reality, as so few are. Let them read everything
that bears upon the Bible, and let them read nothing
that does not. They have not the time nor the
permission. Let them be content to be men of
one book. Let them give themselves wholly to
the interpretation of divine truth as its riddles
are set in nature and in man, in scripture, in providence,
and in spiritual experience. Let them store
their memories at college with all sacred truth, and
with all secular truth that can be made sacred.
And if their memories are weak and treacherous, let
them be quiet under God’s will in that, and all
the more labour to make up in other ways for that
defect, so that they may have always something to
say to the purpose when their future people come up
to church hungry for instruction and comfort and encouragement.
Let them look around and see the sin that sinks the
ship of so many ministers; and let them begin while
yet their ship is in the yard and see that she is
fitted up and furnished, stored and stocked, so that
she shall in spite of sure storms and sunken rocks
deliver her freight in the appointed haven.
When they are lying in bed of a Sabbath morning, let
them forecast the day when they shall have to give
a strict account of their eight years of golden opportunity
among the churches, and the classes, and the societies,
and the libraries of our university seats. Let
them be able to name some great book, ay, more than
one great book, they mastered, for every year of their
priceless and irredeemable student life. Let
them all their days have old treasure-houses that they
filled full with scholarship and with literature and
with all that will minister to a congregation’s
many desires and necessities, collected and kept ready
from their student days. ’Meditate upon
these things; give thyself wholly up to them, that
thy profiting may appear unto all.’
4. And then with a sly stroke at us old ministers,
our significant author points out to us how much better
furnished the Interpreter’s House was by the
time Christiana and the boys visited it compared with
that early time when Christian was entertained in
it. Our pilgrim got far more in the Interpreter’s
House of delight and instruction than he could carry
out of it, but that did not tempt the Interpreter to
sit down and content himself with taking all his future
pilgrims into the same room, and showing them the
same pictures, and repeating to them the same explanations.
No, for he reflected that each coming pilgrim would
need some new significant room to himself, and therefore,
as soon as he got one pilgrim off his hands, he straightway
set about building and furnishing new rooms, putting
up new pictures, and replenishing his woods and his
waters with new beasts and birds and fishes.
I am ashamed, he said, that I had so little to show
when I first opened my gates to receive pilgrims,
and I do not know why they came to me as they did.
I was only a beginner in these things when my first