A Baptist Abroad: Travels and Adventures of Europe and all Bible LandsWhittle, Walter Andrew
Religion
A Baptist Abroad: Travels and Adventures of Europe and all Bible Lands
Whittle, Walter Andrew
Europe -- Description and travel; Middle East -- Description and travel
for yourself the exquisite carving on the vaulted Gothic roof a hundred
feet above you; unless that holy calm, which these scenes inspire and
which forever inhabits these sacred walls, could settle down upon your
own spirit,—I say, that unless you could see, realize, and experience
all these things in, and of, and for, yourself, then it were impossible
for you to appreciate the beauty, the grandeur, the sublimity of this
splendid structure.
The Fitzwilliam Museum is the most handsome modern building in
Cambridge, if not in Great Britain. It looks as if it should be placed
in a glass case and kept for the angels to inhabit.
In Trinity College Library, I saw the original manuscript of Milton’s
“Paradise Lost,” the manuscript of Lord Macaulay’s “History of
England,” also the first letter that Lord Byron ever penned; he wrote,
in his mother’s name, thanking a neighbor lady for some potatoes which
she had been kind enough to send Lady Byron. I saw the telescope used
by Newton in studying the heavenly bodies, and by the assistance of
which he discovered new planets.
I was much interested in going through the University printing
establishment, and in seeing the Cambridge Bibles manufactured. When
I got back to Nottingham, I felt that I could truly say: “I have
been through Cambridge University, and still I may write, ‘Plus
ultra’—there is more beyond, more to learn.”
I bade adieu to my Nottingham friends this morning while the
dewdrops and the rays of the sun were yet playing hide-and-seek and
seek-and-hide. Two hours later found me in Bedford. I go at once to
the church where John Bunyan was pastor two hundred years ago. The
church I find surrounded by a huge iron fence. After hunting for half
an hour, I succeed in finding the sexton who kindly shows me through.
The front door of the church cost six thousand dollars. It is molded of
heavy bronze. The door is divided into twelve large panels, each panel
representing a scene taken from _Pilgrim’s Progress_. The first panel
on the bottom of the lefthand side represents Christian with the burden
of sin on his back, parting with his wife and children, leaving the
city of Destruction and starting out for that city whose builder and
maker is God. In the other panels we see Christian as he passes through
the wicket gate; as he approaches the cross and loses his burden; as
he falls into the hands of Giant Despair and is thrust into Doubting
Castle; as he passes the lions in his way; as he sleeps and loses
his scroll; as he enters Vanity Fair; as he stands on the Delectable
Mountains from which he views the city of the blessed and hears the
music of the redeemed; and finally we see him as he crosses the River
of Death, and is welcomed by the angels as he reaches the golden shore.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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