e His true saints. 'Would to God I were back in my pulpit but
for one Sabbath,' said a dying minister in Aberdeen. 'What would you
do?' asked a brother minister at his bedside. 'I would preach to the
people the difficulty of salvation,' he said. All which things are told,
not for purposes of debate or defiance, but to comfort and instruct God's
true people who are finding salvation far more difficult than anybody had
ever told them it would be. Comfort My people, saith your God. Speak
comfortably to My people. Come, said Goodwill, and I will teach thee
about the way thou must go. Look before thee, dost thou see that narrow
way? That is the way thou must go. And then thou mayest always
distinguish the right way from the wrong. The wrong is crooked and wide,
and the right is straight as a rule can make it,--straight and narrow.

Goodwill said all that in order to direct and to comfort the pilgrim; but
that was not all that this good man said with that end. For, when
Christian asked him if he could not help him off with his burden that was
upon his back, he told him: 'As to thy burden, be content to bear it
until thou comest to the place of deliverance, for there it will fall
from thy back of itself.' Get you into the straight and narrow way, says
Goodwill, with his much experience of the ways and fortunes of true
pilgrims; get you sure into the right way, and leave your burden to God.
He appoints the place of deliverance, and it lies before thee. The place
of thy deliverance cannot be behind thee, and it is not in my house, else
thy burden would have been already off. But it is before thee. Be
earnest, therefore, in the way. Look not behind thee. Go not into any
crooked way; and one day, before you know, and when you are not pulling
at it, your burden will fall off of itself. Be content to bear it till
then, says bold and honest Goodwill, speaking so true to pilgrim
experience. Yes; be content, O ye people of God, crying with this
pilgrim for release from your burden of guilt, and no less those of you
who are calling with Paul for release from the still more bitter and
crushing burden made up of combined guilt and corruption. Be content
till the place and the time of deliverance; nay, even under your burden
and your bonds be glad, as Paul was, and go up the narrow way, still
chanting to yourself, I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. It is
only becoming that a great sinner should tarry the Lord's