Bunyan, John, 1628-1688 -- Criticism and interpretation
morning when the widows and orphans of King's Cliffe came to his window,
and so on. A grateful heart feeds itself to a still greater gratitude on
everything that comes to it. So it was with William Law, till he wakened
the maids in the rooms below with his psalms and his hymns as he went
into his vestry and put on his singing robes so early every morning. And
then, after his morning hours of study and devotion, Law had a piece of
livery that he always put on and never came downstairs to breakfast
without it. Other men might put on other pieces; he always clothed
himself next to gratitude with humility. Men differ, good men differ,
and Emmanuel's livery-men differ in what they put on, at what time, and
in what order. But that was William Law's way. You will learn more of
his way, and you will be helped to find out a like way for yourselves, if
you will become students of his incomparable books. You will find how he
put on charity, 1 Cor. thirteenth chapter; and then how, over all, he put
on the will of God; till, thus equipped and thus accoutred, he was able
to say, as it has seldom been said since it was first said, 'I put on
righteousness, and it clothed me; my judgment was to me as a robe and as
a diadem. The Almighty was then with me, and my children were about me.
When I washed my steps with butter, and when the rock poured me out
rivers of oil!' So much for that livery-man of Emmanuel, the author of
the _Christian Perfection_ and the _Spirit of Love_. As for the women's
vestry in the Interpreter's House, Matthew Henry saw the thirty-first
chapter of the Proverbs hung up on that vestry wall, and Christiana
making her morning toilet before it with Mercy beside her. Who would
find a virtuous woman, let him look before that looking-glass for her,
and he will be sure to find her and her daughters and her daughters-in-
law putting on their white raiment there.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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