and insults and injuries that you spend all the rest of your life resenting and repaying.  And that is the reason also that so many of God’s best saints in other ages and other communions used to pursue evangelical humility and ascetic poverty and seclusion till they obliterated themselves out of all human remembrance, and buried themselves in retreats of silence and of prayer.  Yes, you are quite right.  A garment of sackcloth may cover an unsanctified heart; and the fathers of the desert did not all escape the depths of Satan and the plague of their own heart.  Quite true.  A contrite heart may be carried about an applauding city in a coach and six; and a crucified heart may be clothed in purple and fine linen, and may fare sumptuously every day.  A saint of God will sometimes sit on a throne with a more weaned mind than that with which Elijah or the Baptist will macerate themselves in the wilderness.  Every man who is really set on heaven must find his own way thither; and he who is really intent on his own way thither will neither have the time nor the heart to throw stones at his brother who thinks he has discovered his own best way.  All the pilgrims who got to the City at last did not get down Difficulty and through Humiliation so well as Mr. Fearing did; nor was it absolutely necessary that they should.  It was not to lay down an iron-fast rule for others, but it was only to amuse the way with his account of Mr. Fearing, that the guide went on to say:  “Yes, I think there was a kind of sympathy betwixt that valley and my man.  For I never saw him better in all his pilgrimage than when he was in that valley.  For here he would lie down, embrace the ground, and kiss the very flowers that grew in this valley.  He would now be up every morning by break of day, tracing and walking to and fro in that valley.”

6.  Now, do you think you could guess how Mr. Fearing conducted himself in Vanity Fair?  Your guess is important to us and to you to-night; for it will show whether or no John Bunyan and Mr. Greatheart have spent their strength for nought and in vain on you.  It will show whether or no you have got inside of Mr. Fearing with all that has been said; and thus, inside of yourself.  Guess, then.  How did Mr. Fearing do in Vanity Fair, do you think?  To give you a clue, recollect that he was the timidest of souls.  And remember how you have often been afraid to look at things in a shop window lest the shopkeeper should come out and hold you to the thing you were looking at.  Remember also that you are the life-long owners of some things just because they were thrown at your head.  Remember how you sauntered into a sale on one occasion, and, out of sheer idleness and pure fun, made a bid, and to your consternation the encumbrance was knocked down to your name; and it fills up your house to-day till you would give ten times its value to some one to take it away for ever out of your sight.  Well, what was it that those who were so shamelessly and so pesteringly cadging