the toil till the pilgrims came to the House Beautiful.  The great doctrinal and experimental Puritans, with Hooker at their head, put forth their full strength and laid out their finest work just on this same question that Christiana gave out at the place, somewhat ascending, upon which stood a cross, and a little below, in the bottom, a sepulchre.  But not the great Comment on The Galatians itself, next to the Holy Bible as it is, as most fit for a wounded conscience; no, nor that perfect mass of purest gold, The Learned Discourse of Justification, nor anything else of that kind known to me, is for one moment, to compare in beauty, in tenderness, in eloquence, in scriptural depth, and in scriptural simplicity with Greatheart’s noble resolution of Christiana’s question which he made on the way from the Interpreter’s house to the House Beautiful.  “This is brave!” exclaimed that mother in Israel, when the guide had come to an end.  “Methinks it makes my heart to bleed to think that He should bleed for me.  O Thou loving One!  O Thou blessed One!  Thou deservest to have me, for Thou hast bought me.  No marvel that this made the water to stand in my husband’s eyes, and that it made him trudge so nimbly on.  O Mercy, that thy father and thy mother were here; yea, and Mrs. Timorous too!  Nay, I wish now with all my heart that here was Madam Wanton too.  Surely, surely their hearts would be affected here!” Promise me to read at home Greatheart’s discourse on the Righteousness of Christ, and you will thank me for having exacted the promise.

The incongruity of a soldier handling such questions, and especially in such a style, has stumbled some of John Bunyan’s fault-finding readers.  The same incongruity stumbled “the Honourable Colonel Hacker, at Peebles or elsewhere,” to whom Cromwell sent these from Edinburgh on the 25th December 1650—­“But indeed I was not satisfied with your last speech to me about Empson, that he was a better preacher than fighter or soldier—­or words to that effect.  Truly, I think that he that prays and preaches best will fight best.  I know nothing that will give like courage and confidence as the knowledge of God in Christ will; and I bless God to see any in this army able and willing to impart the knowledge they have for the good of others.  I pray you receive Captain Empson lovingly:  I dare assure you he is a good man and a good officer; I would we had no worse.”

4.  “Will you not go in and stay till morning?” said the porter to Greatheart, at the gate of the House Beautiful.  “No,” said the guide; “I will return to my lord to-night.”  “O sir!” cried Christiana and Mercy, “we know not how to be willing you should leave us in our pilgrimage.  Oh that we might have your company till our journey’s end.”  Then said James, the youngest of the boys, “Pray be persuaded to go with us and help us, because we are so weak and the way so dangerous as it is.”  “I am at my lord’s commandment,”