Bunyan, John, 1628-1688 -- Criticism and interpretation
5. And then, the riddles that were made upon the King Himself, and upon
Emmanuel His Son, and upon Emmanuel's wars and all His other doings with
Mansoul. And when Emmanuel would expound some of those riddles Himself,
oh! how they were lightened! They saw what they never saw! They could
not have thought that such rarities could have been couched in so few and
such ordinary words. Yea, they did gather that the things themselves
were a kind of portraiture, and that, too, of Emmanuel Himself. This,
they would say, this is the Lamb! this is the Sacrifice! this is the
Rock! this is the Door! and this is the Way! with a great many other
things. At Gaius's supper-table they sat up over their riddles and nuts
and sweetmeats till the sun was in the sky. And it would be midnight and
morning if I were to show you the answers to the half of the riddles.
Take one, for an example, and let it be one of the best for the communion-
day. 'In one rare quality of the orator,' says Hugh Miller, writing
about his adored minister, Alexander Stewart of Cromarty, 'Mr. Stewart
stood alone. Pope refers in his satires to a strange power of creating
love and admiration by just "touching the brink of all we hate." Now,
into this perilous, but singularly elective department, Mr. Stewart could
enter with safety and at will. We heard him, scarce a twelvemonth since,
deliver a discourse of singular power on the sin-offering as minutely
described by the divine penman in Leviticus. He described the
slaughtered animal--foul with dust and blood, its throat gashed across,
its entrails laid open and steaming in its impurity to the sun--a vile
and horrid thing, which no one could look on without disgust, nor touch
without defilement. The picture appeared too vivid; its introduction too
little in accordance with a just taste. But this pulpit-master knew what
he was all the time doing. "And that," he said, as he pointed to the
terrible picture, "that is SIN!" By one stroke the intended effect was
produced, and the rising disgust and horror transferred from the
revolting, material image to the great moral evil.' And, in like manner,
This is the LAMB! we all said over the mystical riddle of the bread and
the wine this morning. This is the SACRIFICE! This is the DOOR! This
is EMMANUEL, GOD WITH US, and made sin for us!
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