THE PILGRIM’S PROGRESS’

Evening Star, Issue 20256, 17 August 1929, Page 2

THE PILGRIM’S PROGRESS’

(CONCLUSION) VAIN HOPE, A FERRYMAH Fkoude in his penetrating, but occasionally patronising, study of Bunyan’s allegory says that the passage relating to Ignorance and Vain Hope “ is the only one which he reads with regret in this admirable book.” Most other readers will probably agree with him as to the fact, but may dissent from the reasons which he gives for his opinion. Few there are who will not be sorry that Bunyan should have introduced this harsh iron note after the sublime artistic music with which he had unclosed the harmonies of the Celestial City. Why, then, does he do it? Because he is.more concerned about man than about art; about the fact's of life than about their sesthetic expression. It is not true to life to ring joybells over sinner and saint alike. No doubt it would be best if we coukTmanage to make everybody happy at last. But this universe is not built that way. Neither the experience of Barth nor the revelation of the Unseen warrants us to expect it. Bunyan’s “ betes noirs ” are ignorance and turning away, the sins which he felt to be most dangerous and tempting in his day. “Ho was a Puritan first, the artist and all else only afterwards. Given the Puritan hell, the last word of any faithful man must be a word of warning. . . , The last word shall bo for the sake of tempted men ”

Bunyan in thus ending his book took his cuo from Scripture. The Bible is the most hopeful of books, but it is also, a very stern book. Christ was tho greatest of optimists, yet he makes no secret of it that it will not go well with everybody. He who lived and died for love of all unhesitatingly asserts that there is a left hand as well as a right in the final judgment. God will - have all men saved, but there is the mystery of freewill and human personality. Some there are who tell Of One who threatens Ho will toss to Hell Tho luckless Pots he marred in making—Pish! He’s a good Fellow and ’twill all be well.. Such teaching is at the opposite poles from Christ’s. Ho seems to have taken special pains to convince his hearers of the seriousness of life and of the possibility of losing it. In sermon and parable, in hints and emphatic asscr tions, He strikes this note during His ministry on earth. In His very last public addresses we hear the sound of tho closing doors of opportunity and tho proclamation that “too late’’ operates in tho spiritual world as surely us it does in tho mental and material. And the strain of such teaching runs on through the Epistles, and culminates in tho last mysterious book of the Bible from which Bunyan borrows so much of his imagery with its vision of those without tho gates of the Eternal City. Thus Bunyan’s ending falls into line with that of the Book that gave him and tho Puritans the foundation and inspiration of their faith. It is not our province here and now to discuss further the reason for this. We have only desired to draw attention to the fact. « • « e And now let us pass to consider for a little the kind of character of those who, in Bunyan’s view, are left .finally without the heavenly city. Mention is made specifically of two, but in reality they arc only one—lgnorance and Vain Hope, a Ferryman. The latter and his boat are, in fact, projections from the breast of ignorance. They are a happy conception, picturesque, humorous, and most Suggestive, as we shall see after a little. Wo may feel it, perhaps, a little incongruous, as some commentators do, to intrude the “ light hearted, brainless optimism of Vain Hope upon the solemn waters of death.” Yet no one who has had much to do with the last hours of the dying but must have encountered characters

not unlike Vain Hope, with his good natured, well-meaning consolations to a lonely' soul drifting out beyond the bar. But we may concentrate our attention on Ignorance. Next to the main character of the allegory there is scarcely any other one who is given so large a space in the book. It is significant that he is the only one of all those that wc have mot who forges his way right up to the gates of the city. Ho fares on, perfectly confident in his I heart. While our poor Pilgrim goes trembling through the swellings ol Jordan, Ignorance enters quite undismayed—nay, by the help of Vain Hope he gets through quite easily and unperturbed, and makes his way right up to 'the gates. There his self-deception has a rude awakening. Then begins the last, as well as the first, act of his life’s tragedy; for it is noteworthy that up to this point ho has been prosperous and untroubled. At- first look we are half inclined to agree with Mr Fronde when he writes; “Poor Ignorance I Hell—such a place as Bunyan imagined hell to be—was a hard fate for a miserable mortal who had failed to comprehend the true conditions of justification.” But on further consideration it is evident that Mr Fronde wholly misconceives the character with which lie is dealing. The trouble with Ignorance is not mental nor theological. It goes far deeper than that. It is an ethical and spiritual one. Its root is in the will and the. heart. We have in a previous article analysed somewhat the character of Ignorance. Here and now we will merely draw attention to one feature of it.

I Ignorance persists in going forward alone. That word “alone” is the key to his character. He is his own master He tests ,himself not by the authority of Scripture, but by 1 his own reason and common sense He is the essence of spiritual self-conceit. He knows religion as propositions .or doctrines, but as a personal relation to .Him round Whom centre all creeds not at all. Like many others, he would just say he was doing the bhst he could, and what more could be expected? This would ■ be quite satisfactory had there been no

special authoritative guide given tor life. But if there were—and that was the assumption of Bunyan and the Puritans—then it was sheer impertinence not to consider it and shape life according to it. tike many others, he was working out his own salvation, not with fear and trembling, for he did not think God was working in what ho was working out. Sin and holiness were largely cyphers in the shaping of his life, not verities that had sunk their shaft deep into the marrow of of his destiny. It is in keeping, therefore, with all this that Bunyan should picture him journeying alone. Such a superior person neither needs nor desires a companion. His pride will not permit him to have a rival near his throne. * ♦ ■» * And this leads to the fundamental defect in the character of Ignorance; his lack of love, of love kindled at the Cross and rising up like a vital sap, fructifying and beautifying everyfaculty and function of the life. The genuine Pilgrims are all represented as making for the city “ for the love they bear the King of the Place.” All,that Ignorance knew about that was that he had heard of the Love Incarnate, where he lived, and in the churches that ho patronised. But it had moved him little, had no practical influence on his thought and conduct. When we get hold of this, then we see how Bunyan’s treatment of this unhappy being falls into line with the teaching of the great masters of our life and literature through all the ages down to Browning and Tennyson. It is the fundamental creed of all Browning’s poems. And Tennyson embodies Nit in express words that might stand for the epitaph of Ignorance: He that shuts love out in turn shall be Shut out from love, and on her threshold lie Howling in outer darkness. All this brings ‘ Ignorance very close to every one of us. Wo all know people who answer to his character. Multitudes of men and women are urging their way into the Great Unseen, self-satisfied, egotistic, taking heed of no authority saving what comes from their own nninstructed conscience. They console themselves in rejecting the claims of religion because of the varieties of creeds and doctrines; so they just saunter on towards the swellings of Jordan as if Christ had never come ana spoken among them His wonderful words of life. * * « •

And so as we close this long series of studies in the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ this may well be its Tumi message for us: tho tragic consequences that follow on a life such as that of Ignorance. It tells us that it is not only the Pliables, the Worldly Wisemen, and the villains of ‘ Vanity Fair ’ that at last are found outside the gate of tho Celestial City, it is the slack, easygoing life of non-committal, of indifference, of self-conceit which Ignorance typifies. As ho paddles out to the groat beyond in his boat labelled Vain Hope, it is well to remember he has not been a flagrant sinner. He has been in tho world’s estimate just a decent, welldoing, if commonplace, man. He was quite satisfied with himself, had no qualms of conscience either about his conduct here or his acceptance in the hereafter. “He has explored himself with self-love for his lamp, and finds himself a man who is in case to take the road for heaven—his own warrant, his own guide, h,is own master.” He has never seriously considered what sin and lovo signify in the light of the Cross; so he goes jauntily forward, sure that all is well with him. Dean Church, in. one of his great sermons, uses words adapting which may form a suitable close to this series qf studies. It is remarkable, he says, that Christ dwells little on great and open wickedness or manifest crying sins. These need no warning. The sins which ruin, which leave character useless for the handling of God and the life eternal are of a subtler kind. The five foolish virgins; tho alack, easy-going servant who hid his Lord’s money, and thought it did not matter; the soft, indifferent'life to •which Christ and His claims were as a very lovely song that led to no strenuous effort; the people who neglected to .train themselves for love hereafter, which constitutes heaven, in the service of lovo here—these arc the types which He pronounces hopeless. Earth was their probation sphere, and they have proved themselves worthless for the larger life hereafter. And it should give us serious pause when wo think that it is just such as these—men and women like Banyan’s Ignorance sauntering towards the swellings of Jordan and slipping through unperturbed under the guidance of Vain Hope the Ferryman—it is just such as these are the lives of so many of us.