After telling our pilgrims that their way must next lie through the town of Vanity, where all through the year they would find that a large and well-attended fair was being held, Evangelist affectionately commended them to God and the word of His grace (Acts 20:3232And now, brethren, I commend you to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance among all them which are sanctified. (Acts 20:32)) and then bade them farewell.
The town which the writer of The Pilgrim's Progress has called Vanity is of very great age. If we want to know by whom it was founded, we must open our Bibles at the Book of Genesis, and we shall read how between five and six thousand years ago a man whose hands were stained with his brother's blood, Cain, "went out from the presence of the Lord" and tried to make himself happy without God. "And he builded a city" (Gen. 4:15-1715And the Lord said unto him, Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him. 16And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden. 17And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Enoch: and he builded a city, and called the name of the city, after the name of his son, Enoch. (Genesis 4:15‑17)), and from that faraway time to the day in which we live, the men of the world have been doing their best to make the town of Vanity a very pleasant and attractive place.
A great deal of buying and selling is always going on there. The fair attracts great numbers, not only of the young and thoughtless, but alas! many of those older ones whose white heads ought to be found in the way of righteousness. Shows and amusements, too many to count, are provided for those who care for such things, but there is nothing to suit the taste or meet the needs of the children of God, who like others have to pass through Vanity Fair on their way to the Celestial City.
Satan, who is the god of this world, tried his utmost to tempt the Lord Jesus to buy some of the goods exposed for sale when He was passing through the fair, but that blessed, holy One, whose object was always to do the will of His Father in heaven, only answered, "It is written," and passed on.
But we must return to our pilgrims and learn how they fared in passing through the town of Vanity and how they were treated by its citizens. They had no right to expect an easy time or smooth sailing, for when they turned for direction to their guidebook, the Word of God, they found that their Lord had said of His disciples, "They are not of the world" (John 17:1616They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. (John 17:16)), and that they might not lose heart He had also said, "These things I have spoken unto you, that in Me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world" (John 16:3333These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world. (John 16:33)).
We will not linger over all that Christian passed through before he was allowed to leave the city, though the writer of The Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyan, has given a somewhat lengthy account of all that happened to Christian and Faithful there. The townspeople came out in crowds to gaze and stare at them. The clothes of the pilgrims were neither so showy nor so fashionable as those in which the people of Vanity Fair loved to dress themselves and their families. As they did not usually speak the same language, they appeared to them to be men from a foreign country.
Another thing at which many of the crowd took offense was that the pilgrims did not spend any money in the fair and took little if any interest in the wares that were offered for sale in the windows of the shops and upon the stalls in the marketplace. But gazing and staring did not long content the crowd who had gathered. One man called out in a loud, mocking tone, "What will ye buy?" and received for an answer, "We buy the truth and sell it not."
That was the signal for a general uproar. The noise soon became so deafening that the captains and rulers of the city came out to learn the cause of the riot, the blame of which was at once laid upon the pilgrims, and they were asked who they were and where they were going. They said they were pilgrims and strangers and were going to a "better country, that is, a heavenly," and all they desired was to be allowed to pass quietly through the fair on their way to Mount Zion.
By that time the uproar and excitement had become so great that the people would not go quietly to their homes, so the rulers decided that the pilgrims, instead of being allowed to depart, should be put into an iron cage to be mocked and made a gazing-stock to all the people of the fair.
Christian and Faithful were soon surrounded by a crowd of idlers, who did not long content themselves with staring at and mocking the prisoners, but began to pelt them with mud, and some even threw stones. But even then they were not left without comfort, for they reminded each other not only of the warning Evangelist had given them, how as the followers of a rejected Lord they must not expect an easy time, but also they remembered that it was written of Him, the Master they served, "He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief" (Isa. 53:33He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. (Isaiah 53:3)).