087. I Came Where There Were Three or Four Poor Women, Sitting At A Door In The Sun, And Talking...

LXXXVII ‘I Came Where There Were Three Or Four Poor Women, Sitting At A Door In The Sun, And Talking About The Things Of God.’

‘BUT upon a day the good providence of God did cast me to Bedford, to work on my calling; and, in one of the streets of that town, I came where there were three or four poor women, sitting at a door in the sun, and talking about the things of God; and being now willing to hear them discourse, I drew near to hear what they said. But I may say, I heard, but I understood not; for they were far above, out of my reach. Methought they spake as if joy did make them speak; they spake with such pleasantness of Scripture language, and with such appearance of grace in all they said, that they were to me as if they had found a new world, as if they were a people that dwelt alone, and were not to be reckoned amongst their neighbours.’

What is that wonderful thing we call genius? And what is that other wonderful thing we call style? For when John Bunyan touches any subject whatsoever with his genius and with his style, the thing he so touches is at once made both classical and immortal. As here. We read these few simple-looking lines about those three or four poor women, and we at once know them far better than if we had lived next door to them all our days. We overhear and we understand every syllable of their godly conversation far better than if we had sat on the same doorstep beside them. We see down into the very bottom of their hearts, and we honour and love them from the very bottom of our hearts. What a gift is genius! And what a talent is style! The husbands of those four poor women were away at their work, their children were off to school, their beds were all made, and their floors were all swept, and they all came out as if one spirit had moved them, and they met and sat down on a doorstep together to enjoy for a little the forenoon sun. And they plunged immediately into their inexhaustible and ever-fresh subject: God and their own souls. And even when the young tinker came along with his satchel of tools on his shoulder and stopped and leaned against the doorpost beside them they did not much mind him, but went on with the things of God that so possessed them. I have been thinking a great deal about that great night in the third of John, said one; and she went on to tell some of her thoughts to the other three. And as she went on, the young tinker standing beside her had never before heard that there was a third of John. Not one syllable did he understand more than if she had been speaking in Hebrew. Another said that all the time she was doing up the house that morning her Scripture had been a passage out of Paul, and at the name of Paul she kissed her hand to him as if he had been standing beside her.

‘But God,’ she repeated out of Paul, ‘who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ.’ And then one who had a sweet trembling voice made her contribution to the conversation in a few selected verses out of the 51st Psalm.

‘Therefore I should often make it my business to be going again and again into the company of these poor people, for I could not stay away. And the more I went amongst them the more I did question my condition.’

Another day as he was again passing by, behold the same poor women were still occupied with the same things of God. ‘Since last we met,’ said one ‘my constant song has been that faith is the gift of God.’ And another answered her with the man who said, ‘Lord, I believe, help Thou mine unbelief.’ And then the third woman took her New Testament out of her pocket, it also was so old that it was ready to fall piece from piece if she did but turn it over. But she soon found the Epistle she was looking for, and she read it till the Apostle himself could not have read it better, so did she contemn and slight and abhor her own righteousness as filthy and insufficient to do her any good.

‘By these things,’ adds Bunyan, ‘my mind was now so turned that it lay like a horse-leech at the vein, and was still crying give, give. Yea, my mind was now so fixed on Eternity, and on the things of the kingdom of heaven, that neither pleasures, nor profits, nor persuasions, nor threats could loosen it, or make it let go its hold.’

Now for an illustration and a parallel to all that, take this which was going forward in the Highlands of Scotland at the same moment and that in a man of great spiritual genius and great spiritual sensibility.

‘Being in T. H. his house, a godly man, his conversation did me much good. As likewise his prayers did me much good. As likewise the marvellous light he threw on Scripture at family worship, manifesting an order and a depth in the Scriptures that I had never seen before. Which did so astonish me as to make me see somewhat of a Godhead in the Scriptures. Lastly, his cheerful demeanour and that, as I saw, from a deep inward joy. Before that I had sometimes thought that a true saint was but a fancy. But truly I thought mine eyes now saw a true saint here and a man of a true New Testament spirit till I was persuaded that there was a holiness attainable by man. Surely I received much good from the conversation and the example of Mr. T. H.’ And just as I am penning these lines a friend who has come in has occasion to tell me something similar about himself. Like John Bunyan, he tells me, he was a brisk talker about religion. Till one day a woman, like one of those women whose talk was so blessed to Bunyan, took him somehow into her confidence, and began to tell him some of the things that God had done for her soul. But as she went on his conscience spoke out till he was compelled to say to her that she wholly mistook him, for he was not a Christian like her. When his own words about himself so startled and alarmed him that he took no rest till he was a Christian like her. And now he is nothing short of a John Bunyan in his own way, as he works night and day among the poorest and the neediest people of our poor and needy city.

Now from all these cases, and from many more that will come to every thinking mind, we learn this impressive lesson, that it is one of God’s most frequent ways to make use of godly conversation to the awakening and to the undeceiving of those who have hitherto had nothing but a name to live. And more than that; He makes use of godly and close-coming conversation, not only for the awakening and the undeceiving of others, but for the deeper awakening and the deeper undeceiving of those who are His own people already.

‘I would be very glad,’ writes Teresa, ‘that we five should meet together from time to time for the undeceiving of one another, and to confer together how we are to reform ourselves so as to give His Majesty some satisfaction in us. For,’ she continues, ‘no man knows himself so well as other men know him. And no man is so frank and so true toward himself as a wise and a firm friend is, or ought to be. Our preachers,’ she continues, ‘ought to do all that for us. But as a matter of fact, everybody knows that they do not much help their hearers to the knowledge of themselves. They do not come close enough to us. They do not tell us plainly enough what we are. They do not call a spade a spade. They preach, but it is so as not to alarm us too much, or to offend us in any way. Just look around you and see,’ she continue; ‘do you know any man whose life has been much amended by the preaching he has heard? Yes; let us five friends meet together regularly with this one determination, to speak plainly to one another before it is too late.’ So far Santa Teresa. And I have sometimes had her idea in my own mind. I have sometimes thought myself of trying to start a secret clerical club of five or six men who were in dead earnest about their own souls. Not a club for questions of theological science, or for questions of Old or New Testament criticism, or even for pulpit and pastoral efficiency. But for questions that are arising within us all every day concerning our own corrupt hearts. A club for deep and searching and self-undeceiving and God-pleasing work within ourselves; work exactly like that which that great saint and great genius tried in vain to start in Spain. But I am afraid that I have postponed my proposal till it is too late. At any rate the club has lost Dr. Laidlaw who would have been our convener and our chairman. He is taking the chair now where an altogether other kind of questions are being discussed, and where in God’s light he is now seeing light. But perhaps some of his former students, or some of yourselves, will take up and will carry out my too-late intention, and will start in your own presbytery some such club of the soul. From this page of John Bunyan we learn this also, what and where is the true Church of Christ on the earth. The true test of a true Church as of a true tree is its fruit. Those three or four poor women were the true tests and the true seals of the true Church of Christ in Bedford. It is of next to no consequence how the Church of Christ is governed, whether by popes, or by cardinals, or by bishops, or by presbyters, or by managers: a true Church is known not by its form of government but by its fruits; by the walk and the conversation of its members. It is of no consequence at all where a Church hails from, or by what name it likes to be known among men; whether Rome, or Moscow, or Geneva, or Canterbury, or Edinburgh. The one thing of any real consequence for a Church is this: What do her people, and especially what do her poor women talk about when they meet and sit down in the sun? ‘Have you forgot the close, and the milk-house, and the stable, and the barn, where God did visit your souls?’ asks Bunyan of his first readers. That is the true communion roll which has a people upon it like that. Depend upon it, in God’s sight that is the true Church of Rome, and of England, and of Scotland, and He knows no other Church. That is the true Church of Christ and He will acknowledge no other. Do you have any such poor women in your Church? How many such do you know in your Church? Do you know one? What is her name and what is her address? In what street is her doorstep? Send me her name, for I fear she is very lonely. And I would like to introduce her to one or two women like herself whom I have discovered, and with whom she could hold a conversation now and then about the deep things of God. And then there is this. A woman is known by her companions as well as a man. But then a woman is not so able to go far afield to choose her companions, as a man is able to do. No. But she can always choose her books. And the best books are in our day within the reach of our poorest women, if they only knew the names of the best books and in what bookseller’s shop to find them. John Bunyan’s immortal books especially are to be had for next to nothing. Grace Abounding is to be had by anybody for three or four pence. I remember when it was not to be had in all our town for love or money. I was told to my great delight the other day that a Glasgow gentleman had given the Tract Society a generous gift of money to enable them to offer a 5000 edition of the Pilgrim’s Progressto the poor men and women of Scotland — a beautiful edition to be sold at four-pence each copy. The poorest godly woman in Scotland can thus have the best of companionships, even John Bunyan himself, to talk to her as she sits in the sun. To come back to where we began and so close. ‘Upon a day the good providence of God did cast me to Bedford, to work on my calling.’ Now, have you any such providential day in your autobiography? When was it? Where was it? How did it come about? And how did it end? Was it your overhearing a godly conversation like Bunyan, or was it your being in a godly man’s house like Brea? Or was it hearing a sermon like one of the sermons the London merchant heard during his tour in Scotland? Was it on the majesty of God, like Robert Blair’s sermon in St. Andrews? Or was it on the loveliness of Christ, like the sermon of that little fair man Samuel Rutherford? Or was it like the sermon of that proper old man at Irvine; who showed that London merchant his own heart? That was a good providence indeed to Bunyan. That was one of the very best providences that was ever cast upon him. What was your very best providence? And how has it ended? Has it ended by uniting you for ever to that blessed companionship so celebrated by the Hebrew prophet? —

‘Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another; and the Lord hearkened, and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before Him for them that feared the Lord, and that thought upon His name. And they shall be Mine, saith the Lord of Hosts, in that day when I make up My jewels; and I will spare them, as a man spareth his own son that serveth him.’