
 
34 . THE MAN OF BUSINESS : 
 
 nobler end his mission is to circulate truth, and, 
 worthily does he fulfil it. 
 
 "We are now beginning a common enterprise," 
 he writes to a professor at Heidelberg in 1825, on 
 commencing a religious periodical, " by which we 
 desire to forward the cause of truth and God's glory. 
 I say a common enterprise, because I will employ in 
 it my time, my energies, and my substance in order to 
 procure for worthy men an opportunity of influencing 
 the age. I do not expect any return, the difficulties 
 with which such a periodical would have to contend 
 being very great." 
 
 It is Perthes who at this period induces Neander 
 to commence his immortal " History of the Chris- 
 tian Church." " Your challenge " writes Neander 
 
 o ' 
 
 to him, " will not have been in vain." And, after 
 receiving a visit from him at Gotha, at which it is 
 decided that he shall undertake the great work, 
 Perthes writes: "God give Neander health and 
 strength to finish it ! Perhaps there is no one who, 
 at this present time, can do so much as he for Chris- 
 tianity." If Perthes had never done any other service 
 than this, he had not lived in vain. 
 
 The poet Cowper, tracing the aberrations of the 
 sceptic to their real source, has written : 
 
 " Faults in the life breed errors in the braim, 
 And these reciprocally these again. 
 The mind and conduct mutually imprint, 
 And stamp their image in each other's mint." 
 
FREDERICK PERTHES. 35 
 
 And again, he says : 
 
 " Thus men go wrong with an ingenious skill, 
 Bend the straight rule to their own crooked will; 
 And, with a clear and shining lamp supplied, 
 First put it out, then take it for a guide." 
 
 It is because Perthes has himself been driven upon 
 truth by the inward necessities of an accusing con- 
 science and of a vacant heart, that he feels so intense 
 a compassion for all who are out of the way. " On 
 one side," we have him writing, " is secularism, dead 
 to all but earthly things ; and, on the other, a rest- 
 less agitation, which spends its strength in unsettling 
 all that has hitherto given peace to the soul." And 
 again : " I am convinced that you will soon dis- 
 cover that all mere philosophy is vain, and will 
 gladly avail yourself of Revelation ; if, indeed, any 
 true religious feeling be awakened within you." And 
 to another : " Strauss' work will shake all who have 
 not been brought, by personal experience and in- 
 ward struggle, to Christ." 
 
 His eldest son has left home for the University ; 
 and the father, it may be supposed, is not without his 
 anxieties. " When a man," he writes to him, " has 
 passed through the season of wayward minority and 
 stands erect in manhood, he asks himself, * What 
 means all this V his reply must be ' All below is 
 vain and fleeting ; true joy and peace are only to be 
 found in spiritual life. 7 I have done many things, 
 and perhaps well ; but where is the fruit of the bios- 
 
36 THE MAN OF BUSINESS: 
 
 soms which looked so promising ? The ideals have 
 disappeared, but not the faculty of labor ; and there- 
 fore, clothed with humility, * Forward,' I say, * to 
 suffer and to do.' This is to become a master in the 
 business of life ; but it is vain to expect that this can 
 be attained without passing through an apprentice- 
 ship. Here it is that so many well-disposed youths 
 of the present day make shipwreck. They affect a 
 simplicity, plainness, and stoutness of heart, which 
 almost look like the repose and dignity of age." 
 
 And others share his tender sympathies. " It is 
 your body which again inflicts upon you the well- 
 known ' grey season,' " we find him writing to his 
 friend Besser, whose failing health has brought on 
 fits of deep melancholy ; " and no one is perfect mas- 
 ter over bodily moods. You might very often scare 
 away the * grey' mood, by calmly considering how 
 trivial are the causes of your anxiety, and with what 
 ease you have overcome such before. But, indeed, I 
 know only too well how it is with the man : the head 
 may be weary and the heart full of love and devo- 
 tion ; or, on the contrary, the head clear, and the 
 heart cold and barren ; but sorrow weighs down 
 head and heart alike, just as joy brightens both. 
 4 Take courage till life's phantasmagoria are over.' 
 You say that life becomes a burden ; and so it must 
 to us all, as we grow old : but we should try to ac- 
 custom ourselves to a new race of men, or rather to 
 the same men differently dressed. While we live, 
 we must put up with novelty ; but I shall be glad to 
 
FREDERICK PERTHE8. 37 
 
 die one gets tired of evermore picking off one husk 
 after another from the kernel of truth. Here nothing 
 endures ; what most we love, is torn away ; all is 
 brittle and perishable, and we ourselves are but 
 broken reeds. Our heart overflows with love to 
 some dear object ; and yet, how imperfect the union, 
 how weak the sympathy ! And even he who knows 
 that love to God is the only enduring love, and that 
 it is the only anchor of the soul how deeply he feels 
 that he can but seldom draw near to his Father with 
 perfect resignation and sincerity !" 
 
 And, again, to the same friend : " Your bodily 
 frame is not in unison with your loving nature, your 
 lively fancy, and elastic activity. You have been 
 weaving again a dark web of feeling and thought, 
 which holds you fast, as though it were of iron 
 strength, while in reality it is but a spider's web." 
 4 
 
CHAPTEE VII. 
 
 ''Faith, firmness, confidence, consistency these are well allied.* 1 
 
 " Vegetating" and " Living" Instinct of activity " Hard work" A 
 " serious" dream " Common-places for the invisible" a Bibliolatry' 1 
 The shell and the kernel Symmetry of truth Bible's unity- 
 Luther Rationalism Pietism and Christianity Tauler Theologi- 
 cal strife and religious life Not the ideal of Christ, but His person 
 Life in God " Polite society" Pillory " Understands erection 
 of a stake" Party-wrangling. 
 
 As years pass on, Perthes does not " turn the 
 wheel" less energetically. " * All is vanity/ " he 
 writes, " does indeed come home to the man of ripe 
 years, when he reflects upon all that in life's vicissi- 
 tudes has charmed and enchained his heart and 
 mind ; but he who, because all things are vain, 
 should cease to take a part in them, would merely 
 vegetate, and no longer live. An entirely contem- 
 plative life is an impossibility ; the instinct of activity 
 is innate ; at all events, hard work is to me a habit 
 with which I cannot dispense. He who should at- 
 tempt nothing on earth but to meditate on God, and 
 feel His presence, would soon cease to do either. The 
 Christian is set in the midst of the world ; and, let 
 him stand where he may, he will always be called on 
 to fulfil various external duties : in these he is to act 
 
FREDERICK PERTHES. 39 
 
 as skilfully, expeditiously, and energetically as his 
 faculties will allow ; and he may not extinguish his 
 earthly nature or his senses, for he needs them all in 
 order to be God's faithful servant and steward." 
 
 Perthes continues to urge upon all his friends, with 
 a growing earnestness, the grave responsibilities of 
 this brief hour of probation. "Life," we find him 
 writing, " is a dream, but a very serious one ; and 
 our dreams are solemn truths veiled in airy fiction. 
 People here are taken up with the visible, and have 
 only a few trite common-places to bestow upon the 
 invisible." Perthes himself has " learned," as he ex- 
 presses it, " to deny himself without self-annihilation, 
 and to renounce the world without living a monkish 
 life." 
 
 There is a delusive religious system in England at 
 the present day, originating in an "inner life" not 
 implanted by God, but self-developed, deriding and 
 pitying with a kind of condescending scorn the lowly 
 Christian, who, cleaving to his Bible, lives day by 
 day upon " every word which proceedeth out of the 
 mouth of God." Surrounded in Germany at this pe- 
 riod by that pestilential and deceitful atmosphere, 
 Perthes writes : " What we need, to equip us for the 
 battle of life, is Christ and the holy Scripture." 
 And on another occasion : " I find that the benefit 
 I receive from Scripture in a great measure depends 
 upon myself. How often, on turning to it to clear 
 up some historical sequence or some obscure doctrine 
 to find material for imagination or ground for hy- 
 
40 THE MAN OF BUSINESS I 
 
 pothesis, I only get at the shell instead of the kernel ! 
 or, again, if in high-wrought moments a clearer in- 
 sight be afforded, how prone we are to seek to im- 
 prove and define it 'by our own strength, and so to 
 bring to light human fictions instead of divine truth ! 
 The mysteries of holy Scripture are only revealed to 
 us when we are seeking for nothing else but for the 
 way of reconciliation with God, and for help in our 
 battle with selfishness and sin." And again : " God 
 gave a revelation to men, not to increase their knowl- 
 edge, but to deliver them from sin." 
 
 The Bible is to him not a multitude of discordant 
 fragments, but a divine and majestic whole ; and for 
 this symmetry of truth he is peculiarly jealous, be- 
 cause he feels that it bears directly and immediately 
 upon the symmetry of the Christian life. " The ear- 
 lier theologians," we find him writing, about the Bi- 
 ble's charactreistic as an unbroken unity, " have per- 
 haps too little remembered that God has spoken in 
 the Bible, not immediately, but through John, Peter, 
 and Paul. At the present time, however, we are 
 certainly in danger of overlooking the unity of the 
 Scripture, while dwelling on the individual writings 
 of Paul, John, and Peter. In short, the trees prevent 
 our seeing the forest, and we forget that it is not 
 with a colled ion of separate writings that we have to 
 do, but with the Bible as a whole, as being the Word 
 which, during the course of the world's history, God 
 wrote down for man's salvation ; and which contains 
 nothing more, indeed, but still nothing less, than is 
 
FREDERICK PERTHES. 41 
 
 necessary to reveal the mystery of godliness. It is 
 not so much from the individuality of the writers of 
 the Epistles and Gospels that we are to understand 
 their writings, as from the relation of these to the 
 whole." 
 
 His favorite author is Luther ; and one of his chief 
 projects, in these his latter days, is to give Luther 
 again to his country. " As a whole," he writes, 
 broaching this subject, " Luther belongs to all times 
 so great, so pure, so powerful, was his knowledge 
 of eternal truth, that we may always find in him a 
 guide to God. But who is acquainted with him 
 now-a-days ? Few guess what he was and what he 
 effected. Were he better known, his mighty mind 
 and heart-piercing words respecting sin and repent- 
 ance, faith and the atonement, would smite, like a 
 flaming sword, the dry and unbelieving mass of Ra- 
 tionalism ; while others would hear, with surprise, 
 how Luther insisted upon knowledge and reflection, 
 and, with all the energy of his healthy nature, op- 
 posed a weak and sickly pietism. To try at the pres- 
 ent time to bring Luther as a whole before his na- 
 tion, were indeed a noble and blessed undertaking." 
 
 But, whilst disrelishing mystic pietism, Perthes is 
 too intent on living the heavenly life to be drawn 
 away, by this disrelish, from a holy, self-denying 
 walk. " What the Rationalists call pietism," Nean- 
 der has written to him, "is nothing but Christianity 
 itself." And he himself writes : " With these people, 
 the Christian is but a pietist, and the pietist is but a 
 4* 
 
42 THE MAN OF BUSINESS I 
 
 hypocrite." And again, alluding to an author whom 
 many denounced as a pietist, he says : " That which 
 Luther aimed at making openly known, had already 
 been announced, centuries before, by Tauler. In this 
 exalted man we find humility, fervor, and sincerity, 
 united with vigorous inquiry and a free use of human 
 reason. Luther called him a man of God a teacher 
 such as there had not been since the days of the 
 apostles. At the present time, all may find in him 
 what they need CHRIST." 
 
 His ripening spirituality shrinks with an intense 
 sensitiveness from mere theological disputations. 
 " On both sides," he says, " springs up a hard feeling, 
 which should least of all find place in holy things. 
 Theological strife brings, if not gall, at least worm- 
 wood, into religious life." And to another, he writes : 
 " Even if to-day we argued with the devil down into 
 the abyss, he would rise from it to-morrow with a 
 more subtle analysis and a more seductive tongue. 
 You say that many can hardly attain faith till certain 
 difficulties are solved for them scientifically. I doubt 
 if any one was ever led through science to faith, till 
 his very bones and marrow quivered under this ques- 
 tion * Oh, wretched man that I am ! who shall de- 
 liver me from the body of this death ?' " And he 
 adds : " Now-a-days science is at once the starting- 
 point and the goal of Protestantism. Even with the 
 best among the theologians, Christianity is but a stage 
 on the way to science ; and, whilst they are anxiously 
 ferreting out scientific results with which to prop up 
 
 
FREDERICK PERTHES. 43 
 
 their faith, the age is demanding, not Christian the- 
 ology, but the Christian Church not notions, but 
 deeds not the ideal of Christ, but His very living 
 Person." 
 
 And how he himself is realizing this living fellow- 
 ship, we may gather from such words as the follow- 
 ing : vi Being, the only real being, consists in giving 
 one's self up to God is to be found only in the life 
 in God. You say that to live with God can only 
 mean to have intercourse with Him, and that he 
 who has such intercourse must needs be conscious of 
 it. Now, the latter proposition is true, but not the 
 former ; f jr intercourse supposes strangers who seek 
 to become better acquainted intercourse is, indeed, 
 but a repetition of attempts to abolish an existing 
 separation. Friends and acquaintances have inter- 
 course with one another; but who would use that 
 word to express the relation betwixt mother and 
 child?" 
 
 A Christian like Perthes is not likely to escape the 
 reproach of a lukewarm age. "There are few places 
 in Germany," he writes, " where a man 'could speak 
 of Christ in polite society without being covered with 
 derision and contempt. A man who confesses the 
 Saviour is pilloried ; the whole public is against 
 him." And elsewhere, reading with a keen glance 
 the real spirit of the times, he says : " Our age, 
 with all its humanity, understands the erection of a 
 stake." And, on another occasion, alluding to some 
 young men who, for their earnest zeal for Christ, have 
 
44 THE MAN OF BUSINESS. 
 
 begun to be reproached as " of a sombre mood," lie 
 writes : " If the zeal of the young men be sincere, 
 you need not alarm yourself about their gloom." 
 
 The wranglings of party-strife grow more and more 
 distasteful to him. " Whoever is convinced of sin," 
 he writes, " and believes in redemption through 
 Christ, is a Christian, no matter what be the colors 
 of his party. Wherever Christians are divided into 
 parties, truth and its opposite are mingled in them 
 all. The solution must come from within from the 
 power of truth and love reconciling all things. That 
 all should repent, and humble themselves sincerely 
 before God, is the thing needed not the battle-cry 
 of embittered parties." 
 
OHAPTEE VIII. 
 
 " Honesty, though making many adversaries, 
 Whom prudence' might have set aside, or charity have softened, 
 Evermore will prosper at the last, and gain a man great honor, 
 By giving others many goods." 
 
 At the head of the German trade Secret of success Incident at 
 the book-fair Holy walk " Pray and work" Daily communion 
 "Use as not abusing" Friendship Constancy The immortal 
 Abasement Aspirations "More simple" Rustic retreat Life in 
 the woods The cottage Tholuck Olshausen Doctor of Philoso- 
 phy. 
 
 As a publisher and a bookseller, he has risen into 
 the very foremost place in Germany. "I behold 
 with surprise," writes a learned countryman to him 
 in 1835, "your professional activity. By the publi- 
 cation of such solid works, and by the carrying out 
 of so many bold undertakings, you are raising a 
 memorial to your name which will not soon pass 
 away." And another writes : " Perthes always 
 knows what he wants ; he understands people's 
 tastes ; and whatever he does, he does with his 
 whole might : in that lies the secret of his success." 
 And a professional brother we find saying of him : 
 "No one ever occupied so prominent a position 
 amongst us, or influenced the book-trade as a whole, 
 
46 THE MAN OF BUSINESS I 
 
 and its individual members, so powerfully as he." 
 And himself we find writing in 1842, thus: "In 
 the long life, full of chequered experiences, which 
 now lies behind me, I have almost invariably found 
 that God's special providence favors human activity 
 and foresight." 
 
 So trusted is he, and so necessary to literature has 
 he become, that not fewer than two thousand propo- 
 sals from authors were found among his papers at 
 his death. And never does he issue a single work 
 from his press without a fixed belief that he is there- 
 by seeking God's glory. 
 
 An interesting incident occurs one year at the 
 Leipzig book-fair, which illustrates his decisive en- 
 ergy, and also his moral weight. A German book- 
 seller has published an immoral book : the trade are 
 assembled, to the number of two hundred, and 
 amongst them the publisher of the obnoxious book. 
 After the other business has been transacted, Perthes 
 rises. " The honor of our national book-trade," says 
 he, " is sullied by such a production ; the publisher 
 of such a work is a most dangerous character ; and 
 every one of our shops is degraded by the mere sup- 
 position of circulating it. I demand that it be con- 
 demned in the name of the German book-trade, and 
 that all copies of it on which we can lay our hands 
 be publicly torn." The assembly is silent : a pause 
 ensues : smitten with a sense of their responsibility, 
 they assent as one man ; and, the next day, all the 
 copies which can be procured are formally and 
 
FREDERICK PBRTHES. 47 
 
 solemnly destroyed. A prosecution follows ; but the 
 publisher is condemned, and Perthes is honorably 
 acquitted. 
 
 He has become the centre, indeed, of the whole 
 book-trade of Germany. " Such is the respect ac- 
 corded to his Christian integrity and energy," writes 
 Frommau, one of the trade, " that for many years he 
 has been really, though always declining to act as 
 President of our Exchange, the central point in all 
 our deliberations and decisions." 
 
 But, notwithstanding this rude contact with life's 
 daily struggles, the fine edge of his holy bearing is 
 not blunted. " If I have gladly and actively used 
 my physical energies," he writes, u that is no contra- 
 diction to my Christianity ; but if I have foiled to 
 sanctity them, and employ them as in God's sight, 
 then I have been untrue to my convictions." Perthes 
 is a true man to the end. " I can be pious in spirit/ 
 he says, " and humble before God and Jesus Christ, 
 and at the same time be free and cheerful in life." 
 And on another occasion : " Pray and work is the 
 great maxim for young and old. In the conflict 
 with my spiritual foes, the best method I find to be 
 an unvarying habit of devoting daily a certain portion 
 of time to communion with God. Moments of glow- 
 ing aspiration, and occasional attempts to command 
 religious emotions, will not do." 
 
 Old age is not freezing his genial sympathies. " Go 
 forward," he writes, encouraging a youthful convert, 
 whose progress in the heavenly life seems arrested by 
 
48 THE MAN OF BUSINESS! 
 
 contact with life's daily trifles ; " Go forward with Lope 
 and confidence : this is the advice given thee by an 
 old man who has had a full share of the burden and 
 heat of life's day. We must ever stand upright, hap- 
 pen what may ; and for this end we must cheerfully 
 resign ourselves to the varied influences of this many- 
 colored life. You may call this levity and you are 
 partly right, for flowers and colors are but trifles 
 light as air ; but such levity is a constituent portion 
 of our human nature, without which it would sink 
 under the weight of time. While on earth, we 
 must still play with earth, and with that which 
 blooms and fades upon its breast. The conciousness 
 of this mortal life being but the way to a higher 
 goal, by no means precludes our playing with it 
 cheerfully ; and, indeed, we must do so, otherwise 
 our energy in action will entirely fail." And one 
 of the many young men whose " wheel" he has 
 turned in business writes : " From the moment that 
 I set foot upon his threshold, Perthes did me great 
 good, and good only, and in the highest sense proved 
 himself a fatherly friend. May his spirit and his 
 example continue to influence us, and the course of 
 his life encourage the young men amongst us faith- 
 fully to devote their means and energies to the higher 
 interests of our calling !" 
 
 " There is little friendship in the world," says 
 Lord Bacon in one of his Essays, " and least of all 
 between equals. To take advice of some few friends," 
 he adds " is ever honorable." Perthes is not one of 
 
FREDERICK PERTHES. 49 
 
 those isolated beings who, with a hundred armV 
 length friendships, yet move through the word soli- 
 tary and friendless. u When I reflect," we find him 
 writing, " on the extent of my acquaintance, Goethe's 
 words occur to me, ' The stream rolls wider, and its 
 waves increase ;' and I would call out to all to ' hold 
 together Avith all their strength, alike in the sunshine 
 and in the storm.' To tne, at least, it is almost im- 
 possible to let any go from me who once stood near ; 
 and of all the inward gifts God has given me, I am 
 most thankful for the consciousness of constancy. It 
 has always been exquisitely painful to me to see any 
 one who once was closely united to me by head or 
 heart now pass me coldly by." 
 
 " It is good discretion," Bacon says again, " not to 
 make too much of any man at the first, because one 
 cannot hold out that proportion." Perthes' friend- 
 ships are lasting, because they have not been hastily 
 or lightly formed. " What you young people call 
 friendship," he writes, now more than ever estimating 
 friendships on their grave and serious side, " will 
 certainly not last for ever, least of all now-a-days ; its 
 warmth and intensity belong not to the immortal 
 element in man, but to the fresh feelings of youth. 
 A few years hence, and feelings, opinions, convic- 
 tions, will have got developed, which even the most 
 intimate friends will fail to understand. Amongst 
 older in en, friendship, except as it belongs to mem- 
 ory, consists in confidence in each others' earnest 
 5 
 
50 THE MAN OF BUSINESS I 
 
 striving after truth ; and this confidence can outlast 
 all changes." 
 
 Dwelling more abundantly in the light, he feels, as 
 he hastens on towards the mark, an almost-pain fully 
 deepening sense of his un worthiness. u How far," 
 we have him writing, for example, " beneath our 
 wishes and our will are the works and ways even of 
 the old among us ! Love without work, and work 
 without love ! How cold, too, and weak seems our 
 sorrow for sin ! and yet, perhaps," he adds, " God 
 sees more in it than we do, and knows how deep and 
 strong and abiding a sinner's repentance really is." 
 
 And on another occasion he writes : " * Be ye holy, 
 even as I am holy.' These words often pierce me 
 through marrow and bone. Not to shut our eyes, 
 through indolence or despondency, to the sin re- 
 maining in us not to mistake death for life, sor- 
 row for repentance, and imagination for love not 
 to grow weary in our upward course, or to substi- 
 tute wishing for willing this is our ceaseless task 
 here below a task impossible without faith, but 
 without which faith is impossible too." 
 
 His solacing joy at such times is characteristic of 
 the man. " Look," he writes to one similarly exer- 
 cised, " for comfort to the epistle to the Romans : in 
 it is the whole truth of God, in as far as we need to 
 know it here on earth. ' Fight the good fight to the 
 end' this is Paul's teaching to us." And again : " I 
 have often, very often, read the epistle to the Ro- 
 mans ; it is the portion of Scripture which has most 
 
FREDERICK PERTHES. 51 
 
 impressed me, has given me most light, and most 
 stablished my faith." 
 
 As he advances in years, a simplicity more and 
 more childlike gathers on him. " My Christianity," 
 says he, u becomes each year more simple. That 
 not to love God is sin, and that to love Him consti- 
 tutes deliverance from sin this, as infinite truth, as 
 the solution of every problem, has been transmitted 
 from the Bible to my spiritual life. Scientific inquir- 
 ies, and absorption of the soul in religious emotion, 
 are of themselves little worth. I learn more and 
 more to discern the divine wisdom, which has set 
 limits to revelation : all that we need for our happi- 
 ness is given to us ; and were the curtain lifted far- 
 ther from holy mysteries, men's utter bewilderment 
 would be hopeless." 
 
 Nature and its scenes of grandeur or of loveliness 
 have not lost their attraction. " You see," he writes, 
 from a rustic retreat to which he has betaken him- 
 self for the summer with his family, " I have fled to 
 the mountains to drive away the consequences of in- 
 fluenza. My hearing is still much affected, and I 
 have difficulty in making out human babble ; but I 
 hope to be ai)le to hear the vulture scream and the 
 trout splash. If any thing can restore my health, it 
 will be life in the woods. You know this place, so I 
 need not speak of its charms. Every thing is in our 
 favor the sky blue, the woods dark, the meadows 
 green." In that lovely spot he spends his remaining 
 summers the cottage filled with a succession of 
 
52 THE MAN OF BUSINESS I 
 
 guests including such men as Tholuck, Olshausen, 
 and De Wette who repair to its sunny converse as 
 to some sweet oasis. A visitor, indeed, without a 
 sense of natural beauty, rather has his pity than his 
 sympathy ; for such a defect he regards as little bet- 
 ter than if his friend had been born without arms 
 and legs, or deaf and dumb. But Friedrichroda and 
 its aged host are enshrined in every memory, as each 
 new guest departs. To the simple country-people of 
 the valley, the old man is a perfect mystery. " He 
 neither burns charcoal," they will say, " noi prepares 
 tar ; why should he persist in threading these long 
 and toilsome paths of ours, which we must daily 
 traverse for our day's work ?" It is an eye and a 
 heart for Nature which take him there. " O Nature !" 
 is his holy breathing on such scenes 
 
 14 Nature ! whose elysian scenes disclose 
 His bright perfections, at whose word they rose 1 
 
 Do thou expand 
 Thy genuine charms 
 That I may catch a fire but rarely known, 
 May feel a heart enriched by what it pay.<s 
 That builds its glory on its Maker's praise." 
 
 The neighboring little town enrols bim among its 
 freemen "an honor," says he, "which has given 
 me greater pleasure than any I have ever received." 
 And, in 1840, another honor is conferred on him, 
 significant of an appreciation more weighty, though, 
 to himself, less touching. "I could not," he wiites, 
 when, in 1840 the University of Kiel has created 
 
FREDERICK PERTHE8. 53 
 
 him a Doctor of Philosophy, "have marvelled more 
 if I had been created Vladica of Montenegro. The 
 learned company has not for a long time seen such a 
 bungler as I in their midst ; my Latin is as rusty as 
 that of my Erfurt colleague, Dr. Blucher ; and that 
 is saying much." But the degree is not unmerited. 
 " The faculty has done well," writes a literary friend ; 
 " he who has practised wisdom throughout a long 
 career, may well be styled Doctor of Philosophy 
 even though his Latin be rusty." 
 5* 
 
CHAPTEE IX. 
 
 " The harbingers are come. See, see their markl" 
 
 " Order to march" "Last repose" A retrospect Closing year Bun- 
 sen " More certain nourishment" Conflict Argyll Sufferings 
 Cowper Hope " Must be gain" John Owen Deathbed longings 
 Parting visit Bible Venerable Bede Councillor Rist A fare- 
 well Goethe " Light, light !" " Humility, humility I" Dying 
 chamber at Gotha Half in heaven Departure. 
 
 Now consciously nearing his heavenly rest, he 
 grows week by week more heaven-like. " I have 
 never," says he, one day in 1841, to a friend who has 
 been advising him to purchase his country retreat, 
 " had any other landed property than my travelling 
 carriage and my corner in the church-yard ; and, just 
 before the order to march comes, I do not want to 
 bind myself down to any earthly spot." And, on 
 another occasion : " I do not climb so high, nor 
 ramble so far as of yore ; preferring the familiar 
 paths, where I can live my inner life undisturbed, as 
 becomes a man of seventy, who will not much longer 
 see and feel the beauty of this earth." And again, 
 in the spring of 1842 : "I yearn for the repose of 
 Friedrichroda ; perhaps it is there that the last re- 
 pose of all will be granted to me gladly would 1 
 rest in that churchyard with its fir-trees. It is not 
 
FREDERICK PERTHES. 55 
 
 my physical condition which occasions this yearning, 
 but I discover in myself an increasing indifference to 
 all temporal matters; I feel incapable of effort for 
 anything on this side ; I want nothing more here 
 below." 
 
 Friend after friend is summoned away from his 
 side. Niebuhr goes, and Goethe, and his " loved and 
 honored Nicolovius." And his aged uncle, too, fol- 
 lows. " Thank you, dear Fred," the old man has 
 written to him, after receiving a visit from him 
 through snow and storm ; " you love me now just as 
 you did sixty years ago, when you used to ride upon 
 my knee." And, a short time after, Perthes writes : 
 " I heard yesterday of the death of my dear uncle. 
 Schwarzburg is now to me desolate ; the playground 
 of my childhood is no more. The family is now dis- 
 persed. So goes the world ! Who can suppose that 
 this is our home ?" 
 
 Perthes has fought manfully life's great battle. 
 u How strange it seems to me," we find him writing, 
 " to look back upon my past life ! Half a century 
 ago, I was an orphan cast in extreme poverty into 
 the world's whirlpool, without information, without 
 help, without support, a forsaken apprentice in a 
 cold garret, having to limp about for weeks on frozen 
 feet because no one attended to me but my poor and 
 still dear Frederika. All this lies like a dream be- 
 hind me, now that I am at my journey's end : my 
 life has not been an easy, nay, often a painful one. 
 To God be the praise that it ends well !" 
 
56 TEEE MAN OF BUSINESS: 
 
 He is now entering his closing year. " I believe," 
 he writes to Chevalier Bunsen, " that my end is not 
 very far distant My soul yearns for more certain 
 nourishment." And to another : " I know that the 
 prayer, * God be merciful to me a sinner,' will be ac- 
 cepted of God." In January, a serious illness sud- 
 denly reduces his strength ; and though he rallies for 
 a little, his old energy is finally gone. Yet his brave 
 spirit is not weakened. " I found him," writes a 
 friend, who had been visiting him at the end of 
 March, " quite unaltered in mind and heart : he is 
 as bright, friendly, and interesting, in conversation, 
 as formerly. Such a spirit as this is mighty indeed. 
 True, it has lost the absolute mastery over the physi- 
 cal nature; but still it can assert itself, and force 
 that nature to obey, though reluctantly, and but for 
 a season. I was often surprised to see that when, 
 towards evening, Perthes lay back weary and worn, 
 a little mental stimulus availed to restore life and 
 strength even to the body." 
 
 A deeply-tried sufferer, who has gone to his rest, 
 once said : " Looking back on my past life, my con- 
 clusion is, that, want what I might, I could not have 
 wanted the afflictions." The same is the experience 
 of Frederick Perthes. " Pain and sorrow," we find 
 him writing, in these his last days, to his son, u have 
 done more for me than joy and happiness ever did : 
 the prayer for help leads to resignation, and resigna- 
 tion purifies the soul ; but still the fight goes on to 
 the present day. Let us fight to the last, my dear 
 
FREDERICK PERTHES. 57 
 
 son. If Paul had to complain of inward conflict and 
 discord, no other need despair because he has to do 
 the same." 
 
 The Marquis of Argyll, the night preceding his 
 martyrdom, said to those about him, with a calm 
 intrepid voice " I could die like a Roman, but I 
 prefer to die like a Christian." Not in the stern 
 stoicism of a seared conscience, but in the strong 
 faith and hope of one consciously reconciled, Perthes 
 advances towards the " Celestial City." " God," he 
 is heard whispering in hours of extreme pain, " for 
 His Son's sake, is very gracious to me, a poor sinner." 
 And, at intervals of ease, he will write to friends little 
 notes, expressive of his calm confidence. " In hope 
 and faith," he writes, for example, one day, to 
 Neander, " I am joyfully passing over into the land 
 where truth will be made clear, and love pure." 
 And, another day, to Dorner : " The conscious- 
 ness of life being quite over, is to me a very pecu- 
 liar, and by no means depressing, feeling; rather, 
 on the contrary, exhilarating. I am full of thank- 
 fulness to God." 
 
 The Bard of Olney, in one of his bright moments, 
 wrote : 
 
 " Hope, with uplifted foot, set free from earth, 
 Pants for the place of her ethereal birth ; 
 On steady wings sails through the immense abyss, 
 Plucks amaranthine joys from bowers of bliss, 
 And crowns the soul, while yet a mourner here, 
 With wreaths like those triumphant spirits wear. 
 
58 THE MAN OF BUSINESS I 
 
 Hope, as an anchor firm and sure, holds fest 
 The Christian vessel, and defies the blast." 
 
 Frederick Perthes, amidst the rude winds of these 
 last days, is anchored firmly by that holdfast. " Do 
 not mourn for me when I am dead," says the vet- 
 eran warrior one day, as he lies in his room sur- 
 rounded by his children and grandchildren ; " I know 
 that you will often long for me, and I am glad of it. 
 I have, indeed, had my trying days and hours ; but 
 God has ever been gracious to me. I die willingly 
 and calmly ; and I am prepared to die, having com- 
 mitted myself to my God and Father. Here there 
 is no abiding city ; we needs must part : death can- 
 not harm me, it must be gain." 
 
 " Oh, brother !" said John Owen on his death- 
 bed, to a friend who had been alluding to his great 
 work on " The Glory of Christ," " the long-looked- 
 for day is come at last, in which I shall see that 
 glory in another manner than I have ever yet done, or 
 been capable of doing." The same is the death-bed 
 utterance of Perthes. " The season of faith," says 
 he, one morning, " will soon be over for me ; that of 
 sight is near : and yet, how mysterious the word ! 
 Sight ! I shall see with faculties which I never have 
 possessed here. Knowing is not seeing. If I am to 
 see, I must have a new spiritual faculty, conferred by 
 perfect love, in order to make the reception of perfect 
 truth possible. Fain would we question how this 
 will be brought about; but be it unto thy servant 
 according to thy word." 
 
FREDERICK PERTHES. 59 
 
 A friend one day enters his little cabinet, where 
 he is in the habit of reclining in his arm-chair, when 
 able to leave his bed. " His hands were folded," says 
 the visitor, " his eyes were closed, and peace and joy 
 were spread over his countenance. I hoped," he 
 adds, " that God had heard his prayer ; but it was not 
 so he was only asleep, and woke up cheerfully." 
 
 In these hours, his one resting-place is the Word. 
 " Hold simply and firmly," he will say, " to that which 
 our Lord has told us : read again and again the 
 fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth chap- 
 ters of John ; he who has these has all he needs, 
 alike for life and death." His two closing months 
 are a kind of heaven begun ; and the theme which 
 chiefly animates him is, the divine glory beaming so 
 brightly in these divine chapters. 
 
 It is recorded of the Venerable Bede, that he never 
 knew what it was to do nothing. During his last 
 fifty days, he translated into English John's gospel, 
 saying occasionally to his amanuensis, as his breathing 
 was growing shorter "Make haste, I know not how 
 long I shall hold out ; my Maker may take me away 
 very soon." And, one day, towards the close, as a 
 favorite pupil said to him " Dear Master, one sen- 
 tence is still wanting," the dying man replied, "Write 
 quickly," and, on the young man exclaiming, a few 
 moments later " It's finished !" Bede rejoined with 
 a tone of joy "Thou hast well said, It is finished. 
 Glory be to the Father, and to the Sen, and to the 
 Holy Ghost" and expired. Perthes also has been 
 
60 THE MAN OF BUSINESS I 
 
 an unwearied workman for his God. " A rich life," 
 he says, one day, " lies behind me." And, another 
 day, a friend who has been with him, writes : " Perthes 
 belongs to that class of men, with every thought of 
 whom mental and bodily health is so intimately con- 
 nected, that one forgets that they, too, are subject to 
 the universal law of decay. And another fiiend, 
 Schelling, writes : " It was so comforting, to know of 
 one in the world, from whom, in every case of need, 
 one was sure of sincere sympathy, loving good-will, 
 and judicious counsel." And still another, the Coun- 
 cillor Rist, writes : " I stretch out my hand to say 
 farewell if, indeed, it must be so to edify myself 
 by your courage, faith, and joyful trust in the new 
 birth in Christ. You have been much to us, and 
 your memory will remain to us most blessed. And 
 now farewell ; here is my hand : we shall meet again, 
 dear Perthes!" 
 
 When Herbert was dying, and a friend was re- 
 minding him of his many acts of well-doing, the holy 
 man answered: "They be good works, if they be 
 sprinkled with the blood of Christ, and not otherwise." 
 Perthes is dying in the same meek lowliness of heart. 
 " Herder on his death-bed," he says, one evening, 
 " sought only an Idea ; Goethe exclaimed * Light, 
 light P It would have been better," adds Perthes, 
 " had they cried out for love and humility." And, 
 another day, after a severe conflict, he says, 
 " Thanks be to God, my faith is firm, and holds in 
 death as in life : for His dear Son's sake, God is 
 
FREDERICK PERTHES. 61 
 
 merciful to me a sinner. And as his spirit is just 
 winging its upward flight, weeping friends can dis- 
 tinguish only these words " My Redeemer Lord 
 forgiveness." 
 
 It is a heaven-lit scene, that death-chamber at 
 Gotha. " When he folded his cold hands," writes his 
 daughter, who is there, " and prayed from his inmost 
 soul, we, too, were constrained to fold our hands and 
 pray ; it was all so sublime, so blessed, we felt as 
 though our Lord Jesus Christ were with us in the 
 room. As evening came on, and lights were brought 
 in, a strange halo seemed to encircle his brow, as if 
 already he were half in heaven." " The last enemy," 
 writes another eye-witness, " loses all his terrors to us, 
 and the resurrection appears nearer to us than the 
 death. We can think only of his bliss, not of our 
 own sorrow. At half-past ten in the evening of 
 Thursday, May 18, 1843, he calmly falls asleep. He 
 rests from his labors, and his works do follow him. 
 
 " 'Tis heaven, all heaven descending on the wings 
 Of the glad legions of the King of kings ; 
 'Tis more 'tis Grod diffused through every part, 
 'Tis God himself triumphant in his heart." 
 6 
 
V. 
 
 Cju Christian HJo 
 
 MRS. MARY WIXSLOW. 
 
 " To learn much, to love much, and to suffer much, are the 
 three requisites for woman." PROTOPLAST. 
 
4 Be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by 
 the renewing of your mind." Rom. xil 2. 
 
" There is a fragant blossom, that maketh glad the garden of the 
 
 heart; 
 
 And I thought some cherub had planted there a truant flower of 
 Eden." 
 
 " LOVED me and gave Himself for ME !" That is 
 the mainspring of every earnest life. It is the sun 
 rising on the soul's dark night,, and ushering in an 
 unending day. The sun may be clouded by the 
 mists of earth; but it shines there bright and 
 glorious a sun which shall never set. 
 
 Not often, in these days, has the Church witnessed 
 a life more finely sun-lit than the life of MRS. WINS- 
 LOW. It is no transcendental pattern, away from our 
 human sympathies ; but a calm, steady conflict with 
 life's stern realities, crowned with a fitting triumph. 
 
 Woman is specially honored of God. Given by 
 Him as man's complement and help-meet, she ex- 
 ecutes her mission most worthily by a meek and 
 5* 
 
66 THE CHRISTIAN MOTHER. 
 
 womanly mien. The key to her whole being is her 
 heart. 
 
 " The world of the affections is thy world, 
 Not that of man's ambition. In that stillness 
 Which most becomes a woman, calm and holy 
 Thou sittest by the fireside of the heart, 
 Feeding its flame." 
 
 And the woman-nature is never so beautiful as when 
 it adorns this its befitting sphere. The clinging ten- 
 dril of the vine is not intended to do the office of 
 the sturdy oak : each is perfect after its kind, and is 
 adapted to its peculiar function. In like manner 
 woman is not intended for the work of the man: 
 they are each adapted to their peculiar vocation. 
 Never did any woman appreciate more correctly 
 woman's true calling, than did the subject of our 
 present memoir : she ran no risk of perverting the 
 graceful and accomplished woman into " a deficient 
 
CHAPTEE I. 
 
 " Doubtless, neither star, nor flower, 
 
 Hath the power 
 Such sweetness to impart : 
 Only God, who gives perfumes, 
 Flesh assumes ; 
 And, with it, perfumes my heart." 
 
 Birth Bermuda Wesley and the burning thatch at Epworth The 
 ship of war The cask of gunpowder Antigua The hurricane 
 "Preserved in Christ Jesus" The ball "Is this all ?" Kefugees 
 " A sinner" Unhappy Dawn of hope Struggles The meeting- 
 place Eest. 
 
 IT is in the island of Bermuda, and in the year 
 1774, that MARY WINSLOW first sees the light. He 
 who snatched the infant Wesley from the blazing 
 thatch at Epworth, and the youthful Joseph from 
 the living grave in Dothan, interposes in her behalf 
 more than once or twice. The first occasion is, a 
 sudden recovery from illness when about five years 
 of age, after she has been given over by her father to 
 die. But a more striking providence follows. Soon 
 after, she accompanies her parents, during the French 
 war, on a visit to England. The vessel in which 
 they sail is a light barque, carrying a few guns, and 
 but ill furnished for severe conflict with the enemy. 
 On entering the Channel, and midway between the 
 
68 THE CHRISTIAN MOTHER I 
 
 English and French coasts, a ship of war heaves in 
 sight. It is toward night ; and, as she appears to 
 bear down upon them, the captain prepares for ac- 
 tion. Mother and child are hurried from the cabin 
 to what is thought a place of greater safety below. 
 They have not been long there when the child ob- 
 serves a boy come occasionally to the place of their 
 imprisonment, and with a large horn in his hand 
 take something out of a barrel, having first fixed a 
 lighted candle on its edge and leaving it there. Ob- 
 feerving, as she sits upon her mother's lap who is 
 too absorbed in anxiety to notice the circumstance 
 that the piece of candle is nearly burnt to the 
 edge little Mary gets down, puts out her hand, and 
 takes it away, saying, " Mamma, this will burn the 
 barrel." It is a cask of gunpowder ! " Had I not 
 removed it at that moment," she writes long after- 
 wards, alluding to the occasion, " or, in removing it, 
 had a spark fallen from the lengthened wick, the 
 vessel and all on board must instantly have been 
 blown to atoms." Under cover of night, the vessel 
 passes the man of war; and thus another peril is 
 escaped. 
 
 And, on her return home across the ocean, during 
 a brief call at Antigua a fire bursts out in the house 
 where she is sleeping ; and, in a few moments after 
 the alarm has been given, the roof falls in with a 
 fearful crash, and she barely escapes with her life. 
 Some years afterwards, the vessel in which she is 
 sailing from New York to Bermuda is overtaken, 
 
MRS. MARY WINSLOW. 69 
 
 when within an hour of port, by a terrific hurricane, 
 before which vessel after vessel is seen to go down 
 full sail into the yawning waves ; but Mary Winslow 
 \s again saved. By these repeated deliverances she 
 is (as she used to express it) "preserved in Christ 
 Jesus." 
 
 Those who have been so preserved are rarely 
 left without a work to do. Married at the age of 
 eighteen to Captain Winslow, a lineal descendant 
 of one of the pilgrim fathers, she becomes the mother 
 of eight sons, whom she is by and bye honored to 
 train, as another Monica, for her Master's service. 
 
 That service she has not herself yet entered. One 
 night, returning from a ball, where she has been " at 
 the very zenith of earthly happiness,'' the thought 
 occurs to her, as she lies sleepless on her pillow 
 " Is this all ?" Her heart is empty she has grasped 
 a phantom and from that hour she finds no rest till 
 she finds it at the feet of Jesus. 
 
 Various expedients are attempted, to fill the vacant 
 heart. Ashamed to own herself unhappy, " even to 
 her dearest friend," she turns from gaiety to " domes- 
 tic enjoyment," seeking peace of mind there. And 
 if a promising family, ample means, and a beautiful 
 home could have given it, the treasure would not 
 have been sought in vain. But " still," she says, " I 
 was unhappy ; I was a sinner and this secret 
 conviction beclouded every prospect and embittered 
 every cup." 
 
 Years pass OD, and the void is not filled. Having 
 
70 THE CHRISTIAN MOTHER: 
 
 retired to a rustic retreat in Essex, she devotes her- 
 self, in the intervals of domestic cares, to reading. 
 But she is not happy. The barbed arrow is in her 
 conscience ; and the hand has not reached her, 
 which alone can pluck it out. " My mind was rest- 
 less," she writes : " my soul wanted what earth could 
 not supply. And yet I could not describe to any 
 one what I needed or what I felt. I was unhappy, 
 at times miserable ; my weary soul thirsting for what 
 it had not and yet I could not answer myself and 
 say what that one thing was." 
 
 She next removes to London, her husband fondly 
 fancying that its bustle and excitement may heal the 
 wounded spirit. The change of residence is pleasant 
 to her : she is thrown more among friends ; and for 
 a while her mind is diverted from its gloom. But 
 He who leads His own by a way which they know 
 not, now brings her to the place of rest. There has 
 lately entered a neighboring pulpit a holy man of 
 God, from whose lips she is to hear, for the first time 
 in her life, the message of great joy. Eagerly she 
 listens, drinking in every word ! After having in 
 vain endeavored to save herself, her work always fall- 
 ing short, and leaving her as poor and miserable as 
 ever she now learns for the first time that she may 
 be saved by the work of another the work of Jesus 
 Christ. On one occasion, the preacher picturing her 
 own very state at that moment, adds most solemnly : 
 " If there is such an individual present, I will 
 pledge my soul for it that that individual is in the 
 
MRS. MARY WINSLOW. l 
 
 way to Christ." She thinks, if this be true, she 
 may, after all, be saved. Kepairing to her Bible, and 
 searching it again and again, she is arrested by the 
 passage " By grace are ye saved through faith, and 
 that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God." But, 
 not long after, she reads in the Epistle of James that 
 we are "justified by works ;" and immediately her 
 heart sinks within her, for she feels she has no works, 
 and can do none pleasing and acceptable to God. 
 And yet in the Epistles of Paul she reads that we 
 are "justified by faith." There seems a contra- 
 diction. Her anxious mind can find no rest : though, 
 animated by that ray of hope which has risen upon 
 her benighted soul, she continues to hear the pre- 
 cious truth as one hungering and thirsting for divine 
 knowledge. 
 
 One night watching alone by the side of a sick 
 child, she takes her Bible and searches the Scrip- 
 tures. The question, " How can the sinner be justi- 
 fied ?" presses heavily on her mind. If she can be 
 saved by faith in the righteousness of another, then 
 there is hope for her ; but if there be anything for 
 her to do towards meriting this salvation, she sees 
 she must be for ever lost. At last the words are 
 brought to her mind " Ask, and ye shall receive." 
 " Who is it," she asks herself, " that says this ? It 
 is God. Can God lie ? It is impossible. He must 
 do what He has said." She falls upon her knees. 
 Her petition is offered in the simple language of an 
 untutored child. She knows nothing of Christian 
 
 
72 THE CHRISTIAN MOTHER. 
 
 experience has heard the Gospel but a few times 
 and the only thing which has fastened itself upon 
 her mind is the truth that a poor sinner can be saved. 
 Time after time she pleads that word, " Ask, and ye 
 shall receive." At length, light breaks in upon her 
 soul. Jesus seems to stand before her, and to utter 
 those blessed words "I am thy salvation." She 
 hails the glad tidings ; her heart and soul respond. 
 Jesus is with her He has Himself spoken her soul 
 is saved the grave-clothes, in which she has been 
 so long confined, fall off her spirit is free she rises 
 from her knees to adore, and praise, and bless His 
 holy name. 
 
 This is the finger of God. " It was no vision of 
 the bodily senses which I saw," she says ; " but I 
 had no more doubt that I was a redeemed and 
 pardoned sinner that I had seen Christ, and held 
 communion with him who died that I might live, 
 than I had of my own existence." 
 
CHAPTEE II. 
 
 w What came from heaven, to heaven by nature clings." 
 
 "A soul redeemed demands a life of praise; 
 Hence the complexion of her future days." 
 
 The acorn and the oak A right start Trials " An undivided family 
 in heaven 1 ' New- York Conversions Revivals End of Gospel- 
 ministry Cecil The three "ideas" Activities and awakenings 
 Unbelief Return to London-^-Harrington Evans Our calling 
 " Gossiping professors" A poison. 
 
 "MIGHT not the man," asks Vinet, somewhere, 
 " who holds in his hand an acorn, say, ' I hold in my 
 hand an oak ?' Is not the whole of a river in its 
 source ?" Just so, the soul which has found a free 
 acceptance through the blood of Christ, may be said 
 to have in it already the whole elements of the Chris- 
 tian life. Mrs. Winslow now finds herself welcomed 
 in her Father's house; and, her person being thus 
 accepted, her whole future life of service and of suf- 
 fering is transformed into " a living sacrifice." 
 
 " Everything," she once said, many years after- 
 wards, looking back upon this turning-point of her 
 spiritual life, " depends upon a right beginning. One 
 wrong turn in setting out, and all will be wrong the 
 whole, of the way. The starting-point for the saint 
 
74 THE CHRISTIAN MOTHER: 
 
 of God is the finished work of Jesus to know he is 
 pardoned and accepted in the beloved of God the 
 Father. He then can run the race with holy delight ; 
 and, though he may necessarily have many enemies 
 to contend with, both from within and from without, 
 yet He who has once set him upon his feet, and bid 
 him go forward, will watch over him by day and by 
 night, guide him, and correct him when needful, and 
 assuredly enable him to hold out to the end." That 
 starting-point Mrs. Winslow has now, after many toss- 
 ings and anxieties, reached ; and seldom has a race 
 been run so patiently and so nobly. 
 
 The Hill Difficulty soon rises before her. Sud- 
 denly crippled in her resources by certain " disas- 
 trous investments," and scarcely less suddenly be- 
 reaved of her husband, she finds herself summoned 
 to a task such as few women could have mastered. 
 But with a strong will, and with a heart " at leisure 
 from itself," she sets her face steadfastly to the Hill, 
 and bravely ascends. 
 
 " An undivided family in heaven" is now her first 
 and her last aim. It is during one of those remark- 
 able revivals with which the land of the pilgrim 
 fathers has been so often visited, that she begins to 
 reap the earliest fruits of this longing. There has 
 been formed in New York a little circle of Christian 
 mothers, who assemble weekly for special prayer on 
 behalf of their families. From these meetings Mrs. 
 Wiuslow has been seen to return not seldom " with 
 tearful eyes and a glowing countenance," as if He, 
 
MRS. MARY WINSLOW. 75 
 
 whose fellowship on the Mount made Moses' face 
 shine, had been with those holy women. In various 
 churches, and in individual families, a work of God 
 commences. Three of Mrs. Winslow's sons all who 
 at the time reside with her are awakened and 
 brought to Christ. " Not one unconverted soul," we 
 find her writing, " is under my roof. All love the 
 Saviour. My house is a house of prayer." 
 
 These revivals are most instructive facts, and pecu- 
 liarly humbling. That counterfeits have appeared 
 on the American soil, with only the mechanical imi- 
 tation of the inward heart-work, is tolerably certain. 
 But what more convincing evidence of the existence 
 of the real thing ? " Several churches," Mrs. Winslow 
 writes, describing one of those scenes, " have partaken 
 of this heavenly shower. Oh ! it is a refreshing sea- 
 son. The Lord is pouring out His Spirit in a way I 
 never before saw or felt. There is nothing like en- 
 thusiasm. I am quite inadequate to give you any 
 just idea of this most gracious and solemn work of 
 God. It is to me something like the day of Pente- 
 cost. I look back and see with such concern how I 
 have loitered on my way." 
 
 Is not that the great want of the present hour ? 
 It is not philosophy we want in our pulpits, nor cold 
 criticism in our pews it is the tongue of fire 
 the pricked heart the awakened conscience. It is 
 real, downright plucking men out of the fire. Cecil 
 was right when, describing the true character of the 
 Gospel-ministry, he wrote : " Hell is before me, and 
 
76 THE CHRISTIAN MOTHER! 
 
 thousands of souls shut up there in everlasting ago- 
 nies Jesus Christ stands forth to save men from 
 rushing into this bottomless abyss He sends me to 
 proclaim His ability and His love : I want no fourth 
 idea ! every fourth idea is contemptible ! every fourth 
 idea is a grand impertinence !" 
 
 And when God is working thus in the public as- 
 sembly, it sends men to their homes and to their 
 trades, not to lay aside the Sunday religion with the 
 Sunday dress, but to carry it about with them as a 
 part of themselves. "Everything under my roof," 
 writes Mrs. Winslow, " seems to wear another aspect. 
 Old things have passed away, and all things have be- 
 come new. I can say of my children ' Behold, Lord, 
 they pray.' The things of God open upon them with 
 deep interest. The ways of wisdom are pleasant, and 
 everything not connected therewith tasteless. Ask and 
 expect," she adds, " great things from God. You 
 cannot ask too much, when you ask in Jesus' name ; 
 and God cannot give too much, when He gives for 
 Jesus' sake. How near he has been to us ! The 
 angels in heaven rejoice over one sinner that repent- 
 eth ; and here are three to whom Jesus has given re- 
 pentance and life under my roof. If the angels re- 
 joice in heaven, well may I rejoice on earth." 
 
 Are we here in England always to be satisfied with 
 the low standard of godliness which everywhere pre- 
 vails ? Are we to go on from week to week, com- 
 placently resting in our religious activities, and 
 content to have scarcely any conversions? What 
 
MRS. MARY WINSLOW. 77 
 
 are we doing ? Are we pleading believingly enough 
 with God for men ? and are we pleading earnestly 
 enough with men for God ? " How is it," we find 
 
 O ' 
 
 Mrs. Winslow inquiring, years afterwards, " that we 
 have no precious revivals here, and that the all-im- 
 portant subject lies with so little weight upon our 
 hearts? It is because we do not believe the matter- 
 of-fact, although God has promised, and declared the 
 truth. When Christ had risen, and some were eye- 
 witnesses of the fact, yet, when they declared the 
 blessed truth to the rest, they were as those that 
 mocked. We testify that these things are so, for we 
 have seen and felt them ourselves. The doors have 
 been shut about us, and Jesus has been in our midst 
 within, blessing, reviving, and refreshing us giving 
 life to the dead and speaking comforting words to 
 Hi a saints. It has been the work of an Almighty 
 God, manifesting His power, and displaying His 
 love. Oh 1 the mighty power of prayer ! Even the 
 best of Christians know but little what it really is." 
 
 Returning in 1828 to London, and attaching her- 
 self to the church of that venerable man of God, the 
 late Mr. Harrington Evans, she labors for souls with 
 an earnestness which not many in a lukewarm age 
 can comprehend. " It is our duty," she writes in 
 her Diary, "to have our eyes shut, and our ears 
 stopped, to everything that is not a step in that lad- 
 der which reaches from earth to heaven. I cannot 
 understand some Christians, and they do not under- 
 stand me. I may be wrong ; but when I read 
 7* 
 
8 THE CHRISTIAN MOTHER. 
 
 * Come out of the world, and be ye separate ; love 
 not the world, nor the things which are in the world,' 
 and many other such solemn exhortations, with so 
 many exceeding great and precious promises to the 
 overcoming Christian I am satisfied of the way a 
 believer in Christ should walk, and have only to re- 
 gret I so often wander from it myself. Dear Saviour! 
 keep me near, very near, thy blessed self." And on 
 another occasion: "Avoid trifling, lukewarm pro- 
 fessors. They are the bane of the church of Christ. 
 If you can do them no good, they will do you much 
 harm." And again : " I wish to caution you against 
 a great evil in many churches I allude to gossiping 
 professors, who, when they meet, instead of talking 
 of Christ, talk about almost everything else ; 4 busy- 
 bodies,' who go from house to house speaking things 
 which they ought not. Oh, what a dishonor are 
 such to the cause of the dear Redeemer ! Rebuke 
 such in gentleness of spirit, and withdraw from 
 them." And still again : " I am convinced that 
 much intercourse with lukewarm professors does 
 great injury to the believer. Oh, avoid such ! Light 
 and trifling conversation acts as a poison to the life 
 of God in the soul." 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 " I think not of to-morrow, 
 
 Its trial or its task ; 
 But still with childlike spirit 
 
 For present mercies ask : 
 With each returning morning 
 
 I cast old things away ; 
 Life's journey lies before me 
 
 My prayer is for to-day." 
 
 "Company-keeping with Jesus" Little cares The "confidant'* A 
 trial Evidences How brightened ? Each day "Praise him for 
 the present" Robert Bruce The voice in the vestry " Preach- 
 ing in prayer" Unkindness Henry Martyn The best of all well- 
 doingThe alleys The cottage A contrast. 
 
 CHRISTIANITY has been described as " a company- 
 keeping with Jesus." Seldom has any Christian 
 more strikingly realized the idea than did Mrs. 
 Winslow during the last twenty years of her life. 
 " Keep close to JESUS," we find her saying. " Go to 
 HIM for all you need. Tell HIM all that is in your 
 heart. Lay your case before Him as if He did not 
 already know it. This is. the sweet simplicity of 
 faith which Christ loves. You cannot come too 
 often. Bring to Him your little cares, as well as 
 your great ones. If anything is a trouble to you ; 
 however small it may be, you are warranted, nay 
 
80 THE CHRISTIAN MOTHER: 
 
 commanded, to take it to HIM; and thereby you 
 glorify his name. Satan would keep you away from 
 Him; but Christ is as needful for you every step 
 you take to glory, as when you were overwhelmed 
 with sorrow under a sense of your awful state as a 
 sinner before God." And elsewhere she writes: 
 "Be very cautious to whom you open your heart. 
 Make no one your confidant but Jesus. Oh ! com- 
 mune with Him of all that is in your heart. If you 
 are wounded, go and tell Christ if you are in need, 
 go and tell Christ the silver and the gold are His. 
 Live upon Him as little children would live upon 
 a dear, kind, tender father. Oh ! how happily will 
 you then pass on your way !" 
 
 A personal example of this let us quote. "I 
 awoke in the night," she writes in her Diary, July 
 13th (1828) ; "and a care, something like a irial in 
 prospect, presented itself to my mind. I could not 
 sleep till I had laid it before the Lord. Almost 
 directly afterward I fell asleep. I had unburdened 
 myself to Him who has all hearts in His hands, and 
 my mind was at peace." 
 
 Another feature of her Christian life is to be 
 noted. " Never," she writes, on one occasion, 
 "never look within for comfort. You will find 
 nothing there but what is calculated to humble you. 
 But look to JESUS. There is everything in Him to 
 encourage you in your warfare. Oh ! live upon Him, 
 out of yourselves." And on another occasion, thus : 
 " A mistake, common to many Christians, is the 
 
MRS. MARY WINSLOW. 81 
 
 habit of looking for ever within for some evidence 
 of their adoption ; and, finding nothing there, they 
 do not and cannot rejoice. This is a serious defect. 
 It is not by looking within ourselves, but, on the 
 contrary, it is by looking quite out of ourselves, and 
 directing the eye alone to Christ to what Christ is, 
 and where Christ is that we obtain real consola- 
 tion ; and in proportion to our faith in Him, we not 
 only rejoice, but our evidences brighten, and the 
 Spirit within, whose office it is to glorify Christ, 
 bears witness with our spirit that we are born of 
 God." 
 
 It is a blessed attainment to live for each day, and 
 for each day only. We have grace promised to bear 
 present evils, but none to bear anticipated ones. 
 Reader ! are you tried with fears and anxieties about 
 the future ? Lately, a young person told the writer 
 that such was her fear for the future that she had 
 been tempted again and again to take away her life. 
 Few people have been tried more deeply than Mrs. 
 Winslow ; and here is her judgment about the way of 
 bearing it : " I do think, by constantly poring over 
 anticipated troubles, we lose the sweet enjoyment of 
 present mercies in the expectation of future evil. I 
 pray to be enabled to praise Him for the present, 
 and to trust His love for all that is to come. Lord, 
 increase my faith, and let my joy be full." 
 
 It is told of the Rev. Robert Bruce, that on one 
 occasion he delayed so long appearing in the pulpit 
 that a friend went to the vestry, fearing that he had 
 
82 THE CHRISTIAN MOTHER I 
 
 been taken ill. As he approached the door, he over- 
 heard a voice as if of one engaged in earnest collo- 
 quy ; and, as he listened more attentively, the speaker 
 was insisting, that, unless accompanied by Him to 
 whom he spoke, he could not leave that place. It 
 was the preacher on his knees before the Lord ; and 
 when that preacher entered the pulpit, oh, how he 
 prayed and preached ! Often, often does Mrs. Wins- 
 low deplore the absence of such praying. "This 
 evening," we find her writing in her Diary, " attended 
 a prayer-meeting for the outpouring of the Spirit. 
 The fault I generally perceive with most prayer- 
 meetings occurred again to-night. The prayers 
 were too long, and not to the point, Everything 
 was touched upon but the one thing we had agreed 
 to meet and pray for. I do wish there were less 
 preaching in prayer, and more beseeching, as poor 
 needy sinners, for what we want." And on another 
 occasion, writing to one of her sons, she says: 
 " You know my dislike to preaching in prayer. 
 Prayer is the most holy exercise of the soul, and 
 should be the pure breathings of the renewed heart 
 in humble, earnest petition, a* in the presence of a 
 holy God. And when the soul feels in the presence 
 of God, and loses sight of the worms of the dust who 
 are listening, there is no self-seeking or wish to pler.se 
 the ear of man, but humbly to get the blessed ear 
 of God Himself." 
 
 One of our most trying vexations is men's slander- 
 ous whisperings. It is a blessed secret of the hidden 
 
MRS. MARY WINSLOW. 83 
 
 life to rise triumphant over this trial. "Dost thou 
 receive," wrote a holy man who lived in Italy two 
 centuries ago, " an injury from any man ? There 
 are two things in it the sin of him that does it, and 
 the punishment thou sufferest ; the sin is against the 
 will of God, and displeases Him, though He permit 
 it ; the punishment is conform to His will, and He 
 wills it for thy good wherefore thou oughtest to 
 receive it as from His hand." That man was im- 
 prisoned in the Inquisition for eight-and-twenty 
 years ; and when he was entering his dungeon he 
 smiled pleasantly and serenely, calling it his " cabi- 
 net." Mrs. Winslow is learning the same heavenly 
 lesson. " How often," we find her writing on one 
 occasion in her Diary, " has an unkind look or word 
 proved a blessing to my soul ! It has made me flee 
 to Christ ; and there I have found no unkindness. 
 HE has appeared at such times more than to make 
 up for the want of all creature-love and created 
 good." It was Henry Martyn, if we remember 
 rightly, who on one occasion, taking refuge from 
 man's unkindness in the secret of the Lord's presence, 
 wrote : " I shall never have to regret that I loved 
 THEE too well." 
 
 Foster has described the Christian's labor of love 
 for Christ as the best of all the well-doings on this 
 gloomy planet. Mrs. Winslow still counts it her 
 joy to spend and to be spent for HIM. "I have 
 just returned," we find her writing, " from visiting 
 the poor and wretched in the lanes and alleys in this 
 
84 THE CHRISTIAN MOTHER. 
 
 great town. I often have thought that the Lord 
 had nothing more for me to do ; but He seems to 
 have called me to my old work again, and it is one 
 I always had, and still have, great delight in. May 
 He bless it to me, and to the poor to whom I am 
 sent !" And on another occasion describing some 
 work of the same kind down in the country, she 
 says : " I have just returned from a visit to my 
 poor pilgrim. I walked softly in, and found her 
 with her glasses on, attentively reading a book she 
 had upon her lap. l What are you reading ?' I in- 
 quired. * The Shepherd, ma'am ; the Shepherd who 
 laid down His life for the sheep,' looking up into my 
 face with an expression of sweet peace and content. 
 4 Have you dined?' I said. 'Yes.' 'What have 
 you had ?' l Boiled milk.' This, I found, was her 
 chief diet ; and oh, how happy she is ! She says she 
 is happier than the rich or the mighty in their pala- 
 ces ; and from my heart I believe it." And another 
 case she names : " I went last evening to see an 
 aged pilgrim in the village. She abounds in all the 
 comforts of life has a nice house, comfortable farm, 
 and every thing to make her happy. But she is far 
 from being so ; for, although I believe her to be a 
 child of God, she is constantly harassed with the 
 idea that she has grieved away the Spirit, and will be 
 lost for ever. I have endeavored to cheer her up by 
 leading her to look more to Christ than to herself. 
 I sat with her last night for nearly an hour, and 
 found it refreshing to my soul to speak of Jesus." 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 44 O keep me ever learning, 
 
 Subdued beneath thy rod ; 
 Make me a better scholar, 
 But teach me still, my God!" 
 
 United States Awakening "Our great crime" A convert "Old- 
 fashioned conversions" The way of blood "My confessional" As- 
 surance Second Advent " Watch !" 
 
 IN 1833, Mrs. Winslow is in New York, on her 
 final visit to the United States. During her stay, 
 another remarkable awakening visits the churches. 
 Relating a scene in one of the congregations, she 
 writes : " The ministers who conduct the meetings 
 seem men of God, and preach as with the great white 
 throne full in view. The grand aim in their preach- 
 ing and addresses is, to rouse the sinner to follow 
 him in all his refuges of lies to knock from beneath 
 him every false prop, and to show him, that, if he 
 perishes, the fault is not God's, but his own. Next 
 to this, their endeavor is to awaken the church it- 
 self to activity and earnestness in the cause of God. 
 After the sermon, all who feel themselves 'lost and 
 undone sinners are invited to come forward and oc- 
 cupy pews in front of the pulpit. The praying part 
 of the assembly then cluster round them, and peti 
 
66 THE CHRISTIAN MOTHER: 
 
 tions are offered on their behalf. This would be a 
 new and strange thing in England ; but God sees fit 
 to own it to the salvation of many souls. Last even- 
 ing, I felt it peculiarly solemn I felt that God was 
 there. Seventeen individuals advanced many young, 
 some elderly men deeply concerned. There was no 
 excitement no noise or enthusiasm. The feeling 
 was deep, silent, solemn as eternity. All knelt and 
 followed in prayer." 
 
 And, on the same occasion, she adds : " While 
 the Church is stirred up to plead earnestly for sin- 
 ners, the Lord the Spirit causes them to feel their 
 own lack, and brings them to God in humble con- 
 fession of their coldness and unbelief. Unbelief 
 unbelief ! oh, this is our great crime before God ! 
 We will not take Him at His word, fully believing 
 all that He has promised. Did we really believe that 
 sinners will be cast into hell, should we not be more 
 earnest both with them and with God, although we 
 do know that salvation is of God, and that He alone 
 can save a sinner ? If the religion of Christ is not 
 the business of our whole life, it is nothing, and we 
 are nothing, and shall be found as nothing, or worse 
 than nothing, when He comes to judge the world." 
 
 And, the following day, she writes : " The Lord 
 is doing a great work here ; whole families have, in 
 these last two weeks, been translated out of the 
 kingdom of Satan into the kingdom of God's dear 
 Son ; and many more are inquiring what they shall 
 do to be saved. I am glad to be where Jesus is 
 
MRS. MARY WINSLOW. 87 
 
 passing by. A young lady in the bloom of health 
 and beauty, living in all the gaiety of the world, was 
 brought under the appalling conviction of her awful 
 state before a holy God. For nights she scarcely 
 knew what it was to sleep. A few days after, while 
 she was in prayer, and while prayer was being made 
 for her by the church, the Lord revealed Himself to 
 her soul, and filled it with unspeakable joy. Her 
 eyes were now opened, and every thing appeared 
 changed. She was happy in the Lord, and her 
 countenance was radiant. When her minister en- 
 tered the parlor and extended his hand, he said, ' I 
 need not ask how it is with you ; I see you have 
 been with Jesus.' I must add that this young con- 
 vert, in all the fervor of her first love, went from 
 house to house amongst her kinsfolk and friends, im- 
 ploring them to come and hear the gospel." 
 
 And once again, a few days later (to Rev. J. H. 
 Evans) : " I think I never before heard such fervent 
 appeals to the consciences of men, so completely di- 
 vesting them of all their refuges of lies, as I have this 
 last week. How I do love old-fashioned conversions, 
 where sinners are brought to feel they are sinners, 
 crying out under the conviction, ' What must I do to 
 be saved ?' and are then led by the self-same Spirit to 
 look to Jesus, and are at once enabled to believe and 
 rejoice ! I cannot understand this long process of 
 months' and years' seeking, and seeking, and never 
 finding, until, perhaps, at a dying hour. God is the 
 same ?^ow that he was in the New Testament times 
 
88 THE CHRISTIAN MOTHER: 
 
 Christ is the same the Spirit is the same and the 
 sinner is the same. Oh that the Lord might visit 
 you in your part of the vineyard ! Endeavor to 
 show sinners their awful condition ; scatter their vain 
 excuses ; and tell them they must repent and believe 
 the Gospel, or they are lost for ever. They need not 
 be told they have no power to repent and believe : 
 they will soon find they are powerless, and begin to 
 cry for mercy to Him who will give repentance, and 
 power to believe too. I love poor perishing sinners 
 more than I can express. I have been very narrow- 
 hearted and selfish ; and I hate and abhor myself 
 because of it." 
 
 The heart rests upon Christ's person the con- 
 science upon His atoning blood. Mrs. Winslow feels, 
 each day she lives, the growing preciousness of such 
 a Saviour. " The way to God," we find her writing 
 now, in her sixty-second year, " has seemed to me of 
 late so delightful so exactly suited to a poor lost 
 sinner so suited to me. A way sprinkled with 
 atoning blood : justice and mercy as a wall of de- 
 fence on either side ; and this way leading to such a 
 rich treasure-house, filled with all blessing for time 
 
 7 O 
 
 and for eternity ! All is in Jesus the way to God, 
 the way of holiness, the way to glory." And a 
 specimen of the way in which she personally applied 
 this truth occurs elsewhere thus : " You may, per- 
 haps, wonder why confession of sin should be the 
 subject upon which I have chiefly written. I had 
 just returned, when I took up my pen to address 
 
MRS. MART WINSLOW. 89 
 
 you, from my confessional the throne of grace so 
 sweetly refreshed and so blessedly pardoned, that I 
 could not refrain recommending it to all I love and 
 write to, as one of the most hallowed exercises of the 
 Christian. I often repair to it heavily laden, and 
 return as though nestling beneath the wing of the 
 Saviour. If there is a cloud between you and Christ, 
 rest not till it withdraws. Go again and again, 
 should there be but a shade, until it is put away and 
 you see Him who loves you." 
 
 Like not a few Christians of the present day, Mrs. 
 Winslow has not hitherto had her thoughts directed 
 to the Lord's Second Coming. About the year 1840, 
 however, she is led into this truth. " I grieve," she 
 writes, " that I have so long neglected to search into 
 this glorious subject. As it opens upon me, I feel 
 my soul led out in grateful praise and thanksgiving. 
 Oh, to love Jesus more, and to have Him more in 
 our thoughts ! How soon we may behold Him in 
 all His glory, coming in the clouds of heaven ! May 
 the Lord keep us watching and waiting, and enable 
 us to say, * Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly P " 
 8* 
 
CHAPTEE V. 
 
 "Still, my Master, thou requirest 
 
 Service here 'a little while;' 
 Help me, then, to work with patience, 
 Cheer me by thy love and smile." 
 
 Instinct of advancing years-A little child-A bereavement-" Clap 
 his glad wings"-The promise and the precept-A temptation-Fos- 
 ter-Not faint-A pattern-" Only two"-" Love turns the wheel."' 
 
 IT is an instinct of advancing years to return to 
 the scenes and associations of youth and of childhood. 
 In like manner, the instinct of the maturing Chris- 
 tian leads him back with a freshening zest to the 
 simplicities of his first love. Who can subdue sin 
 in us but Jesus ?" writes our venerable friend. " I 
 might as well attempt to remove mountains as to 
 reason away one corruption of my fallen nature. But 
 if we, the moment we detect it, carry it to Jesus, He 
 will do it all for us. This is one of the most difficult 
 lessons to learn in the school of Christ. I am but 
 just beginning to learn it; and therefore I am placed 
 in the youngest class, travelling to Jesus more as 
 little helpless child, for Him to do all for me and 
 all in me. My fancied strength is all vanished, my 
 boasted reason turned into folly ; and now, thus liv- 
 ing on Christ in childlike simplicity, my peace, joy 
 
MRS. MARY WINSLOW. 91 
 
 and consolation are past expression." And, on an- 
 other occasion : " Oh, to believe that Jesus is indeed 
 at the right hand of God ! on the resurrection of 
 Christ depends our eternal all. Upon that single and 
 glorious truth hinges every other. If that be true, 
 all that He has said, all that He has promised, and 
 all that He has engaged to do, is true." 
 
 One of her sons is suddenly snatched from her 
 side, and she pours out her heart thus : " Dear Henry 
 is gone home, and I am a bereaved mother. He sleeps 
 in Jesus. And now thou art beholding in all His 
 glory Him whom thou didst long to see coming in that 
 glory in the clouds of heaven." And she adds : " He 
 was fully prepared for the change, and was more fit- 
 ted for heaven than for earth. The world seemed to 
 have no charms for him. It had lost its hold for a 
 long period. He was living in full expectation of 
 Christ's coming, and now he is with Him whom he 
 so ardently desired to see. Day and night he was 
 looking for Him, as if ' hastening unto the coming of 
 the Lord ; so that Christ was in all his thoughts. 
 When he had to grapple with the ' last enemy,' he 
 feared not death, and, to use his own words, l longed 
 to clap his glad wings, and fly to Jesus.' This afflic- 
 tion has wafted me closer to my happy home. Oh, 
 to realize it fully, even here !" 
 
 Grace in the heart always bears the fruit of hon- 
 est dealing ; and if ever it be accompanied with any 
 crookedness of way, it is because that man has, not 
 too much grace, but too little. "Remember," we 
 
92 THE CHRISTIAN MOTHER: 
 
 have Mrs. Winslow saying on one occasion to her 
 son, who is practising at the bar, " that to walk in 
 the precept is the way to the full enjoyment of the 
 promise. We must not expect the comfort of the 
 one without the observance of tbe other. Rather than 
 incur debt, exercise the most rigid self-denial. Go not 
 against God, and God will be for you. None ever 
 disobey Him but are sure to pay the penalty of disobe- 
 dience. I speak now of His own children. Never un- 
 dertake a cause without kneeling down and asking the 
 Lord for wisdom and grace. If Solomon felt it needful 
 to do this, well may you. Christ says, * Without me 
 ye can do nothing.' Be not fearful you will lose your 
 cause by so doing ; but only trust your case in the 
 Lord's hands, and, if a just one, He will prosper 
 you. Walk in His fear, and you need fear nothing 
 else." 
 
 Reader ! are you ready to faint under the yoke ? 
 Is Satan tempting you at this moment to grow 
 " weary in well-doing ?" " Look up to heaven," says 
 Foster, " and see the beams of the Divine compla- 
 cency ! I obtain little of human favor to animate me 
 in my work ; well, but God is pleased. I accomplish 
 too little by all my efforts but He does not ' despise 
 small things.' Do you say, 1 1 have not resolution and 
 patience to go on ?' What ! not to please God ?" And, 
 appealing to the instance of the Master, he adds : 
 " Think of His appointed work, the greatest that ever 
 was to be done on earth. If He had been ' wearied,' 
 and left but one thing undone ! If He had shrunk 
 
MRS. MARY WINSLOW. 93 
 
 and failed, what sensation in heaven hell earth ! 
 Let His followers advert to that, when tempted to 
 shrink from service, and to say it is too much. When 
 this repugnance arises, go and look at Him ! Even 
 imagine that any given Christian service had been to 
 be performed in His presence under His inspiration 
 would you then be weary ? He is the grand trans- 
 cendant example, to show that a good work must be 
 gone through with : to constitute it such, the conclu- 
 sion is indispensable. * He that endureth to the end 
 shall be saved.' ' He that looketh back is not fit for 
 the kingdom of God.' " And Mrs. Winslow, herself 
 now far on in the " course," summons a fainting fel- 
 low-pilgrim to new faith, and new energy, and new 
 patience, thus : " And so you are discouraged ? Trials 
 and difficulties many ; faith tried ; and only three 
 met. Did you expect to undertake a work for Christ 
 and get on smoothly, while there is every thing within 
 and without to oppose it ? Did you expect faith would 
 not be tried in this matter ? In a country-place in 
 America, a few Christian females engaged to meet to 
 pray for a blessing on their families ; but after a while 
 it declined, and continued to do so until only two came. 
 4 Shall we give it up ?' was the question. They thought 
 of God's faithfulness to His promise, of his power and 
 goodness, and they resolved to go on. They met, 
 these two only, again and again. They pleaded the 
 promise, and encouraged each other by their prayers. 
 At last the answer came. God tried their faith ; Je- 
 sus interceded, and it had not failed. Some who had 
 
94 THE CHRISTIAN MOTHER. 
 
 left them returned ; others followed ; and the place 
 of prayer was soon filled. The Lord poured out His 
 Spirit on them, and they prayed in earnest until the 
 blessing was given. The Church felt the holy influ- 
 ence ; their children at home began to inquire what 
 they must do to be saved ; the mothers directed them 
 to Jesus, and prayed on. God in very deed bowed 
 the heavens, and came down in their midst to bless 
 them. Dear sister, take courage and look up. Ex- 
 pect difficulties expect opposition, even from your 
 own heart ; but you have the Lord on your side. Go 
 forward in the strength of Jehovah Jesus, and God 
 must and will bless you." 
 
 And how to labor on she indicates in another 
 letter, thus : " The Lord has brought me here, I 
 trust, for some service He has for me to do. If His 
 servants, we ought to be doing His work ; and it is 
 so sweet to work when love turns the wheel. It is 
 the love of God in the heart that sets us all in 
 motion. I am persuaded it is irksome where this 
 is not the case. To work for God as a hireling is 
 one thing, and to work for Him as a son is another." 
 
CHAPTEE VI. 
 
 " Where is that fire which once descended 
 
 On thy Apostles ? Thou didst then 
 Keep open house, richly attended, 
 Feasting all comers by twelve chosen men." 
 
 Simeon ''Collar of my coat" The blacksmith The "unanswerable 
 argument" Baxter "Taking walks above" The home Grand 
 Saldve Mountain sunshine Child of the mist "Worth living for" 
 Have God's ear Sin. 
 
 ONE day Charles Simeon stood at the death-bed 
 of a brother. " I am dying," said he, grasping his 
 hand with deep emotion, " and you have never warned 
 me of the state I was in, and of my danger in ne- 
 glecting the salvation of my soul." " Nay, my brother," 
 answered Simeon, " I have often brought it before 
 you in my letters." u Yes, but that was not enough. 
 You never came to me closed the door and took 
 me by the collar of my coat, and told me I was un- 
 converted, and that if I died in that state I should be 
 lost." That scene Mr. Simeon never forgot ; and 
 oftentimes does Mrs. Winslow appeal to it as quicken- 
 ing exceedingly her zeal on behalf of perishing souls. 
 " Oh !" she will be heard saying, as the great tear of 
 tender compassion trembles in her eye, " who will warn 
 who will entreat them ?" 
 
96 THE CHRISTIAN MOTHER I 
 
 And no dreaded " awkwardnesses" hinders the 
 plainest and most downright appeals. It is told 
 of a working man, that one cold winter morning 
 he entered the forge of a blacksmith, with whom he 
 had held frequent discussions about the Gospel. The 
 blacksmith was an infidel ; and only the previous 
 night they had parted, the infidel objections an- 
 swered, but the infidel himself hardened in heart as 
 ever. His friend, on going home, had, instead of 
 going to bed, spent the greater part of the night in 
 prayer for him. Early in the morning he mounted 
 on one of the horses of the farm, and rode through a 
 drifting snow to the forge. Dismounting at the door, 
 he went up to his friend, and, taking him by the 
 hand, he, with tears in his eyes, said " I am greatly 
 concerned for your salvation ! I am greatly con- 
 cerned for your salvation !" And, with another 
 friendly grasp, he left the forge, remounted his 
 horse, and hastened home. " That," said the black- 
 smith, describing the incident, not long afterwards, 
 as the turning-point of his life, " that was the un- 
 answerable argument I could not gainsay that !" 
 All who see Mrs. Winslow feel, in her earnest heart- 
 melting appeals, the power of that argument. 
 
 Baxter, in his " Saints' Rest," stimulating the soul 
 to new attainments in the heavenly life, gives this 
 counsel : " Let thy faith take hold of thy heart, and 
 show it the sumptuous buildings of thine eternal hab- 
 itation, and the glorious ornaments of thy Father's 
 house, even the mansions Christ is preparing, and 
 
MRS. MARY WINSLOW. 97 
 
 the honors of His kingdom ; let thy faith lead thy 
 heart into the presence of God, and as near as thou 
 possibly canst, and say to it, * Behold HIM ! Here is 
 an object worthy of thy love ! here thou shouldst 
 pour out thy soul in love ! here it is impossible to 
 love too much.' This is HE who hath loaded thee 
 with His benefits, ' spread thy table in the sight of 
 thine enemies, and made thy cup overflow.' This is 
 He whom angels and saints praise, and the ' heavenly 
 hosts for ever magnify.' Open thus his excellences 
 to thy heart, till the holy fire of love begins to kindle 
 in thy breast. And if thou feelest thy love not yet 
 burn, lead thy heart further, and show it Him who 
 was dead and is alive for evermore. Draw near, and 
 behold Him. Dost thou not hear his voice ? He 
 that bade Thomas come near and see the print of 
 the nails, and put his finger into His wounds, HE 
 calls to thee, saying, * Come near, and view the Lord 
 thy Saviour, and be not faithless, but believing : 
 Peace be unto thee ; fear not, it is I.' Look well 
 upon Him. Dost thou not know Him ? Or, if thou 
 knowest Him not by the face, the voice, the hands 
 thou mayest know Him by the heart : that soul- 
 pitying heart is His ; it can be none but His ; love 
 and compassion are its certain signatures ; this is He 
 who chose thy life before His own, who pleads His 
 blood before His Father, and makes continual inter- 
 cession for thee. And is not here fuel enough for 
 love to feed on ? Doth not thy throbbing heart stop 
 here to ease itself and, like Joseph, seek for a place 
 
98 THE CHRISTIAN MOTHER I 
 
 to weep in?" One of Mrs. Winslow's favorite ex- 
 pressions, and not less special joys, is, u taking walks 
 above" such walks as Richard Baxter found to be 
 his daily strength and rest. " Only think of this," 
 we find her writing (February 10, 1840) to a tried 
 saint : " Jesus is above, and is ready to welcome you 
 home. Let us hourly realize this realize heaven, 
 with all its glories. What rapture to fall at His feet, 
 and to hear him say, i Come, ye blessed of my 
 Father!' Oh, that the saints of God would live 
 more in the anticipation of the glory that awaits 
 them ! There is much of heaven to be enjoyed 
 even on earth." And, another day, she says : " My 
 soul seems swallowed up in God. I feel heaven so 
 near, that I am almost in the actual presence. Yes, 
 Jesus is above. Our own Joseph lives." 
 
 One autumn morning a traveller left Geneva to as- 
 cend the Grand Saleve. A thick mist enveloped the 
 valley as he began the steep ascent Mounting by a 
 zigzag path in the face of the hill, he suddenly 
 emerged into a brilliant sunshine a sea of mist, as 
 smooth as a chalcedony, still covering all beneath. 
 The chime of the village-bells, the lowing of the 
 oxen, the busy hum of industry, came up from the 
 valley, as if they were things of another sphere ; and 
 yet but a brief moment sufficed to carry down this 
 denizen of this mountain-sunshine into the region of 
 mist and of earnest life. Mrs. Winslow's "walks 
 above" resemble that morning's ascent into the Al- 
 pine sunshine. Not sentimental journeys into the 
 
MRS. MARY WINSLOW. 99 
 
 regions of romance, but occasions of real communion 
 with her living God they bring her down hito these 
 scenes of mist, encircled with a fresh halo of heavenly 
 buoyancy and joy. " Oh, may a view of the bless- 
 ings awaiting us," she writes on one of those occa- 
 sions, " encourage our hearts to press on to know 
 more and more of the power of Christ's resurrection 
 in our souls, that we may manifest it by a holy walk 
 and conversation before a gainsaying world ! Let it 
 be your chief work, and occupy your best thoughts. 
 Look not behind, but press forward. Heaven is 
 worth living for, and it is worth dying for." 
 
 Another of the lessons which she learns, in these 
 " walks above," is an ever-freshening confidence 
 toward the Lord. "When I go," she writes, "to 
 the throne of grace, I cannot be satisfied unless I feel 
 I have the ear of God. I cannot be happy, if I have 
 not communion with Him whom my soul loveth. 
 Go, under all circumstances, and tell Him all. Oh, 
 keep an open heart with the Saviour of sinners." And 
 again : " Let us live more in holy familiarity with 
 Jesus. Nothing is too much beneath His notice. As 
 dear old John Newton says, * If the buzzing of a fly 
 is an annoyance to us, it is our privilege to carry it 
 to Jesus.' " 
 
 And another lesson is an ever-deepening hatred 
 of sin. " I think that in general," she says, " we do 
 but take too superficial a view of what sin is in the 
 sight of God, a holy God, and we do not sufficiently 
 examine our hearts by His holy law. Such a view 
 
100 THE CHRISTIAN MOTHER. 
 
 of what sin is would make us cling closer to the 
 cross of Christ; it would send us oftener to the 
 atoning blood for cleansing, and endear to us the 
 worth and preciousness of a throne of grace. It 
 would also keep us from being mere yea-and-nay 
 Christians, or half-hearted Christians. A slight, im- 
 perfect knowledge of what sin is, leads to almost 
 every evil into which a Christian is liable to fall." 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 " Thou teachest by temptation, 
 
 By weary vigils kept, 
 By deep and earnest conflicts, 
 By troubled slumbers slept. 11 
 
 The Egyptian statue Vocal by sun's rays Life-harp " Hearsay 
 Christians 1 ' An "unknown God" The "earthly house" crumbling 
 Fainting fit" None like Jesus 1 '" Best time 11 Illness "Not yet" 
 " Something more to learn" Port in view " Pin by pin" Heaven 
 a place" Deify Christ's humanity" Snare. 
 
 IT is fabled of an Egyptian statue, that, when the 
 sun rose upon it, the strings within became vocal. 
 It is no fable, that no sooner does the Sun of Right- 
 eousness rise on the statue-like religiousness of the 
 poor formalist, than the heart's life-harp is attuned 
 to a heavenly melody of praise. Herself rejoicing in 
 the happy joys of the heavenly life, Mrs. Winslow 
 seems to yearn with a new compassion over the life- 
 less form. " Oh, how few," we have her writing, 
 " really know God ! I meet with many hearsay 
 Christians, who have heard of Jesus with the hearing 
 of the ear, but who have no personal acquaintance 
 with Him. They have never come to Christ as poor, 
 wretched, blind and naked ; and, therefore, they 
 know nothing of that peace which the application of 
 the atoning blood alone can impart. They have 
 never come in contact with Christ. They only be- 
 
102 THE CHRISTIAN MOTHER I 
 
 lieve what others say of Him, and know nothing of 
 a blessed recognition a oneness and a holy inter- 
 course between Jesus and the poor sinner, saved by 
 sovereign grace and everlasting love." 
 
 And, on another occasion, she adds : " What 
 communion can a formalist have with God ? He 
 regularly says his prayers, but it is to an unknown 
 God. There is no response, no interchange of feel- 
 ing above all, of love. There is no answer from 
 the Lord, no bending down of His ear, no lifting up 
 of His countenance, no cheering welcome. And the 
 formalist is satisfied; he does what he thinks his 
 duty ; he repeats his lifeless, heartless, meaningless 
 prayers, and thinks he has done well ; and so he 
 lives and dies with a lie in his right hand." 
 
 The soul's " dark cottage" is now crumbling down. 
 " I have had one of my alarming fainting fits," she 
 writes, in the autumn of 1851, " and often think I 
 may go off in one of them. God be praised for all 
 His love-tokens. These visitations are nothing more. 
 The oftener the gold is put into a furnace, the more 
 the dross is consumed, and the brighter it shines. In 
 the trial, we cling closer to Jesus ; we see more of 
 His loving heart, and imbibe more of His lovely 
 image. We cannot come into close contact with 
 Christ, and not get good. Touch but the hem of 
 His garment, and virtue flows." And, somewhat 
 later : " I have been feeble ; but this I must expect 
 according to the course of things in this changing, 
 fading world. Oh, to live upon Jesus to live for 
 . Him and, in a measure, even now to live with Him I 
 
MRS. MART WINSLOW. 103 
 
 It is a narrow road the followers of Christ walk ; but 
 it is the footpath He Himself travelled, and it is a 
 great honor put upon a follower of Him to tread in 
 the same. In all my helplessness I lean upon Him. 
 There is none like Jesus, the once despised Nazarene, 
 who trod this earth in loneliness and poverty, de- 
 spised and rejected of men. The honors of this poor 
 world are not worth a thought. May the Lord keep 
 you more than merely satisfied ; may you always 
 rejoice that He . has called you to take up a cross for 
 Him who bore so heavy a one for you, that you 
 may hereafter, after a little while, wear a crown ! I 
 am increasingly feeble. Humanly speaking, I think 
 this will be my last summer on earth. Well, be it 
 so ; the Lord knows the best time, and He will take 
 care of His own." 
 
 This summer, an illness seizes her, which seems 
 to intimate that ere very long the clay-tabernacle 
 . must be " dissolved." But a respite is given. " ' Not 
 yet !' said the Saviour," she writes, September 24, 
 1853 ; " c a little longer trial and conflict in the wil- 
 derness.' I have something more to learn of my 
 helplessness and weakness. It is but a little, and we 
 shall pass away ; all our sicknesses, trials, and dis- 
 appointments are needful to fit us for it. I have, 
 through a long-protracted life, waded through much 
 tribulation ; and now I feel that I have not had one 
 sorrow amiss. The port is almost in view, and how 
 pleasant it looks !" 
 
 The " abundant entrance" is not to be much longer 
 delayed. " Shall soon be with Jesus," she says, one 
 
104 THE CHRISTIAN MOTHER. 
 
 day, about a week afterwards, as the port at last 
 heaves actually in view " shall see Him face to face. 
 Oh, the glorious prospect !" And again : " I am so 
 happy I cannot tell how happy I am ! Not a ruffle, 
 not a cloud. I wish you to keep my poor wandering 
 mind fixed upon that one blessed truth Cl, 
 glorious resurrection ; for, if Christ rose again and is 
 alive, I shall certainly rise and live with Him for ever." 
 
 Another day, she says : " Oh, how graciously the 
 Lord is taking down the tent, pin by pin ! What an 
 eventful life mine has been ! I have lived much in 
 camp, and have seen the tents struck, and the regi- 
 ment move off. Such is life. Jesus is all to my soul. 
 Oh, how I realize His presence ! I have a full view 
 of Him at this moment. Heaven is a reality. We 
 mystify heaven ; it is a place. There is a service in 
 heaven for Christ. I wonder if we shall not go over 
 our eventful lives in heaven ? I think we shall." 
 
 " I feel," she says, on another occasion, " that one 
 reason why many real Christians do not go on their 
 way rejoicing, is, that they deify the humanity of 
 Christ. Jesus is the very same Jesus now that He 
 was when He walked the streets of Jerusalem. 
 Though His body is glorified, He is not altered. His 
 heart is still the same, full of sympathy and love, 
 ready to listen to all we have to say to Him, and to 
 do all we ask Him to do, and in the best possible 
 way." Most weighty words! Jesus is God very 
 God ; but He is also man very man : and to deify 
 His humanity, is to rob Him of His chief glor 
 the Head of His body the Church. 
 
CHAPTEE VIII. 
 
 " I see, by faith, my holy home above, 
 
 Jerusalem ! 
 
 Adorned so richly, by my Saviour's love, 
 With pearl and gem. 
 
 I long to enter the eternal gates, 
 
 And sin no more ; 
 
 My best and sweetest praise suspended waits 
 For that glad hour. 
 
 Then shall my harp possess no broken string, 
 My song to mar ; 
 
 And in the everlasting praise I bring, 
 No note shall jar." 
 
 William Carey A " worm" The mother The Black River A strug- 
 gle "Our sins" The Trinity Sunshine The glory "See Him as 
 He is" "Close intimacies with Jesus" Not a single cloud "All 
 real" "A cloudless death" "I see THEE" Conclusion " First 
 joy in heaven." 
 
 WHEN William Carey was dying, he directed that 
 on his tomb there should be engraven this epitaph 
 
 WILLIAM CAREY, 
 BORN 1761. 
 DIED 
 
 " A guilty, weak, and helpless worm, 
 On thy kind arms I fall." 
 
 Not less self-renouncing is Mrs. Winslow. " I shall 
 enter heaven/' she says, on one of those closing days, 
 
106 THE CHRISTIAN MOTHER: 
 
 a poor sinner saved by grace. I seem to have done 
 nothing for the Lord, who has done so much for me." 
 Reminded of her self-denying labors, especially for 
 her family, and of the blessing which had come upon 
 them, she replies eagerly : " Ah ! faithless, faithless 
 have I been to my trust. 
 
 " ' Nothing in my hand I bring, 
 Simply to thy cross I cling.' 
 
 I think many Christians dishonor Christ by refusing 
 to obey Him. Whatever your hands find to do, do 
 it with your might." 
 
 Like Christian in the Black River, a conflict inter- 
 venes. " Oh, pray for me," she says, at early dawn, 
 one morning, u pray for me ! I am under a cloud. 
 Oh, what a night of conflict I have passed a con- 
 flict with death, hell, and the grave ! The enemy 
 would conquer me, if he could." " It is one thing," 
 she proceeds, " to talk of death ; it is quite another 
 thing, when it becomes a reality, to grapple with it. 
 It is an easy thing to speak of the war in the East 
 perhaps to plan an attack upon the enemy ; but it is 
 quite a different thing to be in the heat of the con- 
 flict, the mighty foe contending with you foot by 
 foot. Some go out of the world without a fear ; but 
 they know not and feel not the magnitude of sin. To 
 have one's sins all in review before the mind's eye, 
 and eternity in view this is reality, and it needs the 
 TRINITY to comfort and support the sinking soul." 
 
 But the sun shines forth once more. " The gloom 
 has all passed," is her joyful exclamation, not long 
 
MRS. MART WINSLOW. 107 
 
 afterwards, " and I have a full view of the glory 
 which awaits me. Oh, the hope of heaven ! when 
 shall I be there ? To see Jesus, once a Man of Sor- 
 rows, now enthroned that very same Jesus who was 
 upon earth, and who so often has spoken words of 
 comfort when others could not comfort !" 
 
 Disclosing the secret at once of her holy living 
 and of her holy dying, she whispers, another day, to 
 one who is watching at her side : " Keep close in- 
 timacies with Jesus. We must live upon Christ, and 
 we must die upon Christ." And again : " Little 
 faith will bring the soul to heaven ; great faith will 
 bring heaven into the soul. I am passing away ; 
 but not a single cloud veils Christ from my view. I 
 seem as if Christ were beckoning me to come, saying, 
 1 Why do you delay ? Come up hither.' " 
 
 The bar is now reached, and she is to enter her 
 haven. " Note this," she says, on her closing morn- 
 ing : " there is a buoyancy, a vitality in the principle 
 of the renewed soul, which, in dying, cannot be de- 
 pressed. The more the body decays and sinks, the 
 higher it rises to its native heaven." And again : 
 " I am longing to depart and to be with Christ. All 
 is real. I long to end this mortal struggle. 
 
 " ' Jesu, lover of my soul, 
 Let me to thy bosom fly.' " 
 
 Too feeble now almost to articulate a word, she 
 looks one of her sons steadily in the face, and, lifting 
 her hand, points upwards. Like the martyr Ridley, 
 ahe Las lived so near heaven, that, now that she is dy- 
 
108 THE CHRISTIAN MOTHER. 
 
 ing, she has not far to go. Her voice regaining for a 
 moment its strength, she exclaims, calmly and firmly 
 " a cloudless death ! a cloudless death ! a cloudless 
 death !" Then a still interval and, as life seems 
 ebbing insensibly away, she whispers " I see Thee ! 
 I see Thee ! I see Thee !" " What do you see ?" 
 inquires a tremulous voice. "I see Thee!" once 
 more whispers the expiring saint ; u I see THEE I'' 
 A few moments longer and she is with her LORP. 
 
 " "When that happy era begins, 
 
 When, arrayed in thy glories, I shine, 
 Nor grieve any more, by my sins, 
 The bosom on which I recline : 
 
 then shall the veil be removed, 
 
 And round me thy brightness be poured ; 
 
 1 shall meet Him whom absent I loved, 
 I shall see whom unseen I adored." 
 
 Such was this honored woman in her life and ia 
 her death. " My first joy in heaven," said she, on 
 one of those last days, " will be to see JESUS." And, 
 on her closing evening, she added "The glory of 
 heaven is Christ." Reader ! is that your heaven ? 
 You can easily judge, by this simple test " Do you 
 love the society of Jesus NOW ?" If you do, then 
 your heaven is already begun ; but if not if Christ 
 be an unwelcome guest in your heart and in your 
 home, the heaven of the Bible is no heaven for you 
 you nave a religion for time but no religion for 
 eternity. And shall it be always so ? 
 
 
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