And even Feeble-mind gave the gatekeeper this praise--"The Lord of the place," he said, "did entertain me freely. Neither objected he against my weakly looks nor against my feeble mind. But he gave me such things as were necessary for my journey, and bade me hope to the end." All things considered, that is perhaps the best praise that Goodwill and his house ever earned. For, to receive and to secure Feeble-mind as a pilgrim--to make it impossible for Feeble-
mind to entertain a scruple or a suspicion that was not removed beforehand--to make it impossible for Feeble-mind to find in all the house and in all its grounds so much as a straw over which he could stumble--that was extraordinary attention, kindness, and condescension in Goodwill and all his good-willed house. "Go on, go on, dear Mr. Feeble mind," said Goodwill giving his hand to Mr.
Fearing's nephew, "go on: keep your feeble mind open to the truth, and still hope to the end!"
3. "As to the Interpreter's House, I received much kindness there." That is all. But in that short speech I think there must he hid no little shame and remorse. No words could possibly be a severer condemnation of Feeble-mind than his own two or three so irrelevant words about the Interpreter's house. No doubt at all, Feeble-mind received kindness there; but that is not the point.
That noble house was not built at such cost, and fitted up, and kept open all the year round, and filled with fresh furniture from year to year, merely that those who passed through its significant rooms might report that they had received no rudeness at the hands of the Interpreter. "Come," said the Interpreter to Feeble-mind, "and I will show thee what will be profitable to thee." So he commanded his man to light the candle and bid Feeble-mind follow him. But it was all to no use. Feeble-mind had neither the taste nor the capacity for the significant rooms. Nay, as one after another of those rich rooms was opened to him, Feeble-mind took a positive dislike to them. Nothing interested him; nothing instructed him. But many things stumbled and angered him. The parlour full of dust, and how the dust was raised and laid; Passion and Patience; the man in the iron cage; the spider-room; the muck-
rake room; the robin with its red breast and its pretty note, and yet with its coarse food; the tree, green outside but rotten at the heart,--all the thanks the Interpreter took that day for all that from Feeble-mind was in such speeches as these: You make me lose my head. I do not know where I am. I did not leave the town of Uncertain to be confused and perplexed in my mind with sights and sounds like these. Let me out at the door I came in at, and I
shall go back to the gate. Goodwill had none of these unhappy rooms in his sweet house!" Nothing could exceed the kindness of the Interpreter himself; but his house was full of annoyances and offences and obstructions to Mr. Feeble-mind. He did not like the Interpreter's house, and he got out of it as fast as he could, with his mind as feeble as when he entered it; and, what was worse, with his temper not a little ruffled.
And we see this very same intellectual laziness, this very same downright dislike at divine truth, in our own people every day.
There are in every congregation people who take up their lodgings at the gate and refuse to go one step farther on the way. A visit to the Interpreter's House always upsets them. It turns their empty head. They do not know where they are. They will not give what mind they have to divine truth, all you can do to draw them on to it, till they die as feeble-minded, as ignorant, and as inexperienced as they were born. They never read a religious book that has any brain or heart in it. The feeble Lives of feeble-
minded Christians, written by feeble-minded authors, and published by feeble-minded publishers,--we all know the spoon-meat that multitudes of our people go down to their second childhood upon.
Jonathan Edwards--a name they never hear at home, but one of the most masculine and seraphic of interpreters--has a noble discourse on The Importance and Advantage of a thorough Knowledge of Divine Truth. "Consider yourselves," he says, "as scholars or disciples put into the school of Christ, and therefore be diligent to make proficiency in Christian knowledge. Content not yourselves with this, that you have been taught your Catechi** in your childhood, and that you know as much of the principles of religion as is necessary to salvation. Let not your teachers have cause to complain that while they spend and are spent to impart knowledge to you, you take little pains to learn. Be assiduous in reading the Holy Scriptures. And when you read, observe what you read.
Observe how things come in. Compare one scripture with another.
Procure and diligently use other books which may help you to grow in this knowledge. There are many excellent books extant which might greatly forward you in this knowledge. There is a great defect in many, that through a lothness to be at a little expense, they provide themselves with no more helps of this nature."
Weighty, wise, and lamentably true words.