of death have compassed me about; I shall not see the land that
flows with milk and honey. And with that a great horror and darkness
fell upon Christian, so that he could not see before him; and all the
words that he spoke still tended to discover that he had horror of mind
lest he should die in that river and never obtain entrance in at the
gate. Here also, as they that stood by perceived, he was much in the
troublesome thoughts of the sins that he had committed, both since and
before he began to be a pilgrim. 'Twas also observed that he was
troubled with apparitions of hobgoblins and evil spirits. Hopeful,
therefore, had much ado to keep his brother's head above water. Yea,
sometimes he would be quite gone down, and then ere a while he would rise
up again half dead." My brethren, all my brethren, be not deceived; God
is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap. Whom
the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth.
Thou, O God, wast a God that forgavest them, but Thou tookest vengeance
on their inventions.

MR. FEARING

"Happy is the man that feareth alway."--_Solomon_

For humour, for pathos, for tenderness, for acute and sympathetic insight
at once into nature and grace, for absolutely artless literary skill, and
for the sweetest, most musical, and most exquisite English, show me
another passage in our whole literature to compare with John Bunyan's
portrait of Mr. Fearing. You cannot do it. I defy you to do it.
Spenser, who, like John Bunyan, wrote an elaborate allegory, says: It is
not in me. Take all Mr. Fearing's features together, and even
Shakespeare himself has no such heart-touching and heart-comforting
character. Addison may have some of the humour and Lamb some of the
tenderness; but, then, they have not the religion. Scott has the insight
into nature, but he has no eye at all for grace; while Thackeray, who, in
some respects, comes nearest to John Bunyan of them all, would be the
foremost to confess that he is not worthy to touch the shoe-latchet of
the Bedford tinker. As Dr. Duncan said in his class one day when telling
us to read Augustine's Autobiography and Halyburton's:--"But," he said,
"be prepared for this, that the tinker beats them all!" "Methinks," says
Browning, "in this God speaks, no tinker hath such powers."

Now, as they walked along together, the guide asked the old gentleman if
he knew one Mr. Fearing that came on p