Adam in his first estate.  That happy child at his best is but the relics and ruins of his first father; at the same time, in him the relics are more abundant and the ruins more easy to trace out.  And little Honest was such a well-born child.  For, Stupidity and all, there was a real inborn and inbred integrity, uprightness, straightforwardness, and nobleness about this little and not over-clever man-child.  And, on the principle of “to him that hath shall be given,” there was something like a special providence that hedged this boy about from the beginning.  “I girded thee though thou hast not known Me” was never out of Old Honest’s mouth as often as he remembered the days of his own youth and heard other pilgrims mourning over theirs.  “I have surnamed thee though thou hast not known Me,” he would say to himself in his sleep.  Slow-witted as he was, no one had been able to cheat young Honest out of his youthful integrity.  He had not been led, and he had led no one else, into the paths of the destroyer.  He could say about himself all that John Bunyan so boldly and so bluntly said about himself when his enemies charged him with youthful immorality.  He left the town in nobody’s debt.  He left the print of his heels on no man or woman or child when he took his staff in his hand to be a pilgrim.  The upward walk of too many pilgrims is less a walk than an escape and a flight.  The avenger of men’s blood and women’s honour has hunted many men deep into heaven’s innermost gate.  But Old Honest took his time.  He walked, if ever pilgrim walked, all the way with an easy mind.  He lay down to sleep under the oaks on the wayside, and smiled like a child in his sleep.  And, when he was suddenly awaked, instead of crying out for mercy and starting to his heels, he grasped his staff and demanded even of an armed man what business he had to break in on an honest pilgrim’s midday repose!  The King of the Celestial City had a few names even in Stupidity which had not defiled their garments, and Old Honest was one of them.  And all his days his strength was as the strength of ten, because his heart was pure.

3.  At the same time, honesty is not holiness; and no one knew that better than did this honest old saint.  When any one spoke to Old Honest about his blameless youth, the look in his eye made them keep at arm’s-length as he growled out that without holiness no man shall see God!  Writing from Aberdeen to John Bell of Hentoun, Samuel Rutherford says:  “I beseech you, in the Lord Jesus, to mind your country above; and now, when old age is come upon you, advise with Christ before you put your foot into the last ship and turn your back on this life.  Many are beguiled with this that they are free of scandalous sins.  But common honesty will not take men to heaven.  Alas! that men should think that ever they met with Christ who had never a sick night or a sore heart for sin.  I have known a man turn a key in a door and lock