him his hand and set him upon sound ground. Christiana, again, and Mercy
and the boys found the slough in a far worse condition than it had ever
been found before. And the reason was not that the country that drained
into the slough was worse, but that those who had the mending of the
slough and the keeping in repair of the steps had so bungled their work
that they had marred the way instead of mending it. At the same time, by
the tact and good sense of Mercy, the whole party got over, Mercy
remarking to the mother of the boys, that if she had as good ground to
hope for a loving reception at the gate as Christiana had, no slough of
despond would discourage her, she said. To which the older woman made
the characteristic reply: 'You know your sore and I know mine, and we
shall both have enough evil to face before we come to our journey's end.'

Now, I do not for a moment suppose that there is any one here who can
need to be told what the Slough of Despond in reality is. Indeed, its
very name sufficiently declares it. But if any one should still be at a
loss to understand this terrible experience of all the pilgrims, the
explanation offered by the good man who gave Christian his hand may here
be repeated. 'This miry slough,' he said, 'is such a place as cannot be
mended. This slough is the descent whither the scum and filth that
attends conviction of sin doth continually run, and therefore it is
called by the name of Despond, for still as the sinner is awakened about
his lost condition there ariseth in his soul many fears and doubts and
discouraging apprehensions, which all of them get together, and settle in
this place, and this is the reason of the badness of the ground.' That
is the parable, with its interpretation; but there is a passage in _Grace
Abounding_ which is no parable, and which may even better than this so
pictorial slough describe some men's condition here. 'My original and
inward pollution,' says Bunyan himself in his autobiography, 'that, that
was my plague and my affliction; that, I say, at a dreadful rate was