Oct
24
Packer on Pilgrim’s Progress
Filed Under John Bunyan, Puritans, Reading
I read this quote by J. I. Packer on another (excellent) blog and had to pass it along considering our ongoing series on Thursday evening with Derek Thomas on Pilgrim’s Progress. Packer writes:
“For two centuries Pilgrim’s Progress was the best-read book, after the Bible, in all Chrisendom, but sadly it is not so today. When I ask my classes of young and youngish evangelicals, as I often do, who has read Pilgrim’s Progress, not a quarter of the hands go up. Yet our rapport with fantasy writing, plus our lack of grip on the searching, humbling, edifying truths about spiritual life that the Puritans understood so well, surely mean that the time is ripe for us to dust off Pilgrim’s Progress and start reading it again. Certainly, it would be great gain for modern Christians if Bunyan’s masterpiece came back into its own in our day. Have you yourself, I wonder, read it yet?”
J. I. Packer, “Pilgrim’s Progress,” in The Devoted Life: An Invitation to the Puritan Classics , ed. Kapic and Gleason (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press: 2004), p. 198.
Remember that we have two meetings left for our Pilgrim’s Progress lectures. Even if you haven’t come yet, we’d love to have you attend the last two on November 9 and 16. Pick up a book, read through Vanity Fair, and you’ll be up to date.
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