In an essay and sermon on dealing with things that are taken away from us, FWB uses the colorful image of highway robberies:Poor Mr. Little-Faith was violently assaulted and robbed in Deadman's Lane. So Bunyan tells us. But the remarkable thing about the crime was this, that when he recovered his senses and was able to investigate his loss, he found that his assailants had taken only his spending-money. ‘The place where his jewels were, they never ransacked; so those he kept still.’ There is a subtle philosophy about the episode in Deadman's Lane.
Prebendary Carlile, the head of the Church Army, tells a delightful story of a Welsh miner who, in the great days of the Revival, avowed himself a disciple of Jesus Christ. He had previously exhibited an amazing facility in the use of expletives of the baser kind. With his changed life, however, it became customary for him to meet the most exasperating treatment with a manly smile and a homespun benediction. His mates, disapproving the revolution in his behavior, one day stole his dinner. But all they heard their transformed comrade say was ‘Praise the Lord! I've still got my appetite! They can't take that!’
The good collier only emphasized, in his own quaint way, the lofty logic of Deadman's Lane. The truth is embedded in the very essence of Christian teaching. The robbers always leave the best behind them; they cannot help it.
The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews commends his readers for having taken joyfully the spoiling of their goods. And he adds: ‘You are well aware that you have in your own selves a more valuable possession, and one which will remain.’ Life's spoilers leave the best of the spoil after all.
F W Boreham, ‘Our Highway Robberies’, The Luggage of Life (London: Charles H Kelly, 1912), 18-19.
Image: “Life's spoilers leave the best of the spoil after all.”