Chapter 6, page 53. Mr. Whirly Wiseman. Wise in this world. A quote from Paul. Mr. Whirly Wiseman has a long history behind him on which we cannot now enter at any length. As a child, the little whirling, it was observed, took much after his secular father, but much more after his scheming mother. He was already a self-seeking, self-satisfied youth, and when he became a man and began business for himself, no man's business flourished like his. Nothing of news, says his biographer in another place, nothing of doctrine, nothing of alteration, or talk of alteration, could at any time be set on foot in the town, but be sure Mr. Worldly Wiseman would be at the head or tail of it. But to be sure, he would always decline those he deemed to be the weakest, and stood always with those, in his way of thinking, that he supposed were on the strongest side. He was a man that was often remarked of, but one book also. Sunday and Saturday, he was found to be deep in The Architect of Fortune, or Advancement in Life, a book written by its author so as to come home to all men's business and bosoms. He drove over scrupulously once a Sunday to the state church, of which he was one of the most determined pillars. He had set his mind on being Lord Mayor of the town before long, and he was determined that his eldest son should be called Sir Worldly Wiseman, after him, and he chose his church accordingly. Another of his biographers in this connection wrote of him thus, Our Lord Mayor parted his religion betwixt his conscience and his purse, And he went to church not to serve God, but to please the king. The face of the law made him wear the mask of the gospel, which he used not as a means to save his soul, but his charges. Such, in a short word, was this sottish man who crossed over the field to meet with our pilgrim when he was walking solitarily by himself after his escape from the slough. How now, good fellow! Whither away after this burdened manner? What a contrast those two men were to one another in the midst of that plain that day. Our pilgrim was full of the most laborious goings. Sighs and groans rose out of his heart at every step, and then his burden on his back and his filthy, slimy rags all made him a picture such that it was to any man's credit and praise that he should stop to speak to him. And then, when our pilgrim looked up, he saw a gentleman standing beside him to whom he was ashamed to speak. For the gentleman had no burden on his back, and he did not go over the plain laboriously. There was not a speck or a spot, a rent or a wrinkle, on all his fine raiment. He could not have been better appointed if he had just stepped out of the gate at the head of the way. They can wear no cleaner garments than his in the Celestial City itself. How now, good fellow, whither away after this burdened manner? A burdened manner, indeed, as ever I think poor creature had. And whereas you ask me whither away, I tell you, sir, I am going to yonder wicket gate before me. For there, as I am informed, I shall be put into a way to be rid of my heavy burden. Hast thou a wife and children? Yes, he is ashamed to say that he has, but he confesses that he cannot to-day take the pleasure in them that he used to. Since his sin so came upon him, he is sometimes as if he had neither wife nor child, nor a house over his head. John Bunyan was of Samuel Rutherford's terrible experience that our sins and our sinfulness poison all our best enjoyments. We do not hear much of Rutherford's wife and children and that no doubt for the sufficient reason that he gives us in his so open-minded letter. But Bunyan laments over his blind child with a lament worthy to stand beside the lament of David over Absalom and again over Saul and Jonathan at Mount Gilboa. At the same time, John Bunyan often felt sore and sad at heart that he could not love and give all his heart to his wife and children as they deserve to be loved and to have all his heart. He often felt guilty as he looked on them and knew in himself that they did not have in him such a father as God knew he wished he was or ever in this world could hope to be. Yes, he said, I cannot take the pleasure in them that I would. I am sometimes as if I had none. My sin sometimes drives me like a man bereft of his reason and clean-demented. Who did thee go this way to be rid of thy burden? I beshrew him for his counsel. There is not a more troublesome and dangerous way in the world than this is to which he hath directed thee. And besides, though I used to have some of the same burden when I was young, not since I settled in that town, pointing to the town of Carnal Policy over the plain. Have I been at any time troubled in that way? And then he went on to describe and denounce the way to the celestial city, and he did it like a man who had been over it all and had come back again. His alarming description of the upward way reads to us like a page out of Job or Jeremiah or David or Paul. Hear me, he says, for I am older than thou. Thou art like to meet within the way which thou goest worrisomeness, painfulness, hunger, perils, nakedness, sword, lions, dragons, darkness, and in a word, death and whatnot. You would think that you were reading the 8th of the Romans at the 35th verse. Only Mr. Worley Wiseman does not go on to finish the chapter. He does not go on to add, 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 Jesus Christ our Lord." No, Worley Wiseman never reads the Romans, and he never hears a sermon on that chapter when he goes to church. Mr. Worley Wiseman became positively eloquent and impressive, and all but convincing, as he went on so graphically and cumulatively over all the sorrows that attended on the way to which this pilgrim was now setting his face. But staggering as it all was, the man in rags and slime only smiled a sad and sobbing smile in answer, and said, Why, sir, this burden upon my back is far more terrible to me than all the things which you have mentioned. Nay, methinks I cannot care what I meet with in the way, so be I can also meet with deliverance from my burden. This is what our Lord calls a pilgrim having the root of the matter in himself. This poor soul had by this time so much wearisomeness, painfulness, hunger, peril, nakedness, sword, lions, dragons, darkness, death, and what not in himself, that all these threatened things outside of himself were but so many bugbears and hobgoblins wherewith to terrify children. They were but things to be laughed at by every man who is in earnest in the way. I care not what else I meet with, if only I also meet with deliverance. There speaks the true pilgrim, there speaks the man who drew down the Son of God to the cross for that man's deliverance. There speaks the man who, mire and rags, and burdens and all, will yet be found in the heaven of heavens, when the chief of sinners shall see their deliverer face to face, and shall at last and forever be like him. Peter examined Dante in heaven on faith, James examined him on hope, and John took him through his catechism on love, and the seer came out of the tent with a laurel crown on his brow. I do not know who the examiner on sin will be, but speaking for myself on this matter, I would rather take my degree in that subject than in all the other subjects set for a sinner's examination on either earth or in heaven. For to know myself, and especially, as the wise man says, to know the plague of my own heart is the true and the only key to all the other true knowledge, God and man, the Redeemer and the devil, heaven and hell, faith, hope, and charity, unbelief, despair, and malignity, and all things of that kind else, all knowledge will come to the man who knows himself, and to that man alone, and to that man in the exact measure in which he does really know himself. Listen again to this lost, stained, sin-burdened, sighing and sobbing pilgrim, who in spite of all these things, nay in virtue of all these things, is as sure of heaven and of the far end of heaven as if he were already enthroned there. Worrisomeness, he protests, painfulness, hunger, perils, nakedness, swords, lions, dragons, darkness, death, and what not. Why, sir, this burden on my back is far more terrible to me than all these things which you have mentioned. Nay, methinks I care not what I meet with in the way, so be I can also meet with deliverance from my burden. O God, let this same mind be found in me and in all the men and women for whose souls I shall have to answer at that day of judgment, and I shall be content and safe before Thee. That strong outburst from this so forethoughten man for a moment quite overawed worldly wisdom. He could not reply to an earnestness like this. He did not understand it and could not account for it. The only thing he ever was in such earnestness as that about was his success in business and his title that he and his wife were scheming for. But still, though silenced by this unaccountable outburst of our pilgrim, Worley Wiseman's enmity against the upward way, and especially against all the men and all the books that made pilgrims take to that way, was not silenced. How camest thou by thy burden at first? By reading this book in my hand. Worldly Wiseman did not fall foul of the book indeed, but he fell all the more foul of those who meddled with matters they had not a head for. These these high and deep things for the ministers who are paid to understand and explain them, and attend to matters more within my scope. And then he went on to tell of a far better way to get rid of the burden that meddlesome men brought on themselves by reading that book too much, a far better and swifter way than attempting the wicked gate. Thou wilt never be settled in thy mind till thou art rid of that burden, nor canst thou enjoy the blessings of wife and child as long as that burden lies so heavy upon thee." That was so true that it made the pilgrim look up. A gentleman who can speak in that true style must know more than he says about such burdens as this of mine, and after all, he may be able, who knows, to give me some good advice in my great straits. Pray, sir, open this secret to me. for I sorely stand in need of good counsel. Let him here, who has no such burden as this poor pilgrim had, cast the first stone at Christian. I cannot. If one who looked like a gentleman came to me tonight and told me how I would on the spot get to a peace of conscience never to be lost again, and how I would get a heart tonight that would never any more plague and pollute me, I would be mightily tempted to forget what all my former teachers had told me and try this new gospel. and especially if the gentleman said that the remedy was just at hand. Pray, sir, said the breathless and spiritless man, wilt thou then open this secret to me? The wit and the humor and the satire of the rest of the scene must be fully enjoyed over the great book itself, the village named Morality, hard by the hill, that judicious man Legality, who dwells in the first house you come at after you have turned the hill, Civility, the pretty young man that legality hath to his son, the hospitality of the village, the low rents and the cheap provisions, and all the charities and amenities of the place, altogether make up such a picture as you cannot get anywhere out of Bunyan. And then the pilgrim's dark folly in entering into worldly wise men's secrets, his horror as the hill began to thunder and lighten and threaten to fall upon him, the sudden descent of evangelist and then the plain spoken words that pass between the preacher and the pilgrim. Don't say again that the poorest of the Puritans were without letters or that they had not their own esoteric writings full of fun and frolic. Don't say that again until you are a pilgrim yourself and have your John Bunyan for one of your classics by heart. We are near an end but before you depart stand still a little as Evangelist said to Christian that I may show you the words of God. And first, watch yourselves well, for you all have a large piece of this worldly wise man in yourselves. You all take something of some ancestor, remote or immediate, who was wise only for this world. Yes, to be sure, for you still decline as they did, and desert as they did, those you deem to be the weakest, and stand with those that you suppose to be the strongest side. The architect of fortune is perhaps too strong meat for your stomach. But still, if you ever light upon its powerful pages, you will surely blush in secret to see yourself turn so completely inside out. You may not have chosen your church wholly with an eye to your shop, but you must admit that you see as good and better men than you are doing that every day. And it is a sure sign to you that you do not yet know the plague of your own heart, Unless you know yourself to be a man more set upon the position and praise that this world gives, then you yet are on the position and the praise that come from God only. Set a watch on your own worldly heart. Watch and pray, lest you also enter into all worldly wise men's temptation. This is one of the words of God to you. Another word of God is this. The way of the cross, said severe evangelists, is odious to every worldly wise man. While, all the time, it is the only way there is, and there never will be any other way to eternal life. The only way to life is the way of the cross. There are two crosses, indeed, on the way to the celestial city. First, there is the cross of Christ, once for you, and then there is your cross daily for Christ, and it takes both crosses to secure and to assure any man that he is on the right road. and that he will come at last to the right end. The Christian's great conquest over the world, says William Law, is all contained in the mystery of Christ upon the cross. And true Christianity is nothing else but an entire and absolute conformity to that spirit which Christ showed in the mysterious sacrifice of himself upon the cross. Every man is only so far a Christian as he partakes of this same spirit of Christ the same suffering spirit, the same sacrifice of himself, the same renunciation of the world, the same humility and meekness, the same patient bearing of injuries, reproaches, and contempt, the same dying to all the greatness, honors, and happiness of this world that Christ showed on the cross. We also are to suffer, to be crucified, to die, to rise with Christ, or else His crucifixion, His death, and His resurrection will profit us nothing. This is the second word of God unto thee. And the third thing tonight is this, that though thy sin be very great, though thou hast a past life round thy neck, enough to sink thee forever out of the sight of God and all good men. A youth of sensuality now long and closely cloaked over, with an afterlife of worldly prosperity, worldly decency, and worldly religion, all which only makes thee that whited sepulchre that Christ has in his eye when he speaks of thee with such a severe and dreadful countenance. Yet if thou confess thyself to be all the whited sepulchre he sees thee to be, and yet knock at his gate in all thy rags and slime, he will immediately lay aside that severe countenance and will show thee all his good will. Notwithstanding all that thou hast done and all that thou still art, He will not deny his own words, and do otherwise than at once fulfill them all to thee. Ask then, and it shall be given thee. Seek, and thou shalt find. Knock, and it shall be opened unto thee. And with a great good will he will say to those that stand by him, Take away the filthy garments from him. And to thee he will say, Behold, I have caused all thine iniquity to pass from thee, and I will clothe thee with change of raiment. Chapter 7 page 64 Goodwill the gatekeeper Goodwill Luke chapter 2 verse 14 So in the process of time Christian got up to the gate Now there was written over the gate knock and it shall be opened unto you He knocked therefore more than once or twice saying may I now enter here? when at last there came a grave person to the gate named Goodwill who asked him who was there and The gravity of the gatekeeper was the first thing that struck the pilgrim. And it was the same thing that so struck some of the men who saw most of our Lord, that they handed down to their children the true tradition that he was often seen in tears, but that no one had ever seen or heard him laugh. The prophecy in the prophet concerning our Lord was fulfilled to the letter. He was indeed a man of sorrows, and he early and all his life long had a close acquaintance with grief. Our Lord had come into this world on a very sad errand. We are so stupefied and besotted with sin that we have no conception how sad an errand our Lord had been sent on, and how sad a task He soon discovered it to be. To be a man without sin, a man hating sin, and hating nothing else but sin, and yet to have to spend all his days in the world lying in sin, and in the end to have all that world of sin laid upon him, till he was himself made sin, How sad a task was that! Great no doubt, as was the joy that was set before our Lord, and sure as he was of one day entering on that joy, yet the daily sight of so much sin in all the men around him, and the cross, and the shame that lay right before him, made him, in spite of the future joy, all the man of sorrow Isaiah had said he would be, and made light-mindedness and laughter impossible to our Lord. As it is indeed to all men among ourselves, who have anything of his mind about this present world and the sin of this world. They also are men of sorrow and of his sorrow. They, too, are acquainted with grief. Their tears, like his, will never be wiped off in this world. They will not laugh with all their heart till they laugh where he now laughs. Then it will be said of them, too, that they began to be merry. What was the matter with you that you did laugh in your sleep last night? asked Christiana of Mercy in the morning. I suppose you were in a dream. So I was, said Mercy, but are you sure that I laughed? Yes, you laughed heartily. But prithee, Mercy, tell me thy dream. Well, I dreamed that I was in a solitary place and all alone, and was there bemoaning the hardness of my heart, when methought I saw one coming with wings towards me. So he came directly to me and said, Mercy, what aileth thee? Now when he heard my complaint, he said, Peace be to thee. He also wiped mine eyes with his handkerchief, and clad me in silver and gold, and he put a chain about my neck, and earrings in mine ears, and a beautiful crown upon my head. So he went up. I followed him till we came to a golden gate, and I thought I saw your husband there. But did I laugh? Laugh, I, and well you might, to see yourself so well. but to return and begin again. Goodwill who opened the gate was, as we saw, a person of a very grave and commanding aspect, so much so that in his sudden joy our pilgrim was a good deal overawed as he looked on the countenance of the man who stood in the gate, and it was some time afterwards before he understood why he wore such a grave and almost sad aspect. But afterwards, as he went up the way, and sometimes returned in thought to the wicked gate, He came to see very good reason why the keeper of that gate looked as he did. The sight and situation of the gate, for one thing, was of itself enough to banish all light-mindedness from the man who was stationed there. For the gatehouse stood just above the slough of this pond, and that itself filled the air of the place with a dampness and a depression that could be felt. And then out of the downward windows of the gate, the Watcher's eyes always fell on the city of destruction in the distance, and her sister cities sitting like her daughters round about her. And that also made mirth and hilarity impossible at that gate. And then the kind of characters who came knocking all hours of the day and the night at the gate. Goodwill never saw a happy face or heard a cheerful voice from one year's end to the other. And when anyone so far forgot himself as to put on an untimely confidence and self-satisfaction, the gatekeeper would soon put him through such questions as quickly sobered him, if he had anything at all of the root of the matter in him. Terror, horror, despair, remorse chased men and women up to that gate. They would often fall before his threshold more dead than alive. And then, after the gate was opened, and the pilgrims pulled in, the gate had only opened on the path of such painfulness, toil, and terrible risk, that at whatever window Goodwill looked out, he always saw enough to make him, and keep him, a grave, if not a sad man. It was, as he sometimes said, his meat and drink to keep the gate open for pilgrims. But the class of men who came calling themselves pilgrims, the condition they came in, The past, that in spite of all both he and they could do, still came in through his gate after them, and went up all the way with them. Their ignorance of the way, on which he could only start them, the multitudes who started, and the handfuls who held on, the many who for a time ran well, but afterwards left their bones to bleach by the wayside, and all the impossible to be told troubles, dangers, sorrows, shipwrecks that certainly lay before the most steadfast and single-hearted pilgrim. All that was more than enough to give the man at the gate his grave and anxious aspect. Not that his great gravity, with all the causes of it, ever made him a melancholy, a morose, a despairing, or even a desponding man. Far from that. The man of sorrows himself sometimes rejoiced in spirit, not sometimes only but often he lifted up his heart and thanked his father for the work his father had given him to do and for the success that had been granted to him in the doing of it and as often as he looked forward to the time when he should finish his work and receive his discharge and return to his father's house at the thought of that he straightway forgot all his present sorrows and somewhat so was it with goodwill at his gate No man could be but at bottom happy and even joyful who had a post like his to occupy, a gate like his to keep, and altogether a work like his to do. No man with his name and his nature can ever in any circumstances be really unhappy. Happiness is the bloom that always lies on a life of true goodness, and this gatehouse was full of the happiness that follows on and always dwells with true goodness. Goodwill cannot have more happiness till he shuts in his last pilgrim into the celestial city and then himself enters in after him as a shepherd after a lost sheep. The happy, heavenly, divine disposition of the gatekeeper was such that it overflowed from the pilgrim who stood beside him and descended upon his wife and children who remained behind him in the doomed city. So full of love was the gatekeeper's heart that it ran out upon obstinate and pliable also His heart was so large and so hospitable that he was not satisfied with one pilgrim received and assisted that day. How is it, he asked, that you have come here alone? Did any of your neighbors know of your coming? And why did he who came so far not come through? A last poor man, said Goodwill, is the celestial glory of so little esteem with him that he counted it not worth running the hazards of a few difficulties to obtain it. Our pilgrim got a lifelong lesson in goodwill to all men at that gate that day. The gatekeeper showed such deep and patient and genuine interest in all the pilgrim's past history and in all his family and personal affairs that Christian, all his days, could never show impatience or haste or lack of interest in the most long-winded and egotistical pilgrim he ever met. He always remembered when he was becoming impatient how much of his precious time and of his loving attention his old good friend Goodwill had given to him. Our patient got tired of talking about himself long before Goodwill had ceased to ask questions and to listen to the answers. So much was Christian taken with the courtesy and the kindness of Goodwill that had it not been for his crushing burden he would have offered to remain in Goodwill's house to run his errands, to light his fires, and to sweep his floors. So much was he taken captive with good will's extraordinary kindness and unwary attention. And since he could not remain at the gate, but must go on to the city of all good will itself, our pilgrim set himself all his days to copy this gatekeeper when he met with any fellow pilgrim who had any story that he wished to tell. And many were the lonely and forgotten souls that Christian cheered and helped on, not by his gold or his silver, nor by anything else, but just by his open ear. To listen with patience and with attention to a fellow pilgrim's wrongs and sorrows, and even his smallest interests, said this Christian to himself, is just what good will, so winningly, did to me. With all his good will, the grave gatekeeper could not say that the way to the celestial city was other than a narrow, a stringent, and a heart-searching way. Come, he said, and I will tell thee the way thou must go. There are many wide ways to hell, and many there be who crowd them, but there is only one way to heaven, and you will sometimes think you must have gone off it, there are so few companions. Sometimes there will be only one footprint, with here and there a stream of blood, and always as you proceed it becomes more and more narrow, till it strips a man bare, and sometimes threatens to close upon him, and crush him to the earth altogether. Our Lord in His many words tells us all that, Strive, he says, strive every day. For many shall seek to enter into the way of salvation, but because they do not early enough and long enough and painfully enough strive, they come short and are shut out. Have you then anything in your religious life that Christ will at last accept as the striving he intended and demanded? Does your religion cause you any real effort? Christ calls it agony. Have you ever had, do you ever have, anything that he would so describe? What cross do you take up every day? In what thing do you every day deny yourself? Name it. Put your finger on it. Write it in cipher on the margin of your Bible. Would the most liberal judgment be able to say of you that you have any fear and trembling in the work of your salvation? If not, I am afraid there must be some mistake somewhere. There must be great guilt somewhere. At your parents' door or at your minister's. or if their hands are clean then at your own Christ has made it plain to a proverb and John Bunyan has made it a nursery and a schoolboy story that the way to heaven is deep and narrow and lonely and perilous and that remember not a few of the first miles of the way but all the way and even through the dark valley itself almost all that is said in the New Testament of men's watching giving earnest heed to themselves running the race that is set before them, striving and agonizing, fighting, putting on the whole armor of God, pressing forward, reaching forth, crying to God day and night. I say almost all that we have in the New Testament on these subjects is spoken and directed to the saints. Where those things are applied to sinners seeking salvation once, they are spoken of the saints' prosecution of their salvation ten times." Jonathan Edwards If you have a life at all like that, you will be sorely tempted to think that such suffering and struggle, increasing rather than diminishing as life goes on, is a sign that you are so bad as not to be a true Christian at all. You will be tempted to think and say so. But all the time the truth is that he who has not that laboring, striving, agonizing, fearing and trembling in himself, knows nothing at all about the religion of Christ and the way to heaven. And if he thinks he does, than that but proves him a hypocrite, a self-deceived, self-satisfied hypocrite. There is not an ounce of a true Christian in him. Says Samuel Rutherford on this matter, Christ commendeth his hearers to a strict and narrow way, in mortifying heart lusts, in loving our enemy, in feeding him when he is hungry, in suffering for Christ's sake and the gospels, in bearing his cross, in denying ourselves, in becoming humble as children, in being to all men, and at all times, meek and lowly in heart. Let any man lay all that intelligently and imaginatively alongside of his own daily life. Let him name some such heart-lust. Let him name also some enemy, and ask himself what it is to love that man, and to feed him in his hunger, what it is in which he is called to suffer for Christ's sake and the Gospels, in his reputation in his property, in his business, in his feelings. Let him put his finger on something in which he is every day to deny himself, and to be humble and teachable, and to keep himself out of sight like a little child. And if that man does not find out how narrow and heart-searching the way to heaven is, he will be the first who has so found his way thither. No, no, be not deceived. Deceive not yourself, and let no man deceive you. God is not mocked. Neither are his true saints. Would to God I were back in my pulpit but for one Sabbath, said a dying minister in Aberdeen. What would you do, asked a brother minister at his bedside. I would preach to the people the difficulty of salvation, he said. All which things are told, not for purposes of debate or defiance, but to comfort and instruct God's true children, who are finding salvation far more difficult than anybody had ever told them it would be. Comfort my people, saith your God. Speak comfortably to my people. Come, said Goodwill, and I will teach thee about the way thou must go. Look before thee. Dost thou see that narrow way? That is the way thou must go. And then thou mayest always distinguish the right way from the wrong. The wrong is crooked and wide, and the right is straight as a rule can make it, straight and narrow. Goodwill said all that in order to direct and to comfort the pilgrim, but that was not all that this good man said with that end. For when Christian asked him if he could not help him off with this burden that was upon his back, he told him, As to thy burden, be content to bear it until thou comest to the place of deliverance, for there it will fall from thy back of itself. Get you into the straight and narrow way, says Goodwill, with his much experience of the ways and fortunes of true pilgrims. Get you sure into the right way, and leave your burden to God. He appoints the place of deliverance, and it lies before thee. The place of thy deliverance cannot be behind thee, and it is not in my house, else thy burden would have been already off. But it is before thee. Be earnest, therefore, in the way. Look not behind thee. Go not into any crooked way, and one day before you know, when you are not pulling at it, your burden will fall off of itself. Be content to bear it till then, says bold and honest Goodwill, speaking so true to pilgrim experience. Yes, be content, O you people of God, crying with this pilgrim for release from your burden of guilt, and no less those of you who are calling with Paul for release from the still more bitter and crushing burden made up of combined guilt and corruption. Be content till the place and the time of deliverance. Nay, even under your burden and your bonds be glad, as Paul was, and go up the narrow way, still chanting to yourself, I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. It is only becoming that a great sinner should tarry the Lord's leisure. All the more that the greatest sinner may be sure the Lord will come and will not tarry. The time is long, but the thing is sure. And now two lessons from Goodwill's Gate. Number one. The gate was shut when Christian came up to it and no one was visible anywhere about it. The only thing visible was the writing over the gate which told all pilgrims to knock. Now when we come up to the same gate we are disappointed and discouraged that the gatekeeper is not standing already upon his doorstep and his arms round about our necks. We knelt today in secret prayer and there was only our bed or our chair visible before us. There was no human being, much less to all appearance, any divine presence in the place. And we prayed a short, indeed, but not an unearnest prayer, and then we rose up and came away disappointed, because no one appeared. But look at him who is now inheriting the promises. He knocked, says his history, more than once or twice, That is to say, he did not content himself with praying one or two seconds and then giving over, but he continued in prayer till the gatekeeper came. And as he knocked, he said, so loud and so impatient that all those in the gatehouse could hear him, May I now enter here? Will he within open to sorry me, though I have been a wandering rebel? Then shall I not fail to sing his lasting praise on high. Number two. We make no objections against any," said Goodwill, notwithstanding all that they have done before they come hither, they are in no wise cast out. He told me all things that ever I did, said the woman of Samaria, telling her neighbors about our Lord's conversation with her. And somehow there was something in the gatekeeper's words that called back the Christian, if not all the things he had ever done, yet from among them the worst things he had ever done. They all rose up black as hell before his eyes, as the gatekeeper did not name them all, but only said, Notwithstanding, all that thou hast done. Christian never felt his past life so black, or his burden so heavy, or his heart so broken, as when Goodwill just said that one word, Notwithstanding. We make no objections against any, Notwithstanding, all that they have done before they come hither, they are in no wise cast out. chapter 8 page 76 the interpreter an interpreter one among a thousand a quote from Elihu we come tonight to the interpreter's house and since every minister of the gospel is an interpreter and every evangelical church is an interpreter's house let us gather up some of the precious lessons to ministers and to people with which this passage of the pilgrim's progress so much abounds Number 1. In the first place, then, I observed that the House of the Interpreter stands just beyond the Wicket Gate. In the whole topography of the Pilgrim's Progress, there lies many a deep lesson. The church that Mr. Worley Wiseman supported, and on the communion roll of which he was so determined to have our pilgrims so unprepared named, stood far down on the other side of Goodwill Gate. It was a fine building, and it had an eloquent man for its minister. And the whole service was an attraction and an enjoyment to all the people of the place. But our interpreter was never asked to show any of his significant things there. And indeed, neither minister nor people would have understood him had he ever done so. And had any of the prisoners from below the gate ever by any chance stumbled into the interpreter's house, His most significant runes would have had no significance to them. Both he and his house would have been a mystery and an offense to worldly wise men, his minister, and his fellow worshipers. John Bunyan has the clear warrant both of Jesus Christ and the Apostle Paul for the place on which he has planted the Interpreter's house. It is given to you, said our Lord to his disciples, to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given. And Paul tells us that the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him. Neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. And accordingly, no reader of the Pilgrim's Progress will really understand what he sees in the Interpreter's house, unless he is already a man of a spiritual mind. Intelligent children enjoy the pictures and the people that are set before them in this illustrated house, but they must become the children of God and must be well on in the life of God before they will be able to say that the house next to the gate has been a profitable and a helpful house to them. All that is displayed here, all the furniture, all the vessels, all the ornaments, and all the employments, and all the people of the Interpreter's house is fitted and intended to be profitable as well as interesting to pilgrims only. No man has any real interest in the things of this house or will take any abiding prophet out of it, till he is fairly started on an upward road. In his former life, and while still on the other side of the gate, our pilgrim had no interest in such things as he is now to see and hear. And if he had seen and heard them in his former life, he would not with all the interpreter's explanation have understood them. As here among ourselves tonight, they who will understand and delight in the things they hear in this house tonight, are those only who have really begun to live a religious life. The realities of true religion are now the most real things in life to them. They love divine things now, and since they begin to love divine things, you cannot entertain them better than by exhibiting and explaining divine things to them. There is no house in all the earth, after the gate itself, that is more dear to the true pilgrim heart than just the interpreter's house. I was glad when it was said to me, Let us go into the house of the Lord. Peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces. This Reformation audio track is a production of Stillwater's Revival Books. SWRB makes thousands of classic Reformation resources available, free and for sale, in audio, video, and printed formats. Our many free resources, as well as our complete mail-order catalog, containing thousands of classic and contemporary Puritan and Reform books, tapes, and videos at great discounts, is on the web at www.swrb.com. We can also be reached by email at swrb at swrb.com, by phone at 780-450-8333, 3730 by fax at 780-468-1096 or by mail at 4710-37A Edmonton Alberta Canada T6L 3T5 You may also request a free printed catalog and remember that John Kelvin in defending the Reformation's regulative principle of worship, or what is sometimes called the scriptural law of worship, commenting on the words of God, which I commanded them not, neither came into my heart. From his commentary on Jeremiah 731, writes, God here cuts off from men every occasion for making evasions, since he condemns by this one phrase, I have not commanded them, whatever the Jews devise. There is then no other argument needed to condemn superstitions than that they are not commanded by God. For when men allow themselves to worship God according to their own fancies, and attend not to His commands, they pervert true religion. And if this principle was adopted by the Papists, all those fictitious modes of worship in which they absurdly exercise themselves would fall to the ground. It is indeed a horrible thing for the Papists to seek to discharge their duties towards God, by performing their own superstitions. There is an immense number of them, as it is well known, and as it manifestly appears. Were they to admit this principle, that we cannot rightly worship God except by obeying his word, they would be delivered from their deep abyss of error. The prophet's words, then, are very important, when he says that God had commanded no such thing, and that it never came to his mind. As though he had said, That men assume too much wisdom, When they devise what he never required, Nay, what he never knew.