Tried and Proved by Trials

How do you do when tried and tempted? Can you sing with Faithful in Pilgrim’s Progress these wonderful words?

The trials that those men do meet withal,

that are obedient to the heavenly call,

Are manifold and suited to the flesh.

And come, and come, and come again afresh;

That now or sometime else, we by them may

Be taken, overcome, and cast away.

O let the Pilgrims, let the Pilgrims then,

Be vigilant, and quit themselves like men (p. 78).

Faithful, Christian’s traveling companion for a good stretch of the journey, sang this after, among other temptations, he had been enabled to shake of “bold-faced shame” in “The Valley of Humiliation,” otherwise known as “The Valley of the Shadow of Death.” Shame had come at him despising his religion. But Faithful, he tells Christian, had spoken this truth to him (p. 77):

 I began to consider, “That that which is highly esteemed among Men, is had in an abomination with God” (Lk. 16:15). And I thought moreover, that at the day of doom we shall not be doomed to Death or Life, according to the hectoring spirits of the world: but according to the wisdom and law of the highest. Therefore thought I, what God says is best indeed, is best, though all men in the world are against it. Seeing then that God prefers his religion, seeing God prefers a tender conscience, seeing they that make themselves fools for the kingdom of heaven are wisest: and that the poor man that lovest Christ, is richer than the greatest man in the world that hates him: Shame depart, thou art any enemy to my salvation: shall I entertain thee against my Sovereign Lord? How then shall I look him in the face at his coming?