e who at home have just made
the discovery of some great master of the spiritual life, and who are
almost beside themselves with their delight in their divine author. If
they are new beginners they will not take this warning well, nor will
even all old pilgrims lay it aright to heart; but there it is as plain as
the plainest, simplest, and most practical writer in our language could
put it.

Behold ye how these crystal streams do glide
To comfort pilgrims by the highway side;
The meadows green, besides their fragrant smell,
Yield dainties for them: And he that can tell
What pleasant fruits, yea leaves, these trees do yield,
Will soon sell all that he may buy this field.

Thus the two pilgrims sang: only, adds our author in a parenthesis, they
were not, as yet, at their journey's end.

2. 'Now, I beheld in my dream that they had not journeyed far when the
river and the way for a time parted. At which the two pilgrims were not
a little sorry.' The two pilgrims could not perhaps be expected to break
forth into dancing and singing at the parting of the river and the way,
even though they had recollected at that moment what the brother of the
Lord says about our counting it all joy when we fall into divers
temptations. But it would not have been too much to expect from such
experienced pilgrims as they by this time were, that they should have
suspected and checked and commanded their sorrow. They should have said
something like this to one another: Well, it would have been very
pleasant had it been our King's will and way with us that we should have
finished the rest of our pilgrimage among the apples and the lilies and
on the soft and fragrant bank of the river; but we believe that it must
in some as yet hidden way be better for us that the river and our road
should part from one another at least for a season. Come, brother, and
let us go on till we find out our Master's deep and loving mind. But,
instead of saying that, Christian and Hopeful soon became like the
children of Israel as they journeyed from Mount Hor, their soul was much
discouraged because of the way. And always as they went on they wished
for a softer and a better way. And it was so that they very soon came to
the very thing they so much wished for. For, what is that on the left
hand of the hard road but a stile, and over the stile a meadow as soft to
the feet as the meadow of lilies itself? ''Tis just according to my
wish,'