The Dusty Parlor

"This symbol is, no doubt, designed to strengthen the impression already made upon the Pilgrim’s mind by the scene at Sinai. The dust of the 'Dusty Parlor' is indwelling sin. The besom of the law awakes the slumbering dust, revives its power, and causes it to be sensibly felt. Disturbed from its settled state, and discovered to our eyes, the dust of sin rises as a cloud of witness, witnessing against us. The law can disturb sin and arouse it, but the law cannot take it away. Then comes the Gospel, with the sprinkled waters of Christ’s atoning love, which bind sin and repress it. The power of the law and the Gospel respectively, with regard to sin, receives here one of the most telling illustrations that uninspired man has ever written. This scene, indeed, well describes those two scriptures—'I had not known sin, but by the law' (Romans 7:7); and, 'Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world' (John 1:29)."[1]