for poor Greatheart.  Back and forward, back and forward, year after year, this noble soul uncomplainingly goes.  And, ever as he waves his hand to another pilgrim entering with trumpets within the gates, he salutes his next pilgrim charge with the brave words:  “Yet what I shall choose I wot not.  For I am in a strait betwixt two:  having a desire to depart and to be with Christ.  Nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needful for you, for your furtherance and joy of faith by my coming to you again.”  If Greatheart could not “usher himself out of this life” along with Christiana, and Mercy, and Mr. Honest, and Standfast, and Valiant-for-truth—­if he had still to toil back and bleed his way up again at the head of another happy band of pilgrims—­well, after all is said, what had the Celestial City itself to give to Greatheart better than such blessed work?  With every such returning journey he got a more and more enlarged, detached, hospitable, and Christ-like heart, and the King’s palace in very glory itself had nothing better in store for this soldier-guide than that.  A nobler heaven Greatheart could not taste than he had already in himself, as he championed another and another pilgrim company from his Master’s earthly gate to his Master’s heavenly gate.  Like Paul, his apostolic prototype, Greatheart sometimes vacillated just for a moment when he came a little too near heaven, and felt its magnificent and almost dissolving attractions full in his soul.  You will see Greatheart’s mind staggering for a moment between rest and labour, between war and peace, between “Christ” on earth and “Christ” in heaven—­you will see all that set forth with great sympathy and great ability in Principal Rainy’s new book on Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians, and in the chapter entitled, The Apostle’s Choice between Living and Dying.

Then there came a summons for Mr. Standfast.  At which he called to him Mr. Greatheart, and said unto him, “Sir, although it was not my hap to be much in your good company in the days of my pilgrimage, yet, since the time I knew you, you have been profitable to me.  When I came from home I left behind me a wife and five small children.  Let me entreat you, at your return (for I know that you will go and return to your master’s house in hopes that you may be a conductor to more of the holy pilgrims), that you send to my family and let them be acquainted with all that hath and shall happen to me.  Tell them, moreover, of my happy arrival to this place, and of the present late blessed condition I am in, and so on for many other messages and charges.”  Yes, Mr. Standfast; very good.  But I would have liked you on your deathbed much better if you had had a word to spare from yourself and your wife and your children for poor Greatheart himself, who had neither wife nor children, nor near hope of heaven, but only your trust and charge and many suchlike trusts and charges to carry out when you are at home and free of all trust and all charge and all care.