Bunyan Characters (1st series) | Page 3

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This etext was prepared by David Price, email [email protected]
from the 1894 Oliphant Anderson and Ferrier edition.

BUNYAN CHARACTERS: FIRST SERIES BEING LECTURES
DELIVERED IN ST. GEORGE'S FREE CHURCH EDINBURGH

INTRODUCTORY

'The express image' [Gr. 'the character'].--Heb. 1. 3.
The word 'character' occurs only once in the New Testament, and that
is in the passage in the prologue of the Epistle to the Hebrews, where
the original word is translated 'express image' in our version. Our Lord
is the Express Image of the Invisible Father. No man hath seen God at
any time. The only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He
hath declared Him. The Father hath sealed His divine image upon His
Son, so that he that hath seen the Son hath seen the Father. The Son is
thus the Father's character stamped upon and set forth in human nature.
The Word was made flesh. This is the highest and best use to which our
so expressive word 'character' has ever been put, and the use to which it
is put when we speak of Bunyan's Characters partakes of the same high
sense and usage. For it is of the outstanding good or evil in a man that
we think when we speak of his character. It is really either of his
likeness or unlikeness to Jesus Christ we speak, and then, through Him,
his likeness or unlikeness to God Himself. And thus it is that the
adjective 'moral' usually accompanies our word 'character'--moral or
immoral. A man's character does not have its seat or source in his body;
character is not a physical thing: not even in his mind; it is not an
intellectual thing. Character comes up out of the will and out of the
heart. There are more good minds, as we say, in the world than there
are good hearts. There are more clever people than good people;
character,--high, spotless, saintly character,--is a far rarer thing in this
world than talent or even genius. Character is an infinitely better thing
than either of these, and it is of corresponding rarity. And yet so true is
it that the world loves its own, that all men worship talent, and even
bodily strength and bodily beauty, while only one here and one there
either understands or values or pursues moral character, though it is the
strength and the beauty and the sweetness of the soul.

We naturally turn to Bishop Butler when we think of moral character.
Butler is an author who has drawn no characters of his own. Butler's
genius was not creative like Shakespeare's or Bunyan's. Butler had not
that splendid imagination which those two masters in
character-painting possessed, but he had very great gifts of his own,
and he has done us very great service by means of his gifts. Bishop
Butler has