By-ends and the Hill Lucre

“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.” — Matthew 6:24 (ESV)

Christian doesn’t walk on alone. Out of the crowd at Vanity Fair — out of the ashes of what they did to Faithful — a new companion joins him: Hopeful, who decided to follow after watching how Christian and Faithful carried themselves in their suffering. That’s worth a full stop. Faithful’s death wasn’t the end of Faithful’s effect. Someone was watching, and became a pilgrim because of it. What looked like a total loss produced a new traveller. It usually does.

Soon they catch up to a very agreeable, well-connected gentleman named By-ends, from the town of Fair-speech. He’s happy to walk with them — with conditions. And when Christian presses him, By-ends lays out his personal religion with startling honesty. He differs from “the stricter sort,” he says, in just two small points: “First, we never strive against wind and tide. Secondly, we are always most zealous when religion goes in his silver slippers” — when it’s sunny, popular, and everyone’s applauding.

Read that twice, because By-ends is not a villain in the obvious way. He’s not against God. He just wants God when it’s convenient and it makes him look good. Faith when it’s trending; faith that costs nothing; faith you turn up for when the room approves and quietly drop when the wind changes. Bunyan’s point is that this is one of the most common and dangerous conditions there is — not rejecting God, but keeping him strictly for the seasons when he pays off socially. Christian’s terms are the opposite: if you walk with us, “you must own Religion in his rags, as well as when in his silver slippers.” Will you still follow when it’s not paying off? By-ends won’t commit, so they leave him behind.

By-ends finds his real crowd soon enough — three old schoolmates, Mr. Hold-the-world, Mr. Money-love, and Mr. Save-all, all trained by a schoolmaster called Mr. Gripeman in the town of Love-gain. They have a whole worked-out philosophy for using religion to get rich: become “extraordinary zealous” about your faith exactly when it’ll win you a better job, a richer spouse, more customers. When they smugly put the argument to Christian, he demolishes it: making God a tool to get the world is the religion of Judas, who followed for the money and sold his Master for it. You cannot serve God and money; and the person who takes up faith for what it gets them will drop faith the moment something else pays better.

Then Bunyan shows you where the love of money ends. The road passes a hill called Lucre with a silver mine in it, and a smooth man named Demas beside it calling, “Come see the treasure! A little digging and you can set yourself up for life.” Christian won’t turn aside — he’s heard how many died in that pit, and how the treasure “is a snare to those that seek it.” But when By-ends and his crew come along, they go straight over at the first call, and are never seen on the road again. Chasing the money literally took them off the journey for good.

Just past it stands a strange monument — a woman turned into a pillar of salt. It’s Lot’s wife, who escaped a doomed city but was destroyed anyway because, at the last second, she looked back toward it with a longing heart. Hopeful is shaken: “Wherein was the difference between her sin and mine? She only looked back — and I wanted to go see the mine.” That’s the sober lesson in stone. You can be technically on the right road and still be quietly turning your heart back toward what you’re supposed to be leaving. The mine doesn’t have to get you. Wanting it can be enough.

One thing to do: ask yourself the By-ends question straight — do I only care about God when it’s paying off? When faith would cost you something socially, or get you nothing you can post about, does your interest quietly evaporate? Then this week, do one thing for God specifically when it gets you nothing — no audience, no advantage, no applause. That single act, done in the rags instead of the silver slippers, is how you find out whether you’re a pilgrim or a By-ends.