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

to their God, they shall see before them, or from earth see glory. —⁠Bunyan’s Paul’s Departure, vol. 1, p. 741 ↩

Hebrews 12:22⁠–⁠24. ↩

Revelation 2:7; 3:4; 22:5. ↩

Isaiah 57:1, 2; 65:17.

Ah, Christian! None can conceive or describe what it is to live in a state separate from a body of sin and death. Surely in some happy, highly-favoured moments, we have had a glimpse, a foretaste of this, and could realize it by faith. O for more and more of this, till we possess and enjoy it in all its fullness! If Jesus be so sweet to faith below, who can tell what He is in full fruition above? This we must die to know. —⁠Mason ↩

Galatians 6:7. ↩

1 John 3:2. ↩

1 Thessalonians 4:13⁠–⁠17; Jude 14; Daniel 7:9, 10; 1 Corinthians 6:2, 3. ↩

Revelation 19:9. ↩

Bunyan has, with great beauty and probability, brought in the ministry of angels, and regions of the air, to be passed through in their company, rising, and still rising, higher and higher, before they come to that mighty mount on which He has placed the gates of the Celestial City. The angels receive His pilgrims as they come up from the River of Death, and form for them a bright, glittering, seraphic, loving convoy, whose conversation prepares them gradually for that exceeding and eternal weight of glory which is to be theirs as they enter in at the gate. Bunyan has thus, in this blissful passage from the river to the gate, done what no other devout writer, or dreamer, or speculator, that we are aware of, has ever done; he has filled what perhaps in most minds is a mere blank, a vacancy, or at most a bewilderment and mist of glory, with definite and beatific images, with natural thoughts, and with the sympathizing communion of gentle spirits, who form, as it were, an outer porch and perspective of glory, through which the soul passes into uncreated light. Bunyan has thrown a bridge, as it were, for the imagination, over the deep, sudden, open space of an untried spiritual existence; where it finds, ready to receive the soul that leaves the body, ministering spirits, sent forth to minister unto them who are to be heirs of salvation. —⁠Cheever ↩

Glory beyond all glory ever seen
By waking sense, or by the dreaming soul!
The appearance, instantaneously disclosed,
Was of a mighty City⁠—boldly say
A wilderness of building, sinking far,
And self-withdrawn into a wondrous depth,
Far sinking into splendour without end!
Fabric it seemed of diamond and of gold,
With alabaster domes and silver spires,
And blazing terrace upon terrace, high
Uplifted: here, serene pavilions bright,
In avenues disposed; there, towers begirt
With battlements, that on their restless fronts
Bore stars⁠—illumination of all gems!

—⁠Wordsworth

↩

Revelation 22:14. ↩

A certificate,
To show thou seest thyself most desolate;
Writ by the Master, with repentance seal’d.
To show also that here [by Christ] thou would’st be healed.
* * *
And that thou dost abhor thee for thy ways,
And would’st in holiness spend all thy days.

—⁠Bunyan’s House of God, vol. 2, p. 580

↩

Isaiah 26:2.

Blessed indeed is that man who, while encumbered with a sinful body, can truly say, “I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” In Him all the commandments are obeyed⁠—all my sins washed away by His blood⁠—and my soul clothed with righteousness and immortality. Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord: they enter the Celestial City. This is the righteous nation, which keepeth the truth. O my reader, would you be one of the glorified inhabitants of that city whose builder and maker is God? Then must you live the life of faith; so run that ye may obtain; ever be found looking unto Jesus. —⁠Editor

“Prepare me, Lord, for Thy right hand,
Then come the joyful day;
Come death, and some celestial hand,
And fetch my soul away.”

↩

O what acclamations of joy will there be, when all the children of God meet together, without the fear of being disturbed by Antichrist! How will the heavens echo of joy, when the Bride, the Lamb’s wife, shall come to dwell with her Husband! If you would be better satisfied what the beatific vision means, my request is, that you would live holily, and thus go and see. Christ is the desire of all nations, the joy of angels, the delight of the Father. What solace, then, must that soul be filled with, which hath the possession of Christ to all eternity? —⁠Bunyan’s Dying Sayings, vol.1, pp. 64, 65 ↩

Revelation 5:13. ↩

Revelation 4:8. ↩

When a formal visit from a minister, a few general questions, and a prayer, with or without the sacrament, calm the mind of a dying person, whose life has been unsuitable to the Christian profession; no doubt, could we penetrate the veil, we should see him wafted across the river in the boat of Vain-hope, and meeting with the awful doom that is here described. From such fatal delusions, good Lord, deliver us! —⁠Scott ↩

Vain-hope ever dwells in the bosom of fools, and is ever ready to assist Ignorance. He wanted him at the last, and he found him. He had been his companion through life, and will not forsake him in the hour of death. You see Ignorance had no pangs in his death, no fears, doubts, and sorrows, no terror from the enemy, but all was serene and happy. Vain-hope was his ferryman; and he, as the good folks say, died like a lamb. Ah, but did such lambs see what was to follow, when Vain-hope had wafted them over the river, they would roar like lions! —⁠Mason ↩

This is a most awful