,
and would have taken his judges and would have said to them, with some
scorn--Go to, and pass the time of your sojourning here with something of
the same silence and the same fear! Christian's excuse for falling into
the Slough was that fear so followed him that he fled the next way, and
so fell in. But Mr. Fearing had no such fear behind him in his city as
Christian had in his. All Mr. Fearing's fears were within himself. If
you can take up the distinction between actual and indwelling sin,
between guilt and corruption, you have already in that the whole key to
Mr. Fearing. He was blamed and counselled and corrected and pitied and
patronised by every morning-cloud and early-dew neophyte, while all the
time he lived far down from the strife of tongues where the root of the
matter strikes its deep roots still deeper every day. "It took him a
whole month," tells Greatheart, "to face the Slough. But he would not go
back neither. Till, one sunshiny morning, nobody ever knew how, he
ventured, and so got over. But the fact of the matter is," said the
shrewd-headed guide, "Mr. Fearing had, I think, a slough of despond in
his own mind; and a slough that he carried everywhere with him." Yes,
that was it. Greatheart in that has hit the nail on the head. With one
happy stroke he has given us the whole secret of poor Mr. Fearing's life-
long trouble. Just so; it was the slough in himself that so kept poor
Mr. Fearing back. This poor pilgrim, who had so little to fear in his
past life, had yet so much scum and filth, spume and mire in his present
heart, that how to get on the other side of that cost him not a month's
roaring only, but all the months and all the years till he went over the
River not much above wet-shod. And, till then, not twenty million cart-
loads of wholesome instructions, nor any number of good and substantial
steps, would lift poor Mr. Fearing over the ditch that ran so deep and so
foul continually within himself. "Yes, he had, I think, a slough of
despond in his mind, a slough that he carried everywhere with him, or
else he never could have been the man he was." I, for one, thank the
great-hearted guide for that fine sentence.

2. It was a sight to see poor Mr. Fearing at the wicket gate. "Knock,
and it shall be opened unto you." He read the inscription over the gate
a thousand times, but every time he read it his slough-filled heart said
to him, Yes, but that is not for such as you. Pilgr