Bunyan, John, 1628-1688 -- Criticism and interpretation
But, alas! the thing is, they
are not willing. For, were they once soundly willing, these, and a
thousand things such as these, would hold them no faster than the cords
held Samson when he broke them like flax. I tell you the will is all.
The Lord give thee a will, then, and courage of heart.'
2. Let that, then, suffice for this man's name and nature, and let us
look at him now when his name and his nature have both become evil; that
is to say, when Willbewill has become Illwill. You can imagine; no, you
cannot imagine unless you already know, how evil, and how set upon evil,
Illwill was. His whole mind, we are told, now stood bending itself to
evil. Nay, so set was he now upon sheer evil that he would act it of his
own accord, and without any instigation at all from Diabolus. And that
went on till he was looked on in the city as next in wickedness to very
Diabolus himself. Parable apart, my ill-willed brethren, our ill-will
has made us very fiends in human shape. What a fall, what a fate, what a
curse it is to be possessed of a devil of ill-will! Who can put proper
words on it after Paul had to confess himself silent before it? Who can
utter the diabolical nature, the depth and the secrecy, the subtlety and
the spirituality, the range and the reach-out of an ill-will? Our hearts
are full of ill-will at those we meet and shake hands with every day. At
men also we have never seen, and who are totally ignorant even of our
existence. Over a thousand miles we dart our viperous hearts at innocent
men. At great statesmen we have ill-will, and at small; at great
churchmen and at small; at great authors and at small; at great, and
famous, and successful men in all lines of life; for it is enough for ill-
will that another man be praised, and well-paid, and prosperous, and then
placed in our eye. No amount of suffering will satiate ill-will; the
very grave has no seal against it. And, now and then, you have it thrust
upon you that other men have the same devil in them as deeply and as
actively as he is in you. You will suddenly run across a man on the
street. His face was shining with some praise he had just had spoken to
him, or with some recognition he had just received from some great one;
or with some good news for himself he had just heard, before he caught
sight of you. But the light suddenly dies on his face, and darkness
comes up out of his heart at his sudden glimpse of you. What is the
matter? you ask yourself as he scowls past you. What have you done so to
darken any man's heart to you? And as you stumble on in the sickening
cloud he has left behind him, you suddenly recollect that you were once
compelled to vote against that man on a public question: on some question
of home franchise, or foreign war, or church government, or city
business; or perchance, a family has left his shop to do business in
yours, or his church to worship God in yours, or such like. It will be a
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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