of his spiritual children
broke down and came short in the arduous and perilous way in which he had
so hopefully started them. 'If any of those who were awakened by my
ministry did after that fall back, as sometimes too many did, I can truly
say that their loss hath been more to me than if one of my own children,
begotten of my body, had been going to its grave. I think, verily, I may
speak it without an offence to the Lord, nothing hath gone so near me as
that, unless it was the fear of the salvation of my own soul. I have
counted as if I had goodly buildings and lordships in those places where
my children were born; my heart has been so wrapped up in this excellent
work that I counted myself more blessed and honoured of God by this than
if He had made me the emperor of the Christian world, or the lord of all
the glory of the earth without it.' And I have no doubt that we have
here the three things that above everything else bereft Bunyan of so many
of his spiritual children personified and then laid down by the heels in
Simple, Sloth, and Presumption.

SIMPLE

Let us shake up Simple first and ask him what it was that laid him so
soon and in such a plight and in such company in this bottom. It was not
that which from his name we might at first think it was. It was not the
weakness of his intellects, nor his youth, nor his inexperience. There
is danger enough, no doubt, in all these things if they are not carefully
attended to, but none of all these things in themselves, nor all of them
taken together, will lay any pilgrim by the heels. There must be more
than mere and pure simplicity. No blame attaches to a simple mind, much
less to an artless and an open heart. We do not blame such a man even
when we pity him. We take him, if he will let us, under our care, or we
put him under better care, but we do not anticipate any immediate ill to
him so long as he remains simple in mind, untainted in heart, and willing
to learn. But, then, unless he is better watched over than any young man
or young woman can well be in this world, that simplicity and
child-likeness and inexperience of his may soon become a fatal snare to
him. There is so much that is not simple and sincere in this world;
there is so much falsehood and duplicity; there are so many men abroad
whose endeavour is to waylay, mislead, entrap, and corrupt the simple-
minded and the inexperienced, that it is next to impossible that any
youth or ma