From The Bible Treasury, 1879, volume 12:
"Allegory, etc., have been consecrated by the Highest and this when walking here among men, to the purposes of grace and truth: by His servants, too, though seldom with marked success. John Bunyan was a rare exception; and, spite of mistake and defect, his book retains its hold on the affections of thousands of saints, and commands the interest of innumerable young people, from generation to generation. The work now introduced to the acquaintance of the reader is in no way an imitation of its popular predecessor. It seeks, under a similar form, to guard from the prevalent snares of the day, but withal presenting, in a suggestive method, the main outlines of revealed truth, from the sin and sorrow of a lost paradise to the last judgment, and the making of all things new, when God shall be all in all in everlasting rest and glory. The book supposes a certain acquaintance with the workings of unbelief at this time, no less than of the Bible; but to all persons of exercised mind there is a fund of interesting and profitable thought. Hence it may be commended as very suitable for souls without as well as within."