nd helped him over the river at last. In his own manly, hearty,
blunt, breezy, cheery, and genial way Old Honest is a pilgrim we could
ill have spared. Old Honest has a warm place all for himself in every
good and honest heart.

"Now, a little before the pilgrims stood an oak, and under it when they
came up to it they found an old pilgrim fast asleep; they knew that he
was a pilgrim by his clothes and his staff and his girdle. So the guide,
Mr. Greatheart, awaked him, and the old gentleman, as he lifted up his
eyes, cried out: What's the matter? Who are you? And what is your
business here? Come, man, said the guide, be not so hot; here is none
but friends! Yet the old man gets up and stands upon his guard, and will
know of them what they are." That weather-beaten oak-tree under which we
first meet with Old Honest is an excellent emblem of the man. When he
sat down to rest his old bones that day he did not look out for a bank of
soft moss or for a bed of fragrant roses; that knotted oak-tree alone had
power to draw down under its sturdy trunk this heart of human oak. It
was a sight to see those thin grey haffets making a soft pillow of that
jutting knee of gnarled and knotty oak, and with his well-worn
quarterstaff held close in a hand all wrinkled skin and scraggy bone. And
from that day till he waved his quarterstaff when half over the river and
shouted, Grace reigns! there is no pilgrim of them all that affords us
half the good humour, sagacity, continual entertainment, and brave
encouragement we enjoy through this same old Christian gentleman.

1. Now, let us try to learn two or three lessons to-night from Old
Honest, his history, his character, and his conversation. And, to begin
with, let all those attend to Old Honest who are slow in the uptake in
the things of religion. O fools and slow of heart! exclaimed our Lord at
the two travellers to Emmaus. And this was Old Honest to the letter when
he first entered on the pilgrimage life; he was slow as sloth itself in
the things of the soul. I have often wondered, said Greatheart, that any
should come from your place; for your town is worse than is the City of
Destruction itself. Yes, answered Honest, we lie more off from the sun,
and so are more cold and senseless. And his biographer here annotates on
the margin this reflection: "Stupefied ones are worse than merely
carnal." So they are; though it takes some insight to see that, and some
courage to ca