turning regard and love to turn to the end of his
history, where we read: "After this Mr. Feeble-mind had tidings brought
him that the post sounded his horn at his chamber door. Then he came in
and told him, saying, I am come to tell thee that thy Master hath need of
thee, and that in very little time thou must behold His face in
brightness. Then Mr. Feeble-mind called for his friends, and told them
what errand had been brought to him, and what token he had received of
the truth of the message. As for my feeble mind he said, that I shall
leave behind me, for I shall have no need of that in the place whither I
go. Nor is it worth bestowing upon the poorest pilgrim. Wherefore, when
I am gone, I desire that you would bury it in a dung-hill. This done,
and the day being come in which he was about to depart, he entered the
river as the rest. His last words were, Hold out, faith and patience! So
he went over to the other side."

GREAT-HEART

"--when thou shalt enlarge my heart."--_David_.

On Sabbath, the 12th December 1886, I heard the late Canon Liddon preach
a sermon in St. Paul's Cathedral, in which he classed Oliver Cromwell
with Alexander the Sixth and with Richard the Third. I had taken my
estimate of the great Protector's character largely from Carlyle's famous
book, and you can judge with what feelings I heard the canon's
comparison. And, besides, I had been wont to think of the Protector as
having entered largely into John Bunyan's portrait of Greatheart, the
pilgrim guide. And the researches and the judgments of Dr. Gardiner have
only gone to convince me, the eloquent canon notwithstanding, that Bunyan
could not have chosen a better contemporary groundwork for his Greatheart
than just the great Puritan soldier. Cromwell's "mental struggles before
his conversion," his life-long "searchings of heart," his "utter absence
of vindictiveness," his unequalled capacity for "seeing into the heart of
a situation," and his own "all-embracing hospitality of heart"--all have
gone to reassure me that my first guess as to Bunyan's employment of the
Protector's matchless personality and services had not been so far
astray. And the oftener I read the noble history of Greatheart, the
better I seem to hear, beating behind his fine figure, by far the
greatest heart that ever ruled over the realm of England.

1. The first time that we catch a glimpse of Greatheart's weather-beaten
and sword-seamed face is wh