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This is one of Bunyan's most deeply expressive directions to the heaven-ward pilgrim; may it sink into our hearts. Christ is the way, the cross is the standing way-mark throughout the road, never out of sight.
What, every lazy one; every wanton and foolish professor, that will be stopped by anything, kept back by anything, that scarce runneth so fast heaven-ward as a snail creepeth on the ground? Nay, there are some professors do not go on so fast in the way of God as a snail doth go on the wall; and yet these think, that heaven and happiness is for them.
Your conscience pulls, your good old mother pulls, your little child pulls, your Christian mate pulls; each sermon you hear, each Bible class you attend, each hymn you sing, each prayer uttered in your presence, each striving of the Spirit, each God-given yearning after better things, each storm you come through, each danger you escape, each sickness in your family, each death in your home, each deliverance granted you, gives you a pull God-ward, Christ-ward, heaven-ward.
Three or four times during the twenty-four hours, they rounded the point, sat down on the shore, raised their noses heaven-ward at an angle of about forty-five degrees, when, with half-closed eyes, and the expression of a spirit medium when about to deliver an inspirational lecture, they abandoned themselves to paroxysms of howling and yelping.
Let us do it "with our faces Zion-ward;" yea, let us stedfastly set our faces reformation-ward and heaven-ward, and God-ward, and Christ-ward, with whom we enter covenant this day. A man may inquire the way to Zion, with his face towards Babylon; a people or person may enter covenant with God, with their hearts Rome-ward, and earth-ward, and sin-ward, and hell-ward. Friends, look to your hearts.
We walk with Dante through the nether world, awed by the tremendous power with which he depicts for us the secrets of the prison house. With Milton, we mount heaven-ward, and in the immortal verse of his minor poems, finer even than the stately march of Paradise Lost, we hear celestial music, and breathe diviner air.
He saw nothing but mists and birds around him, and began to look upon it as reasonable that they were travelling heaven-ward. He was glad, and wondered what he should see up there. The dizziness passed all at once. He was so exceedingly happy at the thought that he was on his way to heaven and was leaving this earth.
A burning log crackled with a sharp report, and a thousand sparks flew heaven-ward. There were wonderful lights in this woman's eyes and a high color on her somewhat thin cheeks. A minute passed; and another ticked itself into eternity. The Chevalier sat upright and stirred restlessly. The paper of the cabal crackled in his hand. . . . What was it? he wondered.
O, if we had spiritual organs, to see and hear things now invisible and inaudible to us, we should behold the whole air filled with the departing souls of that vast multitude which every moment dies, should behold them streaming up like thin vapors heaven-ward, and hear the startling blast of the archangel's trump sounding incessant through the universe and proclaiming the awful judgment day.
I keep a fast twice a week, I pay the tenth of all things I possess. And the tax-gatherer standing at a distance, would not even so much as lift his eyes heaven-ward, but smote on his breast, saying, May God accept the atonement for me a sinner!
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