with great mental sufferings, with painstaking labour, with a
simple reliance upon the Word of God, and with earnest prayer. If
man impiously dares to submit his conscience to his fellow-man,
or to any body of men called a church, what perplexity must he
experience ere he can make up his mind which to choose! Instead of
relying upon the ONE standard which God has given him in his Word;
should he build his hope upon a human system he could be certain only
that man is fallible and subject to err. How striking an instance
have we, in our day, of the result of education, when the mind does
not implicitly follow the guidance of the revealed Word of God.
Two brothers, named Newman, educated at the same school, trained in
the same university, brought up under the same religious system--all
human arts exhausted to mould their minds into strict uniformity,
yet gradually receding from the same point in opposite directions,
but in equally downward roads; one to embrace the most puerile
legends of the middle ages, the other to open infidelity. Not so
with those who follow the teachings of the Word of God, by which,
and not by any church, they are to be individually judged at the great
day: no pontiff, no priest, no minister, can intervene or mediate
for them at the bar of God. There it will be said, 'I know you, by
your prayers for Divine guidance and your submission to my revealed
will'; or, 'I know you not,' for you preferred the guidance of
frail, fallible men, to me, and to my Word--a solemn consideration,
which, as it proved a source of solid happiness and extensive
usefulness to Bunyan in his pilgrimage, so it insured to him, as
it will to all who follow his course, a solid foundation on which
to stand at the great and terrible day, and thus enable them to
live as well as die in the sure and certain hope of a triumphant
entry into the celestial city.