all his past life.  ‘Yes,’ he honestly and humbly said.  ’Yes, but greatly against my will:  especially my inward and sinful cogitations.’  At this Prudence looked on him with all her deep and soft eyes, for it was to this that she had been leading the conversation up all the time.  Prudence had a great look of satisfaction, mingled with love and pity, at the way the pilgrim said ‘especially my inward and sinful cogitations.’  Those who stood by and observed Prudence wondered at her delight in the sad discourse on which the pilgrim now entered.  But she had her own reasons for her delight in this particular kind of discourse, and it was seldom that she lighted on a pilgrim who both understood her questions and responded to them as did this man now sitting beside her.  Now, my brethren, all parable apart, is that your religious experience?  Are you full of shame and detestation at your inward cogitations?  Are you tormented, enslaved, and downright cursed with your own evil thoughts?  I do not ask whether or no you have such thoughts always within you.  I do not ask, because I know.  But I ask, because I would like to make sure that you know what, and the true nature of what, goes on incessantly in your mind and in your heart.  Do you, or do you not, spit out your most inward thoughts ten times a day like poison?  If you do, you are a truly religious man, and if you do not, you do not yet know the very ABC of true religion, and your dog has a better errand at the Lord’s table than you have.  And if your minister lets you sit down at the Lord’s table without holding from time to time some particular discourse with you about your sinful thoughts, he is deceiving and misleading you, besides laying up for himself an awakening at last to shame and everlasting contempt.  What a mill-stone his communion roll will be round such a minister’s neck!  And how his congregation will gnash their teeth at him when they see to what his miserable ministry has brought them!

Let a man examine himself, said Paul.  What about your inward and sinful cogitations? asked Prudence.  How long shall thy vain thoughts lodge within thee? demanded the bold prophet.  Now, my brethren, what have you to say to that particular accusation?  Do you know what vain thoughts are?  Are you at all aware what multitudes of such thoughts lodge within you?  Do they drive you every day to your knees, and do you blush with shame when you are alone before God at the fountain of folly that fills your mind and your heart continually?  The Apostle speaks of vain hopes that make us ashamed that we ever entertained them.  You have been often so ashamed, and yet do not such hopes still too easily arise in your heart?  What castles of idiotic folly you still build!  Were a sane man or a modest woman even to dream such dreams of folly overnight, they would blush and hide their heads all day at the thought.  Out of a word, out of a look, out of what was neither a word nor a look intended for you, what a world of vanity