THE SWELLING OF JORDAN

   “The swelling of Jordan.”—­Jeremiah.

“Fore-fancy your deathbed,” says Samuel Rutherford.  “Take an essay,” he says in his greatest book, that perfect mine of gold and jewels, Christ Dying and Drawing Sinners to Himself—­“Take an essay and a lift at your death, and look at it before it actually comes to your door.”  And so we shall.  Since it is appointed to all men once to die, and after death the judgment; and since our death and our judgment are the only two things that we are absolutely sure about in our whole future, we shall henceforth fore-fancy those two events much more than we have done in the past.  And to assist us in that; to quicken our fancy, to kindle it, to captivate it, and to turn our fancy wholly to our salvation, we have all the entrancing river-scenes in the Pilgrim’s Progress set before us; a succession of scenes in which Bunyan positively revels in his exquisite fancies, clothing them as he does, all the time, in language of the utmost beauty, tenderness, pathos, power, and dignity.  Let us take our stand, then, on the bank of the river and watch how pilgrim after pilgrim behaves himself in those terrible waters.  We are all voluntary spectators to-night, but we shall all be compulsory performers before we know where we are.

1.  On entering the river even Christian suddenly began to sink.  Fore-fancy that.  All the words he spake still tended to discover that he had great horror of mind and hearty fears that he would die in that river; here also he was much in the troublesome thoughts of the sins he had committed both since and before he began to be a pilgrim.  Fore-fancy that also, all you converted young men.  Hopeful, therefore, had much to do to keep his brother’s head above water; yea, sometimes he would be quite gone down, and then in a while he would rise up again half-dead.  Then I saw in my dream that Christian was in a muse a while; to whom also Hopeful added this word, “Be of good cheer; Jesus Christ maketh thee whole.”  And with that Christian broke out with a loud voice, “When thou passest through the waters I will be with thee, and through the rivers they shall not overflow thee.”  Then they both took courage and the enemy was after that as still as a stone till they were gone over.  Fore-fancy that also.  There is one other thing out of that crossing that I hope I shall remember when I am in the river:  “Be of good cheer,” said Hopeful to his sinking fellow—­“Be of good cheer, my brother, I feel the bottom, and it is good.”  “Hold His hand fast,” wrote Samuel Rutherford to Lady Kenmure.  “He knows all the fords.  You may be ducked in His company but never drowned.  Put in your foot, then, and wade after Him.  And be sure you set your feet always upon the stepping-stones.”  Yes; fore-fancy those stepping-stones, and often practise your feet upon them before the time.