6.  Did you ever know a family, or, rather, the relics of a family, where there was just a decrepit old father and a lone daughter left to nurse him through his second childhood?  All his other children are either married or dead; but both marriage and death have spared Miss Much-afraid to watch over the dotage-days of Mr. Despondency; till one summer afternoon the old man fell asleep in his chair to waken where old men are for ever young.  And in a day or two there were two new graves side by side in the old churchyard.  Even death could not divide this old father and his trusty child.  And so when the time was come for them to depart, they went down together to the brink of the river.  The last words of Mr. Despondency were, “Farewell night and welcome day.”  His daughter went through the river singing, but none could understand what it was she said.  Fore-fancy that, all you godly old men, with a daughter who has made a husband and children to herself of her old father.

7.  As I hear Old Honest shouting “Grace reigns!” I always remember what a lady told me about a saying of her poor Irish scullery-girl.  The mistress and the servant were reading George Eliot’s Life together in the kitchen, and when they came to her deathbed, on the pillow of which Thomas A’Kempis lay open, “Mem,” said the girl, “I used to read that old book in the convent; but it is a better book to live upon than to die upon.”  Now, that was exactly Old Honest’s mind.  He lived upon one book, and then he died upon another.  He lived according to the commandments of God, but he died according to the comforts of the Gospel.  Now, we read in his history how that the river at that time overflowed its banks in some places.  But Mr. Honest had in his lifetime spoken to one Good-conscience to meet him at the river, the which he also did, and lent him his hand, and so helped him over.  All the same, the last words of Mr. Honest still were, “Grace reigns!” And so he left the world.  Fore-fancy whether or no you are making, as one has said, “an assignation with terror” at that same river-side.

8.  Standfast was the last of the pilgrims to go over the river.  Standfast was left longest on this side the river because his Master could best trust him here.  His Master had to take away many of His other servants from the evil to come, but He could trust Standfast.  You can safely trust a man who takes to his knees in every hour of temptation, as Standfast was wont to do.  “This river,” he said, “has been a terror to many.  Yea, the thoughts of it have often frighted me also.  The waters, indeed, are to the palate bitter, and to the stomach cold; yet the thoughts of what I am going to, and of the conduct that awaits me on the other side, doth lie as a glowing coal at my heart.  I see myself now at the end of my journey, and my toilsome days are all ended.  I am going now to see that head that was crowned with thorns, and that face that was spit upon for me.  His name