of good cheer, I
have overcome the world. Know ye what I have done unto you? Ye call Me
Master and Lord, and ye say well, for so I am.'

BY-ENDS

'Ye seek Me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat
of the loaves.'--Our Lord.

In no part of John Bunyan's ingenious book is his strong sense and his
sarcastic and humorous vein better displayed than just in his description
of By-ends, and in the full and particular account he gives of the
kinsfolk and affinity of By-ends. Is there another single stroke in all
sacred literature better fitted at once to teach the gayest and to make
the gravest smile than just John Bunyan's sketch of By-ends'
great-grandfather, the founder of the egoistical family of Fairspeech,
who was, to begin with, but a waterman who always looked one way and
rowed another? By-ends' wife also is a true helpmate to her husband. She
was my Lady Feigning's favourite daughter, under whose nurture and
example the young lady had early come to a quite extraordinary pitch of
good breeding; and now that she was a married woman, she and her husband
had, so their biographer tells us, two firm points of family religion in
which they were always agreed and according to which they brought up all
their children, namely, never to strive too much against wind and tide,
and always to watch when Religion was walking on the sunny side of the
street in his silver slippers, and then at once to cross over and take
his arm. But abundantly amusing and entertaining as John Bunyan is at
the expense of By-ends and his family and friends, he has far other aims
in view than the amusement and entertainment of his readers. Bunyan uses
all his great gifts of insight and sense and humour and scorn so as to
mark unmistakably the road and to guide the progress of his reader's soul
to God, his chiefest end and his everlasting portion.

It was no small part of our Lord's life of humiliation on the earth,--much
more so than His being born in a low condition and being made under the
law,--to have to go about all His days among men, knowing in every case
and on every occasion what was in man. It was a real humiliation to our
Lord to see those watermen of the sea of Tiberias sweating at their oars
as they rowed round and round the lake after Him; and His humiliation
came still more home to Him as often as He saw His own disciples
disputing and pressing who should get closest to Him while for a short
season