When he was come up to the gate, he looked up to the writing that was above, and then began to knock, supposing that entrance should have been quickly administered to him; but he was asked by the men that looked over the top of the gate, “Whence come you? and what would you have?” He answered, “I have eat and drank in the presence of the King, and he has taught in our streets.”  Then they asked him for his certificate, that they might go in and show it to the King.  So he fumbled in his bosom for one, and found none.  Then said they, “Have you none?” But the man answered never a word.  So they told the king; but he would not come down to see him, but commanded the two shining ones that conducted Christian and Hopeful to the city, to go out and take Ignorance, and bind him hand and foot, and have him away.  Then they took him up and carried him through the air to the door that I saw in the side of the hill, and put him in there.  Then I saw that there was a way to hell even from the gates of heaven, as well as from the city of Destruction.

XXVII.  HEAVEN.

Happiness and glory of heaven.

Heaven!  It is called the paradise of God—­a paradise, to show how quiet, harmless, sweet, and beautiful heaven shall be to them that possess it.

“The street of the city was pure gold.”  All the visions were rich, but this the richest, that the floor of the house should be covered with gold.  The floor and street are walking-places, and how rich will our steps be then!  Alas, here we sometimes step into the mire, and then again stumble upon blocks and stones.  Here we sometimes fall into the holes, and have our heel often catched in a snare; but there will be none of these.  Gold! gold! all will be gold, and golden perfections, when we come into the holy place.

If a sight of sin and the love of God will make such work in that soul where yet there is unbelief, blindness, mistrust, and forgetfulness; what will a sight of sin do in that soul which is swallowed up of love, which is sinless and temptationless, which hath all faculties of soul and body strained by love and grace to the highest pin of perfection that is possible to be in glory enjoyed and possessed?

O the wisdom and goodness of God, that he at the day of judgment should so cast about the worst of our things, even those that naturally tend to sink us and damn us, for our great advantage.  All things shall work together for good, indeed, to them that love God.  Those sins that brought a curse upon the whole world, that spilt the heart-blood of our dearest Saviour, and that laid his tender soul under the flaming wrath of God, shall, by his wisdom and love, tend to the exaltation of his grace, and the inflaming of our affections to him for ever and ever.

These visions, that the saved in heaven shall have of the love of Christ, will far transcend our utmost knowledge here; even as far as the light of the sun at noon goes beyond the light of a blinking candle at midnight.