The Riches of Bunyan: Selected from His WorksBunyan, John
Religion
The Riches of Bunyan: Selected from His Works
Bunyan, John
Theology, Doctrinal
And to Christians who are neither authors nor preachers, this life
of romantic privacy and illustrious obscurity has its lessons, alike
to awe and to cheer, of solemn warning and of sustaining hope. No
scene or station of all the earth that can eye paradise, or catch
the gleams of the atoning cross, is truly ignoble or utterly
forlorn. He who promised that, in the last days, the inscription
which shone on the front of the high-priest's mitre, "HOLINESS UNTO
THE LORD," should be written also on the very bells of the horses,
and that "every pot" in Jerusalem, and its outlying streets should
become holy as the consecrated furniture of his own temple and
altar, can in like manner render the lowliest scenes of human art
and toil and traffic the schools of truth and duty and peace,
schools ministering alike to the truest happiness and to the most
perfect holiness of our race. He who gave, as in Bunyan's case he
did, to the maker or mender of culinary vessels the sacred skill to
grave the all-holy Name, as one dignifying and consecrating them, on
all the objects and scenes and accompaniments of his humble labors,
can, in our times and in our various stations, make each allowable
task of our earthly life to become also "HOLINESS TO THE LORD;" and
as the Christian's body is made a TEMPLE of the Holy Grhost, so can
he render the Christian himself, in all his social relations and
enterprises, "A PRIEST AND A KING UNTO GOD." And the great principle
of conciliation amid earth's jarring tribes and clashing interests,
and of true and helpful communion among mankind, is not external but
internal, not material but spiritual, not, terrene but celestial;
and is found in the blending by this one divine Spirit, of all
earth's inhabitants, in a common contrition before a common
redemption, tending as these inhabitants are, under a common sin and
doom, to the same inevitable graves; but all of them invited, in the
one name of one Christ, to aspire to the same heaven of endless and
perfect blessedness.
WILLIAM R. WILLIAMS.
NEW YORK, January, 1851.
THE RICHES OF BUNYAN.
I. GOD.
GLORY OF GOD.
God is the chief good--good so as nothing is but himself. He is in
himself most happy; yea, all good and all true happiness are only to
be found in God, as that which is essential to his nature; nor is
there any good or any happiness in or with any creature or thing but
what is communicated to it by God. God is the only desirable good;
nothing without him is worthy of our hearts. Right thoughts of God
are able to ravish the heart; how much more happy is the man that
has interest in God. God alone is able by himself to put the soul
into a more blessed, comfortable, and happy condition than can the
whole world; yea, and more than if all the created happiness of all
the angels of heaven did dwell in one man's bosom. I cannot tell
what to say. I am drowned. The life, the glory, the blessedness, the
soul-satisfying goodness that is in God, are beyond all expression.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account