Toward the end of that marvelous classic, Pilgrim''s Progress, the character, Christian, is moving with tremendous difficulty on the highway between the walls of salvation. His heavy burden makes it almost impossible to move, though he slowly inches along. Finally, he reaches an elevated place upon which there stands a cross and a little below, in the bottom, a sepulcher. As Bunyan describes it:

Just as Christian came up to the cross, his burden was loosened from his shoulders and fell from his back and began to tumble and continued to do so until it came to the mouth of the sepulcher, where it fell in and I saw it no more.

Then, Christian was glad and lighthearted and said with a merry heart, "He has given me rest through his sorrow, and life through his death." He stood still a while t…