will allow me, to put them on their guard. ''Tis hard,'
said Contrite, who was a householder and had a vote in the town of
Vanity, ''tis hard keeping our hearts and our spirits in any good order
when we are in a cumbered condition. And you may be sure that we are
full of hurry at fair-time. He that lives in such a place as this is,
and that has to do with such as we have to do with, has need of an item
to caution him to take heed every hour of the day.' Now, if all my
people, and all this day's communicants, were only contrite enough, I
would leave them to the hurry of the approaching election with much more
comfort. But as it is, I wish to give them such an item as I am able to
caution them for the next ten days. Let them know, then, that their way
for the next fortnight lies, I will not say through a fair of jugglings
and cheatings, carried on by apes and knaves, but, to speak without
figure, their way certainly lies through what will be to many of them a
season of the greatest temptation to the very worst of all possible
sins--to anger and bitterness and ill-will; to no end of evil-thinking
and evil-speaking; to the breaking up of lifelong friendships; and to
widespread and lasting damage to the cause of Christ, which is the cause
of truth and love, meekness and a heavenly mind. Now, amid all that, as
Evangelist said to the two pilgrims, look well to your own hearts. Let
none of all these evil things enter your heart from the outside, and let
none of all these evil things come out of your hearts from the inside.
Set your faces like a flint from the beginning against all evil-speaking
and evil-thinking. Let your own election to the kingdom of heaven be
always before you, and walk worthy of it; and amid all the hurry of
things seen and temporal, believe steadfastly concerning the things that
are eternal, and walk worthy of them.

'We buy the truth and we sell it not again for anything,' was the reply
of the two pilgrims to every stall-keeper as they passed up the fair, and
this it was that made them to be so hated and hunted down by the men of
the fair. And, in like manner, there is nothing more difficult to get
hold of at an election time than just the very truth. All the truth on
any question is not very likely to be found put forward in the programme
of any man or any party, and, even if it were, a general election is not
the best time for you to find it out. 'I design the search after truth
to be the one