The writings of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume 6.
John Greenleaf Whittier, Ed.

---

[11] and sincerity, the lesson of his inward trials, temptations, sins, weaknesses, and dangers; and to give glory to Him who had mercifully led him through all, and enabled him, like his own Pilgrim, to leave behind the Valley of the Shadow of Death, the snares of the Enchanted Ground, and the terrors of Doubting Castle, and to reach the land of Beulah, where the air was sweet and pleasant, and the birds sang and the flowers sprang up around him, and the Shining Ones walked in the brightness of the not distant Heaven. In the introductory pages he says: ‘I could have dipped into a style higher than this in which I have discoursed, and could have adorned all things more than here I have seemed to do; but I dared not. God did not play in tempting me; neither did I play when I sunk, as it were, into a bottomless pit, when the pangs of hell took hold on me; wherefore, I may not play in relating of them, but be plain and simple, and lay down the thing as it was.’

This book, as well as Pilgrim's Progress, was written in Bedford prison, and was designed especially for the comfort and edification of his ‘children, whom God had counted him worthy to beget in faith by his ministry.’ In his introduction he tells them, that, although taken from them, and tied up, ‘sticking, as it were, between the teeth of the lions of the wilderness,’ he once again, as before, from the top of Shemer and Hermon, so now, from the lion's den and the mountain of leopards, would look after them with fatherly care and desires for their everlasting welfare. ‘If,’ said