post, forasmuch as it mattered not to them what Emmanuel and His officers said.  There could be no manner of doubt who composed that inimitable passage.  There is all the truth and all the humour and all the satire in Old Prejudice that our author has accustomed us to in his best pieces.  The common people always get the best literature along with the best religion in John Bunyan.  ’They are like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear, and which will not hearken to the voice of charmers charming never so wisely,’ says the Psalmist, speaking about some bad men in his day.  Now, I will not stand upon David’s natural history here, but his moral and religious meaning is evident enough.  David is not concerned about adders and their ears, he is wholly taken up with us and our adder-like animosity against the truth.  Against what teacher, then; against what preacher; against what writer; against what doctrine, reproof, correction, has your churlish prejudice adder-like shut your ear?  Against what truth, human or divine, have you hitherto stopped up your ear like the Psalmist’s serpent?  To ask that boldly, honestly, and in the sight of God, at yourself to-night, would end in making you the lifelong friend of some preacher, some teacher, some soul-saving truth you have up till to-night been prejudiced against with the rooted prejudice and the sullen obstinacy of sixty deaf men.  O God, help us to lay aside all this adder-like antipathy at men and things, both in public and in private life.  Help us to give all men and all causes a fair field and no favour, but the field and the favour of an open and an honest mind, and a simple and a sincere heart.  He that hath ears, let him hear!

4.  As we work our way through the various developments and vicissitudes of the Holy War we shall find Ear-gate in it and in ourselves passing through many unexpected experiences; now held by one side and now by another.  And we find the same succession of vicissitudes set forth in Holy Scripture.  If you pay any attention to what you read and hear, and then begin to ask yourselves fair in the face as to your own prejudices, prepossessions, animosities, and antipathies,—­you will at once begin to reap your reward in having put into your possession what the Scriptures so often call an ‘inclined’ ear.  That is to say, an ear not only unstopped, not only unloaded, but actually prepared and predisposed to all manner of truth and goodness.  Around our city there are the remains, the still visible tracks, of roads that at one time took the country people into our city, but which are now stopped up and made wholly impassable.  There is no longer any road into Edinburgh that way.  There are other roads still open, but they are very roundabout, and at best very uphill.  And then there are other roads so smooth, and level, and broad, and well kept, that they are full of all kinds of traffic; in the centre carts and carriages crowd them, on the one side horses and their riders delight to display