rovoked, but the
longer she lives and keeps the table in the House Beautiful the more she
is provoked to think that there is far too little prayer among pilgrims;
far too little of all kinds of prayer, but especially prayer with and for
their children. But hard as it was to tell all the truth at that moment
about Christian's past walk in his house at home, yet he was able with
the simple truth to say that he had indeed prayed both with and for his
children, and that, as they knew and could not but remember, not seldom.
Yes, he said, I did sometimes so pray with my boys, and that too, as you
may believe, with much affection, for you must think that my four boys
were all very dear to me. And it is my firm belief that all that good
man's boys will come right yet: Matthew and Joseph and James and Samuel
and all. 'With much affection.' I like that. I have unbounded faith in
those prayers, both for and with, in which there is much affection. It
is want of affection, and want of imagination, that shipwrecks so many of
our prayers. But this man's prayers had both these elements of sure
success in them, and they must come at last to harbour. At that one word
'with much affection,' this man's closet door flies open and I see the
old pilgrim first alone, and then with his arms round his eldest son's
neck, and both father and son weeping together till they are ashamed to
appear at supper till they have washed their faces and got their most
smiling and everyday looks put on again. You just wait and see if
Matthew and all the four boys down to the last do not escape into the
Celestial City before the gate is shut. And when it is asked, Who are
these and whence came they? listen to their song and you will hear those
four happy children saying that their father, when they were yet boys,
both talked with them and prayed for and with them with so much affection
that therefore they are before the throne.

Why, then, with such a father and with such makable boys, why was this
household brought so near everlasting shipwreck? It was the mother that
did it. In one word, it was the wife and the mother that did it. It was
the mistress of the house who wrought the mischief here. She was a poor
woman, she was a poor man's wife, and one would have thought that she had
little enough temptation to harm upon this present world. But there it
was, she did hang upon it as much as if she had been the mother of the
finest daughters and the m