ust stepped out of the gate at the
head of the way; they can wear no cleaner garments than his in the
Celestial City itself. 'How now, good fellow? Whither away after this
burdened manner?' 'A burdened manner, indeed, as ever I think poor
creature had. And whereas you ask me whither away, I tell you, sir, I am
going to yonder wicket gate before me; for there, as I am informed, I
shall be put into a way to be rid of my heavy burden.' 'Hast thou a wife
and children?' Yes; he is ashamed to say that he has. But he confesses
that he cannot to-day take the pleasure in them that he used to do. Since
his sin so came upon him, he is sometimes as if he had neither wife nor
child nor a house over his head. John Bunyan was of Samuel Rutherford's
terrible experience,--that our sins and our sinfulness poison all our
best enjoyments. We do not hear much of Rutherford's wife and children,
and that, no doubt, for the sufficient reason that he gives us in his so
open-minded letter. But Bunyan laments over his blind child with a
lament worthy to stand beside the lament of David over Absalom, and again
over Saul and Jonathan at Mount Gilboa. At the same time, John Bunyan
often felt sore and sad at heart that he could not love and give all his
heart to his wife and children as they deserved to be loved and to have
all his heart. He often felt guilty as he looked on them and knew in
himself that they did not have in him such a father as, God knew, he
wished he was, or ever in this world could hope to be. 'Yes,' he said,
'but I cannot take the pleasure in them that I would. I am sometimes as
if I had none. My sin sometimes drives me like a man bereft of his
reason and clean demented.' 'Who bid thee go this way to be rid of thy
burden? I beshrew him for his counsel. There is not a more troublesome
and dangerous way in the world than this is to which he hath directed
thee. And besides, though I used to have some of the same burden when I
was young, not since I settled in that town,' pointing to the town of
Carnal-Policy over the plain, 'have I been at any time troubled in that
way.' And then he went on to describe and denounce the way to the
Celestial City, and he did it like a man who had been all over it, and
had come back again. His alarming description of the upward way reads to
us like a page out of Job, or Jeremiah, or David, or Paul. 'Hear me,' he
says, 'for I am older than thou. Thou art like to meet with in the way