





Transcribed from the 1893 Oliphant Anderson and Ferrier edition by David
Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk





BUNYAN CHARACTERS: FIRST SERIES
BEING LECTURES DELIVERED IN ST. GEORGE'S FREE CHURCH EDINBURGH
BY ALEXANDER WHYTE, D.D.


INTRODUCTORY


   'The express image' [Gr. 'the character'].--Heb. 1. 3.

The word 'character' occurs only once in the New Testament, and that is
in the passage in the prologue of the Epistle to the Hebrews, where the
original word is translated 'express image' in our version.  Our Lord is
the Express Image of the Invisible Father.  No man hath seen God at any
time.  The only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath
declared Him.  The Father hath sealed His divine image upon His Son, so
that he that hath seen the Son hath seen the Father.  The Son is thus the
Father's character stamped upon and set forth in human nature.  The Word
was made flesh.  This is the highest and best use to which our so
expressive word 'character' has ever been put, and the use to which it is
put when we speak of Bunyan's Characters partakes of the same high sense
and usage.  For it is of the outstanding good or evil in a man that we
think when we speak of his character.  It is really either of his
likeness or unlikeness to Jesus Christ we speak, and then, through Him,
his likeness or unlikeness to God Himself.  And thus it is that the
adjective'moral' usually accompanies our word 'character'--moral or
immoral.  A man's character does not have its seat or source in his body;
character is not a physical thing: not even in his mind; it is not an
intellectual thing.  Character comes up out of the will and out of the
heart.  There are more good minds, as we say, in the world than there are
good hearts.  There are more clever people than good people;
character,--high, spotless, saintly character,--is a far rarer thing in
this world than talent or even genius.  Character is an infinitely better
thing than either of these, and it is of corresponding rarity.  And yet
so true is it that the world loves its own, that all men worship talent,
and even bodily strength and bodily beauty, while only one here and one
there either understands or values or pursues moral character, though it
is the strength and the beauty and the sweetness of the soul.

We naturally turn to Bishop Butler when we think of moral character.
Butler is an author who has drawn no characters of his own.  Butler's
genius was not creative like Shakespeare's or Bunyan's.  Butler had not
that splendid imagination which those two masters in character-painting
possessed, but he had very great gifts of his own, and he has done us
very great service by means of his gifts.  Bishop Butler has helped many
men in the intelligent formation of their character, and what higher
praise could be given to any author?  Butler will lie on our table all
winter beside Bunyan; the bishop beside the tinker, the philosopher
beside the poet, the moralist beside the evangelical minister.

In seeking a solid bottom for our subject, then, we naturally turn to
Butler.  Bunyan will people the house for us once it is built, but Butler
lays bare for us the naked rock on which men like Bunyan build and
beautify and people the dwelling-place of God and man.  What exactly is
this thing, character, we hear so much about? we ask the sagacious
bishop.  And how shall we understand our own character so as to form it
well till it stands firm and endures?  'Character,' answers Butler, in
his bald, dry, deep way, 'by character is meant that temper, taste,
disposition, whole frame of mind from whence we act in one way rather
than another... those principles from which a man acts, when they
become fixed and habitual in him we call his character... And
consequently there is a far greater variety in men's characters than
there is in the features of their faces.'  Open Bunyan now, with Butler's
keywords in your mind, and see the various tempers, tastes, dispositions,
frames of mind from which his various characters act, and which, at
bottom, really make them the characters, good or bad, which they are.  See
the principles which Bunyan has with such inimitable felicity embodied
and exhibited in their names, the principles within them from which they
have acted till they have become a habit and then a character, that
character which they themselves are and will remain.  See the variety of
John Bunyan's characters, a richer and a more endless variety than are
the features of their faces.  Christian and Christiana, Obstinate and
Pliable, Mr. Fearing and Mr. Feeblemind, Temporary and Talkative, Mr. By-
ends and Mr. Facing-both-ways, Simple, Sloth, Presumption, that brisk lad
Ignorance, and the genuine Mr. Brisk himself.  And then Captain Boasting,
Mr. High-mind, Mr. Wet-Eyes, and so on, through a less known (but equally
well worth knowing) company of municipal and military characters in the
_Holy War_.

We shall see, as we proceed, how this and that character in Bunyan was
formed and deformed.  But let us ask in this introductory lecture if we
can find out any law or principle upon which all our own characters, good
or bad, are formed.  Do our characters come to be what they are by
chance, or have we anything to do in the formation of our own characters,
and if so, in what way?  And here, again, Butler steps forward at our
call with his key to our own and to all Bunyan's characters in his hand,
and in three familiar and fruitful words he answers our question and
gives us food for thought and solemn reflection for a lifetime.  There
are but three steps, says Butler, from earth to heaven, or, if you will,
from earth to hell--acts, habits, character.  All Butler's prophetic
burden is bound up in these three great words--acts, habits, character.
Remember and ponder these three words, and you will in due time become a
moral philosopher.  Ponder and practise them, and you will become what is
infinitely better--a moral man.  For acts, often repeated, gradually
become habits, and habits, long enough continued, settle and harden and
solidify into character.  And thus it is that the severe and laconic
bishop has so often made us shudder as he demonstrated it to us that we
are all with our own hands shaping our character not only for this world,
but much more for the world to come, by every act we perform, by every
word we speak, almost by every breath we draw.  Butler is one of the most
terrible authors in the world.  He stands on our nearest shelf with Dante
on one side of him and Pascal on the other.  He is indeed terrible, but
it is with a terror that purifies the heart and keeps the life in the
hour of temptation.  Paul sometimes arms himself with the same terror;
only he composes in another style than that of Butler, and, with all his
vivid intensity, he calls it the terror of the Lord.  Paul and Bunyan are
of the same school of moralists and stylists; Butler went to school to
the Stoics, to Aristotle, and to Plato.

Our Lord Himself came to be the express image He was and is by living and
acting under this same universal law of human life--acts, habits,
character.  He was made perfect on this same principle.  He learned
obedience both by the things that He did, and the things that He
suffered.  Butler says in one deep place, that benevolence and justice
and veracity are the basis of all good character in God and in man, and
thus also in the God-man.  And those three foundation stones of our
Lord's character settled deeper and grew stronger to bear and to suffer
as He went on practising acts and speaking words of justice, goodness,
and truth.  And so of all the other elements of His moral character.  Our
Lord left Gethsemane a much more submissive and a much more surrendered
man than He entered it.  His forgiveness of injuries, and thus His
splendid benevolence, had not yet come to its climax and crown till He
said on the cross, 'Father, forgive them'.  And, as He was, so are we in
this world.  This world's evil and ill-desert made it but the better
arena and theatre for the development and the display of His moral
character; and the same instruments that fashioned Him into the perfect
and express image He was and is, are still, happily, in full operation.
Take that divinest and noblest of all instruments for the carving out and
refining of moral character, the will of God.  How our Lord made His own
unselfish and unsinful will to bow to silence and to praise before the
holy will of His Father, till that gave the finishing touch to His always
sanctified will and heart!  And, happily, that awful and blessed
instrument for the formation of moral character is still active and
available to those whose ambition rises to moral character, and who are
aiming at heaven in all they do and all they suffer upon the earth.
Gethsemane has gone out till it has covered all the earth.  Its cup, if
not in all the depth and strength of its first mixture, still in quite
sufficient bitterness, is put many times in life into every man's hand.
There is not a day, there is not an hour of the day, that the disciple of
the submissive and all-surrendered Son has not the opportunity to say
with his Master, If it be possible, let this cup pass: nevertheless, not
as I will, but as Thou wilt.

It is not in the great tragedies of life only that character is tested
and strengthened and consolidated.  No man who is not himself under God's
moral and spiritual instruments could believe how often in the quietest,
clearest, and least tempestuous day he has the chance and the call to
say, Yea, Lord, Thy will be done.  And, then, when the confessedly tragic
days and nights come, when all men admit that this is Gethsemane indeed,
the practised soul is able, with a calmness and a peace that confound and
offend the bystanders, to say, to act so that he does not need to say,
Not my will, but Thine.  And so of all the other forms and features of
moral character; so of humility and meekness, so of purity and
temperance, so of magnanimity and munificence, so of all self-suppression
and self-extinction, and all corresponding exalting and magnifying and
benefiting of other men.  Whatever other passing uses this present world,
so full of trial and temptation and suffering, may have, this surely is
the supreme and final use of it--to be a furnace, a graving-house, a
refining place for human character.  Literally all things in this life
and in this world--I challenge you to point out a single exception--work
together for this supreme and only good, the purification, the refining,
the testing,