THE PILGRIM’S PROGRESS: VANITY FAIR

Evening Star, Issue 19664, 17 September 1927, Page 2

THE PILGRIM’S PROGRESS: VANITY FAIR

Two great writers Lave given us pictures and portraits of Vanity Fair. First and foremost is Bunyan. Then, later. Thackeray. Not to be overlooked by any means is Hawthorne’s sketch of it, more after the style of Bunyan than Thackeray, and, though in brief space, hardly less clever than either. “The main thing which the adventure stands for in the allegory is the change from inward to external life. This is the first crowd wo meet with. Tlio introspective aspect of Christian life comes more naturally to the Puritan author, and ho has kept largely to that—so far. The public aspect, however, must bo dealt with.” Where is Vanity Fair? Banyan's is not the same as Thackeray’s, on the outside. But in essence they aro both one. Vanity Fair is just the everyday world, and as the world summarises itself best in crowds, cities and towns express it best. Vanity Fair is not a historical or geographical designation. Let us keep at home, as Carlyle advises poets to do, and say that it is just Dunedin, or Christchurch, or whatever city in which we may happen to dwell. It is the people, thoughts, works, passions, ambitions, money making and money losing, and talk and gossip and gamble and dance and picture shows and theatres and church amid which wc live and move and have our being. Perhaps the shortest definition of it would be the thoughts, emotions, and activities of life with God left out. * * * * “ They must needs go through it,” says Bunyan. Why? Two reasons may be suggested. First, for their own sakes. We come into this world a bundle of possibilities. Wo are put here to develop these, to be made men and women, to have character created. What is character? Etymologically the word means a stamp or mark. It is something cut or grooved in. That is the original significance of the word. “Character,” says Bishop Butler, “is that temper, disposition, whole form i of mind from which we act in one way rather than another. Those principles from which a man acts when they become fixed and habitual in him wc call character.” We see, then, how our world creates and moulds it. Character is the sum total of habits. Habits arc made by repeated acts; acts grow out of movement of will; and movements of will are determined by thoughts and desires. lienee, everything that we aro called to be or do in our world adds something to the growth of character, as snowflakes pile the avalanche. And the process is constantly going on. In the home, shop, street, trams, trains, hammering iron, sweeping rooms, reading, gossiping, and the thousand and one things that make up the day’s duties and pleasures, character, good or bad, is being inevitably formed. And character is destiny. That is one reason why Vanity Fair is on the Pilgrim’s way. That is why ho must needs go through it. IK * * * Another reason may be .suggested. The Master of men once said that Tie came into the world for judgment. The first process in the act of judgment is separation. You pass a magnet over a heap of iron filings, copper, brass, and wood. It judges them—i.o., it separates them. It attracts some and not others. So of Christ. He drew to Him the natures akin to His own; others remained unmoved. Ho thus became their judge. So of His disciples. They act on the world in . the same way. If He and they were | withdrawn absolutely from it the world i would have no fixed moral standard by I which its character might bo determined. Christ did not come to judge i the world. But it was the inevitable consequence of His coming. The Christlike lives are not meant to condemn the world. But once they live, then they cannot help doing it. They must needs go through the world, therefore, as their Master did, for tho world’s sake as well as their own. Some think they should retire from it. Cowper sang;

Far from the world, 0 Lord, 1 flee, From strife and tumult far, From scenes where Satan wages still His most successful war. That is a cowardly and pernicious idea. To keep out of the places where the devil is busy is to deny the faith and bo a traitor to the Christian war faro. The church is not a club, is not a place where a select few assemble to hear good music and he soothed by the dulcet tones of a popular preacher. This has been too often and too long its ideal. And so the world has become the merry-go-round of Satan. The church ought to be n recruiting ground and training camp where the forces of good arc mobilised - to fight evil, instead of surrendering to it or fleeing from it. They may seem to fail, bub the only failure we need fear is never having a striving great enough to bo called one. So they must needs go through Vanity Fair. * * * % The nest point wo may note is the impression they made on the citizens. They stirred up the whole place. Some said they were fools, some they were bedlams, some that they were outlandish men. Here we come on a question of casuistry: How far is it not piflident, but right, to live a life in the world that antagonises it? Wo are told “ not to be conformed to it.” ( But there may be a nonconformity | which defeats the ends for which it is I made, and may even bo a greater snare than conformity. Merely to adopt a course of thought or action because it differentiates ns from what is culled the world is not necessarily Christian, lb was certainly not the custom of the Master. “There is no virtue in painting my front door black because ray 'godless neighbor happens to have , painted his door red.” Nevertheless, 1 the modern danger is not noncoiij formity to the life and spirit of Vanity Fair. It is just the reverse. Professing Christians are all too ready to be of the type described by the boy. He said when he grew up ho would like “to be a Christian same as his father, for then no one would know he was j a Christian.” Scientific people tell us ' about tho principle of protective resemblances in Nature, Birds, animals, insects, fishes acquire peculiar forms and colorings so that they can scarcely be distinguished from the element in which they move. When the brilliant butterfly folds its wings in rest it looks just like tho leaf or ground on which it reposes. Many people do that with their principles. They don’t like to stir up Vanity Fair by being thought narrow or odd. And so they disguise their feelings and conviction,s —“ pathetic hypocrisy to counterfeit tho features of

ignoble life, to mask by base manoeuvre the truth' and beauty of the soul.” Even Nature indicates a safer, as it is a nobler, way. Instead of mimicry she secures some by lavishing upon them splendid and conspicuous colors. These are equally effective in warding off enemies. It is still more true for the life urging it upward. In it “ sincerity is the synonym for safety. No man is of any use,” says Stevenson, “until ho has dared everything, and he who has dared everything for a sublime faith is henceforth afraid of nothing.”

What was it in the pilgrims that excited the curiosity and contempt of Vanity Fair? Wc can distinguish four things. There was first their dress. The philosophy of clothes is a fertile and favorite subject. Think of the fashion literature of the shops and the columns which newspapers devote to it on a Cup Day. Lot anyone, as has been suggested, walk through the streets of Dunedin clad in the habiliments that may be seen in the men and women which John Leech drew in a ‘Punch ’ of tho Early Victorian Era, and he will find himself not as free to dress as he supposed What were the garments of tho pilgrims? Long ago St.. Paul, writing to his Colossian people, described them: “Clothe yourselves with tender-heartedness, kindness, lowliness of mind, meekness, long suffering, bearing with one another, and readily forgiving each other. ...

And on all these put on love [love with the connotation which he defines in his letter to the Corinthians], which is the perfect bond of union, and let the peace which Christ gives settle all questionings in your heart and be thankful. Let the teaching concerning Christ remain as a rich treasure in your heart.” A life clad in this old-fashioned dress still looks odd enough in Vanity Fair. A second thing that irritated Vanity Fair was the pilgrims’ speech The tongue is indicative not only of bodily health, but of the condition of mind and heart as well. It was very different from the drench Talkative had subjected the pilgrims to a little before. It was its subject and substance that were so alien from the tastes of Vanity Fair. A third thing drew the lire of the town; they set “very light store by its wares.” The wares 'that were sold there were such us merchandise, houses, lands, trades honors, lusts, pleasures, pearls, gold, silver, and what not. The difference between the pilgrims and the Vanity Fair folk was that, while they did not despise these, they only considered them of secondary importance. They regarded them as means, the citizens as ends in themselves.

The fourth thing that irritated Vanity Fair was that the only ware the pilgrims would buy was the truth. “We buy tho Truth.” It is a scarce commodity in Vanity Fair. It is too expensive. It costs too much. People say they arc on the search for Truth. Are they sure? Arc they willing to pay the price? Once only tho world saw Tho Truth, and it Crucified Him. Truth, it has been said, is “the cry of all, but the game only of a few.” That is so. And the reason is that the price is too great. Its price is the sacrifice of much that we cherish : our self-will, our prejudices, often our property, our wealth, and our friends. Yet none who have paid it have ever complained about its being dear. It might sccili so at first. But Truth crushed to earth shall rise again, Tho eternal years of God are hers; But Error wounded writhes in pain And dies amid her worshippers. But Truth is not an abstraction that is self-acting, Jb needs truthful men to make it victorious. It needs men and women who can face Vanity Fair, with its mnd-lhrowing, as Faithful and tho Pilgrim did, and pay the price like them; and these, while among the best, are also tho fewest in number.