Bunyan Characters-1 [31]
sooner had he seen one or two of the significant rooms than this easily satisfied student was as eager to get out of that house as he had been to get in. Twice over the wise and learned Interpreter had to beg and beseech this ignorant and impulsive pilgrim to stop and get another lesson in the religious life before he left the great school-house. All our professors of divinity and all our ministers understand the parable at this point only too well. Their students are eager to get into their classes; like our pilgrim, they have heard the fame of this and that teacher, and there is not standing-room in the class for the first weeks of the session. But before Christmas there is room enough for strangers, and long before the session closes, half the students are counting the weeks and plotting to petition the Assembly against the length and labour of the curriculum. Was there ever a class that was as full and attentive at the end of the session as it was at the beginning? Never since our poor human nature was so stricken with laziness and shallowness and self-sufficiency. But what is the chaff to the wheat? It is the wheat that deserves and repays the husbandman's love and labour. When Plato looked up from his desk in the Academy, after reading and expounding one of his greatest Dialogues, he found only one student left in the class-room, but then, that student was Aristotle. 'Now let me go,' said Christian. 'Nay, stay,' said the Interpreter, 'till I have showed thee a little more.' 'Sir, is it not time for me to go?' 'Do tarry till I show thee just one thing more.'
6. 'Here have I seen things rare and profitable, . . . Then let me be Thankful, O good Interpreter, to thee.'
Sydney Smith, with his usual sagacity, says that the last vice of the pulpit is to be uninteresting. Now, the Interpreter's House had this prime virtue in it, that it was all interesting. Do not our children beg of us on Sabbath nights to let them see the Interpreter's show once more; it is so inexhaustibly and unfailingly interesting? It is only stupid men and women who ever weary of it. But, 'profitable' was the one and universal word with which all the pilgrims left the Interpreter's House. 'Rare and pleasant,' they said, and sometimes 'dreadful;' but it was always 'profitable.' Now, how seldom do we hear our people at the church door step down into the street saying, 'profitable'? If they said that oftener their ministers would study profit more than they do. The people say 'able,' or 'not at all able'; 'eloquent,' or 'stammering and stumbling'; 'excellent' in style and manner and accent, or the opposite of all that; and their ministers, to please the people and to earn their approval, labour after these approved things. But if the people only said that the prayers and the preaching were profitable and helpful, even when they too seldom are, then our preachers would set the profit of the people far more before them both in selecting and treating and delivering their Sabbath-day subjects. A lady on one occasion said to her minister, 'Sir, your preaching does my soul good.' And her minister never forgot the grave and loving look with which that was said. Not only did he never forget it, but often when selecting his subject, and treating it, and delivering it, the question would rise in his heart and conscience, Will that do my friend's soul any good? 'Rare and profitable,' said the pilgrim as he left the gate; and hearing that sent the Interpreter back with new spirit and new invention to fill his house of still more significant, rare, and profitable things than ever before. 'Meditate on these things,' said Paul to Timothy his son in the gospel, 'that thy profiting may appear unto all.' 'Thou art a minister of the word,' wrote the learned William Perkins beside his name on all his books, 'mind thy business.'
PASSION
'A man subject to like passions as we are.'--James 5. 17.
That was a very significant room in the Interpreter's House where our pilgrim saw Passion and Patience sitting each one in his chair.
6. 'Here have I seen things rare and profitable, . . . Then let me be Thankful, O good Interpreter, to thee.'
Sydney Smith, with his usual sagacity, says that the last vice of the pulpit is to be uninteresting. Now, the Interpreter's House had this prime virtue in it, that it was all interesting. Do not our children beg of us on Sabbath nights to let them see the Interpreter's show once more; it is so inexhaustibly and unfailingly interesting? It is only stupid men and women who ever weary of it. But, 'profitable' was the one and universal word with which all the pilgrims left the Interpreter's House. 'Rare and pleasant,' they said, and sometimes 'dreadful;' but it was always 'profitable.' Now, how seldom do we hear our people at the church door step down into the street saying, 'profitable'? If they said that oftener their ministers would study profit more than they do. The people say 'able,' or 'not at all able'; 'eloquent,' or 'stammering and stumbling'; 'excellent' in style and manner and accent, or the opposite of all that; and their ministers, to please the people and to earn their approval, labour after these approved things. But if the people only said that the prayers and the preaching were profitable and helpful, even when they too seldom are, then our preachers would set the profit of the people far more before them both in selecting and treating and delivering their Sabbath-day subjects. A lady on one occasion said to her minister, 'Sir, your preaching does my soul good.' And her minister never forgot the grave and loving look with which that was said. Not only did he never forget it, but often when selecting his subject, and treating it, and delivering it, the question would rise in his heart and conscience, Will that do my friend's soul any good? 'Rare and profitable,' said the pilgrim as he left the gate; and hearing that sent the Interpreter back with new spirit and new invention to fill his house of still more significant, rare, and profitable things than ever before. 'Meditate on these things,' said Paul to Timothy his son in the gospel, 'that thy profiting may appear unto all.' 'Thou art a minister of the word,' wrote the learned William Perkins beside his name on all his books, 'mind thy business.'
PASSION
'A man subject to like passions as we are.'--James 5. 17.
That was a very significant room in the Interpreter's House where our pilgrim saw Passion and Patience sitting each one in his chair.