第135章 FEEBLE-MIND(3)

"Mundanus," says William Law, "is a man of excellent parts, and clear apprehension. He is well advanced in age, and has made a great figure in business. He has aimed at the greatest perfection in everything. The only thing which has not fallen under his improvement, nor received any benefit from his judicious mind, is his devotion; this is just in the same poor state it was when he was six years of age, and the old man prays now in that little form of words which his mother used to hear him repeat night and morning. This Mundanus that hardly ever saw the poorest utensil without considering how it might be made or used to better advantage, has gone on all his life long praying in the same manner as when he was a child; without ever considering how much better or oftener he might pray; without considering how improvable the spirit of devotion is, how many helps a wise and reasonable man may call to his assistance, and how necessary it is that our prayers should be enlarged, varied, and suited to the particular state and condition of our lives. How poor and pitiable is the conduct of this man of sense, who has so much judgment and understanding in everything but that which is the whole wisdom of man!" How true to every syllable is that! How simple-looking, and yet how manly, and able, and noble! We close our young men's session with Law and Butler to-night, and I cannot believe that our session with those two giants has left one feeble mind in the two classes; they were all weeded out after the first fortnight of the session; though, after all is done, there are still plenty left both among old and young in the congregation. Even Homer sometimes nods; and I cannot but think that John Bunyan has made a slip in saying that Feeble-

mind enjoyed the Interpreter's House. At any rate, I wish I could say as much about all the feeble minds known to me.

4. The Hill Difficulty, which might have helped to make a man of Feeble-mind, saw a laughable, if it had not been such a lamentable, spectacle. For it saw this poor creature hanging as limp as wet linen on the back of one of the Interpreter's sweating servants.

Your little boy will explain the parable to you. Shall I do this?

or, shall I rather do that? asks Feeble-mind at every stop. Would it be right? or, would it be wrong? Shall I read that book? Shall I go to that ball? Shall I marry that man? Tell me what to do.

Give me your hand. Take me up upon your back, and carry me over this difficult hill. "I was carried up that," says poor Feeble-

mind, "by one of his servants."

5. "The one calamity of Mr. Feeble-mind's history," says our ablest commentator on Bunyan, "was the finest mercy of his history." That one calamity was his falling into Giant Slay-good's hands, and his finest mercy was his rescue by Greatheart, and his consequent companionship with his deliverer, with Mr. Honest, and with Christiana and her party till they came to the river. You constantly see the same thing in the life of the Church and of the Christian Family. Some calamity throws a weak, ignorant, and immoral creature into close contact with a minister or an elder or a Christian visitor, who not only relieves him from his present distress, but continues to keep his eye upon his new acquaintance, introduces him to wise and good friends, invites him to his house, gives him books to read, and keeps him under good influences, till, of a weak, feeble, and sometimes vicious character, he is made a Christian man, till he is able for himself to say, It was good for me to be afflicted; the one calamity of my history has been my best mercy!