5.  The first time we see Valiant-for-truth he is standing at the mouth of Dead-man’s-lane with his sword in his hand and with his face all bloody.  “They have left upon me, as you see,” said the bleeding man, “some of the marks of their valour, and have also carried away with them some of mine.”  And, in like manner, we see Paul with the blood of Barnabas still upon him when he is writing the thirteenth of First Corinthians; and John with the blood of the Samaritans still upon him down to his old age when he is writing his First Epistle; and John Bunyan with the blood of the Quakers upon him when he is covertly writing this page of his autobiography under the veil of Valiant-for-truth; and William Law with the blood of Bishop Hoadly and John Wesley dropping on the paper as he pens that golden passage which ends with Dr. Trapp and George Fox.  Where did you think Paul got that splendid passage about charity?  Where did you think William Law got that companion passage about Church divisions, and about the Church Catholic?  Where are such passages ever got by inspired apostles, or by any other men, but out of their own bloody battles with their own wild-headedness, intolerance, dislike, and resentment?  Where do you suppose I got the true key to the veiled metaphor of Valiant-for-truth?  It does not exactly hang on the doorpost of his history.  Where, then, could I get it but off the inside wall of my own place of repentance?  Just as you understand what I am now labouring to say, not from my success in saying it, but from your own trespasses against humility and love, your unadvised speeches, and your wild and whirling words.  Without shame and remorse, without self-condemnation and self-contempt, none of those great passages of Paul, or John, or Bunyan, or Law were ever written; and without a like shame, remorse, self-condemnation, and self-contempt they are not rightly read.

   “Oh! who shall dare in this frail scene
   On holiest, happiest thoughts to lean,
   On Friendship, Kindred, or on Love? 
   Since not Apostles’ hands can clasp
   Each other in so firm a grasp,
   But they shall change and variance prove.

   “But sometimes even beneath the moon
   The Saviour gives a gracious boon,
   When reconciled Christians meet,
   And face to face, and heart to heart,
   High thoughts of Holy love impart
   In silence meek, or converse sweet.

   “Oh then the glory and the bliss
   When all that pained or seemed amiss
   Shall melt with earth and sin away! 
   When saints beneath their Saviour’s eye,
   Filled with each other’s company,
   Shall spend in love the eternal day!”