lead in and that shall lead out Mansoul.  And at thy command shall all the rest of the captains be.’  My brethren, you will have the whole key to all that in yourselves if this same war has gone this length in you.  Faith, your faith in God, and in the word of God, will, as this inward war goes on, not only lead the van in your heart and in your life, but just because your faith so leads in all things, and is so fitted to lead in all things, it will at last be lifted up and set over your soul, and all the things of your soul, till nothing shall be done in any of the streets, or gates, or walls thereof that faith in God and in His word does not first allow and admit.  And then, when it has come to that within you, that is the best mind, that is the safest, the happiest, and the most heavenly mind that you can attain to in this present life; and when faith shall thus lead and rule over all things in thy soul, be thou always ready, for thy speedy translation to a still better life is just at the door.

2.  ’The second was that famous captain, Good-hope.  His were the blue colours.  His standard-bearer was Mr. Expectation, and for a scutcheon he had three golden anchors; and he had ten thousand men at his feet.’  The time was, my brethren, when all your hopes and mine were as yet anchored without the veil.  But all that is now changed.  We still hope, in a mild kind of way, for this thing and for that in this present life; but only in a mild kind of way.  It would not be right in us not to look forward, say, from spring-time to summer, and from summer to harvest.  If the husbandman had not hope in the former and in the latter rain he would not sow; and as it is with the husbandman so it is with us all:  so ought it to be, and so it must be.  But we say God willing! all the time that we plot and plan and hope.  And we say God willing! no longer with a sigh, but, now, always with a smile.  In His will is our tranquillity, we say, and we know that if it is not His will that this and that slightly anchored hope should be fulfilled, then that only means that all our hopes, to be called hopes, are soon to be realised.  Our green and salad days in the matter of hope are for ever past.  If we had it all absolutely secured to us that this world is still promising to its salad dupes, it would not come within a thousand miles of satisfying our hearts.  Whether the hopes of our hearts are to be fulfilled within the veil or no, that remains to be seen; but all the things without the veil taken together do not any longer even pretend to promise a hope to hearts like ours.  Our Forerunner has carried away our hearts with Him.  We have no heart left for any one but Him, or for anything without or within the veil that He is not and is not in.  And till that hope also has made us ashamed,—­till He and His promises have failed us like all the rest,—­we are going to anchor our hearts on that, and on that only, which we believe is with Him within the veil.