hast bought me. No marvel that this made the water to stand in my
husband's eyes, and that it made him trudge so nimbly on. O Mercy, that
thy father and thy mother were here; yea, and Mrs. Timorous too! Nay, I
wish now with all my heart that here was Madam Wanton too. Surely,
surely their hearts would be affected here!" Promise me to read at home
Greatheart's discourse on the Righteousness of Christ, and you will thank
me for having exacted the promise.

The incongruity of a soldier handling such questions, and especially in
such a style, has stumbled some of John Bunyan's fault-finding readers.
The same incongruity stumbled "the Honourable Colonel Hacker, at Peebles
or elsewhere," to whom Cromwell sent these from Edinburgh on the 25th
December 1650--"But indeed I was not satisfied with your last speech to
me about Empson, that he was a better preacher than fighter or soldier--or
words to that effect. Truly, I think that he that prays and preaches
best will fight best. I know nothing that will give like courage and
confidence as the knowledge of God in Christ will; and I bless God to see
any in this army able and willing to impart the knowledge they have for
the good of others. I pray you receive Captain Empson lovingly: I dare
assure you he is a good man and a good officer; I would we had no worse."

4. "Will you not go in and stay till morning?" said the porter to
Greatheart, at the gate of the House Beautiful. "No," said the guide; "I
will return to my lord to-night." "O sir!" cried Christiana and Mercy,
"we know not how to be willing you should leave us in our pilgrimage. Oh
that we might have your company till our journey's end." Then said
James, the youngest of the boys, "Pray be persuaded to go with us and
help us, because we are so weak and the way so dangerous as it is." "I
am at my lord's commandment," said Greatheart. "If he shall allow me to
be your guide quite through, I shall willingly wait upon you. But here
you failed at first; for when he bid me come thus far with you, then you
should have begged me of him to have gone quite through with you, and he
would have granted your request. However, at present, I must withdraw,
and so, good Christiana, Mercy, and my brave children, adieu!" "Help
lost for want of asking for," is our author's condemnatory comment on the
margin at this point in the history. And there is not a single page in
my history, or in yours, my brethren, on which the same