Scale Wages: Currently plowing through Part Two of John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress (1684), which, for the most part, is a painfully inferior rehash of the classic first part, but has one passage of startling beauty. I'll quote it for you here to save you the trouble of reading it, but that doesn't get you off the hook from reading Part One. If you're a musician who's plumbed life's depths, or anyone who's suffered from depression, I think you'll understand why I find the passage profoundly affecting. And what it says about God I know from my own experience to be true.

The passage comes after one character relates the story of a pilgrim (making the pilgrimage from the earthly city to the heavenly city) who was always in fear, sadness, and trepidation. He is asked, "But what would be the reason that such a good man should be all his days so much in the dark?"

The man replies that "...[the fearful man] and his fellows sound the sackbut [which was like a bass trumpet], whose notes are more doleful than the notes of other music are; though, indeed, some say the bass is the ground of music. And, for my part, I care not at all for that profession that begins not in heaviness of mind. The first string that the musician usually touches is the bass, when he intends to put all in tune. God also plays upon this string first, when he sets the soul in tune for himself."
11:54 PM