Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1183
“Therefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” 2 Corinthians 5:17.
A FEW days ago I was preaching in Lancashire upon the putting away of sin by our Lord Jesus and the consequent peace of conscience enjoyed by the Believer. In the course of the sermon I related my own conversion, with the view of showing that the simple act of looking to Jesus brought peace to the soul. Now, the diocese of Manchester is presided over by a bishop who has a deservedly high place in public esteem for his zeal, industry and force of character. And, feeling that he did not agree with me, he has very properly taken an opportunity to warn the working men, whom he addressed, against drawing improper inferences from my story. And he has done this in a manner so courteous that I only wish all discussions were conducted in the same spirit.
The best return I can make for his courtesy is to enlarge upon the subject and carefully guard his utterances from injurious inferences, even as he has protected mine. The idea of controversy is not upon my mind at all, nor have I any other feeling towards Bishop Fraser than that which is honestly expressed in a hearty prayer that God may bless him. But I am thinking of the many who will read his remarks who, I trust, may afterwards read mine—and as the point is of the utmost conceivable importance and deeply concerns the souls of our hearers—it is well that neither should be misunderstood and that, by all means, a Truth of God so vital should be brought into prominence. The bishop does not doubt for a moment that my own conversion was correctly described by me—and that like cases have occurred at other times—but he fears lest others should suppose that they must be converted in exactly the same manner.
In that fear I fully participate! It has always been a special point with me to show that God’s Spirit calls men to Jesus in different ways. Some are drawn so gently that they scarcely know when the drawing began. Others are so suddenly affected that their conversion stands out with noonday clearness. Perhaps no two conversions are precisely alike in detail. The means, the modes, the manifestations all vary greatly. As our minds are not cast in the same mold, it may so happen that the Truth of God which affects one is powerless upon another. The style of address which influences your friend may be offensive to yourself—and that which leads him to decide may only cause you to delay. “The wind blows where it will.” The Holy Spirit is called, “the free Spirit,” and in the diversity of His operations, that freeness is clearly seen.
Again and again have I warned you against imitating others in the matter of conversion, lest you be found counterfeits, and it is well when another voice unites with me in the warning. Yet in all true conversions there are points of essential agreement—there must be in all a penitent confession of sin and a looking to Jesus for the forgiveness of it— and there must also be a real change of heart such as shall affect the entire life. Where these essential points are not to be found there is no genuine conversion! The bishop goes on to remark upon Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress” and its description of the burdened pilgrim and his finding rest at the Cross. The bishop mistakes honest John, for he says that, “the pilgrim, having failed to get his wife to take the same gloomy view of fleeing from the wrath to come, and to accompany him in his flight, set out alone. There they had a man who deserted his home and home duties, leaving them to take care of themselves—but if a man stayed at home and his heart was right, he would have been saved in the day of doom.”
Surely allegory is not to be read in this fashion. John Bunyan never meant to teach that any man should forsake his home and neglect his family! No one ever charged him with doing so! In his imprisonment he worked hard at tagging laces to support his family and his affection for his poor blind child is well known. John Bunyan was no monk, but as true a father, citizen and friend as ever lived. The passage is part of an allegory and represents an awakened man as resolving to seek the Savior, whether others would do so or not—a man alive to his own condition and responsibility—and
therefore determined to pursue the right road, even if the nearest and dearest refused to bear him company. It is not implied that he left the company of his family in temporal things, for with these the allegory has nothing to do! I feel sure the bishop knows too well the value of decision of mind and of that strong resolve to be right which dares to be singular, to say a word wittingly against one of the bravest of the virtues.
The bishop continues, “The pilgrim went on his journey and at the sight of the Cross, the great bundle, which was the burden of his past sins, fell off his back. Falling down before the Cross, he thought of Him who hung upon it, and of the great doctrine of Atonement, and the burden dropped from his back, and he rose what is called ‘a converted man.’” The bishop is inclined to think that this story of Bunyan’s conversion has given a color to a great part of what is called Protestant Theology in these days. He has noticed that a great number of our theological ideas come, rather, from Milton, and “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” than from the Bible, for he does not find a single case in the Bible at all analogous to or resembling the case of John Bunyan. He then denies that the case of the penitent thief is at all to the point, or even the conversion of the Apostle Paul—and he bids his hearers remember that it is, “better not to dream those dreams of conversion that might happen to one and not to another.”