I am away on a mission, so while I am away I thought I’d share seven sections of the best book (save the Bible) that anyone could ever read and from which this blog acquired its name. I hope you are spurred on to pick up a copy of Pilgrim’s Progress and read it.

[The interpreter] led him into a very dark room, where there sat a man in an iron cage.

Now the man, to look on, seemed very sad; he sat with his eyes looking down to the ground, his hands folded together, and he sighed as if he would break his heart.

Then said Christian, ‘What means this?’ At which point the Interpreter bid him talk with the man. Then said Christian to the man, ‘What art thou?’

The man answered, ‘I am what I was not once.’

‘What wast thou once?’ enquired Christian.

The man said, ‘I was once a fair and flourishing professor, both in mine own eyes, and also in the eyes of others: I once was, as I thought, fair for the celestial city, and had then even joy at the thoughts that I should get thither’.

‘Well, but what art thou now?’ Christian asked the man.

‘I am now a man of despair, and am shut up in it, as in this iron cage, I cannot get out; Oh now I cannot!’

‘But how camest thou into this condition?’ Christian enquired once more.

‘I left off to watch and be sober: I laid the reins on the neck of my lusts; I sinned against the light of the word, and the goodness of God; I have grieved the Spirit, and he is gone; I tempted the devil, and he is come to me; I have provoked God to anger, and he has left me: I have so hardened my heart, that I cannot repent.’

Then Christian said to the Interpreter, ‘But is there no hope for such a man as this?’

‘Ask him,’ said the Interpreter.

‘Nay,’ said Christian, ‘pray, sir, do you.’

Then said the Interpreter, ‘Is there no hope, but you must be kept in the iron cage of despair?’

‘No, none at all,’ was the reply.

‘Why, the Son of the blessed is very merciful.’

‘I have crucified him to myself afresh,’ groaned the man. ‘I have despised his person. I have despised his righteousness; I have counted his blood an unholy thing; I have done despite to the Spirit of grace: therefore I have shut myself out of all the promises and there now remains to me nothing but threatenings, dreadful threatenings, fearful threatenings of certain judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour me as an adversary.’

The Interpreter further asked the man, ‘For what did you bring yourself into this condition?’

‘For the lusts, pleasure, and profits of this world; in the enjoyment of which I did then promise myself much delight: but now every one of those things also bite me, and gnaw me like a burning worm.’

‘But canst thou not now repent and turn?’

‘God hath denied me repentance. His word gives me no encouragement to believe; yea, himself hath shut me up in this iron cage: nor can all the men in the world let me out. Oh eternity! Eternity! How shall I grapple with the misery that I must meet with in eternity?’

Then said the Interpreter to Christian, ‘Let this man’s misery be remembered by thee, and he an everlasting caution to thee.’

‘Well,’ said Christian, ‘this is fearful! God help me to watch and to be sober, and to pray that I may shun the cause of this man’s misery.’