For, to tell you truth, I love Him, because by Him I was
eased of my burden, and I am weary of my inward sickness; and I would
fain be where I shall die no more, and for ever with that company that
shall continually cry, Holy, holy, holy.'
CHARITY
'I will walk within my house with a perfect heart.'--David.
There can be nobody here to-night so stark stupid as to suppose that the
pilgrim had run away from home and left his wife and children to the work-
house. There have been wiseacres who have found severe fault with John
Bunyan because he made his Puritan pilgrim such a bad husband and such an
unnatural father. But nobody possessed of a spark of common sense, not
to say religion or literature, would ever commit himself to such an utter
imbecility as that. John Bunyan's pilgrim, whatever he may have been
before he became a pilgrim, all the time he was a pilgrim, was the most
faithful, affectionate, and solicitous husband in all the country round
about, and the tenderest, the most watchful, and the wisest of fathers.
This pilgrim stayed all the more at home that he went so far away from
home; he accomplished his whole wonderful pilgrimage beside his own forge
and at his own fireside; and he entered the Celestial City amid trumpets
and bells and harps and psalms, while all the time sleeping in his own
humble bed.
Pages:
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216