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There is a passage so beautiful, in the pages of a great writer, on this very point; that it might have been written as a commentary on this very opening of the Pilgrim's Progress, and I shall set it before you. "Awakened," says Mr. Coleridge, "by the cock-crow (a sermon, a calamity, a sick bed, or a providential escape) the Christian Pilgrim sets out in the morning twilight, while yet the truth is below the horizon. Certain necessary consequences of his past life and his present undertaking will be seen by the refraction of its light more will be apprehended and conjectured. The phantasms, that had predominated during the hours of darkness, are still busy. No longer present as Forms, they will yet exist as moulding and formative Motions in the Pilgrim's soul. The Dream of the past night will transfer its shapes to the objects in the distance, while the objects give outwardness and reality to the shapings of the Dream. The fears inspired by long habits of selfishness and self-seeking cunning, though now purifying into that fear which is the beginning of wisdom, and ordained to be our guide and safeguard, till the sun of love, the perfect law of liberty, is fully arisen-these fears will set the fancy at work, and haply, for a time transform the mists of dim and imperfect knowledge into determinate superstitions. But in either case, whether seen clearly or dimly, whether beheld or only imagined, the consequences contemplated in their bearings on the individual's inherent desire of happiness and dread of pain become motives: and (unless all distinction in the words be done away with, and either prudence or virtue be reduced to a

superfluous synonyme, a redundancy in all the languages of the civilized world,) these motives, and the acts and forbearances directly proceeding from them, fall under the head of PRUDENCE, as belonging to one or other of its three very distinct species. It may be a prudence, that stands in opposition to a higher moral life, and tends to preclude it, and to prevent the soul from ever arriving at the hatred of sin for its own exceeding sinfulness, (Rom. vii. 13;) and this is an EVIL PRUDENCE. Or it may be a neutral prudence, not incompatible with spiritual growth and to this we may, with especial propriety, apply the words of our Lord, 'What is not against us is for us.' It is therefore an innocent, and (being such) a proper and coм

MENDABLE PRUDENCE.

Or it may lead and be subservient to a higher principle than itself. The mind and conscience of the individual may be reconciled to it, in the foreknowledge of the higher principle, and with a yearning towards it that implies a foretaste of future freedom. The enfeebled convalescent is reconciled to his crutches, and thankfully makes use of them, not only because they are necessary for his immediate support, but likewise, because they are the means and condition of EXERCISE ; and by exercise of establishing, gradatim paulatim, that strength, flexibility, and almost spontaneous obedience of the muscles, which the idea and cheering presentiment of health hold out to him. He finds their value in their present necessity, and their worth as they are the instruments of finally superseding it. This is a faithful, a

WISE PRUDENCE, having indeed its birth-place in the world, and the wisdom of this world for its father; but naturalized in a better land, and having the Wisdom from above for its Sponsor and Spiritual Parent."

The Pilgrim is in rags, the rags of depravity and sin, and the intolerable burden of sin is bending him down; but the book is in his hand, and his face is from his own house. Reading and pondering, and full of perplexity, foreboding and a sense of sin, gloom and wrath, he cries out, What shall I do! This is his first exclamation. He has not as yet advanced so far as to say, What shall I do to be saved? And now for some days the solemnity, and burden, and distress of his spirit increases; his unconverted friends see that he is "becoming serious;" they think it is some distemper of the mind or animal spirits; they hope he may sleep it away; they chide, neglect, deride him; carnal physic for a sick soul, as Bunyan describes it in the margin, is administered. But nothing answers. The sense of his mortal disease and danger, the painful sense of sin, and of what is to come on account of it, increases. Not even his wife and sweet babes can do any thing for him, but only add to his misery in a sense of their danger as well as his own. He pities and prays for those who deride him, and spends much solitary time in reading and praying. He looks this way and that way, as if he would run, and cries out in the anguish of his wounded spirit, What shall I do to be saved? This is the first stage of genuine conviction. "I perceive by the book in my hand, that

I am condemned to die, and after that to come to judgment; and I find that I am not willing to do the first nor able to do the second."

And now he meets Evangelist, who gives him the parchment roll, Flee from the wrath to come! It is a godly minister of Christ, whom the Father of mercies has sent to help him. Bunyan has here put in the margin, Conviction of the necessity of fleeing. But which way shall I fly? Then said Evangelist, pointing with his finger over a very wide field, Do you see yonder Wicket Gate! The man said, No. He cannot see that yet, he is in such darkness. Then said the other, Do you see yonder shining light? Thy word is as a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path. He said, I think I do. Then said Evangelist, Keep that light in your eye, and go up directly thereto, so shalt thou see the gate; at which, when thou knockest, it shall be told thee what thou shalt do. Bunyan has here put in the margin, Christ, and the way to him cannot be found without the Word. So, if any awakened sinner will fill his eye with that light, and follow it, it will bring him to Christ.

And now the trembling Pilgrim, with fixed resolution, having a glimpse of the light, and a definite direction, begins to run; it is an unutterable relief to his perplexities to run towards Christ; though as yet he sees him not. But now the world clamors after him, yea, the dearest ones in it try to his conscience is stronger

stop him; but the fire in than they; he stops his ears, and runs without looking behind him, and stays not in all the plain,

but runs as swiftly as his burden will let him, crying, Life, life, eternal life!

And now he is fairly set out. But he becomes a gazing stock to the world, and some of them set off after him to fetch him back. There is no telling the wiles, which ungodly ridiculing companions have sometimes tried, to turn their awakened friends from the way of life. There is nothing can stand against such enemies, but a resolute purpose like Christian's, a fire in the conscience, and a fixedness in the word of God. These things will not, indeed, if he goes no farther, make a man a Christian; but these things, as long as they last, will make him despise the world's ridicule, and if he runs on, he will soon, by God's grace, get beyond the reach of ridicule, beyond all worldly harm.

Two of these City of Destruction men, who came to bring Christian back, Obstinate and Pliable, are portraitures of classes. They, together with Christian, constitute the representatives of most of the hearers of the Gospel, and of the manner in which they receive it; they are either hardened against it, or are somewhat softened and disposed to set out, or they become real Pilgrims. Obstinate, finding Christian was not to be moved, tried to persuade Pliable not to give heed to him; and then he went railing back, saying, I will be no companion to such misled, fantastical fellows.

And now Christian and Pliable went talking over the plain, Christian with a sense of sin and of the terrors of the Lord, with the fire in his conscience and the burden on his back, yet something

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