his face. But, staggering as it all was, the man in rags and slime only
smiled a sad and sobbing smile in answer, and said: 'Why, sir, this
burden upon my back is far more terrible to me than all the things which
you have mentioned; nay, methinks I care not what I meet with in the way,
so be I can also meet with deliverance from my burden.' This is what our
Lord calls a pilgrim having the root of the matter in himself. This poor
soul had by this time so much wearisomeness, painfulness, hunger, perils,
nakedness, sword, lions, dragons, darkness, death, and what not in
himself, that all these threatened things outside of himself were but so
many bugbears and hobgoblins wherewith to terrify children; they were but
things to be laughed at by every man who is in ernest in the way. 'I
care not what else I meet with if only I also meet with deliverance.'
There speaks the true pilgrim. There speaks the man who drew down the
Son of God to the cross for that man's deliverance. There speaks the
man, who, mire, and rags, and burdens and all, will yet be found in the
heaven of heavens where the chief of sinners shall see their Deliverer
face to face, and shall at last and for ever be like Him. Peter examined
Dante in heaven on faith, James examined him on hope, and John took him
through his catechism on love, and the seer came out of the tent with a
laurel crown on his brow. I do not know who the examiner on sin will be,
but, speaking for myself on this matter, I would rather take my degree in
that subject than in all the other subjects set for a sinner's
examination on earth or in heaven. For to know myself, and especially,
as the wise man says, to know the plague of my own heart, is the true and
the only key to all other true knowledge: God and man; the Redeemer and
the devil; heaven and hell; faith, hope, and charity; unbelief, despair,
and malignity, and all things of that kind else, all knowledge will come
to that man who knows himself, and to that man alone, and to that man in
the exact measure in which he does really know himself. Listen again to
this slough-stained, sin-burdened, sighing and sobbing pilgrim, who, in