will speak peace.”  “Serve your God day and night faithfully,” says Dr. Goodwin.  “Walk humbly; and there is a promise of the Holy Ghost to come and fill your hearts with joy unspeakable and glorious to rear you up to the day of redemption.  Sue this promise out, wait for it, rest not in believing only, rest not in assurance by graces only; there is a further assurance to be had.”  “I would not give a straw for that assurance,” says John Newton, “which sin will not damp.  If David had come from his adultery and still have talked of his assurance, I should have despised his speech.”  “When we want the faith of assurance,” says Matthew Henry, “let us live by the faith of adherence.”  And then the whole truth is in a nutshell in Isaiah and in John:  “The effect of righteousness shall be quietness and assurance for ever,” and “My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth.  And hereby we shall know that we are of the truth, and so shall assure our hearts before Him.”

CHRISTIANA

   “Honour widows that are widows indeed.”—­Paul.

We know next to nothing of Christiana till after she is a widow indeed.  The names of her parents, and what kind of parents they were, the schools and the boarding-schools to which they sent their daughter, her school companions, the books she read, if she ever read any books at all, the amusements she was indulged in and indulged herself in—­on all that her otherwise full and minute biographer is wholly silent.  He does not go back beyond her married life; he does not even go back to the beginning of that.  The only thing we are sure of about Christiana’s early days is that she was an utterly ungodly woman and that she married an utterly ungodly man.  “Have you a family?  Are you a married man?” asked Charity of Christian in the House Beautiful.  “I have a wife and four small children,” he replied.  “And why did you not bring them along with you?” Then Christian wept, and said:  “Oh, how willingly would I have done it; but they were all utterly averse to my going on pilgrimage.”  “But you should have talked to them,” said Charity, “and have endeavoured to have shown them the danger of being behind.”  “So I did,” answered Christian.  “And did you pray to God that He would bless your counsel to them?” “Yes, and with much affection; for you must think that my wife and poor children were very dear unto me.”  “But what could they say for themselves why they came not?” “Why, my wife was afraid of losing the world, and my children were given over to the foolish delights of youth; so what with one thing and what with another, they left me to wander in this manner alone.”