could see in each other. Now, therefore, they began to esteem
each other better than themselves.'[127] 'The Interpreter led them
into his garden, where was great variety of flowers. Then said he,
Behold, the flowers are diverse in stature, in quality and colour,
and smell and virtue, and some are better than some; also, where the
gardener hath set them, there they stand, and quarrel not with one
another.'[128] 'When Christians stand every one in their places,
and do their relative work, then they are like the flowers in the
garden that grow where the gardener hath planted them, and both
honour the gardener and the garden in which they are planted.'[129]
In the same treatise on Christian Behaviour, similar sentiments
are expressed in language extremely striking and beautiful. 'The
doctrine of the gospel is like the dew and the small rain that
distilleth upon the tender grass, wherewith it doth flourish and
is kept green (Deut 32:2).Christians are like the several flowers
in a garden that have upon each of them the dew of heaven, which,
being shaken with the wind, they let fall their dew at each other's
roots, whereby they are jointly nourished, and become nourishers
of one another. For Christians to commune savourly of God's matters
one with another, it is as if they opened to each other's nostrils
boxes of perfume.'[130] Similar peaceful, heavenly principles, flow
through Bunyan's Discourse of the Building, &c., of the House of
God and its inmates;[131] and blessed would it be if in all our
churches every believer was baptized into such motives of forbearance
and brotherly love. These sentiments do honour to the head and heart
of the prince of allegorists, and should be presented in letters
of gold to every candidate for church fellowship. A young man
entertaining such opinions as these, however rude his former conduct,
being born again to spiritual enjoyments, would become a treasure
to the Christian society with which he might be connected.