3.  “Was it,” asked Valiant-for-truth, in a holy curiosity, “was it some special mercy that brought thee to thy knees even now?” Yes; Valiant-for-truth had exactly hit it.  Gracious wits, like great wits, jump together.  “Yes,” confessed Standfast, “I continue to give thanks for my great deliverance.”  My brethren, you all pray importunately in your time of sore trouble.  Everybody does that.  But do you feel an obligation, like Standfast, to abide still on your knees long after your trouble is past?  Nature herself will teach us to pray; but it needs grace, and great grace continually renewed, to teach us to praise, and to continue all our days to praise.  How we once prayed, ay, as earnestly, and as concernedly, and as careless as to who should see or hear us as Standfast himself!  How some of us here to-night used to walk across a whole country all the time praying!  How we hoodwinked people in order to get away from them to pray for twenty miles at a time all by ourselves!  Under that bush—­it still stands to mark the spot; in that wood, long since cut down into ploughed land—­we could show our children the spot to this day where we prayed, till a miracle was wrought in our behalf.  Yes, till God sent from above and took us as He never took a psalmist, and set our feet upon a still more wonderful rock.  How He, yes, HE, with His own hand cut the cords, broke the net, and set us free!  Come, all ye that fear God! we then said, and said it with all sincerity too.  And yet, how have we forgotten what He did for our soul?  We start like a guilty thing surprised when we think how long it is since we had a spell of thanksgiving.  Shame on us!  What treacherous hearts we have!  What short memories we have!  How soon we forgive ourselves, and so forget the forgiveness of our God!  Brethren, let us still lay plans for praise as we used to do for prayer.  If our friends will go out with us, let us at least insist on walking home alone.  Let us say with Paul that we get sick at sea; and, besides, that we have some calls to make and some small accounts to settle before we leave the country.  Tell them not to wait dinner for us.  And then let us take plenty of time.  Let us stop at all our old stations and call back all our old terrors; let us repeat aloud our old psalms—­the twenty-fifth, the fifty-first, the hundred and third, and the hundred and thirtieth.  We used to terrify people with our prayers as Standfast terrified the young pilgrims that day; let us surprise and delight them now with our psalms of thanksgiving.  For, with all our disgraceful ingratitude in the past, if William Law is right, we are even yet not far from being great saints, if he is not wrong when he asks:  “Would you know who is the greatest saint in the world?  It is not he who prays most or fasts most; it is not he who gives most alms, or is most eminent for temperance, chastity, or justice.  But it is he who is most thankful to God, and who has a heart always ready to praise God.  This is the perfection of all virtues.  Joy in God and thankfulness to God is the highest perfection of a divine and holy life.”  Well, then, what an endless cause of joy and thankfulness have we!  Let us acknowledge it, and henceforth employ it; and we shall, please God, even yet be counted as not low down but high up among the saints and the servants of God.