hearts that chills and blasts all the feeble beginnings of a better life.
The natural and constitutional obstinacy of the obstinate heart is
exasperated when it comes to deal with the things of God. For it is then
reinforced with all the guilt and all the fear, all the suspicion and all
the aversion of the corrupt and self-condemned heart. There is an
obdurateness of obstinacy against all the men, and the books, and the
doctrines, and the precepts, and the practices that are in any way
connected with spiritual religion that does not come out even in the
obstinate man's family life.

John Bunyan's Obstinate, both by his conduct as well as by the etymology
of his name, not only stands in the way of his own salvation, but he does
all he can to stand in the way of other men setting out to salvation
also. Obstinate set out after Christian to fetch him back by force, and
if it had not been that he met his match in Christian, _The Pilgrim's
Progress_ would never have been written. 'That can by no means be,' said
Christian to his pursuer, and he is first called Christian when he shows
that one man can be as obstinate in good as another man can be in evil.
'I never now can go back to my former life.' And then the two obstinate
men parted company for ever, Christian in holy obstinacy being determined
to have eternal life at any cost, and Obstinate as determined against it.
The opening pages of _The Pilgrim's Progress_ set the two men very
graphically and very impressively before us.

As to the cure of obstinacy, the rod in a firm, watchful, wise, and
loving hand will cure it. And in later life a long enough and close
enough succession of humble, yielding, docile, submissive,
self-chastening and thanksgiving acts will cure it. Reading and obeying
the best books on the subjugation and the regulation of the heart will
cure it. Descending with Dante to where the obstinate, and the