Bunyan Characters (1st series) | Page 9

where it landed
Evangelist's quaking and sweating charge. When Bishop Butler lay on
his deathbed he called for his chaplain, and said, 'Though I have
endeavoured to avoid sin, and to please God to the utmost of my power,

yet from the consciousness of my perpetual infirmities I am still afraid
to die.' 'My lord,' said his happily evangelical chaplain, 'have you
forgotten that Jesus Christ is a Saviour?' 'True,' said the dying
philosopher, 'but how shall I know that He is a Saviour for me?' 'My
lord, it is written, "Him that cometh to Me, I will in no wise cast out."'
'True,' said Butler, 'and I am surprised that though I have read that
Scripture a thousand times, I never felt its virtue till this moment, and
now I die in peace.'
The third and the last time on which the pilgrims meet with their old
friend and helper, Evangelist, is when they are just at the gates of the
town of Vanity. They have come through many wonderful experiences
since last they saw and spoke with him. They have had the gate opened
to them by Goodwill. They have been received and entertained in the
Interpreter's House, and in the House Beautiful. The burden has fallen
off their backs at the cross, and they have had their rags removed and
have received change of raiment. They have climbed the Hill Difficulty,
and they have fought their way through the Valley of the Shadow of
Death. More than the half of their adventures and sufferings are past;
but they are not yet out of gunshot of the devil, and the bones of many
a promising pilgrim lie whitening the way between this and the city.
Many of our young communicants have made a fair and a promising
start for salvation. They have got over the initial difficulties that lay in
their way to the Lord's table, and we have entered their names with
honest pride in our communion roll. But a year or two passes over, and
the critical season arrives when our young communicant 'comes out,' as
the word is. Up till now she has been a child, a little maid, a Bible-class
student, a young communicant, a Sabbath-school teacher. But she is
now a young lady, and she comes out into the world. We soon see that
she has so come out, as we begin to miss her from places and from
employments her presence used to brighten; and, very unwillingly, we
overhear men and women with her name on their lips in a way that
makes us fear for her soul, till many, oh, in a single ministry, how
many, who promised well at the gate and ran safely past many snares,
at last sell all--body and soul and Saviour--in Vanity Fair.
Well, Evangelist remains Evangelist still. Only, without losing any of
his sweetness and freeness and fulness of promise, he adds to that some
solemn warnings and counsels suitable now, as never before, to these

two pilgrims. If one may say so, he would add now such moral treatises
as Butler's Sermons and Serious Call to such evangelical books as
Grace Abounding and A Jerusalem Sinner Saved.
To-morrow the two pilgrims will come out of the wilderness and will
be plunged into a city where they will be offered all kinds of
merchandise,--houses, lands, places, honours, preferments, titles,
pleasures, delights, wives, children, bodies, souls, and what not. An
altogether new world from anything they have yet come through, and a
world where many who once began well have gone no further. Such
counsels as these, then, Evangelist gave Christian and Faithful as they
left the lonely wilderness behind them and came out towards the gate of
the seductive city--'Let the Kingdom of Heaven be always before your
eyes, and believe steadfastly concerning things that are invisible.'
Visible, tangible, sweet, and desirable things will immediately be
offered to them, and unless they have a faith in their hearts that is the
substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen, it
will soon be all over with them and their pilgrimage. 'Let no man take
your crown,' he said also, as he foresaw at how many booths and
counters, houses, lands, places, preferments, wives, husbands, and what
not, would be offered them and pressed upon them in exchange for
their heavenly crown. 'Above all, look well to your own hearts,' he said.
Canon Venables laments over the teaching that Bunyan received from
John Gifford. 'Its principle,' he says, 'was constant introspection and
scrupulous weighing of every word and deed, and even of every
thought, instead of leading the mind off from self to the Saviour.' The
canon seems to think that it was specially unfortunate for Bunyan to be
told to keep his heart