The Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunyan [most popular novels .txt] 📗

id="note-92" epub:type="endnote">

Acts 14:22. ↩

Verily thou didst, noble Christian! And who is there that does not know the meaning of it, and what heart so cold as not to be ravished by it! Yea, we should think that this passage alone might set any man out on this pilgrimage, might bring many a careless traveler up to the gate of this glorious palace to say, Set down my name, Sir! How full of instruction is this passage! It set Christian’s own heart on fire to run forward on his journey, although the battle was before him. —⁠Cheever ↩

Luke 8:13. ↩

Hebrews 4:6. ↩

Luke 19:14. ↩

Hebrews 10:28, 29. ↩

All these deeply interesting pictures are intended for every age and every clime. This iron cage of despair has ever shut up its victims. Many have supposed that it had a special reference to one John Child, who, under the fear of persecution, abandoned his profession, and, in frightful desperation, miserably perished by his own hand. —⁠Editor ↩

Bunyan intended not to represent this man as actually beyond the reach of mercy, but to show the dreadful consequences of departing from God, and of being abandoned of Him to the misery of unbelief and despair. —⁠Cheever ↩

“An everlasting caution”⁠—“God help me to watch.” The battle with Apollyon, the dread valley, the trying scene at Vanity Fair, the exhilarating victory over By-ends and Demas, dissipated the painful scene of the iron cage; and want of prayerful caution led Christian into the dominion of Despair, and he became for a season the victim shut up in this frightful cage. Reader, may we be ever found “looking unto Jesus,” then shall we be kept from Doubting Castle and the iron cage. —⁠Editor ↩

“In the midst of these heavenly instructions, why in such haste to go?” Alas! the burden of sin upon his back pressed him on to seek deliverance. —⁠Editor ↩

“Rack.” Driven violently by the wind. —⁠Editor ↩

1 Corinthians 15:52; 1 Thessalonians 4:16; Jude 14; John 5:28, 29; 2 Thessalonians 1:7, 8; Revelation 20:11⁠–⁠14; Isaiah 26:21; Micah 7:16, 17; Psalms 95:1⁠–⁠3; Daniel 7:10. ↩

Malachi 3:2, 3; Daniel 7:9, 10. ↩

Matthew 3:12; 13:30; Malachi 4:1. ↩

Luke 3:17. ↩

1 Thessalonians 4:16, 17. ↩

Romans 2:14, 15. ↩

We go about the world in the day time, and are absorbed in earthly schemes; the world is as bright as a rainbow, and it bears for us no marks or predictions of the judgment, or of our sins; and conscience is retired, as it were, within a far inner circle of the soul. But when it comes night, and the pall of sleep is drawn over the senses, then conscience comes out solemnly, and walks about in the silent chambers of the soul, and makes her survey and her comments, and sometimes sits down and sternly reads the record of a life that the waking man would never look into, and the catalogue of crimes that are gathering for the judgment. Imagination walks tremblingly behind her, and they pass through the open gate of the Scriptures into the eternal world⁠—for thither all things in man’s being naturally and irresistibly tend⁠—and there, imagination draws the judgment, the soul is presented at the bar of God, and the eye of the Judge is on it, and a hand of fire writes, “Thou art weighed in the balances, and found wanting!” Our dreams sometimes reveal our character, our sins, our destinies, more clearly than our waking thoughts; for by day the energies of our being are turned into artificial channels, by night our thoughts follow the bent that is most natural to them; and as man is both an immortal and a sinful being, the consequences both of his immortality and his sinfulness will sometimes be made to stand out in overpowering light, when the busy pursuits of day are not able to turn the soul from wandering towards eternity. —⁠Cheever Bunyan profited much by dreams and visions. “Even in my childhood the Lord did scare and affright me with fearful dreams, and did terrify me with dreadful visions.” That is a striking vision of church fellowship in the Grace Abounding, (Nos. 53⁠–⁠56); and an awful dream is narrated in the Greatness of the Soul⁠—“Once I dreamed that I saw two persons, whom I knew, in hell; and methought I saw a continual dropping from Heaven, as of great drops of fire lighting upon them, to their sore distress’ (vol. 1, p. 148). —⁠Editor ↩

Our safety consists in a due proportion of hope and fear. When devoid of hope, we resemble a ship without an anchor; when unrestrained by fear, we are like the same vessel under full sail without ballast. True comfort is the effect of watchfulness, diligence, and circumspection. What lessons could possibly have been selected of greater importance or more suited to establish the new convert, than these are which our author has most ingeniously and agreeably inculcated, under the emblem of the Interpreter’s curiosities? —⁠Scott ↩

Isaiah 26:1. ↩

This is an important lesson, that a person may be in Christ and yet have a deep sense of the burden of sin upon the soul. —⁠Cheever So also Bunyan⁠—“Every height is a difficulty to him that is loaden; with a burden, how shall we attain the Heaven of heavens?” —⁠Knowledge of Christ’s Love ↩

Zechariah 12:10.

This efficacious sight of the cross is thus narrated in Grace Abounding, (No. 115):⁠—“Traveling in the country, and musing on the wickedness and blasphemy of my heart, that scripture came in my mind⁠—‘Having made peace through