Pictures from Pilgrim's Progress - Part Four

Extract

Pictures from Pilgrim’s Progress
Part Four
C. H. Spurgeon

Booklet Contents
16. The Enchanted Ground
17. How Mr. Fearing Fared
18. How Mr. Fearing Fared (Concluded)
19. Mr. Feeble-Mind and Mr. Ready-to-Halt
20. Christiana at the Gate and the River
16. The Enchanted Ground

As the spiritual guide of the flock of God along the intricate mazes of experience, it is the duty of the Gospel minister to point out every turning of the road to Heaven, to speak concerning its dangers and its privileges, and to warn any whom he may suspect to be in a position peculiarly perilous. Now, there is a portion of the road which leadeth from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City, which has in it, perhaps, more dangers than any other part of the way. It doth not abound with lions; there are no dragons in it; it hath no dark woods, and no deep pit-falls; yet more seeming pilgrims have been destroyed in that portion of the road than anywhere else; and not even Doubting Castle, with all its hosts of bones, can show so many who have been slain there. It is the part of the road called The Enchanted Ground. John Bunyan thus pictured it: — “I say them in my dream, that they went on till they came into a certain country, whose air naturally tended to make one drowsy, if he came a stranger into it. And here Hopeful began to be very dull and heavy of sleep; wherefore he said unto Christian, ‘I do now begin to grow so drowsy that I can scarcely hold up mine eyes; let us lie down here, and take one nap.’
“CHRISTIAN. By no means, said the other; lest, sleeping, we never awake more. …