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Whyte, Alexander, 1836-1921

"Bunyan Characters (1st Series)"

Now, next Sabbath is our communion day in
this congregation. Let us therefore this week examine ourselves. And if
we must sin as long as we are in this world, let it henceforth be the sin
of ignorance and of infirmity.
So the three reprobates lay down to sleep again, and Christian as he left
that bottom went on in the narrow way singing:
'O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I'm constrained to be
Let that grace, Lord, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.'


THE THREE SHINING ONES AT THE CROSS

'Salvation shall God appoint for walls.'--Isaiah.
John Bunyan's autobiography, _Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners_,
is the best of all our commentaries on _The Pilgrim's Progress_, and
again to-night I shall have to fall back on that incomparable book. 'Now,
I saw in my dream that the highway up which Christian was to go was
fenced on either side with a wall, and that wall is called Salvation. Up
this way, therefore, did burdened Christian run, but not without great
difficulty, because of the load on his back.' In the corresponding
paragraph in _Grace Abounding_, our author says, speaking about himself:
'But forasmuch as the passage was wonderful narrow, even so narrow that I
could not but with great difficulty enter in thereat, it showed me that
none could enter into life but those that were in downright earnest, and
unless also they left this wicked world behind them; for here was only
room for body and soul, but not for body and soul and sin.


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