chased in her despair on the
previous Saturday night. It was not a sermon from her unconscious
minister, but it was far better; it was a conversation that Christiana
held with her four boys that fairly and for ever put all thought of the
pond out of their mother's remorseful mind. "So Christiana," as we read
in the opening of her history--"so Christiana called her sons together
and began thus to address herself unto them: My sons, I have, as you may
perceive, been of late under much exercise in my soul about the death of
your father. My carriages to your father in his distress are a great
load on my conscience. Come, my children, let us pack up and be gone to
the gate, that we may see your father and be with him, according to the
laws of that land." I like that passage, I think, the best in all
Christiana's delightful history--that passage which begins with these
words: "So she called her children together." For when she called her
children together she opened to them both her heart and her conscience;
and from that day there was but one heart and one conscience in all that
happy house. I was walking alone on a country road the other day, and as
I was walking I was thinking about my pastoral work and about my people
and their children, when all at once I met one of my people. My second
sentence to him was: "This very moment I was thinking about your sons.
How are they getting on?" He quite well understood me. He knew that I
was not indifferent as to how they were getting on in business, but he
knew that I was alluding more to the life of godliness and virtue in
their hearts and in their characters. "O sir," he said, "you may give
your sons the skin off your back, but they will not give you their
confidence!" So had it been with Christian and his sons. He had never
managed, even in his religion, to get into the confidence of his sons;
but when their mother took them into her agonised confidence, from that
day she was in all their confidences, good and bad. You who are in your
children's confidences will pray in secret for my lonely friend with the
skin off his back, will you not? that he may soon be able to call his
sons together so as to start together on a new life of family love, and
family trust, and family religion. That was a fine sight. Who will make
a picture of it? This widow indeed at the head of her family council-
table, and Matthew at the foot, and James and Joseph and Samuel all in
their plac