第243章 MR. GOD'S-PEACE, A GOODLY PERSON, AND A SWEET-NATU

-that is the highest triumph of the theologian and the highest wisdom of the saint. The prophets and the psalmists of the Old Testament are all full of the peace that God gave to His people Israel. My peace I give unto you, says our Lord also. Paul also has taken up that peace that comes to us through the blood of Christ, and has made it his grand message to us and to all sinful and sin-disquieted men. And John Bunyan has shown how sure and true a successor of the apostles of Christ he is, just in his portrait of this sweet-natured gentleman who was not a native of Mansoul, but who came from that same court from which Emmanuel Himself came. And it is just this outlandishness of this sweet-

natured gentleman; it is just this heavenly origin and divine extraction of his that makes him sometimes and in some things to surpass all earthly understanding. 'I am coming some day soon,'

said a divinity student to me the other Sabbath night, 'to have you explain and clear up the atonement to me.' 'I shall be glad to see you,' I said, 'but not on that errand.' No. Paul himself could not do it. Paul said that the atonement and the peace of it passed all his understanding. And John Bunyan says here that not the Prince only, but his officer Mr. God's-peace also, was not native to the town of Mansoul, but came straight down from heaven into that town--and what can the man do who cometh after two kings like Paul and Bunyan? I have not forgotten my Edwards where he says that the exquisite sweetness of this peace is perfectly agreeable to reason. As, indeed, so it is. And yet, if reason will have a clear and finished and all-round answer to all her difficulties and objections and fault-findings, I fear she cannot have it here. The time may come when our reason also shall be so enlarged, and so sanctified, and so exalted, that she shall be able with all saints to see the full mystery of that which in this present dispensation passeth all understanding. But till then, only let God's peace enter our hearts with God's Son, and then let our hearts say if that peace must not in some high and deep way be according to the highest and the deepest reason, since its coming into our hearts has produced in our hearts and in our lives such reasonable, and right, and harmonious, and peaceful, and every way joyful results.

3. Governor God's-peace had not many in the town of Mansoul to whom he could confide all his thoughts and with whom he could consult. But there were two officer friends of his stationed in the town with whom he was every day in close correspondence, viz., the Captain Credence and the Captain Good-hope. Their so close intimacy will not be wondered at when it is known that those three officers had all come in together with Emmanuel the Conqueror.