that if there be any danger I may be first therein; because by my means we are both gone out of the way.

No, said Hopeful, you shall not go first; for your mind being troubled may lead you out of the way again. Then, for their encouragement, they heard the voice of one saying, 'Let thine heart* be towards the highway; even the way that thou wentest:

Let thine'-When such as have turned aside are called upon in Scripture to return to God and his ways, the exhortation implies a promise of acceptance to all who comply with it, and may be considered as immediately addressed to every one with whose character and situation it corresponds. It might be thought indeed, that an experienced believer, when convinced of any sin, would find little difficulty in returning to his duty, and recovering his peace. But experience inculcates a very different instruction: a deliberate transgression, however trivial it might seem at the moment, appears upon the retrospect to be an act of most ungrateful and aggravated rebellion; so that it brings such darkness upon the soul, and guilt on the conscience, as frequently causes a man to suspect that his experiences have been a delusion. And, when he would attempt to set out anew, it occurs to him, that if all his past endeavours and expectations, for many years, have been frustrated, he can entertain little hope of better success hereafter; as he knows not how to use other means, or greater earnestness, than he hath already employed to no purpose. Nor will Satan ever fail, in these circamstances, to pour in such suggestions as may overwhelm the soul with an apprehension that the case is hopeless, and God inexorable. The believer will not, indeed, be prevailed upon by these discouragements wholly to neglect all attempts to recover his ground; but he will often resemble a man who is groping in the dark and cannot find his way, or who is passing through a deep and rapid stream, and struggling hard to keep his head above water. Thus the desire of present relief from intolerable distress will occupy his thoughts, and expose him to the danger of quieting his conscience in an unauthorized manner, by some erroneous opinion or con clusion.

turn aside' (Jer. xxxi. 21). But by this time the waters were greatly risen, by reason of which the way of going back was very dangerous. (Then I thought, that it is easier going out of the way when we were in, than going in when we are out). Yet they adventured to go back; but it was so dark, and the flood was so high, that in their going back they had like to have been drowned nine or ten times.

Neither could they, with all the skill they had, get again to the stile that night. Wherefore at last, lighting under a little shelter,*

*Shelter-When David had fallen in the depths of sin and distress, he cried most earnestly to the Lord (I's. cxxx); and Jonah did the same in the fish's belly. Extraordinary cases require singular diligence; even as greater exertion is necessary to get out of a pit than to walk upon level ground. When believers, therefore, have brought themselves, by transgression, into great terror and anguish of conscience, it is foolish to expect that God will restore to them the joy of his salvation,' till they have made the most unreserved confession of their guilt, humbly deprecated his deserved wrath in persevering prayer, and used peculiar diligence in every thing that accompanies repentance and faith in Christ, and ends to greater watchfulness, circumspection, and selfdenial. But they often seek relief in a more compendious way; and, as they do not wholly omit their customary religious exercises, or vindicate and repeat their transgressions, they endeavour to quiet themselves by general notions of God's mercy through Jesus Christ, and the security of the new covenant; and the storm in their consciences subsiding, they find a little shelter,' and wait for a more convenient opportunity' of recovering their former life and vigour in re. ligion. Indeed, the very circumstances which should excite us to peculiar earnestness, tend, through the depravity of our nature, to blind and stupify the heart: Peter and the other disciples slept for sorrow,' when they were more especially required to watch and pray, that they might not enter into temptation. Such repeated sins and inistakes bring believ VOL. I

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they sat down there till the daybreak ; but being weary they fell asleep. Now there was,

ers into deep distress. Growing more and more heartless in religion, and insensible in a most perilons situation, they are led habitually to infer that they are hypocrites; that the encouragements of Scripture belong not to them; that prayer itself will be of no use to them; and, when they are at length brought to reflection, they are taken prisoners by Despair, and shut up in Doubting castle. This case should be carefully distinguished from Christian's terrors in the city of Destruction, which induced him to flee from the wrath to come;' from the slough of Despond, into which he fell when diligently seeking salvation; from the burthen he carried to the cross; from his conflict with Apollyon, and his troubles in the valley of the Shadow of death; and even from the terrors that seized him and Hopeful in By-path-meadow, which would have speedily terminated if they had not slept on forbidden ground, and stopped short of the refuge the Lord hath provided. Despair, like a tremendous giant, will at last seize on the souls of all unbelievers; and when Christians conclude, from some aggravated and pertinacious misconduct, that they belong to that company, even their acquaintance with the Scripture will expose them to be taken captive by him in this world. They do not indeed fall and perish with Vain-confidence; but for a season they find it impossible to rise superior to prevailing gloomy doubts bordering on despair, or to obtain the least comfortable hope of deliverance, or encouragement to use the proper means of seeking it. Whenever we deliberately quit the plain path of duty, to avoid hardship and self-denial, we trespass on giant Despair's ground; and are never out of his reach till renewed exercises of deep repentance, and faith in Christ, producing unreserved obedience, especially in that instance where Lefore we refused it, have set our feet in the highway we had forsaken. This we cannot attain to without the special grace of God, which he may not see good immediately to communicate: in the mean time every effort must Be Accompanied with discouragement and distress; but if we yield to another temptation, and, instead of persevering, amidst our anxious fears, to cry to him for help, and wait his time of shewing mercy, endeavour to bolster up some false condence, and take shelter in a refuge of lies, the event will be such as is here described. It will be in vain, after such perverseness, to pretend that we have inadvertently mis

not far from the place where they lay, a cas tle, called Doubting Castle, the owner whereof was giant Despair; and it was in his grounds they were now sleeping. Wherefore he getting up in the morning early, and walking up and down in his fields, caught Christian and Hopeful asleep in his grounds. Then with a grim and surly voice he bid them awake, and asked them whence they were, and what they did in his grounds? They told him they were pilgrims, and that they had lost their way. Then said the giant, You have this night trespassed on me by trampling in, and lying on, my ground, and therefore you must go along with me. So they were forced to go, because he was stronger than they. They also had but little to say, for they knew themselves in a fault The giant, therefore, drove them before him, and put them into his castle in a very dark dungeon, nasty, and stinking to the spirits of these two men. Here then they lay, from taken our way; our own hearts will condemn us;' how then can we have confidence in God, who is greater thar our hearts and knoweth all things? The grim giant will prove too strong for us, and shut us up in his noisome dungeon, and the recollection of our former hopes and comforts will only serve to aggravate our woe. These lines are here

inserted

The pilgrims now, to gratify the flesh,

Will seek its ease; but, oh! how they afresh
Do thereby plunge themselves new griefs into !
Who seek to please the flesh themselves undo.'

Here then-Perhaps this exact time was mentioned under the idea, that it was as long as life can generally be

Wednesday morning, till Saturday night, without one bit of bread, or drop of drink, or light, or any to ask how they did : they were, therefore, here in evil case, and were far from friends and acquaintance (Ps. lxxxviii. 8). Now in this place Christian had double sorrow, because it was through his unadvised counsel that they were brought into this distress.

Now giant Despair had a wife, and her name was Diffidence; so when he was gone

supported in the situation here described. The believer may be brought by wilful sin to such a condition, that, to his own apprehension, destruction is inevitable. If a man may sink so low as to have no light or comfort from God's word and Spirit, nothing to sustain his dying faith and hope, no help or pity from his brethren, but severe sensures or more painful suspicions; the horrors of an accusing conscience, the dread of God as an enemy, connected with sharp and multiplied corrections in his outward circumstances; as the price of the ease or indulgence obtained by some wilful transgression; who, that believes it, will take encouragement to sin from the doctrine of final perseverance? Would a man, for a trivial gain, leap down a precipice, even if he could be sure that he should escape with his life? No, the dread of the anguish of broken bones, and of being made a cripple to the end of his days, would effectually secure him from such a madness.

*Now giant-Despair seldom fully seizes any man in this world; and the strongest hold it can get of a true believer amounts only to a prevailing distrust of God's promises, with respect to his own case; for this is accompanied with some smail degree of latent hope, discoverable in its effects, though unperceived amidst the distressing feelings of the heart. Perhaps this was intended in the allegory by the circumstance of Despair's doing nothing to the pilgrims save at the instance of his wife Diffidence. Desponding fears, when they so prevail as to keep men from prayer, make way for tempta tions to suicide, as the only relief to their miseries; but when true faith is in the heart, however it may seem to be wholly out of exercise, the temptation will be evidently overcome, provided actual insanity do not intervene; and this is a