would get a heart to-night 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 humour 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,--all together make up such a picture as you
cannot get anywhere out of John Bunyan. And then the pilgrim's stark
folly in entering into Worldly-Wiseman's secret; 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 passed
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 till you
are a pilgrim yourself, and have our 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 turned 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 the praise that this world gives
than 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-Wiseman's temptation. This is one of the words of
God to you.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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