The cover picture of the Wicket Gate, which was drawn by Mr David Lang of Musselburgh in 1970 for the Wicket Gate, admirably captures the spirit of good John Bunyan. Let me emphasise the theme of our little magazine.
It was through the Wicket Gate in the Pilgrim's Progress that the burdened Pilgrim found the House of Interpreter and the Cross of his salvation, so that the journey that had started from the City of Destruction finally ended in God's Celestial City. It is our desire that the Wicket Gate may be the means of entrance into a Christian pilgrimage for some, and a House of Interpretation of the things of the Lord, and a signpost on the way to Immanuel's Land for all who read it. Our cover sets us right at the beginning, almost, of the Christian pilgrimage and shows us the spiritual genius of the great "Bedford Tinker".
"As I walked through the wilderness of this world," Bunyan tells us in the very opening words of his outstanding work, "I lighted on a certain place where was a den; and I laid me down in that place to sleep … I dreamed, and, behold, I saw a man clothed with rags … with his face from his own house, a book in his hand, and a great burden upon his back … And this is what we see in our cover. The man is clothed in the "rags" of his own self-righteousness; he has turned his "face" away from his own house, for there is none there that can help him; and the cause of his despair that weighs as a great burden upon his back is the "book in his hand." That "book" is the Word of God and it has told him of his sinnership before his God in heaven, and this knowledge makes him cry out "with a lamentable cry, saying, 'What shall I do?'"
It is in answer to this heartfelt cry that God, in His mercy, eventually send Evangelist – the second figure on our cover – across the Pilgrim's path, and Evangelist's direction is clear and plain: "Do you see yonder wicket gate?" The Pilgrim fails to see it at first, but God has set a shining light above it, for the Pilgrim must enter in at the Wicket Gate to find rest for his soul.
May our little "Wicket Gate", then, be a true reflection of that one and only way of everlasting life, which is in Christ our Lord. So be it.
W.J. Seaton
(April 1970)
