Such were some of the many keys by the use of which God let John Bunyan
so often out of despair into full assurance and out of darkness into
light. Which of the promises have been of such help to you? Over what
Scriptures have you ever cried out: Oh, how good a thing it is for God to
send me His word! Which are the biggest words in all the Bible to you?
To what promise did you ever flounce as a horse flounces when he is
sticking in the mire? And has any word of God so made God your God that
even death itself, since it alone separates you from His presence, is
lovely and beautiful in your eyes? Have you a cluster of such keys in
your bosom? If you have, take them all out to-night and go over them
again with thanksgiving before you sleep.
KNOWLEDGE
'I will give you pastors after Mine own heart, which shall feed you
with knowledge and understanding.'
The Delectable Mountains rise out of the heart of Immanuel's Land. This
fine range of far-rolling hills falls away on the one side toward the
plain of Destruction, and on the other side toward the land of Beulah and
the Celestial City, and the way to the Celestial City runs like a bee-
line over these well-watered pastures. Standing on a clear day on the
highest peak of the Delectable Mountains, if you have good eyes you can
see the hill Difficulty in the far-back distance with a perpetual mist
clinging to its base and climbing up its sides, which mist the shepherds
say to you rises all the year round off the Slough of Despond, while,
beyond that again the heavy smoke of the city of Destruction and the town
of Stupidity shuts in the whole horizon. And then, when you turn your
back on all that, in favourable states of the weather you can see here
and there the shimmer of that river over which there is no bridge; and,
then again, so high above the river that it seems to be a city standing
in heaven rather than upon the earth, you will see the high towers and
shining palace roofs and broad battlements of the New Jerusalem itself.
The two travellers should have spent the past three days among the sights
of the Delectable Mountains; and they would have done so had not the
elder traveller misled the younger. But now that they were set free and
fairly on the right road again, the way they had spent the past three
days and three nights made the gardens and the orchards and the pastures
that ran round the bottom and climbed up the sides of the Delectable
Mountains delectable beyond all description to them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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