purposes of debate or defiance, but to comfort and instruct God’s true people who are finding salvation far more difficult than anybody had ever told them it would be.  Comfort My people, saith your God.  Speak comfortably to My people.  Come, said Goodwill, and I will teach thee about the way thou must go.  Look before thee, dost thou see that narrow way?  That is the way thou must go.  And then thou mayest always distinguish the right way from the wrong.  The wrong is crooked and wide, and the right is straight as a rule can make it,—­straight and narrow.

Goodwill said all that in order to direct and to comfort the pilgrim; but that was not all that this good man said with that end.  For, when Christian asked him if he could not help him off with his burden that was upon his back, he told him:  ’As to thy burden, be content to bear it until thou comest to the place of deliverance, for there it will fall from thy back of itself.’  Get you into the straight and narrow way, says Goodwill, with his much experience of the ways and fortunes of true pilgrims; get you sure into the right way, and leave your burden to God.  He appoints the place of deliverance, and it lies before thee.  The place of thy deliverance cannot be behind thee, and it is not in my house, else thy burden would have been already off.  But it is before thee.  Be earnest, therefore, in the way.  Look not behind thee.  Go not into any crooked way; and one day, before you know, and when you are not pulling at it, your burden will fall off of itself.  Be content to bear it till then, says bold and honest Goodwill, speaking so true to pilgrim experience.  Yes; be content, O ye people of God, crying with this pilgrim for release from your burden of guilt, and no less those of you who are calling with Paul for release from the still more bitter and crushing burden made up of combined guilt and corruption.  Be content till the place and the time of deliverance; nay, even under your burden and your bonds be glad, as Paul was, and go up the narrow way, still chanting to yourself, I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.  It is only becoming that a great sinner should tarry the Lord’s leisure; all the more that the greatest sinner may be sure the Lord will come, and will not tarry.  The time is long, but the thing is sure.

And now two lessons from Goodwill’s gate:—­

1.  The gate was shut when Christian came up to it, and no one was visible anywhere about it.  The only thing visible was the writing over the gate which told all pilgrims to knock.  Now, when we come up to the same gate we are disappointed and discouraged that the gatekeeper is not standing already upon his doorstep and his arms round our neck.  We knelt to-day in secret prayer, and there was only our bed or our chair visible before us.  There was no human being, much less to all appearance any Divine Presence, in the place.  And we prayed a short, indeed, but a not unearnest prayer, and then we rose up and came away disappointed because no one appeared.  But look at him who is now inheriting the promises.  He knocked, says his history, more than once or twice.  That is to say, he did not content himself with praying one or two seconds and then giving over, but he continued in prayer till the gatekeeper came.  And as he knocked, he said, so loud and so impatient that all those in the gatehouse could hear him,