lity will do it himself, or it can
be done equally well by his pretty young son, Mr. Civility.

The way to a better life does not lie in a change of outward action,
but in a changed heart. Legality soon passes into civility, according
to the saying that vice loses half its evil when it loses its
grossness. Bunyan would have said that the poison was the more deadly
from being concealed. Christian after a near escape is set straight
again. He is admitted into the wicket-gate and is directed how he is
to go forward. He asks if he may not lose his way. He is answered Yes,
'There are many ways (that) butt down on this and they are crooked and
wide. But thus thou mayest know the right from the wrong, that only
being straight and narrow.'

Good people often suppose that when a man is once 'converted,' as they
call it, and has entered on a religious life, he will find everything
made easy. He has turned to Christ, and in Christ he will find rest
and pleasantness. The path of duty is unfortunately not strewed with
flowers at all. The primrose road leads to the other place. As on all
other journeys, to persevere is the difficulty. The pilgrim's feet
grow sorer the longer he walks. His lower nature follows him like a
shadow watching opportunities to trip him up, and ever appearing in
some new disguise. In the way of comfort he is allowed only certain
resting places, quiet intervals of peace when temptation is absent,
and the mind can gather strength and encouragement from a sense of the
progress which it has made.

The first of these resting places at which Christian arrives is the
'Interpreter's House.' This means, I conceive, that he arrives at a
right understanding of the objects of human desire as they really are.
He learns to distinguish there between passion and patience, passion
which demands immediate gratification, and patience which can wait and
hope. He sees the action of grace on the heart, and sees the Devil
labouring to put it out. He sees the man in the iron cage who was once
a flourishing professor, but had been tempted away by pleasure and had
sinned against light. He hears a dream too--one of Bunyan's own early
dreams, but related as by another person. The Pilgrim himself was
beyond the reach of such uneasy visions. But it shows how profoundly
the terrible side of Christianity had seized on Bunyan's imagination
and how little he was able to forget it.

'This night as I was in my sleep I dreamed, and behold th