and example the young lady had early come to a quite extraordinary pitch of good breeding; and now that she was a married woman, she and her husband had, so their biographer tells us, two firm points of family religion in which they were always agreed and according to which they brought up all their children, namely, never to strive too much against wind and tide, and always to watch when Religion was walking on the sunny side of the street in his silver slippers, and then at once to cross over and take his arm.  But abundantly amusing and entertaining as John Bunyan is at the expense of By-ends and his family and friends, he has far other aims in view than the amusement and entertainment of his readers.  Bunyan uses all his great gifts of insight and sense and humour and scorn so as to mark unmistakably the road and to guide the progress of his reader’s soul to God, his chiefest end and his everlasting portion.

It was no small part of our Lord’s life of humiliation on the earth,—­much more so than His being born in a low condition and being made under the law,—­to have to go about all His days among men, knowing in every case and on every occasion what was in man.  It was a real humiliation to our Lord to see those watermen of the sea of Tiberias sweating at their oars as they rowed round and round the lake after Him; and His humiliation came still more home to Him as often as He saw His own disciples disputing and pressing who should get closest to Him while for a short season He walked in the sunshine; just as it was His estate of exaltation already begun, when He could enter into Himself and see to the bottom of His own heart, till He was able to say that it was His very meat and drink to do His father’s will, and to finish the work His Father had given Him to do.  The men of Capernaum went out after our Lord in their boats because they had eaten of the multiplied loaves and hoped to do so again.  Zebedee’s children had forsaken all and followed our Lord, because they counted to sit the one on His right hand and the other on His left hand in His soon-coming kingdom.  The pain and the shame all that cost our Lord, we can only remotely imagine.  But as for Himself, our Lord never once had to blush in secret at His own motives.  He never once had to hang down His head at the discovery of His own selfish aims and by-ends.  Happy man!  The thought of what He should eat or what He should drink or wherewithal He should be clothed never troubled His head.  The thought of success, as His poor-spirited disciples counted success, the thought of honour and power and praise, never once rose in His heart.  All these things, and all things like them, had no attraction for Him; they awoke nothing but indifference and contempt in him.  But to please His Father and to hear from time to time His Father’s voice saying that He was well pleased with His beloved Son,—­that was better than life to our Lord.  To find out and follow every new day His Father’s mind and