an interpreter, and every evangelical church is an
interpreter's house, let us gather up some of the precious lessons to
ministers and to people with which this passage of the _Pilgrim's
Progress_ so much abounds.

1. In the first place, then, I observe that the House of the Interpreter
stands just beyond the Wicket Gate. In the whole topography of the
_Pilgrim's Progress_ there lies many a deep lesson. The church that Mr.
Worldly-Wiseman supported, and on the communion roll of which he was so
determined to have our pilgrim's so unprepared name, stood far down on
the other side of Goodwill's gate. It was a fine building, and it had an
eloquent man for its minister, and the whole service was an attraction
and an enjoyment to all the people of the place; but our Interpreter was
never asked to show any of his significant things there; and, indeed,
neither minister nor people would have understood him had he ever done
so. And had any of the parishioners from below the gate ever by any
chance stumbled into the Interpreter's house, his most significant rooms
would have had no significance to them. Both he and his house would have
been a mystery and an offence to Worldly-Wiseman, his minister, and his
fellow-worshippers. John Bunyan has the clear warrant both of Jesus
Christ and the Apostle Paul for the place on which he has planted the
Interpreter's house. 'It is given to you,' said our Lord to His
disciples, 'to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven, but to them
it is not given.' And Paul tells us that 'the natural man receiveth not
the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him:
neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.' And,
accordingly, no reader of the _Pilgrim's Progress_ will really understand
what he sees in the Interpreter's House, unless he is already a man of a
spiritual mind. Intelligent children enjoy the pictures and the people
that are set before them in this illustrated house, but they must become
the children of God, and must be well on in the life of God, before they
will be able to say that the house next the gate has been a profitable
and a helpful house to them. All that is displayed here--all the
furniture and all the vessels, all the ornaments and all the employments
and all the people of the Interpreter's House--is fitted and intended to
be profitable as well as interesting to pilgrims only. No man has any
real interest in the things of this