THE PILGRIM’S PROGRESS

Evening Star, Issue 19894, 16 June 1928, Page 2

THE PILGRIM’S PROGRESS

GIANT DESPAIR We suppose that, next to the light with Apollyon, the interlude between [the Pilgrims and Giant Despair is j what appeals most to boys in the •immortal allegory. At that stage is nil 'literal'truth. Hut as tiic years go on they find it to bc. truo in a deeper sense. ■ Experience of life lights up early knowledge with a new significance as the westering sun Hushes and fires the leaden • clouds. The scenes in Doubting 'Castle are inimitably staged. The combination of grim humour and great truths is unsurpassed, it is all one admirable stroke of imagination—solemn, profound, eternal. We can deal only with the more prominent of the suggestions. " The life that we now live is miserable. For ray part, 1 know not whether ’tis best to live thus or to die out of hand.” Where is the Pilgrim when-he says that? Ho is in Doubting Castle; he is in the grip „of Giant Despair. “ I know not whether ’tis best to live thus or to die.” Ho is not the first, nor will ho bo the last, who has debated this alternative. Is life worth living ? Hundreds are asking that very question to-day.* It has given birth to books innumerable, and the’ignorant multitudes who cannot write books are trying to solve it in their own rou>o aud-ready way. It is perhaps significant to note here-that with Giant Despair, as with so many others, the ?oi loqnialism that “the grey mare is the better horse ” holds true. Diffidence, his wife, who plays such a sinister part in this incident of the allegory, does not appear in the first edition. She comes in on second thoughts in the later editions. Wo hear little of her, but we feel that she .is the power behind the thron§. She is a managing woman in the full sense of that word. : She has got a big husband, but stupidity is often associated with bulk of that sort. And the giant is somewhat stupid. But his wife is not; she is full of resource. She is not like Macbeth, “ infirm of purpose;” She is fertile in ideas, expedients, hypotheses. Lib© Shakespeare’s dire and dexterous lady, she pushes her husband over the precipice. Who' is Diffidence? The words, says Dr Kelmau, had “a stronger meaning in Banyan’s day. It meant suspicion, mistrust.” So she comes nearer to most of ns than her husband. She is a tjpe oi that habit of doubt that paralyses faith, wh'ch besets so many folks in these days. It is a common boast that with our larger light mistrust and despair are non-existent, or need be. But Doubting Castle still stands, and Giant Despair and Diffidence, his wife, still lord it over many an unhappy prisoner in their weird dungeons.- ‘‘l know Vanity Fair,” said Professor Reaveley Glover the other day in a brilliant address at the Bunyan commemoration in Bristol. ” I took my degree there. And I know Doubting Castle; I have spent my holidays there.” And so ha/e multitudes of lesser persons, and jot their holidays only.

How came the Pilgrims there? In a previdus article we have seen that. They went off the straight, sure road into Bye Path Meadow. They followed the advice of Vain Confidence; darkness came down upon them; they tried to turn back, found it hard and tiring, sat down to rest, fell asleep, and when they awoke they were in the clutches of Giant Despair. We know what ul> that means. The road to Doubting Castle is usually through moral Volinquency of some sort. When a man goes wrong wilfully—when, after trying to retrieve himself, he finds it too hard. gives up the effort and settles down alothfully in his wrongdoing—he discovers himself ere long within the confines of Doubting Castle. He creates about himself the atmosphere in which Diffidence does her deadly .work. - The great thing to bo afraid of is not violent sin, but dullness, slothfulness, heartlessness. These make the conditions in which all woe and wickedness become possible. And, perhaps, the special significance of this incident is this: the Pilgrim and Hopeful: iWere both travelling towards the Celestial City. They had felt the powers of the world to come; they were, to use a commonplace of religion, converted, and had set out after spiritual ideals But they had turned aside into Bye Path Meadow. Apathy had come upon them. They fell asleep spiritually.. But. for all such waking hours will come, and remorse will bite deep and keen. Ahd the reason is obvious. The man who lias once lived in .a luxurious home, if he becomes a bankrupt and is driven back and down into a four-roamed cottage, will feel the shame and suffering far more than one whose life has always moved on these lower levels of existence. This is the reason of the paradox that the holier a man is the more he is liable to the assaults of Doubt and Despair. His higher professions are a direct challenge to the Devil —a challenge that is never declined. If a man knows little or nothing of these assaults of Giant Despair he may well doubt if he has not put off the livery of the Cross, and is asleep in the grounds of the enemy.

When the Pilgrim asked himself if life was worth living he was led to do so when moral lapses pressed heavily upon him. It is over so. No healthy holy life hath truly longed for death. It it not less life anybody really wants; it is more life and fuller. Amid all the frightful sufferings that fell on Christ He never debated with Himself Hamlet's question: “ To be or not to bo?” Pessimism is not mainly a disease of the poor; it is a disease of the comfortable and well-to-do, who take no part in the moral uplift of the world. Now, it is good for us in such hours of doubt or despair to have some companionship that will help to steady us. The Pilgrim had Hopeful, otherwise it is hard to say what might hare happened. The companionship may take the form of books. It is difficult nowadays to get books that brace us up to face life’s trials. In poetry, since Browning died, there are few singers who sound the notes of courage and cheer. There never was an age, perhaps, in \vhicb. the prevailing tone of literature tends to draw the moral fibre out of life and leave it merely critical or cynical. Happy are they who number among their companions, be they books or people, inepirers like Hopeful of the pilgrimage here. • » ♦ • * It, would be'.interesting and instructive to develop the reasons, which Hopefgi adduces to dispel th» Pilgrim,’#

doubts and . despair. Space. will permit rofovpncp sto : only .ouerti The Pilgrim, longing for death, spoke of the quietness of the grave. Hopeful knocks that notion ,on , the head.; It is well to heed him,. for it i, s in our day a, commonplace of literature. “ I lingered round them,” writes Emily Bronte, as sho buries one by one the sad wild lives Hint storm through the. pages of her weird, tragic story, * Wulhcring under the benign sky, watclied the ihoths Hitting among the heaths and harebells, listened to the soft wind-breath-ing through the grass, and wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.” A very common idea; Yet there is not a word of truth in it. There is nobody in the graves. Jf there be stillness and quiet, it is only that of the dust and the clay. Hell as well as heaven is within us, and no pistol or poison can kill the self that survives death. In Mr Kernaghan’s ‘ Book of Strange Sins ’ there is a weird story of a suicide—of a man who revolted against life and God and sought the eternal quiet of the grave. The writer, in a powerful analysis of the motives and causes which led up to the suicide, says: “This, is the judgment which awaits the suicide, that;, though he kill the corporal life, ho cannot disentangle the dead body from the living spirit, but must be then a conscious corpse, aware of the coming interment which ho is powerless to hinder or avert.” It is a terrifying vision of possibilities. The Creator may not bo outwitted and defied by His creature, for our life, as well as the length of it, is in His hands and not ours. But we cannot pursue this further at present; ,

How did these prisoners in Doubting Castle escape? Wo are told that on Saturday about midnight—i.e., the last day of the week and the last hour of tho day—they prayed, and continued it til! the dawn. What happened? What always does happen? There came a clarifying of the mind, a stirring of memory- Yes. Why not? Prayer is one of the fundamental laws of the universe. Stop it in any sphere of. business, or life, .and everything would come to a standstill or he thrown out of gear. And so when tho prisoners of Giant Despair resorted to it the clouds lifted and things were seen in their right perspective. Mind and memory were clarified. Tho Pilgrim suddenly remembered ho had a key in his bosom that would open any locks in Doubting Castle. Tho key was called Promise—i.e., the Bible, for that is its, distinctive characteristic. It Is not primarily a book of laws or ethics or science or philosophy. It is a book of promises. That is the one thing that differentiates it from all other books. It is because of its promises that prayer finds at once its rationale and assurance. The keys which secularism supplies to escape from Doubting Castle are leaden ones, and will bend and break in the locks It is a touch as true as it is humorous to read that just as they were getting away Giant Despair came lumbering after them, but his fits took him again, and his prisoners got clear off. We speak of giving people “ fits.” ' It is a right suggestive phrase. Perhaps this is the origin of it. Anyhow, the way to give Giant Despair fits is to pray and get hold of.the promises. Wo can’t pray aright without recalling the promises, and we can’t do both and remain long in tho grip of Giant Despair. This world would be a better and brighfer’ place for multitudes if prayer and the promises had a larger place in theiy lives. There would be fewer seduced into Bye Path Meadow, with its easy-going road and its fatal cul-de-sac in Doubting Castle. It is neither a road nor a region for those whose feet should be ever tracking their wav towards the sunkissed grassy uplands enfolded by , the Hills Delectable.