communities and churches the clean opposite of ours; and they are as
ignorant of all New Testament religion as Ignorance himself was; or, on
the other hand, they are as full of superstition and terror and spiritual
starvation as Little-Faith was. And then, instead of recollecting and
laying to heart Who made us to differ from such ignorance and such
unbelief, and thus putting on love and humility and patience toward our
neighbours, we speak scornfully and roughly to them, and boast ourselves
over them, and as good as say to them, Stand by thyself, come not near to
me, for I am wiser, wider-minded, stronger, and better every way than
thou. And then, ere ever we are aware of what we are doing, we have let
the arch-flatterer of religious superiority and of spiritual pride seduce
us aside out of the lowly and heavenly way of love and humility till we
are again brought back to it with rebukes of conscience and with other
chastisements. You all understand, my brethren, that the man black of
flesh but covered with a white robe was no wayside seducer who met
Christian and Hopeful at that dangerous part of the road only and only on
that high-minded day. You know from yourselves surely that both
Christian and Hopeful carried that black but smooth-spoken man within
themselves. The Flatterer who led the two pilgrims so fatally wrong that
day was just their own heart taken out of their own bosom and personified
and dramatised by Bunyan's dramatic genius, and so made to walk and talk
and flatter and puff up outside of themselves till they came again to see
who in reality he was and whence he came,--that is to say, till they were
brought to see what they themselves still were, and would always be, when
they were left to themselves. "Where did you lie last night? asked the
Shining One with the whip. With the Shepherds on the Delectable
Mountains, they answered. He asked them then if they had not of those
shepherds a note of direction for the way? They answered, Yes. But did
you not, said he, when you were at a stand pluck out and read your note?
They answered, No. He asked them why? They said they forgot. He asked,