begin, then, at the very bottom of this whole matter, take stiff
old Loth-to-stoop as a guilty sinner in the sight of God. Let us take
this stiff old man in this dreadful character to begin with, because it
is in this deepest and most dreadful aspect of his nature and his
character that he is introduced to us in the _Holy War_. And I shall
stand aside and let John Bunyan himself describe Loth-to-stoop in the
matter of his justification before God. 'That is a great stoop for a
sinner to have to take,' says our apostolic author in another classical
place, 'a too great stoop to have to suffer the total loss of all his own
righteousness, and, actually, to have to look to another for absolutely
everything of that kind. That is no easy matter for any man to do. I
assure you it stretches every vein in his heart before he will be brought
to yield to that. What! for a man to deny, reject, abhor, and throw away
all his prayers, tears, alms, keeping of Sabbaths, hearing, reading, and
all the rest, and to admit both himself and them to be abominable and
accursed, and to be willing in the very midst of his sins to throw
himself wholly upon the righteousness and obedience of another man! I
say to do that in deed and in truth is the biggest piece of the cross,
and therefore it is that Paul calls it a suffering. "I have suffered the
loss of all things that I might win Christ, and be found in Him, not
having mine own righteousness."' That is John Bunyan's characteristic
comment on stiff old Loth-to-stoop as a guilty sinner, with the offer of
a full forgiveness set before him.

2. And then our so truthful and so fertile author goes on to give us
Loth-to-stoop as a half-saved sinner; a sinner, that is, trying to make
his own terms with God about his full salvation. Through three most
powerful pages we see stiff old Loth-to-stoop engaged in beating down
God's unalterable terms of salvation, and in bidding for his full
salvation upon his own reduced and easy terms. It was the tremendous
stoop of the Son of God from the throne of God to the cradle and the
carpenter's shop; and then, as if that were not enough, it was that other
tremendous stoop of His down to the Garden and the Cross,--it was these
two so tremendous stoops of Jesus Christ that made stiff old
Loth-to-stoop's salvation even possible. But, with all that, his true
salvation was not possible without stoop after stoop of his own; stoop
after stoop which, if not so trem