THE PILGRIM’S PROGRESS

Evening Star, Issue 19634, 13 August 1927, Page 2

THE PILGRIM’S PROGRESS

OLD FRIENDS AND NEW FACES How dear and beautiful certain places become sometimes in one’s memory! Wo leave the city weary and outworn. We go lor a holiday away into some ,quiet nook of Nature. Gradually life and strength come back to us. The body is revived, the mind braced up; we return to our daily work with fresh vitality. But our visit there is never forgotten. The place has a charmed corner.in our memory over after. And what is true .of places is still more true of persons. Think of those who have met you at some life crisis and have helped you. Their presence then, their word, their deed have formed perhaps a turning point in your life. They, too, live in your .recollection. 'The present writer recalls one man who thus influenced him. Ho introduced him to iho writings of an author to whom he owes his intellectual and largely also his spiritual awakening. He Jms long since passed into the invisible. But when ho thinks of all ho did for him ho con scarcely conceive of a greater to meet him again and talk over all that life’s experiences hero and-beyond have brought to both. Everybody has a similar history. The minister, friend, comrade, teacher who touched the heart and sent forward the leot. in the way of knowledge and truth, bow sacred their memory hoqomcs! One might well conceive that, the joy of the place or stale called heaven would largely consist in the meeting of those who have been helpers to each other on earth. Is not this what the seer means in the book of .Revelation when ho puts at the Cro.wn of Creation the One who had bcren the supremest of earth’s helpers? lie draws to Himself the wonder and worship of the Redeemed as the vision of what Ho was and did for them sometimes consciously, often unconsciously, dawns upon them. When in late life families forgather their chief joy lies in the remembrance of what each owed to the other. The greater the sense of this debt the greater the gladness of tho reunion.

With happier mood and feelings born

anew, Their childhood’s fancies they renew, Talk o’er old talks, play as they used to play, And meet again on many a future day. And in the vaster assembly of which these earthly ones are prophetic all who have entered good of any sort into others by word, or speech, or song, or pen will meet there, and this meeting of helped lives and their helpers will make heaven in its past and luture. This is tho thought which emerges as we come to look at tho meeting again of Evangelist, Faithful, and Christian. They had just emerged, the last two, out of tho valleys and out of the wilderness of oily words that Talkative had been spraying about them. Evangelist had met them twice before at critical epochs in their history. Ho had been the means of starting the Pilgrim on the right way and keeping him safe and steady upon it. It is natural that the meeting should he a joyous one, for there is no joy to equal that of reunion with those who have entered good into us and have been the saviours and sanctifiers of our lives.

A second thing is to be,noted, in tins connection—viz., the way in which those who fare forth on the upward road meet with helpers. From the very moment when tho Pilgrim set his face and feet to travel this road he has been met and followed by grace and guidance. At unexpected turns, in the most unlikely places, in the darkest hour of need, light came, help of some sort was vouchsafed. As a. poet of our own day, Helen Hunt Jackson, has recorded it: Blindfolded and. alone I stand. With unknown thresholds on each hand. The darkness deepens as I grope. Afraid to fear, afraid to hope. Tct this one thing I know, Each day more surely as I go— That doors aro opened, ways arc made, Burdens are lifted or aro laid

By some groat law unseen and still Dnfathomcd purpose to fulfil. There is no one who remains firm to what ho believes to be tho highest as interpreted by the Divine Light that will not ho able to set his seal to tho poet’s words. All along tho upward path deliverance somehow comes, not in the way wo hoped or desired or expected. And often such little and foolish things, as it seemed at tho moment, bring them about. As tho Israelites kept up their fools’ tramp—as it seemed to them and the Jcriehoites —round the grim fortress that barred their way into tho promised land, it never looked stronger than just on the niuht before it -went down in ruins. It is often so as we follow what seems to us the Divino loading. Tho night is darkest before the dawn; when the pain is sorest the child is born. We go to bed not knowing how to-morrow’s ordeal is to be faced, hut when the morning dawns Jericho has disappeared, and the way is clear. I give you the end of a golden string; Only wind it into a hall. It will lead you at last to Heaven’s gate. Built in Jerusalem’s wall.

So now, once again, Evangelist, their old friends, meets them. He comes prior to another critical epoch in their lives. Neither of them knows of it. Thus often in life wc are forewarned. It is the last time they shall meet on earth. Evangelist comes to tell them about Vanity Fair, the trials and tragedies that await them there. The Pilgrim and Faithful have had to fight for their lives with the Prince of this world in the Valleys of Humiliation and the Shadow of Death. Now they are to encounter him in a more subtle and dangerous form. They are to meet him, not as before as an angel of the abyss, but as an angel of light and of the upper air. This is the significance of Vanity Fair. ' Thackeray's great novel has familiarised us with the name; life itself with the thing. Faithful and the Pilgrim won their way far along the upward road. They have started well.' They have had a vision of the Cross, with the uplift that it gave them. They have been in the Interpreter’s house. They have had news and views of Immanuel’s land. - They have breasted the hill Difficulty and fought their way through the valleys. But Evangelist warns them they are not yet out of “ gunshot of the devil.” The bones of many a promising pilgrim lie whitening the way between this and the city which hath foundations. All ministers can corroborate that. They have seen their most promising converts, faring bravely forth foe a time, facing difficulties,, valleys of doubt and

humiliation, and winning'through into the morning, iint they entered Vanity Fair, and after a time that was the end of them. They never earno out otyit, “They were seen no more on the road.' 1 We shall have occasion to deal more fully with Vanity Fair later on. We may recall here an illustration, one of a thousand, of what we have just said./ It is Dr Lydgato in ‘ Middleware!!.’ Lydgate, the young doctor, the man of fine thought and high ideals, marries Rosamund Vincy. And this man,, as Professor Dowden puts it, “ against whom the temptations of the flesh and the devil would have been idle, is subdued by that third enemy of man, the world—the world incarnated- iu -the form of a creature with feminine vdieo, swan-liko, neck, perfectly-turned shoulders, exquisite curve of lip and eyelid, and, hidden behind these, tho hardness of a little sordid soul.” Ultimately he goes down, and Rosamund Vincy, a Vanity Fair incarnate, is tho basic plant that nourishes on the murdered man's brains. AVo shall have occasion, as wo have said, to deal with Vanity Fair later, so need say no more of it here, * * * * Evangelist emerges at this juncture to give some parting counsels to Faithful and the Pilgrim. AVo have not space to go through these in detail. They are still of worth for us of to-day. “Believe steadfastly concerning things that are invisible.” That is difficult. Tho pressure of the visible is so strong and persistent. But our safety depends on not being overcome by it; our safety depends on faith in the invisible, The great powers of Nature arc the invisible ones. Nobody has ever seen the ether iu which tho world and we live and move and have our being; but our belief iu it gives us the mastery over dead matter, over the visible. So in ourselves. The body is the visible part of us; it is what we can see and touch. Many live only for tho things of tho senses. But these are all passing. Behind them, using them as its servants, is the life, is the something that abides, that holds together the visible part of us. If wo once lose faith in that fact and its implications it is all over with us. And on the wider scale of the -world behind the visible is the invisible, the life, the being in which all coheres. It was said of tho great leader of the Jewish race, Moses, “Ho endured as seeing Him who is invisible.” Ho gave bis race tho moral leadership of tho world because of that faith. The nation was hemmed iu by vast empires, with prancing horses and rattling sabres. But they are all vanished to-day, while those who have most closely believed in Moses Invisible, later on interpreted in terms of Christ, form tho vanguards of progress everywhere. Believe steadfastly iu tho invisible. Let nothing that is on this side of the other world get within you. * * * * Next, “above all, look well to your own hearts and the lust thereof.” The heart is tho citadel of life. As long as it can bo kept pure all is well. Life follows love. Not what we think, but what we love, makes what wo do and are. AVe get safely through A'auity Fair only by knotting tho affections firmly round whatever things are true, honorable, just, lovely, pure, of good report. Failing this, it masters ns and accumulates tho materials. _ for 1 tragedy.- Neither intellect nor- com science can long hold out against' the secret sappings of passions and desires. Tho devil rarely captures the mind till he has provfously captured the heart. “ Tell me what’s in the lion’s heart and I will rule that, too. Above all things, then, look well to yonr own hearts and the lust thereof.” And, finally, “ Set yonr faces as a flint.” The shortest word in our language and the easiest to spell is a word of two letters, No, But it is tho most difficult one to learn to say. Those who are ruined as they go through Vanity Fair are tho Yes or the No-Yes people. AVhen Canon Liddon died a friend, writing of him, said erne of tho secrets of his strength was that “ho was not flabby or undecided or weak; rot one of them, as ho used to put it himself, who set their faces as a pudding.” Tho moral, puddingfaced people abound everywhere. It is they who run tho Ahuiity Fair shows and who are the seducers of unwary Pilgrims. “Set your faces like a Hint. Yo have all power of heaven ami earth otx your side.” With that assurance who dares fear, without it who dares hope!' Eon.