Last week at Mount Calvary Baptist Church a dramatic reading was presented of Nathanial Hawthorn’s Celestial Railroad. Hawthorn wrote the short piece as an allegory for the creeping modernism of his day in keeping with John Bunyan’s classic, The Pilgrim’s Progress.
The text for Hawthorn’s allegory is available here (I think in its entirety – it is also available at several other sites). It is well worth reading. I recommend listening to the reading of it at Mount Calvary as well, although you will have to pay for the download.
We live in a day of easy religion that was rushing ahead in Hawthorn’s day as well. Our young fundamentalist friends are asking the same questions that so many asked in Hawthorn’s day, in the days of the Graham compromise, in the seventies of my youth, and now again today. Must the way be so narrow? Must we be so strict and exacting in our religion?
Well… yes.
Regards,
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3
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