kept him—­you will seek in vain for the dot of those crutches on any by-path or on any wrong road.  No; the fact is, if you wish to go to the same city, and are afraid you lose the way; as Evangelist said, “Do you see yon shining light?” so I would say to you to-night, “Do you see these crutch-marks on the road?” Well, keep your feet in the prints of these crutches, and as sure as you do that they will lead you straight to a chariot and horses, which, again, will carry you inside the city gates.  For Mr. Ready-to-halt’s crutches have not only eyes like Tiresias’ staff, they have ears also, and hands and feet.  A lamp also burns on those crutches; and wine and oil distil from their wonderful wood.  Happy blindness that brings such a staff!  Happy exchange! eyes full of earth and sin for eyes full of heaven and holiness!

4.  “They began to be merry,” says our Lord, telling the story of the heart-broken father who had got back his younger son from a far country.  And even Feeble-mind and Ready-to-halt begin to be merry on the green that day after Doubting Castle has fallen to Greatheart’s arms.  Now, Christiana, if need was, could play upon the viol, and her daughter Mercy upon the lute; and, since they were so merry disposed, she played them a lesson, and Mr. Ready-to-halt would dance.  So he paid a boy a penny to hold one of his crutches, and, taking Miss Much-afraid by the hand, to dancing they went.  And, I promise you he footed it well; the lame man leaped as an hart; also the girl was to be commended, for she answered the music handsomely.  In spite of his life-long infirmity, there was deep down in Mr. Ready-to-halt an unsuspected fund of good-humour.  There was no heartier merriment on the green that day than was the merriment that Mr. Ready-to-halt knocked out of his nimble crutch.  “True, he could not dance without one crutch in his hand.”  True, dear and noble Bunyan, thou canst not write a single page at any time or on any subject without thy genius and thy tenderness and thy divine grace marking the page as thine own alone!

5.  The next time we see Mr. Ready-to-halt he is coming in on his crutches to see Christiana, for she has sent for him to see him.  So she said to him, “Thy travel hither hath been with difficulty, but that will make thy rest the sweeter.”  And then in process of time there came a post to the town and his business this time was with Mr. Ready-to-halt.  “I am come to thee in the name of Him whom thou hast loved and followed, though upon crutches.  And my message is to tell thee that He expects thee at His table to sup with Him in His kingdom the next day after Easter.”  “I am sent for,” said Mr. Ready-to-halt to his fellow-pilgrims, “and God shall surely visit you also.  These crutches,” he said, “I bequeath to my son that shall tread in my steps, with an hundred warm wishes that he may prove better than I have done.”  Isaac was a child of promise, and Mr. Ready-to-halt had an Isaac