dow forth their meeting with the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb in that Celestial City. This would have been presumption. He has gone as far as the purest devotion, and the sweetest poetry could go, as far as an imagination kindled, informed, and sustained by the Holy Scriptures, could carry us; he has set us down amidst the ministry and conversation of angels, at the Gate of the City, and as the Gate opens to let in the Pilgrims, he lets us look in ourselves; but farther nor revelation nor imagination traces the picture. But in all the untrodden space which Bunyan has thus filled up, he has authority as well as probability on his side. For our blessed Lord said of the good man Lazarus, that when he died he was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom, that is, into the abode of the blessed. It is not said that the instant Lazarus died he was with Christ in glory, but the mind has an intermediate transaction, a passage, a convoy, to rest upon; "he was carried by angels;" there is time occupied, and a passage from this existence to the sight of God and the eternal life of glory, which passage Bunyan has filled up with the utmost probability, as well as with an exquisite warmth and beauty of imagery, which finds no rival in the language. The description comes from the heart, and from an imagination fed, nourished, and disciplined by the Scriptures; and this is the secret of its power, the secret of the depth and heavenly glow of its ravishing colors, and of the emotions with which it stirs the soul even to tears. For it is almost impossible in a right frame of heart, to read this description with out weeping, especially that part of it where Christian and Hopeful pass the River of Death together. How full of sweet feeling and Christian wisdom is this passage! How gentle, and tenderly affectionate are Hopeful's efforts to encourage his fainting brother! And how instructive the fact that here the older and more experienced Christian of the two, and that soldier in the Christian conflict who had the most scars upon him for Christ, should be the one to whom the passage of the River of Death was most difficult-instructive, as showing us that safety does not depend upon present comfort, but upon Christ, and that it is wrong to measure one's holiness and degree of preparation for death, by the degree in which the fear of death may have departed. The Pilgrims, especially Christian, began to despond in their mind when they came to the River, Notwithstanding that, the angels were with them, and though they had been for many days abiding in the Land Beulah, and though they were now in full view of the Celestial City, and though they heard the bells ringing, and the melodious music of the City ravishing their hearts, yet were their hearts cast down as they came to the borders of this river, and found no means of being carried across it, For timorous mortals start and shrink, To cross that narrow sea, And linger, shivering on the brink, They looked about them on this side and on that, and inquired of their shining seraphic companions if there were no other way of getting over the Chris river, and they must go into it: and when told there was none, they were at a stand. With all the glory before them, it was death's cold flood still. The fear of death is not always taken away, even from experienced and faithful Christians, nor is the passage without terrors. tian had much darkness and horror, while to Hopeful there was good ground all the way. Christian was wrong when he said, If I were right, He would now arise to help me; for he had, as Hopeful told him, forgotten that it was of the wicked that God saith, There are no bands in their death. However, it is observable that Christian's darkness did not last quite over the River. The Saviour was at length revealed to him, the clouds and darkness fled away, the evil spirits, and the shades of unbelief that had invited and strengthened their temptations, were subdued and put to flight forever, and the Enemy after that was as still as a stone, and the rest of the River was but shallow. "Brother, I see the Gate," Hopeful would say, while Christian was sinking, "and men standing by to receive us." But Christian would answer, "It is you, it is you, that they wait for; you have been hopeful ever since I knew you.' "And so have you," said he to Christian. What affecting simplicity, and faith and love in this last, stern, dark scene and conflict of their pilgrimage! The Great Tempter and Accuser of the saints was busy now with Christian, as he had been under the form of Apollyon, and in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. But this was his last opportunity forever, and his last desperate assault. If Bunyan, throughout this work, had been unconsciously throwing into his delineation of Christian's character the features of his own religious experience, we may suppose that he drew this death scene also with a foreboding that his own soul would have to experience in the last mortal hour, another fearful conflict with the Adversary. But could he have returned into life, to paint the conclusion of his own passage of the River of Death, there would have been little or no gloom in the coloring, for his own death was full of peace and glory; his forebodings, if he had them, were never realized. We may suppose that in general the children of God find this passage much easier in reality than they had anticipated; but it is only because Christ is with them; he is with them in death, by a manifestation not granted in life, because not necessary. Yet, if there were as great conflicts to pass through in life, there would be as great and sustaining manifestations of the Saviour. In life and in death he knoweth how to succour them that are tempted. To those who live by the grace of Christ during life, dying grace will be vouchsafed in a dying hour; for he hath said, My grace is sufficient for thee. It is appointed unto all men once to die, and after that the judgment. It is this judgment which sinful men dread; it is this which makes Death the KING OF TERRORS. The future is indeed an unknown region, but the judgment is as certain as the present life, and even beyond the judgment the sinner's conscience and the Word of God combined, fill the unknown future with definite scenes and images. The elements of retribution are there, and also the subjects of retribution, living, moving, acting, speaking, suffering. Our blessed Lord, in that mighty spiritual drama of the rich man and Lazarus, has raised before us, as it were, a vast, graphic, living transparency, where the glories of heaven and the terrors of hell flash upon the soul. Death stands between the sinner and the eternal world; death hands him over to the elements of eternal retribution. The agonized conscience, not sprinkled with the blood of Christ, sees the fires of eternity glimmering through the grim monarch's shadowy skeleton form, as it rises and advances on the soul's horizon. Death, in such a case, is the KING OF TERRORS. He marshals them at pleasure. He has but to stand before the frame of the unprepared mortal, and he curdles the blood and blanches the cheek, even of the Atheist. He has but to touch the frame of the boldest of God's enemies, and they are brought into desolation as in a moment; they are utterly consumed with terrors. The Poet of The Grave has depicted, in a powerful and never-to-be-forgotten passage, the terrors of the unprepared soul in such a moment. How shocking must thy summons be, O death! |