Both Ignorance and Little-Faith would have had their revenge and
satisfaction upon Christian and Hopeful had they seen those two so
Pharisaical old men taken in the Flatterer's net. For it was nothing
else but the swaggering pride of Hopeful over the pitiful case of Little-
Faith, taken along with the hard and hasty ways of Christian with that
unhappy youth Ignorance, that so soon laid them both down under the small
cords of the Shining One. This word of the wise man, that pride goeth
before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall, was fulfilled to
the very letter in Christian and Hopeful that high-minded day. At the
same time, it must be admitted that Christian and Hopeful would have been
more than human if they had not both felt and let fall some superiority,
some scorn, and some impatience in the presence of such a silly and
upsetting stripling as Ignorance was; as, also, over the story of such a
poor-spirited and spunging creature as Little-Faith was. Christian and
Hopeful had just come down from their delightful time among the
Delectable Mountains, and they were as full as they could hold of all
kinds of knowledge, and faith, and hope, and assurance; when, most
unfortunately, as it turned out, they first came across Ignorance, and
then, after quarrelling with him, they fell out between themselves over
the case of Little-Faith. Their superior knowledge of the truth, and
their superior strength of faith, ought to have made them more able to
bear with the infirmities of the weak, and with the passing moods,
however provoking, of one another. But no. And their impatience and
contempt and bad temper all came at this crisis to such a head with them
that they could only be cured by the small cords and the stinging words
of the Shining One. The true key to this so painful part of the parable
hangs at our own girdle. We who have been born and brought up in an
evangelical church are thrown from time to time into the company of
men--ministers and people--who have not had our advantages and
opportunities. They have been born, baptized, and brought up in