d neither king nor bishop, man nor devil, they
feared God and sin and death and hell so much. This was why, while all
other men were so full of torpid assurance, they still carried, to the
annoyance and anger of all their serene-minded neighbours, such a Slough
of Despond in their anxious minds. This was why sin so poisoned all
their possessions and enjoyments that Greatheart could not get Fearing,
any more than Rutherford could get Gordon, out of the Valley of
Humiliation. And this was why Gordon so often turned upon Rutherford
when he was exalted above measure, and reminded his minister, in the old
Scottish proverb, that 'Hall-binks are slippery.' Seats of honour, Mr.
Samuel, are unsafe seats for unsanctified sinners. Ecstasies do not
last, and they leave the soul weaker and darker than they found it. It
is a comely thing even for a saint to be well-clothed about with
humility, and the deepest valley is safer and seemlier walking for a lame
man than the mountain-top; and so on, till Rutherford admitted that
Robert Gordon's warnings were neither impertinent nor untimeous. The sin-
stricken laird of Knockbrex was like Mr. Fearing at the House Beautiful.
When all the other pilgrims sat down without fear at the table, that so
timid and so troublesome pilgrim, remembering the proverb, stole away
behind the screen and found his meat and his drink in overhearing the
good conversation that went on in the banquet-hall. Gordon could not
understand all Rutherford's joy. He did not altogether like it. He did
not answer the ecstatic letters so promptly as he answered those which
were composed on a soberer key. He was a blunt, plain-spoken, matter-of-
fact man; he immensely loved and honoured his minister, but he could not
help reminding him after one of his specially enraptured letters that
'Hall-binks are slippery seats.' The golden mean lay somewhere between
the hall-bink and the ash-pit; somewhere between Rutherford's ecstasy and
Gordon's depression. But as the Guide said in the exquisite
conversation, the wise God will have it so, some must pipe and some must
weep: and, for my part, I care not for that profession that begins not
with heaviness of mind. Only, here was the imperfection of Mr. Fearing
and Robert Gordon, that they would play upon no other music but this to
their latter end. So much so, that the thick woods of Knockbrex are said
to give out to this day the sound of the sackbut to those who have their
e