'It is given to you,' said our Lord to His
disciples, 'to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven, but to them
it is not given.' And Paul tells us that 'the natural man receiveth not
the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him:
neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.' And,
accordingly, no reader of the _Pilgrim's Progress_ will really understand
what he sees in the Interpreter's House, unless he is already a man of a
spiritual mind. Intelligent children enjoy the pictures and the people
that are set before them in this illustrated house, but they must become
the children of God, and must be well on in the life of God, before they
will be able to say that the house next the gate has been a profitable
and a helpful house to them. All that is displayed here--all the
furniture and all the vessels, all the ornaments and all the employments
and all the people of the Interpreter's House--is fitted and intended to
be profitable as well as interesting to pilgrims only. No man has any
real interest in the things of this house, or will take any abiding
profit out of it, till he is fairly started on the upward road.
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