Pilgrim's Progress

I just began teaching John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress today in Literature class at Clapham School. I love the beginning paragraph:

"As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place where was a den the jail, and I laid me down in that place to sleep; and as I slept, I dreamed a dream. 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 (Isa. 64:6; Luke 14:33; Psalm 38:4). 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 brake out with a lamentable cry, saying, "What shall I do?" (Acts 2:37; 16:30; Hab. 2:2, 3)."

Besides all the other scripture references given, I can't help thinking about Josiah's response to the finding of the book of the law in 2 Kings 22. He tears his garments and weeps and prays for the mercy of the Lord. Talk about a right response to the reading of God's Word! His actions, like Christian's in Pilgrim's Progress, present a paradigm of the type of contrition that regularly attends real conviction and repentance. While merely working ourselves up to an emotional state will not gain us favor with God, the regular reading of the Word of God should produce this type of response in the believer, first and most dramatically upon conversion, but again and again throughout a believer's life in the reading and preaching of the Word. That's just what a true realization of the self-revelation of God, including the proclamation of grace and judgment, will do to a heart that is soft and receptive.