his after days. Keep back Thy servant, O God,
from presumptuous sin. Let him be innocent of the great transgression.

Dr. Thomas Goodwin says somewhere that the worm that dieth not only comes
to its sharpest sting and to its deadliest venom when it is hatched up
under gospel light. The very light of nature itself greatly aggravates
some of our sins. The light of our early education greatly aggravates
others of our sins. But nothing wounds our conscience and then
exasperates the wound like a past experience of the same sin, and,
especially, an experience of the grace of God in forgiving that sin. Had
we found young Presumption in his irons before his conversion, we would
have been afraid enough at the sight. Had we found him laid by the heels
after his first uncleanness, it would have made us shudder for ourselves.
But we are horrified and speechless as we see him apprehended and laid in
irons on the very night of his first communion, and with the wine
scarcely dry on his unclean lips. Augustine postponed his baptism till
he should have his fill of sin, and till he should no longer return to
sin like a dog to his vomit. Now, next Sabbath is our communion day in
this congregation. Let us therefore this week examine ourselves. And if
we must sin as long as we are in this world, let it henceforth be the sin
of ignorance and of infirmity.

So the three reprobates lay down to sleep again, and Christian as he left
that bottom went on in the narrow way singing:

'O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I'm constrained to be
Let that grace, Lord, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.'

THE THREE SHINING ONES AT THE CROSS

'Salvation shall God appoint for walls.'--Isaiah.

John Bunyan's autobiography, _Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners_,
is the best of all our commentaries on _The Pilgrim's Progress_, and
again to-night I shall have to fall back on that incomparable book. 'Now,
I saw in my dream that the highway up which Christian was to go was
fenced on either side with a wall, and that wall is called Salvation. Up
this way, therefore, did burdened Christian run, but not without great
difficulty, because of the load on his back.' In the corresponding
paragraph in _Grace Abounding_, our author says, speaking about himself:
'But forasmuch as the passage was wonderful narrow, even so narrow that I
could not but with great difficulty enter in thereat, it showed me that
none co