5.  “Then it came to pass a while after that there was a post in the town that inquired for Mr. Honest.  So he came to his house where he was, and delivered to his hands these lines, Thou art commanded to be ready against this day seven night, to present thyself before thy Lord at His Father’s house.  And for a token that my message is true, all thy daughters of music shall be brought low.  Then Mr. Honest called for his friends and said unto them, I die, but shall make no will.  As for my honesty, it shall go with me:  let him that comes after me be told of this.  When the day that he was to be gone was come he addressed himself to go over the river.  Now, the river at that time overflowed the banks at some places.  But Mr. Honest in his lifetime had spoken to one Good-conscience to meet him there, the which he also did, and lent him his hand, and so helped him over.  The last words of Mr. Honest were, Grace reigns!  So he left the world.”  Look at that picture and now look at this:  “They then addressed themselves to the water, and, entering, Christian began to sink, and crying out to his good friend Hopeful, he said, I sink in deep waves, the billows go over my head, all His waters go over me.  Then said the other, Be of good cheer, my brother, I feel the bottom, and it is good.  Then said Christian, Ah, my friend, the sorrows of death have compassed me about; I shall not see the land that flows with milk and honey.  And with that a great horror and darkness fell upon Christian, so that he could not see before him; and all the words that he spoke still tended to discover that he had horror of mind lest he should die in that river and never obtain entrance in at the gate.  Here also, as they that stood by perceived, he was much in the troublesome thoughts of the sins that he had committed, both since and before he began to be a pilgrim.  ’Twas also observed that he was troubled with apparitions of hobgoblins and evil spirits.  Hopeful, therefore, had much ado to keep his brother’s head above water.  Yea, sometimes he would be quite gone down, and then ere a while he would rise up again half dead.”  My brethren, all my brethren, be not deceived; God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap.  Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth.  Thou, O God, wast a God that forgavest them, but Thou tookest vengeance on their inventions.

MR. FEARING

   “Happy is the man that feareth alway.”—­Solomon

For humour, for pathos, for tenderness, for acute and sympathetic insight at once into nature and grace, for absolutely artless literary skill, and for the sweetest, most musical, and most exquisite English, show me another passage in our whole literature to compare with John Bunyan’s portrait of Mr. Fearing.  You cannot do it.  I defy you to do it.  Spenser, who, like John Bunyan, wrote an elaborate