me and at that stage would have satisfied the exigent author of the
_Practical Treatise upon Christian Perfection_ where he says that "we are
too apt also to think that we have sufficiently read a book when we have
so read it as to know what it contains. This reading may be quite
sufficient as to many books; but as to the Bible we are not to think that
we have read it enough because we have often read and heard what it
teaches. We must read our Bible, not to know what it contains, but to
fill our hearts with the spirit of it." And, again, and on this same
point, "There is this unerring key to the right use of the Bible. The
Bible has only one intent, and that is to make a man know, resist, and
abhor the working of his fallen earthly nature, and to turn the faith,
hope, and longing desire of his heart to God; and therefore we are only
to read our Bibles with this view and to learn this one lesson from it .
. . The critic looks into his books to see how Latin and Greek authors
have used the words 'stranger' and 'pilgrim,' but the Christian, who
knows that man lives in labour and toil, in sickness and pain, in hunger
and thirst, in heat and cold among the beasts of the field, where evil
spirits like roaring lions seek to devour him--he only knows in what
truth and reality man is a poor stranger and a distressed pilgrim upon
the earth." John Bunyan read neither Plato nor Aristotle, but he read
David and Paul till he was the chief of sinners, and till he was first
the Graceless and then the Christian of his own next-to-the-Bible book.

2. In the second place, and as to his burden. We are supplied with no
particulars as to the first beginnings, the gradual make-up, and at last
the terrible size of Christian's burden. What this pilgrim's youthful
life must have been in such a city as his native city was, and while he
was still a young man of such a name and such a character in such a city,
we are left to ourselves to think and consider. Graceless was his name
by nature, and his life was as his name and his nature were. Still, as I
have said, we have no detailed and particular account of his early life
when his burden was still day and night in the making up. How long into
your life were you graceless, my brother? And what kind of life did you
lead day and night before you were persuaded or alarmed, as the case may
have been with you, into being a Christian? What burdens do you carry on
your broken back to this day t