it fell in, and I saw it no more.’  Turning again to the Grace Abounding, we read in the 115th paragraph:  ’I remember that one day as I was travelling into the country and musing on the wickedness and blasphemy of my heart, and considering of the enmity that was in me to God, that scripture came into my mind, He hath made peace by the blood of His Cross.  By which I was made to see both again and again and again that day that God and my soul were friends by that blood:  yea, I saw that the justice of God and my sinful soul could embrace and kiss each other through that blood.  That was a good day to me; I hope I shall not forget it.  I thought I could have spoken of His love and of His mercy to me that day to the very crows that sat upon the ploughed lands before me had they been capable to have understood me.  Wherefore I said in my soul with much gladness, Well, I would I had a pen and ink here and I would write this down before I go any farther, for surely I will not forget this forty years hence.’

From all this we learn that the way to the Celestial City lies within high and close fencing walls.  There is not room for many pilgrims to walk abreast in that way; indeed, there is seldom room for two.  There are some parts of the way where two or even three pilgrims can for a time walk and converse together, but for the most part the path is distressingly lonely.  The way is so fenced up also that a pilgrim cannot so much as look either to the right hand or the left.  Indeed, it is one of the laws of that road that no man is to attempt to look except straight on before him.  But then there is this compensation for the solitude and stringency of the way that the wall that so encloses it is Salvation.  And Salvation is such a wall that it is companionship and prospect enough of itself.  Dante saw a long reach of this same wall running round the bottom of the mount that cleanses him who climbs it,—­a long stretch of such sculptured beauty, that it arrested him and instructed him and delighted him beyond his power sufficiently to praise it.  And thus, that being so, burdened and bowed down to the earth as our pilgrim was, he was on the sure way, sooner or later, to deliverance.  Somewhere and sometime and somehow on that steep and high fenced way deliverance was sure to come.  And, then, as to the burdened man himself.  His name was once Graceless, but his name is Graceless no longer.  No graceless man runs long between these close and cramping-up walls; and, especially, no graceless man has that burden long on his back.  That is not Graceless any longer who is leaving the Interpreter’s House for the fenced way; that is Christian, and as long as he remains Christian, the closeness of the fence and the weight of his burden are a small matter.  But long-looked-for comes at last.  And so, still carrying his burden and keeping close within the fenced-up way, our pilgrim came at last to a cross.  And a perfect miracle immediately took place in that somewhat ascending ground.  For scarcely had Christian set his eyes on the cross, when, without his pulling at it, or pushing it, or even at that moment thinking of it, ere ever he was aware, he saw his burden begin to tumble, and so it continued to do till it fell fairly out of his sight into an open sepulchre.