ions you speak of
should pull me to pieces. I, for one, shall never go back. To go back
is nothing but death; to go forward is fear of death and everlasting life
beyond it. I will yet go forward.' So Mistrust and Timorous ran down
the hill, and Christian went on his way. George Offor says, in his notes
on this passage, that civil despotism and ecclesiastical tyranny so
terrified many young converts in John Bunyan's day, that multitudes
turned back like Mistrust and Timorous; while at the same time, many like
Bunyan himself went forward and for a time fell into the lion's mouth.
Civil despotism and ecclesiastical tyranny do not stand in our way as
they stood in Bunyan's way--at least, not in the same shape: but every
age has its own lions, and every Christian man has his own lions that
neither civil despots nor ecclesiastical tyrants know anything about.

Now, who or what is the lion in your way? Who or what is it that fills
you with such timorousness and mistrust, that you are almost turning back
from the way to life altogether? The fiercest of all our lions is our
own sin. When a man's own sin not only finds him out and comes roaring
after him, but when it dashes past him and gets into the woods and
thickets before him, and stands pawing and foaming on the side of his
way, that is a trial of faith and love and trust indeed. Sometimes a
man's past sins will fill all his future life with sleepless
apprehensions. He is never sure at what turn in his upward way he may
not suddenly run against some of them standing ready to rush out upon
him. And it needs no little quiet trust and humble-minded resignation to
carry a man through this slough and that bottom, up this hill and down
that valley, all the time with his life in his hand; and yet at every
turn, at every rumour that there are lions in the way, to say, Come lion,
come lamb, come death, come life, I must venture, I will yet go forward.
As Job also, that wonderful saint of God, said, 'Hold your peace, let me
alone that I may speak, and let come on me what will. Wherefore do I
take my flesh in my teeth and put my life in my hand? Though He slay me,
yet will I trust in Him. He also shall be my salvation; for an hypocrite
shall not come before Him.'

One false step, one stumble in life, one error in judgment, one outbreak
of an unbridled temperament, one small sin, if it is even so much as a
sin, of ignorance or of infirmity, will sometimes not only greatly