Well, then, in the first place, the only way to the Celestial City ran
through Vanity Fair; by no possibility could the advancing pilgrims
escape the temptations and the dangers of the fatal fair. He that will
go to the Celestial City and yet not go through Vanity Fair must needs go
out of the world. And so it is with the temptations and trials of the
next ten days. We cannot get past them. They are laid down right across
our way. And to many men now in this house the next ten days will be a
time of simply terrible temptation. If I had been quite sure that all my
people saw that and felt that, I would not have introduced here to-night
what some of them, judging too hastily, will certainly call this so
secular and unseemly subject. But I am so afraid that many not untrue,
and in other things most earnest men amongst us, do not yet know
sufficiently the weakness and the evil of their own hearts, that I wish
much, if they will allow me, to put them on their guard. ''Tis hard,'
said Contrite, who was a householder and had a vote in the town of
Vanity, ''tis hard keeping our hearts and our spirits in any good order
when we are in a cumbered condition. And you may be sure that we are
full of hurry at fair-time. He that lives in such a place as this is,
and that has to do with such as we have to do with, has need of an item
to caution him to take heed every hour of the day.' Now, if all my
people, and all this day's communicants, were only contrite enough, I
would leave them to the hurry of the approaching election with much more
comfort. But as it is, I wish to give them such an item as I am able to
caution them for the next ten days. Let them know, then, that their way
for the next fortnight lies, I will not say through a fair of jugglings
and cheatings, carried on by apes and knaves, but, to speak without
figure, their way certainly lies through what will be to many of them a
season of the greatest temptation to the very worst of all possible
sins--to anger and bitterness and ill-will; to no end of evil-thinking
and evil-speaking; to the breaking up of lifelong friendships; and to
widespread and lasting damage to the cause of Christ, which is the cause
of truth and love, meekness and a heavenly mind. Now, amid all that, as
Evangelist said to the two pilgrims, look well to your own hearts. Let
none of all these evil things enter your heart from the outside, and let
none of all these evil things come out of your hearts from the inside.
Set your faces like a flint from the beginning against all evil-speaking
and evil-thinking. Let your own election to the kingdom of heaven be
always before you, and walk worthy of it; and amid all the hurry of
things seen and temporal, believe steadfastly concerning the things that
are eternal, and walk worthy of them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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