Hinds’ Feet on High Places

Hannah Hurnard’s 1955 novel Hinds’ Feet on High Places is an allegorical portrayal of purgation, progress, and ascent within the spiritual life. Born to Quaker parents, Hurnard struggled with her faith in her youth but experienced a powerful conversion at the age of 19. In the wake of this newfound inspiration, she gained theological training in England and went on to author almost two dozen books over the course of her life.

Of those, Hinds’ Feet remains the most popular, a classic in the genre that has sold over a million copies and is still widely read and distributed. Influenced by Pilgrim’s Progress, the allegorical novel penned by John Bunyan in the 17th century, Hinds’ Feet is autobiographical in the sense that it draws on some of Hurnard’s own experience and interior life. The novel is also similar to C.S. Lewis’s Pilgrim’s Regress, published in England in 1933, which deals with a male figure searching for an island that holds his heart’s desire and who must struggle against personifications of destructive 20th-century philosophies.

Narrated by an omniscient, third-person narrator, Hinds’ Feet focuses solely on the experience of the young girl Much-Afraid and her growth from a fearful orphan, victimized largely by her circumstances, into the strong and joyful Grace and Glory who has mastered her emotions, grown in understanding, and matured to the point of desiring to share her gifts and lead others to the same heights that she herself has climbed. This study guide is based on the 2018 Kindle Edition reprint by GLH Publishing.

Plot Summary

Hinds’ Feet on High Places traces the journey of the orphan girl Much-Afraid, who escapes the from the clutches of her relatives, the family of Fearings, and journeys with the Chief Shepherd of the Village up to the High Places, where she is healed by love. Born into distressing circumstances and forced to live with two physical disabilities that hinder her ability to walk and to speak clearly or smile, Much-Afraid wants nothing more than to be physically healed and to be given “hinds’ feet” in order to venture into the mountains and follow the Shepherd during his journeys up to the High Places, far above the troubles and strife found in the Valley of Humiliation and the Village of Much Trembling.

Engaged to be married against her will to her cousin, Craven Fear, Much-Afraid escapes an attempted kidnapping by venturing out of her home in the middle of the night. She encounters the Shepherd, who leads her to the foot of the nearby mountains to begin her journey. Provided with two traveling companions, Sorrow and Suffering, Much-Afraid starts off on the path that will lead her up to the High Places and, so she hopes, to the fulfillment of her heart’s desire. Along the way she must overcome natural disasters, geographical and circumstantial hardships, and (most vicious of all) the attacks and assaults of various relatives who attempt to knock her off the Shepherd’s path and bring her back to the Valley with them for good.

Learning to embrace Sorrow and Suffering, who never leave her side, Much-Afraid comes to a deep maturity during her travels, continuously learning how to submit her own will to that of the Shepherd, and even comes to embrace Sorrow and Suffering as friends as they prove to be most reliable and comforting guides. The purgation offered by the pain she endures and her interactions with Sorrow and Suffering are the reason she is able to persevere and ultimately gain mastery of the fears that have continued to assault her. At the precipice of the High Places in the place of anointing, she offers her whole life in sacrifice upon an altar, wakes to find that the flower of True Love has blossomed in her heart, and is healed and transformed by bathing in the river of life. She discovers that the long and arduous path she was given to walk was all in preparation for her new life and was necessary for her to gain a renewed sense of self.

Given the gift of a new life, Much-Afraid is also given a new name by the Shepherd: Grace and Glory. She is greeted by the similarly transformed Joy and Peace—formerly Sorrow and Suffering. After she spends a great deal of time on the summit of the mountain taking in the beauty of the place and continuing to learn from the Shepherd King, the circumstances of her former life again come to mind, and she realizes that she feels nothing but pity for those who used to make her life miserable. Along with her companions, Joy and Peace, she determines to set out for the Valley of Humiliation to draw others to the High Places and into the love of the Shepherd within the Kingdom of Love.