Excerpt from Theodosia Ernest, Vol. 2: Or, Ten Days' Travel in Search of the Church What the prophets often did, and what Jesus habitually did, has been done by good men in every age. They have invented narratives, sometimes brief, and designed to enforce and illustrate a single thought, and sometimes continued and connected, in order to convey a system of doctrine or a series of truths. These are fables, or parables, poems or allegories, or simple stories, as may best suit the objects which the speaker or writer has in view. If Bunyan had merely told in plain, didactic language, the fears, the hindrances, the doubts, the sorrows, the hopes and labors and final triumphs of the Christian, he would have taught just what his Pilgrim's Progress was designed to teach; but he would not have taught it so effectually, nor indeed so truthfully, as he has done by means of his inimitable work of fiction, in which the truth is not only told to the ear, but shown, as it were, to the eye of the mind, acting itself out in its natural and necessary results. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.