5. And as if all that were not enough, and more than enough, to commend Mr. Prywell to us—to our trust, to our confidence, and to our imitation—his royal certificate continues, ‘One that looks into the very bottom of matters, and talks nothing of news, but by very solid arguments.’ The very bottom of matters—that is, the very bottom of his own and other men’s hearts. Mr. Prywell counts nothing else worth a wise man’s looking at. Let fools and children look at the painted and deceitful surface of things, but let men, men of matters, and especially men of divine matters, look only at their own and other men’s hearts. The very bottom of all matters is there. All wars, all policies, all debates, all disputes, all good and all evil counsels, all the much weal and all the multitudinous woe of Mansoul—all have their bottom in the heart; in the heart of God, or in the heart of man, or in the heart of the devil. The heart is the root of absolutely every matter to Mr. Prywell. He would not waste one hour of any day, or one watch of any night, on anything else. And it was this that made him both the extraordinarily successful scout he was, and the extraordinarily sober and thoughtful and judicious man he was. O yes, my brethren, the bottom of matters, when you take to it, will work the same change in you. ‘Two things,’ says one who had long looked at his own matters with Mr. Prywell’s eyes—‘two things, O Lord, I recognise in myself: nature, which Thou hast made, and sin, which I have added.’ My brethren, that recognition, that discovery in yourselves, when it comes to you, will sober you as it has sobered so many men before you: when it comes to you, that is, about yourselves. That discovery made in yourselves will make you deep-thinking men. It will make common men and unlearned men among you to be philosophers and theologians and saints. It will work in you a thoughtfulness, a seriousness, a depth, an awe, a holy fear, and a great desire that will already have made you new creatures. When, in examining yourselves and in characterising yourselves, you come on what some clear-eyed men have come on in themselves, and what one of them has described as ‘the diabolical animus of the human mind’—when you make that discovery in yourselves, that will sober you, that will humble you and fill you full of remorse and compunction. And if in God’s grace to you, that were to begin to be wrought in you this week, there would be one, at any rate, eating of that bread next Lord’s day, and drinking of that cup as God would have it.
6. ‘A man that is no tattler, nor raiser of false reports, and that talks nothing of news, but by very solid arguments.’ Mr. Prywell was more taken up with his own matters at home, far more than the greatest busybodies are with other men’s matters abroad. His name, I fear, will still sound somewhat ill in your ears, but I can assure you all the ill for you lies in the sound. Mr. Prywell would not hurt a hair of your head: the truth is, he does not know whether there is a hair on your head or no. This man’s name comes to him and sticks to him, not because he pries into your affairs, for he does not, and never did, but because he is so drawn down into his own. Mr. Prywell has no eye for your windows and he has no ear for your doors. If your servant is a leaky slave, Prywell, of all your neighbours, has no ear for his idle tales. This man is no eavesdropper; your evil secrets have only a sobering and a saddening and a silencing effect upon him. Your house might be full of skeletons for anything he would ever discover or remember. The beam in his own eye is so big that he cannot see past it to speak about your small mote. ‘The inward Christian,’ says À Kempis, ‘preferreth the care of himself before all other cares. He that diligently attendeth to himself can easily keep silence concerning other men. If thou attendest unto God and unto thyself, thou wilt be but little moved with what thou seest abroad.’ At the same time, Mr. Prywell was no fool, and no coward, and no hoodwinked witness. He could tell his tale, when it was demanded of him, with such truth, and with such punctuality, and on such ample grounds, that a conviction of the truth instantly fell on all who heard him. ‘Sirs,’ said those who heard him break silence, ‘it is not irrational for us to believe it,’ with such solid arguments and with such an absence of mere suspicion and of all idle tales did he speak. On one occasion, on a mere ‘inkling,’ he woke up the guard; only, it was so true an inkling that it saved the city. But I cannot follow Mr. Prywell any further to-night. How he went up and down Mansoul listening; how he kept his eyes and his ears both shut and open; what splendid services he performed in the progress, and specially toward the end, of the war; how the thanks of the city were voted to him; how he was made Scoutmaster-general for the good of the town of Mansoul, and the great conscience and good fidelity with which he managed that great trust—all that you will read for yourselves under this marginal index, ‘The story of Mr. Prywell.’
Now, my brethren, as the outcome of all that, we must all examine ourselves as before God all this week. We must wait on His word and on His providences while they examine us all this week. We must pry well into ourselves all this week. Come, let us compel ourselves to do it. Let us search and try our ways all this week as we shall give an account. Let us ask ourselves how many Communion tables we have sat at, and at how many more we are likely to sit. Let us ask why it is that we have got so little good out of all our Communions. Let us ask who is to blame for that, and where the blame lies. Let us go to the bottom of matters with ourselves, and compel ourselves to say just what it is that is the cause of God’s controversy with us. What vow, what solemn promise, made when trouble was upon us, have we completely cast behind our back? What about secret prayer? At what times, for what things, and for what people do we in secret pray? What about secret sin? What is its name, and what does it deserve, and what fruit are we already reaping out of it? What is our besetting sin, and what steps do we take, as God knows, to crucify it? Do we love money too much? Do we love praise too much? Do we love eating and drinking too much? Does envy make our heart a very hell? Let us name the man we envy, and let us keep our Communion eye upon him. Let us mix his name with all the psalms and prayers and sermons of this Communion season. Or is it diabolical ill-will? Or is it a wicked tongue against an unsuspecting friend? Let us examine ourselves as Paul did, as Prywell did, and as God would have us do it, and we shall discover things in ourselves so bad that if I were to put words on them to-night, you would stop your ears in horror and flee out of the church. Let a man see himself at least as others see him; and then he will be led on from that to see himself as God sees him; and then he will judge himself so severely as that he shall not need to be judged at the Judgment Day, and will condemn himself so sufficiently as that he shall not be condemned with a condemned world at the last.
CHAPTER XVI—YOUNG CAPTAIN SELF-DENIAL
‘If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me.’—Our Lord.
‘Now the siege was long, and many a fierce attempt did the enemy make upon the town, and many a shrewd brush did some of the townsmen meet with from the enemy, especially Captain Self-denial, to whose care both Ear-gate and Eye-gate had been intrusted. This Captain Self-denial was a young man, but stout, and a townsman in Mansoul. This young captain, therefore, being a hardy man, and a man of great courage to boot, and willing to venture himself for the good of the town, he would now and then sally out upon the enemy; but you must think this could not easily be done, but he must meet with some sharp brushes himself, and, indeed, he carried several of such marks on his face, yea, and some on some other parts of his body.’ Thus, Bunyan. I shall now go on to-night to offer you some annotations and some reflections on this short but excellent history of young Captain Self-denial.
1. Well, to begin with, this Captain Self-denial was still a young man. ‘And, now, it comes into my mind, said Goodman Gains after supper, I will tell you a story well worth the hearing, as I think. There were two men once upon a time that went on pilgrimage; the one began when he was young and the other began when he was old. The young man had strong corruptions to grapple with, whereas the old man’s corruptions were decayed with the decays of nature. The young man trod his steps as even as did the old one, and was every way as light as he; who, now, or which of them, had their graces shining clearest, since both seemed to be alike? Why, the young man’s, doubtless, answered Mr. Honest. For that which heads against the greatest opposition gives best demonstration that it is strongest. A young man, therefore, has the advantage of the fairest discovery of a work of grace within him. And thus they sat talking till the break of day.’
Now, I have taken up Captain Self-denial to-night because the young men and I are to begin a study to-night to which I was first attracted because it taught me lessons about myself, and about self-denial, and thus about both a young man’s and an old man’s deepest and most persistent corruptions—lessons such as I have never been taught in any other school. In all my philosophical, theological, moral, and experimental reading, so to describe it, I have never met with any school of authors for one moment to be compared with the great evangelical mystics, especially when they treat of self, self-love, self-denial, the daily cross, and all suchlike lessons. Take the great doctrinal and experimental Puritans, such as John Owen, Thomas Goodwin, Richard Baxter, John Howe, and Jonathan Edwards, and add on to them the greatest and best mystics, such as Jacob Behmen, Thomas À Kempis, Francis Fénelon, Jeremy Taylor, Samuel Rutherford, Robert Leighton, and William Law, and you will have the profoundest, the most complete, the most perfect, and, I will add, the most fascinating and enthralling of spiritual teaching in all the world. And I will be bold enough to promise you that if you will but join our Young Men’s Class to-night, and will buy and read our mystical books, and will resolve to put in practice what you hear and read in the class, I will promise you, I say, that by the end of our short session you will not only be ten times more open and hospitably-minded men, but also ten times more spiritually-minded men, ten times more Christ-like men, and with your joy in Christ and His joy in you all but full.
2. The Captain Self-denial was a young man, and he was also a townsman in Mansoul. Young Self-denial and one other were all of Emmanuel’s captains who were townsmen in Mansoul. All his other captains Emmanuel had brought with him; but the Captains Self-denial and Experience were both born and reared to their full manhood in that besieged city. ‘A townsman.’ How much there is for us all in that one word! How much instruction! How much encouragement! How much caution and correction! Our greatest grace; our most essential and indispensable grace; our most experimental and evidential grace; that grace, indeed, without which all our other graces are but specious shows and painted surfaces of graces; that grace into which our Lord here gathers up all our other graces;—that greatest of graces cannot be imputed, imported, or introduced; it must be born, bred, exercised, reared up to its full maturity, and sent forth to fight and to conquer, and all within the walls of its own native town; in short, our self-denial must have its beginning and middle and end in our own heart. Antinomians there were, as our Puritan fathers nicknamed all those persons who glorified Christ by letting Him do all things for them, both His own things and their things too, both their justification and their sanctification too. And there are many good but ill-instructed men among ourselves who have just this taint of that old heresy cleaving to them still—this taint, namely, that they are tempted to carry over the suretyship and substitutionary work of Christ into such regions, and to carry it to such lengths in those regions, as, practically, to make Christ to minister to their soft and sinful living, and to their excuse and indulgence of themselves. I will put it squarely and plainly to some of my very best friends here to-night. Is it not the case, now, that you do not like this direction into which this text, and the truth of this text, are now travelling? Is it not so that you shift back in your seat from the approaching cross? Is it not the very and actual fact that you have secret ways of sin, secret habits of self-indulgence in your body and in your soul, in your mind and in your heart, secret sins that you mantle over with the robe of Christ’s righteousness? His spotless and imputed righteousness? In your present temper you would have disliked deeply the Sermon on the Mount had you heard it; and I see you shaking your head over your Sabbath-day dinner at this text when it was first spoken. Lay this down for a law, all my brethren,—a New Testament and a never-to-be-abrogated law,—that the best and the safest religion for you is that way of religion that is hardest on your pride, on your self-importance, on your self-esteem, as well as on your purse and on your belly. You are not likely to err by practising too much of the cross. You may very well have too much of the cross of Christ preached to you, and too little of your own. Why! did not Christ die for me? you indignantly say. Yes; so He did. But only that you might die too. He was crucified, and so must you be crucified every day before one single drop of His sin-atoning blood shall ever be wasted on You. Be not deceived: the cross is not mocked; for only as a man nails himself, body and soul, to the cross every day shall he ever be saved from sin and death and hell by means of it. And, exactly as a man denies himself—no more and no less—his appetites, his passions, his thoughts and words and deeds, every day and every hour of every day, just so much shall He who searches our hearts and sees us in secret, acknowledge us, both every day now, and at the last day of all.
3. This same Captain Self-denial, his history goes on, was stout, he was an hardy man also, and a man of great courage. Stout and hardy and of great courage at home, that is; in his own mind and heart, soul and body, that is. Young Captain Self-denial was a perfect hero at saying No! and at saying No! to himself. It is a proverb that there is nothing so difficult as to say that monosyllable. And the proverb is Scripture truth if you try to say No! to yourself. It takes the very stoutest of hearts, the most noble, the most manly, the most soldierly, and the most saintly of hearts to say No! to itself, and to keep on saying No! to itself to the bitter end of every trial and temptation and opportunity. I remember reading long ago a page or two of a medical man’s diary. And in it he made a confession and an appeal I have never forgot; though, to my loss, I have not always acted upon it. He said that for many years he had never been entirely well. He had constant headaches and depressions, and it was seldom that he was not to some extent out of sorts. But, all the time, he had a shrewd guess within himself as to what was the matter with him. He felt ashamed to confess it even to himself that he over-ate himself every day at table; till, at last, summoning up all divine and human help, he determined that, however hungry he was, and however savoury the dish was, and however excellent the wine was, he would never either ask for or accept a second helping. And this was his testimony, that from that stout and hardy day he grew better in health daily; ‘my head became clear, my eye bright, my complexion pure, my mind and feelings were redeemed from all clouds and depressions. And to-day I am a younger man at fifty than I was at thirty.’ Now, if just saying No! to himself and to the waiter at table did work such a new birth in a confirmed gourmand of middle life, what would it not have wrought for him had he carried his answer stoutly and courageously through all the other parts of his body and soul?—as perhaps he did. Perhaps, having tasted the sweet beginnings of salvation, he carried his short and sure regimen through. If he has done so, let him give us his full autobiography. What a blessed, what a priceless book it would be!