It had been generally supposed that the house of that strange woman, whose house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death, was almost only in the plains below. But it was found that one of her " moveable" dwellings was also in those by-paths going off from the Hill, full of pretensions to holiness, to call passengers who go right on their ways. There was a pretence to a holiness so great and marvellous, that it released men entirely from the law of God, and set them free from all obligations, and that, they said, was the freedom of faith. Many unstable souls were beguiled by the accursed practices of these teachers, and went into the house of the moveable woman. But the pilgrims could turn to their maps, and find this horrible reef of sin and danger, laid down most distinctly, in Peter, with the very beginnings of it in those boastful pretences of great holiness and freedom. "For when they speak great swelling words of vanity, they allure, through the lusts of the flesh, through much wantonness, those that were clean escaped from them who live in error. While they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption: for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage. For if, after they have escaped the pollutions of the world, through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning. For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them."

Some of the by-ways of this Hill were much frequented by demons. They staid, it is true, mostly in the plains below, where they electioneered for the owners of the balloons, when they could not prevent people from starting, at some rate, on the journey; but still they came sometimes, in great swarms, higher up, and set upon the passengers up the Hill, for the purpose of sifting them, and

finding weak spots where they might strike a dart through them. Peter, in his way up the Hill, encountered such an assault more than once, and it proved a perilous place in his pilgrimage; but our blessed Lord prayed for him, and so his faith was not suffered utterly to fail. Job, it was well known, had terrible and repeated encounters of this kind, in the hardest part of his progress up the Hill, and Paul once and again was hindered in his way by Satan, and spoke from experience when he exhorted all Pilgrims to put on the whole armor of God, that they might be able to stand against all the wiles of the devil, and especially to take the shield of faith for quenching the fiery darts of the Wicked One. These darts the Adversary would sometimes shoot, suddenly and unexpectedly, from behind the crags that outjutted in some places over the way, and Pilgrims who walked carelessly received many a severe wound and injury.

Now, when I had beheld all these things, and for the present was satisfied with looking, I bethought me that I would examine those Songs of Degrees, or goings up, in the Psalms of David, for I thought it probable he might have composed them on purpose for the pilgrimage up this very Hill. There are fifteen of them, and I found in some of them very great internal marks of the Hill Difficulty. In the first, the Pilgrim seems to be just setting out, or thinking of setting out from the plains. "Wo is me, that I sojourn in Mesech, that I dwell in the tents of Kedar!"

out.

In the second, he has a clear view of the Hill, and encourages himself greatly with God's promises in setting "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills. My help cometh from the Lord. He will not suffer thy foot to be. moved. The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in forever."

In the third, he rejoices in being in the way up the Hill, and is assured that he shall see Jerusalem, and stand within the gates of the great city.

In the fourth, he begins to meet with some of the difficulties, but lifts up his soul to God, and waits upon him for mercy and deliverance.

In the fifth he has evidently had some wonderful escapes from the dangers of the way, and blesses God for his deliverance.

In the sixth he has seen the fate of some that turn aside, and contrasts it with the happiness of those who trust in the Lord, and cannot be removed, but are as Mount Zion, which abideth forever. "As for such as turn aside into their crooked ways, the Lord shall lead them forth with the workers of iniquity, but peace shall be upon Israel."

In the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth, there are various and beautiful experiences, some of them applicable especially to whole households on pilgrimage.

In the eleventh there is a great and precious spiritual experience, common to all true Pilgrims up the Hill.

In the twelfth the singer seems to be very near the top, and as quiet as a weaned child. And that was David's quietism.

In the thirteenth he has great foretastes and prophecies of the glorious rest of God forever.

In the fourteenth he steps into the winged cars with a company of fellow-pilgrims, and enjoys the sweetness of the Christian alliance, the unity of love.

In the sixteenth he praises God, and exhorts to the observance of night, as well as day-worship in the sanctuary, and blesses all the servants of the Lord.

The Jewish Rabbi, Kimchi, says that there were fifteen steps by which the priests ascended into the temple, and on each of these steps they sang one of these psalms. This was all the approximation that many of them ever made towards the experience of a Pilgrim's Progress. Then I thought that those who now go back to Judaism, and set up again a Jewish priesthood and a temple-worship in the place of Christ's own ministry of the New Dispensa

tion, are likely never to know anything more of the Pilgrim's Progress than those fifteen stone steps. For he only is a true descendant of faithful Abraham who is one inwardly, and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter, whose praise is not of men, but of God. The Galatians, in the time of Paul, were going up those stone steps; though they began in the spirit, they went about to be made perfect in the flesh; they removed from the grace of Christ into another gospel of forms and ordinances, and of weak and beggarly elements, whereunto they desired to be in bondage. But Paul declared that in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availed anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith which worketh by love. He said that nothing would be of the least avail without a new creature,-the entire regeneration of the soul in Christ. That was the true Pilgrim's progress;-it was David's Psalms in the heart, and not on the fifteen stone steps of the temple.

THE TWO WAYS AND THE TWO ENDS.

A LIFE ALLEGORY.

METHOUGHT I was writing upon the mystery of the judgment. The books seemed as if open before me, and my pen could almost transcribe their dread immutable records. But I was looking at the future through the unerring telescope of the past; through the mighty fact, that all of life is to be reproduced in the day of judgment, and then and there to constitute the material and ground of an endless and immutable decision. In this connection there came to my mind the remark of an eminent man of God, Mr. Cecil, that the way of every man is declarative of the end of that man. A prayerful man, for example, I said, will have a prayerful end. A prayerful man, a man whose life has been ordered by prayer, and filled with the habit of prayer, will be prayerful in sickness, and prayerful in death. He will possess a spirit of prayer, even when all the faculties of body and of mind seem departing. The habit of his life will assert its power, and come out triumphant in death, and there will be communion of the soul with the Lord Jesus Christ, even when all possibility of communing with anything of earth has departed.

I remarked that a man's whole way through life, religious or irreligious, is developed at his end. Our life is as a book, in the leaves of which are written, for the most part, as with invisible ink, the processes of our real existence, the goings on of our inward, hidden being, the movements of real,