082. I Was Overrun With The Spirit Of Superstition.

LXXXII ‘I WAS OVERRUN WITH THE SPIRIT OF SUPERSTITION.’

‘BECAUSE I knew no better I fell in eagerly with the religion of the times; to wit to go to church twice a day, and that, too, with the foremost. And there should, very devoutly, both say and sing as others did; yet retaining my wicked life. But withal, I was so overrun with the spirit of superstition, that I adored, and that with great devotion, even all things; both the High Place, Priest, Clerk, vestment, service, and what else, belonging to the Church: counting all things holy that were therein contained. And especially, the Priest and the Clerk most happy, and without doubt, greatly blessed, because they were the servants of God, as I then thought, and were Principal in His holy temple to do His work therein. But all this time I was not sensible of the danger and evil of sin. All this time I never thought of Christ nor whether there was one or no.’

Now you must all see from that truly Bunyan-passage just what this thing superstition is and just what it is not. Superstition always sticks fast on the surface of things. Superstition never goes down through the outside skin of things. Superstition never enters into the deep and living heart of things. Superstition always builds both its own house and the house of its god upon the sand. And it fills the house of its god with high places, and with priests, and with clerks, and with vestments, and with services of its own. At any rate it did so in Bunyan’s day. But all the time this so scrupulous worshipper still retained all his former wicked life. All the time he remained utterly insensible of the danger and the evil of his sin. All the time, in his own words, he never thought of Christ nor whether there was one or no.

Now you will all expect me to launch out at this point against the superstitions of other Churches than our own, and against the superstitions of other people than ourselves, but I am not going to do that to-night. I am not so much as to name the papists, nor the ritualists, nor any of our own too superstitious fellow-countrymen. A discourse of that kind would do you no good, and it would do me no honour; no honour that I covet after. But to discover to you some of your own overrunning superstitions and to help you to cast them off — what a successful and what an honourable discourse that would be! And now to take John Bunyan for our forerunner and for our guide into this not very easy subject. Well his chief superstition in those early days of his, and before he had one atom of true religion, was to go to church twice every Sabbath, and that too with the foremost. In those unconvicted and unconverted days of his, Bunyan would not stay away from church in the very worst of wintry weather; no not even when he was threatened with a consumption. No not for a single diet from year’s end to year’s end. Bunyan was always the first to arrive at the church, and he was always the last to leave it. But all the time — would you believe it? — he led the same wicked life as soon as he went home, and all the week again till the next Sabbath came round. The thought of sin, or of salvation from sin, never once entered his tinker head from Sabbath to Saturday. He left all these things to the priest and to the clerk to manage for him. Now there are multitudes among ourselves who are exactly like poor Bunyan in all that. We, many of ourselves, go to church twice a day. We will not on any account stay away from church, no not for a single diet, if we can crawl on our staff or can get a Sabbath cab. But the cab delivers us at our own door again exactly the same men that we were when it took us up. We still retain our old life, as the people at home know to their cost. We are nothing better after a long lifetime of such church-going but rather worse. Well, that is superstition, and rank superstition too. It is the rankest superstition to think that such going to church as that has anything to do with true religion. Just hear what God Himself has to say about such church-going as that.

‘When ye come to appear before Me, who hath required this at your hands to tread My courts? The new moons, and the Sabbaths, and the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with them: it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. I am weary to bear them. Cease to do evil. Learn to do well. Seek judgment. Relieve the oppressed,’ — you know one — ‘Judge the fatherless,’ — you surely know one — ‘Plead for the widow,’ — you must know more widows than one.

‘All this while,’ says Bunyan, ‘I met with no conviction. I did both sing, and say, as others did; yet retaining my wicked life. All this while I was not sensible of the danger and evil of sin. I was kept from considering that my sin would damn me, what religion soever I followed, unless I was found in Christ. Nay, I never thought of Him, nor whether there was one or no.’

God does not mean for one moment, neither does Isaiah mean, nor does John Bunyan mean, that we are to stay away from church because of our sinful hearts and lives. Far from that. Come to church, they all three say, twice a day as long as you are able. And twice a day put away some wickedness out of your heart and out of your life before you go home. Twice every Sabbath day become more and more sensible of the danger and the evil of sin. And be you sure, it will take you twice a day all the days that are now left to you on earth to learn the simple a b c of the full danger and the full evil of sin. Yes, come till instead of never thinking whether there is a Christ or no, you come to think and to see that there is nothing and no one else to be much thought about but Christ in all the world. And then the priest and the clerk and their vestments at that time entirely took the place of God, and of Christ, and of the Holy Ghost, in Bunyan’s Sabbath-day devotions. The scales fell off his eyes afterwards till he came to see that there are no such priests and no such vestments in the Church of Christ at all, as he at one time so superstitiously thought there were. By the time he was himself anointed of God to be one of the chief priests of the Church of Christ in England, Bunyan came to see, as clearly as Paul himself saw, just in what the true spiritual priesthood really consists, and what a multitude of redeemed men there are in that holy office on earth, with their one High Priest in heaven. ‘You have no bishops in Scotland, I understand,’ said an English Churchman, with some superiority, on one occasion, to old Dr. Rainy, Dr. Roxburgh’s elder, at Cardwell’s table at Oxford. ‘Oh yes, sir,’ said the somewhat irate old doctor,

‘I would not like to say on the spot how many real bishops there are in Scotland: and, more than that, your humble servant is one of them himself.’

Happily you have not been suckled into any superstition about bishops and priests and clerks and vestments, and there is no fear of your adoring your plain and unpretentious presbyterian minister with a too superstitious devotion. You know him too well for that. And thus it is that your danger lies all the other way. Indeed, you cannot give your minister a too high place, or a too frequent place, in your most holy thoughts. Short of adoring him with Bunyan, all your way up to church, twice every Sabbath, keep thinking of your minister, and keep saying things like this concerning him:

‘Cast him not away from Thy presence this day, and take not Thy Holy Spirit from him. Restore to him, and to me, and to mine, the joy of Thy salvation this day, and uphold us all with Thy free Spirit.’ And when he gives out his text in the church, say you all the time, ‘I will hear what God the Lord will speak to me and mine.’ And now and then all through the week when you are near God mention confidentially to Him the name of your minister. Let a heavenly spirit like that absolutely overrun your spirit, and that will extinguish all overrunning superstition out of your spirit. A spirit of love and of prayer like that will fill your mind and your heart and your life, Sabbath day and every day, with a true and a spiritual worship.

Bunyan’s superstitions even went the length of regular family worship in those early days of his married life. Partly to please his young wife who had been better brought up than her husband, partly to soothe her conscience for marrying such a man, he held a sort of family worship with her, especially on Sabbath nights. But all the time, his Sabbath night readings in his wife’s good books, and his saying a prayer with her, all that was no better than so much hanging up of some of his father’s old horseshoes at the door so as to keep away all approaching ghosts during the night. Bunyan would have been uneasy and unhappy and would have been alarmed at the surrounding noises of the night if he had not nailed up that old iron over his threshold. And something like that is the same with ourselves. If our dinner party runs too late into the night, or if some of our guests stay talking too long, or if we know that some of our more honoured guests are not accustomed to it at home, we forego our family worship for that night, out of respect to them and out of regard for their feelings. But we are not quite easy about God all that night till we fall asleep, and then our customary family worship in the morning sets matters all right between us and Him. Not that it makes much real difference in our house any night whether we have family worship or no. The chapter is read, and the psalm is sung, and after we have prayed a word or two on one knee, as that indecent custom is coming in, we rise up light and alert and plunge into the interrupted talk again. The superstition of family worship has enough hold of our habits and of our consciences to make us go through it. But when once it has been gone through, well, Bunyan tells us that for his part he immediately returned to his former evil life.

There is another family superstition that we all go through three times a day and which we call saying grace. This is how they said their graces in William Law’s day.

‘In one house you may perhaps see the head of the family just pulling off his hat; in another, half getting up from his seat; another shall, it may be, proceed so far as to make as if he said something; we can hardly bear with him that seems to say grace with any degree of seriousness, and we look upon it as a sign of a fanatical temper if a man has not done as soon as he begins.’ But worse than even that, I once dined at a nobleman’s table where we all fell to like so many famished wolves. Only, I had been so suckled into this superstition of saying grace that I remember to this day how I could scarcely swallow my dinner that evening. I had never eaten a meal all my days till that day, without shutting my eyes and saying something or other to myself before I began to eat. In this connection I remember a young minister once coming to consult with me as to whether he should stay on and finish his intended holiday in the house where he was, because there was neither grace at meals there nor family worship at any time, and he was afraid something evil would happen to him. All the same, it is not so easy to say grace aright as you would think it is before you begin to try it. For one thing, you might try the freshening-up experience of varying your grace from meal to meal and from day to day. You might say a well selected verse of Scripture at one time. And then two or three words straight out of your own warm feelings at another time. At one time ask some devout-minded guest, if there is one at table, to sanctify your meal, and at another time invite your little boy to say one of his nursery verses or schoolroom Scriptures. And when you say grace yourself, sometimes look up in the twinkling of an eye, beyond all interposing persons and things, and make your own immediate acknowledgment and say: ‘My table Thou hast furnished, and my cup overflows.’ Say at another time that you sit down at this full table of yours well remembering Him who had not where to lay His head. And now to wind up with a word of hope. We evangelical Protestants of Scotland look upon the Church of Rome as being a perfect hotbed of all manner of superstition in the public worship of God and in the private Christian life. And just because that is our standing protest against her I was the more arrested by what a dignitary of that Church said the other day at a Catholic congress in England. They had rites and ceremonies in their Church, he said, not because they thought these things to be of any real value, but they encouraged many of these things in order to safeguard their people against slovenliness and vulgarity and irreverence and bad taste in the house of God. Now when a Catholic of position is permitted to say such things as these there is surely hope for that Church. At any rate, on the apostolic principle of thinking no evil, but believing all things, and hoping all things, I for one will hail the utterance of such things as these on this so separating subject. At one time that teaching, allowed and practised, would have satisfied John Calvin, and John Knox, and James Melville, and Samuel Rutherford, as to Church ceremonies. As much enriching and good taste and refinement and beauty as is possible and fitting in the house of God, they would have said, so long as it is all sanctified into the beauty of holiness, so long as it is all confessed and taught to be of no superstitious or unspiritual effect. For, —

‘The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth; for the Father seeketh such to worship Him. God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.’ Amen.