as several
shades of meaning in Bunyan. But in the present instance its meaning is
modified and fixed by judgment. A bravely hung tongue; at the same time
the parish minister of Mansoul's tongue was not a loosely-hung tongue. It
was not a blustering, headlong, scolding, untamed tongue. The pulpit of
Mansoul was tuned with judgment. He who filled that pulpit had a head
filled with judgment. The ground of judgment is knowledge, and the
minister of Mansoul was a man of knowledge. It was his early and ever-
increasing knowledge of himself, and thus of other men; and then it was
his excellent judgment as to the use he was to make of that knowledge; it
was his sound knowledge what to say, when to say it, and how to say
it,--it was all this that decided his Prince to make him the minister of
Mansoul. How excellent and how rare a gift is judgment--judgment in
counsel, judgment in speech, and judgment in action! 'I am very little
serviceable with reference to public management,' writes the parish
minister of Ettrick, 'being exceedingly defective in ecclesiastical
prudence; but the Lord has given me a pulpit gift, not unacceptable: and
who knows what He may do with me in that way?' Who knows, indeed! Now,
there are many parish ministers who have a not unacceptable pulpit gift,
and yet who are not content with that, but are always burying that gift
in the earth and running away from it to attempt a public management in
which they are exceedingly and conspicuously defective. Now, why do they
do that? Is their pulpit and their parish not sphere and opportunity
enough for them? Mine is a small parish, said Boston, but then it is
mine. And a small parish may both rear and occupy a truly great divine.
Let those ministers, then, who are defective in ecclesiastical prudence
not be too much cast down. Ecclesiastical prudence is not in every case
the highest kind of prudence. The presbytery, the synod, and the
assembly are not any minister's first or best sphere. Every minister's
first and best sphere is his parish. And the presbytery is not the end
of the parish. The parish, the pastorate, and the pulpit are the end of
both presbytery and synod and assembly. As for the minister of Mansoul,
he was a well-read man, and also a man of courage to speak out the truth
at every occasion, and he had a tongue as bravely hung as he had a head
filled with judgment.

4. But there was one thing about the parish pulpit of Mansoul th