th much more anxiety what would be felt even when they restrained
themselves from saying it by timid and cautious and scrupulous people. I
had the full fear of all such judges before my eyes; but, somehow,
something kept this before my eyes also, that, as Evangelist met the two
pilgrims just as they were entering the fair, so, for anything I knew to
the contrary, it might be of God, that I also, in my own way, should warn
my people of the real and special danger that their souls will be in for
the next fortnight. And as I thought of it a procession of people passed
before me all bearing to this day the stains and scars they had taken on
their hearts and their lives and their characters at former general
elections. And, like Evangelist, I felt a divine desire taking
possession of me to do all I could to pull my people out of gunshot of
the devil at this election. And, then, when I read again how both the
pilgrims thanked Evangelist for his exhortation, and told him withal that
they would have him speak further to them about the dangers of the way, I
said at last to myself, that the thanks of one true Christian saved in
anything and in any measure from the gun of the devil are far more to be
attended to by a minister than the blame and the neglect of a hundred who
do not know their hour of temptation and will not be told it. And so I
took my pen and set down some similarities between Vanity Fair and the
approaching election, with some lessons to those who are not altogether
beyond being taught.

Well, then, in the first place, the only way to the Celestial City ran
through Vanity Fair; by no possibility could the advancing pilgrims
escape the temptations and the dangers of the fatal fair. He that will
go to the Celestial City and yet not go through Vanity Fair must needs go
out of the world. And so it is with the temptations and trials of the
next ten days. We cannot get past them. They are laid down right across
our way. And to many men now in this house the next ten days will be a
time of simply terrible temptation. If I had been quite sure that all my
people saw that and felt that, I would not have introduced here to-night
what some of them, judging too hastily, will certainly call this so
secular and unseemly subject. But I am so afraid that many not untrue,
and in other things most earnest men amongst us, do not yet know
sufficiently the weakness and the evil of their own hearts, that I wish
much, if they