# “Have you yourself, I wonder, read it yet?” by J. I. Packer

- Link: https://tollelege.net/2008/08/06/have-you-yourself-i-wonder-read-it-yet-by-j-i-packer/
- Published: 2008-08-06T23:14:30-05:00
- Author: tollelege

“For two centuries _Pilgrim’s Progress_ was the best-read book, after the Bible,
in all Christendom, but sadly it is not so today. When I ask my classes of young
and youngish evangelicals, as I often do, who has read _Pilgrim’s Progress_, not
a quarter of the hands go up.

Yet our rapport with fantasy writing, plus our lack of grip on the searching, humbling,
edifying truths about spiritual life that the Puritans understood so well, surely
mean that the time is ripe for us to dust off _Pilgrim’s Progress_ and start reading
it again.

Certainly, it would be great gain for modern Christians if Bunyan’s masterpiece 
came back into its own in our day. Have you yourself, I wonder, read it yet?”

–J. I. Packer, “Pilgrim’s Progress,” in _The Devoted Life: An Invitation to the 
Puritan Classics_, ed. Kapic and Gleason (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press:
2004), 198-9.

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