insufferable.  Why, prayers and tears that the most and best of God’s people cannot attain to are spurned and spat upon by Mr. Wet-eyes.  The man is beside himself with his tears.  For, tears that would console and assure us for a long season after them, he will weep over them as we scarce weep over our worst sins.  His closet always turns all his comeliness to corruption.  He comes out of his closet after all night in it with his psalm-book wrung to pulp, and with all his righteousnesses torn to filthy rags; till all men escape Mr. Wet-eyes’ society—­all men except Mr. Desires-awake.  I will go out on your errand now, said Mr. Desires-awake, if you will send Mr. Wet-eyes with me.  And thus the two twin sons of sorrow for sin and hunger after holiness went out arm in arm to the great pavilion together, Mr. Desires-awake with his rope upon his head, and Mr. Wet-eyes with his hands wringing together.  Thus they went to the Prince’s pavilion.  I gave you a specimen of one of Mr. Wet-eyes’ prayers in the introduction to this discourse, and you did not discover much the matter with it, did you?  You did not discover much filthiness in the bottom of that prayer, did you?  I am sure you did not.  Ah! but that is because you have not yet got Mr. Wet-eyes’ eyes.  When you get his eyes; when you turn and employ upon yourselves and upon your tears and upon your prayers his always-wet eyes,—­then you will begin to understand and love and take sides with this inconsolable soul, and will choose his society rather than that of any other man—­as often, at any rate, as you go out to the Prince’s pavilion door.

5.  ’Mr. Repentance was my father, but good men sometimes have bad children, and the most sincere do sometimes beget great hypocrites.  But, I pray Thee, take not offence at the unqualifiedness of Thy servant.’  Take good note of that uncommon expression, ‘unqualifiedness,’ in Mr. Wet-eyes’ confession, all of you who are attending to what is being said.  Lay ‘unqualifiedness’ to heart.  Learn how to qualify yourselves before you begin to pray.  In his fine comment on the 137th Psalm, Matthew Henry discourses delightfully on what he calls ‘deliberate tears.’  Look up that raciest of commentators, and see what he there says about the deliberate tears of the captives in Babylon.  It was the lack of sufficient deliberation in his tears that condemned and alarmed Mr. Wet-eyes that day.  He felt now that he had not deliberated and qualified himself properly before coming to the Prince’s pavilion.  Do not take up your time or your thoughts with mere curiosities, either in your Bible or in any other good book, says A Kempis.  Read such things rather as may yield compunction to your heart.  And again, give thyself to compunction, and thou shalt gain much devotion thereby.  Mr. Wet-eyes, good and true soul, was afraid that he had not qualified himself enough by compunctious reading and self-recollection.  The sincere, he sobbed out, do often beget hypocrites!  ’Our hearts