solemn warnings and counsels suitable now, as never before, to these two
pilgrims. If one may say so, he would add now such moral treatises as
Butler's _Sermons_ and _Serious Call_ to such evangelical books as _Grace
Abounding_ and _A Jerusalem Sinner Saved_.

To-morrow the two pilgrims will come out of the wilderness and will be
plunged into a city where they will be offered all kinds of
merchandise,--houses, lands, places, honours, preferments, titles,
pleasures, delights, wives, children, bodies, souls, and what not. An
altogether new world from anything they have yet come through, and a
world where many who once began well have gone no further. Such counsels
as these, then, Evangelist gave Christian and Faithful as they left the
lonely wilderness behind them and came out towards the gate of the
seductive city--'Let the Kingdom of Heaven be always before your eyes,
and believe steadfastly concerning things that are invisible.' Visible,
tangible, sweet, and desirable things will immediately be offered to
them, and unless they have a faith in their hearts that is the substance
of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen, it will soon be
all over with them and their pilgrimage. 'Let no man take your crown,'
he said also, as he foresaw at how many booths and counters, houses,
lands, places, preferments, wives, husbands, and what not, would be
offered them and pressed upon them in exchange for their heavenly crown.
'Above all, look well to your own hearts,' he said. Canon Venables
laments over the teaching that Bunyan received from John Gifford. 'Its
principle,' he says, 'was constant introspection and scrupulous weighing
of every word and deed, and even of every thought, instead of leading the
mind off from self to the Saviour.' The canon seems to think that it was
specially unfortunate for Bunyan to be told to keep his heart and to
weigh well every thought of it; but I must point out to you that
Evangelist puts as above all other things the most important for the