region is inferior; there is more familiarity and humour, but less poetry; and though there is the same vigorous delineation of character, the allegory is imperfect. One of the most humorous and amusing portions of the whole work is the account of the courtship between Mercy and Mr. Brisk, which took place while the parties were at the house of the Interpreter. There are also some exquisitely beautiful snatches of melody in this second part of the pilgrimage.

Perhaps no other work could be named, which, admired by cultivated minds, has had at the same time such an ameliorating effect on the lower classes in society as the Pilgrim's Progress. It is a work so full of native good sense, that no mind can read it, without gaining in wisdom and vigour of judgment. What an amazing effect must it have produced in this way on the mass of common minds brought under its power! We cannot compute the good it has thus accomplished on earth, nor tell the number of souls it may have been the means of guiding to Heaven. It is one of the books, that, by being connected with the dearest associations of childhood, always retain their hold on the heart, and it exerts a double influence when, at a graver age, and less under the despotism given to imagination in childhood, we read it with a serene and thoughtful perception of its meaning. How many children have become better citizens of the world through life by the perusal of this book almost in infancy! And how many, through its instrumentality, may have been fitted after life to live for ever! The Christian warfare is here arrayed in the glow of imagination, to make it attractive. How many Pilgrims, in hours when perseverance was almost exhausted, and patience was yielding, and clouds and darkness were gathering, have felt a sudden return of animation and courage from the remembrance of Christian's severe conflicts, and his glorious entrance at last through the gates into the City!

As the work draws to its conclusion, the poet's soul seems to expand with the glory of the subject. The description of Christian and Hopeful's entrance up through the regions of air into the Celestial City, preceded by the touching account of their passing the River of Death, though composed of the simplest materials, and depicted in the simplest language, with Scripture-imagery almost exclusively, constitutes one of the finest passages in English literature. The Shining Ones, and the beauty and glory of their conversation; the angels and their melodious notes; the Pilgrims among them, in Heaven, as it were, before they come at it; the city itself in view, and all the bells ringing with joy of their welcome; the warm and joyful thoughts they had about their own dwelling there with such a company, and that for ever and ever; the letters of gold written over the gate; the transfiguration of the men as they entered, and the raiment put on them that shone like gold; the harps and crowns given them, the harps to praise withal, and the crowns in token of honour; the bells in the city ringing again for joy; the shout of welcome, ENTER YE INTO THE JOY OF OUR LORD; the men themselves singing with a loud voice, BLESSING, AND HONOUR, AND GLORY, AND POWER BE UNTO HIM THAT SITTETH UPON THE THRONE, AND UNTO THE LAMB FOR EVER AND EVER!'

Now, says the Dreamer, just as the gates were opened to let in the men, I looked in after them, and behold the city shone like the sun; the streets also were paved with gold, and in them walked many men, with crowns upon their heads, palms in their hands, and golden harps to sing praises withal. There were also of them that had wings; and they answered one another without intermission, saying, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord; and after that, they shut up the gates; which, when I had seen, I wished myself among them. And who would not wish himself among them? or what man, reading of these things, or hearing of these things, can refuse to join them? In what attractive beauty of description are the life and the rewards of practical religion here delineated! The whole course of the Pilgrim's Progress shines with a light borrowed from its close. Just so it is in the reality. The splendours of the Celestial City, though rather to be dreamed of, and guessed at, than distinctly seen, do, nevertheless, break from the clouds, and fall from mountain top to mountain top, flashing on forest and vale, down into the most difficult craggy passes of our mortal pilgrimage. At times, the domes and towers seem resting on our earthly horizon, and in a season of fair weather our souls have sight of the streets of gold, the gates of pearl, the walls of jasper. Then we walk many days under the remembrance of such a vision. At other times the inhabitants of that city seem to be walking with us, and ministering to us; men do eat angels' food; melodious music ravishes the ear; listening intently, we think we hear the chimes of bells wafted across the sea; and sometimes the gales are laden with such fragrant spicy airs, that a single

breath of them makes the soul recognise its immortal Paradise, and almost transports it thither.

When shall the day break, and the shadows flee away! It is night here, but there the sun shall never go down. Light is sown for the righteous, and in the harvest time it shall come up; but as Goodwin beautifully remarks in his Child of Light Walking in Darkness,' we must be content to let it lie under ground; and the longer it doth so, the greater crop and harvest will spring up in the end.

In the Pilgrim's Progress there is a charming passage descriptive of the Pilgrim's entertainment in the House Beautiful, which was thus:- -"The Pilgrim they laid in a large upper chamber, whose windows opened towards the sunrising; the name of the chamber was Peace; where he slept till break of day, and then he awoke and sang." A great and thoughtful poet has written a poem with this description as its motto, which he has entitled Day-break,' and which closes with the following stanza :

How suddenly that straight and glittering shaft
Shot 'thwart the earth! In crown of living fire
Up comes the day! As if they, conscious, quaffed
The sunny flood, hill, forest, city, spire,
Laugh in the wakening light. Go, vain Desire!
The dusky lights have gone; go thou thy way!
And pining Discontent, like them expire!

Be called my chamber PEACE, when ends the day,
And let me, with the dawn, like PILGRIM, sing and pray!

ΘΕΩ ΜΟΝΩ ΔΟΞΑ.

LECTURE VI.

THE CITY OF DESTRUCTION

AND SLOUGH OF DESPOND.

Locality of the City of Destruction.-Character of Christian.-The awakened sinner.-The sinner convinced of sin, and fleeing from the wrath to come.-Character of Pliable.-Difference between a burden and no burden.-Pliable and Christian in the Slough of Despond.-Mr. Worldly Wiseman and his instructions. Mr. Legality and the town of Carnal Policy. The terrors of the Law of God to an awakened conscience.-Christian's entrance at the Wicket Gate.

THE CITY OF DESTRUCTION!

We are all inhabitants of it; no man needs ask, Where is it? What is it? Who are its people? Alas! our world of sin is the City of Destruction, and we know of a certainty from God's Word that it is to be burned up, and that if we do not escape from it, though we may die at peace in it before its conflagration, yet to be found with its spirit in our souls when we die, is to be for ever miserable. There is

a blessed pilgrimage from the City of Destruction to the City of Immanuel. It is full of dangers, trials, difficulties; but the perils are not worthy to be named in comparison with the glory at its close. And indeed the pilgrimage itself, with all its roughnesses and trials, is romantic and delightful. As the author of this book has delineated it, he makes many a man wish that he were set out in it. And yet this delineation is not in the colouring of imagination, but of sober reality; there is nothing overdrawn, nothing exaggerated in it; the scenery along the way is not painted too beautiful, there are no ecstacies, or rapturous frames, or revelations in it; the colouring is sober, with all its richness, the experience is human with all its variety; the very angels are more like gentle sympathizing friends than glittering supernatural intelligences.

It is this charm of common sense and reality that constitutes in a great measure the power of this book. Its characters are not removed from our own experience; the piety of Christian, though very rich and mellow, is progressive, and for every day's use, and for every saint's attainment. It is neither mystical, nor visionary, nor in extremes; it is not perfection, nor ascetic sublimation from the world, nor contemplation, nor penance, nor the luxury of mere spiritual frames and exercises. It is deep, sincere, gentle, practical, full of the fruits of the Spirit, full of intelligence and kindness, of love, joy, peace, long-suffering, goodness, and truth. They are every day virtues which shine in Christian; and his character is an example of what ours ought to be in our daily pilgrimage. His conflicts are such as every Christian may pass through, his consolations and enjoyments such as every Christian may experience, his knowledge of the Word of God, and indeed all his attainments, within reach of every pilgrim. He is indeed a model of excellence for all.

I think we shall observe, as we study the book through, that from first to last Bunyan has composed this character out of the most general and universally recognised traits belonging to the experience of a child of God. This, it is clear, was necessary, in order to its highest success and usefulness. And yet the individuality and originality of the character is as perfect, as striking, as graphic, as if it were the delineation from life of some person well known to Bunyan with all his peculiarities. Now, we do not suppose that Bunyan intended this in so definite a form of art and philosophy; we do not suppose that he said within himself, I must make this Christian, in the absence of all peculiarities, a suitable model for all, and yet, in the translucence through his particular characteristics,

of the general qualities belonging to our conception of a Christian, a character recognisable by, and the counterpart of, every individual. This would involve a greater degree of art and criticism than Bunyan ever exercised; and yet his genius, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, did spontaneously work according to these rules. Just so, Bunyan's own incomparable freedom from all sectarianism, even in a sectarian age, has prevented the character of Christian and of the whole Progress of the Pilgrim, from being narrowed or disfigured by any thing which could even be tortured to restrict its application, or its preferences, to any religious party. Accordingly, the more bigoted, exclusive, and sectarian a man is, the less he will like this book; to a violent Churchman it wants a bishop and the apostolical succession: to a rigid Baptist it wants immersion as the Wicket Gate. But Bunyan was wonderfully preserved from affixing to any part of this book the seal of any such local or party distinctions. Though he was himself a Baptist, yet he was an open communion Baptist, and experienced the wrath of his more exclusive Baptist brethren, because he laid no stress whatever on their peculiarities. They had bitter controversies against him as a deserter from the faith, because he would not pronounce their Shibboleths, and was completely free from the unchurching spirit of his age.

Now here was a characteristic of the presence of the Holy Spirit in him very remarkable; and his work accordingly has come from that school of heaven in which no man is of Apollos, or Cephas, or Paul, but all of Christ. Ah, this is delightful; and accordingly, in such a controversial world as this, this work is like oil upon the waters; it is as the very voice of the Saviour in the tempest, Peace, be still; it is like the dove with her olive leaf, a prophet of the garden of the Lord; it is like a white-robed herald with his sacred flag, privileged to go every where, and admitted every where, even amidst contending armies. This book will remain, when there shall be nothing to hurt nor destroy in all God's holy mountain, when Judah shall no more vex Ephraim, nor Ephraim envy Judah; for it has come forth from the mint of celestial universal love; it has no leaf in it, which the Spirit of God may not sweetly mingle with those leaves of the Tree of Life for the healing of the nations. We doubt whether there was another individual in that age, except Leighton, whose piety could have produced so catholic, so unsectarian, so heavenly a work.

In accordance with what I have said, you will perceive how Bunyan commences with his Pilgrim. He begins with releasing himself and the position of the Dreamer from any positive locality; he does not suffer his personal situation or feelings to throw a single determinate shade upon the picture; he does not say, (as many persons would very naturally have said,) As I lay suffering for the Gospel in the prison of Bedford, but, As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted upon a certain place where was a den, and laid me down in that place to sleep; and as I slept, I dreamed a dream. Ah, it was a wilderness indeed, and no small part of Bunyan's life was spent in the deserts and caves of it. It is a wilderness to us all, but to many a wilderness of sinful pleasures infinitely more dangerous than dens and caves, bonds and imprisonments. is a wilderness to the soul, away from its God, surrounded by dangers, exposed to the wiles of its great adversary the devil, in peril of eternal ruin.

It

There are lions, chained and unchained, in the way, and temptations of every shape and name, and unseen dangers too, from which God alone can protect us. He only walks safely who walks as a stranger and a pilgrim.

Yet the dear path to thine abode

Lies through this horrid land;

Lord, we would trace the dangerous road,

And run at thy command.

And if we do this, then a blessed Faith comes in, and ours is a more cheerful, delightful, heavenly vision. We walk under the gracious care, and in the safe dominions of the King of the Celestial City; we travel the King's own highway; we come to the land Beulah;

We're marching through Immanuel's ground

To fairer worlds on high!

You will observe what honour, from his Pilgrim's first setting out, Bunyan puts upon the Word of God. He would give to no inferior instrumentality, not even to one of God's Providences, the business of awakening his Pilgrim to a sense of his danger; but

he places him before us reading his book, awakened by the Word.

66

Now we know that it is often God's providence, in the way of sickness, the loss of friends, earthly disappointments, the voice and discipline of pain of various kinds, that awakens careless men in the first place, and leads them to the Word of God; and kind and gracious providences are always, all through life, all through our Christian course, combining with the Word and the Spirit of God to help us on our pilgrimage, and make us wary in it; but in general it is the Word of God, in some form, which God uses as the instrument in awakening men, as well as in converting them. And so Bunyan, with heavenly wisdom and truth, gives us the first picture of his Pilgrim, anxiously reading the Word of God. And he makes the first efficacious motive in the mind of this Pilgrim, a salutary fear of the terrors of that Word, a sense of the wrath to come, beneath the burden of sin upon his soul. There is a passage so beautiful, in the pages of a great writer, on this very point, that it might have been written as a commentary on this very opening of the Pilgrim's Progress, and I shall set it before you. Awakened," says Mr. Coleridge, "by the cock-crow (a sermon, a calamity, a sick-bed, or a providential escape) the Christian Pilgrim sets out in the morning twilight, while yet the truth is below the horizon. Certain necessary consequences of his past life and his present undertaking will be seen by the refraction of its light: more will be apprehended and conjectured. The phantasms, that had predominated during the hours of darkness, are still busy. No longer present as forms, they will yet exist as moulding and formative motions in the Pilgrim's soul. The Dream of the past night will transfer its shapes to the objects in the distance, while the objects give outwardness and reality to the shapings of the Dream. The fears inspired by long habits of selfishness and self-seeking cunning, though now purified into that fear which is the beginning of wisdom, and ordained to be our guide and safeguard, till the sun of love, the perfect law of liberty, is fully arisen-these fears will set the fancy at work, and haply, for a time transform the mists of dim and imperfect knowledge into determinate superstitions. But in either case, whether seen clearly or dimly, whether beheld or only imagined, the consequences contemplated in their bearings on the individual's inherent desire of happiness and dread of pain become motives: and (unless all distinction in the words be done away with, and either prudence or virtue be reduced to a superfluous synonyme, a redundancy in all the languages of the civilized world) these motives, and the acts and forbearances directly proceeding from them, fall under the head of PRUDENCE, as belonging to one or other of its three very distinct species. It may be a prudence, that stands in opposition to a higher moral life, and tends to preclude it, and to prevent the soul from ever arriving at the hatred of sin for its own exceeding sinfulness (Rom. vii. 13); and this is an EVIL PRUDENCE. Or it may be a neutral prudence not incompatible with spiritual growth; and to this we may, with especial propriety, apply the words of our Lord, What is not against us is for us.' It is therefore an innocent and (being such) a proper and COMMENDABLE PRUDENCE.

66

Or it may lead and be subservient to a higher principle than itself. The mind and conscience of the individual may be reconciled to it, in the foreknowledge of the higher principle, and with a yearning towards it that implies a foretaste of future freedom. The enfeebled convalescent is reconciled to his crutches, and thankfully makes use of them, not only because they are necessary for his immediate support, but likewise, because they are the means and condition of EXERCISE; and by exercise of establishing, gradatim paulatim, that strength, flexibility, and almost spontaneous obedience of the muscles, which the idea and cheering presentiment of health hold out to him. He finds their value in their present necessity, and their worth as they are the instruments of finally superseding it. This is a faithful, a WISE PRUDENCE, having indeed its birth-place in the world, and the wisdom of this world for its father; but naturalized in a better land, and having the Wisdom from above for its Sponsor and Spiritual Parent."

The Pilgrim is in rags, the rags of depravity and sin, and the intolerable burden of sin is bending him down; but the book is in his hand, and his face is from his own house. Reading and pondering, and full of perplexity, foreboding and a sense of sin, gloom and wrath, he cries out, What shall I do! This is his first exclamation. He has not as yet advanced so far as to say, What shall I do to be saved? And now for some days the solemnity, and burden, and distress of his spirit increases; his unconverted friends see that he is "becoming serious;" they think it is some distemper of the mind or animal spirits; they hope he may sleep it away; they chide, neglect, deride him; carnal physic for a sick soul, as Bunyan describes it in the margin, is administered. But