doubt, diffidence, and
despair, till I gave over counting the passages, they are so many. I had
intended to illustrate the passage before us to-night out of the kindred
materials that I knew were so abundant in Bunyan's terrible
autobiography, but I had to give up that idea. It would have taken two
or three lectures to itself to tell all that Bunyan suffered all his life
long from an easily-wounded spirit. The whole book is just Giant Despair
and his dungeon, with a gleam here and there of that sunshiny weather
that threw the giant into one of his fits, in which he always lost for
the time the use of his limbs. Return often, my brethren, to that
masterpiece, _Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners_. I have read it a
hundred times, but last week it was as fresh and powerful and consoling
as ever to my sin-wounded spirit.

Let me select some of the incidents that offer occasion for a comment or
two.

1. And, in the first place, take notice, and lay well to heart, how
sudden, and almost instantaneous, is the fall of Christian and Hopeful
from the very gate of heaven to the very gate of hell. All the Sabbath
and the Monday and the Tuesday before that fatal Wednesday, the two
pilgrims had walked with great delight on the banks of a very pleasant
river; that river, in fact, which David the King called the river of God,
and John, the river of the water of life. They drank also of the water
of the river, which was pleasant and enlivening to their weary spirits.
On either side of the river was there a meadow curiously beautified with
lilies, and it was green all the year long. In this meadow they lay down
and slept, for here they might lie down and sleep safely. When they
awoke they gathered again of the fruits of the trees, and drank again of
the water of the river, and then lay down again to sleep. Thus they did
several days and nights. Now, could you have believed it that two such
men as our pilgrims were could be in the enjoyment of all that the first
half of the week, and then by their own doing should be in Giant
Despair's deepest dungeon before the end of the same week? And yet so it
was. And all that is written for the solemn warning of those who are at
any time in great enlargement and refreshment and joy in their spiritual
life. It is intended for all those who are at any time revelling in a
season of revival: those, for example, who are just come home from
Keswick or Dunblane, as well as for all thos