and personal affairs, that Christian all his days could never show impatience, or haste, or lack of interest in the most long-winded and egotistical pilgrim he ever met.  He always remembered, when he was becoming impatient, how much of his precious time and of his loving attention his old friend Goodwill had given to him.  Our pilgrim got tired of talking about himself long before Goodwill had ceased to ask questions and to listen to the answers.  So much was Christian taken with the courtesy and the kindness of Goodwill, that had it not been for his crushing burden, he would have offered to remain in Goodwill’s house to run his errands, to light his fires, and to sweep his floors.  So much was he taken captive with Goodwill’s extraordinary kindness and unwearied attention.  And since he could not remain at the gate, but must go on to the city of all goodwill itself, our pilgrim set himself all his days to copy this gatekeeper when he met with any fellow-pilgrim who had any story that he wished to tell.  And many were the lonely and forgotten souls that Christian cheered and helped on, not by his gold or his silver, nor by anything else, but just by his open ear.  To listen with patience and with attention to a fellow-pilgrim’s wrongs and sorrows, and even his smallest interests, said this Christian to himself, is just what Goodwill so winningly did to me.

With all his goodwill the grave gatekeeper could not say that the way to the Celestial City was other than a narrow, a stringent, and a heart-searching way.  ‘Come,’ he said, ’and I will tell thee the way thou must go.’  There are many wide ways to hell, and many there be who crowd them, but there is only one way to heaven, and you will sometimes think you must have gone off it, there are so few companions; sometimes there will be only one footprint, with here and there a stream of blood, and always as you proceed, it becomes more and more narrow, till it strips a man bare, and sometimes threatens to close upon him and crush him to the earth altogether.  Our Lord in as many words tells us all that.  Strive, He says, strive every day.  For many shall seek to enter into the way of salvation, but because they do not early enough, and long enough, and painfully enough strive, they come short, and are shut out.  Have you, then, anything in your religious life that Christ will at last accept as the striving He intended and demanded?  Does your religion cause you any real effort—­Christ calls it agony?  Have you ever had, do you ever have, anything that He would so describe?  What cross do you every day take up?  In what thing do you every day deny yourself?  Name it.  Put your finger on it.  Write it in cipher on the margin of your Bible.  Would the most liberal judgment be able to say of you that you have any fear and trembling in the work of your salvation?  If not, I am afraid there must be some mistake somewhere.  There must be great guilt somewhere.  At your