discovering this about him, that he showed best in adversity and
distress, just as he showed worst in deliverance and prosperity. It is a
fine lesson in Christian hope to descend into Giant Despair's dungeon and
hear the older pilgrim groaning and the younger pilgrim consoling him,
and, again, to stand on the bank of the last river and hear Hopeful
holding up Christian's drowning head. "Be of good cheer, my brother, for
I feel the bottom, and it is good!" Bless Hopeful for that, all you
whose deathbeds are still before you. For never was more true and fit
word spoken for a dying hour than that. Read, till you have it by heart
and in the dark, Hopeful's whole history, but especially his triumphant
end. And have some one bespoken beforehand to read Hopeful in the River
to you when you have in a great measure lost your senses, and when a
great horror has taken hold of your mind. "I sink in deep waters," cried
Christian, as his sins came to his mind, even the sins which he had
committed both since and before he came to be a pilgrim. "But I see the
gate," said Hopeful, "and men standing at it ready to receive us." "Read
to me where I first cast my anchor," said John Knox to his weeping wife.

The Enchanted Ground, on the other hand, threatened to throw Hopeful back
again into his former light-minded state. And there is no saying what
shipwreck he might have made there had the older man not been with him to
steady and reprove and instruct him. As it was, a touch now and then of
his old vain temper returned to him till it took all his companion's
watchfulness and wariness to carry them both out of that second Vanity
Fair. "I acknowledge myself in a fault," said Hopeful to Christian, "and
had I been here alone I had run in danger of death. Hitherto, thy
company hath been my mercy, and thou shalt have a good reward for all thy
labour."

Now, my brethren, in my opinion we owe a great debt of gratitude to John