king
of.

5. "The further I go the more danger I meet with," said old Timorous,
the father, to Christian, when Christian asked him on the Hill Difficulty
why he was running the wrong way. "I, too, was going to the City of
Zion," he said; "but the further on I go the more danger I meet with."
And, in saying that, the old runaway gave our persevering pilgrim
something to think about for all his days. For, again and again, and
times without number, Christian would have gone back too if only he had
known where to go. Go on, therefore, he must. To go back to him was
simply impossible. Every day he lived he felt the bitter truth of what
that old apostate had so unwittingly said. But, with all that he kept
himself in his onward way till, dangers and difficulties, death and hell
and all, he came to the blessed end of it. And that same has been the
universal experience of all the true and out-and-out saints of God in all
time. If poor old Timorous had only known it, if he had only had some
one beside him to remind him of it, the very thing that so fatally turned
him back was the best proof possible that he was on the right and the
only right way; ay, and fast coming, poor old castaway, to the very city
he had at one time set out to seek. Now, it is only too likely that
there are some of my hearers at this with it to-night, that they are on
the point of giving up the life of faith, and hope, and love, and holy
living; because the deeper they carry that life into their own hearts the
more impossible they find it to live that life there. The more they aim
their hearts at God's law the more they despair of ever coming within
sight of it. My supremely miserable brother! if this is any consolation
to you, if you can take any crumb of consolation out of it, let this be
told you, that, as a matter of fact, all truly holy men have in their
heart of hearts had your very experience. That is no strange and unheard-
of thing which is passing within you. And, indeed, if you could but
believe it, that is one of the surest signs and seals of a true and
genuine child of God. Dante, one of the bravest, but hardest bestead of
God's saints, was, just like you, well-nigh giving up the mountain
altogether when his Greatheart, who was always at his side, divining what
was going on within him, said to him--

"Those scars
That when they pain thee most then kindliest heal."

"The more I do," complained one of Thomas Shepard's best