Page:The pilgrim's progress by John Bunyan every child can read (1909).djvu/89

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CHRISTIAN GIVES THANKS
81
But blessed angels helped me; and I,
By dint of sword, did quickly make him fly:
Therefore to God let me give lasting praise,
And thank and bless His holy name always."

Then there came to him a hand with some of the leaves of the tree of life; the which Christian took, and laid upon the wounds that he had received in the battle, and was healed immediately. He also sat down in that place to eat bread, and to drink of the bottle that was given to him a little before: so, being refreshed, he went forth on his journey, with his sword drawn in his hand; "For," he said, "I know not but some other enemy may be at hand." But he met with no other harm from Apollyon quite through this valley.

Now, at the end of this valley was another, called the Valley of the Shadow of Death; and Christian must needs go through it, because the way to the Celestial City lay through the midst of it. Now this valley is a very solitary place; the prophet Jeremiah thus describes it: "A wilderness, a land of deserts and pits, a land of drought, and of the shadow of death, a land that no man" but a Christian "passeth through, and where no man dwelt."

Now here Christian was worse put to it than in his fight with Apollyon, as in the story you shall see.

I saw then in my dream, that when Christian was got to the borders of the Shadow of Death, there met him two men, children of them that