第241章 MASTER THINK-WELL, THE LATE AND ONLY SON OF OLD MR

any day forgotten the lesson. The lesson how to make a conscience, as he said, of all my thoughts about myself and about all my neighbours. Such, then, were Think-well's more immediate ancestors, and such was the inheritance that they all taken together had left him.

Think-well! Think-well! My brethren, what do you think, what do you say, as you hear that fine name? I will tell you what I think and say. If I overcome, and have that white stone given to me, and in that stone a new name written which no man shall know saving he that receiveth it; and if it were asked me here to-night what I

would like my new name to be, I would say on the spot, Let it be THINK-WELL! Let my new name among the saved and the sanctified before the throne be THINK-WELL! As, O God, it will be the bottomless pit to me, if I am forsaken of Thee for ever to my evil thoughts. Send down and prevent it. Stir up all Thy strength and give commandment to prevent it. Do Thou prevent it. For, after I

have done all,--after I have made all my overt acts blameless, after I have tamed my tongue which no man can tame--all that only the more throws my thoughts into a very devil's garden, a thicket of hell, a secret swamp of sin to the uttermost. How, then, am I

ever to attain to that white stone and that shining name? And that in a world of such truth that every man's name and title there shall be a strict and true and entirely accurate and adequate description and exposition of the very thoughts and intents and imaginations of his heart? How shall I, how shall you, my brethren, ever have 'Think-well' written on our forehead?--Well, with God all things are possible. With God, with a much meditating mind, and a true and humble and tender heart, and a pure conscience, a conscience void of offence, working together with Him--He, with all these inheritances and all these environments working together with Him, will at last enable us, you and me, to lift up such a clear and transparent forehead. But not without our constant working together. We must ourselves make head, and heart, and, especially, conscience of all our thoughts--for a long lifetime we must do that. The Ductor Dubitantium has a deep chapter on 'The Thinking Conscience.' And what a reproof to many of us lies in the mere name! For how much evil-thinking and evil-

speaking we have all been guilty of through our unthinking conscience and through a zeal for God, but a zeal without knowledge. Look back at the history of the Church and see; look back at your own history in the Church and see. Yes, make conscience of your thoughts: but let it first be an instructed conscience, a thinking conscience, a conscience full of the best and the clearest light. And then let us also make ourselves a new heart and a new spirit, as Ezekiel has it. For our hearts are continually perverting and polluting and poisoning our thoughts.

That is a fearful thing that is said about the men on whom the flood soon came. You remember what is said about them, and in explanation and justification of the flood. God saw, it is said, that every imagination of the thoughts of their hearts was evil, and only evil continually. Fearful! Far more fearful than ten floods! O God, Thou seest us. And Thou seest all the imaginations of the thoughts of our hearts. Oh give us all a mind and a heart and a conscience to think of nothing, to fear nothing, to watch and to pray about nothing compared with our thoughts. 'As for my secret thoughts,' says the author of the Holy War and the creator of Master Think-well--'As for my secret thoughts, I paid no attention to them. I never knew I had them. I had no pain, or shame, or guilt, or horror, or despair on account of them till John Gifford took me and showed me the way.' And then when John Bunyan, being the man of genius he was,--as soon as he began to attend to his own secret thoughts, then the first faint outline of this fine portrait of Think-well began to shine out on the screen of this great artist's imagination, and from that sanctified screen this fine portrait of Think-well and his family has shined into our hearts to-night.