doth bring forth by handfuls. Some also have wished that the next way to their Father's house were here, that they might be troubled no more with hills or mountains to go over; but the way is the way, and there is an end.

Now, as they were going along and talking, they spied a boy feeding his father's sheep. The boy was in very mean clothes, but of a fresh and well-favoured countenance; and as he sat by himself, he sang. Hark, said Mr. Greatheart, to what the Shepherd's boy saith so they hearkened, and he said,

He that is down needs fear no fall,

He that is low no pride:
He that is humble ever shall
Have God to be his guide.

I am content with what I have,
Little be it or much;

And, Lord, contentment still I crave,
Because thou savest such.

Fulness to such a burden is
Who go on pilgrimage.
Here little and hereafter bliss,
Is best, from age to age.

Then said their guide, Do you hear him? I will dare to say this boy lives a merrier life, and wears more of that herb called hearts-ease in his bosom, than he that is clad in silk and velvet."

In this Valley, says Bunyan, our Lord formerly had his country-house; he loved much to be here; he loved also to walk these meadows, for he found the air was pleasant. Besides, here a man shall be free from the noise and from the hurryings of this life; all states are full of noise and confusion; only the Valley of Humiliation is that empty and solitary place. Here a man shall not be so let and hindered in his contemplation, as in other places he is apt to be. This is a valley that nobody loves to walk in but those that love a pilgrim's life. And though Christian had the hard hap to meet here with Apollyon, and to enter with him on a brisk encounter; yet, I must tell you that in former times men have met with angels here, have found pearls here, and have in this place found the words of life.

Mercy thought herself as well in this valley as ever she had been in all their journey. "The place, methinks, suits with my spirit. I love to be in such places, where there is no rattling with coaches, no rumbling with wheels; methinks here one may, without much molestation, be thinking what he is, whence he came, what he has done, and to what the King has called him. Here one may think and break the heart, and melt in one's spirit. They that go rightly through this valley of Baca, make it a well; the rain, that God sends down from heaven upon them that are there, also filleth the pools. To this man will I look, saith the King, even to him that is humble, and of a contrite spirit, and who trembleth at my word."

Mercy was right in her preference of this sweet valley. The few noises here heard were as the voices of heaven to shepherds watching their flocks by moonlight.

Stillness, accompanied by sounds so soft,
Charms more than silence. Meditation here
May think down hours to moments. Here the heart
May give a useful lesson to the head,

And Learning wiser grow without his books.

This retired and lowly vale was a scene for a spirit like Cowper's to linger in; though his soul was long in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Strange, that such a discipline should have been necessary for such a mind! This Valley of Humiliation, as Christiana and Mercy found it, Cowper has described more beautifully than any other writer that ever lived.

Far from the world, O Lord, I flee,

From strife and tumult far;
From scenes where Satan wages still
His most successful war.

a

Now if you wish for commentary in plain prose on the sweetness of Bunyan's delineation of this Valley, you may find it in the Dairyman's Daughter, or in the Shepherd of Salisbury Plain. But it is very important to remember that those who would find a foretaste of heavenly rest in this Valley, must bring into it, in their own hearts, the spirit of Heaven; then, and not otherwise, is it a Valley of Peace. When God's discipline discloses to a man "the plague of his own heart," then he is very apt to lay the evil to the score of circumstances, instead of the inveterate diseased heart, which needed so much, and perhaps such violent medicine for its healing. Oh, cries one, if I were only in a different situation, how easy it would be to live near to God! Ah, cries another, if I were in the place of this or that happy individual, how easy it would be to adorn my profession! Every thing in my very circumstances would lead me to it! Oh, exclaims another, if I had the health of such an one, how easy it would be to rise above my difficulties and walk with God! And I, complains another, if my occupation did not so absorb me, could be as godly as I ought to be! Oh, if I were in the place of my minister, how holy I would become!

Ah! I would, and I would, and I would, if it were so, and if it were so, and if it were only so! Here, dear friend, is the very plague of your own heart revealing itself. You are discontented with your situation. You are not submissive to the trials God has laid upon you. And, instead of seeking to be delivered from your heart-plague, you are only casting about to find some position, if possible, where it will not have occasion to vex you; where you suppose, in fact, that it will be easier, that it will cost less self-denial to serve Christ than it does now. But remember that you are not called to be holy in another's situation, but your own; and if you are not now faithful to God in the sphere in which he has placed you, you would not, probably, be any more faithful, let him place you where he might. For he that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in much; and he that is neglectful in that which is least, is neglectful also in much. And as to circumstances repressing the plague of your own heart, they would only change its exhibition a little. The plague is in your heart, and not in your circumstances. Prosperous circumstances might, it is true, hide that plague; in a different situation it might have been concealed from yourself, but would that be any gain? Would you really be any the better for that? The revelation of the evil might only be deferred till it should work your ruin. How much better it is to know it in season, and be humbled before God, though it be at the cost of ever so much suffering!

And remember that those whose happy lot you, under the influence of this envious plague in your own heart, deem so desirable, if they are really living near to God where they are, would also have been very holy in your situation. Take Mr. Wilberforce, for example, a Christian in a sphere of life in society in all respects desirable and delightful in regard to this world, and living in that sphere to the glory of his Saviour. Now you may perhaps think if you could only change situations with such a man, O how easy it would be to conquer the plague of your own heart; how little should you feel it, how easy it would be, in such a conspicuous situation, with all your wishes gratified, to shine to the glory of your Redeemer. You could do it, you think, and it would cost you no selfdenial at all. But in your present situation it is a hard thing to be a living Christian. Now remember that if a man like Mr. Wilberforce could change situations with you, he would be a very holy and happy man where you perhaps are vexed and discontented, and you, in his place, might be a very worldly and ambitious men, where he was humble and prayerful. Be assured, it is not place, nor opportunities, nor circumstances, that make character or minister grace, but it is rather character that makes circumstances, and grace that makes place.

So the next time you detect your heart, under the influence of the plague that is in it, saying to you like a concealed devil, O if I were in such or such a one's place, how much good I could do, or how holy a person I could become, just think of some eminent saint, and say, If that person were in my place, how much nearer he would live to God than I do, how many opportunities that I waste he would use for his Master's glory, how he would fill my little sphere, that now is so dark, with brightness and happiness! And you, if you will may do the same.

LECTURE X.

CHRISTIAN IN THE

VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH.

Sympathy with spiritual distresses.-The power of prayer.-Bunyan's own temptations depicted in Christian's distresses.-The similar experience of Job, and that of David. The breaking of the light. -Comparison of the experience of Christian with that of Christiana and Mercy in this Valley. The uses of trials.—Effect of the hiding of God's countenance from the soul.-Christian's meeting with Faithful.

WE are naturally less affected with sympathy for men's spiritual distresses, than we are for their temporal or bodily evils. The reason is to be found in our want of spiritual experience, and in the fact that we habitually look at, and are moved by, the things which are seen, and not the things which are unseen. We are creatures of sense, and therefore a great battle, when a kingdom is to be lost or won, affects us more deeply than the far more sublime and awful conflict, where the soul and the kingdom of heaven are to be lost or won for ever.

I have stood upon the sea-shore, in a dreadful storm, and have watched the perils of a noble frigate, about to be cast upon the rocks, holding by only her last anchor, plunging and pitching amidst mountainous breakers, as if she would shoot like a stone to the earth's centre. One after another I have watched her masts cut away, to see if that would not save her. The shore was lined with spectators, trembling, affrighted, weeping, unable to do any thing, yet full of anxiety and sympathy.

Now, the sight of an immortal soul in peril of its eternal interests, beset with enemies, engaged in a desperate conflict, with hell opening her mouth before, and fiends and temptations pressing after, is a much more sublime and awful spectacle. A spiritual bark in the tempest, on the ocean of life, struggling at midnight through furious gales and waves, that by the lightning flashes are seen every instant, ready to swallow her up, has nothing to compare with it in solemn interest. But of all those multitudes of intensely anxious spectators watching the frigate, on a rock-bound shore, ready to perish, there was scarcely here and there one, who could have been persuaded to look with the spiritual vision at spiritual realities, or to listen to the most vivid descriptions of the danger of the soul, amidst its struggle with its enemies: scarcely one, who would even understand the danger of the costly spiritual vessel about to be wrecked for eternity, and still less any who would sympathize with the distresses of such a soul.

And yet, for one spectator watching the ship in a storm on the Mediterranean, there were thousands tracing the course of such a soul as Bunyan's, out amidst the storms of sin and temptation, with fiends flying through the gloom, with fiery darts hurtling the air, with sails rent, and the sea making breach after breach over the vessel. Angels, that see from heaven to earth, are busy, though we are blind. Clouds of witnesses survey the course of the Pilgrim; and when he passes through a place like the Valley of the Shadow of Death, there are, we have reason to believe, more good angels than bad ones attending him, though he does not see them, by reason of the darkness. If he has not earthly sympathy, he has heavenly; and all the earthly sympathy he does get is heavenly, for it comes from God's own Spirit in the soul. They that have been new-born, understand his terrors: they know that there is nothing to be compared with the peril of the soul beset by its great Adversary on the way to Heaven; nor any anguish to be

mentioned along with that which is occasioned in the soul by the hiding of God's counte nance. "When he giveth quietness, who then can make trouble? And when he hideth his face, who then can behold him? Whether it be done against a nation, or against a man only!"

"Herein," says an excellent old writer, discoursing on the case of a child of light walking in darkness, "believers wrestle not alone with flesh and blood, and the darkness thereof, but do farther conflict also with those spiritual wickednesses, the Princes of Darkness, about their interest in heavenly privileges, even with Satan and his angels, whom the Apostle compares to a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. And like as when God makes the natural darkness, and it is night, then the young lions creep forth, and roar after their prey, as the psalmist says, so do these roaring lions, now when God hath withdrawn the light of his countenance, and night comes on, and these damps and fogs of jealousies and guilt begin to arise out of a man's own heart, then come these forth and say, as David's enemies said in his distress, 'Come, let us now take him, for God hath forsaken him, let us now devour him, and swallow him up with darkness and despair.' And as God says of those enemies of his church, I was but a little displeased, and they helped forward the affliction;' so, when God is angry with his child, and but a little doth hide his face for a moment, yet Satan watcheth that hour of darkness, as Christ calls it, and joins his power of darkness to this our natural darkness, to cause, if possible, blackness of darkness, even utter despair, in us.

It is much such a picture as this, that Bunyan, our great master of spiritual allegory, hath set forth in such glowing colours, in the passage of his Christian through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. It is night; night in Christian's soul, and therefore night in this Valley. He is walking in the path of duty, and no forebodings of evil, though he had them abundantly, can turn him back; and yet, it is night in him, and night around him. Gloomy dark mountains shut in the horizon; the chill air penetrates his soul with images of the storm before it breaks on him; the path is exceedingly narrow, and on either side there are terrible pitfalls and quagmires, which must needs prove fatal to any that fall therein. What can Christian do? He is plainly in the case represented in the prophet Isaiah, being here, as I said, in the way of duty, and in the path direct to the Celestial City. "Who is among you that feareth the Lord, that walketh in darkness and hath no light? Let him trust in the name of the Lord, and stay upon his God." There is but one thing for him to do, and that is, to grope his way forward with fear and trembling, remembering that God can, if he will, save him even here; and that, even if he were in kings' palaces, and God would not save him, he would be no better off than in the midst of that Valley. Besides, should a man whom God had delivered from the hand of Apollyon, be afraid of any of the fiends of darkness, or fear to trust God's mercy in the midst of them?

There are Christians, who, as Bunyan says, are strangers to much combat with the devil; and such cannot minister help to those who come, as Christian did, under his assaults. No man is introduced to the aid of Christian in all these severe conflicts; all the help he finds is in God only; direct to Christ he must go, for there is no other helper. This was Bunyan's own experience. While himself under the assaults of Satan, in the midst of this Valley of the Shadow of Death, he did at one time venture to break his mind to an ancient Christian. This was a good man, but not one of deep experience, and evidently unable to enter into Bunyan's difficulties, or to understand his state of mind. Bunyan told this man that one of his dreadful fears was that he had sinned the sin against the Holy Ghost; and the man answered him that he thought so too! This was indeed but cold comfort, and the man that could administer it must have had a most narrow mind, as well as an insensible, unsympathizing heart; but you often meet with this want of tenderness among certain spiritual comforters, who take severity and want of feeling to be marks of faithfulness.

Poor Bunyan was forced again from man to God.. "Wherefore I went to God again as well as I could, for mercy still. Now also did the Tempter begin to mock me in my misery," and under this mockery, even the free, full, and gracious promises of the Gospel were as a torment to Bunyan, for the Tempter suggested that they were not for him, because he had sinned against and provoked the Mediator through whom they were given, and also that his sins were not among the number of those for which the Lord Jesus died upon the cross. He was as if racked upon the wheel; he was tossed to and fro like the locust, and driven from trouble to sorrow. Every part of the Word of God seemed