CHRISTIAN

   “The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch.”—­Luke.

   “Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.”—­King Agrippa.

   “Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from
   iniquity.”—­Paul.

All the other personages in the Pilgrim’s Progress come and go; they all ascend the stage for a longer or shorter time, and then pass off the stage and so pass out of our sight; but Christian in the First Part, and Christiana in the Second Part, are never for a single moment out of our sight.  And, accordingly, we have had repeated occasion and opportunity to learn many excellent lessons from the chief pilgrim’s upward walk and heavenly conversation.  But so full and so rich are his life and his character, that some very important things still remain to be collected before we finally close his history.  “Gather up the fragments that nothing be lost,” said our Lord, after His miraculous meal of multiplied loaves and fishes with His disciples.  And in like manner I shall now proceed to gather up some of the remaining fragments of Christian’s life and character and experience.  And I shall collect these fragments into the three baskets of his book, his burden, and his sealed roll and certificate.

1.  And first, a few things as to his book.  “As I slept I dreamed, and behold I saw a man clothed in rags standing in a certain place, with his face from his own house, a book in his hand, and a great burden upon his back.  I looked and saw him open the book and read therein; and as he read he wept and trembled; and not being able longer to contain he broke out with a lamentable cry, saying, What shall I do?” We hear a great deal in these advertising days, and not one word too much, about the books that have influenced and gone largely to the making of our great men; but Graceless, like John Bunyan, his biographer, was a man of but one book.  But, then, that book was the most influential of all books; it was the Book of books; it was God’s very own and peculiar Book.  And those of us who, like this man, have passed out of a graceless into a gracious state will for ever remember how that same Book at that time influenced us till it made us what we are and shall yet be.  We read many other good books at that epoch in our life, but it was the pure Bible that we read and prayed over out of sight the most.  We needed no commentators or exegetes on our simple Bible in those days.  The great texts stood out to our eyes in those days as if they had been written with a sunbeam; while all other books (and we read nothing but the best books in those days) looked like twilight and rushlight beside our Bible.  In those immediate, direct, and intense days we would have satisfied Wordsworth and Matthew Arnold themselves in the way we read our Bible with our eye never off the object.  The Four Last Things were ever before us—­death