their slough and direct them to the gate. And then there are multitudes
of so-called ministers who eat the King's bread who can neither push a
proud sinner into the slough nor help a prostrate sinner out of it; no,
nor point him the way when he has himself wallowed out. And then, there
are men called ministers, too, who also eat the King's bread, whose voice
you never hear in connection with such matters, unless it be to revile
both the pilgrims and their helpers, and all who run with fear and
trembling up the heavenly road. But our pilgrim was happy enough to meet
with a minister to whom he could look back all his remaining pilgrimage
and say: 'He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry
clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings. And he
hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise to our God.'

Now, as might have been expected, there is a great deal said about all
kinds of help in the Bible. After the help of God, of which the Bible
and especially the more experimental Psalms are full, this fine name is
then applied to many Scriptural persons, and on many Scriptural
occasions. The first woman whom God Almighty made bore from her Maker to
her husband this noble name. Her Father, so to speak, gave her away
under this noble name. And of all the sweet and noble names that a woman
bears, there is none so rich, so sweet, so lasting, and so fruitful as
just her first Divine name of a helpmeet. And how favoured of God is
that man to be accounted whose life still continues to draw meet help out
of his wife's fulness of help, till all her and his days together he is
able to say, I have of God a helpmeet indeed! For in how many sloughs do
many men lie till this daughter of Help gives them her hand, and out of
how many more sloughs are they all their days by her delivered and kept!
Sweet, maidenly, and most sensible Mercy was a great help to widow
Christiana at the slough, and to her and her sons all the way up to the
river--a very present help in many a need to her future mother-in-law and