an all your ministers.
Only, take home with you these two lines I have clipped out of Fraser of
Brea for you. Nothing in man, he says to us, is to be a ground of
despair, since the whole ground of all our hope is in Christ alone.
Christ's relation is always to men as they are sinners and not as they
are righteous. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to
repentance. 'Tis with sinners, then, Christ has to do. Nothing damns
but unbelief; and unbelief is just holding back from pressing God with
this promise, that Christ came to save sinners. This is a faithful
saying, and worthy of all acceptation, and it is still to be found
standing in the most clipped-up Bible, that Christ Jesus came into the
world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.

CHAPTER XI--STIFF MR. LOTH-TO-STOOP

'Thy neck is an iron sinew.'--_Jehovah to the house of Jacob_.

'King Zedekiah humbled not himself, but stiffened his neck.'--_The
Chronicles_.

'He humbled himself.'--_Paul on our Lord_.

All John Bunyan's Characters, Situations, and Episodes are collected into
this house to-night. Obstinate and Pliable are here; Passion and
Patience; Simple, Sloth, and Presumption; Madame Bubble and Mr. Worldly-
wiseman; Talkative and By-ends; Deaf Mr. Prejudice is here also, and,
sitting close beside him, stiff Mr. Loth-to-stoop; while good old Mr. Wet-
eyes and young Captain Self-denial are not wholly wanting. It gives this
house an immense and an ever-green interest to me to see character after
character coming trooping in, Sabbath evening after Sabbath evening, each
man to see himself and his neighbour in John Bunyan's so truthful and so
fearless glass. But it stabs me to the heart with a mortal stab to see
how few of us out of this weekly congregation are any better men after
all we come to see and to hear. At the same time, such a constant
dropping will surely in time wear away the hardest rock. Let that so
stiff old man, then, stiff old Mr. Loth-to-stoop, came forward and behold
his natural face in John Bunyan's glass again to-night. 'Lord, is it I?'
was a very good question, though put by a very bad man. Let us, one and
all, then, put the traitor's question to ourselves to-night. Am I stiff
old Loth-to-stoop?--let every man in this house say to himself all
through this service, and then at home when reviewing the day, and then
all to-morrow when to stoop will be so loathsome and so impossible to us
all.

1. To