‘ [33] when the flowers appear, and the sun shines warm, and make the woods and groves and solitary places glad.’ Side by side with the good Christiana and the loving Mercy, he walked through the green and lowly valley, ‘fruitful as any the crow flies over,’ through ‘meadows beautiful with lilies;’ the song of the poor but fresh-faced shepherd-boy, who lived a merry life, and wore the herb heartsease in his bosom, sounded through his cell:—
He that is down need fear no fall;The broad and pleasant ‘river of the Water of Life’ glided peacefully before him, fringed ‘on either side with green trees, with all manner of fruit,’ and leaves of healing, with ‘meadows beautified with lilies, and green all the year long;’ he saw the Delectable Mountains, glorious with sunshine, overhung with gardens and orchards and vineyards; and beyond all, the Land of Beulah, with its eternal sunshine, its song of birds, its music of fountains, its purple clustered vines, and groves through which walked the Shining Ones, silver-winged and beautiful. What were bars and bolts and prison-walls to him, whose eyes were anointed to see, and whose ears opened to hear, the glory and the rejoicing of the City of God, when the pilgrims were conducted to its golden gates, from the black and bitter river, with the sounding trumpeters, the transfigured harpers with their crowns of gold, the sweet voices of angels, the welcoming peal of bells in the holy city, and the songs of the redeemed ones? In reading the concluding pages of the
He that is low no pride.
