6.  The half cannot be told of the guilt and the corruption, the pain and the shame and the manifold misery of secret sin; but all that will be told, believed, and understood by all men long before the full magnificence of their sanctification, and the superb transcendence of their blessedness, will even begin to be described to God’s secret saints.  For, all that sleepless, cruel, and soul-killing pain, and all that shameful and humbling corruption,—­all that means, all that is, so much holiness, so much heaven, working itself out in the soul.  All that is so much immortal life, spotless beauty, and incorruptible joy already begun in the soul.  Every such pang in a holy heart is a death-pang of another sin and a birth-pang of another grace.  Brotherly love is at last being born never to die in that heart where envy and malice and resentment and revenge are causing inward agony.  And humility and meekness and the whole mind of Christ are there where pride and anger and ill-will are felt to be very hell itself.  And holiness, even as God is holy, will soon be there for ever where the sinfulness of sin is a sinner’s acutest sorrow.  “As for me,” said one whose sin was ever before him, “I will behold Thy face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied when I wake with Thy likeness.”

MRS. TIMOROUS

   “But the fearful [literally, the timid and the cowardly] shall have
   their part in the second death.”—­Revelation xxi.

No sooner had Secret bidden Christiana farewell than she began with all her might to make ready for her great journey.  “Come, my children, let us pack up and begone to the gate that leads to the Celestial City, that we may see your father and be with him, and with his companions, in peace, according to the laws of that land.”  And then:  “Come in, if you come in God’s name!” Christiana called out, as two of her neighbours knocked at her door.  “Having little to do at home this morning,” said the elder of the two women, “I have come across to kill a little time with you.  I spent last night with Mrs. Light-mind, and I have some good news for you this morning.”  “I am just preparing for a journey this morning,” said Christiana, packing up all the time, “and I have not so much as one moment to spare.”  You know yourselves what Christiana’s nervousness and almost impatience were.  You know how it upsets your good temper and all your civility when you are packing up for a long absence from home, and some one comes in, and will talk, and will not see how behindhand and how busy you are.  “For what journey, I pray you?” asked Mrs. Timorous, for that was her visitor’s name.  “Even to go after my good husband,” the busy woman said, and with that she fell a-weeping.  But you must read the whole account of that eventful morning in Christiana’s memoirs for yourselves till you have it, as Secret said, by root-of-heart.  On the understanding that you are not total strangers to that so excellently-written passage I shall now venture a few observations upon it.