him saying:  “Certainly,” he says, “I am not blind to the faults of the Puritan discipline, but it has been an invaluable discipline for that poor, inattentive, and immoral creature, man.  And the more I read history and the more I see of mankind, the more I recognise the value of the Puritan discipline.”  And in that same Address he “founded his best hopes for that so enviable and unbounded country in which he was speaking, America, on the fact that so many of its millions had passed through the Puritan discipline.”  John Milton was a product of that discipline on the one hand, as John Bunyan was on the other.  Christiana was another of its products in the sphere of the family, just as Matthew Arnold himself had some of his best qualities out of the same fruitful school.

2.  Her heart, her deep, strong, tender heart, is present on every page of Christiana’s noble history.  Her heart keeps her often silent when the water in her eyes becomes all the more eloquent.  When she does let her heart utter itself in words, her words are fine and memorable.  As, for one instance, after Greatheart’s discourse on redemption.  “O Mercy, that thy father and mother were here; yea, and Mrs. Timorous also.  Nay, I wish with all my heart now that here was Madam Wanton, too.  Surely, surely, their hearts would be affected, nor could the fear of the one, nor the powerful lusts of the other, prevail with them to go home again, and to refuse to become good pilgrims.”  But it was not so much what she said herself that brought out the depth and tenderness of Christiana’s heart, it was rather the way her heart loosened other people’s tongues.  You must all have felt how some people’s presence straitens your heart and sews up your mouth.  While there are other people, again, whose simple presence unseals your heart and makes you eloquent.  We ministers keenly feel that both in our public and in our private ministrations.  There are people in whose hard and chilling presence we cannot even say grace as we should say it.  Whereas, we all know other people, people of a heart, that is, whose presence somehow so touches our lips that we always when near them rise far above ourselves.  Christiana did not speak much to her guides and instructors and companions, but they always spoke their best to her, and it was her heart that did it.

3.  And then a widow indeed is just a true and genuine widow; a widow not in her name and in her weeds only, but still more in her deep heart, in her whole life, and in her garnered experience.  “Honour widows that are widows indeed.  Now, she that is a widow indeed and desolate, trusteth in God, and continueth in supplications and in prayers night and day.  Well reported of for good works; if she have brought up children, if she have lodged strangers, if she have washed the saints’ feet, if she have relieved the afflicted, if she have diligently followed every good work.”  These are the true marks and seals and occupations of a widow indeed.