wife in such a crisis truly betake themselves to Him who gathereth the solitary into families, the result will be such a remarriage of depth and tenderness, loyalty and mutual help, as their early dreams never came within sight of.  Not early love, not children, not plenty of means, not all the best amenities of married life taken together, will repair a marriage and keep a marriage in repair for one moment like a living and an intense faith in God; a living and an intense love to God; and then that faith in and love for one another that spring out of God and out of His love alone.

   “The tree
   Sucks kindlier nurture from a soil enriched
   By its own fallen leaves; and man is made,
   In heart and spirit, from deciduous hopes
   And things that seem to perish.”

MR. SKILL

   “The vine of Sodom.”—­Moses.

With infinite delicacy John Bunyan here tells us the sad story of Matthew’s sore sickness at the House Beautiful.  The cause of the sore sickness, its symptoms, its serious nature, and its complete cures are all told with the utmost plainness; but, at the same time, with the most exquisite delicacy.  Bunyan calls the ancient physician who is summoned in and who effects the cure, Mr. Skill, but you must believe that Bunyan himself is Mr. Skill; and I question if this skilful writer ever wrote a more skilful page than just this page that now lies open before him who has the eyes to read it.

Matthew, it must always be remembered, was by this time a young man.  He was the eldest son of Christiana his mother, and for some time now she had been a sorely burdened widow.  Matthew’s father was no longer near his son to watch over him and to warn him against the temptations and the dangers that wait on opening manhood.  And thus his mother, with all her other cares, had to be both father and mother to her eldest son; and, with all her good sense and all her long and close acquaintance with the world, she was too fond a mother to suspect any evil of her eldest son.  And thus it was that Christiana had nearly lost her eldest son before her eyes were open to the terrible dangers he had for a long time been running.  For it was so, that the upward way that this household without a head had to travel lay through a land full of all kinds of dangers both to the bodies and to the souls of such travellers as they were.  And what well-nigh proved a fatal danger to Matthew lay right in his way.  It was Beelzebub’s orchard.  Not that this young man’s way lay through that orchard exactly; yet, walled up as was that orchard with all its forbidden fruit, that evil fruit would hang over the wall so that if any lusty youth wished to taste it, he had only to reach up to the over-hanging branches and plash down on himself some of the forbidden bunches.  Now, that was just what Matthew had done.  Till we have him lying at the House Beautiful, not only not