The Wicket Gate

The Second Discourseman

In the dusk tonight, I sat in Chapel Court of Jesus College, my alma mater as of this day. I had just graduated a year after I had left, so that it was both a return and a farewell. Life played out across that court: couples walking together, students traipsing back and forth from the library, the sounds of friendship through open windows. It was open to the heavens, so that the light of stars was in the place, but the walls were tall and quiet. 

Iron lamps above doorways show the staircases where students live, nestled in the walls of this haven as if to be closest to their strength. They are covered in thick leaves of wisteria so that one looks into Badger’s house in the Wild Woods, light and strength. From outside the walls, however, one sees none of this. There are no woods to tangle through, only the red bricks protecting too well. In the spring, daffodils line the avenue leading to Chapel Court, but the walls are there just the same. 

Yet in the heart of the court’s great wooden gate, a small door stands open. It is a wicket gate. It is indeed small, so that a tall man must stoop to enter, but through it one can see that there is light. In the dark or in the winter, the daffodils cannot guide you, and for warmth there is only the wicket gate. How often did I walk that evening path, down empty streets full of people, through a door that did not open until I put my hand to it, kneeling in tears and in prayer beside my bed. Before me, ever before me, was the Wicket Gate. The strength and heart of God stood against me as a preventing wall, but as I stumbled towards it, towards prayer, I could see that there was a doorway, a light, the Son of God pierced for my transgressions. 

Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in thee.

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For Bunyan’s Christian, the Wicket Gate opens to a new and wide country, indeed onto the world in its fullness. With this prospect come many trials, severer ones which put past hardships to shame, make undergraduate fretting seem trivial, and are sure to send present worries to the same fate. There is also refreshment for the soul, organ music streaming through stained glass windows, the stars above if one chooses to see them. 

But always at the entrance to this land stands the Wicket Gate, and the one whose land it is always sees the gate. He sees the wooden bars upon the hillside, and remembers how the way was made – how the way was suffered. He watches the journeys made through his land, from gate to Jordan’s verge, with compassion and with delight. He sees outside the gate, among the darkness and the daffodils, and he says:

“Come unto me; look unto me; all may come in.”