his companion.

What were the things, asked Christian of his young companion, that first
led you to leave off the vanities of the fair and to think to be a
pilgrim? Many things, replied Hopeful. Sometimes if I did but meet a
good man in the street. Or if mine head began unaccountably, or mine
heart, to ache. Or if some one of my companions became suddenly sick. Or
if I heard the bell toll that some one was dead. But, especially, when I
thought of myself that I must quickly come to judgment. And then it is
told in the best style of the book how peace and rest and the beginning
of true satisfaction came to poor Hopeful's heart at last. But you must
promise me to read the passage for yourselves before you sleep to-night;
and to read it again and again till, like Hopeful's, your heart also is
full of joy, and your eyes full of tears, and your affections running
over with love to the name and to the people and to all the ways of Jesus
Christ.

And then, it is very encouraging and reassuring to us to see how
Hopeful's true conversion so deepened and sobered and strengthened his
whole character. He remained to the end in his mental constitution and
whole temperament, as we say, the same man he had always been; but, while
remaining the same man, at the same time a most wonderful change
gradually began to come over him, till, by slow but sure degrees, he
became the Hopeful we know and look to and lean upon. To use his own
autobiographic words about himself, it was "by hearing and considering of
things that are Divine" that his natural levity was so completely whipped
out of his soul till he was made at last an indispensable companion to
Christian, strong-minded and serious-minded man as he was. "Conversion
to God," says William Law, "is often very sudden and instantaneous,
unexpectedly raised from variety of occasions. Thus, one by seeing only