CHRISTIAN ON THE HILL DIFFICULTY. Happiness of Christian with his roll.-His efforts to save others.-Simple, Sloth and Presumption.-Christian's knowledge of character.-Formalist and Hypocrisy.— Christian climbing the Hill.-The sleep in the arbor, and the loss of his roll.Christian weeping and searching for it.-His thankfulness at finding it. WE left Christian light of heart, and singing for joy of his deliverance from his burden. How lightly did he now step forward, with what pleasant thoughts in his soul, with what precious views of the cross and of the way of salvation! Now it seemed to him that he should never tire. He thought of that sweet Psalm, When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion, we were like them that dream. Sometimes he could scarcely persuade himself that it was a reality; he was almost afraid it was a dream. But then, there was his roll that had been given him, and the new dress in which the Shining Ones had arrayed him, and his heart was full of gratitude and love. He thought "he could have spoken to the very crows that sat upon the ploughed land by the way-side," to have told them of his joy, and of the preciousness of his Saviour, if they could have understood it. His heart was like the blind man's restored to sight, and just as simple and unaffected. Now methinks I hear him praising, Publishing to all around, What a Saviour I have fond! Yes, and now Christian desires to save others. The joy in his soul was no transitory sympathy or selfish hope, that would subside into indolence. It led him to set himself at work at once to win others to Christ. This is very striking. Now he would neglect no opportunity of doing good, and he did not say, when he saw some ready to perish, I am but a young Christian, but just now converted, and must wait till I have more experience, before I try to persuade others. Not at all. But the very first opportunity Christian had after his release from his burden, he faithfully employed it. As he went on, singing and making melody in his heart unto the Lord, he came to a wide level place, where he saw, a little out of the way, three men fast asleep, with fetters on their heels. Their names were Simple, Sloth, and Presumption. The first thing Christian did was to go to them and endeavor to awake them, which he thought certainly he might easily do, for their danger was clear to him, though they themselves did not seem to see it. So he cried out to them to awake, telling them that they might as well sleep on the top of a mast, for that the Dead Sea was under them, a gulf without a bottom. Awake, said he, and come away, or you will perish forever. He furthermore told them that if they were but willing, he would help them off with their irons, but they manifested no anxiety. He told them that if he that goeth about as a roaring lion came by, they would certainly become a prey to his teeth. In fine, he used all proper and likely means to wake them up; and they were at length so far roused as to listen to him, and answer him. Simple said, I see no danger. That was the voice of one-third part of the world in their sins. Tell them they are sleeping on the brink of perdition, and they say, We see no danger. Sloth said, Yet a little more sleep. That was the voice of another third part of the world. A little longer indulgence in sin is pleaded for, a little more quiet ease and indifference; wait till we have a more convenient season; a little more folding of the hands to sleep! Presumption said, Every vat must stand on its own bottom. There outspoke at least another third part of the world in their sins. Take care of your interests, and I' will take care of mine. You need not troubie yourself about my salvation. I am not at all concerned but that all will go well, and I am ready to take my chance. All these classes of men Christians have to encounter in their efforts to awaken the sinner and bring him to repentance; so Christian was earnest and faithful, but all his efforts were of no avail. These persons laid themselves down to sleep again, and Christian went sorrowfully on his way, being sad to think of the danger they were in, and their insensibility to it, and their utter indifference as to the help proffered them to get them out of it. But now there met him persons of a different sort; for behold two men came tumbling over the wall, on the left hand of the narrow way; and they made up apace to him. The name of the one was Formalist, and the name of the other Hypocrisy. It looked very suspicious to see them tumbling over the wall; so Christian asked at once where they came from, and whither they were going. Their answer was very curious. We were born in the land of Vainglory, and are going for praise to Mount Zion. Christian asked them why they did not come in at the gate, for that they who came not in by the door, but did climb up some other way, were thieves and robbers. They told him that in their country of Vainglory, that gate was considered too far round about, so that it was their custom to make a short cut, and get over the wall. Now you will remark that Bunyan had met these characters himself, and was well acquainted with them. He is here painting from real life; indeed in every part of the Pilgrim's Progress he had but to look back through the perspective of the way he had himself been travelling, and its characters started into life, thronging the path with such number and vividness, that the difficulty was not to find portraits, but to make choice of his materials. He had also only to look into his own soul, with the wonderful clearness and accuracy with which he remembered every part of his experience, and there he found within his own past self, before he became a Christian, the portraiture of many a character introduced in his pages; the portraitures of just such characters as he would himself have become, had he stopped where they did; had he stopped at the points, where he sketched and painted these developments of classes. This is, in truth, an illustration of the meaning of that passage, Evil men understand not judgment, but they that seek the Lord understand all things. And also of that in 1 Cor. ii. 15. We see plainly that as a clear-sighted Christian looks back upon his own experience, he sees himself in many aspects, and through the prism of his own nature, he sees a thousand others; he sees, through and through, the motives, thoughts, feelings, veils and hiding-places of every possible variety of the children of this world, because he has been one of them. He sees some stopping with their characters in perfection at one stage of his own experience, and some at other stages; some more advanced towards the point where he himself really set out to be a Christian, and some less; but many he sees, through the perfect knowledge he has of his own past refuges of lies, evidently trusting in the same refuges; refuges where he himself would have stopped and died as a pretended Christian, had not God had mercy on him. On the other hand, a man of the world, a wicked man, an unconverted man, cannot see beyond the line of his own experience; the things of the Christian are hidden from him, for he has never gone into them; it is a world unknown, a world hidden by a veil that he has never lifted, a region of blessedness, knowledge and glory, where his feet have never wandered; a region of |