The whole book is just Giant Despair
and his dungeon, with a gleam here and there of that sunshiny weather
that threw the giant into one of his fits, in which he always lost for
the time the use of his limbs. Return often, my brethren, to that
masterpiece, _Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners_. I have read it a
hundred times, but last week it was as fresh and powerful and consoling
as ever to my sin-wounded spirit.
Let me select some of the incidents that offer occasion for a comment or
two.
1. And, in the first place, take notice, and lay well to heart, how
sudden, and almost instantaneous, is the fall of Christian and Hopeful
from the very gate of heaven to the very gate of hell. All the Sabbath
and the Monday and the Tuesday before that fatal Wednesday, the two
pilgrims had walked with great delight on the banks of a very pleasant
river; that river, in fact, which David the King called the river of God,
and John, the river of the water of life. They drank also of the water
of the river, which was pleasant and enlivening to their weary spirits.
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