with them to go home again,
and to refuse to become good pilgrims." But it was not so much what she
said herself that brought out the depth and tenderness of Christiana's
heart, it was rather the way her heart loosened other people's tongues.
You must all have felt how some people's presence straitens your heart
and sews up your mouth. While there are other people, again, whose
simple presence unseals your heart and makes you eloquent. We ministers
keenly feel that both in our public and in our private ministrations.
There are people in whose hard and chilling presence we cannot even say
grace as we should say it. Whereas, we all know other people, people of
a heart, that is, whose presence somehow so touches our lips that we
always when near them rise far above ourselves. Christiana did not speak
much to her guides and instructors and companions, but they always spoke
their best to her, and it was her heart that did it.

3. And then a widow indeed is just a true and genuine widow; a widow not
in her name and in her weeds only, but still more in her deep heart, in
her whole life, and in her garnered experience. "Honour widows that are
widows indeed. Now, she that is a widow indeed and desolate, trusteth in
God, and continueth in supplications and in prayers night and day. Well
reported of for good works; if she have brought up children, if she have
lodged strangers, if she have washed the saints' feet, if she have
relieved the afflicted, if she have diligently followed every good work."
These are the true marks and seals and occupations of a widow indeed. And
if she has had unparalleled trials and irreparable losses, she has her
corresponding consolations and compensations. For she has a freedom to
go about and do good, a liberty and an experience that neither the
unmarried maiden nor the married wife can possibly have. She can do
multitudes of things that in the nature of things neither of them can
attempt to do. Things that would be both unseemly and impossible for
other women to say or to do are both perfectly seemly and wholly open for
her to say and to do. Her widowhood is a sacred shield to her. Her
sorrow is a crown of honour and a sceptre of authority to her. She is
consulted by the young and the inexperienced, by the forsaken and by the
forlorn, as no other human being ever is. She has come through this
life, and by a long experience she knows this world and the hearts that
fill it and make it