Mr. Worldly-Wiseman became positively eloquent and impressive and all but convincing as he went so graphically and cumulatively over all the sorrows that attended on the way to which this pilgrim was now setting his face.  But, staggering as it all was, the man in rags and slime only smiled a sad and sobbing smile in answer, and said:  ’Why, sir, this burden upon my back is far more terrible to me than all the things which you have mentioned; nay, methinks I care not what I meet with in the way, so be I can also meet with deliverance from my burden.’  This is what our Lord calls a pilgrim having the root of the matter in himself.  This poor soul had by this time so much wearisomeness, painfulness, hunger, perils, nakedness, sword, lions, dragons, darkness, death, and what not in himself, that all these threatened things outside of himself were but so many bugbears and hobgoblins wherewith to terrify children; they were but things to be laughed at by every man who is in ernest in the way.  ’I care not what else I meet with if only I also meet with deliverance.’  There speaks the true pilgrim.  There speaks the man who drew down the Son of God to the cross for that man’s deliverance.  There speaks the man, who, mire, and rags, and burdens and all, will yet be found in the heaven of heavens where the chief of sinners shall see their Deliverer face to face, and shall at last and for ever be like Him.  Peter examined Dante in heaven on faith, James examined him on hope, and John took him through his catechism on love, and the seer came out of the tent with a laurel crown on his brow.  I do not know who the examiner on sin will be, but, speaking for myself on this matter, I would rather take my degree in that subject than in all the other subjects set for a sinner’s examination on earth or in heaven.  For to know myself, and especially, as the wise man says, to know the plague of my own heart, is the true and the only key to all other true knowledge:  God and man; the Redeemer and the devil; heaven and hell; faith, hope, and charity; unbelief, despair, and malignity, and all things of that kind else, all knowledge will come to that man who knows himself, and to that man alone, and to that man in the exact measure in which he does really know himself.  Listen again to this slough-stained, sin-burdened, sighing and sobbing pilgrim, who, in spite of all these things—­nay, in virtue of all these things—­is as sure of heaven and of the far end of heaven as if he were already enthroned there.  ‘Wearisomeness,’ he protests, ’painfulness, hunger, perils, nakedness, sword, lions, dragons, darkness, death, and what not—­why, sir, this burden on my back is far more terrible to me than all these things which you have mentioned; nay, methinks I care not what I meet with in the way, so be I can also meet with deliverance from my burden.’  O God! let this same mind be found in me and in all the men and women for whose souls I shall have to answer at the day of judgment, and I shall be content and safe before Thee.