a grave, if not a sad, man.  It was, as he sometimes said, his meat and his drink to keep the gate open for pilgrims; but the class of men who came calling themselves pilgrims; the condition they came in; the past, that in spite of all both he and they could do, still came in through his gate after them, and went up all the way with them; their ignorance of the way, on which he could only start them; the multitudes who started, and the handfuls who held on; the many who for a time ran well, but afterwards left their bones to bleach by the wayside; and all the impossible-to-be-told troubles, dangers, sorrows, shipwrecks that certainly lay before the most steadfast and single-hearted pilgrim—­all that was more than enough to give the man at the gate his grave and anxious aspect.

Not that his great gravity, with all the causes of it, ever made him a melancholy, a morose, a despairing, or even a desponding man.  Far from that.  The man of sorrows Himself sometimes rejoiced in spirit.  Not sometimes only, but often He lifted up His heart and thanked His Father for the work His Father had given Him to do, and for the success that had been granted to Him in the doing of it.  And as often as He looked forward to the time when he should finish His work and receive His discharge, and return to His Father’s house, at the thought of that He straightway forgot all His present sorrows.  And somewhat so was it with Goodwill at his gate.  No man could be but at bottom happy, and even joyful, who had a post like his to occupy, a gate like his to keep, and, altogether, a work like his to do.  No man with his name and his nature can ever in any circumstances be really unhappy.  ’Happiness is the bloom that always lies on a life of true goodness,’ and this gatehouse was full of the happiness that follows on and always dwells with true goodness.  Goodwill cannot have more happiness till he shuts in his last pilgrim into the Celestial City, and then himself enters in after him as a shepherd after a lost sheep.

The happy, heavenly, divine disposition of the gatekeeper was such, that it overflowed from the pilgrim who stood beside him and descended upon his wife and children who remained behind him in the doomed city.  So full of love was the gatekeeper’s heart, that it ran out upon Obstinate and Pliable also.  His heart was so large and so hospitable, that he was not satisfied with one pilgrim received and assisted that day.  How is it, he asked, that you have come here alone?  Did any of your neighbours know of your coming?  And why did he who came so far not come through?  Alas, poor man, said Goodwill, is the celestial glory of so little esteem with him that he counteth it not worth running the hazards of a few difficulties to obtain it?  Our pilgrim got a lifelong lesson in goodwill to all men at that gate that day.  The gatekeeper showed such deep and patient and genuine interest in all the pilgrim’s past history, and in all his family