subjects set for a sinner's
examination on earth or in heaven. For to know myself, and especially,
as the wise man says, to know the plague of my own heart, is the true and
the only key to all other true knowledge: God and man; the Redeemer and
the devil; heaven and hell; faith, hope, and charity; unbelief, despair,
and malignity, and all things of that kind else, all knowledge will come
to that man who knows himself, and to that man alone, and to that man in
the exact measure in which he does really know himself. Listen again to
this slough-stained, sin-burdened, sighing and sobbing pilgrim, who, in
spite of all these things--nay, in virtue of all these things--is as sure
of heaven and of the far end of heaven as if he were already enthroned
there. 'Wearisomeness,' he protests, 'painfulness, hunger, perils,
nakedness, sword, lions, dragons, darkness, death, and what not--why,
sir, this burden on my back is far more terrible to me than all these
things which you have mentioned; nay, methinks I care not what I meet
with in the way, so be I can also meet with deliverance from my burden.'
O God! let this same mind be found in me and in all the men and women for
whose souls I shall have to answer at the day of judgment, and I shall be
content and safe before Thee.

That strong outburst from this so forfoughten man for a moment quite
overawed Worldly-Wiseman. He could not reply to an earnestness like
this. He did not understand it, and could not account for it. The only
thing he ever was in such earnestness as that about was his success in
business and his title that he and his wife were scheming for. But
still, though silenced by this unaccountable outburst of our pilgrim,
Worldly-Wiseman's enmity against the upward way, and especially against
all the men and all the books that made pilgrims take to that way, was
not silenced. 'How camest thou by thy burden at first?' By reading this
Book in my hand.' Worldly-Wiseman did not fall foul of the Book indeed,
but he fell all the more foul of those who meddled with matters they had
not a head for. 'Leave these high and deep things for the ministers who
are paid to understand and explain them, and attend to matters more
within thy scope.' And then he went on to tell of a far better way to
get rid of the burden that meddlesome men brought on themselves by
reading that book too much--a far better and swifter way than attempting
the wicket-gate. 'Thou wilt never be settle